Jonathan Stray and Mr. Norwich Terrier 6/1

Posted on by

aka A Bark and Hungry Puppy Arises

June is bustin’ out all over which may account for one of the longest roundups ever. The pack includes lead dog Brad R. Torgersen, Alexandra Erin, Ian Gillespie, Jim C. Hines, John Scalzi, John C. Wright, Larry Correia, Dave Freer, Laura “Tegan” Gjovaag, Vox Day, Chris Kluwe, Lis Carey, Dave M. Strom, Pluviann, Chris Gerrib, Russell Blackford and Brianna Wu. (Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editors May Tree and  Soon Lee.)

Brad R. Torgersen

“Sheepdog staring at the horizon” – May 31

As my friend and author (and Sad Puppy critic) Eric Flint recently noted, he’s put his body on the line for what he believes. Other people spew a lot of hot air about being “warriors” for social justice. Eric’s a man who can actually claim that title, and be taken seriously; by allies and opponents alike.

So you will pardon me if I can’t spare much serious thought for those who think being some guy who gets pissed off on the internet, is somehow going to make a difference — a real, lasting, actual difference.

Which takes me back to a point Larry Correia and I have both made, about the Hugo awards: loads of people loved to complain about how the Hugos suck, and almost nobody was doing anything to make an impact. I say “almost” because there were interested parties working hard to effect the kind of change they wanted — Seannan McGuire didn’t get five Hugo nominations in a single year on accident — they just didn’t conduct their operations in broad daylight, nor on a scale to compare with Sad Puppies.

Which takes me back to a comment Michael Z. Williamson once made: we’re bad because we’re competent?

Well, whatever people have against Sad Puppies 3 — legit, or imaginary — it’s clear that the various narratives will continue without my input. I can only restate the obvious, in the hope that it sticks with people who have not decided to be dead-set against us. We (Sad Puppies Inc.) threatened nothing, demanded nothing, and closed no doors in any faces. We threw the tent flaps wide and beckoned to anyone and everyone: come on in, join the fun!

 

 

Ian Gillespie

“Blank Slate” – May 31

Putting aside the reasoning behind the Puppy slates – which is, admittedly, thoroughly objectionable to many of us all on its own – I’ve yet to see anyone offer a cogent, clearly articulated explanation for what makes the machinations of these melancholy mutts categorically different than what’s been done, without controversy, in years past.

I’d like to humbly suggest that the anti-puppies have been sucked into debating a strawman. While most of the prominent denunciations of the dispirited dogs have focused on their use of slates, the real problem with the pessimistic pups isn’t about slates at all, but rather tactical voting.

By linking their Hugo recommendations to a larger cause – namely, putting those insufferable progressives in their place – the Puppies have effectively encouraged their small-but-loyal pack of supporters to nominate works based on a political agenda – not the works themselves, not even their own individual preferences. That’s the issue. Not campaigning for particular works, but rendering the works themselves a meaningless consideration.

 

Ian Gillespie

“Paulk the Vote” – May 31

According to Erin, Kate Paulk has been tapped to take over the dog pound, and she’s already promised that next year’s puppy-approved slatecraft will be done in a “transparent and democratic manner”.

If this is truly the case, I have a modest proposal to make:

Let’s rock the vote.

No slates. No cheating. Just show up 7 months from now and vote for the same SJW message fiction, or the same gun-totting monster mashups, you were gonna nominate anyway. If it’s really democratic, then the outcome won’t be any different than a normal, unpuppied process anyway. Right?

 

Jim C. Hines

“Publishing 101” – June 1

In the wake of Scalzi’s Big Book Deal, folks have been saying some rather ignorant or ill-informed stuff about how publishing works. I wanted to address a few of those points here.

Let’s start with the easiest, in which folks over on Theodore Beale’s blog claim that by Tor giving Scalzi a $3.4 million advance, they’re “squeezing out” approximately “523 initial advances to new science fiction authors.” In other words, Beale claims that “Patrick Nielsen Hayden and John Scalzi have combined to prevent more than 500 authors from getting published and receiving paid advances.”

This is a particularly egregious bit of ignorance coming from Mister Beale, who fancies himself a publisher.

Publishing is a business. As a business, Tor not only spends money on things like acquiring and publishing books, they also earn money by selling said books. Assuming Scalzi shut out 500 authors assumes that Tor is simply pissing away that $3.4 million. This is a rather asinine assumption. John Scalzi has repeatedly hit the NYT Bestseller list, earned a Best Novel Hugo, and has several TV/film deals in development for his work. Tor buys books from John Scalzi for the same reason they buy books from Orson Scott Card: those books sell a hell of a lot of copies, and earn Tor significant profits.

