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oops editing window closed and there’s extra bits at the end
sigh
@Andrew: “But two volumes of a series being completed in one year is presumably rare.”
Actually, it’s extremely common: monthly comics are typically collected into trade paperbacks every 4-6 issues. Even less-than-monthly comics often have two volumes collected in the same year.
Nor is it unlikely that there will be high levels of convergence in the Graphic Story category. I’m sure there’s a group of fans who nominate only superhero comics, for instance, and another group of fans who only nominate web comics. So I think it’s likely that EPH could at some point help modestly to improve diversity in the category.
SFK:
“Establishment figures” telling us how undemocratic and antithetical the motion was would have counted as debate. I don’t recall them doing that.
RC:
If she was the moderator on a panel called “A Survey of Worldcons Past,” then maybe, yeah. If she was the subject of a panel called “Moira Greyland Holds Forth: A Candid Discussion,” probably not.
But yes, there are some kinds of situations in which people want decisions to be made as to the moment-to-moment running of the con, since there’s a con going on in real time, and there are other situations where people don’t want that kind of efficiency, and the rules include guidance on both.
Steve:
There was some discussion over various of the graphic story nominees coming out at a different time than the cover date on the magazines. “Requiem” actually came out in 1939, so maybe…
…no, never mind.
OK, fair enough. Insofar as this is the case, EPH has an effect. But I consider this different from just “convergence”; this is “convergence by a specific subgroup“. I’d say that to first order, categories like BDPLong have more convergence full stop; only at second order to they have more subgroup convergence. So the effects of EPH or EPH+ will exist, but still be relatively minor. This is part of why I disagree with Dave’s choice not to run numbers for BDPLong.
A number of suggestions were made on the extensive Making Light discussions and it would not surprise me if something like 3SV was suggested. There were two main reasons that the consensus went for EPH:
1. It was a small change: members still nominate in the same way, and members still vote in the same way. The only difference is how the nominations are tallied to arrive at the final ballot. At that time, a proposal to add an additional step (like 3SV does), with the extra work required by Hugo admins, would not have IMO got enough support to pass.
2. The consensus at the time was that:
a) The Puppies had exploited a hitherto unexploited but known weakness of the nomination stage. The rules should be changed to avoid this sort of gaming in future.
b) As annoying as some people found the Puppies, they had just as much right for their nominations to count toward the Hugos, (and this is important) so long as it was proportionate to their numbers. EPH addresses that; the analysis was done on old data, and as we have discovered, it doesn’t work nearly as well as people hoped.
Cheryl Morgan said:
That’s exactly what EPH is supposed to do!
EPH was never meant to defeat slates: it was never ever going to remove all slate works from the final ballot. Rather, it was designed to reduce the effect of a slate to one commensurate with its proportion of the total nominating membership. If for example 20% of Hugo nominators are slaters, then they should get one out of the five finalists. What they shouldn’t get, is all five of the finalists. (I had hoped that EPH would be more effective at reducing the influence of slaters to a level more commensurate to their actual proportion of the total membership, but it still does what it was designed to do.)
What EPH says to Puppies (or any other future slaters) is, “You are members of WSFS too”.
What EPH doesn’t fix, it doesn’t stop slating griefers placing offensive & inappropriate works on the final ballot. But then it was never designed to do so. For that, we need something like 3SV.
Kurt Busiek:
I checked the videos to see if I was really that badly mistaken, and I wasn’t. It is suggested that the name of the motion should actually be “Screw democracy!”, and the next speaker announces that it would be “antithetical to the spirit of the Hugos”. I’m not saying they were doing anything wrong, of course (that is what you’re supposed to do in a meeting where you want your opinions to win), but that is what happened.
Hugo administrators don’t perform their jobs in vacuums.
