aka A Puppy Thing Happened on the Way to the INB Performing Arts Center
Although the roundups generally copy little material from the File 770 comment section, it is heavily represented today. The roll call includes: L.E. Modesitt Jr., Lee Wise, Vox Day, Lela E. Buis, Bruce Baugh, Kary English, Lis Carey, Spacefaring Kitten, Laura “Tegan” Gjovaag, Dave Weingart, Christopher Chupik, Declan Finn, Kyra, and a few Shy Others. (Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editors of the day Paul Oldroyd and ULTRAGOTHA.)
File 770 Meetup is planned for Sasquan. https://t.co/qRbnBFoCIl
— sasquansf (@sasquansf) June 25, 2015
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
“The Illusion of Social Media” – June 26
One of the great benefits touted by exponents of social media is that it brings people together. It does indeed, but each social media group brings together only those sharing similar views.
A good example of this lies in the “sad puppies/rabid puppies” kerfuffle involving “slate voting” to determine the nominees for the annual World Science fiction awards. The situation continues and appears to be getting increasingly acrimonious, with partisans on each side making declarations and demands, and even threatening the boycott of the books of one major F&SF publisher because of the intemperate comments of two employees on social media.
From what I can tell, this acrimony likely involves at most perhaps several thousand individuals, and probably less than a few hundred who are deeply involved and committed… and who feel that the entire literary “culture” of fantasy and science fiction is threatened in one way or another, with the “liberal” side declaring that “traditional” F&SF is the bastion of old white males who embody all of those stereotypes, and the “sad/rabid puppy” side declaring that the liberals have hijacked F&SF into everything they detest, including novels that focus on multi-culturalism, gender diversity, extreme environmentalism, etc. Each side is industriously employing social media to assail the other.
The truth is that F&SF is big enough for both sides, and in fact is far bigger than either…..
Lee Wise on Lee’s Blog
“They came for the fen…” – June 26
….And then I learned that Gallo and her ilk were claiming that all emails objecting to her libel and that of other senior people at Tor were being generated by bots. Peter Grant requested that people email several people at Tor and their parent company Macmillan, copy to him, to prove that real people were emailing.
So I did. For the first time in my life, I emailed a company. And you know what I got back?
*crickets*
Neither Tor nor Macmillan so much as acknowledges emails on the subject. They could have — and one would have expected them to have — a bot of their own that acknowledged your email and thanked you for your input. It needn’t have any reference to what you actually wrote. But they didn’t even bother with that.
So, Peter Grant called for a boycott of Tor. It will be fairly difficult for me to boycott Tor since they haven’t been publishing much of anything that I care to read anyway. Gallo and her ilk are undoubtedly responsible for this. Still, I’m being careful these days. I spent $66.91 on ebooks last Saturday — pretty standard — but none of them came from Tor.
Vox Day on Vox Popoli
“Fire Irene Gallo” – June 26
The continued refusal of Tor Books to hold Irene Gallo responsible for her actions demonstrates that labeling Tor’s customers “racist neo-Nazis” and Tor’s own books “bad-to-reprehensible” is observably acceptable to its management, no matter what feeble protests Tom Doherty may offer.
Lela E. Buis
“No such thing as bad publicity…” – June 25
I’ve read some posts to the effect that this is the most entertaining Hugo season ever. We now see how the bad press is playing out. Because of the brouhaha, many more people now know that there is a Hugo Award for science fiction and/or fantasy. WorldCon is busting at the seams, and supporting memberships are going like hotcakes. People are busy reading and reviewing the nominations. Do you suppose the Nebula’s could arrange for Vox Day to game their system next year? Nevermind, just kidding.
A few blogs back, I did suggest that Day was in marketing mode with this Rabid Puppies scheme. His name has been up there in the lights for weeks now. The interesting thing is, so has the Hugo Awards, WorldCon, Tor Books, Irene Gallo, Moshe Feder and Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden. I’d be willing to bet Tor comes out with a little spike in sales.
