aka Crate Expectations
The Memorial Day roundup begins with Dave Freer and carries on with Cheryl Morgan, Jeff Duntemann, Sam Finlay, Adam-Troy Castro, Lisa J. Goldstein, Joseph Tomaras, Andrew Hickey, Rebekah Golden, Martin Wisse, Declan Finn, Steve Leahy and Dcarson. (Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editors of the day William Reichard and Jim Henley.)
Dave Freer on Mad Genius Club
“Making a living, and things that may interfere with it” – May 25
So far, to best of my knowledge, the Puppies, both sad and rabid, and their followers have avoided attacking things which make people a living. They’ve asked people to NOT take it out on the authors who have been pressured into stepping out of Noms. They’ve spoken out against punishing Tor Books despite the Neilsen Hayden’s and friends attacks on ‘Making Light’. No-one has called for a boycott or blacklist of David Gerrold, or Glenn Hauman, or to have their reputations tarnished and Amazon reviews deliberately lowered.
That’s of course NOT true in the converse. And while there’s been some passive-aggressive ‘semi-plausible-deniability’ ‘who will rid us of these turbulent puppies’ basically from the get-go it’s been attacks on the ability of the Puppy organizers and the nominees ability to make a living. We’re immoral destroyers (we obeyed the rules to letter. Patrick Nielsen Hayden broke the embargo rules with absolute impunity, not a word of criticism offered. Rules are only for little people.) who break every convention of good behavior (David Gerrold, the MC of the event, has been campaigning relentlessly against the Pups and the nominees – which is so far outside the canon of ‘acceptable behavior’ as to be a light-year beyond the pale). They organized smears on Entertainment Weekly to label us racists and sexists – which the magazine had to redact because they’re demonstrably untrue. It didn’t stop the smears mysteriously cropping up in ‘friendly’ outlets across the English Speaking world. Gerrold and TNH carefully listed all the nasty things –exclusion from Cons, denial of space in publications, editors closing doors to subs, reviews being denied… that just would happen to us. All things that would, had to affect the puppies ability to make a living. Not one of them said ‘hey, these people have families. They’re human too.’ In fact we had phrases flung about putting us down. Untermench. Then we have Glenn Hauman calling for people to use the Hugo package for a way to game the rankings against the puppies. “Oh, and to answer the title question: what do you do to rabid puppies? You put them down.”
Jeff Duntemann on Jeff Duntemann’s Contrapositive Diary
“Sad Puppies Summary and Wrapup” – May 24
Eveybody’s got a theory on how to fix the Hugo Awards process, but to me the process is fine; what’s missing is about 25,000 more involved nominators and voters. A large enough voter base is unlikely to be swept by something like a slate of recommendations. Whether so many new people can be brought into the Worldcon/Hugos community is unclear, but I doubt it.
That’s about all I’m going to have to say about the Sad Puppies topic for awhile. I’m turning my attention back to writing, to the concept of the Human Wave, and perhaps to a suspicion I have that fandom is in the process of splitting. The problems of fandom are caught up in the problems of publishing. Once Manhattan-style traditional publishing becomes more or less irrelevant, fandom may become an overlapping group of online communities centered on authors and genres. Each will probably have its own awards, and the Hugos will become only one among many. Is this a good thing?
You bet!
Sam Finlay on Return of Kings
“How Female-Dominated Publishing Houses Are Censoring Male Authors” – May 25
We continued talking about why the industry seems to be so focused on just playing to the tastes of upper-middle class women in New York City, and I then told him some things that Sci-Fi author Larry Correia had said recently in a podcast concerning the Sad Puppies-Rabid Puppies controversy, and how it struck me that by pursuing their current strategy the publishing houses are ignoring huge markets of people willing to buy books and are cutting their own throats.
He broke in saying, “I know, I know…But look, Sam…you gotta stop thinking. Just stop thinking! Thinking about all this will drive you crazy! Don’t go to bookstores, if they even still have any where you live. Don’t look at other books. You’ll just wonder how in the world this thing even got published,” and then told me some more anecdotes about how the sausage is made. He then quoted Otto Priminger, saying “Nobody knows anything.”
It was sad. He’s a good man, and was just as frustrated about it all as anybody, but he’s stuck fighting a literati who only look for books that support the current narrative, and is left trying to sneak in what stories he can, however he can.
Adam-Troy Castro on Facebook – May 25
So if somebody unfamiliar to me wins an award I was up for, and more importantly gets a big contract while I’m left begging for more porridge at Mr. Bumble’s Workhouse, I honestly give serious thought to the premise that I have missed something that excels in a way my efforts do not.
By contrast, a glance at some of the rhetoric issued by {Gay-Basher McManly-Nuts} establishes a deep and unwavering belief that he, and those who work in his wheelhouse, represent the bastion of greatness against which the rest of us hammer in vain, like zombies trying to get past a boarded-up window.. To wit, if he hasn’t set the world on fire, if he is not met at the convention gates by a swarm of screaming groupies like the kids at the beginning of A HARD DAY’S NIGHT, if books that are nothing like the books he writes get more acclaim than his, the answer can only be that it MUST BE A CONSPIRACY, that justifies an EVEN MORE BLATANT CONSPIRACY. He has no doubts at all. He deserves this. He is angry, Mr. {Gay-Basher McManly-Nuts}. And it is not just regular anger. It is righteous anger, bringing us to the point that being righteously angry is not necessarily the same thing as being justifiably angry, not even close.