The first time I was a Hugo administrator (in 1998, along with my wife Ruth Sachter), we carefully look at how the job had been performed in the past and tried to follow the usual practices. Between then and my fourth time (in 2015, again with my wife, Ruth Sachter), we’ve often talked with the other administrators over the years, and we’ve all tried to follow the usual practices…because we know that it’s what’s expected (and entrusted to us) by the Worldcon members.
In the end, WSFS has no power to punish a Worldcon who doesn’t follow the rules, other than saying “We’ll do our best to make sure that you never host a Worldcon again!”
(To which, most rational people would say “Thank you!” )
lauowolf: I totally agree with your takedown of 3SV as a comprehensive solution. My problem is that I don’t think EPH is sufficient either.
Bruce and Jameson’s paper showed (what many of us had suspected before) that EPH still allows slates a disproportionate influence. EPH+ mitigates this problem but does not remove it. Some people, on finding that EPH was not a sufficient solution, put their trust in 3SV instead. But I agree with those who say that 3SV is only effective against abuse, and does not address the general problem of disproportionate influence.
Jameson’s suggested scenario with VD picking an all-male list effectively shows the weakness of 3SV without EPH. But even with EPH, though he could not (probably) secure an all-male ballot, he could still skew it in a male direction.
Also (a) he may come up with a clever (perhaps accidentally clever) new plan we haven’t thought of (after all, he managed to come up with two clever new plans – griefing and kingmaking- this year) and (b) his mere presence puts unnatural constraints on the process, meaning not only that we need millions [rhetorical exaggeration] of nominators (which is desirable on other grounds) but that they all have to nominate in every category and as many works as possible, while trying not to be too diverse but also not to clump.
So I don’t think all our problems will be solved in Helsinki. Of course, if you thought the current proposals were enough to resolve the problem, you would not want to do anything more. But if you think they aren’t, the possibility of a plan that cuts slating off at the root is still going to look attractive.
By the way, I think someone – perhaps Camestros – at one point suggested a plan that was like Additional Finalists but with an objective trigger. Might that be worth thinking about again?
Kevin Standlee,
It was you(!) who made the suggestion for a semi-final stage at Making Light in a comment from April 18, last year. At that time, we weren’t ready to consider it as a serious proposition. What a difference a year makes!
Soon Lee:
As annoying as some people found the Puppies, they had just as much right for their nominations to count toward the Hugos, (and this is important) so long as it was proportionate to their numbers
I know this was the consensus at ML, but I always had doubts about it, and so did some others. Of course, as people, they had just as much right as anyone else. But it doesn’t follow that a slated set of nominations has just as much right to count as any other, because a slated set of nominations doesn’t represent real preferences, and the value of the Hugos arises out of their representing real preferences. As members of Worldcon, they should do what members of Worldcon do – nominate things they like.
Of course, a voting system can’t read people’s minds, so no voting reform can actually force votes to represent real preferences; the most it can do is solve the part of the problem that arises from disproportionateness. But it doesn’t follow from that that it’s a positive advantage of a system that it allows slated nominations to count. If there were a method which didn’t allow slated candidates to reach the ballot, except by coincidence, I still think that would be better.
@spacefaringkitten:
You are quite right in that, of course. And I’m sure you’re correct that what you call ‘establishment figures’ had effect. It had effect to the extent that it was persuasive. It was persuasive to the extent that a large number of very well informed people came to agree — though, in this case, I can say that the overwhelming ‘Ah, hell no’ reaction among frequent Business Meeting attendees goes all the way back to July, when Lisa originated it.
(No, that largely wasn’t here on File770. Want to know what conrunners think, in all its fractious diversity, you have to get to know conrunners.)
Point is, we of the Business Meeting aren’t anyone’s dittoheads. Also (and I’m not saying you’re claiming otherwise), to quote a near-mantra from parliamentary circles (which you’ll hear quoted more than a few times in the BM videos): ‘Debate need not be factual.’
