Aka Mansfield Puppy Park
The wisdom of crowds is supplied by Ruth Davies, Adam-Troy Castro, Nancy Lebovitz, Gabriel McKee, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Lyda Morehouse, L. Jagi Lamplighter Wright, Alexandra Erin, Vox Day, JDZ, Lis Carey, Joe Sherry, Lisa J. Goldstein, Rebekah Golden, Joseph Brassey, John Scalzi, Katya Czaja, plus less identifiable others. (Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editors of the day rcade and Kary English.)
Ruth Davies on The Hippo Collective
“Taking a Literary Step Backwards: the Hugo Awards 2015” – May 24
This scandal is clearly worrying; such regressive views placed upon particular literary genres, such as science fiction and fantasy, must have implications for other genres, and the larger literary field. Literature is key in its power to evolve and combat the oppression of minority groups, by allowing a voice and platform (although being well heard often unfortunately relies on getting ‘discovered’ and subsequently published). Right-wing action is also more concerning when involved with such canonising activity as literary awards. Awards often help shape the (Western) literary canon, which contains a lot of the West’s most famous and widely read literature. Therefore right-wing attitudes, such as those of the ‘Sad Puppies’ and ‘Rabid Puppies’, merely blocks diversification of the canon – discouraging the cultural change that the West still desperately needs.
However, the question still remains: how do we overcome such regressive strategies in literature? The democratic fan vote should appear the fairest and least problematic strategy, yet as seen, it has its fundamental drawbacks.
Font Folly
“Tom Puppy and the Visitor from Planet Clueless” – May 27
A Sad Puppy/Rabid Puppy supporter posted an op-ed on the men’s rights site Return of the Kings (he links to and heavily paraphrases one of the Sad Puppy podcasts), “How Female-Dominated Publishing Houses Are Censoring Male Authors” that is a great example of several of the issues that I believe underpin the Sad Puppy position. Never mind that the statistics show that men make up more than 65% of the annual publishing lists of most of the publishing houses, and male-authored books comprise more the 80% of books reviewed in the major publications, this guy is here to tell us that men are being censored!
Adam Troy-Castro on Facebook – May 27
(Sigh) No, I am not saying, nor am I ever going to say, that the organizers of the Sad Puppy nonsense need to be “boycotted” for what they have done and said, and I am most certainly not saying that the writers they advocated for need to be boycotted for the actions of those who supported them.
This is after all me, the guy who has made such a regular habit of arguing for separating the art from the artist, most of the time in more extreme circumstances. If I can distinguish between Bill Cosby and “Bill Cosby,” if I can praise the occasional film by Roman Polanski, if I can struggle in vain to discuss the filmic achievements of Woody Allen without being slammed by the same stuff that artistic discussions of Woody Allen are always slammed with, if I can further regularly wax enthusiastic about work by writers like Stephen Hunter and Dan Simmons who exist so far from me on the political spectrum that we are almost on separate rainbows, then why the hell would I tell anybody to boycott the work of {Gay-Basher McManly-Nuts}, to name one, just because I think it’s fun to summarize his persona as {Gay-Basher McManly-Nuts}? Ditto with {Hurt-Feelings Harry}, {Steely-Eyed Rage-Monster}, Beale The Galactic Zero, and the rest of that crew. I mock them with abandon, but want *none* of them subjected to organized boycott of any kind.
I have said nothing advocating otherwise, and anybody who represents me as having said anything of the kind is, in precise measurement, a goddamned liar.
Nancy Lebovitz in a comment on Making Light – May 27
At Balticon, someone asked Jo Walton about the Hugos at her GoH speech, and she said that ideally, the Hugos are a gesture of love and respect, and campaigning for the Hugos is like persistently asking your partner whether they love you. It just isn’t the same.
Doctor Science on Obsidian Wings
“Problems with the Hugo Nominations for Pro and Fan Artist” – May 28
[Doctor Science vetted the sample art in the Hugo Voters Packet and says she discovered most of the material from Nick Greenwood and Steve Stiles came from another eligibility year, and that among all artists she traced 14 items to periods before 2014.]
I’ll stop here for the moment, and go on later to talk about things like: how I’m going to vote, what I think the problems with the categories are, and start some ideas about how to fix them.
For a start, though, I urge my fellow voters to click around the 2014 Pro and 2014 Fan collections at Hugo Eligible Art, to get a sense of what your baseline should be for comparison.
