591 thoughts on “First Dragon Awards Presented”

1. StephenfromOttawa on September 6, 2016 at 11:34 am said:
   There are quite a few Baen books in the sf section at the Kanata Chapters store I frequent at lunchtime, including many by authors I’ve never heard of. This leads me to suspect that their brand of fiction may be more popular than we might think.

   I don’t doubt that Baen are popular in North America but, like I said, I can’t recall ever having seen their books in the UK or in Turkey.

2. Dammit, now I want a wargame featuring Aristotle.

   In at least one version of Sid Meier’s Civilization, one of the great leaders who would pop up as a bonus was Aristotle.

3. @rcade:

   She used needing a wheelchair, walker or oxygen tube as an insult against people she was ridiculing. How else could it possibly be interpreted but bigotry?

   It’s not bigotry against the disabled. It’s mockery of WSFS for being a bunch of old people. That’s fair comment with which I disagree.

   And man! Every time I get frustrated with people over here acting kinda like dicks and I have cause to dive into the crazy elsewhere, I get my own perspective adjusted back. There are a lot of actual, honest-to-god dicks over there.

4. @John A Arkansawyer – It’s not bigotry against the disabled. It’s mockery of WSFS for being a bunch of old people.

   Or, less charitably (and that’s the tack I’m taking), it’s mockery of the disabled of all ages. I might feel differently another day, but today I don’t feel like buying into apologia for the mean things people say.

   Also, from Mann’s High on Sunday 51: Hate the sinner and love the sin. Not quite what you were saying, but it’s got one of your preferences covered. 😉

5. @Cora : Puppies blend outeverything Non-US. I often asked Puppies questions regarding this and never got an answer. Always ignored. I dont know if we are irrelevant or we just dont fit their worldview. And I cant say I saw a Baen somewhere here, but I havent particulary looked. Correira was an unknown to me before the puppies. Oh, and of course I started with Schwarze Auge, but quickly moved to MERS . Because I am a snob.

   To add icing to the “yes, we’re familiar with this stuff” some of us are even actual game designers; even going so far as to do some work for companies well-known for their SFnal content, like SJG, GDW, Chaosium, etc.

   Or have published and will publish with companies with wargaming content such as Osprey. But European!
   (To be fair:The winner in the boardgame category was well deserved, despite – or because of? – the strange selection of nominees. I dont think Rob Daviau knows that he won an award though, at least he hasnt signaled it in any way (or I missed it). It was not announced in any boardgamesites I know though.

6. Speaking of Civ…only a month or so until Civilization 6!

7. @Paul

   Speaking of Civ…only a month or so until Civilization 6!

   Have they announced the sysreqs, yet?

8. Moira deserves some consideration, I think. Folks who have been through horrific ordeals are changed by them in ways that they feel are necessary for their personal survival. No one can judge the coping mechanisms (rather, no one should – even if they’ve been through similar) and those experiences ought to be taken into account when dealing with that person.

   That does not mean that I have to agree with their conclusions, but I can muster a fair amount of sympathy for the fact that they arrived where they are not through conventional means. A greater degree of understanding for what I consider to be incorrect.

   I liken it to trying to understand the actions and reasoning of the “Judenraat” – the Jewish leaders put in charge of ghettos by the NAZIs; they were placed in unconscionable situations and forced to make decisions for which there were no good answers: Some cooperated for personal safety; some thought that they’d be able to preserve things as long as possible; some thought they were in the best position to determine who lived and who died. None of those responses was “right” – but who the hell am I to judge?

   I can’t judge Moira’s position. All I can do is disagree with her conclusions.

9. @Cheryl S.: I don’t blame you. There’s no law that says one has to take a charitable view of everything all the time. I find it easier on myself to take that view in most cases because it frees me to drop the million pound shithammer without hesitation on the very few cases where the clear moral obligation is to nuke ’em till they glow.

   Selfish, perhaps, but that’s me. Or perhaps a little Exotic.

