Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Puppy 5/6

aka The Puppy Who Barked Hugo At The Hearts Of The Fans

A modest roundup today because Your Host is under the weather. Will catch up in the next post. Meantime here are thoughts from Eric Franklin, Megan Leigh, George R.R. Martin, Alexandra Erin, Soon Lee and less easily identified others.  (Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editors of the day Paul Weimer and Rev. Bob.)

Eric Franklin on Gamethyme

“Awards and Geekdom” – May 6

It’s caused a huge stir.  To the point where more than a few nominees have withdrawn, either because they don’t want to be associated with the “Puppies” lists or because the winners of this year’s Hugo awards may feel like there will always be an asterisk associated with that award.

And it’s a shame, because there are some really good works on the list. For example, I really liked Ancillary Sword (which is the sequel to Ancillary Justice, which is well worth the read).

To make things worse, the folks involved with this are using the “We didn’t break any rules,” argument. And have co-opted GamerGate language, referring to their opponents as “SJWs.”

As a gamer, I am well aware that “We didn’t break the rules,” is shorthand for, “I know I’m being an asshole.”  Because I hear it at the table all too often.

 

Nightly Nerd News On Facebook – May 6

So If I vote for someone on at a Puppy slate I am fighting “puritanical bullies” or “the amoral culture of human degradation” while if I vote for someone on the other slate, wait, there isn’t another slate. Those bullies and their amoral culture must have already subsumed and conquered everyone else. No wonder we are getting metaphors from the Puppies of their donning old gray uniforms or suits of armor to ride forth into battle. The most I see on the non-puppy side is “hey, we’re fantasy and science fiction fans, we should read all kinds of things by all kinds of people.”

Larry seems to have confused the “puritanical bullies” side.

I don’t like being dragged into wars, on either side. So I will read and look at all the nominees and compare some to Locus Award nominees and see if the Hugo nominees are really the best from last year and worthy of awarding.

My past preferences have always been I like all kinds of things from all kinds of people.

 

electricscribbles

“The 2015 Hugo Award Kerfluffle makes me glad I’m not a Trufan!” – May 6

Admittedly I’m a fan of Larry Correia, Brad Torgersen, Michael Z. Williamson, Sarah Hoyt, John Ringo, well almost the whole Baen Stable really.  My politics are socially liberal and fiscally conservative, limited government with a hawkish bent (that’s my military upbringing speaking).  Classic Liberal if you will, libertarian versus Libertarian.   I’m a military veteran and I like military SF, it speaks to me.  But that’s beside the point really.  The sad reality is that both sides are more interested in tearing each other down then they are convincing anybody of the righteousness of their cause.

 

Megan Leigh on Pop-Verse

“The boys’ club: Why literary awards are so problematic” – May 6

To rectify this perceived problem, a bunch of white males have gathered together to herd the fans back into line. The Sad Puppies campaign, led by Brad L. Torgersen and Larry Correia, created their own list of suggested nominees for all categories. They asked those who were eligible to vote to follow their suggestions, which kept the number of female nominees to a scant 8, most of them being either writers of short stories or editors, none in the best novel, novella, or novelette categories. Not only do Torgersen and Correia take issue with the leftist movement in the voting, they disagree with the inclusion of these kinds of publications within their beloved genre at all.

 

George R.R. Martin on Not A Blog

“STATION ELEVEN Wins Clarke Award” – May 6

I must admit, I am partial to awards that come with cool trophies. I mean, the honor is great and all, but a plaque is a plaque is a plaque and a certificate-suitable-for-framing is a piece of paper, really. SF and fantasy have been uniquely blessed with some nifty awards. The Hugo rocket is, of course, iconic, and still number one for me… at least in the years when the worldcon doesn’t go overboard with the base. (We have had some VERY ugly-ass bases, huge ones that overwhelm the rocket, but also some great ones). Some people prefer the Nebula, and the early Nebulas with the quartz crystals were really striking, but in more recent decades they have been more hit-and-miss. I also love HWA award, the Tim Kirk haunted house, and of course the wonderfully ghastly head of H.P. Lovecraft (by the wonderfully ghastly Gahan Wilson) that is the World Fantasy Award. (I have one of the former, and three of the latter).

