376 thoughts on “He Do The Puppies In Different Voices 5/9”

1. Xdpaul, I can’t figure out what your argument is. Is it that academia has ruined science fiction?

2. Nick Mamatas –

   Well, does the meaning of the passage change if one replaces “blonde,” with “brunette?” I posit that it’s essentially the same in all meanings, which would refute your assertion about cultural memes. Perhaps, to you, it does. To me, it does not. It certainly does, however, screw up that lovely iambic…

   As for that passage, I read it as mid-length past… such as a personal recollection while writing an incident report or the like.

   And, given that Hannah IS a pyromancer, are you willing to admit that I was on to something with the comment about the “literal” rise in temp? 😉

   But my overall point with this is that, contrary to your original assertion (blog post), there’s actually quite a bit of information presented in that paragraph – far more than “She’s hot, and it’s giving him an erection.” I understand if you don’t like the style or the structure – I certainly would have reworded a few things in there, but I can’t necessarily fault the author without knowing more about the character – if the character is always thinking and acting like that, it’s just a stylistic choice and it doesn’t bother me.

   It seems I may have misinterpreted your comments about the “male gaze” aspect of the writing – with that clarification you seem more put off by the bluntness rather than the simple fact of it. Is that fair?

   And yes, I still think you’re a snob on the issue of style. Which is fine – I have my own areas of snobbishness; but I do think that you place far, far more emphasis on style (too much, IMO) as a result, which does explain our differences of opinion (and my differences of opinion with much of WorldCon fandom) with regards to some of the works on the ballot, past and present.

3. Nick
   And here we are again at the objectivity of what is SF. I didn’t think Dinosaur was, and lots of others may have agreed with me–it came in third.

   Lots of others DID NOT agree with me re Gravity. And that’s fine. I see their point.

   I agree Appollo 13 is even less SFnal than Gravity. But I didn’t vote in 96.

4. “Why? It is very simple. Most fans don’t find it very fun to read.”

   [citation needed]

   Again, we have a puppy declaring “Because I didn’t like something, it must mean no one likes it”

   Yet it got nominated and was in a very close race for second. So…. apparently a lot of fans did find it very fun to read. Whoops.

5. “And, again, it’s incredibly odd to refer to a Bishop kicking a hole in a stained-glass window. Not breaking, or shattering, or hitting… the normal ways one would damage a stained-glass window.”

   Nick has explained the kick (as a reference to high kicks, although I think there is also an element of the fact that a kick is more of a knee-jerk reaction. And the evocation of a bishop in robes kicking gives the mental image of a very dramatic action).

   I’m guessing S1AL doesn’t have much experience with stained glass, particularly the older stuff, which is very likely to lose a couple of pieces of glass at the lead cames, rather than having the glass shatter or break, in response to a kick or similar impact.

6. VD:”Hell, we have very seriously contemplated joining all of you in voting No Award for everything this year. We won’t, for various reasons, but we certainly could.”

   No, you just wound up throwing your own Best Novel author candidates under the bus in favour of a novel that initially was left out because of your slated candidates.

7. “It’s all technology and situations that actually exist today.”

   Kessler syndrome is not a situation that exists today. It’s a catastrophic theory that was proposed in 1978 and remains very much in the realm of future speculation.

8. S1,

   Yes, absolutely the meaning changes if “blonde” is switched to “brunette” which is exactly why Chandler chose to make the character a blonde and have his narrator highlight her blondeness.

   In the same way, if a character describes another a: “A guy who looked like a professional wrestler. The kind of guy who got up in the morning angry, ate angry toast, did some angry exercises down at the gym, had an angry ten minutes in the ring against some poor sap of a ham and egger, and then went to bed…with a smile on his face” we will imagine a heavily muscled professional wrestler in tights and boots and not for example, a professional wrestler in a feather boa with lots of eye make-up and lipstick, or one dressed like an alien, or a hillbilly, and nor will we imagine a high-flying middleweight wrestler in a luchador mask, etc.

   Connotation is key to meaning.

