Far From the Barking Crowd 6/24

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aka Canine of Gore

Today’s roundup brings you Vox Day, Peter Grant, John C. Wright, Cat Valente, Lis Carey, Laura “Tegan” Gjovaag, Scott Kennedy, Camestros Felapton, Spacefaring Kitten, Mark Dennehy, and Fred Kiesche. (Title credit is due to File 770 contributing editors of the day Jane Dark and Rev. Bob.)

Vox Day on Vox Popoli

“Stage 2: snail mail” – June 24

Since Macmillan has yet to respond to any of the many emails it has received from hundreds of people, it’s now time to take things to Stage 2 of the Tor Books boycott. Mail a handwritten postcard or index card to each of the following three individuals informing them that as long as Irene Gallo is employed by Tor Books or Tor.com, you will not be purchasing any books published by Tor Books…..

It’s interesting, is it not, to contrast the way in which Walmart, Amazon, and Ebay were so quick to respond to totally nonexistent pressure to stop selling Confederate flag-related material with Macmillan’s non-response to receiving thousands of emails. This is the difference that SJW entryism makes. I’ve seen the BBC “react” and change its policies due to “outrage” that was later reported to be a grand total of 17 complaints.

 

Peter Grant on Bayou Renaissance Man

“The latest development in the Tor boycott” – June 24

I’d be very grateful if those of my readers who support my position would please send letters requesting the above to the addressees Vox has listed on his blog.  That’ll add the weight of our numbers, and our more moderate requests, to those supporting his position.  The SJW’s are lumping all of us together, whether we agree with that or not – they’re equal-opportunity blamers – so why not use our combined strength in numbers?

 

John C. Wright

“Tor and the Volunteer Thought Police Department” – June 24

Whatever the solution, I am confident my loyal readers who do not want my sale numbers to fall, so that the accountants continue to regard my work as a legitimate source of revenue, so that I can continue to write books for you. Hence I am sure you would like to see a speedy resolution to this matter.

In that spirit, and without expressing my private opinion about the right and wrong in this matter, I urge my readers to write to Tor and Macmillan to express your gratitude for their many fine publications you have purchased over the years, and your disappointment in the events that seem to be hindering that comfortable relationship, and eroding buyer loyalty.

…. The spirit of compromise would suggest that if I become half-honest, Tor’s upper management could tell half as many lies with half as much vitriol and bigotry.

It is in that spirit of half-honesty that I am pretending to be neutral in this matter. In truth, I am not willing to compromise on the question of having readers who like my work. Indeed, I would like more readers who like my work even more.

Which means I would like to get back to my job.

To get back to my job requires Tor’s editors, Mr Feder, Miss Gallo, and Mr Nielsen Hayden, to get back to the their job of editing books, and cease moonlighting as the racial conformity officers, Christ-hating crusaders for Sodom, defenders of fainting feminist damsels in distress, public scolds, soapbox preachers, cheerleaders for the Two Minute Hate, riotmongers, and volunteer thought police department for the science fiction genre.

Or so I might say were I to express an opinion, which I will not. You, however, my beloved readers, patrons, and employers, whom I live to serve with fearless pen, I invite to express your opinion to the addresses given above.

 

Scott Kennedy in a comment to Adam-Troy Castro on Facebook – June 24

If You Were a Dinosaur My Love is the #Benghazi! of the Sad Puppies

 

Vox Day on Vox Popoli

“An interesting admission and EPH analysis” – June 24

One of the more amusing aspects of File 770 is the way that the commenters there are both a) absolutely obsessed with me and b) hell-bent on denying that I am of any import whatsoever. So they repeatedly claim that they just want to talk about books while mostly talking about the Puppies; in the meantime, nary a link in the round-up has anything to do with anything that isn’t related to me, the Puppies, or the Torlings dutifully doing exactly what I assumed they would do from the start, which is destroy the village in the name of saving it.

I find the EPH proposal to be very promising in this regard, as it is designed by the Torlings at Making Light to permit Tor Books to avoid being shut out in the future and ensure it at least one nomination per category every year. Of course, it will hand the Puppies the same fixed claim on the Hugos, which will gradually turn the award into a five-faction competition, perhaps four if we continue to build our numbers to the point where we can reliably lay claim to two nominations per category. It’s a very parliamentarian proposal.

