Featured in today’s roundup are David Gerrold, Vox Day, Jim Wright (no relation to John C.), Jason Cordova and Jason Sanford, Amanda Green and Edward Green, Mick and Mackintosh, Alexandra Erin, Philip Sandifer, plus all the other woofers and tweeters.
Eric James Stone
“Ruminations on Nominations” – April 20
- Voting: Various people have suggested voting “No Award” above any of the Puppy nominees regardless of the merits of any particular nominee, as a way of protesting the use of bloc voting for nominations. I think that’s an understandable reaction, and it’s not against the rules, so I do think that’s a valid strategy. But I think it’s unseemly; not as unseemly as bloc voting, but still unseemly. I don’t think it’s right to punish all the nominees on the Sad Puppies slate because they swept most of the available spot on the ballot, because I doubt any of them had any idea that was going to happen. This whole Sad Puppies seems to have grown out of what happened a few years ago when some people in the WorldCon community deliberately snubbed Larry Correia because of his politics and religion. Larry decided to push back, and received pushback on his pushback, and things escalated from there. It’s time to stop the escalation. I think George R.R. Martin, John Scalzi, and many others have the right idea: check out the individual nominees, and vote based on whether you consider them worthy or not. If that means “No Award” in some categories, so be it, but I think you should at least give the nominees a fair look.
- Self-Correction: Given the reaction this year, I think it’s fair to say people should be on notice about what it means to be on a slate, and a blanket No Award strategy for any nominees who are willing participants in a slate next year would be appropriate. Also, people will be alert to warn others who might have missed this year’s controversy as to what being on a slate means. With regard to the Sad Puppies campaign, I hope that if they do decide to continue with Sad Puppies 4, it is with a recommendation list far broader than a slate of nominees. Hopefully, next year slates will not be a problem, and so amending the rules (which takes two years) will turn out to be unnecessary.
Vox Day on Vox Popoli
“There is a theme” – April 21
This is an interesting exercise in rhetoric. Mr. Gerrold clearly wants us to be very impressed by his feelbads, and thereby convinced of the pure and utter evil of those who would cause such feelbads.
With all due respect, Mr. Gerrold, you’re not exactly convincing anyone. We’ve read STARTREKSHIRTS. We’ve read “If a Dinosaur Had a Cookie, My Love”. We’ve read “I am Chinese and I am Gay”. We’ve read LOOK MA, I CAN DO WHAT DAVID SILVERBERG DID NEARLY 30 YEARS AGO. The only soaring that is taking place here is the Muse of Science Fiction leaping out the window in protest. More interesting is Mr. Gerrold’s threats of unpersoning and banishment from that fine community of SF fandom, which of course proves exactly what we’ve been saying from the start.
Edward L. Green on Facebook – April 21
And when the SP/RPs do the same next year? Declare the war is over, and the Hugo is done. Business meeting votes to retire the award and box the rocket.
And when we bury it, we tell the world that Vox Day, Larry Correia and Brad R. Torgersen killed it.
Every time the Hugos are mentioned in the future, we say that same thing.
Vox Day, Larry Correia and Brad R. Torgersen killed it.
Now, I admit, at least one of those people seem to not care in the slightest that will happen.
But I suspect Correia and Torgersen might care. Or not. Hell, maybe they want their one lasting literary accomplishments to be to destroy a prestigious award like the Hugo.
Wouldn’t that look kinda neat of the cover of a novel?
“From The Author Who Helped Killed The Hugo.”
Now some might say ‘Those guys weren’t part of the RP Slate. They may have hung around them, and maybe spoke with them, but they weren’t part of it.” Correia and Torgesen are trying to distance themselves in a not distancing kind of way from this madness.
Amused how the Sad Puppies can say I'm a "rich, powerful" writer AND also maintain I don't actually sell books. MAKE UP YOUR MINDS, PUPPIES
— John Scalzi (@scalzi) April 21, 2015
Jim Wright (of Stonekettle Station) on Facebook – April 21
Some day, I hope to be on that stage receiving my own shiny rocketship, should that particular fantasy ever come to pass I’d like to think it was because I earned it on the strength of my ability and not because a bunch of you people stacked the ballot box for political reasons.
As to the Con itself, I don’t care about controversies. I. Don’t. Care. We’re gonna have fun. Repeat, we’re gonna have fun, huge goddamned fun, with a lot of really, really amazing and fun and talented people. If you’re determined to be miserable, don’t come. Please.
And on that note: for minions who plan on being at SASQUAN, I’ll be happy to meet up and share a drink and a story or two – especially if you’re buying.
Look for me, I’ll be the guy in the hat.
Alexandra Erin on Storify
“Gamergate, Sad Puppies and the default narrative” – April 19
Alexandra Erin discusses how both GG and the Sad Puppies are both operating under the fallacy that the narrative that most closely aligns with their own world view and politics is the one “without politics”
But these guys, despite their heavily ideologically, message-centered, politicized writings, see themselves as basically neutral.