Bruce Baugh on Obsidian Wings
“On accusations of *-ism and prejudice” – June 26
[Promoted from a File 770 comment to a standalone blog post.]
….Other people believe that we never altogether escape our legacies, and that they include a bunch of ugly screwed-up stuff as well as good things. We can — and should — aim to do better, but perfection isn’t attainable, and we are likely to do small harms (and sometimes larger ones) all the time. Sometimes it’s through ignorance, sometimes it’s through laziness and unwillingness to change the habits that give hurt, usually it’s a fair dose of both. In this view, dishing out harm is a routine though unwelcome part of life, and it’s no great achievement — but also no great burden, really — to respond by acknowledging it, apologizing, seeing what you can do to repair things, and then working to not do that particular one again. As Huey Lewis put it once, “All I want from tomorrow / is to get it better than today.”
This view is more common among people who are “marked”: those who are hyphenated Americans, who will have to say something to avoid incorrect assumptions about the sex or gender of their loved ones, who can expect to be called a “lady X” instead of just “an X”, and so on. They have more experience of being on the receiving end of a lot of unintended but nonetheless genuinely hurtful junk, and of seeing other deny responsibility for the hurt they’ve given. They see too how even when dealing with their own friends, family, and peers, disparaging attitudes about their kind can slip in and color what they do. (This is what “internalized” bigotry means: believing crap about yourself and people like you, and treating yourself or others like you the way people with social advantages over you are prone to.)
In my view, the second approach is vastly more realistic. We do all screw up a bunch all the time. Nobody can go through life constantly apologizing…but we can go through life recognizing that we do things worth apologizing for all the time, and try to do better. We can be humble about our limitations….
Kary English in a comment on File 770 – June 26
[“Kary’s apology” included at her request.]
I also wish people like Brad, Larry and other SP notables would come out and say “Hey, this* isn’t what we intended or what we hoped would happen. We’re sorry the whole thing has become such a mess.” (*where “this” means locking up the ballot and shutting out other works)
I don’t consider myself a spokesperson for the SP, or even an SP notable, but I’ll say it. I never got involved in this with any idea that I’d even make the ballot, much less that VD would run his own campaign or that there would be a ballot sweep. If I’d known that, I wouldn’t have participated. To the extent that I’ve been part of that, even unknowingly, I apologize.
It seems I can’t say anything remotely in that vein without someone saying that if I truly thought that, I would withdraw. I’ve already given my reasons for not withdrawing, but I’ll mention again that a large part of it is not giving Vox Day the satisfaction.
All that stuff about nominating liberals just to watch them self-flagellate and see how fast they withdraw? I’m not his marionette, and I won’t dance to his tune. He set us up to be targets, just like he set up Irene Gallo. I’m not giving in to Vox Day.
Lis Carey on Lis Carey’s Library
Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form 2015 Hugo nominee
Captain America fights Hydra and confronts the deadly Hydra agent the Winter Soldier, who turns out to be [spoiler]….
The level of violence was too high for me to fully enjoy the Neat Superhero Stuff, though.
Overall, not really my cup of tea.
Reading SFF
“2015 Hugo Awards Reading: The Parliament of Beasts and Birds – John C. Wright (Short Story)” – June 26
Concerning the story: I was not impressed. It seems to be a religious (christian) parable of some kind and, adding to the annoyance over the vocab, I have the distinct impression that JCW is showing off how smart he is. I bet there are a bunch of references that I do not get because of how dumb and uneducated I am and didn’t do my bible studies diligently enough. (Or ever 😉 ). So now everyone knows that JCW is able to actively use a lot of randgruppen** words, knows his christian mysticism and is so very educated.
As you can see, the story’s prose and style annoyed so much that I barely was able to follow the actual story. Can’t be much good then. I didn’t like it.
TPI’s Reading Diary
“My Hugo award votes 2015 part 3 – Novellas” – June 25
[Reviews all five nominees.]
