Flow My Tears, the Sad Puppy Said 4/26

aka The Puppy That Cried Love at the Heart of the World

Today’s roundup spans everything from legitimate beef to The Walking Dead, with visits along the way to James Worrad, Bob Mayer, Martin Wisse, Earl Newton, Brad Torgersen, T. L. Knighton and T.C. McCarthy. (Title credits go to File 770 consulting editors of the day Vivien and NelC.)

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Todd VanDer Werff on Vox

“How conservatives took over sci-fi’s most prestigious award” – April 26

Do the Sad Puppies have a legitimate beef with the Hugos?

Not really.

In recent years, the Hugos have definitely taken a turn away from traditional pulp sci-fi toward more literary works. But science fiction has always had pulp and literary writers, and the latter crowd has traditionally been more successful at awards ceremonies — just as it has with the Pulitzers or National Book Awards, where Phillip Roth is more likely to win than Stephen King.

The Puppies’ claim here also ignores that the science-fiction community has traditionally backed all sorts of authors, of all sorts of political stripes.

“Robust conservative voices have always been part of the SF&F conversation.”

“What’s actually notable about the SF subculture is its heterodoxy, expressed by things like the Libertarian Futurist Society sometimes giving their Prometheus Award to the Scottish socialist SF writer Ken MacLeod, or MacLeod himself talking about the importance to him of right/libertarian writers like Robert Heinlein and Poul Anderson. Robust conservative voices have always been part of the SF&F conversation,” [Patrick] Nielsen Hayden told me.

The Puppies also insist there’s an unstated secret cabal running things behind the scenes of the Hugos, and that the only way to fight it is to push back against it.

Said Torgersen again: “Sad Puppies was necessary because everywhere I went in the field (as a young professional) I heard the same gripes: that the same predictable names always popped up in the same categories, that other names were always left out in the cold, or in the Hugo awards blind spots, and that the way to win a Hugo was not to write a fantastic story or book, it was to buddy up with and schmooze the right people.”

 

James Worrad

“Kicking Against The Pricks: Thoughts On That Vox Day Troll Fiasco” – April 26

I’d like to tell you it was a tough, valiant battle but it was more a pull-the-trigger-with-left-hand-smoke-with-the-right Somme-type affair.

The first wave had no comprehension of irony or satire and were thus tragically cut down in their knicker-sniffing prime. Second wave realized  they should at least pretend to understand irony and satire and still got cut down. The third wave was more of a trickle by then, one that had no option but to criticize my weight and writing ability. This, readers take note, is the troll equivalent of boys and old men being sent out into the breach with rifles made in 1892. The last push. Not pretty.

 

Bob Mayer on Write On The River

“The Hugo Awards: Who Gives A Shit? Author Bullshit” – April 26

I’m a whore. I cash my check.

This highlights the bullshit of authors.

If the system works their way—GREAT!

But when it doesn’t it’s censorship?

Take indie bookstores. Love them. Was in one yesterday and it inspired me. But over half the indie bookstores I’ve been in over the years blew me off trying to place my books there, even when traditionally published and a NY Times bestseller. Didn’t even bother to ask the guy behind the counter yesterday. Just bought some books. But, by God, one of them starts going out of business, the hue and cry arises. Ever hear that for an author going out of business?

99% or more of readers don’t care. They read. I did buy a book with the badge of Hugo Award Winner once on the cover based on it—Hyperion by Dan Simmons. Great fucking book and series. Total dickhead as an author in person and in email. But who cares?

He wrote some great shit. Harlan Ellison supported him so he won a Hugo. Yeah. Still a dickhead. But who cares? You read his book, not marry him.

 

Martin Wisse on Wis[s]e Words

“Will 2015 see the end of the Hugo Voters Packet?” – April 26

This year we’re in a perfect storm. For the average non-Puppy voter, the Voter Packet is a lot less attractive with all that Puppy Poo on it, while publishers might be wary to put their books on it due to the rocketing number of supporting memberships bought since the shortlist announcement. Sasquan is on track to become one of the largest, perhaps the largest Worldcon ever and what’s more, most of the memberships are supporting, not attending.