— Alexandra Erin | patreon.com/AlexandraErin (@AlexandraErin) April 19, 2015
Philip Sandifer
“Guided By The Beauty of Their Weapons: An Analysis of Theodore Beale and His Supporters” – April 21
All of these tropes are, of course, immediately visible in the Sad/Rabid Puppy narrative of the Hugos. Torgersen’s paean to the olden days of science fiction is straightforwardly the golden age myth. The claim that a leftist cabal of SJWs, the details of which are, as is always the case with these things, fuzzy, but which at the very least clearly includes John Scalzi, Teresa and Patrick Nielsen Hayden, and the publishing house Tor have since taken control of the Hugos is a classic stab-in-the-back myth. And the Puppy slates feature heroic men (Torgersen and Beale) who speak truth to power and call excitedly for the people to rise up and show their freedom by voting in complete lockstep with them. It’s a classically fascist myth, just like Gamergate (gaming used to be great, then the feminist SJWs took over the gaming press, and now Gamergate will liberate it) or Men’s Rights Activists (of which Beale is one).
I haven't paid much attention to Sad or Rabid Puppies, since attention is what they want, and my mindspace is limited.
— Joe Hill (@joe_hill) April 21, 2015
Steph Rodriguez in San Francisco Book Review
“War of the Worlds: Slate Voting Games” – April 21
“In science fiction, you cannot be an out-of-the- closet conservative without people sticking their nose in the air,” said Torgersen in a telephone interview from his home in Utah. “Science fiction is almost overwhelmingly, very progressive, very liberal, and there’s a monoculture that is formed, and, if you’re not part of it, you’re on the outs.”
…For science fiction author and Hugo Award winner Kameron Hurley, she noticed a definite shift in the science fiction community over the last five years, in terms of hosting a more diverse group of authors, whether it be male to female ratios, or even a more culturally varied lineup.
“Science fiction award ballots in 2009 through last year became more diverse and as it got more diverse, it started to frighten people, and they didn’t want their own slice of pie to get eaten by everyone,” Hurley explained. “[This year], there [are] nine nominations that come from this tiny, little [publishing] house in Finland, which one of the organizers of the slate, [Theodore Beale], actually owns. So, it’s an incredibly tiny minority. It’s not even really representative of science fiction publishers, let alone the full breath of science fiction.”
David Gerrold on Facebook – April 21
Some people have posted notes that suggest they believe that the host of the Hugo Award Ceremony will use the podium as an opportunity to take revenge on the sad puppies with some scathing ridicule.
No.
Absolutely not.
The Hugo Award Ceremony is the highlight of the fannish calendar. It is the most important fan event of the year. It is not a place for petty grudges, it is not a place for divisiveness. It is a celebration of excellence. It is a celebration of our community. And most of all, it is for the nominees — it is their moment to be recognized as the best in the field. And this year, despite the slate-mongering, despite the rancor, there are still many qualified works that have fairly earned their place on the ballot.
This is my commitment. We will do nothing to spoil their evening. We will honor them, we will celebrate them. We will congratulate them if they take home a trophy, we will give them an “attaboy” even if they don’t take a trophy home.
David Gerrold on Facebook – April 21
An open letter to Brad Torgersen,
Dear Brad,
It looks to me that there is a part of this situation that you have not considered.
Regardless of how you have justified yourself, you have failed to understand several things:
The Worldcon is created fresh every year — it’s a self-assembling village. It requires the work of hundreds of fans who volunteer their time and energy to have a five day celebration of science fiction. It belongs to no one. It belongs to all of us, regardless of politics, regardless of skin color, regardless of who we love, regardless of gender. It belongs to all of us — in the traditional sense of the word “all” — with no one and nothing left out.
While you may believe your slate-mongering was a moral act, a justified act, a pushback against some kind of social justice tyranny — at least that’s how it’s been characterized by some of those who favored the slate — while you may feel that your actions are not blameworthy, you have hurt the entire community.
Mick from Mick on Everything
“Why We Need Sad Puppies” – April 20
[First-ever post on this blog.]
Query: with everything I just wrote, does it surprise anyone still reading that I didn’t know I could vote on the Hugos until Sad Puppies 2? I was shocked to learn it. No wonder the insular cliques are running the show, the rest of us don’t even know we’re supposed to be contributing to the script!
The only way to change that is to erect a big tent and get everyone in. People like the trufen who scoff at me are already there. Sad Puppies have showed the rest of us that we can join too. And as a bonus, since SP3 started, I have a list of new authors to check out so long I can’t even remember them all at once. Everybody wins!
That’s what it’s really about. I just spent 1,300+ words telling you why my fandom should count. That doesn’t invalidate anyone else’s fandom. I am still laboring to understand how “fandom” became a contest. My whole life, “fandom” has meant that I can share books, and games, and movies with people with similar interests, and they will share theirs with me, and we will both get enjoyment.
Now, “fandom” is being construed to mean the taste-makers, the CHORFs who get to tell the rest of us how awful we are for simply enjoying our entertainment. I have rarely been so enraged as when I read Making Light, or George RR Martin’s attempts to sugarcoat the groupthink, with the supposed kingmakers telling me that I don’t matter. As if my 25+ years of actually reading and supporting these genres makes me unworthy of their eminence. As if they and their ilk are better than the rest of us.
Jason Sanford
“Thank you to our genre’s many volunteers (and please don’t attack them)” – April 21
One of the most disgusting things I’ve seen since the launch of the Puppy campaigns is how people are attacking these genre volunteers. Some of these attacks are subtle, such as the Puppies saying Worldcon and the Hugo Awards don’t represent the true fans (whatever that means). But if you’re saying that, then you’re also saying everyone who volunteers to make the Worldcon and the Hugo Awards happen aren’t true SF/F fans.
Other attacks aren’t subtle, such as the attempt to create insulting names to call our genre volunteers. Or saying you’ll destroy the Hugo Awards, which amounts to an attempt to destroy the work of generations of Worldcon volunteers merely to accomplish your political goals.