“Pale Realms of Shade”, John C. Wright (The Book of Feasts & Seasons, Castalia House) The story starts as a sort of supernatural thriller. A detective has been murdered and his ghost has been waked up. His wife wishes that he should reveal his murderer and rule out the suicide in order to release the insurance compensation. (I wonder how the suicide is even suspected as apparently the victim was shot several times). He then meets temptations before finally he gets an atonement. The first few chapters offered some promise – the writing was slightly clumsy, but the premise as itself seemed interesting. Alas, the story went from below average to mediocre and eventually to ridiculously bad. The writing was clumsy, there were sentences like this: “Sly had come across the dead body of a man who had — let’s be frank with this now — I rode him pretty hard some times.”. What does that even mean? The plot went from allegorical to pounding heavy-handed religion with a sledgehammer. What we learn from this story: a freethinker is about same thing as a devil worshipper. One of the worst things I have read.
Spacefaring Kitten on Spacefaring, Happy Kittens
“Groundhogs in Battle Armor: Edge of Tomorrow” – June 26
Edge of Tomorrow, adapted from Hiroshi Sakurazaka’s novel All You Need Is Kill, may not stand a change in the Hugo race, because Interstellar was made the same year — and that’s arguably one of the best (if not the best) SFF movies of all time. Still, it’s an enjoyable science fiction film with good storytelling and interesting characters.
Laura “Tegan” Gjovaag on Bloggity-Blog-Blog-Blog
“Hugo Reading – Graphic Story” – June 26
[Reviews all five nominees.]
The top spot has to go to either Saga or Sex Criminals. I’m more impressed with what Saga managed to do in what is clearly a single volume of a long ongoing story, so I think I’ll probably give the top spot to Saga and the second to Sex Criminals. The clear third-place winner is Rat Queens, which is much more amusing than the top two, but just not quite as good. The Ms. Marvel volume is solidly in fourth place while Zombie Nation will take up the rearguard of the five nominees. If I wasn’t a charitable sort, I’d leave Ms. Marvel and Zombie Nation off the ballot entirely. But I’m inclined to include them.
"This is the worst thing I've ever read" — comment on one of the RP nominees. #HugoAwards #Fandom #archipelacon
— Jewish Space Laser K2FI Parody Account (@filkerdave) June 26, 2015
https://twitter.com/ProtestManager/status/614612193351479296
Christopher Chupik in a comment on “How Authors Get Paid Part 2” at Monster Hunter Nation
Sad Puppies Monthly? I’d submit to that. It could be more hated among the SJW crowd than Baen in no time.
https://twitter.com/APiusManNovel/status/614672171386937345
[Declan Finn is a man of great simplicity of mind.]
Kyra in a comment on File 770 – June 26
… Well. Now that I’ve managed to stop crying with joy about the Supreme Court decision for the moment, a brief word about short stories:
A is for Asimov, yes I’m his fan, especially for Bicentennial Man.
B is for Bixby, I read him and squealed; read It’s A Good Life (or end up in the field.)
Collier, genius that nobody knows, I treasure my copy of Evening Primrose.
Delany’s unique, with no mimics or clones; he saw Time As A Helix Of non-high-priced Stones.
Ellison, man of cantankerous bent, knew even a Harlequin has to Repent.
Foster just left, but we haven’t forgot her, and now that it’s Ended, I hope that He Caught Her.
G is for Gaiman, a winner because he scores with as few words as Nicholas Was …
Heinlein’s the standard by which some judge worth; my personal favorite? Green Hills Of Earth.
(I didn’t read any I’s, so I’ll just go with Ing, whose Devil You Don’t Know I guess was a thing?)
J’s for Dianna Wynne Jones, I’ll decide – just take any section out of her Tough Guide.
Keyes left us little, but each word we crave, we all lay our Flowers on Algernon’s grave.