 

 

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Alexandra Erin on Blue Author Is About To Write

“Sad Puppies Review Books: The Little Prince”  – May 6

Reading this book it is obvious that the author was relying more on demographic appeal than quality storytelling, a fact that is only confirmed when you realize that The Little Prince was written by a Frenchman. It is well-known that the French have been Stalinists ever since they were conquered by Hitler. Did you know that Hitler was a leftist? They teach kids in school that Fascism is the opposite of Stalinism but Hitler and Stalin agreed to carve up the world between them and they would have got away with it if it wasn’t for God’s America.

397 thoughts on “Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Puppy 5/6

  1. 11/23/63 was like Under The Dome; interesting but I thought he stumbled the landing on that one.

  2. @clif

    49 people nominated 11/22/63 in 2012. The same number as Rothfuss’s Wise Man’s Fear, and 1 more than Scalzi’s Fuzzy Nation.

  3. @Matt Y

    I agree the ending of 11/22/63 was kind of … not good (I thought it was very close to being just right but yes he missed it). I read an interview in which he suggested his son, Joe Hill, helped him with the ending … I can see in a book like that, figuring out how to wrap everything up would be a problem. It didn’t really take away from my enjoyment at all however …

  4. I read China Mievilles “King Rat” a few years back. Really liked it, had a Gaiman feeling. And I agree that there will always be authors that keeps on being missed at the Hugo Ballot. Iain Banks was one. Sergei Lukyanenko another one. I can’t believe that no book in his “Night Watch” series has won. They are a step above anything else.

    But thats just the way it goes, I guess. No conspiracy, just a question on what people read and like.

  5. Clif, i’m about halfway through ‘the grace of kings’, and am really enjoying it.

    I’m really curious about ‘Uprooted’; I enjoyed the first Temeraire book, and so her branching out into something new sounds interesting.

    ‘Seveneves’ will be automatically delivered to my Kindle on the day it is released, as willl ‘The Water Knife’ and, of course, ‘Nemesis Games’ and ‘Shadows of Self’.

    I didn’t realize there was a new Clive Barker coming out. I’ll have to check it out, although it may wait until June.

    ‘Trailer Park Fae’ looks fun.

  6. Clif,

    I thought A Darker Shade of Magic was pretty damn outstanding. I liked Schwab’s Vicious, but that one took a minute to get into as she played around with the chonology. ADSOM is straight through and it’s a damn good romp.

    I’ve got Flex on the TBR, and The Mechanical and Persona on the list of books to grab when it drops in price.

    This is the first I’ve heard of Seveneves, and I may wait to read some reviews before I make the devision.it. I liked Reamde, but the parts I loved where the wrapping parts about the game world, and the other stuff. The 80 page gunfight really didn’t do much for me.

    Crooked looks interesting. Nixon fighting eldtrich Lovecraftian monsters? Wasn’t a huge fan of SOon I Will Be Invincible tough. Thought the premise was done better by I am a Genius of Unspeakable Evil and I want to Be Your Class President

  7. Hampus – The Night Watch series is indeed fantastic. I’d bet that if you asked every Worldcon member they’d each have a different list of authors/books that they wish had received a Hugo nomination. Nick Harkaway hasn’t been as far as I know and Gone Away World might be one of my favorite books ever, and Tigerman is right up there with 3BP and Goblin Emperor in my opinion. Which sort of makes it even more frustrating that Correia and Torgerson who have had that honor (and whose work is not even close to being better than some who have never been nominated) are whining about it.

    clif – Yes this is going to be a great year for the genre. Missing from that even is the next Gentleman Bastards book, the Gunpowder Mage trilogy ended really really well, there’s a new Butcher series starting, new Novick, Reynolds, Leckie, 3BP part 2, another book from Bacigalupi, and many more. Considering the proliferation of Hugo award winning and nominated authors releasing books this year and only so many slots, there’s going to be a lot of people upset that their favorite work didn’t make it!

  8. West – ‘I didn’t realize there was a new Clive Barker coming out. I’ll have to check it out, although it may wait until June.’