I recently read a comment which sums up the pain many of these volunteers are feeling over having something they love turned into a political football. Chris Barkley, who is a long-time WorldCon volunteer and has worked on the Hugo Awards, recently wrote the following:
“As someone who has been deeply and personally involved with the Hugos Awards for the past 16 years, I find this…situation, extremely distressing. I, and many others involved with the Worldcon and the Business Meeting have worked VERY hard to make the award categories inclusive, fair, engaging and most importantly, relevant, in the 21st century. To see all of that jeopardized, by people who should know better, for all the wrong headed reasons, is something I never saw coming…”
Paul St. John Mackintosh on TeleRead
“Hugo Gernsback: The man who put the Hugo – and the bad karma – in the Hugos” – April 21
The sad Sad Puppies saga in the Hugo Awards casts an unflattering light – in fact, two lights – on the man whose name they bear: Hugo Gernsback, “who founded the pioneering science fiction magazine Amazing Stories and who is considered one of the “fathers” of the science fiction genre,” as the Hugo Awards Wikipedia page says. In fact, in 1960 he received a special Hugo Award as “The Father of Magazine Science Fiction.” And the two lights are: first, Gernsback’s personal ethics when dealing with his stable of pioneering science fiction authors, which according to quite a few sources, were shoddy. And second, the whole notion of “good old-fashioned SF and fantasy, the stuff the readers really love,” as George R.R. Martin described it, which Gernsback personified and which many Sad Puppies proponents have claimed to be defending.
Tim Hall on Trebuchet Magazine
“Watching the Hugos burn. Sci-Fi Controversy Wreaks Havoc” – April 21
[Largely repeats two of Hall’s blog posts referenced earlier, for those who’ve been tracking these roundups since the beginning.]
At this point, the Hugo Awards of 2015 look as good as dead, and everyone is now fighting over a corpse. Whether The Hugos can be salvaged in future years is another matter, and it does need a consensus on what the awards actually represent, and who they belong to. At the moment it’s degenerated into a fight to the death which will only destroy the object being fought over. Science Fiction itself is the loser.
Maybe cooler heads will prevail in 2016. A few people have tried to build bridges and find some common ground, but they’re still being drowned out by the louder and angrier voices.
There do need to be changes, and there is still the chance that some long-term good can come out of this mess.
Slate voting has demonstrated how a relatively small minority voting the same way can sweep entire categories. But it didn’t start with the Sad and Rabid Puppies. It was broken before, and it didn’t need an organised conspiracy to do it. With a small voting pool all it took was a critical mass of people with heavily-overlapping tastes to crowd everything else off the ballot. That fuelled the perceptions, true or not, that second-rate work was ending up on the ballot simply because the author was friends with the right people, and even that the whole thing was being fixed behind the scenes by an imaginary cabal.
R. C. Hipp on The Drakehall Broadsheet
“Shakespeare and that Sad Puppies Thing” – April 21
…Othello wins hands down because the titular character has a full blown panic attack. Contemplating Desdemona’s (invented) betrayal and the reparative action required of him by the demented Man Code of his time (murdering her), Othello becomes so unhinged that he babbles half-incoherently before falling “in a trance” to the stage.
Yup, that’s a panic attack.
You probably get the idea that while elves and aliens are important to me, so are more meaty and realistic things. I like to see race, gender, and religion in my speculative fiction. I like to read about mental illness (and wellness). If the characters are fighting a daemon or a mega corporation that’s all well and good. But when it becomes clear the dragon is a stand-in for something else, something I or my friends have to deal with in real life, that’s when I’m jumping up and down in my seat.
So I don’t get the Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies.
If you haven’t heard (you probably have, I’m about two weeks late to this party and in Internet Years that’s a millennia) a bunch of dimbulbs worked together to ensure that only “fun” stories were nominated for the Hugos this year. “Fun” as opposed to “niche, academic, overtly [leftist]”. Mainstream escapism for the overprivileged as opposed to anything else.
Amanda S. Green on Noctural Lives
“An update, a thought or two, and a snippet” – April 21
Frankly, I am more than disappointed with how a number of them have reacted to the current situation. Here are authors who ought to know better trying to get their peers and fans to vote No Award ahead of nominated works simply because they don’t like they think something made it onto the ballot. They don’t give a damn about the author or the work. They are making a “statement” — well, I hate to tell them this but it is a chickenshit statement and one that shows just how petty they are. I have looked at the ballot and there are works on it that I have a pretty good idea I won’t like — and yes, they come from one of the so-called slates. But I am not going to vote No Award because of the slate it was on. Nor am I going to vote No Award because I think I won’t like it. What I will do is read it, as well as the other entries. Then and only then will I cast my ballot. The only way I will vote No Award is if I think a work — after reading or watching it — is not worthy of being awarded the Hugo. Too bad others can’t do the same.
The Prussian on The Prussian
“Don’t Bring A Toothpick to a Tank Fight” – April 21
Before I go on, let me say that I don’t give a damn about literary awards. I’m a reader, not a writer, so I have no financial interest in the awards, and that is the only reason anyone should be interested in them. I’m only interested in good books – words put together on paper in a new and interesting way.
Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that getting an award is a bad thing or that they only go to crappy authors. Obviously not – Neil Gaiman and Harlan Ellison have won multiple Hugos and V.S. Naipaul won the Nobel Prize for literature. But on the other hand, neither Nabokov nor Borges ever won the Nobel Prize in literature, and Ray Bradbury never won a Hugo, and Terry Pratchett, Michael Moorcock and J.G. Ballard were never even nominated.