Very often it’s those profits — the income from reliable bestsellers like Card and Scalzi — that allow publishers to take a chance on new and unknown authors.

 

 

 

 

John C. Wright

“You Got My Attention By Libeling Me and Desecrating What I Love” – June 1

With a combination of pity and dismay, I read this

https://file770.com/?p=22824&cpage=3#comment-272798….

I suspect the Rabids aren’t fans of SF so much as they are “members of the cult of Vox Day.” Partly, this is the only thing that truly seems to explain the works on the slate — the ones that aren’t published by Beale’s own press anyway — the point isn’t that they are any particular thing, the point is that he chose them, and there they are.

But to my infinite amusement, I read the reply: There are, as of last count, 367 vile, faceless minions of the Dark Lord of the Evil Legion of Evil Authors.

 

https://twitter.com/damiengwalter/status/605445248924282880

 

Larry Correia on Monster Hunter Nation

“Back from New York, BEA Recap, and Updates” – June 1

I had some very interesting business conversations, many of which I can’t post about in public. I was worried that I’d catch flack because of all the negative media attention related to Sad Puppies, and the many CHORFs screaming about how I’ve ruined my career, will never work in this town again, blah, blah, blah. Basically, most of the publishing industry hasn’t heard or doesn’t care about the Hugos, it is a non-issue to them, and those who did talk to me about it were either on my side, or weren’t on my side but thought the stagnant little pond still needed a rock thrown in it.

There were also some interesting political conversations. The vast majority of the publishing folks live around and work in New York and are usually politically liberal. Everybody is nice, but at party conversations, people like me are a weird fly-over, red state curiosity. No, really, I do own like that many guns. I had a fascinating and too brief conversation about how Simon & Schuster realized after Bush’s reelection that there were actually lots of people in America who are not liberal and did not think that way, and maybe they should start some imprints to publish conservative political books, and New York publishing was all like no way, nobody believes that stuff. But S&S started some imprints aimed at conservative audiences and shockingly enough, made buckets of money.

 

Alexandra Erin on Blue Author Is About To Write

“This JUST In” – June 1

So if you are a Puppy reading this, here’s how you convince the rest of the world that you mean all those high-minded ideals more than the snipping and sniping:

Next year, try actually spreading awareness of the open nature of nominations. Don’t buy into the slate. Don’t take your recommendations and hand them off to someone who may ignore them while assembling a slate of their own picks. Instead do what countless other people have done for years: post your own recommendations directly, as recommendations.

Add an explanation that anyone who buys a supporting membership to Worldcon can nominate their own picks, and bam… you will have just raised awareness of the nomination process.

What does participating in a slate do that furthers that mission? What does making vague, unfounded accusations that past nominees/winners benefited from some shadowy affirmative action program do to advance the cause? What does all the noise and mess and deliberate provocation and stirring up controversy have to do with anything? What does it add?

 

Dave Freer on Mad Genius Club

“Signals across the void –awards and other signs.” – June 1

Of course people can argue about what the signal meant in the first place. Take the various ‘literary’ awards. What were they intended to do?

1) A recognition of excellence by one’s peers?
2) A recognition of excellence by the public?
3) Promote such excellence – signal to others that that is excellent and they should look?
4) A pat on the back for one of the ‘in’ literary clique’s chums?

Different awards have different purposes, and different values. As a reader and writer only (3) ‘Promote such excellence – signal to others that that is excellent and they should look at the work’ is worth much. Most awards, without careful custodianship, head for (4). At which point they lose their historical value and gradually vanish. They have less and less value as (3), and really (1) and (4) are something only the insecure want, unless they feed (3) – which (4) never does and (1) does badly. To put it brutally, if you need and support an award being (1) or (4) you’re a loser, not big enough for what is a tough profession.

(2) is a different kettle of tea. In real terms you could only get there by systematic polling. It does have a lot of (3) value too, because, true enough, we’re not that different. A book which is really the most popular book around, is worth a look-in. The nearest approximation in sf-fantasy is the Hugos. And it isn’t a great approximation (the sample of readers, by who attends/supports Worldcon is obviously inaccurate, and various problems in the nomination have been exposed by the Puppies. (they’re game-able, they’re not demographically representative of the sf readership) – but it’s the best we’ve got right now. As such it could do a good job for sf. It used to.