Gabriel McKee on SF Gospel
“The Way the Future Never Was” – May 27
For a lot of us, SF’s ability to deal with current problems in metaphorical terms is the whole point. It’s why we got interested in the genre, and why we’ve stuck with it—because there will always be new quesitons, and new angles on them. Does Brad Torgersen really want SF to be a genre about space ships and ray guns with no resonance with current society? Does he really want SF authors to abandon the time-honored tradition of exploring social issues with SFnal metaphor? That sounds to me like an SF that’s afraid of the future.
Gabriel McKee on SF Gospel
“The Way the Future Never Was: A Visual Appendix” – May 27
To get a better idea of Brad Torgersen’s problem with today’s science fiction, let’s take a look at some good, old-fashioned, reliably-packaged SF….
Hey, this one looks fun. It’s got space ships and all kinds of stuff. Wait, what? It’s about the evils of capitalism? Bait and switch!
https://twitter.com/pnh/status/603691400895582209
Lyda Morehouse on Bitter Empire
“Real Talk About John Scalzi, Vox Day, And That Big Big Book Deal” – May 27
Vox Day (Theodore Beale), if you recall, is the mastermind behind the Rabid Puppies (the super-far right organizers of this year’s Hugo debacle.) Beale apparently also sees himself as Scalzi’s rival. Beale has all sorts of “hilarious” nicknames for Scalzi….
So, as you can imagine, Beale’s head is near ready to explode.
He starts off with a simple report of the deal, but then it takes a hard right into God knows what. Beale says that Scalzi’s deal can really only be expected because Tor, his publisher, really doesn’t have any big name authors in its stables beyond Scazli, except maybe one other, and, more importantly, “It’s not as if the award-winning Jo Walton or the award-winning Catharine (sic) Asaro or any of their other award-winning authors sell enough books to support all the SJW non-SF they keep trying to push on an unwilling public.”
What.
Whoa, ladies, that was almost a compliment there for being all award-win-y, but nope. According to Beale, the only reason Walton and Asaro write is push the SJW (Social Justice Warrior) “non-SF” on all of us non-willing readers.
JDZ on Never Yet Melted
“John Scalzi Gets $3.4 Million Publishing Deal” – May 27
Scalzi has alienated a significant portion of his readership with sanctimonious hoplophobic blog posts (example) and by lining up with the Social Justice Warriors in the fighting over the Hugo Awards. My guess is that his backlisting powers will be declining.
L. Jagi Lamplighter Wright conducts interview on Superversive SF
“Interview with Hugo Fan Writer Nominee: Dave Freer!” – May 27
7) How did you come up with the idea for your current nominated story?
Eating cheese late at night. It was that or my concern for the state of a genre I love. I happen think all nice boys and girls should love sf and fantasy (and find sf and fantasy to love). I think all nasty boys and girls should too. I am delighted if the rare, nasty, odd, and possibly puke purple creatures crawling out of the East River do too. I just find it worrying when the latter group seems to have become so dominant that the rest lose interest and go and pursue other forms of entertainment and escapism.
Alexandra Erin on Blue Author Is About To Write
“Of Dinosaurs, Legos, and Impossible Hypotheticals” – May 27
There’s another work nominated this year that has stirred similar questions in a more limited way, perhaps more limited because the Dramatic Presentation categories are seen as less serious and crucial in a literary award than the literary categories, and perhaps because as a Sad Puppy pick it is taken less seriously to begin with.
The work in question is The Lego Movie, which contains a couple of scenes near the end that make explicit the implicit framing device for a movie about Lego characters in a world made out of Lego blocks: it’s all a child, playing with toys. It is this moment, in my opinion, that elevates The Lego Movie from merely being charming and fun to actually pretty sublimely brilliant. It explained so many of the odd quirks of characterization and storytelling earlier in the film.
I mean, it changed the movie’s version of Batman from “weirdly out of character, but okay, it’s funny” to “…that’s freaking brilliant” because it wasn’t Batman as adult comic book fans understand him but Batman seen through the eyes of a child, with way more focus on the cool factor of everything and of course he has the coolest girlfriend and of course even the grimdark angst seems kind of fun…
Vox Day on Vox Popoli
“Hugo Awards 2015: Best Novella” – May27
This is how I am voting in the Best Novella 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 367 Vile Faceless Minions or anyone else.