(BTW, I am dismayed by complaints here about you and rcade continuing to assert your opinion, to which you have every right, and I sincerely thank you both for your clarity and care.)
As Aaron pointed out in a previous discussion, 8 categories were won this year by a pick on a puppy list.
A Sad Puppy pick won Best Novella and Best Fan Writer.
A Rabid Puppy pick won Best Graphic Story.
A Sad and Rabid Puppy pick won Best Novelette, Best Long Form Dramatic Presentation, Best Professional Artist, Best Fanzine and the Campbell Award.
One might think puppies would be celebrating this, but so far all the angry ones last year are still just as angry this year.
As I’ve said before, I think that two additional proposals (well, three, if you count replacing IRV with MJ in the final round; but I don’t expect that idea to pass) would be good.
First, change the 3SV options to “reject, extend, accept, abstain”. If something gets a quorum of “extend” or “reject”, but not of “reject” alone, then it could still end up as a finalist, but would not use up one of the 6 finalist spaces, so that there would be one extra finalist for each “extend” among them.
Second, allow voters to add one new nomination per category from the longlist during the 3SV period. This would help non-slate voters get consensus on the best works and not waste their nominations solely on the long tail, but would offer essentially no extra power to slates.
I estimate that about half of the former long tail voters would manage to vote for a winner during 3SV. This would reduce the power of slates by a third to a half, meaning that the 2016 puppies really would have gotten just 1 or 2 slots out of 6, which is not too far from their true proportion.
At least 4 of those are things that would have been finalists and at least among the top two, even without the puppies. (Gaiman, Weir, and Okorafor.)
At least 4 of those are things that would have been finalists and at least among the top two, even without the puppies. (Gaiman, Weir, and Okorafor.)
Sure, but the Puppies pre-Hugo claims were that they had selected the best stuff to promote. The real point is that all of the Puppy claims about just wanting to push for quality works to win is a lie. They want their works to win, even if they pretend to support quality works that might actually win.
You are correct if what we’ve passed already and may pass in 2017 solves the problem in 2018. But we won’t know that for two years. I had an exaggerated expectation last year of what EPH would accomplish as a slate deterrent, so I’m reluctant to declare victory today. I am cautiously hopeful about 3SV.
I was just entertaining Kevin’s hypothetical about how a “stop the griefers” movement could make change happen in Hugo subcommittee selection. There was a path easier than the one he suggested and it didn’t require a Worldcon bid committee to declare that agenda in its bid.
The overall philosophy of the membership can change. At some point there may be enough of us and the damage great enough that a Hugo administrator takes a different tack in how votes are deemed valid.
I did suggest that. I backpedalled for a few reasons:
1. I still think that if active griefing continues some sort of strong-admin or committee would be the only option that was flexible enough and didn’t reward trolling – adding extra nominees could be a remedy in such a groups armoury. [But, yes, this is unpopular for good reason and I’m not going to rehash that argument 🙂 ]
2. Other stuff probably solves the problems, 3SV, EPH etc.
3. I couldn’t make the numbers work out – but I didn’t try that hard.
4. Don’t know how hard it would be to administer and the pile of extra stuff that will need to be administered is getting pretty big.
The positive side:
1. I think there is a lesser problem that is independent of trolls, slates, pups etc. I think, in principle, the nominees should represent a broad section of those who nominated. The extra proportionality from EPH is good in this regard but limited.
2. Using the principle above there is good reason for +2 regardless. Some years, some categories, the nominees will represent a smaller proportion of voters than others. Slates in particular, cause this but it can happen for other reasons. Some categories just have that kind of distribution where the fourth, fifth, sixth place nominees all have very similar numbers. They are virtual but not actual ties.
3. Looking at the EPH simulations, it does suggest that EPH can change results in situation 2. I think this is unremarkable in some ways but helps illustrate point 2.