10. rob_matic on September 6, 2016 at 11:38 am said:

    I don’t doubt that Baen are popular in North America but, like I said, I can’t recall ever having seen their books in the UK or in Turkey.

    Or Australia, I assume because of the original deal with Simon & Schuster (?) they only have distribution of physical books in North America.

    I’ve seen exactly one Baen book in Australia that I noticed – a Bujold in a 2nd hand bookshop.

11. @Steve Davidson: I don’t think it’s intrinsic to being primarily a fan of visual-media sf/f. I know folks who are like that, who have great curiosity about who makes their entertainment, unobvious lines of influence in ideas and techniques, and stuff like that, who end up knowing all kinds of interesting things about context. They sound, really, like my dedicated knitting/weaving/crocheting friends with all the stuff those folks learn thanks to interest in wools and yarns and all.

    Some people are satisfied with the surface of something they like. Some love to delve deeply into whatever it is. Some are anti-curious and use their object of interest as a wall against an unwelcome world. (And really, all of us are sometimes the first and sometimes the second thanks to finite time, and we are all at some risk for being the third sometimes.)

    A fan of, oh, Sense8 and The Expanse and The Man In The High Castle and Fringe and Stranger Things and Orphan Black is very likely interested in a lot of things I am, too. If she likes to watch reflectively and engage with them critically, she’s likely interested in them the same way I am, too. It is overwhelmingly likely that she is a fan like me in ways that no avid Puppies fan.

    As Roger Ebert said, it’s not what a movie is about, it’s how it’s about it. That’s true of mediums, too.

12. The Hugo Winners, volumes one and two.

13. There’s also this discussion on reddit as well, that starts off with

    Puppy chow. Any award that would give “best anything” to John C. Wright (except “best kindling”) is pretty much a joke. I mean, don’t even consider his dire failings as a human being: the dude can’t write. At all. (To be fair, I’ve heard good things about one of his books — Night Lands? But everything I’ve tried to read of his in the last couple of years is just painful.)

14. There’s also this discussion on reddit as well, that starts off with

    I’ve said it before, and it still applies: The worst thing that can happen to the reputations of the Puppy authors is the result of a wider audience reading their work.

15. @Eric
    Strangely and sadly, no. I am expecting my current PC, which is a frankenstein slowly dying, will not be able to run it (It can’t run Stellaris for anything, for instance). Things have gotten to the point where I have to disable leader animations to still play V.

    Consequence of decaying technology.

16. Having looked over the winners, I’d like to congratulate Larry Correia for having gotten exactly the award he deserves. I’m sure that this will give him all the respect he is due by his peers in the industry. May he get all the satisfaction he can from it!

17. @John Seavey

    I take your comment in the spirit it was meant!

18. @ Falling: Larry fans are Larry fans for a reason and would vote for him without a coordinated effort.

    This is absolutely true, nor is he the only author to have such a following. In fact, it can and should be argued that any non-Puppy author who has won a Hugo has done so because they have lots of fans who vote for them without a coordinated effort.

    @ John A: The term you’re looking for is “ableist”, and yes, it is a form of bigotry; pretending that only old people need mobility assistance, or a nasal cannula (ever heard of sleep apnea?), is disability-erasure for a number of people I personally know. I’m surprised you haven’t become acquainted with this concept already, between the places you hang out and the current political campaigns.

19. Nor is there anything wrong with being very old. Survivors, every one. So even supposing this was sneering at people for being old as opposed to for being disabled, it still leaves a lot to be desired in both the empathy and reason departments.

20. Larry fans are Larry fans for a reason and would vote for him without a coordinated effort.

    Sure, but one can also say the same of Butcher fans. The only salient difference between the two is that Correia’s book was on Beale’s totally-not-a-slate wink, wink, nudge, nudge, and Butcher’s was not.

21. I tend to mock my own church for its inability to attract young people. I have no ethical issue with mocking WSFS for the same failing. The parallels are striking, including my feeling that it’s not the worst failing one can have. The inability of my church to put younger members into leadership positions is much worse.