The difference between Mr. {Gay-Basher McManly-Nuts} and myself is therefore significant, and it boils down to the statement that while I am very capable of being an asshole about many things, I am not an asshole to that extent or in that particular way.
I also possess discernment about some things that apparently still confuse him.
For instance, I have absolutely no difficulty identifying my elbow. It’s the place in the middle of my arm that bends.
Lisa J. Goldstein on theinferior4
“The Hugo Ballot, Part 15: Back to Novellas” – May 25
Okay, I’m surprised. Tom Kratman’s “Big Boys Don’t Cry” actually reads in places like an anti-war story. Well, let’s not get carried away here — it’s more a story about the harm that fighting wars can do, the ways in which a personality can be twisted and perverted by the aims of those in command.
Maggie is a Ratha, an intelligent fighting vehicle who has been through countless battles, and been made to forget some of her more disturbing actions. She has been mortally wounded and is being taken apart for scrap — but the more the workers drill down, the more she starts remembering things that now seem to her to be problematic…..
Joseph Tomaras on A Skinseller’s Workshop
“Hugo Short Story Ballot” – May 24
“Totaled” by Kary English is too good a story to be tarred with the brush of a slate. It makes good use of not-as-far-future-as-those-unfamiliar-with-the-field-might-think neuroscience to explore the mind-body problem, the relationship of emotion to cognition, and the furthest limits to which careerist self-sacrifice can drive a person. I wish it had first appeared either in a free online venue, or a magazine with broader circulation than Galaxy’s Edge.
Lou Antonelli’s “On a Spiritual Plane” attempts to cover similar ground, but there’s a crippling contradiction between the short story form, which requires some measure of crisis for the protagonist, and the author’s evident desire simply to set up a world that is confirmatory of the narrator’s Thomistic metaphysics….
Lis Carey on Lis Carey’s Library
“Jeffro Johnson Hugo Nomination Fanwriter Sample” – May 25
This might be the best of the Puppy Fan Writer nominees. At the very least, I can see real substance in it that doesn’t work for me, but surely will for its intended audience.
Andrew Hickey on Sci-Ence! Justice Leak!
“Hugo Blogging: ‘Best’ Related Work” – May 25
For fairly obvious reasons, I am not going to give anything on those slates a ranking above No Award. Once again, however, I am grateful that my aesthetic instincts match my moral ones here — while these are (with one notable exception) much less incompetent than the fiction I’ve read so far, none of them are actually, you know, good.
Here’s how I’m ranking them.
Letters from Gardner by Lou Antonelli is half writing autobiography/how to break into SF manual, and half collection of short stories. Basically imagine The Early Asimov, but with Antonelli replacing Asimov and Gardner Dozois replacing John Campbell. Antonelli tells the story of how each of his stories was written, and how it was accepted or rejected. The difference is, though, that Antonelli has had an undistinguished career, lasting roughly a decade, while Asimov was one of the greats of the genre (at least in sales and critical status). There is an intrinsic interest in Asimov’s juvenilia which there just isn’t for Antonelli. The stories were pedestrian, and there were no real insights, but this might be of interest to someone. It’s not *bad*, just also not *good*…..
Rebekah Golden
“2015 Hugo Awards Best Short Story: Reviewing L Antonelli” – May 25
“On A Spiritual Plain”, Lou Antonelli (Sci Phi Journal #2, 11-2014)
If this had been longer than fifteen pages I would not have finished it. After I did finish it I looked up the elements of a story to see what was missing.
Martin Wisse on Wis[s]e Words
“Preliminary thoughts — Best Graphic story Hugo” – May 25
During the various discussions about the Puppies, the Hugo Awards and everything somebody, I think it was Erik Olson, made the excellent remark that new Hugo categories only make sense if there are enough good candidates each year for it. If there only one or two or even five different candidates in any given year, what’s the point? It occurred to me that the converse is also true: any given Hugo category only makes sense if the Hugo voters are knowledgeable enough to actually vote for more than just a handful of the usual subjects year after year. Otherwise it means you just have an even smaller than usual group of people nominating and most people either not voting, or only voting for names they recognise.
The Best Graphic Story category, which was first awarded in 2009, at first seemed to fail that second requirement. The first three awards were won by Girl Genius and you do wonder whether that was because people recognised Kaja & Phil Foglio from fandom, rather than for the comic itself. The Foglios themselves were gracious enough to withdraw after their third win and since then the category has improved a lot, having been won by three different comics since. I’m still a bit skeptical of how well it will work out in the long term, or whether it’ll become just another category most people won’t care about, like the best semi-prozine or best fan artist ones and just vote by rote, if at all.
On the other hand though, if there’s one thing the Hugos, as well as Worldcon needs if it wants to stay relevant, is to get in touch with wider fandom, to not just focus on the old traditional categories. And comics suit the Hugos well. There are plenty of science fiction comics published each year, even omitting superhero series and there does now seems to be a core of Worldcon fans invested in nominating and voting. Since there isn’t really a proper comics orientated sf award yet, haivng the Hugos take up the slack is an opportunity to make them relevant to a primary comics geek, as opposed to a written sf geek audience.
Cheryl Morgan on Cheryl’s Mewsings
“The Wages of Sin” – May 25
Yesterday Sasquan, the 2015 Worldcon, announced that they now have 9,000 members. Fannish mathematics thus makes it the first billion dollar Worldcon1.
