603 thoughts on “50 Ways To Leave Your Rover 6/20”

1. I’m glad to see that we have a good recycling program that reuses old arguments for fresh excuses.

2. Hearing these reactions I’m wondering if people simply don’t realize that until recently that stuff was not done, which is why Scalzi called his annual announcements “award pimpage posts” and “wholly unseemly self-pimpery.”

   I’d say he was poking fun at himself. As a semi-regular reader of Scalzi’s Whatever blog myself, that’s definitely his style.

3. Brian Z.: Scalzi is a great guy and I’m sure he didn’t realize where it was all going, but by doing it first…

   Scalzi wasn’t even close to being the first at letting his fans know what things he’d done in the previous year. Authors have been doing this for decades. Harlan Ellison has been railing at other authors for decades for doing it.

   Your attempt to blame Scalzi for “being the first” to engage in author self-promotion is cheap — and, oh yeah, another Brian Z. epic-grade lie.

4. Brian, also – one author naming one of his eligible works in each category does not make it a slate.

   The reason people are so angry is that the way the slates were set up – with five per category, and the works being of decidedly insultingly poor quality over all – meant that the slates pushed out everyone else. If Beale or Correia or Torgensen had done the same as Scalzi – and unlike him, managed to get each of their named eligible works on the final nominations list – no one would be angry! Because other good eligible works would still have a chance, even with presumed vote stuffing.

   Argh, I can’t believe you don’t know this.

5. @McJulie: Is there anything Beale isn’t wrong about?

   I keep wanting to filk Depeche Mode’s “Wrong”, but there’s really nothing that needs to be changed in it:

   I reached the wrong ends
   By the wrong means
   It was the wrong plan
   In the wrong hands
   The wrong theory
   For the wrong man
   The wrong eyes
   On the wrong prize

6. @Paul Weimer and others: (decoding Day-cism)

   tl;dr version: FungiFromYuggoth has it right. Beale’s “trick” is that he correlates genetic inferiority with species purity, so that calling someone “more fully human” is an insult. If you’re up on your X-Men lore, picture Beale as a dime-store Magneto and it should snap into focus.

   The trick is to recognize Beale’s linguistic traps, and it helps if you’re familiar with logic problems or Encyclopedia Brown-style short mysteries. For instance, in your quoted block, which I’ve edited so that only the key points remain:

   pointing out the INCONTROVERTIBLE GENETIC FACT that all of us are not equally Homo sapiens sapiens is not tantamount to calling his wife subhuman. […] Nor does it say, “Brad Torgersen’s wife is not fully human according to Science!”

   Logic problem time. The first sentence amounts to “saying that A does not equal B does not mean A is less than B.” True enough. It could mean that, but it could also mean that A is greater than B… which is his rhetorical trick. He’s saying that black people are closer to “pure human” and that this is what makes them inferior. Basically, he’s saying that non-black people are superior hybrids – mutants, even – thanks to the Neandertal and Denisovan DNA in their genomes. With that in mind, the second sentence’s meaning becomes clear. He’s saying that Torgersen’s wife is fully human (purer Homo sapiens sapiens), which is an insult in Voxland because it’s a claim of genetic inferiority, but he pulls just short of connecting that last dot.

   This is why I did not say Beale held her to be subhuman, but a savage – because that is the insult he used against N.K. Jemisin when he decided to insult her based on her skin color. (Okay, technically he called NKJ a “half-savage.” I freely admit that I’m not sure where the “half” comes from, but I’m under the impression that it may relate to mixed heritage. I’m sure someone else here can fill in that blank.)

   @various: (Predestination)

   I’ve had that on my stack for a few weeks now, but haven’t had a chance to watch it. Maybe next week, while I’m on vacation…

   @Jonathan Edelstein: “Officer Pupke”

   Oi. That’s a Pest Side Story if I’ve ever heard one. Bonus points for giving Beale the “social disease” line.

   @David W.: “and sometimes we ran out of ones”

   That reminds me: it’s your turn to empty the bit bucket. I’ve already picked up the garbage. 😀

7. Ann –

   Argh, I can’t believe you don’t know this.