4. So I’d suggest a test: if the 5 nominees represent less than X% of the people who voted in the category then extra nominees are added. [Note that it is X% of people not X% of votes]
I think this fits the ‘converge on quality’ notion that people like. When the set of 5 nominees together represent a lot of voters then there is a good chance that the ‘best’ candidate is in the list. When it represents a small number of voters (e.g. 20% in the case of a slate) then something that the other 80% might vote for may well be missing.
So really this more like a more baroque version of the existing tie-break policy. I suspect with EPH actual ties will be far more rare but virtual ties (works with very similar levels of nominations) will be just as common.
[What value for X? 50% makes sense but I strongly suspect that for that to work in some categories you’d end up with the longlist]
True, but at least some nominees put on the ballot because of the puppies won. That undercuts their argument that Hugo voters will refuse to reward excellence if it comes from wrongfans.
Sad Puppies 4 did not act like a slate and seven of the things it recommend won. We could be seeing a post from them hailing this great victory for the insurgents.
I hope that the recently announced Sad Puppies 5 continues to be unslatelike.
I also have a suggestion for how they could avoid their list being piggy-backed (puppy-backed?) by Beale: Don’t publish the final Sad Puppies list until after Beale reveals his slate.
P.s. That Mad Genius Club link has more business meeting discussion, with special guest star Ben Yalow.
Sec 3.7.1 of the WSFS Constitution says “[nominators] shall be allowed to make up to five (5) equally weighted nominations in every category.”
EPH changes this, in that nominations will no longer be equally weighted. But the language establishing EPH does not amend Sec 3.7.1, so the Constitution now is not internally consistent.
Does this suggest a need to amend Sec 3.7.1 in coming Business Meetings?
@Bill: I’d say that the nominations on a single ballot are still “equally weighted”, in that they always count for the same amount as each other, though they may count for different amounts from those of a different ballot. I realize that this is arguable either way, but it’s a longstanding principle that when two parts of a constitution may or may not contradict each other, you should prefer the reading with no contradiction (all else equal). So I think there’s no need to amend.
(I actually realized this issue during the business meeting this year and decided not to bring it up based on the logic above, and based on the fact we were dealing with other issues.)
I am seriously digging this idea. The percentage of voters who got a pick in a category is a great metric. It’s a number that measures our collective happiness. A rule to add nominees to a category until we’re sufficiently happy could be pretty amazing.
And who among us could cast a vote AGAINST HAPPINESS?
I realize that this is arguable either way, but it’s a longstanding principle that when two parts of a constitution may or may not contradict each other, you should prefer the reading with no contradiction (all else equal).
Also, a standard rule of statutory construction is that when two elements do appear to contradict one another, the more recently passed portion controls.
All of the “problems” related to 3SV (paraphrasing multiples) not eliminating works that maybe oughta have been kicked to the curb indicates that less than 60% of the electorate were insufficiently affronted by a work’s presence to vote it down.
To my mind, THAT is what makes 3SV so effective; puppies can bleat all they want, but when they nominate something that more than 40% of the electorate either don’t have a problem with or are not sufficiently moved to have a problem with, it probably ought to remain on the final ballot, regardless of the external politics.
And that’s exactly what I want: an opportunity for WSFS voting membership to say “mmmmm – is a story about Adolf Hitler being a pulp fiction writer something we want to endorse?” (actual case), but not enough feeling that way sees it making it to the ballot and getting its shot at the award.
When we ALL have the opportunity to vote on whether or not a work is worthy of a Hugo, should it win, then we’re all collectively determining what kinds of works are representative of the values embodied by the award and, through association, the values embodied by Worldcon, WSFS and Fans. (Unnecessary necessary caveat: Fans in this context refers to those individuals sufficiently engaged and interested to be members of Worldcon; the rest of you can call yourselves something else. Also, in this context “all” equates to current voting members, in other words, WSFS as WSFS has defined Hugo Voters.)
3SV returns that opportunity to ALL voters, not just the small percentage trying to make that determination for everyone else.