On the back of this unexpected windfall the Commie Pinko Faggot Feminazi Cabal that controls Worldcon via Tor Books has announced the 10-year, $3.4 million deal for its primary gamma rabbit author, John Scalzi.
Scalzi’s editor at Tor, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, explained the rationale behind this move. “It was a tough decision,” he said, especially as none of Scalzi’s books have sold more than a dozen or so copies, mostly to his friends and family. The convention revenue simply doesn’t cover the shortfall.” ….
Declan Finn on A Pius Man
“The Anti-Puppies (Sad Puppies Bite Back VI)” – May 26
[Putatively humor.]
[GRR Martin …gapes, blinks, then turns to NKJ] And you, hold on a second. You’re not content with having a personal vendetta and an online feud with Vox Day, but you want to deliberately taunt the Dark Lord of the Fisk!? Have you no sense of self-preservation?
[Scalzi frowns] I thought he was the International Lord of Hate
[Jemisin] Anything he says to me will prove that he’s a racist!
Declan Finn on A Pius Man
“Putting down the puppies (Sad Puppies Bite Back VII)” – May 26
[Three hours later, down the road, lying in wait, are the Evil League of Evil. Tom Kratman tirelessly watches the road, awaiting the dog catcher truck. John “Dr. O. No” Ringo, now that the sun is down, furiously taps away on his laptop, cranking out a rough draft of a 15-book series on an alien invasion. Larry Correia, the International Lord of Hate, is fisking the entire back catalog of The Guardian. The Cuddly Skeletor, Brad Torgersen, clutches the flamethrower on loan from Larry, looking like a kid waiting for Christmas morning.]
[LC looks up] I’m running out of Guardian articles. Are they coming or not?
[TK growls, frustrated] I don’t see them sir! We still have the Claymore mines ready and waiting to blow them straight to Hell at the first sign! Assuming the land mines in the road don’t get them first! Or the three backup snipers!
[LC] Geez, Tom, are you sure that we’ll even need to fire a shot, assuming they ever get here?
[TK] Better to be prepared than not, sir!
[LC sighs, closes the laptop, and stands up, taking care not to hit the flagpole above him] Okay, everyone, we’re packing up. Brad, sorry, no flamethrower for you tonight.
[Brad, frustrated that he never got to use his flame thrower on the self-destructed anti-Puppies, fires it off into space. The massive fireball makes it way to low orbit. It impacts and explodes against a low-flying alien spacecraft, a scout for the incoming armada. The armada, thinking their surprise has been ruined, turn around and retreat. The wounded ship hurtles in an uncontrolled descent, slamming right into Tor’s officers, taking out the entire suite of offices, and a few cockroaches — including an intern named Joe Buckley, but no one noticed one way or another, since interns are all disposable anyway. But Joe died happy. He FINALLY got to see an exploding space ship!]
Dcarson on Steve Jackson Games Board & Dice Forum
“Mars Attacks (Worldcon)” – May 24
Played Mars Attacks this weekend at Balticon. We noticed that the cities showing were all ones we had been to a Worldcon in. So for the next game we sorted through the city deck and if we allowed San Diego as the site of a Nasfic we had 16 city and monument cards. So a 4 player game of Mars Attacks the Worldcon.
I wonder if all those people trying to rig the Hugo Awards have one of these at home: https://t.co/evPJzSyK7Z
— Steve Leahy (@oz_penguin) May 25, 2015
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Is James *Nicoll* obligated to review books edited by Toni
And given that I think most of Baen’s contemporary books are mediocre to bad (as opposed to their library of older works, which is quite good), would I be doing the authors any favours if I did review them? “Which genocidal space-lizard book is this? Frankly, I’m not sure.”
Joe Sherry on May 26, 2015 at 7:16 am said:
As I understand it, PNH had posted on Making Light that he had heard that the puppies had 3/5 of the Best Novel nominees.
If he did (and I don’t recall seeing that), it was after the official announcement.
@James Nicoll: “…would I be doing the authors any favours if I did review them?”
Word on this. There’s quite a few authors this year for whom getting placed on the nominees list is probably a remarkable disservice – they’ve just been thrown into the deep end when they’re craft is not quite ready for that level of expectation.
It seems Tuomas is behind the times–I believe the current GG narrative is that yes, okay, maybe it started that way, but NOW it’s moved on to ethics because of the people writing “Gamers are dead!” articles which was totally collusion not people reacting to other articles because that’s just crazy talk, and anyway Quinn was clearly abusive, except you’re really not even supposed to mention Quinn by name because GG is TOTALLY OVER THAT NOW. Keep sending those emails!
Then again, been a few weeks since I waded in that particular kiddie pool. It’s possible there’s a new narrative now.
Surprised that the Puppies didn’t try a “send emails to publishers!” campaign, actually. GG is convinced that it’s spectacularly effective. One wonders why they didn’t transition it and try to drown Tor in “consumer revolt.”
I found it interesting that the War on Heinlein spin on me giving Baen Books the cut direct was to claim that I, like Kirkus Indie Reviews, PW Select and now, sigh, RT Review Source, take money from authors to review their books when in fact my site clearly says:
B: Authors may not buy reviews of their own books nor can their family members, publishers or agents. This is for two reasons: Yog’s Law and also the possibility that a confused minority might expect if they pay me to read their book they are then entitled to a positive review.
Authors may point out to me that their qualifying books are now out (or back in print) and while I cannot promise to read said books, there will not be a charge if I do.