    @Lee: I may be ignorant on this point, but my understanding is that nasal cannulas are the little tubes that feed in oxygen, and that sleep apnea is treated with a mask or more lately the little pads. But yeah, I may be cutting slack here that I shouldn’t be. I just feel bad for Greyland in ways I don’t for most of those who surround her.

22. @Falling & Aaron,
    Another difference is Butcher wasn’t promoting the Dragon Awards on his site the way Correia did.

    BTW does anyone know where the Dragon Award admins are identified apropos this?
    “Yes. They should totally run with that theory and not even bother to participate.
    (which is ironic, since as far as I know the admin’s identities aren’t secret or anything).”

23. Well, I do think of Greyland as an example of “one of the reasons we don’t tolerate child abuse is that it can warp the personality of a vulnerable individual in very unhealthy ways.”

24. I imagine Larry could have won his category simply on the strength of mobilising his fans while no-one else did, with or without VD’s little nudge. Other’s, less so.

    Incidentally, I’m wondering about VD throwing his vote behind Novik in alt-history. Was he simply being consistent with his Kingmaker claims from the Hugos, or did he perhaps want to spoiler Eric Flint?

25. @Soon Lee

    I think Larry knew for sure because he’d exchanged emails with them. Per comments in the ceremony it was one or more DC staffers named Dave!

26. @Aaron: Corriera asked his fans to vote for him. Did Butcher? I know he did for the Hugos, but did he for the Dragons?

27. Mark on September 6, 2016 at 2:45 pm said:
    @Soon Lee

    I think Larry knew for sure because he’d exchanged emails with them. Per comments in the ceremony it was one or more DC staffers named Dave!

    Well, that seems pretty open and transparent to the general public.

28. @John A Arkansawyer,

    No, Butcher did not ask his fans to vote for him for the Dragon Awards, not on his website as far as I can see.

29. @rob_matic: I was just thinking that there’s a difference between “It’s not secret and here’s where everyone can find it” and “It’s not secret and anyone who thinks to ask will be told”. Neither one is a secret; only one is transparent. I’m a skeptic about the value of transparency in many cases, but not in this one.

    @Soon Lee: So it’s an award that gives a premium to hustle (okay) and knowing who to ask (not so okay, but the fault of the organizers, not the contestants).

30. @rob_matic

    To be fair, they did name him/them fully, but mumbly voices over cameraphone video + my lack of enthusiasm to listen multiple times to check means I’m not 100% sure, although I did post what I thought I’d heard somewhere upthread.

    But no, still nothing on their website giving details of the admins, so us poor old general public are in the dark.

31. Ouch. I got banned from Mad Genius Club blog for, well, disrespecting the Dragon Awards, I guess, which in this case consisted of saying that the voting numbers weren’t published. Ah well.

32. @Spacefaringkitten

    
    It had been noted. Consider your status as Cat who May Not Be Named On MGC as a badge of honour or something.

33. Hyman Rosen: I was particularly disappointed that the gaming organizers at MAC2 didn’t arrange for any Magic the Gathering tournaments. And it’s not just DragonCon. I went to Arisia in Boston last year and there were a ton of young people there, including lots of children (and MtG tournaments), and that con is about WorldCon-size.

    Being that Worldcon is run by volunteers, the best way to make something you want happen at a Worldcon (or any other SF con) is to volunteer to run that thing yourself. At the very least, find out who is in charge of the Gaming track at the next Worldcon, and ask about plans for MTG. Many times the absence of something at a con is due to the fact that they don’t have the warm bodies to staff it.

34. Spacefaringkitten on September 6, 2016 at 2:56 pm said:
    Ouch. I got banned from Mad Genius Club blog for, well, disrespecting the Dragon Awards, I guess, which in this case consisted of saying that the voting numbers weren’t published. Ah well.

    Well, I can see how saying things that are ‘technically correct’ might be problematic on MFC.