So if voters are less eager for the Packet anyway and publishers less willing to include their books now the membership is getting bigger and bigger, does this mean 2015 will make the Packet obsolete?

 

Earl Newton

“The Victimhood of Bullies, or: The 2015 Hugo Awards” – April 26

You know what political correctness actually is?

It’s treating strangers like your friends.  One of the biggest predictors of whether someone will accept gay people as equal in society?  “Do they have a personal relationship with someone who is gay.”

You might tease your best friend, but you don’t tease them in front of others. You don’t tease them behind their back (or maybe you do.  Stop doing that.)

You don’t make them into an outcast.  You respect their feelings.

“Feelings?!” comes the Sad Puppies / GamerGate / Men’s Rights Activist reply, swaddling itself in self-pity and righteous outrage.  “What about our feelings?”

I care about your feelings, too.  And I want to take your feelings seriously.

But you’re like a bully who, after shaking down a seven year old for their lunch money and pride, complains about the harshness of the reprimand.

If your only persecution is that no one will let you persecute others anymore, then I can’t help you.

 

T. L. Knighton

“Fisking Cat Valente” – April 26

And really, how in the hell do you know that that was what bumped the Heinlein biography off the ballot?  You are talking about volume two of the biography that Tor has put almost no push behind, that has been largely absent from many book stores, and that a number of people didn’t even know was out?  That biography?

Cat, we can’t nominate what we haven’t read and we can’t nominate what we don’t know is even out.  Take that up with your buddies at Making Light, because the biography was published then not pushed by Tor.

 

Brad R. Torgersen in a comment to T. L. Knighton – April 26

Again, some of the chief plaintiffs (against SP3) have been the most obvious beneficiaries of the status quo. Cat tends to be a bit of a “queen bee” within the field, and has a lot of sycophantic admirers. She’s just mad that somebody is disrupting things, and falling back on the tired narrative of, “Everyone who upsets me is a [insert bogeyman words here] so I win!”

 

T.C. McCarthy

“Anti #SadPuppies/#GamerGate – Brianna Wu – has ‘Ralph Retort’ Reporter Ejected from Panel Discussion” – April 26

The SadPuppies did not hijack the Hugo Awards. They played by the rules and won a popular vote that resulted in many within the SFF community complaining (falsely) about how there had been ballot stuffing, etc. This is all disingenuous. It’s a bit silly to complain and write hit pieces that accuse Brad Torgersen and Larry Correia of being racist just because one lost a popular vote. Brianna Wu is one of the latest to make these false (maybe erroneous is less inflammatory?) claims; this is my assessment.

 

Barth Anderson on Con Gusto

“Sad Puppies, The Walking Dead, and Hunting for Conservative Science Fiction” – April 14

Saddest Puppy Brad Torgersen has said there was no political litmus test at play in selecting certain works for their proposed slate, and I tend to believe him. The works on their slate are mainly fifty shades of military science fiction. Tellingly, to me, the most exemplary conservative piece of science fiction in the last ten years didn’t make the Sad Puppies’ ballot for Best Dramatic Presentation: The Walking Dead. This isn’t a work that merely plays with the trappings and furnishings of conservative thought, as military sf does, saying “yay guns” and stopping there. The Walking Dead is conservative from individual scenes to the widest angle of its worldview and philosophy.

The big conservative idea behind The Walking Dead’s apocalyptic world is a pure, condensed Thomas Hobbesian scenario. Society and government have collapsed from a zombie apocalypse, but even if you aren’t killed by a zombie, your corpse will re-animate as one. Indeed, the situation is so bleak and horrible that there is no presumption of seeking a cause or cure for the outbreak in this story. We don’t even know if it’s really an “outbreak” at all. The Walking Dead narrative is reduced to the horrible choices facing the characters, who come to realize that other humans are even worse foes than the zombies could ever be.

