aka Time Enough To Read Even The Puppy Nominees
Today roundup hors d’ouerve includes Tim Hall, Adam-Troy Castro, Vox Day, Patrick McCulley and Jon Zeigler. (Title credit goes out to File 770 contributing editors of the day Will Reichard and Daniel Dern.)
Tim Hall on Where Worlds Collide
“Geeks, Mops and Sociopaths” – July 4
There’s an interesting post by David Chapman about the life-cycle of subcultures. He identifies three types of people who enter a subculture at different stages. First there are the “Geeks”, the creators and hardcore supporters. The come “Mops”, the more casual supporters whose numbers are necessary for a scene to grow big enough to be economically viable. Finally there are the “Sociopaths”, who want to exploit everything for profit without caring about the subculture itself, taking a short-term slash-and-burn approach that destroys the thing in the process…..
I certainly don’t agree with him on the necessity of gatekeepers to preserve the purity of a subculture; that smacks too much of elitism, and gatekeeping is one of those things that can so easily turn toxic. This is especially true when you have what amounts to a turf war between competing subcultures over a disputed space; the whole Sad Puppies/Hugo thing, and the ongoing Gamergate culture war are prime examples.
Adam-Troy Castro on Facebook – July 4
Wright is outraged that I would imply anti-Semitism in this language, and wants us to know that he loves the Jewish people and indeed angrily bans any holocaust deniers who show up on his blog. Well, bully for him. So what we really need to take from this is that he wasn’t targeting Jews, with those words, but simply and clumsily doubling down on his previously stated hatred for homosexuals. That’s much different.
Vox Day on Vox Popoli
“Hugo Recommendations: Best Editor” – July 4
This is how I am voting in the Best Editor categories. 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 388 Vile Faceless Minions or anyone else.
Best Editor, Short Form
- Vox Day
- Jennifer Broznek
- Bryan Thomas Schmidt
- Mike Resnick
Best Editor, Long Form
- Toni Weisskopf
- Anne Sowards
- Jim Minz
- Vox Day
- Sheila Gilbert
Jon Zeigler on Sharrukin’s Palace
“My 2015 Hugo Ballot” – July 4
My sole motivation here is to read and appreciate genre fiction from (almost) any source. The dispute certainly motivated me to become involved with the process for the first time, but I’ve done my good-faith best to evaluate nominees as if the dispute was not taking place. In particular, for individual writers or editors I’ve deliberately avoided reading blog pages or social media, concentrating instead on neutral sources and the body of work.
[Lists everything on his Hugo ballot.]
https://twitter.com/panther_modern/status/617352254409043968
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5-7-5’s not
proper English haiku form
but that battle’s lost.
Goblins and elves talk
Magic is practiced throughout
How’s this fantasy?
KS wins!
Mark Hopper:
What’s interesting to me is that NONE of the different subculture theories you talk about correspond to my experience, which is mostly in what we’re calling Transformative Works Fandom.
Here’s an account of an old South Park fandom, for instance. I chose it because it was what we sometimes call a “feral” fandom — one that grew up spontaneously, without input from other fannish experience.
[In case it’s not clear, especially because the writer doesn’t use caps: “ocs” = OCs = Original Characters, aka “Mary Sues”; rping = RPing = Role Playing; bnf = Big Name Fan]
In TWF, your lines between Creators, Curators, and Consumers are extremely blurred and even swirled. Fans aren’t attracted by Creator content and become Curators, they’re attracted by the content and by the prospect of becoming Creators themselves — while also becoming Curators and Consumers.
It often feels more like the old, *old* fashioned circle around the fire, where one person after another stands up to tell a story or a part of one, and we all cheer or cry or make rude noises. Not everyone stands up, but the rest of the circle aren’t just “consumers”, they’re Audience, they give feedback.
And some are more like musicians, providing accompaniment but not story-telling.
And some people try to pick fights, or to put other voices down, or to get praise for being creatively mean … because they’re people.
Brouhaha!
I would like to write
In the haiku form but I
Never really got the hang of it, sorry.
Mark Dennehy –
But yet it stops the story constantly to say what a samurai is, incorrectly. That bugged the shit out of me.
