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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“In the partnership, Beale is the foaming-at-the-mouth spokesman…”
Sounds about right.
So this piece crossed my path today:
https://otherwheregazette.wordpress.com/2015/06/04/the-puppies-need-to-thank-these-recruiters/
There’s a lot in here to challenge, but I’ll focus on this one:
Now we will look at Betsy Wolheim. I have only noticed her recently. She is one of those whose publishing house, started by her father, is losing readership.
I’m fascinated that he just declares DAW as “losing readership” with no facts or data to back that up. I don’t have hard numbers, but glancing at the Locus bestseller lists for the past year, it seems DAW is doing all right. Maybe this is the same data source they were using when they said Scalzi was going to get dropped by Tor shortly…
Does Sword give anyone else a sort of original-Ender’s-Game sort of vibe? It had a different feel to it than Justice did.
Honestly, and I know people say that Sword suffers from “middle book” syndrome, and aside from the ending being not a real ending I don’t think I agree. I actually liked it better than Justice.
Rev:
>> Choosing to obey Man over God, perhaps? As for why wild animals need redemption, they disobeyed God’s decree that Man had dominion over them. >>
That seems like a Catch-22. If they obey Man, which is following God’s decree, they’ve chosen against God by doing as he decreed? And if they don’t obey Man, they didn’t obey God. But if they had they’d be punished like the dogs, for obeying.
Going to Maine
Start breathing immediately!
I must apologise; once my iPad decides on a word it decides on a word and my brain failed the override.
Stevie: Your reminder about the limits on Radch resources etc. has made me remember my experience of reading Ancillary Justice — it all hung together and the background as presented worked for me til I closed the book. Then I wondered — how is it that bodies are economically more feasible than robots or some other kind of AI-managed military unit? Early in the book I was expecting to be told they somehow lacked that kind of technology (notwithstanding the ship AI) but that didn’t prove to be the case. Anyway, here we are in 2015 reading about attempts to develop more robotic ground-based fighting units. Why not in the Radch? Unless I overlooked some rationale that was given.
@ Stevie
Nobody will find out from me. See you outside MC’s writing house at midnight! (Gives SISF salute)
There are actually rules about how the voting takes place now. The system is open, very open. The winning Worldcon is required to post the final vote breakdowns, and the seated Worldcon runs the process and serves as observers for WSFS. The difficulty in making it more transparent is the desire to protect the secret ballot. Under the current rules electronic voting is allowed, but only with the consent of all bids involved. I do not see a situation where competing bids will agree to that, except maybe (and a bid maybe at that) hiring a third party to run the actual voting.
Mike, I got the sense that the Radch didn’t care about people much until they became citizens. Every annexation created political prisoners and rebels. Very efficient to take their bodies and use them as ancillary soldiers. More efficient than prisons or even graveyards.
1000 years ago the Lord of the Radch splintered, or bifurcated, and it stopped being as ethical to at least one part of her to warehouse bodies for ancillaries. Though how they treat un-ancillaried soldiers doesn’t look like a vast improvement to me.
Mike: I would guess that once you’ve reached the tech level where you can control an entire autonomous nervous system remotely with only a few implants, and you’ve got a culture that doesn’t care about the lives of those it conquers, it’s easier than robots?
There’s probably some back story on how the tech was improved specifically to allow the Lord of the Radch to come into being as well.
Also, some things you have to suspend disbelief for. I mean midi-chlorians. really. 🙂
Rev. Bob:
None of the Hugo-nominated fiction is in The Year’s Best Military SF & Space Opera. (Are we surprised that there were apparently better stories of the type the Puppies say they like available to them than those they actually put on the slate?) Actually, the fact that Sad Puppies like Torgersen and Williamson are in the anthology along with writers such as Holly Black, David D. Levine and Charlie Jane Anders makes the book seem appropriately wide-ranging.
Scott Frazer: So often in SF stories the argument for humans over computers or robots is that they supposedly bring into play some moral sense or quality of soul that a machine could never provide. The Radch don’t seem to use ancillaries because they’re looking for a spiritual or moral quality in their performance, so why are physical bodies which have to be stored and maintained preferable to machines? Ironically, it’s when the Justice of Toren sets Breq in motion that an ancillary suddenly acquires this moral dimension.