And this is really the launching pad from which many conservative arguments spring in The Walking Dead. Each season takes on different “enemy attitudes” that the tribe of right-thinking characters (ha ha) must face, analyze, and ultimately overcome. These “enemy attitudes” (my term) take the form of long-term presumptions about what society is, but which are now delusional (liberal?) beliefs that stand in the way of people being what they really need to be in this hyper-Hobbesian horror. Such as:

  • believing that the walking dead (zombies) still bear some humanity and must be treated humanely;
  • forgiveness and reconciliation are crucial to surviving;
  • motherhood and children are essential to society;
  • arming and feeding ourselves are cornerstones of society

 

 

296 thoughts on “Flow My Tears, the Sad Puppy Said 4/26

  1. I am quite sure if you offer enough money Tor will sell. Not convinced your desires and reality are going to intersect mind you.

  2. @Craig,

    That isn’t evidence. I mean, I actually considered not even responding, because I thought you were joking at first. But anyway, in case you really are that confused—you aren’t comparing like with like.

    One, of course the current Hugo nominees are experiencing a sales spike.

    Two, what you are looking at when you look at Kindle rankings is a daily, or even hourly shapshot. Useful, but very limited.

    Three, the gap between a book in the 30ks and a book in the 100ks is around the order of two-three units on a daily snapshot basis. That is, Red probably sold two more copies than Heinlein today,

    Four, price matters. The actual cheap people aren’t spending $40 a packet, but they may just dl a book for free ($0.00 for Kindle Unlimited for WISDOM) or cheap ($2.99 without for WISDOM, $4.99 for RED). Meanwhile, the Kindle version of the Heinlein bio is $16.99. You’ll note then when I made my remarks in other threads, I always mentioned price and format along with Bookscan estimates and Kindle ranking. You can’t just use one and ignore every other factor.

    Five, speaking of other factors—the Heinlein bio is a real book in real bookstores that a few thousand people went into and bought (Bookscan-recorded sales of around 1700) plus it appears in 81 Worldcat-reporting library systems (a system may have one copy; a system may have a dozen copies). The other books are pure ebook plays—that is, the entire world of bookstores are closed off to them. Indeed, they all appear to be Kindle-exclusives: no NOOK, no Kobo, no Google Play, no iBook. The Heinlein bio appears on all the major ebook retail sites.

    That one of the books, a current Hugo nominee at around one-fifth the price sold two more copies in the one bookstore is it available today, in is hardly “evidence” that “implies anything” about the sales of the books.

  3. rcade- “LOL. You just made Vox Day’s threats seem adorable.”

    I’d like to think the intersection of pity and adorably amusing is court jester personally.

  4. VD- If you plan to buy Tor, I wish you the best. I would like a few people shown the door and some more John C. Wright novels. Consider paying Jim Butcher a wheel burrow full of money for a new series of his choice, and Walter Jon Williams to continue writing in the Praxis universe.

    Since you’ve pretty clearly stated that if people want to know what you are thinking, they need only ask, I’ll take a shot at it:

    What is your ultimate objective regarding the Hugos this year? Is it to win a few for your writers? If so, I’d be happy if Wright, Rzasa and Burnside win. They’ve all written good stuff. And Weisskopf is an excellent editor.

    What I can’t figure out is how your writers win within the Hugo voting system. Getting nominated is the easy part. Heck, now that I know the rules I think I could get a nomination if I ever actually wrote anything. The quality doesn’t have to be good either. One of the benefits of having a huge family and extended social network. Winning is another thing entirely (though one could treat a nomination as a win, as well as perhaps keeping Lock In off the ballot- I agree with you that his nominating base is small).

    The influx of voters could tip it your way, if the majority are SP/RP/GG. But I think it is a mix of percentages, based on my reading on various sites. GRRM has gotten a few percent to sign up, and I think a few offended traditionalists (what you call, in part at least, SJW) have also signed up, as well as a few percent Jim Butcher fans, etc.. Getting to 50% to vote for a SP/RP candidate will be difficult, though Butcher stood a good chance until (I think) the Three Body Problem made the ballot (and still might, if enough of his fans make an appearance).