   The literal bit is useful for Hannah being a pyromancer, but only if we have non-textual information, like the genre in which the author is writing. Chandler’s stuff works whether he’s writing a crime novel, a fantasy, or mainstream not-much-happens realism. But sure, half a point to you! Don’t spend it all in one place.

   As far as snobbery, we’re back to where we started–if pointing out that a 70-year-old pulp crime novel is well-written and clever is “snobbery” when it talks about the cliche of sexbomb blondes, then there is no such thing as snobbery at all.

9. “No, you just wound up throwing your own Best Novel author candidates under the bus in favour of a novel that initially was left out because of your slated candidates.”

   I am astounded this little item is getting left out of the ‘puppies are fairer to overlooked authors’ narrative.

10. >> As Martin put it, “They want to determine who gets the Ditmars [Australian science fiction awards], but they don’t want to be Australians.”
    >> So many of the Puppies seem to be people who know and care nothing about fandom, know and care nothing about the history of fandom, don’t like fandom, aren’t interested in talking to fandom, won’t do the least bit of research on fandom, and don’t wish to join fandom.
    >> They just want fandom’s prize.>>

    The way I look at it:

    The Hugos are the most prestigious award in SF. The reason they’re the most prestigious is because of their long history of awarding excellent work. Readers figure that the process gets good results…most readers, anyway.

    The Puppies don’t like the results, so they question the process. Not only do they intuit the existence of an imaginary conspiracy, but they also question the process overall. “If this is supposed to be fandom’s highest award,” they say (I’m definitely paraphrasing here), “then shouldn’t all of fandom have a say in it?”

    It’s pointed out that the Hugos have always been awarded by Worldcon attendees (and supporters). The response is that this is elitist and needs to change.

    So the Puppies have looked at the most prestigious awards in SF, and decided that they don’t like the process or the results. They could, like others have, create their own awards, the Durstons, and create a process they like that will hopefully result in awards they approve of.

    But they don’t want to, because the Hugos still have what they want. Not the process, not the results, but the prestige.

    They want the prestige that the Hugos have built up over decades. Never mind that the prestige is the result of the stuff they want to change (the results, which came about because of the process), they want to divorce the prestige from the actual history of the awards and make it prestige for the works they care about.

    That’s why they don’t want to create the Durstons, because then they’d have to do the work of decades that the Hugos have done to get that kind of prestige. And they probably suspect they wouldn’t get it.

    After all, look at what’s been happening since they’ve started. When they get something on the ballot, it’s regarded as unworthy. When they take over virtually the whole ballot, it’s regarded as a false result. Even though they followed the rules, in letter of not spirit.

    If they could take over the Hugos and win for the books they wanted, the Hugos would lose all the prestige they’ve built up in a very short time, just as surely as the Oscars would if they started awarding everything to people who worked on FURIOUS 7 and the like. Because the prestige still depends on the results, which were arrived at by following the process in good faith.

    All the stuff they’ve said about how the Hugos have recently come under the control of a secret cabal so secure that it’s big enough to control the results but no one in it has admitted to it has been nonsense — a look at the actual nominations and awards over time has shown that.

    They’d do much better to create the Durstons, build up a history of results that people would associate with excellence at the sort of thing Puppies think should be celebrated, and maybe someday they’d have an award that has its own kind of prestige in its own area.

    But that’s too much work. Easier to demand that the Hugos grant the Puppies their prestige or be destroyed.

    Not that it’s likely to work, not even if they were successful at it, because that would destroy the very prestige they’re trying to seize.

    But it’s easier.

    kdb

11. Is xdpaul claiming Connie Willis is not fun to read?

    That the Swirsky’s dinosaur story wasn’t fun to read? (I can see being upset about it because it got social justice in your peanut butter, but not fun?)

    Well. I suppose I should not be surprised by this claim, given what the puppies have put up on their slate as “fun reads” — John C. Wright et al — and yet.

    What strange ideas about fun these pups have.

12. ULRAGOTHA:

    “Gravity is, IMO, *contemporary* fiction.