So, yeah. For someone who cares about writing and literature, the awards are irrelevant.
…Now usually in these issues, I wind up by pointing out that this is dangerous, because it opens up the field to truly scary types. That’s not true here – as I’ve said, awards are pretty meaningless, so we’re not really playing for high stakes. Just a word of warning: if you are relying on SJWs to defend issues that actually matter – anti-racialism, women’s emancipation, free speech, the defense of civilization – you are relying on people who cannot even rig an award competently.
Sci Phi Journal
“Lou Antonelli’s Hugo-nominated Short “On A Spiritual Plain” Available for Free” – April 21
You can get Lou Antonelli’s “On a Spiritual Plain” for free in EPUB and MOBI The download also includes the story of how “On a Spiritual Plain” came to be included in Sci Phi.
Jason Cordova
“#FreeSpeech” – April 21
I’ve been having a <<censored>> day so far, trying to <<censored>> <<censored>> before I <<censored>>. It’s a <<censored>> way to live, but hey, gotta <<censored>>, am I right?
A lot of <<censored>> have been contacting me this week regarding <<censored>>. One of the things I like to <<censored>> is that <<censored>> is open to the <<censored>> of <<censored>> speech. <<censored>> speech is one of the most important basics of our <<censored>> nation, yet the muzzle of <<censored>> has been slowly being applied to the <<censored>> mouth over the past 50 years. Not only is our <<censored>> of speech being attacked in the name of <<censored>>, certain individuals and groups are now <<censored>> their own allies, feasting upon them as the Ouroboros does its own tail. But it’s <<censored>> <censored>> who are <<censored>> and <<censored>>. Do I have that right?
<<censored>> of <<censored>> — it’s why we have such a great <<censored>>.
glaurung_quena comment on More Words, Deeper Hole
The theory is that one nominates the best stories you’ve read in the past year — stuff that knocked your socks off. Judging by the quality of the puppy slate, I can only conclude that they have very loose socks
Damon G. Walter on Patreon
Damien Walter is creating Nothing
Other than the things I already do.
The Hugo Awards ballot and ceremony appear to be unhanged for the last two days now. I don't know how to react.
— Ray Radlein (@Radlein) April 21, 2015
[sic]
https://twitter.com/JackLint1984/status/590507566335045632
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‘There are good stories on the ballot and they deserve a fair read wherever they came from. Otherwise, we end up in the strange situation of objecting to Three-Body Problem because Beale likes it.’
Wasn’t on a slate so no one is objecting to it. If anything Theo liking it just proves the failure of slate voting. He hadn’t read the book yet, so by telling his minions to vote lock step with his opinions meant that a book that most people enjoy a lot and even he finds worthy almost got left out of the nominations completely. An author rejecting a slate nomination allowed a deserving book voted on by individuals that the slates overlooked to move up. That he likes is an admission of error when it comes to slates.
Oh great. Now I’ve become part of the problem.
Thanks for the mention.
It’s fortunate that it does take at least two years for any significant change to go through. People who consider themselves friends of Worldcon and the Hugo Award (not arsonists and vandals) can over-react and pass massive rule changes in haste, but anything they do will have to be ratified a year from now.
The WSFS rules are not “against Puppies” or “for Puppies.” They are for the definition and self-preservation of the World Science Fiction Society. And very sensibly, they are much more difficult to be “gamed” than is the first round of the Hugo Awards.
(Now, if I just knew whether 400 seats were enough for the Business Meeting. Or 600. Or 1000. Or 2700….)
Kevin: If it’s any of those, I hope you are digging into your parliamentary education for ways of managing a meeting of that size while preserving as fully as possible the chance for a spectrum of participants to raise their points without monopolizing the alloted time.
Matt Y, our three-body problem may not be as academic as you think. I think Vox Day commented on this blog that it was an excellent novel and it would have been on his slate had he read it earlier. (Correct me if I’m wrong.) Now that he is aware of its virtues, he’ll put the sequel, Dark Forest, out from Tor a couple months from now, on his reading list for the next round. Even if it were not already something of an alarm bell that we might be getting ready to ask an author from China who writes about the Cultural Revolution to “renounce” a fellow author he may not even have heard of, as a more practical matter, how does one get off Vox Day’s slate anyway? He doesn’t ask permission. And would anyone seriously want Liu Cixin to decline a nomination for the sequel to a Hugo-nominated (maybe Hugo-winning) novel?
“Even if it were not already something of an alarm bell that we might be getting ready to ask an author from China who writes about the Cultural Revolution to “renounce” a fellow author he may not even have heard of, as a more practical matter, how does one get off Vox Day’s slate anyway? He doesn’t ask permission. And would anyone seriously want Liu Cixin to decline a nomination for the sequel to a Hugo-nominated (maybe Hugo-winning) novel?”
I don’t think anyone has to renounce their nomination. Vox Day didn’t notify people he was going on their slate and some people on the Sad Puppy slate have also said they were not notified. However, I’m still leaving everyone on those slates off my ballot and putting “No Award” at the bottom of all of my categories.
As has been expressed by many people, including nominees, there is no way to know if someone got a nomination through merit or because they were on a slate. It taints the entire process because the nominees were not arrived at legitimately. I can separate my feelings about slate voting from my feelings about authors. I like Jim Butcher but I don’t think he was nominated because of a sudden and uncoordinated uprising of support for the 15th book of his long series. This kind of situation is exactly what “No Award” is good for and that, rather than trying to attack the authors on the slate, is the most reasonable response in my opinion.