A review the author or publisher paid to get isn’t a review. At best, it’s advertising. At worst, it is author victimization.
@snowcrash
I know, intellectually, I should ignore his crap given that I’ve been a fairly successful lurker until now, but I get so, SO sick of the revision of gamergate history. I think it’s especially galling that the they’re so quick to adopt a name coined by someone who has explicitly denigrated gaming folk while harassing women who literally develop games.
That they latched onto using it to attack Anita Sarkeesian is not a surprise, though, since I think they could find some way to blame her for a bad cupcake review on a restaurant blog written entirely in Portuguese. (Just to be clear to the GG/Puppies out there: I’m not saying that they have, just that they could.)
@PJ Evans: He did, here, on March 25. Nominations were announced April 4.
Quote: “* Regarding Best Novel: I’ve heard that three of the five finalists are SP-endorsed. (Which, see above, doesn’t in itself guarantee that any of them are unworthy of a Hugo.) I don’t know what any of those three books are. I do know the identity of the other two, and I don’t think anyone in this conversation will regard them as unworthy candidates. (Disclaimer: Neither of them are books Teresa or I worked on in any way.)”
It doesn’t look like he said anything about the rest of the ballot, which means I had heard the rumor of a near SP/RP sweep from elsewhere. I had also heard that Ancillary Sword and Goblin Emperor were the two which made the ballot, and it was likely Correia was a SP selection, possibly Butcher though that was a bit questionable, and no idea what the fifth selection was.
I’m most curious to see the final nominating numbers in August to see what the top ten looked like.
rob_matic at 8:49 am
It’s also an odd complaint to be made by the Puppies. If the demographics changed and more young people became involved, the general political tone would probably become more liberal.
I don’t know. Maybe you should ask a puppy. A young fan base with a liberal tone sounds good to me. By the way, if you really want to look at potential youth involvement in science fiction, look at China.
The Trouble with Kibble
Incidentally, Joe, I think it was you with whom I had an exchange a few threads back about whether the puppies had swept three or four of the novel slots prior to Correia’s withdrawal, so I just want to acknowledge that that PNH comment seems to bear out your contention that it was only three.
Has “The Scarlet Litter” been done already?
Mark at 9:12 am
I think Red Plenty might be a bit of a left-field choice, to put it mildly.
People who write reviews in magazines and newspapers liked it.
I think you’re right, Andy. I don’t know when the nominees were notified and how much time they have to decline, but PNH’s statement on the 25th suggests that it may have been prior to Correia withdrawing. But that’s just my guess based on what PNH said.
Parsing the final nomination numbers will be fascinating this year (and it’s something I enjoy looking at every year anyway).
Jeffro Johnson:
Hi Jeffro! Haven’t read all of your reviews yet, but I liked what you wrote about Vance. Absolutely the best of the puppy nominees. Will read the rest and see how it works. All the best!
@Kimberly K
No worries. GG was one of the major OMG THE STUPID IT BURNNNNS of recent times for me, and given that Puppydom is GG – the Low Budget Sequel, I can empathise with you on it.
One of the more cathartic things is always the humour bits that come out of these sort of things. For GG, Cracked was a good outlet, esp their opening to the article by Quinn:
For Puppydom, some of the stuff like #newhugocategories and Alexandra Erin’s reviews play much the same role as well.
Francis Spufford’s Red Plenty isn’t so much left or right as it is a utopian novel that involves linear programming. Cosma Shalizi has written a beautiful review about it here:
http://crookedtimber.org/2012/05/30/in-soviet-union-optimization-problem-solves-you/
Jeffro
Sure, your reviews lauding Vox Day and panning Mary Robinette Kowal might have nothing to do with your presence on the Sad Puppy slate. No, really, that’s completely believable. It could totally be coincidence.
Just like all the other “Best Fan Writer” nominees could be Puppies purely coincidentally. Maybe the people who put together the Puppy slate (who were they again?) were *genuinely* impressed by the nominees writing talent and weren’t influenced in the slightest by personal relationships or political sympathy. Nobody can prove otherwise.
@Mar Idon’t think I would have broken Wolfe onto my ballot for 2011.
Then you must reread The Sorcerer’s House immediately. Then Home Fires. You may not stop rereading them until you retract your statement.
@David W., Red Plenty is just a wonderful book.
@Brian Z
Sorry, that was a fairly pithy comment. I meant I don’t think it was on the radar of your average SF reader for 2010; it certainly wasn’t on mine. You are correct that the reviews were good though. I don’t think that it was marketed directly as SF though, was it? That often leaves a high bar to clear for a Hugo nom. It looks more like the sort of book to get a Nebula but not a Hugo.
“1. Calling SP1&2 an effort to broaden the people participating in the Hugos, but failing at all to note all the accusations of affirmative action and secret cabals that Brad & Larry have hurled at Worldcon. Accusations without any shred of evidence.”
Well, they’ve presented their evidence. You and others don’t agree, which is fine. Or you handwave it away, which is also fine. SP and SP2 got people who liked reading those types of stories into the voting process. For better or for worse, but they certainly weren’t participating before, were they?
“2.Accusing Worldcon of hiding the fact that anyone can participate”
Well, Worldcon has certainly gone out of its way to inform the casual SF/F fan whats needed to participate in the process, haven’t they? Thats why the number of voters steadiliy rose in the internet age, to that dizzying height of almost 1000 voters….wait, that’s not the narrative, is it?
