aka The Knights Who say Ni Award
In today’s roundup: Vox Day, Lindsay Duncan, Laura “Tegan” Gjovaag, David Gerrold, Sara Amis, Dave Freer, Chris Gerrib, Lisa J. Goldstein, Lis Carey, Rebekah Golden, Russell Blackford, Camestros Felapton, Mabrick, Will McLean, Alexandra Erin and cryptic others. (Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editors of the day sveinung and ULTRAGOTHA.)
Vox Day on Vox Popoli
“In the SF world rages a war” – June 3
[The translation of an article in Finland’s largest newspaper profiling Markku Koponen and Castalia House.]
IN THE SCI-FI WORLD OF USA RAGES A WAR, IN WHICH EVEN THE GAME OF THRONES AUTHOR IS ENTANGLED WITH – AND IN THE EPICENTER OF IT ALL IS THIS KOUVOLA MAN
Sci-fi literature enthusiasts in USA are in civil war. A conservative mutiny is trying to push out of bestseller lists and awards the mainstream, “tolerant” sci-fi. The battle is already being called culture wars – and one of the headquarters is located in Finland.
There is a man in Kouvola, and before the man, a computer.
Together, the man and the computer are in the front lines of a battle that is shaking the entire world of sci-fi literature.
The man and the computer were revealed to the world, spring this year.
At the time was published “the Oscars of sci-fi books” – Hugo-awards – nominees.
The entire sci-fi world roared: lists were full of works by religious extremists and ultraconservatives.
The surprise was so big that even The New York Times and Washington Post wrote about it.
And behind the entire surprise were a man and a computer in Kouvola.
The name of the man is Markku Koponen, and on the computer runs a company called Castalia House.
Lindsay Duncan on Unicorn Ramblings
“Tuesday Thoughts” – June 3
Behind all this kerfluffle is a tension between the idea that the quality of fiction, like all art, is subjective; and the action of presenting an award, which gives the veneer of some objective quality. Let’s add one more statement to the narrative: diversity is a good thing and necessary in a genre that builds upon possibilities, but we don’t want to set up a forced, artificial diversity. (Already, you can see the questions bubbling up.) What am I thinking of when I say “artificial” diversity? It’s when a work rises to the top not because of merit, but because its author or subject matter checks a particular box. It would be like saying that every novel awards slate has to include one urban fantasy, two epic fantasies, one hard science fiction novel and one soft science fiction novel … even if there were three amazing soft SF books that year.
SF Signal
“MIND MELD: Genre Awards: What are They Good for Anyway?” – June 3
[Bradley P. Beaulieu:] I’m saddened by the tactics that were chosen by the various Puppy campaigns to game the Hugos, but I’m confident the award will live on, and I’m hopeful that in the end the voting base for the award will be broadened. After all, as long as everyone is given a fair shake, how can giving a voice to more fans be a bad thing?
Laura “Tegan” Gjovaag on Bloggity-Blog-Blog-Blog
“Oh dear, not the freaking Hugos again…” – June 3
On Facebook, David Gerrold nails the problem with the slate nominations in the Hugo awards. Namely, the people who participated have developed a narrative of “evil liberals” rather than “good works worthy of nomination for the Hugo Award.” Part of the post was also quoted at File770. Of note is the fact that Gerrold has asked these questions repeatedly, and he describes the “answers” he gets from slate-voting puppy-supporters….
…The last question, #6, is a no-brainer. The excellence of the story is the only thing that truly matters. There have been some fantastic works by authors that I wouldn’t want to sit at the same dinner table with. And I’m sure there are awful works by people who completely agree with me on every major political point. Politics are utterly irrelevant to the conversation. Or, at least, they should be.
David Gerrold on Facebook – June 3
As long as we’re still talking about the sad puppies and the rabid puppies, there is one question that has not yet been asked.
Will Larry Correia and Brad Torgersen be attending the Hugo award ceremony? Will Vox Day and John C. Wright be attending the ceremony? What about the other nominees and the various puppy supporters?
I have been told that none of the major architects of the slates have attending memberships. So the answer is no, they will not be there.
(Some of the slated nominees will likely be there, but that’s not the question I’m asking.)
And that causes me to wonder —
Some of the puppy supporters have said this whole thing is about reclaiming “the real science fiction” from those who have hijacked it into the realm of literary merit. (Something like that.)
Okay — but if we take that at face value — then why aren’t the leaders of the movement coming to the award ceremony to cheer for their nominees? If this is really that important, why aren’t they coming to the party?
Not attending the celebration makes it look like this was never about winning the awards as much as it was about disrupting them.
David Gerrold in a comment on Facebook – June 3
I did not know that Brad Torgersen had been deployed. I’m sure he will serve admirably and I expect him to return home safely. I might disagree with him on some things, but I wish him no ill.
Sara Amis on Luna Station Quarterly
“Hugos, Puppies, and Joanna Russ” – June 3
I always intended from the beginning to write about Joanna Russ. How could I not? It just so happens, though, that she is particularly relevant right at this particular moment.
So, there are some shenanigans with this year’s Hugo awards. And by “shenanigans” I mean “cheating” in the finest, most self-righteous, letter-but-not-the-spirit-of-the-law, but-really-we’re-the-good-guys fashion.