    I got an advance copy and it’s really bad. Like I have to wonder WTF happened during the wirting or editing process because it starts strong and then goes right into the dumpster. As a Hellraiser and Harry D’Amour fan I wish I could scrub this book from my brain. So I wouldn’t recommend putting it above too much else.

  9. Oooooh, Gone Away World. Totally fantastic. Was thinking about that one just a few days ago.

  10. I’m damn excited for the new Gentleman Bastards book. That’s for damn sure.

  11. For feck’s sake, Steven Brust hasn’t had a Hugo nomination. Conspiracy types take note, he seems very well liked by old-school fandom, his politics are totally left wing, he’s published by Tor and his editor is … drumroll … Teresa Nielsen Hayden. Also in what actually counts, his writing and storytelling is brilliant. But just not enough people who could have, nominated or voted for him, have done so.
    (Eric Flint probably rightly diagnoses this as part of the disadvantage of series books.)

  12. @Steve Moss – Thank you for taking the time to post that list. It’s good to see someone trying to support those arguments.

    I will note, however, that part of your complaint was about Wheel of Time- Jordan can hardly be considered either an SJW or a member of any kind of Hugo in-group. That one was definitely just a bunch of fans deciding they wanted to reward him.

  13. clif: “well since we’re tossing out books … does Stephen King not count as science fiction? I know he’s mostly horror … but 11/23/63 was a time-travel story … should’ve made the 2011 shortlist IMO.”

    “11/23/63” made the longlist so it wasn’t completely ignored. It was also in a year where Jo Walton’s “Among Others” (a well-written book that pushes all the right buttons of a Worldcon reader) was always going to gallop away with the win.

    If we’re talking about books that should have made the shortlist but didn’t? I thought both “Rule 34” by Charles Stross & “The Quantum Thief” by Hannu Rajaniemi were robbed of a place in the finals. But that disappointment hasn’t caused me to organise a bloc-vote slate to get them on the ballot. There will always be worthy works that don’t make the shortlist; it’s a feature of the system, not a bug. If you look at that longlist, there is some excellent reading to be had.

    http://www.chicon.org/docs/2012-hugo-statistics.pdf

  14. I think 2012 was an incredibly strong year. There is an entire ballot worth of books on the longlist that I would pick over all the books on 2013’s list of noms.

  15. “So can I ‘prove’ that the Hugo nominations have been passed around by some to a select group over the last decade or so? No.”

    This is all you needed to say. You got nothing. Thanks for playing. Go find an actual problem to solve.

  16. It’s the fallacy of “where there’s smoke, there’s fire”, to which I say, “sometimes a cigar is just a cigar”.

    Also, “facts matter” but then I expect someone will pop up to rebut by saying “Aristotle!”

    At which point, *drink*

  17. Rule 34 is one of those books I couldn’t read more than one paragraph. I want to burn it. It is something with those books written in present tense that I just can’t stand.

  18. Robert West – It really is, especially since he’s been teasing this story for about 20 years. A lot of other advance readers loved it so you might. I think it’s worth noting that it was originally over 200k words and was cut to less than half of that. Maybe that’s why it feels…rough. I went back and re-read some of his old stuff as a palate cleanser or to remind myself why I had ever been a fan in the first place.

  19. Hampus: I’m sad to hear that, since you’re missing out on a great story (IMHO), but I understand it. I think that almost everyone has some style of writing which is their kryptonite, and prevents them from enjoying an otherwise awesome story.

  20. I really dislike present tense. It is a book tossing thing for me.

    And yet, I am re-reading Lifelode by Jo Walton and *just noticed* it is mostly in present tense. What she does with time in that book makes that an almost inevitable decision, and her writing made me not notice. That’s good writing.

  21. @ULTRAGOTHA:

    I’m not a big fan of present tense myself (except in threads like this, where we’re all writing in it), but it has its uses. That indie novel I’m editing is mainly written in past, but switches to present for dream sequences. I asked about it; the author prefers that over pages of italics and feels that it gives the reader a subtle hint that something’s different without being something they can necessarily put their finger on.

  22. Third person present is a favorite. Less so second person, unless we’re talking about a Choose Your Own Adventure story. I guess that’s half a kryptonite for me. Run, eat, hide, like the mouse you are–

  23. I preferred Neptune’s Brood and Ancillary Justice there too, sorry. So much so, I nominated them. I voted AJ #1, along with a HUGE number of other people. Easily the best SF book I read that year.