@rcade: “A Sad Puppy pick won…” sounds a little silly, given Sad Puppies was an anemic rec list with low participation, heavily influenced by Filers. I’m not a fan of SP4, but putting it in the same league as Rabid Puppies is laughable. SP4 “winning” is like saying everyone else who rec’d a winner “won” – okay, they did. So what? 😉
I question saying Rabid Puppies won either, frankly. You haven’t missed the snark about Beale trying to get in front of the crowd so he can claim he’s leading it, human shields, etc., have you? So, kinda misleading. I certainly wasn’t going to vote No Award above works I nominated and enjoyed, just to stick a thumb in my own eye (no thumb in Beale’s eye – he would’ve been thrilled with that outcome).
@Various: Various comments and discussions have me convinced 3SV (which I’m not a big fan of) is only good with EPH – preferably EPH+. (I am a big fan of EPH/EPH+, whether or not 3SV exists, and even if all Puppies & slates go away for ever.)
@Jameson Quinn: The “extend” stuff might be an improvement, but it feels overly complicated for questionable gain. Also a reason I’m not big into 5/6 – the next item on the long list may be a slate pick anyway.
@Aaron: If a Puppy says they honestly like Weir and his book, I believe them. I may be a bit skeptical of other claims, though. 😉
“A Sad Puppy pick won…” sounds a little silly, given Sad Puppies was an anemic rec list with low participation, heavily influenced by Filers. I’m not a fan of SP4, but putting it in the same league as Rabid Puppies is laughable.
Well, the Puppy reaction to the performance of the choices from their recommendation list is kind of telling. They spent the last four years loudly claiming that all they were doing was promoting good material on their lists and Worldcon fandom was viciously downvoting their picks just because they were “wrongfans having wrongfun”. Except this year they provided a list that did have some good stuff on it, and those things did well in the voting. Instead of cheering the victories of this stuff they they supposedly supported, they are still saying that Hugo voters are just voting against their picks for “political” reasons.
In effect, pointing out that Puppy picks did well in the voting is highlighting what a crock of shit the Pups’ claims that Hugo voters were voting against them for political reasons and not because of the quality of the works is.
Spacefaringkitten on August 28, 2016 at 2:31 pm said:
What happened was a move to Postpone Indefinitely, which comes with an automatic 4 minutes of debate time, divided evenly between pro and con, and must be passed with a 2/3 majority. So yes, there was some debate. Plus it took well more than half of us to agree to postpone the amendment.
But really, we all had the agenda. It was out on the WSFS page at the MAC2 site and lovely bulky copies were available right there.
Most of us at the meeting knew about this proposed amendment ahead of the debate. We knew what it entailed, and over 2/3 of us didn’t like the amendment and voted in favor of postponing it indefinitely without needing any “establishment figures” needed to tell us how to vote. Any WSFS member can propose it again in the future if they want.
In fact, voting in favor of postponing it indefinitely is one of the reasons I attended Thursday’s session (that and to vote against any attempt to postpone the other Hugo-related proposals). Heck if the Hugos get seriously jacked again next year I might even be willing to vote in favor of it in San Jose. Who knows?
@Kendall:
Aaron’s response shows why I’m acknowledging puppy wins.
In a discussion with Larry Correia on his blog, I wrote to him, “That’s eight categories in which a Puppy won. If the Puppy lists are full of excellent nominees, that means the Hugos just awarded eight excellent nominees with a rocket — even though they came from the Puppies. So why are you still mad? Does every nominee you like have to win?”
His response was a double madburger with mad sauce and a side of mad. The only joy he would concede, as he monster hunted my CHORF ass, was this: “I am actually impressed Weir got the Campbell.”
@Jameson
Then I still don’t understand EPH.
Suppose my ballot has five different works. They initially are worth 1/5th a point each.
Suppose then that one of my selections fails an elimination round; then it is worth 0 points, and the remaining four are worth .25 points. The votes are no longer weighted equally.