It means that DAW and some of the other smaller publishers had better decide quickly whether they are better off fighting amongst themselves for the 2-3 open slots or fight the proposal, because if EPH passes, some of them will never see another Hugo nomination after 2017… unless the TORlings are willing to give up one of their own seats on what will effectively be the Hugo Security Council.

It’s telling that the Torlings would rather hand us the equivalent of a permanent nomination slot than compete directly with us. It demonstrates that for all of the bluster and splashing about of the small fry, the bigger fish in the little SF pond realize that the Puppies are a serious force with which they must expect to reckon indefinitely.

I am neither endorsing nor opposing EPH or any other rules changes this year. The reason is that when those rules changes implode the awards as I anticipate, I want all responsibility for the changes to be credited to those who proposed and voted for them.

 

nerds of a feather, flock together

“Assessing the Hugo Reform Proposals” – June 24

There are currently three proposals for Hugo reform that will be discussed at the Sasquan business meeting. None are in the ballpark of the comprehensive reforms I’ve suggested, but are at least attempts to rationalize and/or streamline areas of the Hugo process that are either inefficient, inexplicable or path dependent to older models of the SF/F field. Here I assess their merits…..

 

Metafilter

Discussion thread: “Saga of the Sagas”

This years proposed Worldcon rule changes included one introducing a new Hugo Award, for Best Saga: A work of science fiction or fantasy appearing in multiple volumes and consisting of at least 400,000 words of which the latest part was published in the previous calendar year. Initially the new award was coupled with the removal of an old one: Best Novellete. This raised some objections and that part of the proposal was removed.

 

 

Laura “Tegan” Gjovaag on Bloggity-Blog-Blog-Blog

“Hugo Reviewing – Fan Artist” – June 24

[Reviews all five nominees.]

In the end it’s a toss-up between Leggett and Schoenhuth for me. I like them both a lot, but I’m not sure how to decide between them. I’ll have to sleep on it. The other three are distantly behind, but none of them are so bad they don’t deserve an award. I think Aalto is on the bottom of my ballot, but the order of the other two is also up in the air for me.

 

Lis Carey on Lis Carey’s Library

“Strange Horizons, Niall Harrison, editor-in-chief” – June 24

Strange Horizons is a 2015 Best Semiprozine Hugo nominee.

Strange Horizons publishes speculative fiction, poetry, reviews, interviews, and essays. It’s possible, though not easy or obvious, to get to 2014 material. Unfortunately, I bounced off every piece of fiction I tried to read in it. That doesn’t mean it’s not necessarily excellent fiction; it means only that I bounced off it. My only further comment is that it doesn’t have the visual attractiveness of some of the other nominees.

 

Camestros Felapton

“Let’s talk about puppy poo” – June 25

… Early on I ranked this as the worst overall of the Puppy Nominees but aside from that I haven’t  reviewed it here for two reasons.

  1. Initially I was cross that such obvious  rubbish had been nominated and I didn’t see much worth in an angry review.
  2. I decided not to spend my energies being mean to authors – even the weakest of writers us doing a brave thing by putting their writing out there. Additionally I thought Kary English made some good points here: http://karyenglish.com/2015/04/on-anger-power-and-displacement-in-the-hugos-part-one-of-possibly-several/

A couple if things have made me reconsider this. Firstly Wisdom from My Internet really us so genuinely  awful that it is important in considering  the legitimacy  of the Sad Puppy campaign. Secondly Michael Z Williamson’s recent social media ‘jokes’ on the Charleston murders indicate that  I needn’t be too concerned  about hurting anybody’s feelings. Having said that, this isn’t a revenge review – the issue us the work not the author and the author clearly must have a sufficiently  thick skin for me not to be too worried about inadvertently  offending him.

 

 

https://twitter.com/MarkDennehy/status/613640450243756032

 

https://twitter.com/FredKiesche/status/613759661137887232

Bunglespleen and the Leg Sleeves

<http://bunglespleen.tumblr.com/tagged/ayn-rand/chrono>

We’re a post-new-wave punkabilly rock zydeco blog. And right now, we’re reading Hugo Award-winning novels.