- “One Bright Star to Guide Them”
- “Big Boys Don’t Cry”
- “The Plural of Helen of Troy”
- “Pale Realms of Shade”
- “Flow”
Lis Carey on Lis Carey’s Library
“Rat Queens, by Kurtis J. Wiebe (writer), Roc Upchurch (illustrator)” – May 27
Booze-guzzling, death-dealing, battle maidens-for-hire.
This is so not my thing. The art is excellent. The writing is quite good. There’s a plot–but here’s where I run into trouble.
Joe Sherry on Adventures In Reading
“Thoughts on the Hugo Award Nominees: Related Work” – May 27
… Letters from Gardner: Lou Antonelli’s collection is an interesting one. It’s part memoir, part short story collection, part writing advice, part I have no idea. It shows Antonelli’s development as a writer, some of the revision progress, and how influential some of those early rejections from Gardner Dozois were. It’s not necessarily my cuppa, but it’s not bad.
No Award: No Award continues to rear its ugly head. I read half of Wright’s Transhuman and Subhuman collection (approximately), and I bounced off of it. His essay on fiction writing directed at a nonfiction writing friend was fairly solid, but I had issues with the rest of what I read – mostly in that I disagree with much of what Wright has to say and his essay writing style does little to encourage me to continue reading even despite my disagreement. I can’t get into specifics here because each time I bounced off an essay, I moved onto the next. That said, he’s not wrong that Ulysses is a terrible book.
On the other hand, Wisdom from my Internet is truly a terrible book that has no place anywhere near this ballot. I can understand, more or less, why people may have enjoyed / appreciated Wright’s collection. I’m not his audience, but many people likely are. Michael Williamson’s collection of non-sequiturs and jokes is sort of organized by topic, but most are not at all entertaining and what, exactly it has to do with the field of science fiction and / or fantasy is completely beyond me. But it isn’t so much the lack of relation to SFF that gets me, it’s how bad the jokes are and how disinteresting the whole thing is. I may not think that Wright’s collection is worthy of an Award, but I don’t think Williamson’s should have been considered for nomination. I may never understand how or why it was….
Adult Onset Atheist
“There can be only one SNARL” – May 27
Where did such a foolish name as “Sad Puppies” come from? Larry apparently likes cutesy names; he was co-founder of a gunshop he named “Fuzzy Bunny Movie Guns”. The gunshop went under, but the enduring flikr record of it shows racks of plastic-furnitured AK-47s, and glass cases with handguns lovingly laid out for display. “Sad Puppies” is a name derived from the kind of immature humor that wants to be irony when it grows up.
The idea for “Sad Puppies” pre-dates the Hugo kerfluffle. On Larry’s blog one of the first posts he tagged with “Sad Puppies” is a reactionary commentary-style rebuttal to a September 2009 POTUS speech to a joint session of congress, and the next is a similar reactionary commentary to the 2010 SOTU. So “Sad Puppies” in Larry’s mind is political in the strictest sense of the word. Yet somehow everyone else is really political people –whether they say so or not- and poor Larry is just trying to give his embattled writers the only chances available because he perceives them as having been shut out. And the only way to get “his” writers a fair shake is to shut out any competing works that might try to leverage some unfair literati elitist advantage by not being crappy.
The reason the Sad puppies can pee all over the Hugo process is because of complacency in fandom. When I talk about complacency I am mostly talking about myself. I ask myself “How can you make good nominations when you haven’t read more than a dozen SF novellas this year?” The nice voters packet provides a guided reading list; the trufans have done the heavy lifting. So far this year there are over 9,000 voting members of worldcon, and membership is open for a few more days. For $40 you can get a vote and a nice electronic voting packet; unfortunately many of the stories in it are crap. Some of the Hugo nominations this year received less than 30 votes. There needs to be some way of bridging the complacency gap so the large numbers of fans who care enough to vote for a Hugo are presented with a couple choices worth voting for. Perhaps that means I need to get off my rear and wade through the vast number of published SF/F stories to make recommendations and vote during the nomination process instead of waiting until after the nominations list is published.