    And what will your response be next year if SP/RP nominees are No Awarded this year, as some have threatened? I’ll grant you that if SP/RP nominees are No Awarded you’re writers will have been treated unfairly, in my opinion. And personally, if Butcher is No Awarded I’ll be more than a little aggravated.

    And what is the plan about getting yourself nominated as editor? Do you really think you can win it, as I believe the closer the nominee is to you (including you) the harder the resistance and the less likely of registering a win. Weisskopf is a good choice. Was having yourself nominated an effort to keep others (such as PHN) off the ballot?

    In conclusion, if you don’t care about awards (and I believe you), why go through the exercise? Do you intend to advise your supporters how to cast their final ballot? Will you be actively coordinating the final ballot with Larry Corriea, Brad Torgersen, Jim Butcher, etc.? Will you be suggesting anything for No Award?

    As an aside, I personally think the SP/RP have been very good writers and works. I hope your crew get a decent shake. And I’ve been reading like mad since this whole controversy arose. Despite opinions stated on here, I think your Throne of Bones is actually pretty good, though I think parts of the ending (including the dwarven tunnels the army escaped through) was more than a bit weak.

  5. Glad someone is keeping notes, Will. Those will be important to the secret police.

    Thanks Milt! I always wondered why I scored with such frequency!

    Nick, if you insist on calling EC and NEFSA slates, that’s fine with me. You guys keep trying to cry about these mysterious slates as if they are some how against the rules.

    The terms are irrelevant. The outcome has always been the same. Slates, campaigns, lists. They are all legal, and you have no grounds for opposing one and promoting the other.

    Don’t believe me?

    Try to change the rules to prohibit “slates”.

  6. Sorry, XD, I never called the NESFA list a slate. You did. Then you said you didn’t.

  7. xdpaul – show me one of these slates and how it is the same as what Beale and Brad have done and we’re good. But they’re not, and you can’t and you haven’t because you’re an idiot. But hey, never mind, you didn’t want me to be passive did you?

    Most likely slates will remain but the nomination rules will change, I favour 3/6 myself in which case ‘slates’ are irrelevent and lists are back, yay!

    Frankly, Butcher probably wouldn’t have won in a normal year – Three Body is excellent, and so is Goblin Emperor – between them and the Leckie, I suspect he’d have been squeezed by the run off vote process. Even if he was on there legit I’d have him in 4th behind those 3, I suspect I’m not alone. He can cry all the way to bank.

    Finally, speaking of crying all the way to the Bank, I suspect Scalzi isn’t all that worried that he’s only on a half million views verses a million… he’s not got ads, it’s purely a marketing site and that’s a fair number of eyeballs for a mid-listy type author. Between that, the game, the TV and Movie options and the books that keep selling, I’m sure he’s very upset by the dazzling display of wealth of Mr Beale.

    Of course, looking at ‘spikes’, I downloaded Wright’s ‘opus’ for free and based on reading those the probability of me buying anything from Castila is about zero…. So good luck with the acquisition strategy…

  8. ““I believe that far too many of Vox’s words fall into those categories—and a stand has to be made against it.””

    So brave. (slow clap) I assure you, I am duly impressed and will retire to my chambers to contemplate the error of my ways.”

    Do you think he realizes he’s slow-clapping one of his own nominees?

  9. VD — “Scalzi was never as popular as he led you to believe”

    Well, who cares how many page views he gets? I don’t read his blog because he’s popular. If popularity influenced me that much, I’d read the Daily Mail, or Kim Kardashian’s blog. I read Scalzi — when I remember, which isn’t regularly — because he’s a warm and interesting writer. I don’t read yours because you’re neither of those.

    This is where I seriously have to wonder at you seeming to believe the rubbish that comes out of your keyboard. Not everybody who typically dislikes or ignores you worships Scalzi’s ass, as beautiful as I’m sure a middle-aged man with a desk job’s is. Some of us just read him occasionally, don’t begrudge him his few nominations and a couple of awards… and that’s it.

