aka The Puppy In God’s Eye

The Geiger counter pours out a relentless beat as the fallout rains down. The glow in today’s roundup comes from Kameron Hurley, Jo Lindsay Walton, Martin Wisse, Mark Nelson, The Weasel King, Joe Sherry, George R.R. Martin, Vox Day, Jim Butcher, Larry Correia, Lou Antonelli, T. C. McCarthy, Michael Johnston, Alexandra Erin, John Scalzi, Myke Cole, Brad Torgersen, Dave Freer, William Reichard, Michael Z. Williamson and less easily identified others. (Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editors of the day Steve Moss and Laura Resnick.)

https://twitter.com/KameronHurley/status/595286661342175235

 

Kameron Hurley on Motherboard

“It’s About Ethics in Revolution” – May 4

Sorva took her seat on the other side of the table and waited. Both men could pass for Caucasian, as if that even bore mentioning, and sat in stuffed leather chairs. They wore extravagant codpieces that matched their suits, their members so cartoonishly large she could see the tips peeking up from the edge of the table. They both wore backwards caps.

It was the Director of Business Development, Marken, a lanky man with a sincere, pudgy face, who spoke first.

“Do you understand that when we choose the very best forward-looking brand messages each year for the Business Development Award ballot we open to our corporate writers, it must adhere to certain standards?”

 

Jo Lindsay Walton

“Quick Hugo thought”  – May 4

Some folk out there seem to be prevaricating between (a) No-Awarding the Puppies selections or (b) No-Awarding every Puppy-dominated category, since it would be totally unfair to give “The Day the World Turned Upside Down” a Hugo by default, and pretty unfair to give e.g. The Goblin Emperor a Hugo with reduced competition.

I’m prevaricating too, and I know exactly what would let me make up my mind: releasing the full nomination data. That way you could see who else could have been on the ballot. Then the procedure’s simple: you construct a virtual ballot from a Puppy-free world (the kind of Stalinist disappearing we SJWs lurve) and make your choice. If your selection from the virtual ballot is on the real ballot as well, you vote for them above No Award; otherwise you No Award the whole category.

But we don’t have the full nomination data, right?

 

Martin Wisse on Wis[s]e Words

“No Award All The Things” – May 4

No Award All the Things!

Sorry Thomas Olde Heuvelt, you may actually get your Hugo this year, but since you’re the only candidate there on merit I felt uneasy voting for you by default. Better luck next year.

 

Mark Nelson on Heroines of Fantasy

“An Ever Changing Landscape” – May 4

Who pays when the real world intrudes on our imaginary landscape? If we start turning against each other and fall to squabbling over increasingly empty honors, how does that make us look? The truth is SFF needs to grow up.  At times I have felt that our genre heading allowed us to adopt a mock superior tone; mostly as a response to being ignored by “real literature” and those who write criticism.  We reveled in being aberrant. We rallied around our awards and celebrated our words in spite of the roaring silence from the wider world. We were a club with giants as members. We were privy to secret knowledge with informed, inclusionary eye-winks. We were the wandering Jews relegated to pulp fiction status, respected by none other than those lucky, lucky few who accepted the words and understood the latent power of the language of ideas. I wonder if the worst thing to ever happen to the genre was its popular success.  The bigger “it” got, the more insistently came the calls for “it” to be taken seriously.  And when film tech caught up with story tech, a marriage of commercial explosion formed. “Money, money changes everything…”  And at present the affect has not been altogether positive. We were once the progressives. Now we look like idiots fighting over cheesecake while the Titanic’s deck begins to tilt. Wow. We have all but rendered the Hugo award useless. WorldCon cannot avoid the taint of controversy. The folks putting on the con deserve better.

 

The Weasel King

“theweaselking.livejournal.com/4673543” – May 4

The Locus Awards: A collection of skiffy fic untainted by ballot-stuffing assholes. Maybe not all to your taste, but reliably “dickface asslimousines did not shit on this ballot and then demand that you to eat it with a smile” Bonus sick burn: Connie Willis, awesome author[1] and perennial Hugo presenter, told the Hugos to fuck off because of the penisnose MRA anuscacti who hijacked their nomination process, and she’s presenting the Locus Awards.