“But some white women, and black women, and black men, and other people of color too, have actually acquired the nasty habit of putting the stuff on paper, and some of it gets printed, and printed material, especially books, gets into bookstores, into people’s hands, into libraries, sometimes even into university curricula.
What are we to do?” —-from How to Suppress Women’s Writing by Joanna Russ
I might add, some of it gets nominated for Hugos, and even wins. What are we to do???
Vox Day on Vox Popoli
“Hugo Recommendations: Best Fan Writer” – June 3
This is how I am voting in the Best Fan Writer category. Of course, I merely offer this information regarding my individual ballot for no particular reason at all, and the fact that I have done so should not be confused in any way, shape, or form with a slate or a bloc vote, much less a direct order by the Supreme Dark Lord of the Evil Legion of Evil to his 368 Vile Faceless Minions or anyone else.
- Jeffro Johnson
- Dave Freer
- Amanda S. Green
- Cedar Sanderson
- Laura J. Mixon
With regards to Mixon, I still don’t consider a professional writer with five novels published by Tor who also happens to be the current SFWA President’s wife to be what anything remotely recognizable as a proper “Fan Writer”, but that ship sailed back when John Scalzi, Jim Hines, and Kameron Hurley waged their successful campaigns for it. No sense in fighting battles already lost. The more relevant problem is that Best Related Work would be a more reasonable category for a single expose, and Deidre Saorse Moen’s expose of Marion Zimmer Bradley was a considerably more important work in that regard. That being said, I don’t regard the Hugo Awards as being the place to recognize investigative journalism, otherwise I would have nominated Saorse Moen’s stunning revelations about Marion Zimmer Bradley as a Best Related Work. But regardless, Mixon did publish a credible expose and she is a legitimate, if not necessarily compelling candidate.
Dave Freer in comment #58 on the same post at Vox Popoli – June 3
“Freer’s been an ass to me, and incoherent at length to pretty much everybody” sniff. I shall wear this with such pride, just because it comes from Crissy! I am amply rewarded for the time spent pointing out he was mathematically illiterate and logically incompetent.
To be fair to Mixon (I do not approve of her biased reporting, but still) 1)I have 20 novels published. 2) Both Amanda and Cedar are independently published – and both quite successful at it. I suspect they outsell Mixon, who IIRC has day job and a husband to share cost (he also has a day job). Strictly speaking she’s more of a ‘hobbyist’ than any of the three of us. 3) I am not, and never have been married to the pres of SFWA. Neither have Amanda or Cedar or Jeffro. Speaking strictly for myself, I hope to avoid that dreadful fate.
I raised the same objection to my being nominated Vox does on MGC when I was first put on recommended lists and, um, never found out my name was still there. I actually didn’t know I had been nominated (the Hugo Admins didn’t succeed in contacting me) until the nasty messages started popping up telling me I was going to suffer for it and should immediately abase myself. I don’t bully well, so despite the fact I didn’t want to be there, or feel I should be, I still am. Screw them and the donkey they rode into town on (the difference is hard to establish, but the donkey is the more intelligent and prettier).
Jeffro seems a good guy, and I can vouch for Amanda and Cedar.
Chris Gerrib on Private Mars Rocket
“Hugos, Fan Writer, Rant Regarding” – June 3
First, per section 3.3.15 of the WSFS Constitution, Fan Writer (like Best Editor) is an award for the person. It is not, like Best Novel, an award for a particular work. It is thus perfectly acceptable to say “fan writer X is a jerk” and use that as a critique of their nomination.
Actually, it is entirely within the rules to vote based on any criterion, if you want to be a stickler for the rules. Or, people who insist on following the letter of the law do not get to lecture me on the spirit of things.
Second, David Freer is a poor writer, at least with regards to his blog. His posts are lengthy, poorly-thought-out, (see, for example, his 1500 word post on Hugo probabilities, discussed and linked to by me here) and not to me particularly entertaining.
Third, in general the Hugo nominees are asking me and the other voters for a favor. They are asking that we take time out of our day, consider their material, and in the end give one of them an award. I don’t know how things work on Planet Puppy, but here on Earth, if one is asking somebody for a favor, normally the person requesting the favor attempts normal human politeness.
Lisa J. Goldstein on theinferior4
“The Hugo Ballot: All the Rest of the Novels” – June 3
I think the final vote on the novel will come down to what kind of sub-genre people like to read. Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Sword deals with galactic empires and planetary intrigue, but also plays with ideas about gender. The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison is charming and elegantly told, a tale of manners in a fantasy setting. Cixin Liu’s The Three-Body Problem dances out on the far edges of scientific speculation. Really, any one of these could win and I’d be happy, but if I had to choose (and I guess I do), for me the best of them is Ancillary Sword.
Lis Carey on Lis Carey’s Library
“Adventures in SciFi Publishing — Best Fancast Hugo Nominee” – June 3
http://www.adventuresinscifipublishing.com/
This is the first of the Hugo-nominated fancasts that I’ve listened to. Briefly — it’s good.
Rebekah Golden
“2015 Hugo Awards Best Movie: Reviewing Edge of Tomorrow” – June 3
Altogether a fun little movie, well handled and nicely plotted. I haven’t watched it, wasn’t planning to, but am happy I did. I will probably rewatch it before I decide how it stacks up against the other movie nominees.