    I voted for the Lives of Tao for the Campbell.

  24. Nigel @ 10:37 am- A regrettable narrowness of reading is a possible explanation.

    Steven Schwartz @ 10:47 am- I do not hate Scalzi. I do not know the man. As an author, he’s competent; I enjoyed Old Man’s War. What I dislike about Scalzi is:
    1) the constant nominations for Hugos for which don’t, IMO, meet the standards of past Hugo nominees; and,
    2) his personal online behavior, ex- http://twitchy.com/2014/06/19/monster-hunter-author-larry-correia-targeted-for-departing-from-rape-culture-orthodoxy/

    We agree on Iain Banks. His Player of Games was amazing. I’ve enjoyed his work.

    Nigel @ 10:48 am- I think Scalzi has a nomination and an award for Best Fan Writer. What gets me about those awards for “fan” writer is that he got them after his nomination for Old Man’s War. It’s probably within the rules, but professional writer’s going for fan awards, it is a bit much.

    alexvdl @10:49 am- See my response to Steven Schwartz.

    MattY @10:52 am- Thank you. It’s still galling.

    andyl @ 10:56 am- My recollection is that 2013 was a weak year for pure sci-fi, unless one counts stuff like the Lost Fleet series (which I enjoyed but wouldn’t nominate).

    andyl @ 11:10 am- I thought foreign works had an eligibility date as of their US publication date, not their overseas publication date?

    Matt Y @ 11:12 am- You are right about the 60s, but two thoughts-

    First, I think Norton, Heinlien, Zelazny, Simak, etc. were true grand masters, and so can’t begrudge the recurring awards/nominations in light of that competition. I don’t have the same general opinion as to the more recent nominees/winners. If writers like Mieville, Wolfe, Gaiman, Banks, etc. were dominating the nominees and winner lists, I’d probably be a lot quieter.

    Second, I think the number of published SF/F works has increased over time, so I would think there be more competition, not less. Assuming this is accurate (I don’t know if it is), there were 285 SF/F works published in 1970 as compared to 3,957 in 2004.

    http://www.scifan.com/titles/year.asp?ByYear=1970&Items=
    http://www.scifan.com/titles/year.asp?ByYear=2004&Items=30

    If that reflects the general trend, then I’d expect more great work not less (though I know that is not a given).

    Darrell @ 11:14 am- My recommendation would be to start with Mieville’s King Rat. I think its a bit easier than most of his work to get through.

    Kurt Busiek @ 11:19 am- I’m a bit late to the game, but SP1 was purely a Corriea affair. My memory is a bit fuzzy (I wasn’t paying attention during SP1, and only slightly more in SP2, and so am basing this on a blur of reading), but Corriea is an accountant and auditor. He looked at the Hugo data and found what he thought obvious gamesmanship going on. This provoked a backlash against Corriea from the beneficiaries of that alleged gamesmanship. Things went down hill from there.

    I would note the John Scalzi has admitted in his Whatever blog of acting “strategically” to get on the Hugo ballot and, at one point, recommended Corriea get his side organized if he thought he could do better. I’m sorry but I don’t have the links and am too tired to look them up, but I think they’ve been posted on File 770 in the past.

    I’m not a math wiz and so I can’t vouch for Corriea’s or others’ auditing skills. Which is why I limited myself to my personal observations. And since this is not a criminal trial, I don’t need “proof”. I believe something has been going on with the Hugos (if only perhaps it was more insular in the first decade of this century before SP crashed the scene). Coupled with the reactions of some to “their” party being crashed, I have more than an enough information to be sympathetic to the SP.

    clif @ 11:23 am- I also like Walter Jon William’s Dread Empire series, personally. Hardwired and Aristoi were also good, IMO.

    Agreed on Banks.

  25. Steve, do you also object to Terry Carr, Bob Shaw, Frederik Pohl an Kameron Hurley winning Best Fan Writer?

    Regardless, the award is not necessarily for best fan-who-is-a-wrter, but for best writer about fannish stuff.