    Think about that. I get happy goose bumps. Here is a story set in space with space stations, space suits, space shuttles and satellites that *has no SFnal material*. It’s all technology and situations that actually exist today. Lovely, but incredibly not SF.”

    Nope. It’s alternate history. We don’t have an operational shuttle, the Chinese don’t have a space station, and the Hubble isn’t in that orbit. Also, the Soyuz doesn’t have a hatch there.

    Alternate history. You will enjoy it more if you remember that.

13. Stevie – I’m not sure if you’re trying to imply something about my intentions or just making a general statement. There are so many books out there in the world, that I have read thousands of them (quite literally) and have still never even heard of many famous authors. I’ve only read a few works by Asimov and Heinlein. I’ve never read a novel by Hemingway (can’t stand his short stories).

    The fact that I don’t know Chandler is rather meaningless in the overall context of world literature. That doesn’t make the line any less odd from a practical perspective.

    —

    MickyFinn: I thought someone else made that comment, but I lost track of it at some point. As I said, that certainly would help the line make a lot more sense if that was the joke of it. See above statements regarding implication.

    As for stained-glass windows: my experience with them is mostly the ones with the really large pains, newer frames, and being VERY careful not to drop them.

    —

    Re: “Dinosaur” – Again, it is possible that I have an objective definition, but that other people do not agree with that definition. My surprise was that people were disagreeing with the concept that “Is actually SFF” should BE an objective criterion.

    As far as it being a story or not – Nick made the argument that I was expecting someone to catch. But, as he noted, that depends on one’s definition of “event.” I still do not consider it a story, but I understand disagreement on that… even if the disagreement involves getting into questionable details. If you have good reason to think that it might not actually be a story, I think you’re at the same point where you have good reason to not consider it to actually be SF.

14. Nick, it’s like you teach a class in this stuff or something.

15. >> Re: “Dinosaur” – Again, it is possible that I have an objective definition, but that other people do not agree with that definition. My surprise was that people were disagreeing with the concept that “Is actually SFF” should BE an objective criterion.>>

    It’s probably as much an objective criterion as “is excellent.”

    As has been noted by multiple responders, SF has decades of experience with an inability to define the genre in an exacting away (or to define the difference between SF and fantasy, or other such distinctions).

16. Nick Mamatas:

    I guess at this point we just have to disagree. I don’t think that a change in hair color fundamentally alters the connotations of the sentences, and I’ve provided an example of how one could follow it up to make it NOT about her being an “archetypal beauty.” This is part of why I just DO NOT like heavily implicit writing – it requires cultural knowledge fixed to a certain time period and personal knowledge on a certain subject in order to convey the full context.

    As for snobbery, I’m not saying that liking a clever writing style is snobbish, but that the huge amount of emphasis on style – to the point that you show a disdain for pedestrian writing of any sort – heavily skews your perspective on the quality of the works and places style at the top of the heap. For me, it places well below story, character, world-building/maintenance, and even humor. That’s why “perfectly serviceable” is all I look for in the style category until the others are brimming.

17. S1AL: the reason people object to “Is Actually SFF” as an objective criterion is that _it_is_not_objective_. You have your “definition with edge and corner cases”, I have my gut, other people have whatever guides them on the question of “Is this actually SFF”. And your definition, or decision about whether this thing constitutes an edge or a corner case, can come up with a different answer to my gut. Or to someone else’s rigorous definition. this makes this criteria _subjective_.

    words mean things.

18. Naturally, I’d misuse criteria where I meant criterion just before I stated that “words mean things”. Muphry’s law strikes again

19. MickyFinn: Yeah, I’m surprised I haven’t misused that one yet today. I still struggle with treating data as plural or composite depending on context.

    But again, this isn’t an argument over objectivity – it’s an argument over agreement. It’s like the cut-off between orange and red: it’s possible to construct an objective definition based on wavelengths of reflected light, but each individual is going to have a personal idea of where that cut-off occurs… that doesn’t make the definition itself any less objective.