It probably doesn’t get us anywhere to consider the Ancillaries as a waste-disposal problem. We know the Radch has no qualms about mass-murder on an industrial scale. If making Ancillaries is primarily about getting rid of troublesome persons, there are any number of disposal methods that are even simpler.
One way or another, it’s got to be that making tools out of existing living organisms produces better results than manufacturing artificial ones. Since either we’re talking about made-up technology that’s sufficiently advanced as to be magic, it seems perfectly plausible that making ancillaries could be easier than making comparably advanced robots.
Should be “since either way we’re talking about…”
A jab at the moral hypocrisy of colonial empires.
Could also be a societal thing. Ancillaries, having once been independent people, cause less disturbance among the populace? Or serve as a constant reminder of what happens to people fall out of line?
Obviously the authority for these questions is Leckie herself, she may have already answered this stuff somewhere that I’m not aware of.
CF: 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 🙂
You don’t even have to go that far. Remember England-as-it-was-until-recently? A class-ridden society where the accent of your voice marked where you stood?
Laertes : Now I want to buy a jar of the Wretched Honey of Villainy.
See here – http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/10938108/Manuka-honey-fraud-what-else-is-fake-in-our-food.html
@Alfred
Thank you, that was very interesting! Are there any Dutch authors of sf/f you’d recommend over Heuvelt? Preferably ones with the odd English translation, as I’m shamefully monolingual but also ones without to look out for in the future. 🙂
@CPaca
It hasn’t changed much. My accent makes people assume intelligence even now, and my father had elocution lessons as a child because his parents wanted him to be able to take advantage of those assumptions. Its better than it used to be but class systems are very hard to shake in the short-term.
@everyone
You’re not marking spoilers for the Ancillary books. 🙂
Good points to consider, all.
Ray Bradbury is definitely a counter-example to the idea that SF and the conservative “standing athwart history yelling stop” are inherently incompatible.
I was still surprised to find out — thanks to the whole puppy thing — that there are SF writers (other than John Norman) who are deeply invested in old-fashioned patriarchal gender roles, or that there are SF writers who consider “pro Christian” or “pro Religion” themes to be an important point of consideration as to whether or not a work is any good.
Why is human labour less efficient than robot labour? Humans make extremely efficient elements in industrial processes, that is why we currently use them as key resources in our manufacturing and supply chains.
Sweatshops are not threatened economically by automation unless the conditions under which the labour is done is greatly improved. AS makes clear that the Radch, generally have an over supply of human resources, so it doesn’t seem a stretch to assume storing and outfitting ancillaries is cheap.
Once the production of ancillaries is ended it is going take a while, culturally, industrially and logistically to swap to robot bodies. Who knows if the ships would even be amenable to that idea, they are intelligences with personality and preferences for kinds of bodies – ship and biological.
@Mike
Yes, yes:
“Hello, I’ve come to say I must be going,
I cannot stay, I’m here to say I must be going”
But also G&S:
“Yes, but you don’t go!”
Mike Glyer asks:
1) Machines have to be maintained too, and spare machines have to be stored too.
2) The biggest driver of automation in our world is that robots can be cheaper than paying salaries and benefits to humans. In less-developed parts of the world, there isn’t just less automation because the overall technology base is lower, it’s also because the people are cheaper.
3) When looking at the military, another big factor in considering robots is the relative worth of a human soldier’s life versus a robot’s.
If you’re the Radchaai, and you don’t have to pay your ancillaries, and their lives have no inherent worth to you, they could be a pretty cost-effective proposition. Plus, I thought the same thing as Ultragotha– that they probably have a steady supply of people they need to get rid of anyway.
Mike
The reason why we are trying to expand unmanned military hard and software is because our governments can, and will, be voted out if the body count gets too high.
The Radch have no such inhibitions. On the other hand they would like to live forever, which points towards massive investment in biological systems and their interface with computers; we don’t really do that here.
We have massive expenditure on developing drugs, but unfortunately most of it is on me-too drugs which may be very profitable but are not going to significantly extend lifespans. We are doing lots of research on the brain but we seem to be going round in circles, per Watt’s very long research review at the end of ‘Echopraxia’; we are automatons because the brain can only react to outside stimuli.