Lisa J. Goldstein on theinferior4
“Let Me Explain… No, There Is Too Much. Let Me Sum Up.” – May 27
One of my questions when I started was why the Puppies chose these specific stories. And after all that reading, I have to say that I still don’t know, and the statements of the Puppies themselves don’t really help. Larry Correia wanted to nominate stories that would “make literati heads explode,” stories with right-wing themes that would anger SJWs (Super-Judgmental Werewolves?) when they appeared on the ballot. But we’re very used to narratives of straight white men doing straight white manly things, and even seeing those stories nominated for Hugos. It’s all just business as usual. I don’t know about other people’s crania, but my head stayed firmly on my shoulders while I was reading — though it did slip toward the desk a few times, my eyes closing, thinking, Ho hum, another one …
Correia also rejected “boring message fiction” — but then how to explain John C. Wright’s Catholic apologia, or Tom Kratman’s push for more and more weaponry? And his final explanation was that people were mean to him at a convention. Okay, but why these stories? Was putting us through all of this his idea of revenge?
Rebekah Golden
“2015 Hugo Awards Best Short Story: Reviewing J C Wright” – May 26
This is a parable told in the style of Kipling or of old Buddhist tales. It takes a mythology well known to the author and extends it into a second mirroring mythology like Zeno’s Paradox applied to christianity. It was clever and written well, if in a pre-Hemingway style, but overall not a story for me.
Rebekah Golden
“2015 Hugo Awards Best Fan Artist: Reviewing N Aalto” – May 27
Ninni had two pieces included in the Hugo Voters packet. Both were very well drawn and nicely colored. Based on her online portfolio I like her style and find her work pleasing to the eye. I suspect there are some in jokes I don’t get but that’s the nature of being the best fan at something. In short, nicely done.
Katya Czaja
“Hugo Award: Professional Artist” – May 27
Ranking Julie Dillon stood out as the clear winner in this category.
1) Julie Dillon
2) Nick Greenwood
3) Allan Pollack
4) No Award
5) Carter Reid
6) Kirk DouPonce
Things to do at Worldcon: Crash Hugo Awards on a unicycle. Wearing a chicken hat. #worldcon #conlife #fantasy #scifi
— Joseph Brassey is writing (@JosephBrassey) May 28, 2015
https://twitter.com/KosmoATD/status/603582414846300160
Lovely cabal meeting tonight; planned the future of science fiction through 2023. So that's nice.
— John Scalzi (@scalzi) May 28, 2015
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On the off-chance that this won’t get spam-flagged by the plugin and that I can make the link, here’s a link to the Kindle Sale page in question: Marko Kloos Kindle Sale
Strays/starts
Second much/must.
Thenkyew autocorrect.
Snow plus tavern equals fantasy.
I think I may have misplaced my ability to even, and it’s distinctly possible that I forgot the definition of sexual intercourse along the way. Perhaps an appeal to a supreme being would be a helpful course of action.
snowcrash:
Make that PayPal for 1 gallon brain bleach and TWO keyboards.
Kate Paulk re. Ancillary Justice: “The initial worldbuilding signals were all fantasy-adventure, so the sudden inclusion of classic space opera elements threw me – and this in the first few pages. “
I don’t know where to start I can’t even – what?
Doctor Science: “omg, I figured out why Kate P. was confused by AJ:”
“By ‘the signalling’ she means that the opening scene, because it has *snow* and a *tavern*, signaled to her that this was ‘fantasy-adventure’. Which never takes place with spaceships.”
JJ: . . .
JJ: . . .
I swear to the gods, the Puppies just keep writing these jokes for us themselves.
“This was the icy back end of a cold and isolated planet, as far from Radchaai ideas of civilization as it was possible to be.”
This is from paragraph 2 of Ancillary Justice.
@rob_matic: “I don’t know where to start I can’t even – what?”
That’s what I said!
Seriously, it’s like book blurbs don’t even exist to Puppies, and Heaven help you if you try mixing genres. I mean, that way leads to having space colonists alongside dragons, and we all know that kind of thread would be the dawn of a dark age indeed. Someone capable of that might do something bizarre with singing miners or the like, a black possibility best forgotten…
I wasn’t a person, I was a piece of equipment, a part of the ship.
Hmm… I wonder what the writer is signalling here on page 2?
@ Rev. Bob on May 28, 2015 at 12:52 am
If you’re not writing in strict cliché, you’re doing it wrong.
@ Rev. Bob on May 28, 2015 at 12:52 am
Careful, I think Anne McCaffrey is a bit too radical and avant-garde for the Puppies.
Rev Bob:
I’ve been having fun using Anne McCaffrey rereads inbetween Puppy ones as a palate cleanser. 🙂 I wonder how they cope with the early Pern books? Ancillary Justice is much more unsubtle about its science fiction than they.