20. Damn that Muphry!

21. @alexvdl: “Yet it got nominated and was in a very close race for second. So…. apparently a lot of fans did find it very fun to read. Whoops.”

    I think it’s a mistake to conflate “good” with “fun,” either here or in Puppy dogma. I’ve read several books and watched several movies where I wasn’t dancing for joy at the end, but I recognized that they were good books/movies. Heck, any solid adaptation of one of Shakespeare’s tragedies qualifies; how many people who watch West Side Story are having fun when it ends?

    What really depresses me about the Puppy slates is that they had one golden opportunity to make their case… and they screwed it up. They could have packed their slate with sterling examples of the “ray guns and rocket ships” stuff their manifesto praises so highly. They could have constructed a ticket filled with works of stellar quality, eloquently written and well told, and then we could have had a real debate about reading habits, voter pools, and fine works being left by the side of the road.

    Instead, they served up a platter of awful sandwiches and acted surprised when everyone else complained.

    If their goal was to argue that sandwiches deserved recognition right alongside gourmet dishes, they should have given us the best sandwiches in the land. Instead, we got stale bread, spoiled meat, limp lettuce, and rancid dressings. They could not have picked a better way to convince people to reject sandwiches if they’d deliberately set out to do so.

    Even then, if they’d reacted to the outrage by agreeing that yes, that’s some rancid food, we proved our point that there’s a hole in the nominating process, and now we’re going to retract those nominations so the real finalists can be recognized… that would’ve been a class act. Point made, damage undone, let’s focus on fixing the revealed problem. I could have even gotten behind that.

    But that’s not what they did. Instead, they doubled down and claimed that these sandwiches are delicious, they eat ’em all the time, and what are you demented food snobs complaining about? That’s not going to convince the non-Puppies that conservative SF has anything worthwhile to contribute.

    The Puppies have sabotaged their own cause. I hope they had fun.

22. If you look at the science fiction selections on the shelves of academic libraries, they are an alternate universe in comparison to what you will find at the local public library. Criticism has likewise diverged, and often represents, for the most part, academic interests.

    Um, the FICTION on the shelf at an academic library is likely to be extremely different from what’s on the shelf at the local public library . . . largely because the libraries have different purposes. Academic libraries are research institutions; they tend to have only books that academics will want to use for research–and so they rarely have any works of fiction published in, oh, the last ten or twenty years (depending on the academic institution in question). Public libraries are in the business of loaning books to people who want to read them; they keep those books only so long as people keep checking them out, and then–after an unspecified amount of time, depending on the budget for new purchases and shelf space–more or less weed the collection of the books that are no longer being read.

    If you are talking about works of literary analysis of SFF books, I commend to your attention the University of Illinois Press’s Modern Masters of Science Fiction series–the two upcoming volumes this year are on Lois McMaster Bujold and Fred Pohl. Forthcoming volumes are planned on the works of Joe Haldeman, China Mieville, and Connie Willis. Does that support your assertion that academics aren’t interested in the same authors as “regular” readers, or undercut it? (And no, this series isn’t particularly peculiar in terms of academic analyses of SFF, I don’t believe–it was just the example I happened to think of first.)

23. @S1AL: “Re: “Dinosaur” – Again, it is possible that I have an objective definition, but that other people do not agree with that definition. My surprise was that people were disagreeing with the concept that “Is actually SFF” should BE an objective criterion.”

    Are Anne McCaffrey’s first three Pern books objectively SF, or are they fantasy?

    Is Dean Koontz’s 1980s work thriller, horror, fantasy, or SF?

    Taken as an independent story, would the DS9 episode “Far Beyond the Stars” be SFF?

    There are reasons why “SFF is what the nominating ballots choose” is the active guideline, rather than some arbitrarily-drawn definition. They picked “If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love,” so it counts whether you (or I) would place it there on our shelves or not.

24. “..any solid adaptation of one of Shakespeare’s tragedies qualifies; how many people who watch West Side Story are having fun when it ends?”

    Me?