 

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

“The Hugos again” – June 1

Of particular interest to me is this notion of giving people who you don’t like bad reviews on books you haven’t read. Let me make this absolutely clear: This is bad behavior. It is wrong. If you have read a book and don’t like it, then it’s fine to give it a bad review.

If you attempted to read a book and found you couldn’t finish it because it was so bad, then yeah, give it a bad review.

But if you simply don’t like the author? Giving their book a bad review without reading it or trying to read it (in good faith) is every bit as bad as, say, nominating a bunch of works for the Hugo awards without reading them first because somebody put together a slate. Yeah, I’m comparing people who give bad reviews based on how they feel about the authors to the self-called “sad puppies” and “rabid puppies”. Both actions are bad faith. Both actions are wrong. Both actions are not worthy of intelligent people.

As David Gerrold says, “If you’re claiming to be one of the good guys, you gotta act like it.”

 

Vox Day on Vox Popoli

“The descent of literary criticism” – June 1

Natalie Luhrs will be live-tweeting her feelz about THE WAR IN HEAVEN, beginning June 11. I wonder if she’ll like it?:

Before Theodore “Vox Day” Beale was the central figure in the Sad/Rabid Puppies Hugo Awards hacking, he wrote a series of religious-inspired fantasy novels for Pocket Books. And blogger Natalie Luhrs is going to live-tweet his debut novel, Eternal Warriors: The War in Heaven, for charity. Here’s how it works: You donate money to RAINN, a charity that operates the National Sexual Assault Hotline. (Or to a similar organization in your own country.) You send proof of your donation to Luhrs. And for every $5 you donate, Luhrs will livetweet a page of the book, starting June 11 with the hashtag #readingVD. She will also republish her tweets, with additional commentary, on a chapter-by-chapter basis, on her site, Pretty-Terrible. If people raise $2,000, she’ll do the entire book. (She is currently at $920.)

Yeah, probably not. I’d be considerably more impressed if she’d chosen A THRONE OF BONES instead. And it’s kind of a pity that she didn’t choose THE WORLD IN SHADOW, I would have been genuinely interested to see her reaction to that. I’m rather dubious that 300 tweets that alternate between snarking about how bad the writing is and how stupid the author is will prove to be very entertaining for long.

 

Chris Kluwe in a comment on io9  – May 29

As someone who livetweeted Milo Yiannopolous’ “poetry” book, Eskimo Papoose, all I can do is wish her the best of luck. That shit is more toxic than Godzilla poop on a radioactive dump site.

 

Geeky Library Voting Guide

“The 2015 Hugo Awards”

[Combination infographic and voter survey, with a page for each category. Need to log into Twitter to vote.]

 

Lis Carey on Lis Carey’s Library

“Tangent SF Online, edited by Dave Truesdale” – June 1

One of the 2015 Best Fanzine nominees. This is a review zine, focused on reviewing science fiction and fantasy short fiction. I did not find that its style or judgments engaged me at all. However, that said, it’s perfectly competent and professional, and for those who connect better with the tone and approach of Tangent Online, this is a valuable service.

 

Lis Carey on Lis Carey’s Library

“The Dark Between the Stars (Saga of the Shadows #1), by Kevin J. Anderson (author), Mark Boyett (narrator)” – June 1

The prose is pedestrian, and just to be absolutely clear: “Pedestrian” prose is not “transparent” prose. Transparent prose requires real skill and craft. The prose here is no more than adequate. It’s certainly no compensation for diffuse and distracting plotting and barely-present character development.

 

https://twitter.com/samdodsworth/status/605426485881663488

 

Dave M. Strom on Dave M. Strom: author of Holly Hansson, superheroine & writer

cropped-tucker-me-holly COMP

“Sad Puppies? Or Eye of Argon?” – June 1

At least the Eye of Argon was consistent about spelling out numbers. Although it violates hulls in a slightly grander fashion.

“The disemboweled mercenary crumpled from his saddle and sank to the clouded sward, sprinkling the parched dust with crimson droplets of escaping life fluid.”

There’s more. The same supposedly Hugo-worthy short story [Turncoat by Steve Rzasa] has this sentence. So much wrong in so little space.

“Disabling an enemy warship is not enough; they must be crippled, damaged, destroyed.”

I’m jerked from singular to plural. My sense of opposites is assaulted: in this context, disabled is a synonym for crippled and damaged. I offer this rewrite.