LeGuin has so much that it’s hard to pick one, but I’ll go with Intracom just ’cause it’s fun.
M is for Merrill, who wrote like no other, her work is loved (and not Only by her Mother.)
N is for Niven, grandmaster for real, whose Woman of Kleenex met a Man of Steel.
O is for Orwell, a heck of a fella — and Animal Farm’s, technically, a novella.
Padgett, the union of Kuttner and Moore, who wrote The Proud Robot, which I just adore.
(Quaglia I’ve not read, but now Q’s represented; I’ve heard that his writing is good but demented.)
R is for Russ, and will not be exchanged; when she started writing, well, that’s When It Changed.
Sturgeon’s law states that most everything’s crap, but his Baby is Three neatly sidesteps that trap.
Tiptree, oh Tiptree, the greatest indeed; I ask, Houston, if you’ve skipped her, Do You Read?
U is for Utley, another departed, but Shattering came out as strong as he’d started.
Varley, most everyone knows, is top rank, you just can’t Overdraw from his Memory Bank.
Weinbaum was right there when all of this started and his Martian Odyssey’s still well-regarded.
(X is unknown, but don’t mock it or scoff, put here all the many I had to leave off.)
Yolen’s output is both varied and vast; The Devil’s Arithmetic showed us the past.
Zelazny is here as the final contender; how fitting for Camelot’s Last great Defender.
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Steven Schwartz,
I’m sorry that you feel I’ve wasted your time. It is admittedly buried in the middle of my response, but I did say I have sympathy with one of your arguments. Can we come away from this realizing that we found some common ground?
A book I don’t see a lot of people talking about, but that I enjoyed immensely, is Daryl Gregory’s Harrison Squared. Lovecraft, High School, a friendly deep one, and horrifying and funny at the same time. I’m not sure if it’s Hugo worthy, but it’s on my long list.
Gully Foyle on June 27, 2015 at 7:49 pm said:
Sorry to take up your pixels. I felt Nicholas Whyte and Steven Schwartz made good points, which is why I replied to them.
@Brian Z
Brian, we’ve clearly got common ground on a reading list. And somewhat on politics. But I don’t see any evidence of that politics, or the tools of that reading list, showing up here.
I’m sorry to say it, but I find myself honestly wondering whether that list was put together to make your positions seem more reasonable — that it’s a troll’s cover story — because of the way you write, and the way you discuss, and the way you argue.
And it was those methods, and their effects on the people you talk to, not the specifics of the point, that I was trying to get you to see.
Brian: Where’s the Boing Boing post in April calling the Sad Puppies neo-N@/i? I can’t find it.
@Lis
I am so sorry to hear that. My sincere sympathies and best wishes for you.
Thank you for clarifying, Brian. And also you used “I” statements in your long post, which is good! *clicker* Now, you do seem to have a bit of a problem with clarity, given how often people have to have the “this is untrue” “well, I meant this” call and response. (Twice on the last page!)
May I suggest that you try to stop using idiomatic expressions? They keep getting you in trouble. “All fandom was plunged into war” didn’t help your case at all. You may think you know what they mean, but others apparently use the terms differently, or not at all, and then they take you literally and then you have to flail about what you really meant. Clear, lucid prose is your friend. It leaves much less room for error in discussions such as this.
@ Richard Brandt,
Your review of past controversies is helpful, thanks. Of course I understand that bloc voting for five things which swept the final ballot is what was considered unacceptable enough that there are demands to change the rules. That’s why I’m more (but not entirely) sympathetic to 4/6.
Well, it was the subject of his long blog post of March 30, the previous day, which is why I thought it was related.
Sorry to hear your news lis – I didn’t see your message earlier.
Brian Z.: Of course I understand that bloc voting for five things which swept the final ballot is what was considered unacceptable enough that there are demands to change the rules. That’s why I’m more (but not entirely) sympathetic to 4/6.