I quite like Watt’s vampires, though…
From the 2nd Vox Day post: “how I am voting in the Best Fan Writer category. Of course, I merely offer this information regarding my individual ballot”
Uh, he’s not registered for Sasquan. Only registered members have ballots and can vote. I’ve checked the m’ship listing, and there no Theodore Beale or Vox Day.
As has been noted elsewhere, Sad Puppy frontman Brad Torgersen is also not registered. It’s known that he won’t be attending, but he’s not registered as a supporting member, either.
The Lord of the Radsch talks about it when Brej confronts her, where she says she needed the AIs to be at least a little humany so they could have feelings and favorites, with which they could be controlled. That’s what I remember anyway, I may need to go back and re-read.
@Dela
Its possible to prevent your name from appearing in the list (there’s a ticky box during registration), but I am surprised Torgersen or Day would tick it. I would’ve thought they’d want to be public about their voting ability.
Dela, Beale may have asked Sasquan to not show his membership publically. Or he may have joined since May 11.
I think the ancillary question is a good one and it isn’t really addressed in the books. As things currently stand, human minds have far more versatility than any AI or robot. Some things just work better than others. Doing math is easy for an AI and it can do it way faster than a human. Walking up a flight of stairs is extremely hard for a robot and we only kinda-sorta have some tech that can handle it. Considering the vast range of things Berq does in her duties, managing intelligence, serving as a PA, communications, it may be that their current AI can’t handle everything. Or it may be that AI is so expensive that it’s easier to just grab someone’s brain than build a new AI. There are possible explanations but, again, they aren’t really covered.
Maine –
Actually, I just finished writing about that very thing.. (evil grin)
Meredith
I thought I had achieved a major improvement to my accent at University; sadly not everyone agreed. In my first job it was a bit of a blow to discover that one of my colleagues had described me as sounding just like Princess Anne. I thought I’d got rid of it but I was wrong.
I’m envious of your home schooling since I used to get run in for dumb insolence; I couldn’t persuade my teachers that my left eyebrow going up by itself was entirely involuntary. It took me years to get it under control, but it was useful in later years; it’s difficult to make sensible sounding complaints consisting of ‘she raised one eye brow’.
Gabriel F. on June 4, 2015 at 12:50 pm said:
I’m coming in to this late and haven’t read any responses…but my take is it isn’t anything like what we’d see as romantic love. The relationship, istm, resembles the Radch cultural more of clientage – someone of lower status serving someone higher – only there’s deep emotion on Seivarden’s part. Breq saved Seivarden’s life on that bridge and that’s when the emotional attachment solidified. He desperately needed some reason or way to reattach to society. Breq gave him that…a reason to live and a lifeline back to being Radch.
Andrew: “There are possible explanations but, again, they aren’t really covered.”
People have been talking about the way readers fill in these blanks as “head-canon,” which is a wonderful term.
I haven’t quite finished Ancillary Justice due to having to go to work (!@#!) but I wanted to toss a couple of comments into the discussion flow here.
First, I agree that while AJ is not in any way “about” gender, exploring some of the interesting aspects of a supposedly “genderless” society is one of the things Leckie probably wanted to do with the text and is definitely a valid and deep topic for discussion about the series. But I just figured that the reason the Puppies think it’s all “about gender” is just that they are very invested in the idea that you must know a person’s “real gender” in order to know how to relate to them properly — that is, the concept that we could simply disregard gender in social settings and function perfectly well is anathema to them. They simply don’t seem to have any idea how to interact with other people in a gender-neutral way, and therefore probably don’t believe it’s even possible.
Note that that disregarding gender isn’t the same as disregarding biological sex, as there are some minor but important medical differences, but I think the Radch are sufficiently medically advanced that any biological sex markers can be dealt with if they cause issues. If you’re a woman and you want to have more upper-body strength or not have to deal with menstruation, that can easily be had for the asking; if you’re a man and you crave the ability to give live birth, there’s even a mention that surgery is available for that early on in the book. Given that all biological advantages and disadvantages can be overridden medically if the individual wishes it, it makes sense that gender would be mostly a non-issue. When Breq arrives at the Palace station she even says something about how most Radch look very androgynous; that’s probably a conscious choice in their society. I wouldn’t be surprised if outward displays of obvious secondary sexual characteristics are consider tres gauche by the Radch.
So I think the gender issues the Puppies have with the Ancillary books are entirely on the Puppies, not on Leckie at all.