    I think you’re working with a too-narrow definition of fun here. Surely fun doesn’t equal giggling with pleasure?

    I’m having fun when I hike up difficult trails; I’m having fun when I garden; when I read Plato; when I read Dorothy Sayers and Terry Pratchett and Ann Leckie. I’m having fun when I play a hard game of soccer. There are all kinds of fun.

    (It wasn’t any fun, contrariwise, when I slogged my way through John C. Wright’s nominated stories. That was downright unpleasant, if not actively painful.)

25. You can come up with an objective definition of SFF, yes. Experience teaches us that every damn time someone does that, 5 minutes later people will have produced counter cases which fail to satisfy the definition, but which everyone agrees are SFF.

    This is why the policy with the hugo awards has always been to allow the nominators and the voters to use their own judgement to determine whether works are SFF or not. (the nominators by only nominating works which they consider SFF, the voters by putting “No Award” ahead of works they don’t consider to be SFF (or consider otherwise nominated in error))

    Everyone agrees that “Must be SFF” is an appropriate criterion. Not everyone thinks that “Must be SFF” can be given a satisfactory objective definition.

26. >> It’s like the cut-off between orange and red: it’s possible to construct an objective definition based on wavelengths of reflected light, but each individual is going to have a personal idea of where that cut-off occurs… that doesn’t make the definition itself any less objective.>>

    That’s because, in part, you can define colors in numerical terms, and whichever one you pick, it can then be used objectively.

    When defining a genre, though, you’re dealing with something far less linear (planar?) than a spectrum of light. And a big part of the problem is, you’re not just making a choice about labeling, you’re trying to define a genre made up of stories that is already defined by decades of usage — and any definition you pick is almost sure to (a) violate actual usage or (b) be so vague as to be unhelpful.

    Defining something that can be described in terms of numbers — yeah, you might get disagreement over the numbers, but they’re still numbers. Defining something that can’t be described that way gets an awful lot trickier.

    [Never mind that even the hard numbers the Hugos actually do use aren’t as precise as all that — a story can be shifted from one category to another as long as it’s close to the right word length, for instance.]

    kdb

27. I suppose I should make it clear that reading Wright was not fun *for* *me* — obviously some people seem to find him fun.

    Likewise, not everyone enjoys watching musicals, or hiking up tough trails.

    Or reading military SF, apparently.

28. As someone who’s been a brunette all my life – yes, absolutely, there are totally different stereotypes applied to us than to blondes. We’re the sensible ones; if we had to go see a hard-boiled detective it would be because our ditzy blonde sister was in over her head, or maybe we’re the clever sort out to get the detective into trouble.

29. Rev Bob – Been ages since I read the Pern books… I recall them as Fantasy that hinted at possibly being SF instead a few books in. It’s certainly possible for something to be both; heck, I call Star Wars “Future Fantasy” because the science is sketchy at best, even though it’s present. Same thing goes for the 40K tie-in novels.

    Everyone Else – Yes, again, I’m not saying that my definition is the end-all, be-all, though I do believe that it covers the vast majority of instances (otherwise I wouldn’t use it).

30. Jamoche – Of course, that’s absolutely true. But my argument isn’t with the fact that there’s a connotation there; it’s with the assertion that we can reach that conclusion from those sentences.

    Also, redheads are psychos. Cause stereotypes.

31. jamoche: yeah, I’d generally assume that (in genre) a stunning brunette was smart, and manipulative, and likely to be deliberately ensnaring the hard-boiled detective in a tangled web. If it was because your ditzy blonde sister is in trouble, you’re more likely to be a mousy brown.

    These are stereotypes, having them overturned can be part of the fun, but knowing what they are is important for the genre.

32. S1AL: if your definition doesn’t cover everything, it cannot be used as an objective criterion without eliminating works which should not be eliminated.

33. @delurking: “I think you’re working with a too-narrow definition of fun here. Surely fun doesn’t equal giggling with pleasure?”