Of course you’re sympathetic to 4/6 — because you are well aware that under 4/6, two slates by less than 20% of the nominators could still take the whole ballot.
Which is, of course, why you are adamantly opposed to EPH — because a minority slate of 20% will not be able to take more than 1, at the most 2, places on the ballot.
4/6 might look like a solution but the math does not really hold up. It’s a marginal improvement only that is vulnerable to 2 slates just like the FPP is vulnerable to a single slate.
EPH and 4/6 aren’t mutually exclusive. If both pass they can work together.
Lis: Oh, golly, I’m sorry to hear it. We’ll be glad to see you and your posts when it’s a thing you feel like doing, and be thinking thoughts of appreciation, concern, and good will in between.
Matthew B.,
I appreciate your catching that. The original term used was “white supremacist”.
I’m googling to trace the evolution from the beginning of April to Gallo’s comment.
The original EW article of April 6 had the headline:
“Hugo Award nominations fall victim to misogynistic, racist voting campaign”
And it began:
The Hugo Awards have fallen victim to a campaign in which misogynist groups lobbied to nominate only white males for the science fiction book awards. These groups, Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies (both of which are affiliated with last year’s GamerGate scandal), urged sci-fi fans to become members of the Hugo Awards’ voting body, World Science Fiction Convention, in order to cast votes against female writers and writers of color.
The earliest BoingBoing reference I see right now is dated April 25, though I am pretty sure there was something earlier. It says:
Shambles
I agree; the maths doesn’t stand up for 4/6, which leaves us with EPH if we really do want to make ballot stuffing a thing of the past. I suspect this is why Puppidum is desperate to make it fail; judging from the ludicrous ‘what if’s’ which have been trotted out, they really fear the outcome of an honest and fair competition.
Which makes it all the more important to construct an honest and fair system of nominating things..
Lis, I’m very sorry.
Oh Lis, you poor kid. My condolences and virtual hugs.
Brian Z.: Maybe there were a large number of [SP3] ballots with only some overlap between them.
It doesn’t matter. The Puppies pushed a slate. This is anathema to the spirit of the Hugo Awards.
Brian Z.: Mike Glyer identified a call for slate voting in the first year of the Hugo awards.
That was back in 1953. 62 years ago. Strangely, there were no more public calls for slate voting after the first year. Probably because everyone realized that it was a huge act of bad faith against the spirit of the Hugo Awards.
The handful of other nominating “campaigns” you mention were for one work, or one person. None of these even remotely approached what the Puppies did this year — and almost all of them got smacked down hard by the voters.
Brian Z.: I’ve heard discussion of Battlefield Earth which was kept off the ballot
Battlefield Earth was kept off the Hugo ballot the same way a great many novels have been kept off the ballot over the years: It didn’t have enough nominations to get there.
Brian Z.: There was a Sad Puppies 2 slate last year and nobody said anything [about changing the rules]. (No one said anything this year either until they actually won.)
Well, duh. Of course not. I know that last year, and even this year, I (and no doubt many other people) kept hoping that the Puppies would grow the hell up and start acting like decent human beings, instead of like spoiled toddlers throwing a tantrum because they thought they should be given toys they didn’t deserve.
It was only after VD stepped in this year and thoroughly used the Sad Puppies to fulfil his own agenda that it became clear that there was no possibility that these tantrum-throwing toddlers were going to grow the hell up, and that the nominating process was going to have to be fixed so that it could no longer be gamed.
For more than 60 years, people for the most part behaved themselves. There was no need to fix the known flaw in the nominating process because people respected the Hugo Awards too much to abuse it. Then the Puppies appeared: a group of unscrupulous, spoiled whiny babies who had no problem abusing it. Now it’s going to be fixed.
Brian Z.: It is an argument that EPH won’t be much more effective than 4/6.
No, it is not an argument. EPH will be way more effective at de-vulnerableizing the nomination process than 4/6. Which is, of course, why you are so afraid of EPH being passed.