If Liu Cixin is nominated and on a slate it will have to be the same. That isn’t his fault, it’s the fault of people who are undermining the system.
The system is *broken.* That’s the whole point of the Sad Puppies campaign. People like me actively avoid Hugo winning work, because we are tired of being griefed at. I read fantasy and scifi to read about different, cooler worlds, not to be told how I am personally at fault for what’s wrong with this one. I am still waiting for someone to tell me why it’s a bad thing that a lifelong fan like myself has finally learned about and gotten involved in the Hugo process.
‘not to be told how I am personally at fault for what’s wrong with this one.’
Examples of Hugo winners, or even nominees, that do this?
“People like me actively avoid Hugo winning work, because we are tired of being griefed at.”
Welcome to the Worldcon membership. I hope you enjoy it as much as I have the past six years.
I don’t understand the source of your resentment. Give a couple examples of fiction Hugo nominees from the past decade that “griefed at” you.
Andrew, thank you for making this cogent statement of your principles that while you would not demand that Liu Cixin to decline his nomination for Dark Forest, you would personally place No Award above his book if it were listed on a slate. I appreciate your clarity.
“People like me actively avoid Hugo winning work”
Such as? Something from, say, the past twenty years worth of Hugo winners would be nice to cite as evidence of your being “griefed” at. Vague assertions are a dime a dozen on the internet.
Mick, I am all for greater involvement, even from people whose politics or literary tastes differ from mine. If you read a whole bunch of SF stories that were published in 2014 and then submitted a Hugo nomination ballot with what you personally consider the best stories in each category, I say you are true to the letter and spirit of the Hugos, even if I disagree with all of your choices.
What I am against, however, is gaming the system—following the letter of the rules but violating their spirit—and I think that’s what slates with explicitly political goals are doing.
Brian – Eh, I’m not worried about what may or may not happen next year. There’s a lot of books between now and then and I think many people can see he’s not really doing them a favor by including them on the slate. Maybe next year he’ll include nothing but people he considers to Knights of Social Justice to see if they’ll decline their nominations. Maybe the sequel will be so fantastic that it gets slate voting along with the majority of all other votes proving that hey maybe people just vote for stuff they like so the slate’s not really needed. Maybe the Sad Puppies will have a lot of new members who nominate books the Rabid Puppies thinks are part of the Vast Liberal Conspiracy and we’ll have ourselves a dog fight.
I think worrying about anything Theo does is a waste of time.
So it was OK when Stross and Scalzi did it, and it’s ok when Tor gets 3/4 of the nominees, but now that someone else is bringing in tons of fresh blood that’s bad? I mean, look at the numbers. I came late to the party – I pay a *lot* of child support, so $40 is sometimes not in my budget – so I didn’t nominate but I will be voting. I don’t care how the works got on the list. If it’s good fiction, it’s good fiction. All this talk of the awards being “tainted” is just so much bullshit. Look at the registration numbers – more people than ever are buying supporting memberships, of *course* the slate looks different than it did when the numbers were dwindling every year.
To whoever it was above asking me for examples: Anathem, the 21st Century America and about 2/3 of the rest of the nominees.
Also, you guys know I have a 1500-ish word blog post linked above containing my thoughts already, right? 🙂 ok, that was blatant click-whoring, am I gaming the system? ;P
Andrew: Your strategy would seem to incentivize Puppies or Puppy allies to organize a False Flag slate of their worst enemies works, with extremely perverse results.
On the Vox Day issue – I think it is absolutely correct that voting No Award hands him more power. Like it or not, he has the opposition by the short and curlies at the moment. The way to diffuse his current power is to read and vote based on the works, not on how they got there, and then for everyone involved to start talking about what they think about the works, not the slates, and even campaign for favorites if that’s your thing. Screaming about Vox all the time just drives more traffic and attention his way.
“So it was OK when Stross and Scalzi did it, and it’s ok when Tor gets 3/4 of the nominees, but now that someone else is bringing in tons of fresh blood that’s bad?”
They didn’t do it. One of the things this round of Sad Puppy voting has proven through its wild success is that there is no one out there coordinating votes like the Puppies did. If there was, the Puppies would not have dominated.
And yes, slate voting absolutely taints the process. Did people vote for the slate because they honestly thought it happened to have all of the things they thought were the best? Or is it because they hate SJWs? We can’t know for sure so there is no way to know if things on that slate are there because of their quality. Would anyone really want to be recognized by someone saying “Here’s your award! You did a great job! Or didn’t. There’s really no way to tell.”
How did Anathem “grief at” you?
Do you mean “Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America” which was nominated for a Hugo Award for Best novel in 2010? I haven’t read it so can’t comment. Post apocalyptic is not my thing.
Mick – I don’t think it’s bad for more fans to get involved and I hope they’ll continue to participate and vote for books they’ve read as individuals long after this has all blown over.
As far as avoiding prior Hugo winners, man that’s rough. You’re missing some great work for a lifelong fan of the genre. Redshirts isn’t preachy, if anything the message behind it is a love of genre and craft not politics. The Wind Up Girl, The City and The City, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, American Gods, the list goes on. Not one of those griefs anyone. They’re just good, well written books.
Stross’ and Scalzi’s slates are available online bro, and one of the things the Puppies have done is shine bright lights into their dark little corners. Stross did it as recently as 2014, it has been posted around on a bunch of blogs, it’s there plain as day. “You are free to have your own opinions but not your own facts,” etc etc.