The thing is, “Samurai” has a culturally-specific meaning.
It’s like calling your character a Pontifical Swiss Guard but having him just be some sort of fantasy warrior.
There once was a commenter merry-o
Who hung around File 770
All his haikus were risible
Because he couldn’t count syllables
But his limericks weren’t much cop either-o.
(And I’m actually FROM Limerick, for feck’s sake.).
Maybe I haven’t been keeping up – who has been invoking McCarthy? I remember Steve Davidson not too long ago.
A small village in County Limerick called Haiku. On Sonnet Street. Ode Lane. Next to Ballad Park.
I can’t go on.
I’ll go on.
This video has a bit of a discussion about this year’s Hugo’s and the SP/RP. I think it mostly started at about 35 min(there was a shorter earlier mention) that then goes into the sort of victim mentality that somewhat defines the actions of the SP/RP, and Gamergate.
The whole thing is really interesting, too.
I’m surprised that more people aren’t discussing the fanfic angle of “A Single Samurai”. Surely it’s “Shadow of the Colossus” fanfic, a Japanese game in which a young man with a sword faces a series of kaiju who must be climbed to find the glowing sigils that show the weak point at which to attack them. Does that meet the basic expectation of being original work, or is the door now open on nominating fanworks from Transformative Works Fandom for the Hugo? That’s a game-changing shift for everyone, if TWF is now Hugo-eligible.
Huh. I read that really differently, as if he was saying that it is foolish for the various Puppies to use “witch hunt” as if they were the target of one. Because his unspoken point is they aren’t targets.
/no nuance Twitter, good thing I don’t use it on the regular
Huh. I read that really differently, as if he was saying that it is foolish for the various Puppies to use “witch hunt” as if they were the target of one. Because his unspoken point is they aren’t targets.
I read it the same way, Tenar. Like the persecution they are always whining about, it doesn’t exist. Claiming it does only makes them look foolish.
I wish people would stop blaming “Twitter” and its “lack of nuance” for their own reading errors. McCulley’s tweet is perfectly clear.
@Microtherion – Nice!
Are the Hugo Awards a late summer or early autumn kigo?
It just occurred to me that ‘Ort Of Feces’ is probably a good name for a certain kind of band.
Or some sort of quack medicine popular in the 18th century.
What ‘ort of feces is that then?
Hmm, judging by the shape and texture? Vile and cowardly.
Er, carry on.
Jim
I decided to follow your example, and have come across a selection of short stories by Edmund Hamilton.
I’m actually enjoying them more than almost all of the short fiction in the Hugo nominations; if you want to go for the big picture then Hamilton’s nickname of “World Wrecker” is well deserved. I shall dive into ‘Thundering Worlds’, published in 1934, with some relish…
Stevie: Awesome! I would definitely read more Hamilton.
I seem to remember the Gray Mouser having a short discussion about the differences in human and mouse feces.
From the old thread, regarding concerns about Puppies attending Midamericon in person — my husband paulcarp thinks I’m being overly optimistic, but I’m not at all worried by the prospect of real live Puppies at a Worldcon. I believe there are only two likely behavior patterns.
One is that they conduct themselves properly, and thus are fairly invisible, and perhaps they go home having come to see other fans as real live people. Or, they will act up, get tossed out, and go home trying to spin that as some great injustice. I believe this acting up is likely to be entirely nonviolent — disrupting panels or possibly the Hugo ceremony is literally the worst thing I can imagine.
I think if Puppies started going to Worldcons in real life, they would start to lose the precious sense of the typical Worldcon fan/Hugo voter as “other” that fuels their outrage.
Also from the old thread, I would love to see the discussion threads here continue. It’s like being able to go to a really good convention party without leaving my apartment.
Regarding the Geeks/Mops/Sociopaths essay — it’s an interesting theory, and I think it describes some things accurately, but ends up being overly simplistic. If you want to look at what changed in 2000, I think William Gibson, at a V-Con panel last year, offered a better theory: subcultures aren’t really left free to develop and mature away from the public eye anymore. The backwaters have disappeared.