And a lot of it probably ties in to being unable to tell whether the characters are having gay or straight sex, which makes it impossible for them to do crap like complain that a lesbian relationship between a Vulcan and a Klingon is unrealistic. Imagine how much harder it would be to write angry letters about that relationship if you had no idea whether or not the sex was straight or gay!
Stevie said: kudos for Jeffro for being here, being civil.
One of the weird about this whole issue that we have to thank folk who stop by for being nice.
Meredith:
“I think Triple Sun has been judged a little harshly – aside from an irritatingly passive protagonist (honestly, the focus on Maia’s passivity puzzles me when there’s this on the ballot), I actually enjoyed reading it, even if I didn’t think it was Hugo Award level.”
My main complaint is that that isn’t our Solar System or our physics. It probably would have been a solid Hugo contender around 1960, which may be the source of its appeal to the Sad Puppies.
On the question of “Why Ancillaries and not robots?” I put that down to “Because the idea of living on a zombie slave host to the people who conquered your planet and butchered your people scares the living CRAP out of the population you’re trying to keep control of, and that’s very psychologically valuable to a conqueror.” Can you imagine surviving a Radch “annexation” and then finding your spouse, child, sibling, or best friend walking around patrolling your neighborhood with their personality destroyed and a Radch AI living in their head instead? The propaganda value would be enormous.
I’ve made this argument when defending some of the more cartoonish over-the-top villainy in the Hunger Games books when people ask why the technologically advanced Capitol still does so many stupid, wasteful, inefficient and cruel things in the Districts — “Because it’s part of their revenge on the Districts, part of the control scheme, and part of the psychology of the abuser to keep reminding the victim how helpless they are, to keep them from causing trouble.”
It’s worth noting that in behavior economics games, it’s been repeatedly shown that people will sacrifice their own monetary advantage in the games just for the joy of getting sweet, sweet revenge on people they want to punish. Take the ever-popular “Ultimatum” game. Someone gives you $100 and tells you to split it between yourself and a second player any way you choose. The only catch is, if the second player doesn’t like the split. she can choose to have the money returned so that neither of you gets any. Rationally, the second player should be willing to accept a $99/$1 split, because hey, that’s a free dollar she didn’t have at the start, right? But, no. The degree of unfairness the second player will tolerate differs, but it’s rare to find someone who will willingly accept anything less than a 70/30 split and many players won’t accept anything less than 50/50. So for a lot of people, if a $51/$49 split is offered, the second player will happily sacrifice a free profit of $49 just to inflict $51 of damage on a player they consider to have acted like an “enemy” by being unfair.
Or for a closer-to-home example: The Puppy campaigns are, in my opinion, the result of one man (Correia) getting butthurt and deciding to do as much damage as he could to the people who injured his feelings without any consideration whatsoever for his future ability to land SFF awards or for the reputation of the SFF literary genre in general. He then dragged in Torgersen who is similarly pursuing a rather burnt-earth approach, and a bunch of other authors whose careers will probably take a hit from being Puppies, not because of any kind of “cabal” or “boycott” but just because if you act like an arschloch people will go out of their way to avoid you. Are Larry and Brad being reasonable in their actions? Or are they being vengeful? My answer is “vengeful.” (I leave out VD because in his case he may well manage to profit from this nonsense, though there’s clearly vengeance there too.) The same spirit that motivated the Puppy campaigns (“Stick it to the SJWs!”), writ large, would motivate the use of Ancillaries over Robots, because Ancillaries are by far the more vengeful option of the two choices.
@Stevie
Home education has its perks, for sure. A lot of adults found us unnerving, actually, because we were (deliberately) never taught to give them deference, and were also very comfortable talking to them on a social level compared to most children. Eyebrow raising and all. 🙂
Gabriel F,
I hear you. As I said, that is my stereotype of typical puppyism I saw that needs a difinitive cut and dried ending. There is really nothing wrong with that just as there is nothing wrong with liking the books they prefer.
It seems to be the day for shocks related to anime for me today. I had a friend who told me that he didn’t enjoy anything from the Ghost in the Shell franchise.
Finally, I may not have been clear, but it was the comment above James’ May. He is innocent(?) in this regard.