(And as you point out, while my vote for a work may be worth .25 points, someone else’s vote for that same work may be worth .20, .25, .33, .5 or 1.0 points — it’s this disparity that continues to make me uneasy about EPH.)
And I understand that circumstances are such that everyone knows the intention and this issue wouldn’t/shouldn’t keep EPH from being implemented. I just think a consistent Constitution is better than an inconsistent one, and fixing the problem would tidier.
One problem with the various “extend the ballot” proposals: some people (not me, but some people) have trouble keeping up with the reading list as it is. And that’s before 5/6, which is adding one to each category next year.
I’m firmly in favor of 5/6, but I think that’s as far as we want to push things in the direction of “lots of stuff on the ballot”. Otherwise we run the risk of losing potential voters.
@Xtifr. Agreed. I have a lot of trouble even with the list of 5. (Depression tends to push me toward rereading “safe” books rather than new ones.) I voted for 5 and 6, but I’d be worried about potentially adding more.
rcade on August 28, 2016 at 5:06 pm said:
@Kendall:
Aaron’s response shows why I’m acknowledging puppy wins.
In a discussion with Larry Correia on his blog, I wrote to him, “That’s eight categories in which a Puppy won. If the Puppy lists are full of excellent nominees, that means the Hugos just awarded eight excellent nominees with a rocket — even though they came from the Puppies. So why are you still mad? Does every nominee you like have to win?”
His response was a double madburger with mad sauce and a side of mad. The only joy he would concede, as he monster hunted my CHORF ass, was this: “I am actually impressed Weir got the Campbell.”
Wow, they are really all quite mad.
There is a lot of confusion as to what the various awards are for, you know, the work, not the person.
Not lifetime awards.
And like that.
And just a lot of anger.
You’d think they had just been the victims of a years-long slating and griefer campaign to silence the will of the majority of voters, or something.
Oh wait, they think they have been but can show no evidence whatsoever to back up their claim.
And despite having massively and publicly organized slate voting, they couldn’t come up with the numbers to prove that they, in fact, represent any kind of majority of fans.
Or anything, for that matter, except a vocal and loudly aggrieved minority trying to force its taste on everyone else.
Comfortingly enough, they seem pretty much agreed on allowing the Hugos to drift off into inconsequence without further input from them.
Because of shiny new Dragon Awards!
While there is no way to hold them to it, a girl can hope.
His response was a double madburger with mad sauce and a side of mad.
He knows that the only reason he’s relevant to the larger science fiction community is that he has ginned up grievances that garner him a collection of culture warrior hangers on. Without the aggrieved rage, he’s just a bit player who writes mediocre books.
I suspect that no matter who wins Dragon Awards, the Pups will loudly air their grievances about the Hugos afterwards. If non-Pups win, they will talk about how those evil “CHORFs” snuck in and deprived the real fans of their awards. If Pups win, they will cheer, but every cheer will include sneering about how the “Hugos are dead” and how they “stuck it to the SJWs”. In the land of the Pups, there is no joy that does not come packaged with whining about the people you don’t like.
rcade: I hope that the recently announced Sad Puppies 5 continues to be unslatelike.
I got a good laugh out of Paulk’s comment on that:
I’ll be… working with the WSFS committee behind the scenes to help mitigate the damage the motions passed at the business meeting are likely to do to the Hugo brand (Why? Because I don’t want to see an award won by so many greats of the field turn into an irrelevant circle jerk and rather than bitch about its decline I’m going to do what I can to help).
As far as I’m aware, Paulk was not appointed to any WSFS committees at the Business Meeting. So it’s unclear as to what “WSFS committee” it is she claims she will be working with “behind the scenes”, or what exactly she thinks she can do to “mitigate the damage to the Hugo brand”, given her extensive participation in repeated attempts over the last couple of years to damage the Hugo brand. Given that she is not part of the Hugo Administration committee, I suspect that any attempts on her part to “work with them behind the scenes” will be met with a very polite, “Thanks, but we’ve got it covered”.