Maybe it’s all those posts from people saying “I had no idea I could be part of this process”, ut then maybe they are just outliers?
“3.Presenting the Hugo packet as a guaranteed benefit of the Supporting membership.”
That’s been an accepted benefit by many people, not just the SP/RP crowd.
“4.Presenting SP & RP as just another list of recommendations”
SP can certainly make that claim, the RP crowd, I’m not so sure. But you willingness to see anyone who agrees with any part of the SP/RP point of view as some sort of myrmidon who accepts anything and everything Torgerson, Correia, or Beale says without question doesn’t reflect well on you.
“5.The paragraph about Day is the pièce de résistance though. Let me quote it in full…”
Well, maybe next year someone will right a fluff fan piece about Day and all his other online personas, and they can include the posts where he harassed people to the point of suicide, and helped shut down various fora. The he can put out a middling apology, and all will be forgiven, and a fan Hugo will be in order?
This self righteous foot stompy indignation about Vox and what he says and does only goes so far,some point is just throwing gas on a fire that needs to die out. Honestly, I’d have a bunch more respect for the people who hate vox for what he says if they were half as willing to go after authors on their own side of the damned house who are just as guilty of egregious words and behavior.
“6. Accusing Mary Robinette Kowal of ballot-box stuffing for daring to sponsor Con memberships to people who can’t afford them even after withdrawing herself from Hugo consideration next year.”
Well, if she’d sponsered them before the nominations were announced, I think there’d be less of an issue. I don;t have a problem with it, but I can see where people could. Correias announcement that he would not seek or accept a nomination was seen as self serving and empty by many people, including you if I recall JJ, so how is Kowals any different? I think what shes doing is OK, I question the timing of it, but thats just me. Then again, if Worldcon was a bit more visible, she wouldn’t have had to purchase them, they would have known where to go and bought them already. Honestly, I think the SP crowd missed out by matching Kowal purchase for purchase…
“7. Bog standard SJW control all the media accusation – god forbid the news report the news, and god forbid reality doesnt match up to your preferred narrative.”
“The duty of the journalist is to further those ends by seeking truth and providing a fair and comprehensive account of events and issues. Conscientious journalists from all media and specialties strive to serve the public with thoroughness and honesty. Professional integrity is the cornerstone of a journalist’s credibility.”
Sound familair? Thats from the Journalistic Standards and Ethics is the Society of Professional Journalists. Did any of the pieces against the SP crowd meet those standards? Or do you think that Correia, Torgerson and the others really are racist misogynists, and so on and so forth?
“8. Obfuscating the GamerGate / Puppy link, and again listing it as off-topic”
Because there wasn’t one until Brianna Wu brought it up. A few Gamergaters tweeted and posted about the SP3 effort a few weeks and days before hand, and then all of the sudden, the Puppies sweep the noms and it’s all Gamer Gates fault? Until then, the Venn Diagram intersection of SP/RP and GG was quite small.
I buy the “Its all GG’s fault!” argument as much as I buy some “sooper sekrit Star Chamber of editors and voters deciding who gets nominated.”, and theres more evidence for that. Its funny that somehow, the SP/RP claims of logrolling and voting are considered some sort of made up fanatsy, but Gamer Gate and SP3? Sure, they are hand in hand, no questions asked…I like Sci FI as much as the next person, but if that were the case, the GG crowd would have been a lot more visible about it. Honestly, the only thing that Mrs. Wu did was rouse the noninvolved-GG crowd, many of whom had no idea what was going on, and then got them involved. Way to go there by the way, just what the Hugo needed…
“9. Portraying No Award as a Nuclear Option that is beyond the pale, in the same article that makes such pains to stress the utter legality of what the Puppies did with slates.”
Yeah, he misses the point here. I think if you read the works and vote no award, its all good. Voting no award without reading them..well, I think that’s petulant, but understand why some people are doing it. I don’t agree with them, but then again they aren’t doing anything to really hurt the SP/RP crowd by doing so. If it makes them feel better, it makes them feel better.
“10. Painting this as a unacceptable backlash by the Cabal (TinC) against the Puppies
Well, will have to see how this bears out. I think it’s nothing to be worried about, but seeing the behaviors of con organizers the past few years, I wouldn’t put it past a few to try and “Do something” to “Show them”…I think if anything did happen, it would backfire in a most spectacular manner, but I’m not getting the popcorn ready for that just yet.
“11. Again with the “Terry Pratchett never won a Hugo” – guess what Jeff, he withdrew himself from consideration. Oh and I wonder what Jeff thinks of 5 time Puppy nominee and leading member of the Puppies John Wright’s statement of regret that he didn’t strike Pterry across the mouth? I’m guessing he would render that off-topic as well….”
Well, I read it as Wrights hardcore catholicism and its covenants against suicide over riding what Pratchett was saying about how he felt when he was sick and what might happen near the end. Having watched people suffer and pass on from debilitating diseases I can understand Pratchetts point of view on the matter, knowing some hard core Roman Catholics myself I can understand their point of view as well.
Pratchett, well pointing out that he was nominated and withdrew in 2005 is valid, but how about the fact that’s the only time he was ever nominated as well? Is that something not to be considered anymore, a point less than valid somehow?
My questions for the day:
1. If PNH actually did find out the content of the ballot before it was made public… So what?
What does it matter? Why do the Puppies care? If the assertion is true, it would prove only that someone who’s been very active in fandom and prodom for over 30 years knows people and hears stuff–and, gosh, that’s almost as surprising as the news that the earth circles the sun and not the other way around.