Brian Z.: The original EW article… The earliest BoingBoing reference…
These articles are immaterial. They were written by mainstream media outlets cobbling together bits and pieces from various sources. The reality is that they were, in fact, pretty close to the truth. The fact that this hurt the Puppies’ feelings is no one’s fault but their own. If they don’t want it pointed out that they, or the leaders they support, are acting in such a vile way, there is a very clear way to avoid that.
@Stevie
Yes, I agree on the need for EPH. I think people are starting to understand that individual voting is not penalized under EPH. It allows every one’s individual votes to count – no matter what type of SF they are advocating.
Brian
Claiming that EW is anything other than a quick, cheap rehash of celeb and stuff they’ve seen somewhere else is nonsense; anyone trying to use it as a journal of record is deluded.
Admittedly, you haven’t got any good arguments, but relying on a tawdry rag really isn’t helping your case. Surely you must have something better than this to put forward.
I forgot. You haven’t got anything better…
A brief chuckle – I just downloaded the free Baen ebook of 2014 non-fiction to have a look at a particular Puppy’s nominees other work. In the boilerplate text in the inside cover it said:
So proof positive that various characters in the great Puppy Kerfuffle are actually fictional – including some whom I can’t name without invoking moderation gnomes.
I see a game is on. Everyone generate your Bingo Cards. I’ll be scoring the recent entries shortly.
Oh no, Lis! My sympathies to you. I’m so sorry for your losses.
Scoring the 7:41pm entry, we have:
Do you have the nominating ballots of past years to be the judge of that?
Do My Homework For Me
Mike Glyer identified a call for slate voting in the first year of the Hugo awards.
Words Mean What I Say They Mean
Heck, even Vox Day was over here at File 770 willing to admit some mistakes were made and talk about it
Sneaky Passive Voice
How does this affect someone who has already jumped on (say) the Ancillary Justice, WoT and Human Division bandwagons and wants to lobby her friends to vote for Self-Reference Engine too?
FUD about EPH
I’m just asking a question about impact on voting behavior, and would appreciate an explanation.
Smarm
Scoring the 8:16 entry:
It is clear that the tensions were mounting for some time and nasty things were said on both sides.
Both Sides
I’m not justifying his behavior, just noting that he apologized to those caught in the crossfire when he (in his words) responded to attacks.
Our Fake Apologies Count
Camestros, to quote Mike Glyer, “I think you might be on to something there.”
Anyone ever read Web of Wizardry by Jaunita Coulson ? It been years but I do recall liking that book. I never really read anything else by her.
“Mistakes were made.” By who? Did these mistakes arise from spontaneous generation? And has anyone made amends for making those mistakes?
Condolences to Liz.
Stevie, I just finished both of Kate Griffin’s Magicals Anonymous novels, and also The Midnight Mayor, and if you ever read them, I’d love to know what your view is of her take on the City of London. There was a line in one of them about the City being called “The City” being called that to distinguish it from the rest of the city, and I thought…no, that’s just not right. She doesn’t get what the City of London is. I had that feeling all through the books, although I did enjoy them.
The Peter Grant books gave me a more authentic sense of living in London than Griffin’s books do. Do any of the English residing commenters have thoughts about this? I lived in London for seventeen years, temped in the city and the City for a good portion of that, and I’m married to a Hampstead boy, so I feel I know the place, but maybe it’s still just me?
Off to start The City’s Son, thanks to Jane Dark’s rec 🙂
@Steven Schwartz,
Politics and reading taught me about empathizing with people who hold different views than I do and trying to understand their perspective.
Brian Z: Politics and reading taught me about empathizing with people who hold different views than I do and trying to understand their perspective.
And yet you’ve shown precious little empathy for the SFF fans here who are angry and hurt about the fact that a small group of nasty, whiny babies have shit all over the Hugo Awards.