   Unless he’s completely forgotten the same arguments about this from a month ago in the very threads he participated in, I’m sure he knows.

8. Also, and it’s really not hard to find this if you know how to use google, Scalzi was criticised for those posts. There was debate. (e.g. http://wrongquestions.blogspot.de/2014/03/the-2014-hugo-awards-thoughts-on-award.html or http://grrm.livejournal.com/417812.html)
   At the end of which people were able to distinguish eligibility posts made at the beginning of the calendar year from outright campaigns. Were able to factor in the amount of promotion for other books and the fact that self-promotion has changed with the internet and social media.

   This is Brian Z again discovering something old, that was discussed, and offering it up as a new concern.

9. I’m having trouble with understanding why authors telling their fans what they wrote last year that is eligible for an award, and that they’re proud of their work is a problem.

   To me it’s a service. I don’t remember what of the stuff I read last year was actually published last year.

   Renay’s Hugo Spreadsheets of Doom are a wonder and a blessing and I kiss her virtual toes. Ditto with authors tallying their own eligible works.

10. @Brian, before veering of to another completely tangential direction. Please take the time to read, and respond to the comments you’ve gotten. By all means, ignore the ones that are abusive, but you’ve gotten a fair amount of legitimate criticism, both of your behaviour as well as your arguments in the least few hours.

    Going of on a tangent while blithely dismissing those various comments in a line or two just reinforces the argument that you are not participating in good faith

11. JJ, authors have always promoted their work to a certain extent. Heck, some publishers throw parties at cons promoting their books too, and even serve booze at times, and I’m all in favor of that. The charge of self-promotion is basically a red herring being tossed out as a distraction from the issue of slates being used to unfairly dominate the Hugo nominations.

    P.S. – Kudos to Jonathan Edelstein for his hilarious parody. Encore!

12. Rev —

    In the original post, which has been screencapped and preserved, he did call her a savage. The half- bit must have been edited in later.

13. David W. of course he was doing it in a way that poked fun at himself, I said that. He just has the distinction of being the first author to self-deprecatingly suggest you consider his excellent work in any category whilst his cat was getting hundreds of thousands of eyeballs.

    He is also first to ask you to consider nominating as Best Short Story of the Year something that begins:

    When the yogurt took over, we all made the same jokes – “Finally, our rulers will have culture,” “Our society has curdled,” “Our government is now the cream of the crop,” and so on. But when we weren’t laughing about the absurdity of it all, we looked into each others’ eyes with the same unasked question – how did we ever get to the point where we were, in fact, ruled by a dairy product?

    Ann Somerville, please go back and have a look at some of the things you just wrote, and see if they are a proportional response to my commenting on trends in authorial self-promotion over the past decade.

14. Sorry, I really wanted to share that yogurt story. 😀 Really gotta flounce now, see you folks soon!

15. “authors have always promoted their work to a certain extent. ”

    This is so frustrating. People who haven’t been pro published seem to be totally unaware of the extent authors are now responsible for so much of their own marketing, and the willingness to participate in marketing is actually one of the things weighed up – at least by smaller publishers – in offering a contract.

    Maybe Scalzi now is big enough that he can lie back and let Tor do all the work (I doubt it, somehow.) But he certainly hasn’t always been, and most authors aren’t. Whether it’s blogging or tweeting or book tours or signing or whatever, authors are expected to be active in promoting their current books, and those who don’t play that game, lose out.

    Scalzi is doing absolutely nothing that other authors don’t do. The only difference is that he’s doing it really, really well.

    Slamming an author for self-promoting is like yelling at a museum for advertising its exhibitions.

16. “Ann Somerville, please go back and have a look at some of the things you just wrote, and see if they are a proportional response to my commenting on trends in authorial self-promotion over the past decade.”

    Well, I could have been ruder, if you think I should be.

    No, I’m happy I’ve characterised your thinking perfectly accurately. The reason you’re singling my comment out is because it’s true.

17. @Brian Z

    The publishing world is evolving and changing, especially since the advent of the internet. These days, authors are told by their publisher to regularly self-promote and put themselves out there. Actually, some publishers are now looking for writers who already have an active fanbase and/or are active bloggers/vloggers. Yes, even for fiction.