    This isn’t a war of Beale against Scalzi, it’s just you creating a nuisance for everyone else in fandom. If Scalzi dropped dead tomorrow, you’d just switch your rhetoric entirely over to Patrick Nielsen Hayden with barely a pause, I’m positive. And if he retired away to a tropical paradise sans internet, you’d switch to Cat Valente or Charlie Stross or someone completely innocent of the fantasy charges you construct. No-one’s conspiring to keep you from your just rewards, we just individually don’t like you.

  10. “If you plan to buy Tor, I wish you the best.”

    You might want to view Vox Day’s claims with a little more skepticism.

    Tor is part of the Holtzbrinck Publishing Group, which has revenue over $2.5 billion dollars a year. Tor’s not going to be purchased by a tiny ebook publisher in Finland.

  11. As I said, I wish him all the best. Where my tounge is at the moment is a subject for your conjecture 🙂

    What is impressing me here is how people who don’t necessarily like Scalzi (I don’t dislike him either, he’s an ok writer), nor each other (me and Nick), can be genuinely united in contempt for some of the people posting here 🙂

  12. rcade- I assume he meant it humorously, as I meant my reply. Maybe I’m wrong but if so, I doubt any editor will be making business decisions based on the advise of someone unknown person typing half a world away.

  13. “Tor is part of the Holtzbrinck Publishing Group, which has revenue over $2.5 billion dollars a year. Tor’s not going to be purchased by a tiny ebook publisher in Finland.”

    Can you imagine the taxes you’d have to avoid on that?!

  14. Theodore, you could buy Tor and it wouldn’t change anything. The world turns whether anyone wants it to or not. The publishing industry has lost control of the means of production and everyone is adjusting to that fact. I’m no oracle, but I’d say the future leans towards Amazon and similar entities, willing to sell and promote a work for a cut of the profits. If you want to make a war out of this, your actual opponent is: Jeff Bezos. His company sells: Everything. For the record, you won’t beat him by selling a subset of Everything. You’ll have to sell more than that.

    You’ll have to sell books people want to read. Like Tor, selling your friend John C. Wright’s work, right next to John Scalzi.

    You’ll become your own enemy. Start a blog called Vox Nox. Buy a hairless cat.

  15. Tor is in financial trouble and is a tiny subsidiary. You would be surprised at what it might sell for.

  16. No. That is just an opinion based on the state of the traditional industry and the decline in SF print sales and other things like that. Perhaps Tor is secretly going great guns. In either case, they are tiny relative to their parent.

  17. “Tor is in financial trouble” isn’t a statement of opinion, it’s a factual claim.

    Why would a decline in SF print sales mean that any company is in financial trouble? Do us a little math to show the margins on ebooks and audiobook downloads verses trade paperbacks, why don’t you?

    Any subsidiary is likely going to be small vis-a-vis its parent, but is Tor a tiny subsidiary? Will you prepare a list of imprints, by income, in size order for us?

  18. “” I serve the cause(s) and I don’t care about awards at all.”

    None the less, your nomination of yourself has been noted. Also, your nomination of people who work for you.”

    Yes, that’s obvious. And the statement is nevertheless true.

    “Well, who cares how many page views he gets?”

    Scalzi and everyone who claims how popular and influential he is. It was all puffery all along. When he claimed to have 2 million pageviews monthly in a 2010 interview with Lightspeed and everyone bought it, he actually had 305k.

    “No-one’s conspiring to keep you from your just rewards, we just individually don’t like you.”

    Yes, I know. I still don’t care. Why is it that you feel the need to keep pointing out the obvious? Do you find it that hard to accept that I place no value on your precious opinion? And yes, I will keep coming after PNH, but no I would not go after Stross, Valente, or anyone else unless they give me reason to do so. Leave me alone, I’ll leave you alone. And unlike Scalzi, I have respect for Stross’s writing. I was one of the few people who used to nominate him for Nebulas back when he most deserved them.

    “What is your ultimate objective regarding the Hugos this year? Is it to win a few for your writers?”

    To see how the SF establishment responds. This was just recon. No, winning awards was never an objective. I do think John deserves to win a few, as with Stephenson and Mieville he is one of the best SF/F writers writing today. And if WorldCon prefers No Award to honoring Wright for works much superior to past winners, that will confirm what I suspected from the start. And what I expected.