“In retrospect, it was perhaps a mistake to turn Ayn Rand’s reanimated corpse into the galactic empress.”

—   Hyperion Shivered, Hugo winner 1973

#fake first lines#ayn rand#she leads them to glorious victory over the Slug Collective#but then her support of a completely unrestrained market leads to societal collapse and a lack of train service#capitalism

 

 

[Voodoo? Who do?]

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778 thoughts on “Far From the Barking Crowd 6/24”

  1. Well, it’s difficult to prepare for all eventualities if you are deluded enough to believe that it’s possible to prepare for all eventualities.

    I suspect that the master plan consists of asserting that he is amused. It’s about as believable as Santa Claus going Ho, Ho, Ho when he gets stuck in the chimney…

  2. @Jane That’s great! That sense of her playing with convention was nearly visionary.

  3. I remember being all happy some years back when “The Avengers” movie was announced, thinking it would be about Steed and Mrs. Peel. And I couldn’t understand why my friends were talking about Iron Man….

    Rest in peace, Patrick Macnee.

  4. Shedding a tear for Steed as well. It wasn’t till years after ‘The Avengers’ that I realized he also starred with Alastair Sim in one of my top five movies of all time ‘Scrooge’.

  5. Hampus Eckerman : …Or your subway have to wait because there is some problems with a wondering tunnel troll.

    Nothing personal – purely in the spirit of those posts in another thread about their/there/they’re and rain/rein/reign, etc. –

    Why would a tunnel troll engaging in the act of speculation cause hold-ups in the subway schedule? Did it choose to stand on the tracks to do its wondering? What is it wondering about, I wonder? Does it wander, as it wonders, down under the ground?

    …and so forth.

    It’s a really easy word to just typo in a blog comment, and complaining about others’ typos typically opens one up to complaints about one’s own egregious mistakes. But this typo gets made and replicated all the time, specifically on badges, ribbons, buttons for sale in new age shops, usenet .sig files, and so forth, as a misspelled quote/paraphrase of Tolkien. It makes me gnash my teeth and want to yell “WANDER! NOT ALL WHO –WANDER– ARE LOST!”

    Thank you. I feel better now.

  6. Cpaca on Teh Spoiler:

    You Utter Ratbag, Sir or Madam!

    …and the Simon & Garfunkel song is “The Boxer”, I believe.

  7. @Soon Lee and @Glenn,

    Thanks for letting me know. I guess I should have realized that VD would want to emulate Xanatos. He’s got a decent evil plan going, and I agree that he will declare victory no matter what. I don’t understand how someone can be that hateful.

    (There’s a quote from The Three-Body Problem that really struck me. I feel okay posting it because it’s from very early:

    Is it possible that the relationship between humanity and evil is similar to the relationship between the ocean and an iceberg floating on its surface? Both the ocean and the iceberg are made of the same material. That the iceberg seems separate is only because it is in a different form. In reality, it is but a part of the vast ocean….

    Me, I’m not sure I believe in evil. But it’s difficult to fathom that mindset otherwise. I feel literally nauseous reading VD or JCW’s words. That kind of rage terrifies me.)

    And on a lighter note, back to Gargoyles. Am I the only one who loved Hudson?

    Also, @Cassy B.

    There was an Avengers movie. It bombed.

    ETA: Hooray for being able to edit out an html failure!

  8. It will be nice when we get past this nonsense: I’m reading Peter Watt’s ‘Blindside’, which, for something involving vampires, is still on the need to pay attention end of the range, and then I’m thrown out by:

    ‘a rogue halo element from Canis Major – a dismembered remnant of some long-lost galaxy that had drifted into ours and ended up as road kill’

    and thinking yes, that definitely fits…

    .

  10. Valley of Horses is the only book in that series that I have reread. I first read the series in my teens. I have read valley several times, skipping almost all of Jondalar – it’s a reliable “I got the flu, kill me please” book. If I pass out or vomit on it, eh, no harm and I quite like all the horse and liony parts.

  11. MPMRommel: Thanks for that link about persuasion! I slip too easily into “hammer with data” responses myself.

  12. Just FYI, I’ve posted a consolidated, slightly modified version of my lesbian romance SFF recommendation posts here:

    http://kyrademon.livejournal.com/75556.html

    Looks like it can be edited after the fact (it’s been a LONG time since my livejournal got any exercise, but I’m pretty sure this is possible), so I may add books over time as I come across them.