2. Why are the Puppies so obsessed with PNH (& also TNH)?
Okay, Vox Day is obsessed with them, he’s noted numerous times, because they hurt his feelings on their blog 10 years ago. But is that the source of the other Puppies’ obsession with them? Are they upset the NHs hurt Vox Day’s feelings? Or did the NHs hurt their feelings, too? And did the NHs hurt their feelings worse than, say, everyone ELSE who is opposed to the slate campaigns and gaming of the Hugo ballots?
I’m just curious about why the NHs, in particular. I mean, I get that the Puppies’ obsession with Scalzi is envy (though this strikes me as unambitious; if I were going to indulge in obsessive envy of someone, I’d go for JK Rowling, Nora Roberts, Stephen King, GRRM, Barbara Kingsolver–you know, a household name; yes, Scalzi is a hardcover NYT bestseller with Hollywood deals and a beautiful wife and daughter, but, even so–there are higher targets available to someone who wants to be consumed by obsessive envy, so why not shoot for the moon?)…
But surely the Puppies aren’t envious of the NHs? They’re editors, not bestselling writers, and outside of the clubby little world of online sf/f and people who want to write for Tor Book, no one has ever heard of them or cares what they think (and, indeed, even inside this clubby little world, plenty of people (my hand goes up) don’t care what they think.) So whence derives the Puppy obsession with them?
Others have already presented the links before, so I’ll just declare: In 2014, Vox Day, John C. Wright, and other Puppies folks all had lots of good things to say about the Gamergaters, including efforts to recruit them for the slate drive. They lie about it now, but they can’t scrub the record.
@snowcrash
It has definitely felt like GG redux, to me. That Cracked article is great, but they’re usually pretty fun and surprisingly informative.
It feels the same because I guess it stems from the same source: a bunch of insecure, mostly white, boys and men worried that women and black people and brown people are “invading” their space by existing and finally being noticed and represented in the body of the work, as opposed to the fringes. They pretend we’re interlopers instead of people who have been here the entire time(Mary Shelley, please stand up).
Granted, I think SP/RP is actually slightly more complex because it also involves the hurt egos of its leaders and a decades longer history to deal with, but the insecurity comes from the same place of fear and hatred of change. (In GG it’s having to deal with games where the default protagonist isn’t a white, straight, manly man, and in SP/RP it’s having to deal with books where the default protagonist isn’t a white, straight, manly man and/or alien.)
Whether the effort on their part got them anything much is another question, and we’ll have to wait to see the final outcome. But they certainly did their part to stroke the egos of that bunch of vandals and harassers.
Kimberly K: “I think they could find some way to blame her for a bad cupcake review on a restaurant blog written entirely in Portuguese. ”
I saw that review. Who knew that comments about ganache could be so cruel?
“The duty of the journalist is to further those ends by seeking truth and providing a fair and comprehensive account of events and issues. Conscientious journalists from all media and specialties strive to serve the public with thoroughness and honesty. Professional integrity is the cornerstone of a journalist’s credibility.”
Sound familair? Thats from the Journalistic Standards and Ethics is the Society of Professional Journalists. Did any of the pieces against the SP crowd meet those standards? Or do you think that Correia, Torgerson and the others really are racist misogynists, and so on and so forth?
A journalist’s job is also to parse and weight the information based on its credibility. Whether Correia, Trogersen, Day or Wright are racist misogynists is not the point. It is that they have said and posted racist and misogynistic things on-line in support of their cause. Although that does leave out the rampant homophobia. When you state things like ‘the Hugos have been an affirmative action award’, you’re basing the entire premise of your stance around a racist, misogynistic, homophobic attack on the prior winners and communities. And since the argument has not held up to objective review by multiple people and methodologies and the SP/RP lacks any kind of smoking gun about the conspiracy that assert is happening, good journalism is to point out that their claims are apparently bunk.
Interesting comments re 2011. “Dervish House” and “Surface Detail” blew me away that year, in fact basically brought me back to reading lots of sf after many years reading only occasional books in the genre. With respect to other nominees, I didn’t think the Willis was very good at all and I thought the Grant was quite readable but not award calibre.
Cat,
My reviews of Correia, Togerson, Kowal, and Day from last year are utterly forgettable. Seriously, no one cares about them. At all. No one ever did. My Appendix N posts are an order of magnitude better and are the only thing I have ever done that is intended for a wider audience than the hundred odd people that read my personal blog.
I really owe a lot to Mary Robinette Kowal, though. I would not be able to express the pure unadulterated joy I have upon discovering Robert E. Howard, E. C. Tubb, A. Merritt, and Edgar Rice Burroughs were it not for the inspiration that she provides me. I mean that. No subtext. No dog whistles. No snark. The contrast that she provides– the relief that is created when those works are set beside hers– I would not be able to see them for what they are without her.
I did not understand what it was that I wanted until MRK showed me a world where it did not exist. I have received countless hours of reading pleasure because of what she’s done.
Mr. Freer: I know you’ve departed, since while you have the time to misrepresent on the Internet, you don’t have time to defend those misrepresentations, but…
“So far, to best of my knowledge, the Puppies, both sad and rabid, and their followers have avoided attacking things which make people a living”
Well, let’s see: Mr. Beale divides the world into Pink and Blue SF, and his ilk have called for Pink SF’s destruction. That would, I suspect, have rather a negative impact on those who write it, no?