    See, I’ve never been interested in much more than convincing a large number of people that the SJWs in SF are, in fact, the cultural enemy. You’ve collectively played your part wonderfully well in that regard. Based on his recent piece, I think Jim Hines is one of the first to belatedly figured out what’s actually going on. But it’s far too late. The mask has not only slipped, it’s been ripped off.

    “And what will your response be next year if SP/RP nominees are No Awarded this year, as some have threatened?”

    I haven’t given the matter much thought, other than to point out the one obvious option. It’s no secret that a fair number of RP want me to declare No Award for everyone and everything THIS year. The idea had some appeal, but the SP asked me not to do that and I agreed to give WorldCon a chance to play ball. If they’d rather play war, well, I am a wargamer. That’s fine too.

    “And what is the plan about getting yourself nominated as editor?”

    I am the sharpest stick. And I am the best short-form editor this year, as it happens. Not that it is likely to matter with regards to the vote, but then, that’s sort of the point.

    “In conclusion, if you don’t care about awards (and I believe you), why go through the exercise? Do you intend to advise your supporters how to cast their final ballot? Will you be actively coordinating the final ballot with Larry Corriea, Brad Torgersen, Jim Butcher, etc.? Will you be suggesting anything for No Award?”

    To get a better grasp on what the other side can bring to the battlefield when motivated. Yes. No. I will either suggest everything or nothing for No Award, but I have not made a final decision. Out of respect for the opinions of SP and neutrals, I am leaning towards nothing but it is possible their opinions will change, given the behavior of the SJWs.

  19. ‘And I am the best short-form editor this year, as it happens’

    And you should know, being a Hugo-nominated editor and all.

  20. the chorus of “I don’t care about …”

    is drowned by the continuing spew of how much you DO care.

  21. VD — “Why is it that you feel the need to keep pointing out the obvious?”

    Because your supporters in this phony cultural war aren’t as bright as you, as I’m sure you would be the first to admit.

  22. VD — “I am the sharpest stick.”

    I’m not touching that one with a ten-foot stick, no, no, no.

  23. “That is just an opinion based on the state of the traditional industry and the decline in SF print sales and other things like that.”

    You went from “Tor is in financial trouble” to “I have no idea whether Tor is in financial trouble” in the space of two comments. Kudos.

  24. “Because your supporters in this phony cultural war aren’t as bright as you, as I’m sure you would be the first to admit.”

    My supporters have understood what I’m doing all along. They think it’s funny that you guys STILL think it’s about the Hugos. And the cultural war isn’t phony, that’s just more of your SJW lies.

    A few of my supporters are smarter than I am. Most of them aren’t. Of course, very few on the other side are even at my intellectual level, as is completely obvious by their complete inability to grasp the readily apparent. The SJWs are mostly midwits with 115-130 IQs who simply can’t grasp that there are SEVERAL classes of people smarter than they are.

    I’m not in the absolute top class of intelligence myself. But I’m smart enough to know when I’m outclassed, and to shut up and listen when that’s the case.

    But, you know, keep telling me you don’t like me and how sending Sad Puppies a message is going to accomplish… something. If you like.

  25. And you’re one of those several classes eh?

    What about those of us who aren’t ‘SJWs’ but don’t rate you much either? Seriously, mate, you think Wright is in the same class as Meiville and Stephenson, that worries me deeply. Did you read the submissions that are up for the Hugo? Oh, right, yeah, and you still think that?

    Re: Scalzi – I don’t think he much thinks about whether or not he’s influential, what with the books, the games, the movie options, TV consulting work and the like, I suspect he’s fairly comfortable and has been making a decent living for a while. He doesn’t seem to have a plot to prove anything really. OTOH you seem a little upset that that nonsense you posted in the guest post he gave you was, well, not taken seriously is the best I can think of.

    But keep tilting at these windmills, it’s amusing to watch. On the plus side, you’re not as pompus when you write as Wright is.

  26. “What about those of us who aren’t ‘SJWs’ but don’t rate you much either?”