I can’t justify it with any particular passage, but I had thought part of the point of ancillaries was effective oppression. As with real-world empires, this army of occupation bolsters its ranks with locals. Unlike the Sepoys, these local troops will never, ever mutiny. And so it’s a demonstration of power: we’re taking your friends and family and forcibly enlisting them, they will remain loyal to us until they die, and there’s nothing you or anyone else can do about it
Ultragotha: Beale may have asked Sasquan to not show his membership publically. Or he may have joined since May 11.
Must be. After all, Mr. Beale says he doesn’t lie on the Internet.
The Puppy’s Apprentice
Tintinaus
Well, we certainly don’t have to, but it seems to me that I personally do not wish to behave in a manner I deplore in others since it would be deeply hypocritical of me to do so.
And this is particularly the case when someone who has very little experience of SF fandom has been dumped headfirst into it by people who are not exactly notable for their moral scruples…
On “The Day the World Turned Upside Down,” I have tried to reread the ending with the assumption that the author does not want the reader to sympathize with the main character.
It doesn’t work. I don’t buy it. Like Seth Gordon says upthread:
SPOILERS AHEAD if y’all care:
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There is no clue that I can see that the author doesn’t see Toby as “more sinned against than sinning.”
After Sophie says that her kneecap is broken and her back hurts real bad, it is never mentioned again. Not just Toby, who halfheartedly promises to get her aspirin, but the author too seems to have forgotten that she is immobilized with injury and will probably die if no one helps her. Hell, Toby embraces her and kisses her and lies down practically on top of her and gets all lovey-dovey with her while she probably has a broken kneecap and an injured back, and the author doesn’t have Sophie wince or whimper or protest.
When Toby says of the goldfish that “it deserves better,” it’s placed in the text and pitched at a tone such that I get the clear message that This Is Fact, not that this is the whining of an unreliable narrator. I can’t help read that as a sincerely meant takeaway from this scene: Sophie is cruel to Toby. The goldfish deserves better than Sophie. But Sophie totally deserves to be abandoned in her helpless, injured state to her eventual and probable death, of course. Nothing in the narrative seems to question this conclusion.
Yes, we know that it’s utterly reprehensible of Toby to see Sophie’s lover’s dead body and feel no horror over his death. To hear Sophie crying, and think only that Sophie’s tears are “repulsive” for being shed over someone who isn’t Toby. We know he’s a jerk for not considering that maybe she’s crying because she’s in pain, and maybe also in horror that her ex-boyfriend is abandoning her in her injured state for the ‘crime’ of staying broken up with him and having (he thinks) cheated on him… These things are objectively horrible. But “the author shouldn’t want us to sympathize with Toby, ergo he doesn’t” isn’t compelling logic in the face of such a narrative that strikes me as far too sympathetic to Toby.
Besides, there is far too strong a literary tradition of “she cheated on me” being considered–by the author, by the narrative, and expectedly by the reader–as justification for any horrible thing that should thereafter happen to the woman, up to and including murder. “The Day the World Turned Upside Down” doesn’t subvert that tradition. It plays right into it, enthusiastically.
After showing us Toby at his worst, his most criminally reprehensible, the author still gives him that moralistic last word: “I am somebody, too.” It reads to me like I’m expected to pump my fist and say, “Yeah! You ARE somebody! Don’t you let anybody tell you different!”
(No one actually told him “you’re nobody.” Breaking up with you isn’t denying your personhood. But it’s so much more satisfying to say Look at how they persecute meeeeee! and then lash out vindictively, isn’t it? Toby’s kind of a puppy.)
The world the author designed around Toby is far too sympathetic to him–it turned upside down when Sophie dumped him, reflecting unquestionably the importance of his emotional experience. After setting up a story with that kind of premise, the author has to drop some pretty big clues that Toby isn’t meant to be a sympathetic protagonist. And the author did not, at least not where I could see.
So that’s why the “deliberately unsympathetic protagonist” reading doesn’t work for me.
Eh. Forgot to add:
The snipped of text from the author where he says that he’s been where Toby was, that didn’t help. Read more like, “I, too, was hurt by love, and had to rise above it,” rather than, “I, too, have been a self-entitled jerk, and had to grow up.”
Cat, Camestros,
I wonder if an alt title to Wright’s Parliament of Beasts and Birds would be “No Dogs Go to Heaven”?