On the topic of Sad Puppies: I just noticed that in Best Related Work, there were 95 nominations for “Sad Puppies Bite Back” by Declan Finn, which was #1 in the SP4 rec list. This supports my estimate of ~100 Sad Puppies this year.
@Ultragotha – Most of us at the meeting knew about this proposed amendment ahead of the debate. We knew what it entailed, and over 2/3 of us didn’t like the amendment and voted in favor of postponing it indefinitely without needing any “establishment figures” needed to tell us how to vote. Any WSFS member can propose it again in the future if they want.
I believe the proposal was aired here at least once, by Kevin Standlee who wrote up the language. I certainly saw it ahead of time and went into the business meeting with “Hell No” as my opinion. I get how seductive the elegance of other solutions can be when you get tired of the messy, time consuming process inherent in direct democracy, but I’m all for the mess.
@rcade, wow, that’s a lot of mad. It’s so much mad that apparently common sense left the building. Or maybe he’s always like that and I’ve just skimmed over his comments in the past. Anyway, I doubt anyone could be that full of mad and not be self-congratulatory about it, so yay for Correia and his coping skills.
A pedantic reading could say that after the elimination, they’re all 5 worth 0.25; it’s just that the eliminated 0.25 no longer matters. So, weighted equally.
It’s all words anyway. I understand your desire to clean up the constitution and I support it but I don’t think it’s urgent. As someone upthread said, when there’s a statutory conflict, most recent wins.
One thing I noticed in the comments on Correia’s blog is that Correia (and others) were incredulous that Elmore could be unfamiliar to Cora (as she said in her post), and began mocking her lack of knowledge because “he was everywhere in the 1980s”.
Except maybe not. Elmore was primarily associated with RPG art, specifically Dungeons & Dragons, and related fantasy novels. My understanding is that while Germany did have RPGs in the 1980s, Dungeons & Dragons was not a particularly big seller there, and the German RPG community mostly used German made RPGs. If so, this would mean that TSR (and by extension Elmore) never made much of a dent in Cora’s home country.
The short version of this is that by mocking Cora’s lack of knowledge about Elmore, Correia, and the rest of the Pups, are just exposing the very parochial nature of their tastes.
And the Puppy-listed stuff that won doesn’t count because non-Puppy voters actually liked it.
Apparently, the only acceptable victory is when the non-Puppies start voting for stuff they don’t like, because the Puppies tell them to. Only then will the Hugos be free from a cabal directing others what to vote for.
The 1980s was decades ago.
The award’s for work done in 2015.
Kurt Busiek on August 28, 2016 at 6:13 pm said:
Correia (and others) were incredulous that Elmore could be unfamiliar to Cora (as she said in her post), and began mocking her lack of knowledge because “he was everywhere in the 1980s”.
The 1980s was decades ago.
The award’s for work done in 2015.
Some brave soul tried to explain this in the comments, in ref to both Elmore and Weisskopf, with no result whatsoever.
I think the explanation was taken as special pleading on the part of tebil whatever-the-label-is-now to explain why they didn’t just vote for people puppies like, as should all right-thinking people.
Silly old rules.
And the Puppy-listed stuff that won doesn’t count because non-Puppy voters actually liked it.
The Puppy reaction kind of makes Torgersen’s “Big Tent” pretensions seem, well, like a pretense.
@Camestros Felapton:
This makes a great deal of sense, assuming it’s feasible.