    I couldn’t possibly say. I don’t mind being underestimated.

    “Re: Scalzi – I don’t think he much thinks about whether or not he’s influential”

    Then you don’t even begin to understand him. He thinks about it absolutely all the time. I have very seldom encountered, online or in real-life, an individual who more relentlessly attempted to spin the narrative of how people perceive him.

    “OTOH you seem a little upset that that nonsense you posted in the guest post he gave you was, well, not taken seriously is the best I can think of.”

    I wasn’t upset by the reaction of Whatever readers to THE IRRATIONAL ATHEIST at all. And the fact that you are attempting to create a false narrative in that particularly way not only indicates your low socio-sexual rank, but suggests that even if you are not an SJW, you possess a similarly cavalier attitude towards the truth.

  27. “Did you read the submissions that are up for the Hugo? Oh, right, yeah, and you still think that?”

    Yes. And yes, without question.

  28. In contrast, I’ve seen average traffic of 1.3 million pageviews per month for the last 24 months. I expect to be averaging 2 million+ per month by the end of 2015. And that doesn’t include Castalia House, which has decent traffic of its own.

    voxday.blogspot.com got ~450k visits last month.

    Scalzi.com got ~470k visits last month.

  29. People will be reading Awake in the Night Land and loving it 100 years from now… when Redshirts is long forgotten.

  30. ‘People will be reading Awake in the Night Land and loving it 100 years from now… when Redshirts is long forgotten.’

    People who have read the Wright stories TB got onto the ballot, on the other hand, wish they could forget them now. But then quality wasn’t the point, apparently.

  31. “voxday.blogspot.com got ~450k visits last month.

    Scalzi.com got ~470k visits last month.”

    weird… according to site meter VP had 528k visitors between march 15 and april 15.

  32. “But then quality wasn’t the point, apparently.”

    the wright nominations are excellent. And even if you don’t think they are his best… it does not take a genius to spot the pattern that often authors are rewarded for later works that aren’t as good as the earlier works that earned them their reputations that later resulted in the awards.

    See Stross as prime example Number 1.

  33. ‘the wright nominations are excellent.’

    We’ll agree to differ. His Night Land stories do have a good rep, but as far as posterity is concerned, I think he was ill served by TB’s machinations this year.

  34. My low socio-sexual rank? Uh huh, ummm… ok… (backs away, careful not to make eye contact…)

    More seriously, I’m really not underestimating you, I just actually think you’re being a dick for no good reason – you seem more than clever enough to be able to come up with all sorts of creative ways to fuck with the Hugo Awards and the people you perceive to have slighted you. But, in all honesty Theo, get some new insults ‘socio-sexual rank’? Meh. I would have preferred Gamma something or other. That said, if you have to keep reminding me you’re an Alpha, then you’re doing it wrong.

    Seriously, mate, lighten up. This pseudo intellectual claptrap really does make you look like a twit.

    As for the Whatever piece, I assumed that that was what started this ridiculous feud of yours – if not, why are you getting so worked up about somebody with his obviously low socio-sexual rank?

    You I haven’t met, except through your online persona, I think… I’ve met him a few times at various conventions, and you seem to have constructed a fantasy version of Scalzi in your head to fight with. There’s a term related to what you’re doing with Scalzi which I think is fairly apt here – projection.

    And you read those? Edited them? AND YOU STILL LIKE THEM?

    As they used to say back in the day. Wow. Just wow.

    The way he wrote one of them, the voice if you like, was basically like being forced to sit through Dick Van Dyke explaining how he nailed the cockney accent for Mary Poppins. It was that bad. Please never let him write something set in England again, at least until he learns how to write like that. The marlowesque quality in the Time Travel one was better except the story was crap and as for the bad Lewis, it was just bad.

  35. As the old political joke ends, “But, comrade, it appears that [SJW] means whatever you want it to mean!?” “Ah, now you are beginning to understand the theory of [SJW].”

    VD — I stand corrected. Many of your supporters aren’t as bright as you. Certainly not on this site.