35. In fact, it can and should be argued that any non-Puppy author who has won a Hugo has done so because they have lots of fans who vote for them without a coordinated effort.

    Well it can be argued, but I don’t think should be. It seems to overlook the quality of the work. Plenty of cases of a popular author with an ok book getting shut out. (Cough) GRRM.

36. The names of the Dragon Award admins were “on display at the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying beware of the leopard”. #ObAdams

37. In re: Moira — in her last years, her mother used a walker/wheelchair, needed help when traveling, might have used oxygen. So, she’s applying those standards to all disabled and older people. Anyone who in any way resembles her mother is evil or at least lesser. She’s no spring chicken, so insulting the older persons is pot-kettle. But, since she’s adopted some other truly hateful worldviews/bigotry, I’mma go ahead and say she’s also become ableist along with homophobic. Moira used to have a lot of gay friends, and disabled ones, and gay disabled ones.
    Teddy encouraging her to wallow in her terrible past hasn’t been good for her psyche, which is another thing that shows how reprehensible he is.

    When you’ve lost Reddit, you’ve lost everyone. I know there are many good people over there having thoughtful discussions, but that was my knee-jerk response.

    The Reddit thread did remind me that now JCW shares an award with pTerry, the guy he wanted to kill in some hands-on way. Heh.

    Interesting how Larry knew who the award admins were and nobody else did. Didn’t OGH try to find out and fail? The quote Soon Lee links to makes it look even hinkier, doesn’t it?

    @Spacefaring Kitten: Congratulations. But you had to know this was coming; they’re dogs and you’re a cat, and we all know they can’t stand other species (or claws across the nose). You are truly an SJW, the signifier and the signified.

38. Spacefaringkitten on September 6, 2016 at 2:56 pm said:

    Ouch. I got banned from Mad Genius Club blog for, well, disrespecting the Dragon Awards, I guess, which in this case consisted of saying that the voting numbers weren’t published. Ah well.

    Maybe Dave Truesdale had a point – there really are some people in fandom who over react to certain truths about the world, but maybe not the people DT was thinking of…

39. @Lori Coulson Be that as it may, I’ve never been interested in volunteering at cons, just attending them. (Although I don’t know if four days of business meetings at MAC2 count.) As I said earlier, local gaming stores usually run the MtG tournaments. They’re already set up with product and they know the drill.

    Which now reminds me that it was at a DragonCon many years ago that I first encountered MtG and I’ve been playing ever since. I was also there for the Nalathni Dragon (and that ensuing kerfuffle).

40. Heh. I got banned from both Mad Genius Club and According to Hoyt. According to Sarah Hoyt, my picture shows that I have the smirk of a Communist apparatchik 🙂

41. @Hyman: Wow, I’m impressed at how she can tell political views and positions just from a photo! It boggles the mind to ponder what she’d think had you been frowning or neutral in the picture. Good work, Comrade Rosen.

42. It seems we’re offering our gaming credentials? Fine…

    The first RPG I ever played was D&D, in 1974, and the DM for that session was Robert Asprin. I’ve also played Traveller, but found it boring compared to D&D, probably because the latter involved more story-telling.

    In the 1980s, my ex-husband ran a Top Secret campaign based on Man from U.N.C.L.E, as well as a Champions campaign. Still have a slew of dice, and notebooks full of character sheets even if I don’t game often anymore.

    And yes, I’ve been to Dragon*Con — once. Which was more than enough. Too many people in one place — I got crushed into a wall whilst trying to get away from the Saturday parade. Shudder…

43. I was banned at According to Hoyt, once upon a time, for what she called “terminal ink poisoning” (this was years before the Puppy era). It was kind of amusing, because she thought she had banned me before I commented again, and thought that WordPress had unbanned me leading me to briefly have the moniker “The Unbanned”

    Supposedly, I have been unbanned again, but I have not tested that proposition. I don’t *think* I am banned at MGC, but I haven’t tested that either.