 

Joe Sherry on Adventures in Reading

“Books Read: April 2015” – May 4

Discovery of the Month: If not for all of the fracas over the Hugo Awards, I may never have read Eric Flint’s 1632, which was a fairly enjoyable romp taking a group of twentieth century Americans back into seventeenth century Europe. I already have the next book, Ring of Fire, coming in from the library.

 

George R.R. Martin on Not A Blog

“LOCUS Nominations Announced” – May 4

While this year, admittedly, may be different due to the influence of the slate campaigns, over most of the past couple of decades the Locus Poll has traditionally had significantly more participants than the Hugo nomination process. Looking over the Locus list, one cannot help but think that this is probably what the Hugo ballot would have looked like, if the Puppies had not decided to game the system this year. Is it a better list or a worse one? Opinions may differ. The proof is in the reading.

 

Vox Day on Vox Popoli

“Three centuries strong” – May 4

As Supreme Dark Lord of the Evil Legion of Evil, we are pleased to declare that Malwyn, Whore-Mistress of the Spiked Six-Whip, has reported that she has completed the initial Branding of the Minions. She has now gone to take a well-deserved vacation in one of the more secluded lava pits in our Realm of Deepest Shadow, where she will no doubt be nursing her aching wrists and filing for overtime as well as worker’s compensation….

“How many of us are there?”

335 as of this morning.

 

@Dedwrekka I think we'll see what people think when the voting goes down. 🙂

— Jim Butcher (@longshotauthor) May 3, 2015

 

Larry Correia on Monster Hunter Nation

“Arthur Chu sucks at everything but Jeopardy” – May 4

Many regulars may remember Social Justice Warrior and Salon author Arthur Chu as the dipshit who declared Brad Torgersen’s 20 year interracial marriage and his biracial children as “shields” to hide Brad’s racism. He is one of the morons who blamed the Sad Puppies’ success on GamerGate.

Well, after a day of futile harassment, his team of idiots couldn’t even call in a bomb threat correctly.

 

T. C. McCarthy on YouTube

“Local 16, Bizarre Tweets, and Bomb Threats: #GamerGate an #SadPuppies Supporters Meet in DC #GGinDC” – May 4

 

Lou Antonelli on This Way To Texas

Reach out and insult somebody – May 4

The official announcement of the nominations for the 2015 Hugo awards was made on April 4, so its been a month since then, Gee, time flies when you’re having fun.

One thing I’ve learned in the past month is that, thanks to the wonders of the latest technology and the internet, someone you don’t know and have never met, who may live thousands of miles away, can call you an “asshole” in public.

 

Michael Johnston in a comment on Whatever – May 4

Rachel Swirsky said: “Please, please, please, please stop with the “put down” rhetoric about the puppies, and the “you know what has to be done about rabid animals” and “take the dog out behind the barn.”

It’s vicious and horrible. The puppies and how they’ve acted toward me and others sucks. But good lord, let’s keep threats of violence, however unserious, out of it. Please.”

This, in particular, illustrates the difference between the puppies and their perceived enemies. In every “liberal” space I’m following, any threats or overly abusive rhetoric is met with calls for civility. In the SP/RP spaces, the rhetoric is largely about how we deserve horrible things done to us, which are often described in detail–and the moderators not only allow it, but indulge in it themselves.

 

Alexandra Erin on Blue Author Is About To Write

“What! Your Sad Puppies Are Evolving” – May 4

This is a significant shift from Day for two reasons.

The first is that it signals what he thinks is most likely to happen. He rode high on the sweeping fantasy vision of himself as a Roman general leading a slavering horde of berserkers across the frozen river to assault the well-fortified position of his enemies (note to self: suggest history lessons for Vox), but he has just enough self-awareness to know that his strategy of lying and repeating the lie could come back and bite him if he tried to claim a sweeping victory where none existed, so he’s starting the spin now.

The second is that—as mentioned before—the endgame he now endorses is something the Sad Puppies have claimed to have wanted as their ultimate endgame.