    I demand an objective definition of fun! 😉

    But seriously, I separate “fun” from “worthwhile and/or satisfying” along such lines. The gold standard for me, I think, is the movie adaptation of The Mist – very good, quite well done, but not something I watch to lift my spirits.

34. xdpaul: “If you look at the science fiction selections on the shelves of academic libraries, they are an alternate universe in comparison to what you will find at the local public library. Criticism has likewise diverged, and often represents, for the most part, academic interests.”

    Wait, what?

    http://eaton.ucr.edu/

    The Eaton collection is something special, but there are collections like it in academic libraries all over the United States and all over the world. Most “local” public libraries don’t have the space or funds to compare. A large municipal library might, but at that point you’re talking about institutions with similar capabilities and goals.

    I agree with Mary Frances on the research focus, but academic libraries also host a large number of specialized collections. It’s what they do.

35. >> Been ages since I read the Pern books… I recall them as Fantasy that hinted at possibly being SF instead a few books in.>>

    The first book opens with a two-page introduction that explains that Pern was settled by Terrans and that the dragons were created scientifically, but that all of this has been forgotten, and legends and myths have been built up.

    I don’t know if that intro was in the first story when it was published in ANALOG, but the intro to the story talks about man going “Out There” and working together with native aliens, so I think it was probably established as SF even there.

36. @S1AL: “Also, redheads are psychos. Cause stereotypes.”

    Take that back, or I’ll cut you, man! 🙂

    Sorry. Ginger moment. 😉

    The Pern books start out looking like fantasy, then they get retconned as SF: the dragons are gene-modded lizards, the Red Star and Thread are alien threats instead of magical ones, and so forth. However, that happens quite a bit later; the first trilogy reads as straight-up fantasy.

    I’m very interested in your reaction to “Far Beyond the Stars,” too. Buffy the Vampire Slayer did a similar story, casting Buffy as a mental patient who briefly “wakes up” from her monster-hunting delusions to deal with the real world, and its ending is even more ambiguous. (Unfortunately, I don’t recall the episode title offhand.) Are those stories SFF, and why (or why not)?

37. S1AL: “…it covers the vast majority of instances…”

    If it doesn’t cover all instances of Science Fiction, that what utility would it have for the Hugo awards? *Someone* will still have to make a judgement call of whether a work qualifies or not & it’ll still be a subjective decision, and I would feel sorry for that someone, whoever they are because whatever they decide, there will be complaints. Because it’s a subjective decision. Wouldn’t it be better to leave it to the Hugo voters as a whole? That’s what’s been done for decades, and it’s worked just fine.

    The other thing to remember is that a lot of innovation happens at the fringes; it’s true elsewhere, it’s true in Science Fiction. Awards like the Hugos are more likely to encounter edge-cases – because someone doing something new that hasn’t been done before, especially if they do it well – that’s the sort of work that Hugo voters like to recognize. Be too prescriptive & you’ll stifle innovation.

    The first Pern books read like fantasy. But some of it was serialized in Analog, a Science Fiction magazine. It wasn’t until much later that the Science Fictional underpinnings of that setting was revealed.

    The first of Charles Stross Merchant Princes books “The Family Trade” read like a portal fantasy. It was not until later in the series that the Science Fictional background was revealed.

    You want to come up with a definition of Science Fiction? Go for it & good luck to you. But in my mind, Science Fiction is defined by its boundaries, and the boundaries are constantly evolving. Even if you can properly define Science Fiction (and I don’t think you can), it will be out of date as soon as someone publishes a stories that pushes the boundary. Even at the core, it’s not static. That Merchant Princes series? After volume one, everyone regarded it as Fantasy, but by the end, it’s clearly Science Fiction.

38. >> However, that happens quite a bit later; the first trilogy reads as straight-up fantasy.>>

    As noted, it’s there from the first page. The characters in the story don’t find out about it until well into the series, though.

39. There’s certainly a lot of space fantasy (a lot of SF uses handwavy science), but we don’t have to distinguish between the two for the awards as presented.