Gabriel F.: Question for those who’ve read/are discussing Ancillary right now…
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Gabriel F.: Is Seivarden in love with Breq or is it just my little shipper’s heart?
junego: my take is it isn’t anything like what we’d see as romantic love. The relationship, istm, resembles the Radch cultural more of clientage – someone of lower status serving someone higher – only there’s deep emotion on Seivarden’s part. Breq saved Seivarden’s life on that bridge and that’s when the emotional attachment solidified. He desperately needed some reason or way to reattach to society. Breq gave him that…a reason to live and a lifeline back to being Radch.
I definitely sense, from the narrative, that there are very strong feelings on Seivarden’s part — but I’m not sure that it’s romantic love, as much as it is intense gratitude and unwavering loyalty (with a soupçon of protectiveness) for Breq, who has saved his life at least twice, once very nearly sacrificing her own life to do so (and once nearly being killed by thieves while doing so, though I’m not sure whether he’s aware of that).
On ancillaries:
@Gabriel F.: “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.”
That’s my read, too. For all we know, the Radchaai have eliminated non-heterosexual activity altogether, but it’s equally valid to read the text to say that they don’t care what parts their sexual partners have unless procreation is a goal.
@Gabriel F. (later): “Is Seivarden in love with Breq or is it just my little shipper’s heart?”
I think Seivarden is grateful to Breq and thus loyal to her, but I don’t read love as part of that. Remember the scene in AS where Seivarden tells Breq that the crew think they’re sleeping together?
@Mike Glyer: “So often in SF stories the argument for humans over computers or robots is that they supposedly bring into play some moral sense or quality of soul that a machine could never provide. The Radch don’t seem to use ancillaries because they’re looking for a spiritual or moral quality in their performance, so why are physical bodies which have to be stored and maintained preferable to machines?”
Remember that AJ begins with the occupied people asking Justice of Toren to stay because they preferred ancillaries over independent soldiers who were prone to abusing their position. I found that an interesting twist on the concept of humanity’s moral superiority over machines. (Plus, the ancillaries don’t seem to require much maintenance while in storage, and ancillary-staffed ships are noted for being able to serve longer missions due to the lack of humans wanting contact with their families back home.)
@May Tree: “Can you imagine surviving a Radch “annexation” and then finding your spouse, child, sibling, or best friend walking around patrolling your neighborhood with their personality destroyed and a Radch AI living in their head instead?”
That, too… although I get the impression that one annexation’s “crop” of ancillaries doesn’t get used until a later annexation. They stock the reserves, rather than immediately activating them.
Now I want to buy a jar of the Wretched Honey of Villainy.
It doesn’t taste very good, the producers haven’t been careful about seperating the honey from the wax.
That being said, now I want toast with honey.
@McJulie: “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.”
Yes, that. I observed as much earlier in this debacle, and I still think that’s the root of the “anti-conservative bias” that the Puppies perceive in the Hugos. It’s like complaining that the Catholic Church hasn’t named enough Hindu saints.
@Mike Glyer: “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.”
Yes, but that’s like saying that describing a character as “wooden” or “cardboard” implies a wish that they should be set on fire, on the grounds that wood and paper are materials that burn. The argument makes a certain degree of sense from the outside, but is nonetheless false.
“Reactionary” does not literally mean “one who reacts,” despite that being the root of the word’s origin. It was deliberately coined as an antonym for “liberal” or “progressive,” from the conservatives reacting to the French Revolution. Objecting to “reactionary = conservative” on the grounds that people can react to all kinds of things is exactly as pointless as decrying the US’s current usage of “red/blue/purple states” because conservatives used to chant “Better Dead Than Red” as an anti-communist slogan. Yes, it’s technically true, but it’s irrelevant.
@Kurt Busiek: “That seems like a Catch-22. If they obey Man, which is following God’s decree, they’ve chosen against God by doing as he decreed?”
As I have noted, we’re hardly talking about a religion noted for its attention to fairness. Adam and Eve were punished for their gullibility despite explicitly having no knowledge of good and evil; how is this Catch-22 materially different?
@Ultragotha: “Beale may have asked Sasquan to not show his membership publically. Or he may have joined since May 11.”
Must be the former. After all, if he’d waited until May to join, he wouldn’t have had nominating rights, and we all know he’d never do something like push a nomination slate without even being able to cast a ballot! Aristotle!