Mick above avoids doing Hugo winning work. I believe him. In the same way, I avoided to become a millionaire just a few minutes ago. I have also avoided winning the Noble prize. Takes a lot of work, this avoiding thing.
Otherwise, you are doing a Gish gallop, trying to drown your opponents in wrong statements that have to be refuted.
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Gish_Gallop
As I have nothing else to do right now, let me look at them:
1) No Scalzi and Stross has not put up any slates to be voted on in their entireness, whether you have read the works or not.
2) Not, it is not a problem with new blood. It is a problem with block voting on pre-made slates.
3) If you can pay for voting, you can also nominate. Also, this is not a problem that only exists for people on the right wing of the political spectra.
4) You might not care that worthy works are pushed out by block voting, but others care.
“Mick avoids doing Hugo winning work”
Wouldn’t you know it, I just published my first ever Hugo eligible story yesterday! It’s available free on my blog! Remember to nominate me next year!
😉
“… I didn’t nominate but I will be voting. I don’t care how the works got on the list.”
When you do nominate next year, and you make your choices as an individual about what works were best in 2015, how are you going to feel when 10-15% of the nominators use bloc voting to fill almost the entire ballot while you’re in the 85-90% locked out?
That’s the position I’m in. I’ve been voting as an individual, and my motivation is what you blogged that this should all be about: “finding more awesome stuff to read.”
But I saw 0 of my nominations make the ballot, compared to 2-6 in the average year. I’ll likely lay another 0 next year if bloc voting continues.
The Puppies sold you a bill of goods. They weren’t about choosing the best works of the year. It was a political campaign to stick it to people they dislike and promote their own works and those of their friends. Larry Correia admitted that he put Vox Day on his slate last year because it would make people mad. Day put himself and his publishing house on his slate nine times.
‘To whoever it was above asking me for examples: Anathem’
Anathem griefed you and told you you were personally at fault for whatever is wrong with this world? It’s a while since I read it but…. really? I always had the impression Stephenson leaned libertarianish, and Anathem has the world saved by a bunch of scientifically devout white westerners, unless I’m misremembering. I enjoyed it, but I’d never have classed it as anything that might be mistaken for the work of an SJW.
Hampus, thank you for introducing me to the term “Gish Gallop”.
Mick, thank you for not being the seventy-millionth person to complain about Ancillary Justice.
I personally thought Anathem was flawed (I blogged about it, back before Facebook ate my blogger-brain). The Hugo vote, I observe, ultimately ranked it in third place, behind Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book (which I haven’t read) and Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother (which I thought was even worse), and ahead of Charles Stross’s Saturn’s Children (which I thought was better).
But… griefing?! The only way that book could have injured me personally as a white male is if someone dropped it on my foot.
“Stross’ and Scalzi’s slates are available online bro, and one of the things the Puppies have done is shine bright lights into their dark little corners. Stross did it as recently as 2014, it has been posted around on a bunch of blogs, it’s there plain as day. “You are free to have your own opinions but not your own facts,” etc etc.”
And yet their recommendations don’t dominate like the Puppies did. The reason for this is obvious if you’re honest enough to admit it: Stross and Scalzi didn’t organize a slate vote and the Puppies did. I wish we could get past this point. You can’t both take credit for the success of the Puppy campaign and also say that their influence had nothing to do with the nominations we got. I understand you believe there is an equal conspiracy on the “other side” but you already summed up opinions and facts.
Anathem wasn’t an award winner. Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book won that year. Not sure how Anathem preached politically at anyone either.
Mick- I read your online Alabaster Archer. I liked it. I get the distinct feeling that the protagonist, Ferrill, is more than a little bit of a jerk which is a nice touch considering the usual protagonist cast as the reluctant hero, etc. I hope you follow up on it.
Andrew- How exactly is Brad Torgerson proposing a slate (i.e. his recommendations) different from others sharing their recommendations? I don’t get it. Torgerson, so far as I am aware, has no power over the individual members of SP. They read his recommendations and they voluntarily vote. Which is exactly what Scalzi and others have done.
The only difference I can detect in one of impact. Brad’s recommendations carried more weight with his readership than Scalzi’s etc.
rcade –
you’re sounding a little entitled. Just because you voted for something to be on the list doesn’t mean it deserves to be there. I thought Warbound deserved its spot, and I have heard lots of disagreement (as well as agreement). Your argument reeks of the “wrongfans having wrongfun” that Correia, Torgersen, et al complain about.
Stross and Scalzi did have slates. They weren’t as successful as the Sad Puppies because they were preaching to the crowd that was already in.
Ancillary Justice sounds interesting – I haven’t read it. I will though, and hopefully in time to read it before I have to read “Sword” for this year’s vote.
Andrew wrote –
“And yes, slate voting absolutely taints the process. Did people vote for the slate because they honestly thought it happened to have all of the things they thought were the best? Or is it because they hate SJWs? We can’t know for sure so there is no way to know if things on that slate are there because of their quality. Would anyone really want to be recognized by someone saying “Here’s your award! You did a great job! Or didn’t. There’s really no way to tell.”
How do you know when there isn’t a slate that somebody votes because they love a work or because “they hate SJW’s”? If you don’t like how the works were nominated simply change the way nominations are done. Regardless of how a work ended up being nominated you can read a book or work and decide for yourself if it’s worthy of your vote for the award. Voting “No Award” without reading the works and voting your considered choice is also a violation of the “spirit” of the rules wouldn’t you think?