    Compared to the spammy kind of self-promotion I’ve seen other writers do, Scalzi is extremely low-key. He keeps his self-promotion to his blog/twitter and people have to be readers of his blog or follower of his twitter account to even see it. The way the post is worded is just Scalzi’s way of poking fun at himself and being sarcastic. That’s just his style.

    As a reader, I like it when writers remind me which works of theirs are elegible. That way I don’t have to di that information out myself. It might also jog my memory about books I read at the beginning of the year and might have forgotten. It’s nothing more than a helpful reminder.

    A writer’s self-promotion doesn’t mean that people are automatically going to nominate his book. Or buy it (wouldn’t that be nice?)

18. David W.: authors have always promoted their work to a certain extent. Heck, some publishers throw parties at cons promoting their books too, and even serve booze at times, and I’m all in favor of that. The charge of self-promotion is basically a red herring being tossed out as a distraction from the issue of slates being used to unfairly dominate the Hugo nominations.

    Indeed — and over here, Brian Z. is claiming:

    There are no “slate voters” – I feel calling WSFS members that is something of a scare tactic.

    That’s right. According to Brian Z., the big pile of mediocre-to-horrendous crap which has overwhelmed the Hugo ballot this year wasn’t the product of Puppy slates — it just magically appeared on the ballot due to “fans who cast ballots.”

19. ULTRAGOTHA at 9:21 pm:

    I’m having trouble with understanding why authors telling their fans what they wrote last year that is eligible for an award, and that they’re proud of their work is a problem.
    To me it’s a service. I don’t remember what of the stuff I read last year was actually published last year.

    I agree, but there are those who find even that to be unacceptable/unseemly (but they appear to be a minority opinion). For me those sorts of posts are perfectly acceptable for the reason you state. And you’ll generally see the various writers open up their blog comment threads for others to post recommendations too which I appreciate.

    Leaving aside the rhetoric, that is actually what Brad Torgersen’s post earlier this year was doing, and if that had been the extent of Sad Puppy 3, I would have little cause for complaint. But what happened next crossed the line for me, and many others. I think Brian Z is being disingenuous. Again.

20. Brian Z, FWIW the blog I read most lately is… wait for it… File 770. I nominated it for a Hugo this year, but we all know what funny thing happened on the way to the Hugos. (Now there’s a parody just waiting to be written. Perhaps all those years reading Mad Magazine’s musical sendups were not just a waste of time!) Now if Mike’s dogged job of scooping puppy poop, er, doing roundups is just so much shameless promotion for a Hugo, I’m all for it.

    P.S. – I predict a flounce in 5..4.. 3.. 2.. ;^)

21. Hey folks, I’m really sorry to have to depart as you are starting to pile on. Thanks for informing me that authors would like to get you to buy their books. Let me know your thoughts on the implications of that interesting fact for whether we can or should turn back the clock on “award self-pimpage”. And if you could all kindly attack at once, that will be more convenient for me to read quickly when I get back, thanks.

22. From that same post Brain Z

    In my opinion, a certain number of lockstep-voting fans among Vox Day’s blog readership probably did “screw up” (as I would define it in my own view) by following his suggestion to vote his list “as is.”

    See, it’s not all of them, or most, it’s just a certain number. And they didn’t screw up by signing on to the private feud of a racist asshat and paying $40 for the priviledge, they “screwed up” by doing as they were asked to do. Mistakes were made, and those poor unfortunate Rabid Puppies are either unfairly maligned as slate voters when they didn’t follow Beale’s list exactly or they just made a simple mistake, a screw up.

23. @Brian Z on ML:

    What I’ve seen you do here (correct me if I’ve misunderstood) is consider how your model holds up against the threat of some like-minded people voting together strategically in support of a slate of five things, but that is not even a very good characterization of the mess in 2015, much less a likely future scenario if a) this thing is ratified and b) disgruntled voters and potential voters are even more pissed off than they already are and become hellbent on gaming the new system.

    (1) That seems an excellent characterisation of the mess in 2015 that we want to address by revising the nominating system.