Russell Blackford on Metamagician and The Hellfire Club
“Rest Related Work nominations reviewed & discussed – Hugo Awards Voting” – June 3
Antonelli’s Letters from Gardner seems, from what I’ve read, to be about the author’s development, at a relatively late stage of life, as a well-published author of (mainly) short stories. It includes a considerable amount of Antonelli’s fiction, with much commentary and reflection, and amongst it some perfectly sound advice on the craft of writing. If it were up for a lesser (perhaps regional) award, I’d have no difficulty in voting for it. From what I’ve read, however, I just don’t think the book is good, distinguished, or interesting enough to be worth a Hugo Award. It does not stand up well against past winners. Your mileage may vary. It’s not a bad book, and I’d have happily read the whole thing if it had been provided in the Hugo Voters Packet.
“Why Science is Never Settled”, by Tedd Roberts, is a well-written and thoughtful discussion of its subject matter. It popularises certain ideas in the history and philosophy of science, and does a workmanlike job of it. It was aimed at an SF-reading audience, and it was doubtless of interest to many people within that audience, but it does not seem to me to be sufficiently distinguished or relevant to deserve this award. There is some relationship to science fiction – enough that it would interest many readers who are also SF readers – but it’s a rather tenuous one.
Cirsova
“Hugo Art” – June 3
Fan artist category was rather disappointing; while I don’t want to say that any of these artists are bad, many artists I’ve seen on places like Deviant Art or here on WordPress have impressed me more; I really just don’t feel like many of these are ‘best of the best’ quality in terms of sci-fi art, at least by what I’ve seen. The lone exception is Elizabeth Legget, whose work, while not really blowing me away, is evocative and impressive enough that she easily rises to the top in this category….
In the Professional Artist category, I’d almost say that Julie Dillon wins by virtue of including a much larger portfolio to better display the range of her work….
Lastly, I’d like to note that it’s been interesting to see how the Fan Writer category is playing out. When I think of Fan Writing, I think of Algis Budrys and Baird Searles, who wrote on topic about notable books, movies and television that was relevant to fans of Speculative Fiction. One strange notion I’ve seen floated is that a Fan Writer should be writing ABOUT rather than TO the fandom, yet ironically those Fan Writers who have been writing more about the fandom than to them are paying the price, to an extent, for doing so. I enjoy the Mad Genius Club, but the rants about culture wars type stuff are going to come off to dedicated culture warriors about as well as Ann Coulter telling that Muslim girl to ride a camel. Meanwhile, many of those who don’t find pdfs an inaccessible format (sometimes grudgingly) acknowledge that Jeffro’s kept a laser-like focus on important works of Science-fiction and Fantasy, so we’re starting to see sort of a ‘man, we kind of want to hate this guy, but he’s actually writing about and bringing attention to some great authors!’ reaction. Given Jeffro’s decidedly apolitical approach (not ‘this is conservative/liberal’, ‘this is feminist/anti-feminist’, but ‘this is awesome’) to his subject matter combined with some of the backlash against Mixon (for myriad reasons), I think he has a pretty good shot in this category.
Adult Onset Atheist
“SNARL: Championship B’tok” – June 3
This novelette lacks several of the critical elements that any string of words needs to tie it up into a story; the most glaring of these exposes itself as a regular disregard for continuity. It is impossible to tell if this story is actually a chapter of a larger story, or it is just half-written. I get the impression that this author may be able to wrote, and write stories, but this is not one of them. I will eventually pull out a reasonably good excuse for awarding one whole star to this novelette.
Camestros Felapton
“The Puppy Works – Ranked from Bad to Okness” – June 3
So below the fold is an attempt to rank all the Puppy nominated works (not including dramatic, editorial or artistic) altogether from the worst to the least worst. I’ll spoil the suspense by revealing that “Wisdom From My Internet” not only came top but also provides a neat demonstration why rankings can be inadequate when what you need is some kind of measurement scale.
Mabrick on Mabrick’s Mumblings
“Skin Game A Novel of the Dresden Files Book 15 by Jim Butcher” – June 3
….That was a two paragraph introduction to the review of “Skin Game” by Jim Butcher, for which I am somewhat sorry to inflict upon you, but felt compelled to clarify for them that know of the Hugo Award drama. There are strong feelings on all sides of this issue and some will feel like I have somehow betrayed them by listening to and reviewing this book. Poppycock. Jim Butcher is a New York times best-selling author. He didn’t get there because of the Sad Puppies and he deserves a thoughtful and respectful review of his work just like I’ve done with all the other nominees so far (as part of my Nebula Nominee reviews.) Thinking otherwise is puerile behavior as bad as that exhibited by the Sad Puppies. I don’t believe this applies to all authors and publishing houses on the ballot, for some of them were self-serving in the extreme, but it does apply to Jim Butcher and Tor Books, his publisher.
Will McLean on Commonplace Book
“Nutty Nuggets” – June 2
“What are we looking for again?” said Liu, the technician from Mars Spacefleet.