“Disabling an enemy warship is not enough; it must be destroyed.”

Simple, short, and direct. Even a Dalek would smile at that. As for these puppy stories, I urge a vote of no award.

 

Pluviann on The Kingfishers Nest

“The Parliament of Beasts and Birds – John C. Wright” – June 1

The ‘The Parliament of the Beasts and Birds’ is a beautifully written work. It opens with some excellent scene setting. Look at how wonderfully crafted this description is: ….

So, all in all, it was a bit odd. There are some very minor quibbles I can make: the past tense of shine is shone when the verb is intransitive. And Fox trying to wriggle out being called a thief by protesting that he stole meat not animals doesn’t really make sense. But overall, it was well done. The story started strong, meandered along fairly slowly but amusingly, and then took a decided turn for the strange at the end.

 

Chris Gerrib on Private Mars Rocket

“Hugo Thoughts, Novels” – June 1

I’ve been reading my Hugo packet. Over the weekend I finished The Goblin Emperor and abandoned all hope of reading The Dark Between the Stars. I’ll discuss why and what that means for Hugos below.

My problem with Stars was that I lost track of who was who in the zoo. Nearly every chapter brought new characters, with new conflicts. There were at least three main plot lines opened, and no obvious link between them. Also, I kept feeling that I was missing important bits of back-story, namely the war and relationships between the humans and the aliens.

Now, Goblin Emperor is by no means light reading. It has name issues, in that characters have different names and titles based on marital status and age. Having said that, I found it much less opaque. This was for two reasons – one, Sarah Monette (Addison is an open pen name) kept the point-of-view to one character, who as an outsider needed to have stuff explained to him. Second, the story was not set in a world where there were seven previous books written.

 

Russell Blackford

“Some more on the 2015 Hugo Voting Packet” – June 1

2. Rat Queens Volume 1: Sass and Sorcery – written by Curtis J. Weibe and illustrated by Roc Upchurch (nominated for Best Graphic Story). This bawdy fantasy romp, set in a Tolkienesque secondary universe complete with elves, orcs, and trolls, entertained me from beginning to end. The characters who make up the eponymous Rat Queens – a band of magical (female) adventurers – are unfailingly fun to watch, and are strongly distinguished in their individual designs and personalities. The action is fast-paced, and I’m all for the non-stop violence and low comedy. It’s a hoot, but does it have sufficient gravitas to merit a Hugo Award? Debatable, perhaps… but I wouldn’t be wanting to stand in its way. I rate it a bit below the next item, but it has its attractions.

3. Saga Volume Three – written by Brian K. Vaughan and illustrated by Fiona Staples (nominated for Best Graphic Story). Here we have a potential winner. I rate it below Ms. Marvel, but an earlier volume of this complicated, engaging space opera has already won a Hugo Award (in 2013). The characters are worth caring about; the storyline is intriguing; and the overall narrative, when it’s complete, could become a classic of its kind.

 

Alexandra Erin on Blue Author Is About To Write

“Sad Puppies Review Books: Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day” – June 1

alexander

Reviewed by John Z. Upjohn, USMC (Aspired)

Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day is the tale of a young man persecuted past the point of all reason. Only in the sick world of so-called Social Justice would he be held up as a comic figure rather a tragic one to be rescued or, failing that, avenged.

Our story begins when the main character wakes up with gum in his hair. Yet when he went to sleep, it was safely and responsibly in his mouth, where gum belongs. I am sure the SJWs would say that it is his fault for chewing gum in the first place, that he was somehow “asking for it”. They hate victim blaming until the victim is a white straight “CIS-MALE” and then suddenly everything is the victim’s fault. I ask you, is this morality where a person is always wrong 100% based on the gender and race?

If you say it is Alexander’s fault that the gum wound up in his hair, then you are saying he shouldn’t have had it in his mouth. If you are saying that he shouldn’t have had it in his mouth, you are saying he shouldn’t be allowed to chew gum. Who are you to say that he shouldn’t chew gum just because he is a straight white male, or as normal people who don’t notice sex or race would say, a normal person?

 

Discover more from File 770

Subscribe to get the latest posts to your email.

391 thoughts on “Jonathan Stray and Mr. Norwich Terrier 6/1”

  1. @Ken Josenhans:

    I had the difference between traditional fan-based conventions and media mega-cons explained to me like this:

    Traditional fan-based conventions are like family reunions where everyone chips in to cover rental space and food and everyone is considered more or less equal, or at least someone with a voice and a mutual interest.