    (2) I am glad we all agree that ratifying EPH will prevent such behaviour in the future.

    (3) Your prescriptive argument is that we should let people game the system one way, because otherwise they might game it in a way that hasn’t been thought of yet. When you think of what that new extra special gaming might be, do let me know.

24. Hearing these reactions I’m wondering if people simply don’t realize that until recently that stuff was not done, which is why Scalzi called his annual announcements “award pimpage posts” and “wholly unseemly self-pimpery.”

    Reading your words, I can’t help but wonder if you realize just how “young” the internet really is and how much of “we just never did that” has to do with “we didn’t have the ability to do that.” Were people going to send out spam emails — or letters? — to their fans asking for votes? Blogging really didn’t take off until the late 90s early 00s.

    Also, have you not seem similar posts here? I’ve seen at least 4 bloggers/authors in these threads alone say “here’s a link to my blog” or “shameless plug, but you might like X that I covered in Y work.” It’s a normal part of online life.

25. David W. Did you just edit your previous comment to “predict a flounce” right after I said I have to leave?

26. Brian Z.: whether we can or should turn back the clock on “award self-pimpage”

    I can’t believe you’re even suggesting that this is a possibility. The Internet is not going to go away. The requirement by publishers that authors engage in social media marketing of themselves and their works is not going to go away.

    The only person’s behavior which one has the power to change or “turn back the clock” is one’s own. Brian Z., I would suggest that you start with yourself, by ceasing your dissembling, prevarication, derailing, evading, and disingenuousness.

    Clearly, that doesn’t seem to be something which is possible to achieve. So I can’t imagine why you would keep insisting that a whole bunch of peoples’ behavior can be changed by others when you can’t even manage to change your own.

27. Sad Puppy 4 might not be a slate?

    “You are assuming that next year’s Sad Puppy coordinator (Kate Paulk) will run a slate. She does NOT plan on doing a slate. She plans on doing a recommendation list. I spoke with her about it at RavenCon, and she was very clear about not wanting to do a slate; she will have a few rules for recommendations, but they are *very* simple and ones that I personally do not find objectionable – and don’t think most people would find objectionable.

    From what I recall, they are –
    1. You must have actually read what you are recommending.
    2. The author must not have won a Hugo in the past.
    3. (I don’t recall what this one was, I just recall that there was a third rule)
    4. She will not list any recommendations for herself – if people want to nominate her works, that’s fine, but she will not list them on the recommendation list.”

    I would have to see Kate Paulk come out and say so herself, and see if she follows through, but if she does, I would very much welcome that move.

28. Brian Z, I believe the ‘P.S.’ was a dead giveaway. Welcome to the brave new world of File 770 commenting.

29. Brian Z –

    He is also first to ask you to consider nominating as Best Short Story of the Year something that begins:

    Now I know you’d never intentionally misrepresent anything (wink) but he put all the works he had available for consideration on that list and said that he considered that story a trifle that had grown on him. He didn’t say he thought it was the best short story of the year, only that he wrote it, liked it and it was available for consideration.

    And yet for all the clout you give him for his influence, I see it wasn’t nominated though it got 16 whole votes. That sekrit cabal influence. Peter Watts won that year and on his site writes ‘won a Hugo (pos­si­bly due to fan out­rage over an al­ter­ca­tion with US bor­der guards in 2009)’. The Canadian conspiracy to take over the Hugos appears to be the more dominant force. Oh Canada.

    Oddly that trifle of a story would’ve been in harsh contention for second or third place if you judged its quality to what got slated this year.

30. @ Soon Lee
    That would be fine, but based on past behaviour there is a very high chance that somewhere between now and 2016 there will be some new outrage that causes a change of plans. Or the plan will have to be changed when “SJWs” suggest stuff for the recommendation list.
    The basic principle behind the thing requires some adjustment by the coordinator (otherwise the recommendation list has 50+ things in each slot) and a final list people should vote on (which the above doesn’t exclude, it would just be very definite that this is a “recommendation” not a “slate” i.e. semantics). Otherwise people can just do their own voting independently and talk about the books they love.