Please do amend your statement, then.
This is overlooking the larger picture that many of the Puppies and their followers (and if we are going to look at comments by everyone opposed to the Puppies, we must fairly include the commentariats on the various Puppies’ blogs) have called for the outright death, disenfranchisement, or driving from the community many, many people, and the claims of Puppy innocence ring so hollow they must contain a vacuum.
“They’ve asked people to NOT take it out on the authors who have been pressured into stepping out of Noms.”
How impressive; they’ve asked people not to take vengeance upon the empty set. It is OK, as demonstrated by a lead puppy on this site, to dismiss someone’s views that they were not pressured by telling them how they really feel, but that’s different, somehow.
“basically from the get-go it’s been attacks on the ability of the Puppy organizers and the nominees ability to make a living.”
If they need to win a Hugo to make a living, they’re doing it wrong.
“which is so far outside the canon of ‘acceptable behavior’ as to be a light-year beyond the pale”
Tell me, then, how many parsecs out beyond the pale are the Puppies who are calling for the Hugos to be burned down?
“hen we have Glenn Hauman calling for people to use the Hugo package for a way to game the rankings against the puppies.”
Subculture gets exposure to larger world — larger world decides that they don’t like subculture’s output, rates it poorly — subculture declares there’s a campaign against it.
If you didn’t want me to have opinions on the Puppies’ work, and express them, you shouldn’t have made it a condition of voting on the Hugos honestly.
*********
It really is impressive, some times, how much contradiction there is in this entire debate from the Puppy side; it’s perfectly acceptable to dismiss stories as “Not SF” or “affirmative action” or “message-fic”, but when a Puppy story is complained about, it *must* be political, because it’s a good story!
@Mark
Sorry, that was a fairly pithy comment. I meant I don’t think it was on the radar of your average SF reader for 2010
I was just teasing you. 😀
Maybe it wouldn’t have gotten on the ballot under any circumstances, although I just googled for it and notice that Jo Walton plugged it on tor.com.
I picked it first because it is a truly great book and second because I feel that moment (2011-ish) was a watershed moment. It is good in some ways, and problematic in others.
> “Re: Nebulas: these links may be of interest: Tor does OK in terms of nominations but poorly in terms of wins/nominations.”
It’s similar for the Hugos. For novels, at least, Tor does very well in nominations (38 total) but does not have the highest win rate for its nominations (21%).
Publishers with a higher Hugo best novel win rate that have a significant number of nominations include (grouping different imprints of the same publisher together):
Bantam Books/Bantam Spectra/Spectra Books, Harper & Row/HarperCollins/HarperPrism/William Morrow/Morrow/Eos, Galaxy Science Fiction, Doubleday, Ballantine Books, Putnam Publishing Group/Berkeley Putnam, Baen Books, and Astounding Science Fiction.
Tor isn’t at the bottom of the pack in terms of in terms of the win-to-nomination ratio (Ace, for example, has 3 wins/21 nominations and 14%), but it’s definitely below the median for it.
@Fred Davis: Which he might repeat again, so maybe we are stuck in a Groundpuppy Day loop.
I volunteer to snog Andie McDowell if it will get us out of that.
Really, there’s no need to thank me.
@Eric:
Picking a couple of low-hanging fruit here…
Thus proving that you haven’t checked to original sources. Let me just help you out. If you read that link, you’ll find the following quote (bold in the original, original italics marked with asterisks):
Elsewhere, on Twitter, Kowal confirmed that some of the memberships she gave away had been funded by Puppy supporters. (I’ll leave finding that as an exercise for the student.)
Nope. Larry Correia reached out to Nero in January.
1/2 @Nero it was suggested I contact you. I’m a NYT bestselling novelist who ran a campaign to get outsiders into our SJW dominated awards
2/2 @Nero this predates GG, but the tactics were very similar. We’re doing it again this year. http://monsterhunternation.com/2014/04/24/an-explanation-about-the-hugo-awards-controversy/ …”
And Nero replied: Watch @voxday and @monsterhunter45 closely over the next few months http://monsterhunternation.com/2015/01/26/sad-puppies-3-the-ensaddening/ … They’re going to make the Hugos fun…
Dex on May 26, 2015 at 10:13 am said:
“The duty of the journalist is to further those ends by seeking truth and providing a fair and comprehensive account of events and issues. Conscientious journalists from all media and specialties strive to serve the public with thoroughness and honesty. Professional integrity is the cornerstone of a journalist’s credibility.”
This is a nice statement of ideals. Journalists follow it to about the same degree that people in other fields follow the statements of ideals for those fields. Humans are imperfect beasts. In any field, most people will try to do a good job, and a smaller number will actually succeed.
There are a few things to be known about journalists. They work on deadlines. Journalists look for an answer. Once an answer is discovered an article can be written. Compare this to the scholar who looks for all possible answers. This doesn’t mean that scholars are better than journalists. It just means they work under different constraints.
Bruce Baugh : In the Puppies’ world, campaigning to dissolve people’s marriages, deny them the vote, starve them, deny them medical care and shelter, and to make it licit to harass, abuse, stalk, attack, and kill them is all fine. So is explaining why it’s perfectly rational to throw acid in their face and shoot them in the head. But interfere with their right to make a buck selling fiction? That’s too far!
You’re overlooking the crucial factor contained in this joke:
“Comedy is when *you* fall down a manhole and die. Tragedy is when *I* stub a toe.