    If you want to have fun with it, one could make a whole bunch of shows as SFF just because they use tech that doesn’t exist in the real world (“In a world where two people can cooperatively hack using the same keyboard at the same time…”).

40. Well, i for one am No Awarding anything that is not RP/SP.
    Just gonna use the same weapons the SJWs want to use. Let’s see how they like it.

41. Nick Mamatas “Is SF necessarily imaginative fiction? At any rate, GRAVITY is more thoroughly SFnal than 1996 Hugo nominee APOLLO 13.”

    You might not think that APOLLO 13 counts as fiction, however it is something we are not capable of recreating today. Yes a guy in Europe wearing a shirt that drives women out of STEM landed a pod on a comet, but NASA doesn’t have the capability to go to the moon.

    You might argue that a smartphone has more computing power than NASA had then, but last year there was 2 failures to make it into orbit. Thanks to affirmative action NASA no longer works to meet intelligent life in space, but searches for the mythical “good” “moderate” Moslem.

    Planet of the Apes & 2001 a Space Odyssey where the 2 Dangerous Visions of 1968.If you where a time traveling 68 chevy impala my love that landed in Baltimore last week, we could be ready for HilLIARy to give back $40million in donations from nations that execute gays while being Secretary of State.

42. Mokoto @ 605: I agree with Mary Frances on the research focus, but academic libraries also host a large number of specialized collections. It’s what they do.

    Oh, Special Collections are a whole different ballgame from open shelves! I think we’re in agreement, whether talking “small college, largely undergraduate libraries” (which is the variety I’m affiliated with, at the moment) or “major research libraries, with Special Collections.” It’s just a different kind of institution, so the comparison to public libraries in terms of either collection or readership makes no sense. Some public libraries (I’ve worked in one of those, too) will have a sort of “display case” collection, usually of local interest, but those are often non-circulating and, again, not really comparable . . .

43. Craig (2): By far, my favorite handwavy science fantasy is the Deathstalker series by Simon R. Green. I know they’re… pulpy, but I enjoy the snot out of them.

44. “I’m very interested in your reaction to “Far Beyond the Stars,” too. Buffy the Vampire Slayer did a similar story, casting Buffy as a mental patient who briefly “wakes up” from her monster-hunting delusions to deal with the real world, and its ending is even more ambiguous. (Unfortunately, I don’t recall the episode title offhand.) ”

    The episode was called “Normal Again.”

45. Rev: Bob:

    But yield who will to their separation,
    My object in living is to unite
    My avocation and my vocation
    As my two eyes make one in sight.
    Only where love and need are one,
    And the work is play for mortal stakes,
    Is the deed ever really done
    For Heaven and the future’s sakes.

    I refute you thus! 🙂

46. ”
    Just gonna use the same weapons the SJWs want to use. Let’s see how they like it.”

    So I’m doing it to protest slates.

    What’s your reason?

47. @Gully

    Glad you know what we think better than we do….

    I’ll go home while you decompile mine and the other puppies subroutines and find out what we’re REALLY up to later, as we obviously don’t know what we’re REALLY thinking

48. John Carter – ‘Well, i for one am No Awarding anything that is not RP/SP.
    Just gonna use the same weapons the SJWs want to use. Let’s see how they like it’

    As a supporting member you should vote for however you see fit, regardless of whether anyone else likes it or not.

    If you think the non slate works aren’t worth less than No Award, you should really vote so.

49. Well, i for one am No Awarding anything that is not RP/SP.

    Good luck.

    You do realize that a dedicated minority has essentially no power in the final voting, right? If not, I suspect you will be very disappointed.

50. We know you don’t like us. We’ve always known you don’t like us.

    Yes. Everyone so disliked the Sad Puppies that both Correia and Torgersen were nominated for the Campbell. Everyone so disliked the Puppies that Torgersen was nominated for a Hugo. And everyone so disliked the Puppies that Resnick was nominated for the Hugo thirty-six times. The SFWA members so disliked John C. Wright that they nominated him for a Nebula Award. And so on and so forth.

    Your evidence of universal dislike seems to be a little thin. Just saying.

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