  13. Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little:

    Now tunnel trolls wonder about many wonderous things. But I remember a tunnel troll from my youth. He wondered where his green woolen cap was. Perhaps in the subway. Who knows, who knows. Perhaps not even the shadow.

  14. Vox Day’s comment about how much pressure Tor has been getting (impressive, isn’t it, that toward the beginning, there were HUNDREDS of emails, but by the time that he got toward the end of writing, so many had come in that there were THOUSANDS — they must have been coming in fast and furious!) reminds me of the classic song written by Jo Walton, to the tune of “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean”:
    The Lurkers support me in e-mail
    They all think I’m great don’t you know
    You posters just don’t understand me
    But soon you will reap what you sow

    Oh, it’s true and you know they support me
    There’s thousands of lurkers out there
    They all understand my intentions
    You posters are not being fair!

    Lurkers, Lurkers, Lurkers support me, you’ll see, you’ll see
    Off in e-mail, the lurkers support me, you’ll see

    The lurkers support me in e-mail
    “So why don’t they post?” you all cry
    They’re scared of your hostile intentions
    They just can’t be as brave as I

    Lurkers, lurkers, lurkers support me, you’ll see, you’ll see
    Off in e-mail lurkers support me, you’ll see

    On day I’ll round up all my lurkers
    We’ll have a newsgroup of our own
    Without all this flak from you morons
    My lurkers will post round my throne

    Lurkers, lurkers, lurkers support me, you’ll see, you’ll see
    Off in e-mail lurkers support me, you’ll see

  15. @Jane_Dark – Valley of Horses is not notable for its prose stylings–words like “workmanlike” and “serviceable” come to mind. I won’t swear it holds up, exactly, but it also isn’t quite as Suck Fairy-ed as many other works of my youth.

    There’s a particular itch that is scratched–at least in me, and arguably in a large chunk of the populace–by heroines who are completely shit on by life and who survive anyway, because damnit, they are amazing* and screw those people. And I think Valley of Horses is probably one of the iddyiest of id-fic in that regard. You don’t get much more primal than cave lions and clubs. (I’d also say “Daughter of the Forest” and “Deerskin” both do some of the id-fic overcoming-misery-thing, although in much shorter format and with fewer bison.)

    It occasionally drops into–lord, not even infodump, more “National Geographic Guide To Ice Age Europe”–but since I enjoy that sort of thing, it doesn’t bother me much. (Now, later books, including Book Six, aka “Let Us Visit Every Goddamn Cave In The World To Prove I Did My Research” go overboard on this.)

    I could have thought of at least four different wraps for Book Six that would have done it better, and if I had all the time in the world for fan-fic, I would rewrite the vershlugging thing to prove a point and snatch part of my childhood from the jaws of abject failure, but I don’t, so I am still vaguely hoping someone else does it for me.

    *Which is different in a couple key ways than “I am succeeding because I am just so amazing” as discussed earlier, but that’s another rant.

  17. And yet more echoes of the canine campaign from Peter Watt’s ‘Blindside’.

    “There’s a syndrome you might have heard about, eh? Fast talkers, no conscience, tend to malapropism and self-contradiction. No emotional affect.
    “We’re not talking about human beings here,” James said again, softly.
    “But if we were,” Szpindel added, “we might call Rorschach a clinical sociopath.”

    In fairness, I should say that many Sad Puppies may well be onboard the slate because they have been lied to by people they trust; one of the things which I hope E Pluribus Hugo will achieve is that everyone, including the Puppies, will get a fair chance of getting their best picks onto the ballot paper, so that the voters have the best pool to choose from.

    I personally am really angry about Brad’s libelling of the members of Loncom; I will probably carry on being angry about that. But I also see that my anger isn’t important in considering what the best way forward is. If they want to do it again then they will have abandoned decency and will no longer get the benefit of the doubt…

  18. There is also the yawning chasm between European views on sexuality and the US; Wright likes to pretend that his views are mainstream Catholic but if you look at countries which are unambiguously Catholic in Europe there is far more acceptance of same sex relationships, and distinct revulsion from Wright’s views.