Jeffro
I’m glad that you’ve found books that you enjoy reading; that is, after all, what it’s supposed to be about. I’m sure that you will equally appreciate that those of us who read and enjoyed the authors you like many decades ago look for something different nowadays; imitation/plagiarism may be the sincerest form of flattery but it gets boring pretty quickly…
Adam-Troy Castro: As good as I am — and I know that I can be very good indeed, from time to time — I know that the number of writers who would make me look like a guy impotently jabbing his sharpie at the inside of a paper bag must be, MUST be, teeming enough to fill a respectable-sized SFWA business meeting, perhaps even a full convention.
That’s really modest, coming from a guy who in his two Hugo bids was only beaten by Connie Willis, Allen Steele, and Harry Turtledove.
I’ve been meaning to read Emissaries from the Dead – now I might make it a priority.
@Hampus Eckerman
If we can agree on Vance, then… well I can’t really think of anything that matters more than that. I honestly don’t care about the imbroglio. Okay, I’d be lying if I didn’t say that some things get under my skin. But seriously, nothing makes me happier than seeing people reading and discussing classic science fiction and fantasy *regardless* of their opinion on it (or me.)
(And if anyone wants to discuss H. P. Lovecraft and Fritz Leiber, my two most recent retrospectives should provide a great place to do it. But that’s technically off topic for this thread, I suppose. But really, if you’re tired of the squabbling I can certify those two posts as being culture war free! How good a deal is that?!)
I loved RED PLENTY and heard plenty of chatter about it at, for example, ICFA, and through some fans who attend WisCon frequently, but it wasn’t a mainstream Hugo choice and if I recall correctly got my vote in Best Related Work, not Best Novel. I wonder if many other people who enjoyed the book nevertheless felt that it wasn’t actually a novel, but rather a series of fictionalized vignettes designed to illustrate the non-fiction principles so completely endnoted by the author.
(Do I find it funny that someone with such a thing for journalistic integrity should make so many easily provably wrong statements? Why yes, yes I do.)
Eric; Honestly, I’d have a bunch more respect for the people who hate vox for what he says if they were half as willing to go after authors on their own side of the damned house who are just as guilty of egregious words and behavior.
The only one “on their side” who comes even close is Requires Hate or whatever he/she is calling him/herself these days, and they’ve been roasted thoroughly.
When Kowal declared that she was buying Hugo memberships for people who couldn’t afford them, I tweeted:
If anyone doesn’t have $40 to spend on the Hugo awards I’ll send you $40 to spend on anything BUT the Hugo Awards. Groceries, pills etc.?
https://twitter.com/NMamatas/status/587117725035601920
I ended up buying two people some groceries, and some sanitary napkins and the like for a battered women’s shelter. Really, anyone who doesn’t have $40 to spare (and that was me back in the 1990s) has better things to worry about than the Hugo awards.
“I’m sure that you will equally appreciate that those of us who read and enjoyed the authors you like many decades ago look for something different nowadays.”
Yes, of course.
There actually is a parallel to gaming here. When I see a new game, I generally check the comments on Board Game Geek by people that rated it a “10.” I don’t need the even handed reviews. I don’t need the negative reviews. I just want to know… what is it about this game that makes people go “wow!”
That’s what my Appendix N series is. A series of “golly gee whiz I can’t believe I’m reading this and it totally changes my life” type reviews for a target audience that is mostly unfamiliar with the works. It is not the whole picture by any stretch of the imagination. It would take dozens of fan writers to even begin to produce something like that.
Kimberly K – It has definitely felt like GG redux, to me.
Me too, not in just the extremely limited view that an art medium should only be entertaining and any work that challenges the perceptions of the audience is an attack on the medium, but in their arguments about it.
The appeal to the nostalgia. The insinuations of SJW cabals. The persecution complexes. The grouping together of everyone who disagrees with them as Anti-them to make it about two sides. The failure to back up their accusations.
The deja vu is uncanny.
As a long-time reader and admirer of Jack Vance who also is an old-time D&D player, my take on Vance is less that of a gamer who is into magic systems and more that of a lover of language and picaresque tales. That’s why I think Jeffro Johnson deserves to get an award at Gencon, not Worldcon myself.
@Nick: I get your point, but I was refuting Eric’s contention that Kowal’s offer was meant to overcome obscurity, not impecuniousness.
Firstly, there is no “their own side of the damned house.” There are the Puppies, and then there is no other side. None. There are thousands of independent individuals with no leaders, no organization, not much of a connection, just an interest. The “other side” exists only as a mirage of the Puppies.
Secondly, citations please. Name someone not in the Puppies who you think is “just as guilty of egregious words and behavior” who has not already been condemned by people you keep insisting as labeling as the Other Side.
Thirdly, withholding your respect for the latest in a long string of ever-changing demands which keep getting disproven is not much of a burden.
Fourthly, are you seriously demanding that people hush up about Theodore Beale?
As Abi Sutherland said, Correia reached out to GamerGate while publicizing Sad Puppies 3. He does not hide the fact he did this and has declared himself a fan of that movement. He said on Twitter last month, “I think GamerGate is awesome.”
On Correia’s blog, some of his commenters persist in thinking there was no attempt by him to reach out to that crowd. When I posted a comment similar to this one, Correia responded with this:
(Correia’s redesign has broken links to specific comments, but here’s the post where he made that comment.)