Things I’ve read this year that I want to see pick up awards next year:
Persona, Genevieve Valentine: with only three novels out, Valentine is easily one of my favorite authors, and this is an excellent near-future thriller that does interesting things with celebrity and diplomacy.
Karen Memory, Elizabeth Bear: as usually, I love her work. The steampunk setting didn’t do much for me, but everything else did.
I strongly suspect I’m going to love McCarry’s About a Girl, but I have a week or two to wait until I’ll know for sure
Stevie, apologies for the delayed response. Why do I like Drake? Because he writes milSF that’s as crushingly depressing as serious milSF ought to be. The first Hammer’s Slammers collection I read (The Tank Lords) kicked my ass in a way that Private Ryan etc. never quite managed. I cried a lot.
That’s not the only thing he does well (the Lt. Leary books are very effective Hornblower/Aubrey-Maturin IN SPACE novels), but grim military fiction is definitely his strength.
Lis: I am so terribly sorry for your losses.
Thank you, everyone, for your kind words.
Lis,
Very sorry to hear this. You have a strong community of supporters here.
@Lis
Oh that’s awful, I’m sorry. Don’t push yourself to keep doing reviews if you don’t want to. Let me know if there’s anything I can do?
@Stevie
That’s very kind, but it would probably be better for yarn as nice as that to go to someone who would definitely be able to use it, whereas I’m very much a gamble, and getting ring splints is not a quick process. I’ve been working on knitting a chunky snood in the round for the best part of four years because of all the breaks I have to take for recovery time. It frustrates me because my grandmother taught me to knit so it has sentimental value, but it wouldn’t be the first or last sentimental hobby I’ve had to give up because disability sucks. At least I can still sew!
Lis, delurking to offer my deepest condolences. I hope that many happy memories will carry you through this time of sorrow.
Brian Z.: Mike Glyer identified a call for slate voting in the first year of the Hugo awards.
JJ: That was back in 1953. 62 years ago. Strangely, there were no more public calls for slate voting after the first year.
I want to nail this particular distortion as it’s come up a few times. What was said by the Worldcon committee in 1953 was:
In context, of course, this is a Worldcon committee experimenting with a brand new tool to drive up numbers, and imagining that encouraging voting blocs (not “slates”) to form might be one way of doing it.
If there is any evidence that voters heeded the 1953 call to campaign for blocs, I am unaware of it, though I find the complete silence of all subsequent Worldcon committees on the subject eloquent testimony as to just how effective the call for bloc voting turned out to be as a marketing tool, ie not very.
Brian,
We won’t know whether talking amongst the whole community about what went wrong and building consensus about what to do differently in 2016 might work unless we try it.
That is precisely the conversation that EPH has come from. One of its designers is “a retired US Naval officer, a combat veteran, a certified Navy marksman, a Christian, and considers Robert Heinlein to be the greatest science fiction author who has ever lived”, the sort of voter who the puppies falsely claim has been marginalised.
As for a wider conversation with the puppies, GRRM has put an immense amount of effort into dialogue with both Correia and Torgersen despite their pathological untruthfuless about past history and their own actions. How do you feel those dialogues went?
@Meredith
I’m not sure how much an improvement there would be, but have you tried something like Tunisian crochet? It seems like it might be easier on joints. The fabric builds up pretty fast, so it feels a bit more like knitting than crochet, to me, as I’m normally a very slow crocheter.
Also, I seem to remember you mentioning thinking about weaving in an earlier post, maybe? I’m new to the craft, but I do think it’s easier on hands than knitting, except for maybe the warping process. If you have a friend with a loom(or a local yarn store/art center might have classes?), I’d recommend checking it out to see how it feels. I use a 24″ rigid heddle and wish I had the money/space for a floor loom. It’s not nearly as portable as knitting, but I find it very satisfying.
I also find it’s a great opportunity to listen to an audiobook, since, once you get going, a basic weave doesn’t require much brain power.