“Ejecta from Perdita, of course.You saw the images we got from Alaunt. One of what hit Perdita shredded the cargo module and blew debris on a diverging course. The hydrogen tanks were holed too, but we’re not going to waste time looking for hydrogen in space. You have the cargo manifest.” Church, agent for Tranjovian and its insurance agency, was a stubby, thick-lipped, stocky man with heavy eyebrows. Perdita had gone silent on an unmanned low-energy trip to the Jovian moons and Alaunt had found what was left of her hull after a tedious search of her extrapolated course.
“Right.” said Liu, as a document came up on his screen. “Spare parts and luxury goods: single-malt scotch, Napoleon brandy, macadamia nuts and cashews.”
“The liquids will have frozen that far out, so we’ll be looking for nutty nuggets. A pretty unique spectral signature beyond Ceres.” ….
Alexandra Erin on A Blue Author Is About To Write
Sad Puppies Review Books: THE POKY LITTLE PUPPY – June 3
Reviewed by Special Guest Reviewer James May
…Here’s the dividing line and the crucial issue: I don’t care what you do. I don’t care about any of your initiatives. What I care about is it is never expressed without dehumanizing men and whites as racist, women-hating, homophobes who have conspired and continue to conspire to keep everyone but the straight white male out of SFF. That is a lie we have proved with facts over and over again. The history of SFF as portrayed by SJWs is a hoax. It has never been any more exclusionary than Field & Stream.
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What is it about gender that makes it so important to you?
Hmm. No real idea, though I do find the topic fascinating (in a very amateur way) and I should really do some gender studies reading so I can be better at pretending to know things. I tend to hang around MetaFilter, whose community tends to be big on gender things these days, Fun Home is one of my favorite books (and, now, musicals!) Just one of those things about me, I guess.
In the case of Leckie’s books, I tend to think that when an author says anything along the lines of “this society doesn’t have X”, then it’s a sign that the author at least has a few thoughts on X. I don’t think the books scream about gender in the plot – the class stuff is obviously closer to the books’ hearts – but the absence of gender in the Radch seems like a silence akin to a shout.
p.s. shameless plug: MetaFilter is great, and you should think about joining.
news of the Shakespeare Institute SF cabal will trickle out and all our plans will be ruined!
Well the Royal Shakespear Company produced the musical version of Roald Dahl’s Matilda – and everyone knows Matilda is a sith-lord (we do all know that – right?)
@Tuomas:
That’s kind of the point — with the gender indeterminate, the focus is on the morality of the actions, not male/female-based stereotypes of the actions.
In my mind that’s a feature, not a bug. Or, to quote you again:
Yes, but considering why is important, and I can’t think of another genre that offers a better toolkit for examining that sort of question than SF.
@Camestros Felapton
In Japan (or so I have read) they have this whole thing about blood-types as a kind almost astrological personality type. It would be interesting to set a novel in a society that used something else as a social hang-up. Of course as an O-neg that is probably the kind of attitude you were all expecting from me 🙂
How would that work? Would everyone carry around those little lancets and exchange testing strips when they meet, like business cards? Hmm…
Multitudes of people discussing Auxilliary:
It seemed to me that gender is very hard to define from the perspective of an AI; human beings may think they can easily identify gender but we can get it wrong, or at least we are more likely to recognise that we can get it wrong if we live in very large cities with lots and lots of people from all over the world.
The central nature of the Radch is so brutal and so horrific that the uncaring obliteration of millions of millions of people is their defining characteristic. Yet more millions of people have their personalities erased in order to function as auxiliaries; once their minds have been wiped it doesn’t matter what genitalia they may possess since they are no longer in any way human. They are simply mechanisms to enable the AI to achieve certain tasks, no more and no less.
There is no need for an AI controlling a ship to comprehend gender; it serves no purpose, so why should the Radch waste computing power on it? Breq is an auxillery who has no gender, as we understand the term, just as she has no personality as we understand the term; I don’t know whether Auxillery has been translated into Finnish, but once it is there will be no problem since Finnish doesn’t have personal pronouns.
It would be cool if the Helsinki bid for Worldcon succeeds, since we can look forward to discussing this with Finnish fans. Now I come to think of it, they are probably highly amused about this already…
Stevie: “There is no need for an AI controlling a ship to comprehend gender; it serves no purpose, so why should the Radch waste computing power on it?”
The way you led up to this argument — about how the Radch makes auxiliaries — makes me think there really IS a reason the ship’s AI should be aware of the sexes of these bodies, which is a requirement to maintain them medically, isn’t it? Male and female bodies can’t have entirely identical needs in every respect.
While sex and gender are not necessarily the same, it would seem to me an AI would need at least as much gender awareness as the differentiation of sexes necessitates.
On that note, if you aren’t attending Sasquan but are a member and haven’t voted in Site Selection, WHY NOT??
Gabriel: How would that work? Would everyone carry around those little lancets and exchange testing strips when they meet, like business cards? Hmm…
Well naturally it would be easy to tell because we would wear different clothes. Those simpering B-types would naturally wear lots of pink and use makeup, those brave and assertive A-types would wear practical, go-getting clothes and keep their hair short. O-types would wear pajamas and shave half their head. ABs – well they would be tolerated but we wouldn’t want to talk to much about them in polite society. Earrings – rhesus positive, no earrings rhesus negative 🙂
It is getting too much like a rip-off of “Divergent” (there was a premise that couldn’t be sustained by its plot, characters or writing).