    Mega-cons are commercial for-profit enterprises run by middlemen who deliver crowds of paying bodies to the corporate entities, game companies, etc., who are the convention’s actual customers.

    Neither of these is superior to the other, but they are completely different beasties.

  2. Regarding “You Got My Attention By Libeling Me and Desecrating What I Love” — I was intrigued that apparently my observation — that I SUSPECT the Rabids aren’t fans of SF so much as they are members of the cult of Vox Day — struck such a nerve with both Wright and Beale that they bothered to post about it.

    So I popped over to Wright’s post and saw that it was mostly a comment roundup — a couple of people protesting that they DO TOO like science fiction and how dare anyone suggest otherwise — and a whole lot of the kind of self-important and self-referential battle cries that I saw during peak gamergate. You know, “This is a war! We are warriors! You are a FOOL if you think we will stop before we have won this war!”

    Which, you know, proves my point exactly.

    I’m sure it’s very exciting to believe that merely by posting stuff on the Internet and gaming the Hugo awards that you are WINNING! SOMETHING! IMPORTANT!

    Hey, you might even win a Hugo award. Congratulations I guess?

  3. unless you have the sort of the blazingly original talent that descends seemingly from nowhere, like a Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.

    And even JS&MrN (which I adore and will probably be my one book on Desert Island Discs) benefitted from a degree of signal boost from luminaries like Neil Gaiman.

  4. The thing is, what McGuire and Scalzi have done is qualitatively, as well as quantitatively different from what the Puppies have done. They are speaking to their own audience of people who are fans of theirs–who already enjoy their work enough to actively pay attention to their social media presence. You can make a reasonable presumption that those people a) read your books, b) like your books a lot, and c) would at least entertain the notion that they are genuinely great and award winning. Saying to those people, “Hey, this work is eligible for an award and you can vote on it if you want to,” is not an unreasonable thing to say. (I’d do it myself, except that 99% of what I’m writing right now is smut and the rest is blog posts and comments on File 770 posts.)

    Whereas Correia, Torgesen and Beale were speaking to an audience that may have been fans of their personal work, but could definitely not be assumed to be fans of everything on the ballot. They’re recommending works that their audience aren’t familiar with, which is a very different beast than talking to people about things they already are fans of no matter whether it’s one work, five works or eight works.

  5. @mcjulie I read some of those comments too and walked away stumped. Whatever it was, it really did hit close to home for them. It makes me think of a joke we used to tell each other in high school (which was almost certainly old even then): “I’m a non-conformist–just like all my friends!”

  6. Apart from the quality of a work, what matters in a competition is how well read your work is and how active your fans are.

    The puppy slate is about authors pooling their resources, adding their fanbases together to a common block. In that way they could shove out authors with more and active fans.

    When push come to shove on the single works, the active fans are still quite few.

  7. @John Seavey

    And Scalzi throws open the thread for all his readers to suggest other books and stories they felt were great – and doesn’t elevate his work over those (other than that his is first as he made the blog post).

  8. @snowcrash

    I think some of them made the Analog short-list? I’m not sure where you’d find it online but someone posted it in the comments awhile back and I’m pretty sure it included the Puppy picks from Analog.

  9. I’m new to John Scalzi’s blog: I have to admit that before the Canine Kerfuffle started, he was just a name in a bookstore to me. I notice that he has a lot of energy for promoting other authors. “The Big Idea” column allows authors to write at length about what skiffy concept they brought to their most recent book, and that column has already put two books into my “to-be-investigated” list. Mr. Scalzi also has a weekly dump of “New Books and Advance Reading Copies”, where even the picture of all those book spines can get me curious, and all the commenters can share their current enthusiasms.

  11. I also believe that what Scalzi and McGuire and others do is qualitatively different and above board. I also think that someone as active on his blog and on Twitter as Scalzi gets followers who like him for his blog/tweets first and then start reading his books.

    I was more trying to describe how building an active and engaged following online, many of whom may go on to nominate and vote for an author in awards, can look suspicious to someone who wishes they had that kind of fanbase.

  12. Both Flow by Arlan Adnrews, Sr. and Journeyman: In the Stone House by Michael F. Flynn made the final short lists in the AnLab results. Flow placed second in novellas and Journeyman; In the Stone House placed third in Novelettes. Championship B’Tok and The Triple Sun: A Golden Age Tale did not place.

  13. Absolutely, cmm, and I apologize unreservedly if you thought that was directed at you in particular. It was more a general comment on the Puppy party line of, “We’re not doing anything different than other authors do–we’re just doing it on a bigger scale and out in the open!”