31. Soon Lee, I don’t think we can trust anything coming from that quarter right now, given the volume of lies and hateful rhetoric.

    And there’s Beale to consider. He’s not going to dance to some woman’s command. He’s going to double down and keep doing it until Tor sells him all their stock for a dollar.

32. I would have to see Kate Paulk come out and say so herself, and see if she follows through, but if she does, I would very much welcome that move.

    That sounds (vaguely) great. I look forward to checking out the recommendations.

33. @Soon Lee:

    I really don’t care what the Puppies claim SP4 will be. If it is possible for me to ignore it, I will do so, but otherwise, I’m going by past behavior and treating it as a list of stuff best ignored that is written or recommended by people who despise anything to the left of the Tea Party. The “slate” vs. “rec list” change sounds an awful lot like “boy, people hate it when we call this a slate – so we just won’t call it that.”

    As someone else has put it, they have spent their social capital. I am disinclined to let them start running a tab.

34. Whether Paulk comes up with a lengthy recommended reading or not, the cat is still out of the bag regarding the baleful effect of slates on the Hugo nominations, and passing EPH is still going to be necessary.

35. Slamming an author for self-promoting is like yelling at a museum for advertising its exhibitions.

    This. That is literally an author’s job. It is her livelihood. It is how she pays her bills and how she continues doing what she loves to do. Authors set up their own signings when they can, they make promotions on their blogs and websites, they go to cons and gladhand. If they want people to buy their books, the best way to do it is to have people know who they are.

    If you describe the same book with the same title and plot to two different people, but tell one person that “John Bills” wrote it and the second person that Neil Gaiman wrote it… I’m willing to bet the second person is more likely to purchase the book. Because people know who Gaiman is, and that buys him some automatic credit with people’s interest.

36. At least if it was a recommendation list it might gives others a clue why people enjoyed the stories, which isn’t a conversation they want to have with what was slated this year.

37. @Ann & Rev. Bob,

    Hence my disclaimer. But if the Puppies stop doing slates and stick to actual recommendation lists, then they will be as much a part of the Hugo process as everyone else, and we will be free to pay attention to their recommendations or not as we will. I think that is an improvement.

    This year, we have no choice but to look at Puppy stories.

    (ETA: I am totally on board with the need to pass E pluribus Hugo regardless. That’s why I signed my name to it)

38. Soon Lee: if the Puppies stop doing slates and stick to actual recommendation lists, then they will be as much a part of the Hugo process as everyone else, and we will be free to pay attention to their recommendations or not as we will. I think that is an improvement.

    Yep. But it’s still necessary to pass E Pluribus Hugo, and I’ll be voting for it and advocating to others to support it.

39. 2. The author must not have won a Hugo in the past.

    So, right off the bat they are saying that they don’t actually care about what the best work of the year was, but are just checking off boxes so everyone gets a turn with the Hugo. Suppose George R.R. Martin releases a great novel this year – arguably the best novel of the year (I don’t think he’s scheduled to release any novels this year, but I’m using the possibility just as an example). Should he be blocked out because he’s already won a couple of Hugos?

40. I doubt Paulk will have any more influence on next year’s ballot than Torgersen did on this year’s.

41. To change the subject away from Brian’s tedious misrepresentations of fact….

    I finished A Madness of Angels by Kate Griffin (thanks rrede for the rec!) I enjoyed it, although I had to keep stopping – the style is pretty intense, even dense, and verged on horror at times. I’m also hesitating at reading the next in the series because Matthew Swift as a character seemed something of a cipher. Peter Grant sprang from the pages and made me interested in him, and so excused any flimsiness of plot. Swift seemed a bit of a drip apart from the angel part of him, and none of the other characters were likeable at all.

    So for those who’ve read on – does he change? Do we get a firmer impression of him as a person, or is it still going to be about his powers and fighting the forces of evil?

42. Aaron –

    Should he be blocked out because he’s already won a couple of Hugos?

    A lot of prior Hugo Award winning or nominated authors and are dropping books this year so I imagine they’re trying to set a lower bar with that requirement as it’s going to be a tough competition all the way around.