  26. @Steve Moss-
    On Scalzi, note that he was responding to a blog post where someone was saying that teaching young men not to abuse women and that if they see someone taking advantage of a woman they should say something was ‘naive idiocy’. Now, the guy he was talking to later pretended that Scalzi was complaining about teaching women to shoot, but that had no basis in reality.

    On Correia and auditing, what he actually said was that he audited the LonCon results and did NOT find any evidence of wrongdoing. The quote was just posted here within the last hour.

  27. Steve – ‘Second, I think the number of published SF/F works has increased over time, so I would think there be more competition, not less.’

    The authors I referenced actually were from the 60’s through the present, so even while the titles available exponentially increased in each generation of readers there’s some authors who have overlapped interests of the people voting. Meaning you nominate 5 and I nominate 5 different authors but we each have one on the same list, but throughout the entire crowd. Correia’s MHI nearly was a nominee (6th place) with 9% of the nominations, which means people nominated it but the overlap wasn’t as strong as for the other authors.

    While the titles have increased there’s only so much the audience can read in a year, and so the overlap is going to likely be the same, like Le Guin’s fans are likely going to continue to prioritize reading her books and so on. Like I said, look through the entire history of the award and you’ll see that exact same theme repeated about every 8-10 years roughly (differs on the author and how many titles they typically release).

    Gaiman isn’t as prolific as many of the other authors and in fact turned down a recent nomination (The Ocean at the End of the Lane).

    So yes. There’s more books to read, but typically if a there’s a segment of the audience (which appears to only need to be around 10-12%) overlap in an author they like one year, there’s a good shot that same author will appear again because people are more likely to read books by authors they like than the 3,000 books out there by those they do not.

    That’s why next year will be interesting as there’s a ton of work coming out by people who’ve been previously nominated and won. It’s going to be a tough year for a new book to get on there unless it’s something significant that many happen to read.

  28. @Steve Moss: “Second, I think the number of published SF/F works has increased over time,”

    Y’know, I’m pretty sure you’re right about that.

    Did you perhaps mean that the number published per year has increased over time? I mean, I agree with that as well, but…

  29. >> I’m a bit late to the game, but SP1 was purely a Corriea affair.>>
    >> He looked at the Hugo data and found what he thought obvious gamesmanship going on. This provoked a backlash against Corriea from the beneficiaries of that alleged gamesmanship. >>

    “Provoked a backlash” is an awkward way of saying “he made accusations and they defended themselves.” But then, as long as you’re tying yourself into knots to call them the attackers, it’s probably necessary.

    >> I have more than an enough information to be sympathetic to the SP.>>

    And like I said, you can trust that going with their slates will finally redress the injustice of Gene Wolfe not getting a Hugo. Except, well, not so much.

    kdb

  30. If he found data that made it seem like they were being gamed it would be lovely if he’d some day share that data. Otherwise as far as I can tell that data was people voting for works he didn’t like, the Hugos puts their data up, if they’re being gamed, it’s being done poorly.

  31. “…. I don’t need “proof”. I believe something has been going on with the Hugos (if only perhaps it was more insular in the first decade of this century before SP crashed the scene). Coupled with the reactions of some to “their” party being crashed, I have more than an enough information to be sympathetic to the SP.”

    Damn son, you go and believe in whatever you want. However, publicly making accusations without proof is going to get you some very unpleasant reactions, and whining about it post hoc is just sad.

    In other words, do what you will, but do so with eyes wide open. Unlike Day, I hope you at least understand that there is no right to be free of criticism.

  32. Darrell, Robert West:

    I thought Embassytown was amazing, and that it ran circles around The City And The City (with which I had a serious problem circumventing my usually-generous willing suspension of disbelief, in not seeing described sufficient motivation for everyone to be willing to participate in that mass willful subversion of reality).

  33. Ultragotha @ 5:26 pm- My objection is irrelevant. Legal is legal. I do think it pretty low, regardless of who the author is. Maybe because when I think “fan” writer, I (incorrectly) think amateur.