Finally, of course Beale puts himself in the short form editor top spot. I’m sure it’s entirely sincere. After all, he edits things to be exactly the way he likes them, which naturally means that he is the best at it.
Jim Henley, I’m generally talented at teasing nuance from 140 characters (though I try not to use the twitphone myself) – but what does that mean?
@Mark Hopper,
Probably should have made it clearer in my blog post, but I’m not buying Chapman’s Sociopaths theory either. He might have made his point better had he quoted some concrete examples of subcultures his sociopaths had ruined. But he didn’t.
His conflating of creators and curators seems quite valid, though. In some creative spaces there’s a lot of overlap between the two.
And yes, I went down the exact same rabbit hole as you did before writing my blog post…
@bloodstone75
Please, I’m trying to eat breakfast here and now I have to clean egg fragments off my keyboard.
It’s like being able to go to a really good convention party without leaving my apartment.
Amen. I love reading them, although I hardly feel worthy to participate when such luminaries of creativity as Kyra and RedWombat are stalking the threads. This is a highlight of my daily breaks to come and see the latest wonders that have been posted in the File 770 discussions.
I know I’ll regret this:
There once was an RP named VD.
His actions were all rather seedy.
His attempts to harass
Came off as too crass
He just seemed so terribly needy!
No need for the hook, I’ll throw myself out.
Forgot to check for replies.
XS:
Fragile glass bridges
Span canyon with bright colors:
Is this not sci fi?
@mcjulie
I would think that if anything is going to happen it will happen this year. Not next year when MidAmericon II has its go.
I would tend to think that it will be the Hugo ceremony will be the thing that gets disrupted. The ceremony is webcast and some fans who couldn’t make the con watch. So much higher visibility of any direct action.
It depends on the story. The Last Samurai for example, was telling a story about a real historical event that was sufficiently recent to be well recorded and because it was trying to portray itself as being that specific event, it was really fecking annoying if not downright painful to watch how it mangled what a samurai was at that time; to the point where it inverted who the “good guys” were in its story compared with reality.
And I spent long enough in a dojo to know a little bit about bushido and what I knew and what was in A Single Samurai are just not the same thing at all.
But I can forgive all of that because dammit guys, Kaiju. Historical accuracy goes out the window as a metric when you have a mountain stand up and wander off towards Tokyo to punch Godzilla in the fork, you know? You just kindof have to accept that at the door (think Pacific Rim not Schindler’s List).
The problem is that even when you accept that that’s the arena this story is to be judged in, and just accept that it’s not about real samurai any more than Frank Millar’s 300 was about the real battle at Thermopylae or the real Spartans; well, it’s still really bad and in need of a better editor/critical first reader.
@ Tenar Darell
I did consider the tweet a bit ambiguous–which side is the tweeter saying shouldn’t bring up McCarthy?
But in either case, my comment works. It would be silly for the Puppies to bring up McCarthy; no witch hunt against Puppies is actually contemplated. OTOH, many Puppy leaders are acting a great deal *like* McCarthy in claiming that Reds are controlling, for example, SFWA, or publishing, especially in their tendency to claim they have proof without showing any. So it’s perfectly reasonable for nonPuppies to make the comparison.
Regarding Puppies at MidAmeriCon: Core Baen fandom, from which SP originated, seems to be regional, and Kansas City is much closer to them than Spokane. There is genuine chatter on the fannish airwaves about an appearance en masse, possibly with a “Barfly Central”– a kind of alternate con suite that they run at Dragon*Con every year.
(There is also a claim that Barfly Central would show up the con suite by having better food, because con suite food always sucks. I presume they don’t know that the bid was all about how Worldcon needs to come to Kansas City to enjoy its awesome barbecue. Of all the years to challenge the con suite to a cuisine duel, I would not pick 2016.)
Early in the SP3 process, Brad Torgersen also talked about going to the 2016 Business Meeting to argue for a video game Hugo. It sounded like it was going to be a good-faith effort, but this was when SP3 sounded like it wasn’t going to be a slate.
Do Tweets embed here in comments? Actual dogs are getting involved now…
https://twitter.com/Bella_green3/status/615954809946910720
UPDATE: And no, no they don’t. How about with the embed code?