Steve Moss – Thanks!
Yes, that started out as an “origin story” for a bad guy in someone else’s world. He doesn’t like fanfic, so I filed off the serial numbers. Now I have something very different from his world, despite some (intentional) stylistic imitation. I think I am going to continue Ferrill’s story (and yes, I did want it to sound kind of like feral).
Matt – The person asked me about nominees, I think, not winners. This thread is getting big and I am supposed to be working.
“The only difference I can detect in one of impact. Brad’s recommendations carried more weight with his readership than Scalzi’s etc.”
Yes, that’s the exact difference between slate voting and recommendations. People voted for Brad’s list because they were on his slate. But many authors pimp their works and fail to get nominated because their fan base does not automatically do what they say.
“How exactly is Brad Torgerson proposing a slate (i.e. his recommendations) different from others sharing their recommendations?”
First, he put the same number of nominees on his slate as the ballot had available — and no more. Recommendation lists generally put far more suggestions in a category than a voter could choose.
Second, Torgersen ran his slate as part of a political attack campaign to stick it to social justice warriors, and his co-organizer Larry Correia reached out to GamerGate and pro-GamerGate journalists to further this cause. No one prior paired Hugo recommendations with an angry political culture war.
Third, Torgersen and Correia worked closely on this campaign with Day, who published a related slate and urged people to “nominate them precisely as they are.”
No one encouraged bloc voting before the Puppies. No one filled entire categories of the Hugo ballot with their choices before the Puppies. When you try to make the case that the past vote-for-me and vote-for-these-works blog posts were slates, you’re comparing apples and crabapples. I think most people are smart enough to tell the difference between them.
The Gamergate accusation is an oft repeated lie. Vox is the one person heavily involved in both movements, and someone called “Daddy Warpig” is the only other known to be involved in both.
That said, the subset of video gamers and the subset of sf/f readers has quite a bit of overlap, like for example, me.
It’s also a lie that Larry and Brad worked closely with Vox. There isn’t even tangential evidence of that, except that Vox said “those sound good, let me add some of my own stuff.”
The intent behind the Sad Puppies slate is not 100% clear, but to my mind, the evidence that it is more than just a list of recommendations includes:
1. Torgersen did not simply invite his fans to recommend stories (which Scalzi and Stross have done), but selected a slate from those recommendations (and included some stories that his fans never recommended).
2. He described his slate as as slate, rather than just a list of recommendations.
3. He presented this slate in the context of a whole lot of culture-war rhetoric.
4. The slate had few enough candidates in each category that bloc-voting by a sufficiently large group could put all of them on the ballot. (By contrast, the Locus recommended-reading list had over twenty novels.)
5. He collaborated with Vox Day, whose intent on gaming the system to score culture-war points is much more blatant.
“Just because you voted for something to be on the list doesn’t mean it deserves to be there.”
No shit. I don’t need to be told that excellence in SF/F is subjective and people will disagree on it.
I was one nominator among around 1,500. I was content knowing that the other Hugo nominators were choosing individual works in good faith based on their own opinions and the process would elevate the works we collectively liked the most.
That’s a fair process. Bloc voting isn’t. It’s a contest to see who can get the most sheep to vote for the exact same nominees in each category so they can overwhelm all the people who vote as individuals.
This comprehension problem is tricky in people who claim to want to read and vote on a fiction award isn’t it…
“Read my work and nominate me if you like it” is a plug.
“Here are 5 works for your 5 nomination slots, put them in there.” Is a slate.
It really isn’t complicated.
Stross and Scalzi did the former. The BSFA and others did more than 5 recommendations for each category, so again, no problem.
If Brad had done more than 5 nominations per category and called it the Sad Puppies reading list then we wouldn’t be having quite this discussion – we’d still be dealing with Beale, who near as I can tell, is pretty much playing the part of a griefer and playing it well.
But I don’t think any of the people infesting these threads are actually that f’ing stupid – they know what they did, they know the difference, they’re having fun winding people up.
That or Ted Beale’s sock drawer is awfully empty now, which is something else I’m beginning to suspect.
So I’m clear – are you intimating that I am a sock puppet of Vox? If that were so, wouldn’t I put out my stories in an anthology through the publishing house I own instead of for free on a random blog?
And the “other side” are the ones who keep insisting that calling it a slate makes it different.
OK, I really can’t keep responding to this thread. I have to get to work. Maybe I can play more later.
Mick – Read your blog post and I grew up on many of the same movies, books, video games as you did and I’d imagine we have a lot in common, both in tastes of what we like and who we are as fans of SF&F. I love that you gave your child a book that had such impact on you!
Worldcon however is more than happy to have people like us participate. It may have an issue with promoting that to new fans to get them involved however you see it as intentionally exclusive and insular. I disagree. They’re more than happy to have us whether we attend or just support them, because Worldcon was created by fans exactly like you and I, and is run by fans like us who volunteer their time to this event to celebrate these things which we love as a community. As a fan wouldn’t you be annoyed if a book that had an affect on you like A Wrinkle In Time wasn’t even considered for a honor because a set number of voters were all told to vote for the same thing? Instead of people just voting as individuals of things they feel deserve merit?
Sad Puppies didn’t right out tell anyone that. Rabid Puppies did, and self servingly put a bunch of Day’s own publishing house everywhere on there while knocking off some great stuff. That’s exclusion and insular.