    To be honest, even as screwed up as the US general view on sex usually is, Wright is pretty far from the mainstream even here. That’s saying something.

  19. Enjoyed Clan of the Cave Bear and Valley of Horses, and yes, I’ve read the rest of the series, and if I never see another verse of “The Mother’s Song” I will be very happy.

    But, what the hell happened to the last book? We slogged through swamps, over glaciers, through stampeding beasts, and left behind the hot springs, for THIS?!

    I don’t know when I’ve been more disappointed.

    I don’t mind the Neanderthal Geographic approach, anyone who enjoys Michener’s works wouldn’t have a problem with that, but the last volume was way lacking in plot — it came across as a rehash of Mammoth Hunters with a slice of infidelity by Jondalar on the side…

  21. Hampus Eckerman on June 25, 2015 at 11:11 am said:
    Soon people will call Lord of the Flies a YA book also…

    You would be astonished how many US kids have been made to read it for English class.

  22. Praises to all the powers that I didn’t have to read “Lord of the Flies” in school! Dicken’s “Great Expectations” and the mewling “A Separate Peace” were bad enough.

    Funny, I found “Silas Marner” enjoyable, and managed to make it through “A Tale of Two Cities” (The Scarlet Pimpernel was more fun) — man, is it obvious that they were paying Dickens by the word…

  23. Gabriel F: “To be honest, even as screwed up as the US general view on sex usually is, Wright is pretty far from the mainstream even here. That’s saying something.” Right. The US is in the midst of an ongoing fairly rapid change in views on a bunch of sexual issues, and the movement is all away from Wright and such.

  24. “I have graciously accepted Irene Gallo’s apology, by which I mean I am going to shit on her every chance I get until I die.” — John C. Wright.

  25. @Will R. —

    Not according to the Compleat Litter of Puppy Titles in the header — and it certainly gets my vote!

  27. Gabriel F.

    I do understand that Wright is out of the US mainstream view; unfortunately that still leaves the Southern Baptists for him to stand shoulder to shoulder with. And since we are closer to Africa we have a better view of what US churches have done in Africa; it’s absolutely stomach turning.

    I think I’ve mentioned before that the only bar to to them is the UN; the Secretary General visited large numbers of African States and explained to them that they are, of course, entitled to enact laws for imprisoning gay people, and imprisoning people who don’t denounce gay people to the police quickly enough, but that if they have money to spare to do that then they obviously don’t need international aid, and the aid will go elsewhere.

    I gather Scandinavians were a very important example of people who would cease to provide money if they went ahead. Hampus would be the person who knows about this, so I’ll hand over to him, if he wishes to comment.

    But one of the less obvious take-away notes for this is that the U.S. churches who promulgated all of this are horrendously naive, OK vicious and naive; they thought international aid organisations are wimps, and they could roll right over them. It didn’t occur to them that surviving in the really hot spots of the world demonstrates ability to survive…

  28. Enjoyed Clan of the Cave Bear and Valley of Horses, and yes, I’ve read the rest of the series, and if I never see another verse of “The Mother’s Song” I will be very happy.

    But, what the hell happened to the last book? We slogged through swamps, over glaciers, through stampeding beasts, and left behind the hot springs, for THIS?!

    This is me! Holy cow!!

    I identified so strongly with the first book, which I read when I was 10 or 11. I so wanted to be an herbal medicine person, living at one with nature, being all daring and different and beautiful (even though everyone else thought I was ugly…)

    Then the second book was still good, but the Jondalar parts got a huge side-eye because they were all about some guy and his magic schlong and he was boring.

    Then… well. I think I’ve said in other places that once I’m invested in a series, I’ll finish it. And it definitely beats out all the other disappointing series I’ve waited around for.

    I suppose GRRM still has time, but I don’t know how he’d top Plains of Passage.

  29. Three reasons for adding a new award category:
    Some content is not getting enough notice
    Some content is getting too much attention, downing out everything else.
    Content could bring in additional readers.