    Which is a bit like someone who robbed a convenience store with a shotgun in broad daylight using the “Take a penny, leave a penny” dish as justification. 🙂

  14. @David

    Thank you for the clarification! 🙂

    I’m clearly very out of step with the average Analog reader – I liked Triple Sun (flawed as it is) better than Flow or Journeyman.

  15. @McJulie @Will,

    I like to think that an observer could look at the comments over there and the comments over here and draw their own conclusions, but people, it turns out, are funny things.

  17. @peace The rhetoric in those spaces horrifies me to the point that I very often have trouble hearing any content at all in it. Rhetorically, there’s no comparison at all. I was just thinking how much they sound like North Korea or Iran trying to think up new “mother of all battles” quotes all the time.

  18. A few for your consideration:

    The Yippish Policedog’s Kennel
    A Ranticle for Pupbowitz
    The Sirens of Pluto
    The Left Paw of Barkness
    9 Puppies in Anger
    The Once and Future Canid
    World War P
    Something Wicked This Way Barks
    To Your Scattered Puppies Go

  19. But sometimes I’m amused by the comments, too. Like finding out that filking is a left-wing activity brought about by ’60s pinkos like Woody Guthrie. That’s definitely going to make _me_ stop doing it, yes, sir.

  21. @Peace

    San Diego Comic-Con is a nonprofit.

    I used to go regularly for a while, until it metastisized to the point where it seemed like more trouble than it was worth. A lot of the size increase seemed driven by the increased presence of Hollywood — more actors and more movie/TV creators — and I won’t lie, the annual Futurama panel and Joss Whedon panel were always a big draw for me.

    My impression is that “media” cons — like SDCC and DragonCon — are simply going to be bigger than book-and-fan conventions like Worldcon, because they’re drawing from a bigger audience.

    George R.R. Martin (way back in the 90s) explained it more or less this way — the number of people it takes to make your book a massive bestseller is a tiny fraction of the number of people it takes to make your movie a runaway hit is a tiny fraction of the number of people it takes to make your network television program successful.

  22. @Will
    I alternate between being amused and horrified by their rhetoric myself.

    I mean, it’s ridiculous, but some of it skirts dangerously close to how I imagine suicide bombers talk themselves into it.

  24. McJulie on June 2, 2015 at 10:48 am said:

    @Peace

    San Diego Comic-Con is a nonprofit.

    I used to go regularly for a while, until it metastisized to the point where it seemed like more trouble than it was worth. A lot of the size increase seemed driven by the increased presence of Hollywood — more actors and more movie/TV creators — and I won’t lie, the annual Futurama panel and Joss Whedon panel were always a big draw for me.

    I was probably unfair in my description.

    The thing is, so far as I can tell the huge media conventions really are great fun for people with the right temperaments. I would be chewing my own leg off to escape such an environment, but I can at least understand that lots (and lots and lots) of people genuinely love them.

    I am just glad that there is enough variety of types of convention that no matter what one’s temperament there is something suitable.

    I would hate to see all conventions mashed into one sort.

  25. Flow placed second in novellas and Journeyman; In the Stone House placed third in Novelettes.

    One must also consider the fact that these are drawn from a relatively small pool – just those stories published in Analog in a single year. Given that only one or two novelettes are published in any issue, and maybe a single novella, the range of possible choices in those categories is pretty limited.

  27. @Meredith: A lot of that has to do with regular Analog readers getting to read these series of stories as they come out so they are familiar with the context of these “partial” stories. As I have mentioned in the past, Analog publishes a lot of stories that are series. In the past, it would be continuing adventures of a group of characters. This was fun most of the time as stories stood on their own. However, more and more lately they release big stories broken into smaller pieces so individual stories are no longer standalone as many people who have read the Hugo entries this year have noticed. It is really really annoying and has brought me close to dropping a subscription I have held for almost 40 years. Serials are fine. Releasing novels in little dribblets as authors write them is not so fine. To me, anyway.

  28. @David: It’s rather the singleton publishing of a single novel that is new. Charles Dickens, Alexandre Dumas, père, and Jules Verne were all serialised regularly, to name but three. The same held true in the pulp magazines. To take a more recent example, _Falling Free_ by Lois Bujold was serialised in Analog before publication as a book.

    In a way, the modern giant series of one story sold in several volumes can be viewed as a continuation of this pattern, only adapted to modern publishing and distribution.