    Their houses, their rules :shrugs:

44. @Bruce Baugh: I may not have been clear: What I described is a symptom of puppiness, not an indictment of the activity.

45. I see it’s also ranked as:

    #64 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction > First Contact
    #82 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Action & Adventure > Science Fiction
    #85 in Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction > First Contact

    Which, to be honest, kind of makes my eyebrow raise, based on the description. How does a book get slotted into those different lists?

    Keywords, my friends, keywords. If you use Kindle Direct Publishing, which is what indie writers and many small presses use, you get seven keywords, some of which land you in specific subcategories. The keywords to use aren’t exactly secret either, here is the list for SFF.

    Some authors/publishers use the keywords to land in as many subcategories as possible, whether these apply to their book or not, and sometimes you accidentally end up in a category you don’t belong in. For example, if you check out the sword and sorcery category in the Amazon Kindle Store, you’ll find that it’s an unholy mess. This is because really common fantasy keywords like dragon, magic, sword, etc… land you in sword and sorcery.

    Now I have no intention of ever reading anything by JCW again, so I don’t know if Somewhither is actually about first contact or if Teddy found the keyword list and stuffed it.

    BTW, for some of the smaller subcategories in the Kindle store it takes as little as a handful of sales to get into the top 100.

46. Haven’t been banned from MGC but the only time I felt like commenting was to potentially post carpet advertisements in a Freer article. Otherwise I only swing by to check out their articles about writing which are sadly stuck in-between so many more articles about self imposed martyrdom. At least some of those are pretty entertaining in an over the top caricature sort of way.

47. Lori Coulson, oh, cool; you played D&D a few years before I found out about it. I first played in, oh, 1977 or 1978, but never with any famouse people. I still have the Little Beige Books somewhere…

    If we’re doing gaming credentials, I’ve been in a continuous AD&D campaign since 1984 (it’s mutated from AD&D to v2 to v3 to a v3/v3.5 hybrid; same DM, many of the same players; some of the children of the original characters are now adventuring characters. Some of the children of the original players are now players, for that matter…). In no particular order, I’ve played the abovementioned assorted versions of D&D, Traveler, Traveler 2300, Twilight 2000, Champions, In Nomine, Mage: The Awakening, Paranoia, Pokemon, Cyberpunk, Victoriana, Fuzzy Heroes, and several home-brewed games. Probably more that aren’t coming instantly to mind.

    And almost without fail, if I stop to check out an RPG in a game-room at a convention, there will be at least one teenaged boy who feels compelled to explain gaming to me in words of one syllable because I’m a Woman Of A Certain Age and therefore can’t POSSIBLY understand RPGs… <wry> (Probably because I’m female, rather than because I have grey in my hair, because they did it when I was young, too…)

48. Hyman Rosen on September 6, 2016 at 4:03 pm said:
    Heh. I got banned from both Mad Genius Club and According to Hoyt. According to Sarah Hoyt, my picture shows that I have the smirk of a Communist apparatchik

    Well, that’s odd: the Communist apparatchiks of my acquaintance decidedly don’t ‘smirk’ – their resting expression is more of a resolute, distant stare at a Radiant Future that only THEY can see.

49. @Steve Davidson: The “you can write COBOL in any language” principle. Gotcha. 🙂

50. Spacefaringkitten on September 6, 2016 at 2:56 pm said:
    Ouch. I got banned from Mad Genius Club blog for, well, disrespecting the Dragon Awards, I guess, which in this case consisted of saying that the voting numbers weren’t published. Ah well.

    Congratulations?

    Based on the MGC post and your account on your blog, I’m guessing the banning and the previous demand that you use your real name stemmed in large part from a case of mistaken identity and you’re being punished for somebody else’s sins (being intolerant on social media and getting people kicked out of places for wrongthinking (parenthetically, do none of these people recognize irony?)) are apparently very, very sinful).

    When one person makes a mistake about another, it’s possible to correct it. When a group of people are sure they know something about you, you’re pretty much screwed, because they won’t be changing their minds.

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