^^ referenceing Stevies comment.
Mike –
Breq is perfectly capable of knowing if people are male, female, or something else. She knows full well Seivarden is male because she used to be one of Justice of Toren’s officers. She knows the gender of the Justice of Toren One Esk 19 body she’s in right now, too.
She just has trouble figuring out what gender people are in cultures she hasn’t studied much, like Nisk. Their gender markers are very unobvious to her.
@ Mike Glyer:
The way you led up to this argument — about how the Radch makes auxiliaries — makes me think there really IS a reason the ship’s AI should be aware of the sexes of these bodies, which is a requirement to maintain them medically, isn’t it? Male and female bodies can’t have entirely identical needs in every respect.
That point is actually addressed in Sword, in that Breq remembers officers using ancillaries as sexual outlets, and that in order to meet the physical needs of the ancillaries they coupled to one another to maintain happiness.
I don’t think it’s that Breq can’t tell the biological gender of people, it’s just that various cultures pile so much ritual and clothing on themselves that sometimes what Breq reads as the gender markers are indistinct or incorrect. That’s the reading I got from Justice, anyway. And that culturally, gender doesn’t matter to the Radsch. I’m 100% sure they have physical gender, since there’s plenty of reference to sexual activity, yet there doesn’t seem to have been a single mention that I saw in reference to homo/hetero preferences or activities. It’s all just sex. And it’s all just gender. And neither one is a good place to balance cultural attributes.
That was my reading, anyway, YMMV
@ Maine I keep thinking about Le Guin’s story “Mountain Ways” (Link to Clarkesworld’s reprint for those interested). In that story, people have gender AND moiety — morning women and evening women, evening men and morning men. Marriages, naturally, are made of four people.
I thought she had made this system up out of whole cloth (more the fool I) when I encountered something similar in Marie Brennan’s Voyage of the Basilisk (highly, highly recommended, along with the rest of the Lady Trent series). I realized that, of course, why wouldn’t Le Guin have based her morning and evening moieties on something real? She is kind of a genius…
And so the matter has been added to the stack of “research this someday, would you?” that lives in my head.
Mike: The way you led up to this argument — about how the Radch makes auxiliaries — makes me think there really IS a reason the ship’s AI should be aware of the sexes of these bodies, which is a requirement to maintain them medically, isn’t it? Male and female bodies can’t have entirely identical needs in every respect.
True – but the ship in that case would care more about biological sex rather than social gender, and biological sex would be part of a major litany of differences between individuals (e.g. blood type again) that are medically relevant but socially irrelevant. Consider also how “race” would apply in the Radch empire – with genetic villages effectively operating on each planer there will be hereditary conditions that are common for bodies taken from one planet but rare for another. Biological sex would be something the ship would certainly know about but it would also know about it from a purely biological point of view. That actually supports the problem Breq has with social gender markers (dress, language used etc). To know the biological sex of a crew member as a ship it would refer to medical information and not the cultural proxies or body shapes that we would use.
Question for those who’ve read/are discussing Ancillary right now….
Is Seivarden in love with Breq or is it just my little shipper’s heart? I don’t actually ship them, I think it’s really well done that the question simply never emerges in Breq’s head because it’s not something she has experience with, but Seivarden’s behavior seemed indicative, to me.
Also, ULTRAGOTHA, did I miss the reference to One Esk Nineteen’s physical gender? All I’ve gleaned is that it has a crappy singing voice.
Mike Glyer
Except that they seem to make ancillaries from a wide range of conquered races so in terms of body maintenance I would image that there would also be a wide range of difference factors that would necessitate differences in care, so gender would just be one more minor thing that may or may not rise to significance. It also appears that there is a lot more gender fluidity in terms of attraction and attachment, so placing a sex and/or gender identifier on it would be more complex.
Mike: I think that’s addressed a bit in the second book. That there were things the ancillaries did for comfort when under the ship’s control.
The second book certainly deals with interpersonal relationships more than the first did, but I agree that these things are not the “point” of the book. They are minor world-building details that are supposed to help us get inside the characters a bit more.
If getting inside a character that doesn’t think about gender as an important, defining characteristic, I tend to think that says more about the reader than the author.
Also, is anyone worried that by being so accommodating to Jeffro File770 will lose it’s “wretched hive of scum and villainy” endorsement?
Yeah, me neither.
@Scott Frazer
Also, is anyone worried that by being so accommodating to Jeffro File770 will lose it’s “wretched hive of scum and villainy” endorsement?
Yeah, me neither.
Come into our hive! We’ve got honey!
@David K. M. Klaus: I believe the story you have in mind, involving President Robert Heinlein, is Paul Di Filippo’s “Mairzy Doats” (F&SF Feb. 1991).
Gabriel F. on June 4, 2015 at 12:50 pm said:
I think we’re definitely supposed to worry about that possibility given the warnings from Skaaiat
Elisa: “Except that they seem to make ancillaries from a wide range of conquered races so in terms of body maintenance I would image that there would also be a wide range of difference factors that would necessitate differences in care, so gender would just be one more minor thing that may or may not rise to significance.”