43. Oh, yes, Kate Paulk only has the best of intentions:

    Kate Paulk, March 26, 2015: …Even the Evil Legion of Evil has standards, you know. We’re completely against letting Sad Puppies stay sad. We want them to be happy).

    There won’t be much action from Sad Puppies 4 for quite some time, but rest assured I will be lurking in the shadows looking for worthy candidates for the campaign to End Puppy-Related Sadness. When the time is right, announcements will be made and campaigning will begin in earnest. In the meantime, I shall rub my hands together and practice my evil cackle.

    sabrinachase: hehehehee. Oh, they are never going to know what hit them…

    Kate Paulk: Not until after they pick what’s left of themselves up from the steamrollered ground, no.

44. Aaron, in the hands of someone trying to be honest and comprehensive, the “hasn’t won a Hugo before” criterion strikes me as sensible as a bunch of others. Great work by someone who has won Hugos before may have a bit of an edge in getting noticed; focusing on those who haven’t isn’t – in principle – any different from focusing on work by women, or by writers of color, and so on, figuring that introducing them into the mix of nominations will improve it. The problems are basically practical, with us having no reason to trust anything the Puppies say at this point at what they’ll do. There are a lot of people I would trust to run an interesting effort to raise awareness of great work by people who haven’t yet won a Hugo.

45. @ JJ

    Sigh.

46. Soon Lee, I don’t think we can trust anything coming from that quarter right now, given the volume of lies and hateful rhetoric.

    And there’s Beale to consider. He’s not going to dance to some woman’s command. He’s going to double down and keep doing it until Tor sells him all their stock for a dollar.

    I agree. It was VD that drove the nomination train this year, not Brad, and it will be VD that tries to drive it next year. I fully expect this his minions have more staying power than the run-of-the-mill Sads.

47. I agree. It was VD that drove the nomination train this year, not Brad, and it will be VD that tries to drive it next year. I fully expect this his minions have more staying power than the run-of-the-mill Sads.

    Do you suppose he’ll keep his promise not to nominate any more Tor authors and spare us another year of JCW?

48. Gabriel F: Do you suppose he’ll keep his promise not to nominate any more Tor authors and spare us another year of JCW?

    I’m sure Wright’s wife wouldn’t be happy about that. She’s also a Tor author, and has probably been promised her turn on next year’s slate.

49. I dug up my ol’ Tor contract just to confirm what the boilerplate aspects of it might say. There is:

    1. nothing about personal behavior/abuse/discrimination
    2. nothing about publicity or any obligations to say nice things, no things, or to refrain from saying bad things.

    I knew these clauses didn’t exist because I wouldn’t have signed a contract for a traditional book to which I retained the copyright making such demands—and no novelist or anthologist worth publishing would—but it’s been a few years and so I double-checked.

    The boilerplate Glenn Hauman cited (way way back, hourse ago) reads like a comic book or WFH contract to me, especially given its use of the term “licensor.” Not quite the same thing, rights-wise and thus control-wise.

    I made a blog post on the subject a week or so ago, and Mike linked it at the time, but I guess it’s worth repeating, shorter and more simply:

    a publisher cannot and isn’t going to dictate to writers how to behave, for both legal reasons in the US, and because there is zero expectation that Writers Are Nice People*. Tor will not save you from the belligerent blog posts of John C. Wright.

    *Case in point: I received the other day the seventh number of my favorite literary journal, The Savage Kick, which publishes crime and confessional fiction for lack of a better phrase. The editorial notes that four of the issue’s contributors were in prison at press time, including one for the murder of his father. Not mentioned, but detailed in an interview a few pages later—a fifth contributor had recently been arrested and was awaiting trial.

50. JJ at 10:19 pm:

    Those comments were made eons ago (March 26, 2015) and I am open to the idea of Kate Paulk changing her approach for next year in light of what has transpired since then.

    I am still opposed to slates, I am still opposed to the politicizing of the Hugos, I am still not going to forget how the Hugos have been messed-up this year, I still think the Sads got played by T. Beale. But if the Sad Puppy leadership decides to de-escalate, I would welcome that move.

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