  29. I actually like serial novels published in magazines, but they should be categorized as such. They are not short stories. That bothers me about the Hugos and is part of the reason I’m rarely happy with the short story category anymore.

  30. @David

    Releasing novels in dribs and drabs sounds very Victorian to me. I think each section needs to be self-sustaining to have wider appeal. There’s a reason TV shows usually have a self-contained story in every episode even when the series as a whole has a story arc of its own. I didn’t feel that was the case for the examples in the Hugo packet, personally, and if that’s a new development for Analog that’s a shame (although it will probably make my decision about which magazine subscriptions to get easier).

    For novels in particular it seems like a poor idea. What if you decide later on that a plot point or piece of worldbuilding was a mistake? Its too late to edit it out if you’ve been publishing as you go along.

  31. @meredith The folks who wrote Lost talked about that a lot (apparently consciously following Dickens that way). I think they had fun sort of writing themselves into corners and then seeing if they could get out. Of course, it bit them in the end, IMHO, but it was fun along the way.

  32. It isn’t linked in today’s round up, but in the thread for Sarah Hoyt’s blog post yesterday she directed me to her new post. It only obliquely references the puppies (there’s a decided lack of substance), but it’s out there if folks want to see her thoughts today.

  33. How about some Thurber?

    The Hugo the Slate Broke
    A Papillon in the Garden
    The Secret Life of Rabid Puppy

  34. To take a more recent example, Falling Free by Lois Bujold was serialised in Analog before publication as a book.

    Yes, but it was marked as being serialized, with the parts labeled Part 1, Part 2, and so on, and published in consecutive months. The current practice in Analog seems to be to categorize partial novels as shorter works and publish those chunks spread out over several nonconsecutive months or even years. If you label something as a novella or a novelette, it should tell a mostly complete story on its own, and “stories” like Journeyman: In a Stone House and Championship B’tok don’t really do that.

  35. I posted this earlier but it got left behind while waiting for moderation.

    @NickPheas on June 2, 2015 at 12:15 am said:
    Last year I nominated AJ, unread, because the buzz was that this was something I should read, and The Ocean at the End of the Lane because I knew I would read it at some point, and to be honest, if I got a copy I the voter packet I’d not complain.

    Both would have been worthy winners. Unread is not automatically evil.

    No, it really is Not Good to nominate books that you haven’t read. It’s not an honest response to the text. It’s not a considered selection. It’s just someone using the Hugos to get cheap books to read.

    If everyone did what you did then the Hugos would indeed be totally worthless.

    I ask you to reconsider your position on this.

  36. Wandering through album titles today.

    Sasquan Puppy’s Lonely Hearts Con Band
    Pup Sounds
    Houses of the Hugo
    The Rise and Fall of Puppy Condust
    Automatic for the Puppies

  37. Wasn’t The Human Division published as a serial, too? I don’t know how succesful that and the Bujold were as serials (they seem to have had the advantage of being written as a whole first), but I agree that things explicitly marked pt1, pt2 etc. are less awkward than pretending that pt3 is a novelette in its own right when pt3 doesn’t stand alone.

  39. [serial novels] On the flip side, the ‘fix-up novel’ is a long SF tradition – see Asimov’s original Foundation trilogy, which started as eight separate shorter pieces in Astounding. More recently, Weyr Search (the first chunk of Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonflight) won a Hugo on its own, while Dragonrider (the second chunk) won a Nebula.

  40. And even with series of stories, a lot depends on how it is done. If you publish as separate stories, parts of a novel that are different distinct sections of a novel, that is not as bad as abruptly ending short stories in the middle of the story. Contrast how Allen Steele’s Coyote stories in Asimov’s work as opposed to the Journeyman series or H.G. Stratmann’s Paradise Planet series of stories. Having an overall arc is one thing. Being multiple pieces of a single story not identified as such is another. As I said, serials are fine by me. I kind of miss when the major novels came out as serials in the magazines (though there are way too many novels for that to happen now).

  41. Under the Hugo rules, serial novels can be nominated as a single novel, or the individual installments can be nominated in the appropriate short fiction category. But once an installment has been nominated as short fiction, the work in its entirety may not be nominated as a novel. The choice is left to the nominators, though an author may decline the nomination for a single installment and hope that the nominators nominate the entire novel.

  42. @Brad J

    My first, very grumpy reaction was: “Yes, but Asimov and McCaffrey are both much better writers than Flynn or Lerner.” 🙂

    That might be totally unfair, as I haven’t read any of their other work, but I struggled to read to the end of Championship B’Tok and Journeyman, so I’m not eager to seek out more.