One more because I always forget to tick the email box.
Okay, that’s fair.
I guess I’m transferring my own fears and inability to say anything brief, ever, without qualification or editing to how Twitter actually works best as a platform. I’d continually be posting screenshots of essays rather than short declarative sentences because that’s how I write. And there would be lots of /pedants, /sarcasm or even emoticons just because….
Shorter: Twitter is not for me. But I do admire other people’s Tweets.
@Brian Z:
I can probably tell you better once you eliminate the vague pronoun reference. 🙂
What is “that” in your question?
I fear that Puppidum would not approve of Edmund Hamilton’s ‘A Conquest of Two Worlds’, published in 1932 in ‘Wonder Stories’.
After all, questioning ‘Manifest Destiny’ and colonialism could only arise in the last couple of decades, right? So an author writing back then in a disapproving manner of human beings committing genocide, in taking planets from sentient life forms in order to provide earth with resources it wants, couldn’t possibly have existed and must be something made up by SJWs, right?
Well, wrong actually; Hamilton seems to have nailed it. It’s not a fun read, but it is gripping and compelling, and knocks the socks off the garbage offered by puppydum for the 2015 ballot. So, the next time someone claims to want good old fashioned SF I shall refer them to this particular piece of good old fashioned SF, but I am confident that they won’t actually want it when they get it…
Does anyone know if MidAmeriCon II has said if they’ll be doing the 1941 retro Hugos?
Any chance of these puppy stories being on FaceBark?
@Jim Is “that” (“What is “that” in your question?”) a real question? I think I’m having trouble catching your nuance now.
@Will: Yes. I have no idea what “that” refers to.
@Jim. Ah. I read it thus: Brian had just been talking about being confused by McCulley’s statement, which you then called “perfectly clear.” So I took “that” to mean “McCulley’s tweet.”
Some weeks back several of us contributed to (IIRC) “For sale. One Hugo slate. Partially read.”
*googles* Huh, I’m one of the 10,000 today. But then, haiku is one of the many words that have been mugged, Nicoll-style; an English 5-7-5 poem almost never has anything to do with nature, which I already knew was part of a Japanese haiku.
I tweeted some of my Hugo reactions; mostly just notes to myself like “you’ve read Championship B’Tok. Really. You just keep forgetting it.” That one’s useful, because I’ve already forgotten it again, and that’s a very sad thing to say about a Hugo nom.
I assumed that was why next year was being singled out for worry — that more of the slate crowd was planning to go. But if all they do is things like “run a fan lounge” or “suggest a new Hugo category” then that shouldn’t be a problem.
Part of why I’m not worried is that I feel like the slate crowd is mostly either people who are, deep down, actually fans of SF&F, or people who are fans of making trouble on the Internet. I don’t think the first group is likely to make trouble at a real life convention, and I don’t think the second group is likely to go to the expense and bother of attending a Worldcon.
That doesn’t mean there isn’t the potential for a panel or two to get pretty heated, but that happens anyway.
Thoroughly enjoying the haikus, limericks, and in depth discussion of what “that” meant. The Gift of the Rage-I had me laughing enough to wake the dogs.
Speaking of dogs, Lis—squeeee! To a year old shihtzu! We had 2 rescued shihtzus who lived long and happy lives with us but have passed on. I’m fond of our current 2 (pit mix and chi-min-pin) but I sure miss those shihtzus. Will have more one day…
@cmm Coming tomorrow: What “is” is.
yes, the “tweet,” as identified by “140 characters”
And also identified by “I try not to use the twitphone myself”
@Peace….
Gustaf looked at the massive creature that was trudging its vast muitilegged way towards the gates of Vatican City. Since the beginning of Armageddon the Holy See had been attached by both flying demons and satans footsoldiers – the Christ Hating Crusaders for Sodomy. But this was the greatest threat yet.
He drew his pontifical swiss guard knife – never dishonoured since the day in 1512 when Pope Julius II had dubbed them “Defender’s of the Churches Freedom”. He knew what a Pontifical Swiss Guard must do…..