 

Season of the Red Wolf

“A Pox on both their Houses: Sad Puppies, Vox Day, Social Justice Warriors, the Hugos circus and the irrelevancy of a dying genre” – May 4

As with Torgersen, Correia can’t be bothered with addressing what Vox Day actually writes about blacks (the problem there – in the linked blog entry – is not the silly and ridiculous debate itself that Vox Day quotes from, it’s Vox Day’s own commentary on African-Americans in response to that debate that is eyebrow raising) and women alone. Of course as soon as one does acknowledged what Vox Day actually writes about blacks and women (never mind gays), then the only way to defend those indefensible prejudices, is by sinking into prejudice itself. Correia, like Torgersen, thus avoids that trap (defending the actual indefensible remarks/comments of Vox Day’s) by not ever quoting Vox Day’s most egregious commentary in this regard, and getting to grips with what he actually says. Correia, as with Torgersen, just doesn’t go anywhere near what Vox Day actually writes about blacks, women and gays for that matter. The easier to whitewash why Vox Day is considered persona non grata, namely for very good reasons. Yes it’s all so hypocritical, given the genre Left’s multiple prejudices (including of course their anti-Semitism that doesn’t bother anybody really, least of all genre Jewry) but this also misses the point.

 

John Scalzi on Whatever

“I’d Rather Like Men Than To Be a Sad Puppy” – May 4

If Brad Torgersen wants to insult me, insinuating I'm gay won't work. It's not an insult to be gay. Be an insult to be a Sad Puppy, however.

— John Scalzi (@scalzi) May 4, 2015

 

Myke Cole

“An open letter to Chief Warrant Officer Brad R. Torgersen” – May 4

Chief War­rant Officer Torgersen,

As you are no doubt aware, The Don’t-Ask-Don’t-Tell Repeal Act of 2010 removed bar­riers to homo­sexual mem­bers in the armed ser­vices, who may now serve openly and as equals.

You have long held the posi­tion that homo­sex­u­ality is immoral behavior, and most recently made den­i­grating jokes regarding the ori­en­ta­tion aimed at Mr. John Scalzi.

Your moral posi­tions are your own, and I will not ques­tion them. How­ever, I will remind you that you are a mil­i­tary officer and charged with the lead­er­ship of men and women of *all* walks of life, reli­gions, creeds, sexual ori­en­ta­tions, socio-cultural back­grounds and eth­nic­i­ties. Every single one of these people has the right to believe that you will faith­fully dis­charge your duties as an officer, not spend their lives care­lessly, not make them endure unnec­es­sary hard­ship, that you will care for them with com­pas­sion and ded­i­ca­tion. On or off duty, you are *always* an officer.

Your repeated state­ments of your thoughts on homo­sex­u­ality in public forums create the very rea­son­able appre­hen­sion among homo­sexual mem­bers of the ser­vice that you hold them in con­tempt and will not lead them to the utmost of your ability, will not look to their needs and con­cerns, and may place them at undue risk. That this is surely not your inten­tion is irrelevant.

Fur­ther, your pub­li­cally den­i­grating state­ments regarding Mr. Scalzi are base, undig­ni­fied and show ques­tion­able judg­ment. You, Chief War­rant Officer Torg­ersen, are an officer, but no gen­tleman. Your posi­tions are incon­sis­tent with the values of the United States mil­i­tary, and its com­mit­ment to being a ser­vice that belongs to ALL Americans.

Our nation deserves better.

Respect­fully,

Myke Cole

 

Vox Day on Vox Popoli

“Never retreat, never apologize” – May 4

Does no one listen or learn? Never, EVER apologize to SJWs! Case in point: “The apology was worse than the ini­tial attempted slur — it rein­forced the fact that Torg­ersen thinks calling someone gay is a slur.” I repeat. NEVER APOLOGIZE TO SJWs. They will see it as fear, take the apology, and use it as a club with which to beat you. Never back down to them, never retreat, never apologize.Notice that this was all posted AFTER Torgersen apologized to Scalzi.

 

Brad R. Torgersen

“Keyboard rage” – May 4

Today, I am told Myke Cole is on about me. Since Myke doesn’t really know me from Adam, I have to shrug and take whatever he said with a grain of salt. But then, most people who’ve been on about me lately — because of Sad Puppies 3 — don’t know me, either. I may take it personally if a friend, a family member, or a respected senior I admire, has hard words for me. But total strangers spewing hard words?

Well, total strangers may have an opportunity to reconsider at a later point. Especially if they meet me face-to-face.

 

Cirsova

“Hugo Awards Best Fan Writer Category” – May 4

So, in this post, I will try to define what “Fan Writer” means and use it to justify my support of Jeffro Johnson in this year’s Best Fan Writer category.