    I do think there’s a difference between serialised novella’s or novelette’s intended to make a whole that don’t stand alone, and novella’s and novelette’s that stand alone in their own right and are later expanded to become a novel or a series.

  43. Kyra: There’s been much less discussion of, “So, wait, a publisher nakedly conspired to get HOW many of his own properties on the ballot?”

    It is interesting isn’t it. I just wrote a post about the diametrically opposite opinions on romance influences in SF between MadGeniusClub views and Vox Day https://camestrosfelapton.wordpress.com/2015/06/02/pink-sf-and-puppies/ . They aren’t just opposite they are utterly inimical.

    1. It is possible that may SPs are genuinely scared of VD. He is quite open about his assertive style of response (see his recent non-SF related spat with the Popehat blog)
    2. Populist movements have to express their outrage outwards. Such movement (e.g. the Tea Party recently) work by being all-things, to all-men (well, people). They can’t address ideological differences internally because the movement will fall to bits. So they express their objections at non-Puppies. So Amanada on Mad Genius berates non-Puppies for not liking Romance influences in SF while VD berates non-Puppies for putting in the merest hint of it in SF.

  44. Aaron on June 2, 2015 at 11:50 am said:

    . . . The current practice in Analog seems to be to categorize partial novels as shorter works and publish those chunks spread out over several nonconsecutive months or even years. . . .

    Really? That sounds pretty unpleasant to read.

  45. Accelerando is a great example of taking individual stories and weaving them together to make a novel. The individual stories that appeared in Asimov’s stood on their own as stories quite well, in my opinion. It is all in the execution. Analog has been drifting further and further away from standalone stories, expecting that their readers will have read previous stories in the series. Considering their core of super long term subscribers, this might not be unreasonable. But it hurts the stories when they have to be evaluated on their own as independent stories.

  46. Really? That sounds pretty unpleasant to read.

    One need only look to the current Hugo nominees Flow, Championship B’tok, and Journeyman: In the Stone House to see how poorly this can work when it comes to the individual pieces of these broken up novels.

  47. I’m wondering if the novellas/serials thing is a holdover from the golden age of the magazines, which was also the very early days of the postwar paperback novel industry. Publishing a novel in parts in the magazine and seeing the response to it there was perhaps an indicator of which ones were popular enough to justify a paperback release.

    Nowadays there doesn’t seem to be much point to it, particularly when e-books allow novellas and even short stories to be issued as stand alone publications. And it certainly seems unworkable to release novellas that are parts of a bigger work but don’t tell a complete story on their own. That was a major problem with “Flow” and “B’tok” for me.

    Human Division was published as serial e-books, released in several parts over, I think, 6 weeks. It was more akin to how Stephen King published The Green Mile, although only in e-book format so there was a much smaller distribution headache involved. The dead-tree edition didn’t come out until the serial version had completed and was published as a single volume. IIRC the next novel in the series will be done the same way.

    Since the serialization was followed almost immediately by the issue of the complete book, the nominations category question was pretty much moot, I think.

  48. Aaron on June 2, 2015 at 12:25 pm said:

    Really? That sounds pretty unpleasant to read.

    One need only look to the current Hugo nominees Flow, Championship B’tok, and Journeyman: In the Stone House to see how poorly this can work when it comes to the individual pieces of these broken up novels.

    That’s frustrating and annoying. I would hate to read part of a story and not know when the next part was coming.

  49. So much of the backstory of novella, novellettes, “fix-up” novels (a term I learned just four days ago in Puppy-related reading), and serialized novels would be tied up in the economics of the SF field. I’m mostly familiar with the novellas-into-novels from the 1940s-1960s, when the opportunities for selling complete novels were much smaller than they are today, the prozines were the major influences on the commercial field, and it was still practical for the committed reader to cover all the prozines and most or all of the novels, and still have time left over for more books.

    Now that new hardcover genre novels can sell for up to $25 (gack), while the prozines look (to this long-ago reader of them) to be on life support, it’s no surprise that major novels don’t get serialized any more. I’d speculate that the novellas -> fix-up novel is more a path chosen by authors very early in their career, who are taking a low-risk path to try something out.

  50. @cmm:

    Yes, but in the Old Days, if part 1 of a novel was in this month’s issue you darn well knew part 2 was going to be in next month’s issue.

Comments are closed.