    YA definitely works under all three. A significant amount of YA is actually SFF~ish so it’s not like adding historical romance or poetry. Little known YA SFF books could use some love, mega-best sellers have taken Novel Nom spots in the past (though this has been rare). And it might interest more young readers in SFF and other Hugo award winners. I really don’t see a downside.
    Also there is a significant portion of YA readers that are not actually young. And YA does frequently deal with adult/interesting themes in an unusual and interesting ways. (angst! robots! magic! space!) Personally, I feel it does a better job of dealing with sexuality and sexual idenity (but that’s just me).

    Finally! The Belgariad is absolutely YA, whereas the Mallorean is NA. 🙂 Ender’s Game would be YA if it was released today.

  30. Plains of Passage didn’t bother me all that much, weirdly enough–I think they were at least going SOMEWHERE. (Though I could have done without the turned-on-by-mammoth-sex scene.)

    But Jesus, whiny passive-aggressive Jondalar. That schlong better be covered in glitter and sparkles if she’s putting up with all that.

  31. But Jesus, whiny passive-aggressive Jondalar.

    That was my other problem with him. He was pretty, and apparently had magic peen (GMP?) but he’s just mean. And when he’s not mean, he’s whiny. Gah, she could have done much better… especially since she’s the Mariest of Mary Sues.

  34. “Yeah, I could totally club a bison to death with a horse legbone if I really NEEDED to in order to survive.”

    Imagines bison slowly getting annoyed at drunk wombat.

    Imagines flying wombat …

  36. Lis Carey,

    When did JJ or anyone else say anything even vaguely resembling a claim that Hartwell was editing JCW pro bono?

    Hartwell is certainly at least one of the best editors in the field,

    Of course he is one of the best. JJ didn’t say he deserves a Hugo for his other work. JJ said if he can make JCW’s writing readable he deserves flowers and a Hugo, so I wondered if he deserves it for his perspicacity or simply for roaming the land polishing bad prose like an editorial Robin Hood. Perhaps we’ll never know.

  38. Camestros Felapton,

    Also, I assume they would regard the people who comment at ML (or Scalzi’s Whatever or GRRM’s live journal) as to be so deeply embedded in the hive mind as to be incapable of independent thought. They may assume the commenters here are spitefully and willfully not agreeing with what an awesome idea the Puppy campaigns were.

    Alternatively, maybe they think they would have been able to handle a certain amount of legitimate criticism, but that our repeating the Two Minute Hate approximately every two minutes, day in and day out, has gotten to be a bit much.

    Oops, did I just say “we” again? Sorry.

  39. Hampus Eckerman: This might just be my swedish background again, but… books with sex in them can’t be young adult, but it is totally ok with books about freaking genocide??

    Oh, Ender’s Game is definitely YA. I only read it a few years ago as an adult — after years of hearing other adults (mostly male) rave about “how absolutely awesome it is! Seriously!!! You have to read it! You’ll love it!”

    I was half-bewildered and half-horrified. Bewildered because I thought it was written in a very simplistic, juvenile-fiction style that I would not have found enjoyable as a 12-year-old (never mind as an adult), and wondering how all these adults could possibly think it was so amazing. (I eventually decided that it was because most of them had read it as teenagers, and what they were remembering was the book as they had read it, not the actual book itself.) Bewildered because it’s supposedly beloved by really-intelligent children who can totally relate to the protagonist — despite the juvenile writing style which can easily be understood by the most average child who sees himself as being incredibly intelligent.

    I was horrified, because the book presents life as definable by good and bad, right and wrong, with no shades of gray in between, and because its message is “as long as you’re the good guy and you’re acting in a ‘noble’ cause, whatever you have to do to win is fine”. Ender kills two people — but it’s okay, because they were bullies and picked on him. He himself never has to deal with the consquences of his killings, because knowledge of the deaths is kept from him.

    Ender is a totally awesome space-battle gamer who almost single-handedly defeats the aliens (talk about a Mary Sue!). Sure, he commits genocide — but he was tricked into it by those bad, awful adults, and anyway, if he hadn’t, the aliens would have destroyed the humans, so what else could he do?

    Now, reading this as an adult with a well-developed moral and ethical compass, a sense of compassion for The Other, and an understanding that life is hugely complex and everything is varying shades of gray rather than a binary good/bad, I found the book’s events horrifying. But the average teenager, who doesn’t have that life experience, who’s not yet over the childhood belief that “everything is about me”, that teenager is going to see Ender as a really great hero, and regard the things he’s done as “just what had to be done” — without any of the moral / ethical nuance.