On the face of it, a Fan Writer is just that. A fan who writes. They are a fan of something in the realm of fantasy and science fiction, and they write about fantasy and science fiction from the perspective of someone who is a fan to an audience of fellow or potential fans. A good fanwriter is like an evangelical minister of fantasy and science fiction; they give sermons to the believers to help them better understand the texts they know and love and they take the good word to those who have not heard it. You’ve been missing something in your life, and you don’t quite know what it is, but I think I can help you; here’s this story by Lord Dunsany!

 

Dave Freer on Mad Genius Club

“Research, Hard-SF, stats and passing small elephants” – May 4

John Scalzi kindly provided us via his friend Jason Sanford a near text-book perfect example of GIGO. “Recently author John Ringo (in a Facebook post previously available to the public but since made private) asserted that every science fiction house has seen a continuous drop in sales since the 1970s — with the exception of Baen (his publisher), which has only seen an increase across the board. This argument was refuted by author Jason Sanford, who mined through the last couple of years of bestseller lists (Locus lists specifically, which generate data by polling SF/F specialty bookstores) and noted that out of 25 available bestselling slots across several formats in every monthly edition of Locus magazine, Baen captures either one or none of the slots every month — therefore the argument that Baen is at the top of the sales heap is not borne out by the actual, verifiable bestseller data.” As I said: first you need to understand what you’re sampling. For example, if you set up a pollster at a Democratic convention, at 10 pm, in a site just between the bar and the entry to the Men’s urinals… even if he asks every person passing him on the way in, you’re not going to get a very good analysis of what Americans think of a subject. Or what women think of the subject. What you will get is middling bad sample of what mildly pissed male Democratic Party conference attendees think. Middling bad, because many of the passers will be hurry to go and pass some water first. It’s vital to understand what you’re sampling – or what you’re not. Let’s just deconstruct the one above. In theory Sanford was attempting to statistically prove John Ringo’s assertion wrong. What he proved was nothing of the kind (Ringo may be right or wrong, but Sanford failed completely). What he proved was that on the Locus bestseller list, (the equivalent of the Democratic Party convention and the route between the bar and the gentleman’s convenience) that Baen was not popular. That is verifiable. The rest is wishful thinking, which may be true or false. Firstly ‘Bestseller’ does not equal sales numbers. A long tail – which Baen does demonstrably have, can outsell ‘bestseller’ and five solid sellers outsell one bestseller and four duds. Secondly, independent bookstores who self-select by accepting polling, selected by a pollster (Locus) with a well-established bias are not remotely representative of book sales in general, or representative of the choices book buyers have. Thirdly, it is perfectly possible to ‘capture’ no bestseller slots at all, even in a worthwhile sample (which Locus polling isn’t) and STILL be the one house that is actually growing. It depends what you’re growing from – which of course this does not measure and cannot.

Short of actual book sales numbers, and data on advances – which we’ll never see, staffing is probably the best clue. I know several authors at other houses whose editors have left, and quite a lot of other staff at publishers who’ve been let go. Over the last few years, the number of signatures on my Baen Christmas card have gone up year on year.

 

William Reichard

“Silent Punning (aka ‘The Hijacker’s Guide to the Galaxy’”) – May 4

Having run through quite a few sci-fi themed puns regarding the Hugo Award debacle, the community is apparently moving on to Westerns (e.g., “A Fistful of Puppies“).

I have to say, this is my favorite part of online warfare–when the rest of the community acknowledges the madness of it all and just starts having fun again. Because there should be some kind of silver lining in this.

 

https://twitter.com/mzmadmike/status/595265324263546881

syberious _ny on “Ebay: Sad Puppy 1911 Holster Right Hand”

Here’s the scoop…I designed this holster (and its companion holster in Left Hand configuration) because of the whole Sad Puppy / Hugo Award kerfuffle. My original thought was to perhaps raffle them off to raise money for a veterans organization. But, online raffles in the state of Tennessee (where I live and have my business) are tightly regulated, and it would have cost more to run a raffle than what the raffle could potentially bring in.

So, I’m listing these here on FleaBay, with the proceeds going directly to help a friend who is a veteran, who has run into some heavy financial problems with squatters in her rental home. On her GoFundMe page, she’s committed to only using the cash that she needs, and anything extra will be donated to a veterans organization of her choosing.