That’s actually a very good answer to my point.
At the risk of goalpost-shifting, the next thing that occurs to me (having read most of Iain M. Banks Culture novels) is that ship AI’s have so much computing power and thinking capability there wouldn’t really be anything beneath notice, especially something with both physical and linguistic implications like gender. Once Breq is limited to a physical brain it is more credible that a level of detail would be sacrificed.
UTRAGOTHA
I’m waiting to see if any of the bids promise their one-time-only Hugo category will be for the best Hugo related melt down in public.
@ULTRAGOTHA:
Because I’ve got no preference among the four sites. I don’t plan to go, and so far as I’m aware it makes no difference to me where it’s held. I’d be happy to vote if I had some reason to prefer one site to another. Can you think of one?
@Gabriel F:
Now I want to buy a jar of the Wretched Honey of Villainy.
Mike – that is actually pretty much what I was thinking. Justice of Torren knew pretty much everything and such information would have been very low priority.
Now as a single mind it must be quite hard to deal with things that would have been extremely minor details but have now become, at least to Breq, unreasonably important.
Since I managed to completely miss the Culture novels, I’ve started reading through those. So this whole puppy-related nonsense has that going for it.
re: The Day the World Turned Upside Down
As a Dutch reader I’ve found it very gratifying to see (here and elsewhere) that I’m not the only one who’s not taken by Olde Heuvelt’s stuff. The Dutch SFF scene pretty much hails him as their redeemer, though they’ve hardly discussed his work – this comment section alone has gone into more depth.
My own impression – especially after his novel HEX – is that Olde Heuvelt’s just not an intellectually-minded guy. He doesn’t seem to think his stories through in the ways that many of us would and, depending on the subject matter, that can really trip him up. I think if he’d intended the protagonist to be a douche that would’ve been as spelled out as the main metaphor.
You can read some of his own comments on the story here and here (in Dutch).
So yeah. But that said, authorial intent isn’t everything. If TDTWTUD works for you as a story about a callous selfobsessed guy, that’s fair. Personally I think that that reading makes it more palatable but not really any more interesting.
Now, if it’d been written from the perspective of the ex, that would’ve been something. Suddenly everything goes to hell, your lover dies and it slowly dawns on you that that guy you ran away from really _is_ the center of the universe. That shit’s terrifying, as well as a workable metaphor for how male privilege can allow men, even unintentionally, to make a woman’s life hell (while casting themselves as the victim).
Also, ULTRAGOTHA, did I miss the reference to One Esk Nineteen’s physical gender? All I’ve gleaned is that it has a crappy singing voice.
The gender comes up in the first book; I believe One Esk Nineteen is female, but I have a hard time remembering. (Certainly that’s the implication if you do some google image searches.) It’s more unsettling that One Esk Nineteen is also the “youngest” of Justice of Toren’s ancillaries, so to speak.
On the topic of culture wars, science fiction, and conservatives winning Hugos — I think one of the things that complicates this discussion is the way what it means to be conservative has changed over time.
In the 80s and 90s, when I started going to conventions, there was still a meaningful difference between cultural conservatives, economic conservatives, conservative-leaning libertarians, and a few other flavors of conservative. Cultural conservatives were still largely associated with the religious right, and you wouldn’t really expect to find them at a convention, or even reading SF unless that SF was explicitly evangelical Christian in theme (Left Behind, for example.)
Those distinctions started to erode in the post-9/11 era, and seem pretty much obliterated now. Which is awkward, because I think cultural conservatism and SF are not a good fit. SF is supposed to be forward-looking. Cultural conservatism is by its very nature backward-looking, even reactionary.
@Rev Bob, re Bundle of Holding
I can’t believe that slipped my mind – I have the bundle from first time around, but got the newsletter mentioning the revived version a few days ago. If anyone likes RPGs but doesn’t follow the bundle of holding, then you’re missing out on some great sets of games.
@UTRAGOTHA
I thought about voting for Washington, D.C., but when I asked myself if I’d actually be able to make it, and the answer was no. Then I thought about fans in Nippon, Montreal, and Helsinki who probably have fewer opportunities to go to WorldCon, and it seemed a little unfair to cancel out their votes. If there’s a compelling reason to vote for one over another, I’m up for voting.
Assuming that all of my friends don’t suddenly decide to get married next summer, I will be going to MidAmeriCon II!
@Going To Maine
One Esk is referred to as a “tough little girl” by someone on the planet where she finds Seivarden.
Stevie:
The Finnish pronoun hän is still a personal pronoun, it’s just not gendered. It’s the same with Estonian and Hungarian, which are part of the same language family. The same with Korean, although, to quote Wikipedia,
I kind of want a Korean translation of the Ancillary series, even though I don’t speak the language.
I don’t know of any language that truly lacks personal pronouns. Even the languages that don’t have them still do, if you squint at them a little bit.
McJulie: “Cultural conservatism is by its very nature backward-looking, even reactionary.”
Even though I think I know what reactionary means (and apart from that, I understand your point), there is to some degree a circular definition involved in using “reactionary” to amplify “conservative.”