    Maximillian @ 5:44 pm- That’s not quite the chronology. Here’s a breakdown of what occurred:

    http://sjwar.blogspot.com/2014/06/i-judge-larry-correia-and-john-scalzi.html

    As to Corriea’s statement, I think you are correct as to SP2. I think his comments that referenced had to deal with votes prior to SP1, when participation was fairly low. And he never accused the administrators of being crooked, only that very small numbers of voters were controlling the Hugos and there appeared to be bloc voting, all per my admittedly poor memory.

    I think it’s fairly obvious that participation is increasing from SP1 to SP2 to SP3/RP. How it ends, we’ll find out.

    Matt Y @ 5:52 pm- Makes sense.

    Rev. Bob @ 6:15 pm- Yes.

    Kurt Busiek @ 6:36 pm- I’ve always been amused by those who think Larry Corriea started it (not that it matters at this point). SP1 was nothing, one author saying look at my book and, by the way, if my one man campaign goes anywhere watch some people freak-out. They reacted just as he said they would. SP2 became even more of a battlefield. SP3/RP ratcheted up the stakes again.

    Scalzi is mostly Civil on his blog. But on twitter, he loses it:

    https://twitter.com/scalzi/status/585759348934094848

    I’m not certain as to why he comes across fairly well in one medium and a monkey flinging pooh in another.

    As to Gene Wolfe, etc., I can trust that proposed rule changes, if written properly, will limit the influence of a slate. That may have the happy effect of preventing “quiet” slates, logrolling, lobbying and agreements, etc. Which means, if written properly, the anti-Puppy rules being proposed will actually address the Puppy concerns.

    If they do, and if Puppies and Puppy sympathizers such as myself stay engaged, maybe writers like Wolfe, Butcher, etc. will get more recognition.

    Or maybe not. The downside isn’t any worse than it is now.

    snowcrash @ 7:37 pm- Of course not. And that cuts both ways.

  34. alexvdl: “Peace, I just finished reading The Red: First Light by Linda Nagata, which is an interesting near future Mil SF. I thought she deftly showed the cohesion of a small military unit, and was intrigued by the premise of a “rogue marketing program” that is nudging humanity towards… something. I’m very much interested to see where the series leads.”

    I quite enjoyed First Light, and am definitely looking forward to reading The Trials. I thought the book’s Nebula nomination was well-deserved.

  35. Steve Moss: “I mean, the Wheel of Time as a complete series? Really? If that was proper, why not the Great Book of Amber by Roger Zelazny which was published in 1999? That is actually a Hugo worthy series and should have been considered in 2000. The cynic in me would think that Harper Voyager doesn’t have the pull that Tor does when it comes to putting together a coalition to get its work on the ballot.”

    I think you are suffering from the same misperception from which a lot of people suffer, with regards to The Wheel of Time. I read the books, and enjoyed them — though I will be quite willing to admit a certain amount of eye-rolling on my account at certain parts. Brandon Sanderson, in my personal opinion, was deserving of a Hugo nomination in his own right simply for the way he was able to finish that series in a satisfactory, non-eye-rolling-manner.

    But this claim that Tor somehow “orchestrated” the Hugo nomination is utter rubbish. I merely enjoyed the books. However, I am friends with a number of people who belong to a huge WoT fan group, with tens of thousands of members, which started on Usenet 20 years ago with rec.arts.sf.written.robert-jordan — and these were the people behind that campaign. Tor didn’t have to lift a finger. The fans did it all. All Tor did was make the entire series available in the Hugo packet.

    But, of course, the Puppies can’t possibly imagine that such a group exists — because such a group is so alien to the majority they claim to represent, and what they insist “everyone actually enjoys”.

  36. Darrell: “The Same goes for Miéville. He is clearly a brilliant writer. He has the imaginative scope and the sheer literary skill to work wonders. He also writes novels that, to my taste, are akin to my face being shoved into a pile of artfully arranged feces. I think that a lot of people find themselves slogging through his stories because they hate the worlds they find themselves in.”

    While I have enjoyed the Mieville novels I’ve read, I personally find his works massively overrated.

  37. Very odd. Steve says he’s amused at people who think Correia started this, and illustrates it by describing how Correia started it, got exactly the reaction he said he would, and escalated it.