The opening chapter of ANCILLARY JUSTICE, by the way, mentions that it’s minus fifteen degrees Celsius in the second sentence, establishes that the setting is an isolated planet and the Breq is from off-world in the second paragraph, and has Breq buying a hypothermia kit in the eighth paragraph. But hey, snow and a tavern!
Using the hypothermia kit involves sentences like “Once the indicator on the card turned green I unfolded the thin wrap, made sure of the charge, wound it around her, and switched it on.” And the town is made of grey-green cubes of prefab plastic.
All of this, and more, is in chapter one. By the first sentence of chapter two we’re talking about how the lead used to be a troop carrier orbiting the planet Shis’urna. Hey check that out, an apostrophe in the middle of a name, that’s gotta be Elvish or something, right?
Snow, taverns, Elvish stuff. It’ll be just like GAME OF THRONES, right?
Sad Puppies 4 promises to be quite the slate…
Rev. Bob: Seriously, it’s like book blurbs don’t even exist to Puppies, and Heaven help you if you try mixing genres. I mean, that way leads to having space colonists alongside dragons, and we all know that kind of thread would be the dawn of a dark age indeed
I still remember the first time I read the PERN books, lo, these many years ago. And I got to the part where where the records mentioned “agenothree”, and I went, “OHHHH!”
It is a sad, sad thing that we can never read books for the first time over again.
Brian Z has earned another day of life.
I wanna see him dance in a harem girl outfit first before we can make that judgement.
@rob_matic, Meredith:
Glad to see those references got through okay. 🙂
I’ve got a ton of stuff on my plate, but I’m sorely tempted to reread the Crystal Singer books soon. I may even have to bump them up to my Contact Poison shelf. That’s my own coinage for frequent reread books; if I don’t dare look at a book’s spine, let alone touch the cover, for fear of getting sucked into a reread, I chalk it up to contact poison mixed into the ink on the spine. Spider Robinson’s “Callahan” books, Robert Asprin’s “Myth” and “Phule” books, most of Heinlein’s stuff, Arthur C. Clarke’s short stories, and Stephen King’s It have places of high honor on that shelf…
Nick Mamatas: Brian Z has earned another day of life.
CPaca: I wanna see him dance in a harem girl outfit first before we can make that judgement.
Personally, I think anyone who quotes Joyce should be summarily taken out back and shot.
On the earlier thread, Troutwaxer wrote:
As usual, I’m bewildered by the things people say about “Dinosaur.” There is a single sentence – just one – in which “Dinosaur” has any political content at all (a sentence referring to a beating as being motivated by bigotry). That is it.
So am I to take it that if there’s a single sentence referring to a crime being motivated by bigotry, that makes a story “too liberal”?
JJ: Personally, I think anyone who quotes Joyce should be summarily taken out back and shot.
Really?
So, JJ, what are the elementary particles that combine to form hadrons?
CPaca: what are the elementary particles that combine to form hadrons?
I’m sorry, I’m sure I’m missing a pun here, unless you’re making an obscure reference to the bar on DS9 — in which case, I’m still missing it. 🙁
BrianZ, that was a work of brilliance. I agree with those who want to see all your filks collected in one place so they can be easily nominated next year. 🙂
@JJ:
Actually, I was never that into Pern. I read the first two books, then got a few pages into The White Dragon and… stopped. I’m generally aware of the rest of the series, but Killashandra (ahem) resonated a lot more with me.
Back onto more relevant topics, I may have to nominate Bradley W. Schenck in one of the artist or Graphic Story categories this year. I’ve loved his work for years – even got him to customize a pair of T-shirts when a friend of mine got married – and I don’t think even the Puppies could object to his work. I mean, it’s explicitly retro-futuristic; a Google search for Retropolis should pop him right up. Lots of jet packs, ray guns, rocket cars, and mad science. I know he sells merchandise and prints, but he’s done some cover art for other people and illustrated his own stories.
JJ – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quark#Etymology
CPaca:
Yay! You have just made me one of today’s 10,000!
As you might suspect, after a brief, disastrous flirtation with Ulysses, poor Mr. Finnegan never got a look in.
Begin again!
@Barry:
Well, that’s a little simplistic.
The entire story is, after all, meditating on a hate crime.
It’s doing so in an unusual voice and taking a very unusual stance. The voice and stance are, IMHO, interesting and very well-done. But the actual content — what’s being said by the voice, what’s being portrayed by the stance — is “hate crimes are really awful; they cause so much suffering and prey on the weak.” That is the core message; to some extent, it’s the “punchline.” So it’s not “one single sentence”; it’s what the entire story is all about.