    Which, to me, explains a very great deal about the Puppies, and makes it very not surprising that Ender’s Game is not infrequently held up as an example of great adventure SF with No Message. It’s got a great kickass hero who’s really smart, just like the teenager reading the book! He always wins, because he is the Good Guy and on The Side of Right!

    The message is there, all right — but they don’t have the compassion or the moral / ethical compass to see it, so yay! Message-free! And from their point-of-view, it must be intelligently-written — because they loved it, and they’re incredibly intelligent!

    Now, Speaker for the Dead is another thing entirely. But I think it’s very telling — in a really awful way — that my city library has 150 copies of Ender’s Game, and I started out at the end of a waiting list for the book. Whereas the library has only around 12 copies of Speaker for the Dead — and I didn’t have to be on a waiting list. This makes me very sad. It tells me there are a lot of teenagers thinking what a great book Ender’s Game is — and completely missing its message.

  40. Brian Z

    There are entire philosophical concepts which are enlightening us; unfortunately you have failed even to comment on one.

    You do vast amounts of wondering, as ever, and then bring in your trademark:

    ‘Perhaps we’ll never know.’

    I’m bored rigid with it…

  42. But I think it’s very telling — in a really awful way — that my city library has 150 copies of Ender’s Game, and I started out at the end of a waiting list for the book. Whereas the library has only around 12 copies of Speaker for the Dead — and I didn’t have to be on a waiting list.

    Well, the first book in a series is always more popular, and it was a movie, and it is often on school reading lists these days.

  43. that our repeating the Two Minute Hate approximately every two minutes, day in and day out, has gotten to be a bit much.

    What are you even on about?

  44. Gabriel

    I haven’t a clue. Admittedly it’s 4.27 am in England, which doesn’t help, but I have no idea.

    I really do need to get to sleep..

  45. Gabriel:

    What are you even on about?

    Apparently, the Puppies have some sort of two-minute ritual they repeat all day. It explains why they’re so agitated all the time.

    Anyway, Brian’s saying that them doing it so often like that broke their brains.

  46. Rather than put something like Ender’s Game in a YA box, I’d rather just call it a good book, which a lot of young people appreciate as much as we do.

    I always wondered if the theme of young children forced to grow up quickly might have been inspired by what he saw in the Sao Paolo slums during his missionary work.

  47. Gabriel F.:

    that our repeating the Two Minute Hate approximately every two minutes, day in and day out, has gotten to be a bit much.

    What are you even on about?

    I’m on about the 24-hour comment cycle where you can always be sure of hearing someone make another remark about how terrible (stupid, etc.) “the Puppies” are. The “Two Minute Hate” was a reference to the John C. Wright post titled “The Volunteer Thought Police Department,” which was a reference to George Orwell’s 1984, which is a great science fiction novel, and hey, weren’t we supposed to be all talking about the great books that we love? How serendipitous.

  48. You do realize that’s pretty much what we’ve been doing all day, right? Get over yourself. We don’t need you to drag us back on-topic to a topic we’ve been on.

  49. Gabriel F., do you mean like this comment from the previous page?

    Gabriel F. on June 25, 2015 at 1:47 pm said:
    I think I said a month ago that Vox and Brad have themselves positioned so that no matter what the outcome, they can claim it as a victory condition. If they get No Awarded, they use it as proof that the system is corrupt. If they win a few Hugos, then they managed to force a victory trophy from the hands of the literati. If they manage to win all the Hugos, then they’ve won a complete victory and the literati will have to compete with slates of their own. If the literati use slates of their own , then the Puppy position is justified. If the literati change the rules, then they admit they couldn’t beat the Puppies “fairly.”

    There’s really nothing we can do to change their outlook even a little, so I recommend ignoring their outlook completely. I’d rather talk about books. Buuut that’s me.

  50. I thought Talut was dead sexy, myself, but yes! Ranec over Jondalar any day.

    If we are ever geographically convergent, coffee!

    @rgl – I could too! I mean, if the bison was immobilized, and perhaps sedated.

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