At a simplistic level, reaction is to react against something. David Gerrold probably makes half a dozen political posts on Facebook a day (the usual thing of passing along somebody else’s political graphic or article) — he’s the opposite of conservative, and yet he is in a constant state of reaction. So it’s not a quality I see as unique to conservatives, but tends to be true of anyone who is politically aware on any point of the spectrum.
And considering that Ray Bradbury said in many of his stories he was trying to warn against the future, then reaction fits with SF very well.
@Alfred:
I’d very much like to read that story.
ULTRAGOTHA
On that note, if you aren’t attending Sasquan but are a member and haven’t voted in Site Selection, WHY NOT??
Disclaimer: I have voted.
People I know who haven’t are generally put off by the antediluvian voting process. Pay a fee, download a form, print the form, sign the form in ink, scan the form and email it somewhere. It’s a right faff. Compare voting on the Hugos, which is nice and easy, all on line, can be done on a phone or a tablet. There may be some who didn’t get the message that they can pay without needing to write a cheque drawn on an American bank.
@Glenn @David @Rev Thank you all–these are all great.
Words don’t always mean what on a moment’s thought it seems like they ought to mean. See, for instance, any writing about how “conservatives” ought properly to be environmentalists, or “national socialism” must have been primarily concerned with enhancing the political power of workers with respect to capital, or confusion about how “liberal” means completely different things in neighboring countries.
It’s extra complicated in the case of “reactionary” because, like “SJW,” it’s almost never self-applied and almost exclusively used as a term of abuse. The people who use it know exactly what they mean by it, but it’ll often be rejected by those on whom it’s scribbled.
Avoiding that impossibly provocative word, I agree entirely the cultural conservative tradition has deep roots in SF. It’d be shocking if it didn’t. Culture warriors who long for a lost golden age should find in SF any number of opportunities to paint pictures of how we could return to it.
It is actually more messed up with that. A lot of it is looking back towards a past that never was. A past without legal segregation, racial violence or the measles. This is reflected in the Puppy rhetoric about a Golden Age of Sci-Fi that never actually existed. Take Puppy endorsed Hugo nominee Transhuman and Subhuman as an example. There you have an essay which explicitly rejects modernity and calls out towards an idealized version of the past.
Important point about Site Selection: No Preference is a thing you can vote for! See this printable ballot (PDF)!
The cost of a supporting membership for 2017 may wind up higher than the voting fee (and it won’t wind up lower), so if you already have a Sasquan membership, site selection voting still allows you to keep participating in Worldcon at the lowest possible price, even if you don’t want to rank the sites.
Gabriel F. on June 4, 2015 at 12:50 pm said:
A couple of the people on Nilt in chapter 1 of AJ call Breq a girl. But whether that is Breq inadvertently presenting as female-coded or the fact that Justice of Toren One Esk 19 is actually in a female ancillary body, I don’t know.
I am absolutely confident that Justice of Toren (and hence Breq) knows the gender of the One Esk 19 body.
Also, Leckie knows Breq’s gender. The characters she created before she made the decision to use “she” as the universal pronoun have genders in her head. The later ones not so much, per an interview she gave…during Phoenix ComiCon I think.
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Laertes on June 4, 2015 at 1:05 pm said:
I prefer Helsinki (and I live within driving distance of DC). I really like what I see the Europeans doing at SF conventions and I’d like WorldCon to have more of that flavor. I’d also like it out of North America more often.
Eemeli Aro, on the bid committee for Helsinki, was in charge of the Fan Village at LonCon3 and that was one of the coolest con spaces I have ever encountered. Everything I’ve seen of the two Helsinki bids has been friendly, knowledgeable, organized and efficient with deep roots in fandom. They’ve been reaching out to fans all over the world since 2012.
There is also more interesting, IMO, tourist stuff to do around the Baltic than in the Mid Atlantic states; and although the travel expenses would be more for me personally (since I cannot drive both of us to Finland on two tanks of gas) flying to Helsinki isn’t that much more expensive than flying to Spokane and hotel room rates aren’t that different at current exchange rates. The City of Helsinki will also be providing all attending members of the convention with free public transport (subway, trams, buses, local trains, and the ferry to Suomenlinna).
Here is their FAQ
http://www.helsinkiin2017.org/faq
And multilingual instructions on how to vote in Site Selection:
http://www.helsinkiin2017.org/voting
(Disclaimer: I am not in any way part of the Helsinki in 2017 bid, other than pre-supporting them.)
Even if you do not plan to attend WorldCon no matter who wins, if you want to be a supporting member of the 2017 WorldCon I highly recommend you vote in Site Selection. It’s the cheapest a Supporting membership will ever be. It cost me $40 to vote for MidAmeriCon II last year and that got me a supporting membership. That same membership is $50 now. Also, upgrading to Attending is cheaper when you vote. (ninjaed by Petréa)
aaand 50 bazillian more coments while I typed.
nickpheas on June 4, 2015 at 1:35 pm said:
No kidding. It’s nuts and I hope MidAmeriCon II comes up with a better system. It’s hampered by all the bids having to agree to the system (and wanting to see each individual ballot). Sasquan finally got their payment method sorted and you now CAN, as you say, pay with a credit card.
https://sasquan.swoc.us/sasquan/sitevote-pay.php
Meredith: I suspect quantifying the political makeup of past Hugo nominees is not going to be easy, or even possible.