Aaron: One thing I noticed in the comments on Correia’s blog is that Correia (and others) were incredulous that Elmore could be unfamiliar to Cora (as she said in her post), and began mocking her lack of knowledge because “he was everywhere in the 1980s”. Except maybe not. Elmore was primarily associated with RPG art, specifically Dungeons & Dragons, and related fantasy novels. My understanding is that while Germany did have RPGs in the 1980s, Dungeons & Dragons was not a particularly big seller there, and the German RPG community mostly used German made RPGs. If so, this would mean that TSR (and by extension Elmore) never made much of a dent in Cora’s home country.
I was born and grew up in the U.S., and I had no idea who the hell Larry Elmore was until someone listed his background here a few days ago — despite being a lifelong reader of science fiction and fantasy.
That’s because I’m not a gamer (this is not to say that I don’t like games, but there are other, somewhat complicated, reasons why I’ve never been a gamer, either of the RPG or video sort).
The only thing I knew about Larry Elmore was that he did the cover for Correia’s 2015 book which can only barely be considered artwork in comparison to the work of many other pro artists in the field last year.
Now, I do know who Leo and Diane Dillon, Frank Kelly Freas, Frank Frazetta, Pauline Ellison, Ed Emshwiller, Chesley Bonestell, Rowena Morrill, Rick Sternbach, Boris Vallejo, Michael Whelan, Bob Eggleton, Darrell Sweet (bless his heart), J.K. Potter, and Donato Giancola are. I wonder how many Puppies could say the same, and could tell which works by those authors were done by who.
ETA: and Gene Szafran! I love those Heinlein covers with a white-hot, enduring love.
So I just laugh and laugh when Puppies claim that I must be somehow ignorant because I’ve never heard of Larry Elmore until this year.
Pretty much – and we’d have to volubly not like it also and also cry bitter, bitter tears when whatever it was won.
JJ on August 28, 2016 at 6:36 pm said:
…. ETA: and Gene Szafran! I love those Heinlein covers with a white-hot, enduring love.
Went and did a google image search.
Not just Heinlein, lots and lots of covers.
That is some really yummy stuff.
Pretty much – and we’d have to volubly not like it also and also cry bitter, bitter tears when whatever it was won.
Most people knew this already, but the reactions of Correia, Torgersen, Wright, Beale, and all the other Pups to the Hugo results this year clearly demonstrates that everything they have said over the last couple of years about what they wanted, who they wanted to include, and what they thought was wrong with the Hugos was all a lie. Everything.
One more point about the rule changes: It’s nice that the rules got changed, but I guess they are more likely to work as a deterrent against slate-voting than actually reduce its effects.
Sad Puppies will move on and use Dragon Award categories for SP5 (wasn’t this announced somewhere?), so there’s not much there to attack the Hugos with. Beale enjoys his crazy stunts but he could also be less likely to cause a mess because he cannot hijack whole categories like he did this year and the last anymore. Maybe he’ll move on as well now that he has got what he wanted (that is publicity for his publishing venture).
Mission accomplished.
@rcade: Yeah, the wrong Pup Slatees won. 😉 Ugh, I’m unsurprised by LC’s reaction – some folks seem to live to rage – but wow, if we could bottle that energy and use it to for something positive!
@JJ: Has Paulk found a gateway to an alternate reality or something?! What. the. heck. It’s like a reverse conspiracy theory or something. “Oh yeah, I’m working on this. In secret. With People – never you mind who. (pause) Important People, all right?!” ::eyeroll::
@spacefaringkitten: “they are more likely to work as a deterrent against slate-voting than actually reduce its effects.”
The reverse seems the case, especially since any deterrent powers are unproven as of yet (check back next year, and – if 3SV passes – the year after, etc.). Heck, you even write “he cannot hijack whole categories like he did this year and the last anymore” – if he cannot hijack whole categories, then that’s reducing slate effects.
Unless by “reduce its effects” you really mean “completely block slates” (which I realize is your preference – mine, too – but it seems completely impractical).
I’d be very surprised if Beale just dropped this right now. In the future, maybe, as his followers get more and more bored and tired of paying to do something that has less and less effect. I live in hope! 🙂