    But it’s good, I guess, that anti-slate rules won’t just ameliorate the effects of the deliberate vandals he’s so sympathetic to, it’ll also stop imaginary slates, so literary SF those he’s sympathetic to oppose can finally win.

    Go figure.

  38. I loved Kraken, but I almost bounced off of it a couple of times. I have to have a lot of mental space, and undistracted spare time to get into Miéville. And I think thats a class of work that ends up with a lot of the people who enjoyed it acclaiming it as prizeworthy, and anyone who bounced off it baffled by that decision.

  39. @Steve Moss

    “I thought foreign works had an eligibility date as of their US publication date, not their overseas publication date?”

    Well it is a bit more complicated than that.

    They can be nominated on their original publication – for example the UK publication. However they are also eligible in their US publication year. However it wasn’t always thus – I think that at one time there needed to be a 3/4 vote to extend eligibility. Automatic extended eligibility was only passed very recently. Hopefully Kevin Standlee will correct me if I’m wrong and may know more details about the vote. One thing the WSFS website doesn’t do is show the historical version of the constitution so we can see what rules where in place for a particular Hugo year. But regardless of the eligibility rules it is very rare that a book gets nominated when the first English publication is 3 (or more) years before the US publication.

    “My recollection is that 2013 was a weak year for pure sci-fi,”

    Jack Glass – Adam Roberts, Dark Eden – Chris Beckett, Empty Space – M. John Harrison, Intrusion – Ken MacLeod, Blue Remembered Earth – Alastair Reynolds, In the Mouth of the Whale – Paul McAuley, The Hydrogen Sonata – Iain M. Banks*, The Fractal Prince – Hannu Rajaniemi,

    Oh and 2312 by KSR which made the final ballot. Plus second tier books from Peter Hamilton, Neal Asher, Gary Gibson, Greg Egan, Stephen Baxter, John Varley, David Brin

    * on the longer list of nominations for that year.

  40. Steve comes across to me as someone who walks into a model aeroplane club and complains because the don’t offer helicopter flying lessons.

    The Hugos are what they have been built to be, not what is in his head.

    Current rules, as of the end of LonCon3, here:
    http://www.wsfs.org/bm/const-2014.html

    Past versions are also on the WSFS site.

  41. Ultragotha @ 5:17 am- And from that post, I can reasonably surmise that Ultragotha is an incredibly poor judge of character.

  42. AndyL:

    They can be nominated on their original publication – for example the UK publication. However they are also eligible in their US publication year. However it wasn’t always thus – I think that at one time there needed to be a 3/4 vote to extend eligibility. Automatic extended eligibility was only passed very recently.

    That is correct. The change making the extension automatic an permanent was ratified in 2014, so this is actually the first year that is applies; however, prior to that, the 3/4 vote for such extensions passed every year (except 2005, where it narrowly failed) since at least 1999. (I forget the first year that we did such extensions.).

    One thing the WSFS website doesn’t do is show the historical version of the constitution so we can see what rules where in place for a particular Hugo year.

    Actually, it does. We’ve just not been perfect about saving historical documents every year. We’re getting better.

  43. ” These days with selfpublishing being a click away, we have tens of thousands of new SFF coming out every year. Out of all these eligble works, five are nominated. It is not an exception, it is a simple fact: there exists a plethora of worthy works that simply do not get nominated.”

    There appears to be an implication that those works aren’t just eligible, they’re “worthy”. But not only does Sturgeon’s Law apply, Sturgeon was talking about stuff that had made it past the slushpile *and* the editor. If every level of filtering removes 90% of the cruddiest stuff, those tens of thousands still are going to produce about the same number of truly worthy works. The only change is that end readers have to filter through the 99.9% themselves.

  44. Steve Moss: “And from that post, I can reasonably surmise that Ultragotha is an incredibly poor judge of character.”

    I’m finding it vastly amusing that the Puppies keep complaining about being judged by their behavior in the comments here on File770.

    The other people here don’t know how your perceive your own character in your own mind. They don’t know how your friends perceive your character. (And if they’re like me, they don’t care how you or other people perceive your character, they base their own judgment of your character on how you behave here.)

    If you don’t like the way people perceive your character based on your behavior here, well, that’s really on you, isn’t it?

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