Regardless of your thoughts of Scalzi he (and Torgerson for that matter in other ways) have done a lot to help promote other writers, Scalzi let’s people do so on his blog every year and never asks what they’re political bent is prior to doing so.
But hey if anything this bullshit has pulled in fans like you and I to be more active in the community of something we enjoy so that’s at least a positive outcome. You mention that you find less and less to read but man if you need suggestions I could give you a ton. The recent Gunpowder Mage trilogy is awesome, guns and magic and gods. City of Stairs rocked. Marcus Sackey’s Brillaince series, The Expanse series, I could go on and on. Have you ever read Gone-Away World or Tigerman? Gone-Away is one of my favorite books of all time.
Sorry that you feel like you’re being griefed, but frankly the WSFS is made up of people just like us. If you or I ever end up attending instead of supporting I’ll buy you a beer and we can talk about how the Halo books are better than they had any right to be.
“The Gamergate accusation is an oft repeated lie.”
The proof is on Twitter, where Correia reached out to GamerGate while seeking publicity for Sad Puppies 3.
Right after pro-Gamergate Breitbart columnist Milo Yiannopoulus took Correia’s bait and interviewed him, he tweeted, “Watch @voxday and @monsterhunter45 (Correia) closely over the next few months … they’re going to make the Hugos fun …”
Correia also tweeted on Sunday, “I think #GamerGate has been awesome.”
So it’s not like any of this is hidden. They willingly associated the Puppies campaign with GamerGate.
“It’s also a lie that Larry and Brad worked closely with Vox.”
For months, Correia has been on Twitter talking to Day about Puppies, retweeting his messages and using the campaign to stick it to social justice warriors.
Correia, Torgersen, Day, Sarah Hoyt and John C. Wright have been calling themselves the “Evil League of Evil” on their blogs. When the Sad Puppies 3 slate was announced, Correia wrote “here is what the Evil League of Evil authors came up with in discussion” and then said a week later, “The ELoE talked about this a lot before putting together a slate.”
So this also is not hidden. Correia and Torgersen willingly associated their campaign with Day. They even called themselves a club and gave it a nickname.
Matt- thank you sir. You rock. 🙂
‘They weren’t as successful as the Sad Puppies’
There were reasons for that, mainly being that their slates didn’t rise above ‘work pimping,’ The SPs are partly a victim of their own success and mostly a victim of the RPs success.
Wait, because Correia has thoughts on Gamergate he is now “reaching out” to them? By that logic, I reached out to Eric Nylund on twitter when I posted my blog post there.
Seth:
He, I really, really loved Little Brother. As a computer programmer that has to work with security, it was just wonderful. Would have voted it to the top, no problem. Saturn’s Children was acceptable, but not my cup of tea. Different tastes, as it should be.
Mick:
Both Correia and Beale have been heavily involved with gamergate:
https://twitter.com/sinboy/status/589798898325188608
https://twitter.com/sinboy/status/589799675600965632
Does anyone here disagree the principled perceptual shift is one of the centerpieces of science fiction?
I’ve sometimes seen this referred to as “Spock’s Eyes” or “alien eyes.” It’s no dog in the hunt, a tool of self-criticism; it is an appeal outside one’s self – a stepping outside one’s self – a second, more neutral opinion using rules of logic.
On Star Trek Spock was constantly bemused by the odd cultural biases of Earth people because his analytic mind couldn’t embrace contradictory or illogical concepts. It’s how Kirk destroyed Nomad. Nomad brings its obsession into an inappropriate space and as a result of that conflict of priorities, Nomad is destroyed in a logic loop. This is brought about because there is no place for Nomad on the ship as Nomad is and Nomad will not tolerate the existence of the ship as it is.
Imagine if Nomad’s programming has been the sterilization of imperfection in the name of ending the sterilization of imperfection. This too would’ve destroyed Nomad.
If Dr. McCoy told Spock wine was more culturally sophisticated than soda pop Spock might ask how a difference in chemical composition could achieve such a thing. Spock has engaged in a perceptual shift.
Does anyone here disagree the principled perceptual shift is one of the centerpieces of science fiction?
“First, he put the same number of nominees on his slate as the ballot had available — and no more.”
This is totally false. Sad Puppies did not have 5 nominees in most categories. In most of the categories they did, they lost.
“Torgersen ran his slate as part of a political attack campaign to stick it to social justice warriors, and his co-organizer Larry Correia reached out to GamerGate and pro-GamerGate journalists to further this cause.”
Both claims are false. Torgersen absolutely did NOT want a political attack campaign to stick it to SJWs. That’s why I created Rabid Puppies. Rabid Puppies are sworn enemies of the SJWs. Sad Puppies are focused solely on SF. Larry Correia did not reach out to GamerGate, he only reached out to Nero.
No GamerGaters are involved in SP and only two of the 50 or so most influential GamerGaters were involved in RP through the nomination period. GamerGate was not involved, but thanks to the many attacks on GG by the SF SJWs, it is much more aware of the situation in SF than before.
“Wait, because Correia has thoughts on Gamergate he is now “reaching out” to them?”
I said he reached out to them because of the tweets where he reached out to them. He wanted Sad Puppies to be affiliated with GamerGate and continues to describe them as “awesome” today. What part of that are you having trouble figuring out?
I am going to disagree again that this counts as “courting gamergate,” but I respect your viewpoint on that and don’t see the need to die on that particular hill. It is too far afield from the topic at hand.
I already said Vox is the only person who could really be counted as a “key figure” in both dust ups.