And also to McJulie’s point: I think one of the things that complicates this discussion is the way what it means to be conservative has changed over time.
And of course, people themselves change over time. Heinlein was an active Socialist in the 30’s, the man who wrote “Life-Line” is not in the same time and place as the man who wrote “Starship Troopers”.
More recently, 9/11 changed a bunch of people’s political viewpoints rather severely– or if you prefer, acted as a crucible to make their existing politics more extreme.
It seems to me that running multiple bodies as Justice of Toren did, she just did not feel gendered (or possibly she felt multiply-gendered) and that lack of gender or gendered thinking was carried over to Breq.
Even if Toren had thought it was important for Breq to feel only as gendered as the average Radchai (however gendered that is), she wouldn’t necessarily have known how to set Breq up to feel that, when she had never had to consider it in her several thousand years of awareness.
nickpheas says:
Unfortunately, making site selection voting electronic is a much tougher task than Hugo voting. With the Hugos, there’s only one administrative entity involved– that year’s Worldcon. Site selection is administered by the year’s Worldcon on behalf of all the bids, all of whom need to be able to verify the results. Hugo voting also doesn’t have the added complexity of trying to process paymets along with the vote.
Yes, solutions exist which can address these issues. Really simple solutions that are well-suited to this use case are another matter…
Mike
Everybody else has answered your first question so I’ll go with the second: in Bank’s Culture novels the AIs have taken over, which is why he’s usually read as writing about utopia(s) or dystopia(s), depending on your perspective.
There’s nothing in the Radch culture to suggest that they allow AI’s to do anything more than they have to in order to function efficiently; this is closer to a bare minimum than the vast intellects of the Culture. The Radch are, after all, paranoid, for very good reasons; we know that the explosive growth of their empire is shut down, probably for ever, because they have encountered a species even more brutal than their own.
They entered the treaty because they were forced to do so; I doubt that the Radch will survive as an empire very long in the absence of a plentiful supply of auxiliaries. Human beings take up far more resources than the auxiliaries since real brains don’t do well in the sort of suspended animation that auxillaries can survive in, and the Radch have spent so long depending on the use of military force to rape planets and take their resources that I doubt that they have the ability to think of another way to live.
This is a very long way from Bank’s Culture…
Ultragotha says:
It’s further hampered by the fact that electronic site selection isn’t currently allowed by the WSFS constitution, so MidAmeriCon II can’t do anything about it.
Whym on June 4, 2015 at 1:26 pm said:
The Finnish pronoun hän is still a personal pronoun, it’s just not gendered. It’s the same with Estonian and Hungarian, which are part of the same language family. The same with Korean, although, to quote Wikipedia,
Korean geunyeo is found in writing to translate “she” from European languages. In the spoken language it still sounds awkward and rather unnatural, as it literally translates to “that female”.
Turkish (and I assume other related Central Asian languages are similar) also doesn’t have gendered pronouns.
I find it interesting that people flip out about the pronouns in the Ancillary books,
which are about a culture founded in a Dyson sphere, with an interstellar empire, distributed intelligences and quasi-autonomous zombie soldiers, when we have neighbouring cultures on our own planet and in our own time which cope without the concept.
As someone who has been bidding things for the past seven years, and having to explain the system the whole time, that is correct. It’s also a tough issue to deal with because there are some pretty good reasons for the system that we have, and which makes a voting system exactly like the Hugos unfeasible. Take, for instance, the paper ballots. Right now the physical ballots are counted by hand, by members from each bid. The paper ballots aren’t even handled without such representatives being present. Demanding that level of accountability and transparency may seem silly from the outside, but from the inside it makes perfect sense. Bids represent a significant cost in terms of time and money. The winning Worldcon itself is going to have budget around $1,000,000 US. The members are going to spend at least that much on hotel rooms. Given the costs to bid, and the stakes in winning, it makes sense that the system is has built in paranoia.
Whym
Thank you; I’d meant to say gendered personal pronouns but omitted the vital word…
And, if we’re going to start electioneering here: Shizuoka, Shizuoka, Shizuoka! High time there was another Asian Worldcon! Check out their Facebook page for a daily feed of cool stuff in the vicinity of the proposed site!
(Full disclosure: I was on the staff of the 2007 Worldcon in Yokohama. All the same, I wouldn’t be rooting for another Worldcon in Japan if it hadn’t been an awesome experience, and I’m not part of the 2017 bid.)
I doubt that the Radch will survive as an empire very long in the absence of a plentiful supply of auxiliaries.
I HAVE BEEN HOLDING MY BREATH FOR A LONG TIME BUT FOR THE LOVE OF BEANS IT IS ANCILLARIES NOT AUXILLARIES.
Unfortunately, making site selection voting electronic is a much tougher task than Hugo voting. With the Hugos, there’s only one administrative entity involved– that year’s Worldcon.
Simple solution. (Simple to say, not necessarily to get agreement).
There is only one stakeholder. The WSFS. And the WSFS should be able to set the rules and if they can get that through an appropriate number of business meetings then it becomes part of the rules for bidding to hold the con that bids are processed in a particular way. Which ideally is one that opens the process up to the whole World.