Now, you can ask questions. You can ask “Why should the portrayal of one hate crime be indicative of any larger political point?”, or “Why should we care about the message of the story if what interests us is the voice and viewpoint?” But to be honest, I think those are disingenuous questions as well (sorry if I’m strawmanning here) — any focus is presumed to imply importance and relevance, and the central message of a piece is always fair game for consideration and criticism.
My point is, “Dinosaur” is an anti-hate-crime, anti-bigotry story. And anybody writing a story against hate crimes and bigotry – particularly one whose focus and message are so strong — is clearly implying that those things are current, real-world problems that need attention and redress.
Those who feel that “hate crimes” and “bigotry” have become mostly buzzwords bandied about by internet activists and Social Justice Warriors, react to such a story by saying something on the lines of “Ugggh, just stop whining about this subject already.” (To be honest, in general readers who feel like the message is unsubtle and uninteresting may share this reaction.)
You’d probably have a similar reaction if you read a story devoted to a message you disagreed with. I dunno – imagine somebody wrote “If I Had A Time-Machine, Dear Publisher,” about how he’d create an infinite stable of 1950’s SF/F writers to replace all the whiny crud being written nowadays. The twist may be novel, the voice may be good, but if the entire thrust is an argument you see as whiny, you probably won’t enjoy it.
Standback You’d probably have a similar reaction if you read a story devoted to a message you disagreed with.
Yeah but the section of the population willing to say they disagree with the notion that physically attacking people because of their gender/sexuality/ethnicity is very small. The Sad Puppies at least claim quite vehemently that they really aren’t that sort of people.
As messages go ‘don’t beat people up just because you don’t like who they are’ isn’t a left wing one
@ http://www.thehippocollective.com/2015/05/24/taking-a-literary-step-backwards-the-hugo-awards-2015/
So, in other words, Ruth Davies wishes that the author’s face was used to determine who gets the Hugo award, and that the literary field itself was to be used to push a specific political agenda.
I have to disagree, I believe in the freedom of expression even when the output does not please my own ears. And I want to read works that are little more than just political manifestos.
Three quarks for Noah Ward!
Strange pups’ charm is much abhorred
Are we sure the spin hasn’t gone overboard?
JDZ’s use of the extraordinarily peculiar word “hoplophobic” caught my eye. So I looked it up.
Looks like it’s a dog whistle word, a neologism coined by gun rights activists to label gun control advocates, as if they were motivated by fear.
I haven’t yet seen anyone outside of that subculture use the word.
“Ruth Davies wishes that the author’s face was used to determine who gets the Hugo award”
There is literally nothing in that linked article saying *anything* about anyone’s appearance. This is as dishonest as me saying your comment suggests Theodore Beale has herpes.
“the literary field itself was to be used to push a specific political agenda.”
What she *actually says is
How you get ‘political agenda’ from ” Literature is key in its power to evolve and combat the oppression of minority groups, by allowing a voice and platform (although being well heard often unfortunately relies on getting ‘discovered’ and subsequently published)” bewilders me….
oh wait, you’re one of the canines, aren’t you?
You probably wake up in the morning and go, “Wow the moon is bright this morning!” Or think rain is a leftwing conspiracy to ruin your day.
Tuomas Vainio: “So, in other words, Ruth Davies wishes that the author’s face was used to determine who gets the Hugo award, and that the literary field itself was to be used to push a specific political agenda.”
Seriously, dude. Hook yourself up with some Remedial Reading lessons. Because your English Reading Comprehension is a value only slightly above zero.
Here. FTFY. You’re welcome.
Ann, Tuomas is our resident non-SFF fan GamerGator.
It sounds like the visual equivalent of Puppy tastes would be Thomas Kinkade paintings.
Tuomas Vainio writes:
And I want to read works that are little more than just political manifestos.
Which recently nominated works do you consider political manifestos? As Nyq says, I suppose “beating people up is bad” is such an uncontroversial statement that hardly anyone would regard it as political. “Real men want to hit gay people with axe handles” on the other hand…
” as if they were motivated by fear”
Why is it a phobia to be afraid of uncontrolled guns and owners? That’s the mark of a rational person.
I didn’t bother looking it up. I thought it meant being afraid of hoplites. Which I suppose is also rational when you think about it.