  36. according to site meter VP had 528k visitors between march 15 and april 15.

    *shrug* I’m using a free website to look up the numbers quickly, and the time period I was referring to was march 1-march 31, so differing numbers aren’t unexpected, within a reasonable degree.

    an unreasonable degree would be 50-150%, like anything around 250k or 750k a month. An extremely unreasonable degree would be a 300% difference, like stating he’s getting “1.5 million” a month.

  37. NelC- Will Shetterly wrote a whole (albeit small) book on Social Justice Warriors. Here’s the link- http://www.amazon.com/make-Social-Justice-Warrior-intersectionality-ebook/dp/B00IRUW8J6

    I read it yesterday. I now wish I could scrub my brain. Not because Shetterly didn’t do a good job (he did), but I now know more about “cis-gender”, “non-binary”, “binary”, identitarianism, Critical Race Theory, intersectionalism, etc.., than I ever cared to know.

  38. Interestingly, when you look at voxday.blogspot.co.uk and whatever.com – seriously, on that note, you couldn’t get your own domain there??? – one is obviously designed with SEO in mind and especially to drive awareness about the books available. The other has things about ‘my next band’ and a lot of tweets.

    One is certainly not trying to sell you fiction as heavily.

    I also note that Vox Day, ‘super intelligence’ has 4,600 twitter followers, John Scalzi has 81,000…. So while Mr Beale is fighting for dominance of the 2000s, John Scalzi won the 2010s :p

    Not that any of it actually matters, but doesn’t this feel like somebody is trying very hard to measure the size of their extremities?

    Also, how do your books rank against his in, say, Amzon rankings – a quick Googling suggests he’s in the 1,000s and Wright is in the 100,000s and your book was in the 300,000s….

  39. Steve Moss — My one online contact with Will Shetterly settled into him sealioning me almost immediately; IIRC I banned him from my blog, put him on my email blacklist, and resolved never to have anything to do with him again. So, I don’t think I’ll be picking that book up, I wouldn’t be able to read it uncritically.

  40. VD: ““Did you read the submissions that are up for the Hugo? Oh, right, yeah, and you still think that?”

    Yes. And yes, without question.”

    Ladies and gentlemen, why VD will be going below “No Award” for Best Editor, in a single statement.

  41. It’s hilarous to see Teddy “not obsessed with John Scalzi” Beale declare himself superior because his blog might just have more traffic than Scalzi’s. That just leaves Scalzi with the bigger career, the more books sold, the more stories optioned for movies and television series, more critical and popular appreciation and Beale with the ruins of 2 or 3 different careers dabbled in with little success (“rockstar”, game designer, sf writer) and a highly succesful 4th one as internet troll.

    I know which life I’d chose.

  42. @Steve Moss, NelC:

    I tried reading some of that e-book. The chapter I selected made enough errors in logic that I did not bother going further.

    Specifically, I checked out his comments on “Unpacking the Invisible Backpack,” because I’ve read that essay. The error I kept seeing him make was… well, let me use one example.

    The original essay lists, as one of the contents of the backpack, the privilege of not being followed in stores. WS’s response was to say this was a class privilege of being able to not notice underlings, and lower-class white people get followed in stores. That’s fine so far as it goes, but the problem is that he doesn’t take the next step and combine the two factors. The original author saw a racial difference, he sees a class difference, yet he makes no effort to examine how a black person’s experience might differ from that of a white person if they are of the same class.

    Without that key piece of information, his counter-thesis (that class, not race, is the key factor) remains unproven. All he’s done is show that class can be a factor; he has done nothing to disprove the original assertion that race is a factor. Further, this is not an unanswerable question; affluent black people get hassled much more than equally affluent white people, and poor blacks get killed for things that get poor whites warned or arrested. Saying that it’s about class and not race denies that, and disagrees with observable reality in doing so.

    tl;dr: Saying “it’s class, not race” by examining class but not race is not logically sound, so I felt no need to read further. I’ve already heard the “‘White privilege’ is a myth because I grew up poor” thesis, and as a white man who grew up poor, I reject it as a load of bunk.

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