I would’ve thought the best clue that slates like the Rabid & Sad Puppies haven’t happened before would be all the fans who have been in fandom for a really long time saying nothing like this has happened before. If in a sixty year history you can only come up with a handful, if that, of even single items getting on the ballot because of bloc voting, that is also a really big clue. Maybe that is why people are trying to change the nomination system now rather than in the past.
I can’t vote for EPH because I won’t be there, but I hope it gets passed.
Iain Coleman on June 27, 2015 at 8:51 am said:
As noted far above, Blows Against the Empire, 1971 Hugo Awards. That was also the year that the Firesign Theatre’s Don’t Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers was a finalist. The members much not have though much of the ballot, though, because they selected No Award. (For the last-but-one time, as I recall, the next and final time to date being BDP in 1977.)
I look at the 1971 ballot, and while I don’t even recognize two of the finalists, I look at the others and say, “What were the voters thinking!” If audio drama wasn’t good enough and only movies could count, surely Colossus: The Forbin Project was good enough? But apparently not to the 1971 Worldcon’s members.
@Kimberly K
I hadn’t even heard of Tunisian crochet, but I’ll check it out, thank you! I can get help for the warping bit of weaving so long as the majority of it I can do myself, but sadly I don’t know anyone who has one to check it out before buying. I live in the middle of nowhere at the moment (I really, really miss London) so classes aren’t really an option.
Dear Lis,
i’m so sorry you’re going through this hard time, and hope you care well for yourself during all the good but hard work involved in dealing with such losses. Many thanks for your fine reviews, and best wishes for a happier time ahead.
@Nicholas,
For evidence of such a thing prior to Larry Correia declaring war on arugula, I’m aware of Doctor Who up to 2012. I don’t know if less blatantly obvious slates or people organizing themselves to vote in blocs existed back in the old days (though I suspect they probably did), or more recently, such as the hypothetical Tor slate that was alleged to exist in some precincts of puppydom (I’m not alleging this, just reminding you that some fans thought so). The only people who would know for sure would be those who either bloc voted or counted the ballots.
This is why, since anonymized 1984 ballots apparently have now entered the public domain, I was interested by P J Evan’s description of “another” “slate” hidden in the ballots. I don’t have the ballots so I can’t go look at them to see if there are any bloc votes in them. Hence my questions.
If you could comment on my questions about voter strategy, I’d appreciate it. Thanks.
@Meredith:
I couldn’t knit for years after I shattered my wrist. When I started again, I found circular needles easy to handle than straight ones. I’ve done some work with square needles, which are supposed to be easier on the hands, but I haven’t noticed that much difference.
My way of dealing with the yarn stash: a friend who looks after the cats when we travel is a knitter. I try to buy her some local yarn whereever I go, so I have the fun of going to yarn stores but pass the guilt about adding to the stash to someone who knits a lot faster than me.
Kevin Standlee: I wasn’t even a Worldcon member yet, but if asked in 1971 I would have agreed with the verdict that Colossus: The Forbin Project was too dumb to deserve a Hugo. Today I would unblushingly support the Firesign Theater album, though at the time I would have expected Blows Against The Empire to win because of its claims as an artistic saga.
@ BrianZ
I agree with Red Wombat above about your word choices. People in my business describe “fandom was plunged into war” as an example of “the divine passive”: as no human agency is visible, God must have done it. As one of the witnesses to the puppy mess, I have seen no evidence that it’s God’s fault.
In my day job, a pile of passive sentences makes me ask, what’s this writer trying to hide? If you feel people are misunderstanding your views, try stating them in the active voice.
I thought GRRM did a better job than many have at articulating why the traditional Hugo voting culture is important to him and others. I think when there has been civil and constructive dialogue, it has gone pretty well. I believe everybody who cares about this kerfuffle at all must obviously be a fan who deep down wants what is best for the genre, just like we all do. That’s one reason I wanted to see more discussion of EPH (and 4/6) on File 770 – so everybody can talk about their concerns and hopefully find common ground.