“Tuomas is our resident non-SFF fan GamerGator”
A distinction without a difference, as far as I can tell from the contribution from many of the puppies in this forum.
NickPheas: “Which recently nominated works do you consider political manifestos?”
A majority of this years Related Work and Fan Writer nominees caome to mind. But somehow I suspect that Tuomas will flounce before discussing them….
Oh, me too. That’s why I looked it up. I thought it might be some clever classical Greek military-soldier reference.
No such luck.
@Nyq:
Yes, but.
There’s an implied accusation here.
A story about a dogmatic preacher whipping up a frenzied mob may have the message “don’t form a frenzied mob,” but often such as story can be read as being anti-religion.
A story about a terminally naive activist who buddies up with enemy forces, betrays his people, and in consequence The Good Guys lose and everything is horrible might have the message “don’t be an idiot,” but you’d be reasonable in reading it as anti-peace-activism.
A story about a hero rescuing a damsel in distress may have the message “here’s an awesome adventure,” but it very often it can be read as implying that women are weak and need to be rescued.
And so on.
It’s story logic. There’s a constant assertion that “this is the way people work, this is the way the world is” which the reader can accept or reject. It’s very hard to stay away from generalizing, even if that’s not your intention.
So the message goes beyond “don’t beat people up.” It’s closer to “racist and homophobic violence is a real and constant threat which anybody who isn’t cis, straight and white needs to fear, and is effectively helpless against.”
Which, I mean, isn’t exclusively left wing, but it’s no surprise that it isn’t taken kindly by some individuals on the right wing, right?
Can’t speak for anyone else, but I’d admit someone who’s put their novel Heart of Ceres up on Amazon into the science fiction clubhouse.
Aw geez, all this message fiction. I mean Raiders of the Last Arc was alright but it had such a heavy political message (Nazis are psycho crazy arseholes) – I mean it is bound to put some people off. Oh that and The Blues Brothers. It’s political correctness gone mad*
[*I really feel I shouldn’t have to say that this is sarcasm but I feel I may need to]
Glad I wasn’t the only one who had to look up hoplophobia.
So where’s a word for “rational contempt for gun fetishization”?
I seriously doubt those restaurant goers that left the buildings were being irrationally fearful when the Open Carry demonstrators packing automatic weapons trotted in.
http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-things-to-know-about-armed-men-in-your-local-chipotle/
Great moments in this roundup:
Gabriel McKee: The punchline of the cover of “Space Merchants”, with its rocketship. I, erm, barked with laughter.
Lyda Morehouse: “He starts off with a simple report of the deal, but then it takes a hard right into God knows what.”
Lisa J. Goldstein: “One of my questions when I started was why the Puppies chose these specific stories.” The only theory I can see which fits all the facts is “on personal political grounds”.
(SF novels of every stripe seem to have a spaceship on the cover, of varying relevance to the content. Or occasionally the cover art shows a futuristic city, or a conventionally attractive woman. Sometimes a mixture of these, such as a spaceship flying over a futuristic city, observed by a conventionally attractive woman.)
Oh, and gun control does not have to be motivated by fear. It can be motivated by logic, or professsional experience, or a rational response to hard numbers of gathered gun death data, or by a fierce devotion to the sanctity of life, or by a rage at the death of innocents, or a myriad of other good reasons.
A hoplophobe is someone with an irrational fear of kangaroos.
On judging a book by its opening: It’s done by the best. In “To Read The Dispossessed” (in The Jewel-Hinged Jaw), Samuel Delaney looks at the opening paragraph and finds it clunky:
He thinks the paragraph should be:
(And that the stuff he cut is “the 1975 equivalent of Van Vogtian babble.”)
I disagree with Delaney on The Dispossed about as strongly as I disagree with Kate Paulk on Ancillary Sword; but Delany at least backs up his judgment. (With three pages of analysis. O the irony! But three interesting pages.)
Brian Z: Is it our TV though? I think he mentioned way back when that it was not an incommon name where he was.
Kate, no, that’s a hopophobe 🙂
Amazingly Google gives me 241 hits for “irrational fear of kangaroos”. [It’s not actually irrational to be afraid of them, imo. They’re mean little buggers.]
Yeah, I figured Hoplophobic to mean something along the lines of fear of an armed public. Which makes sense. There are few people around here I’d trust with anything more dangerous than safety scissors.
Thank god I live in the UK where there are actual laws and regulations around gun ownership.