532 thoughts on “Love in the Time of Collars 5/21”

1. D’oh! I had a Homer moment and mangled Mamatas. My sincere apologies.

2. David on May 22, 2015 at 1:28 pm said:

   Jamoche: “I think it’s more that we’re a bunch of easily-distracted language nerds. It’s what I like about the place – like Slacktivist, where I’ve been a regular for years, it’s a big free-form discussion where tangents aren’t stomped on for being “off topic”.”

   That may be your motivation, but forgive me if I see something other than a mere innocent interest in linguistics from other commenters on this thread.

   Sorry? I see a lot of different people with different interests talking about SF and books they have read and the Hugos and the esoterica of voting and writing filk and poems and playing with language. What do you see?

3. Eh, everyone does it, no worries.

   Like I tell customer service people on the phone, “It’s em ay em ay like ‘mama’ tee as in Thomas ay ess; all the vowels are ays.” That’s they only way anyone can get it down correctly.

4. A short, pithy phrase seems inappropriate for Wright. Do you think you could bulk it out to a paragraph or two?

   I leave paragraphs to Scott Frazer. But a longer phrase might be something like.

   Lack-a-day and O! John C. Wright! You’ve erred mightily in your reasoning, o’erstepped the bounds of common sense, and committed a grave fallacy; I abjure your mistakes and importune you to rethink yur convoluted, contradictory notions and gross generalizations, but, in truth, am also amused at how your inability to apprehend has created a Gordian Knot of textual japery that undermines your arguments and makes you into no menacing foe but a mere jackanapes who kicks against the pricks of progress and time, your message suitable for the ?? ?????? who read you regularly but not the moiety of society, from whom you have continued to further remove yourself with this particular wrong.

5. Thanks Owlmirror. Illuminating. There is biblical precedent for man being “a little lower than the Angels” (see Psalms). For the contrary position, I was in fact thinking of St. Paul who says that man shall “judge” the Angels in 1 Cor 6:3. Jesus also says in luke 20 man is “equal” to them. Wright’s story would make sense in this context I think

   This is all v helpful for my novel on the secret history of the nephilim 😛

6. Nick Mamatas @ 1:18 — I had a recent chat with a Business Meeting geek and his narrative was that the potential demand for New Hugo Categories — lots and lots of them! — was a key obstacle for a proposal for a Young Adult Hugo. “Young Adult got a Hugo, why can’t Urban Fantasy have a Hugo?”

   Nick Mamatas @ 12:55 — rewriting the Hugo categories isn’t “gerrymandering.” Gerrymandering’s goal is to adjust the distribution of the voting pool. But in Hugo’s case, the common voting pool is available to vote on all categories.

7. Er, for those question marks please read hoi oligoi. Greek, it seems, is right out.

8. >> The Puppies seem to be rethinking (or perhaps never considered as such) the neutrality of Mike’s space, judging from Mr. Beale and Mr Wright.>>

   I gather the Puppies (at least, Beale, Wright and a few others) think of a “neutral space” as one that agrees with them. Anything less is part of the conspiracy against them.

9. Kate Paulk’s manifesto is interesting:
   1.Story first. This doesn’t mean that other things aren’t important. It just means the most important thing is a story that grabs readers by the collar and hauls them into its world.
   a. Characters nearly first.
   2. Meaning and message should arise naturally from the characters and plot, not stop the action for a sermon.
   3. Respect the readers.
   4. The award that matters most is people buying the work.
   5. More voters and more votes mean more representative results.

   The details on each rule are in the quote above. It is interesting in terms of being the first strong attempt to actually state a set of coherent goals that assert a positive objective (i.e. rather than just moaning about strawmen). It really only applies to the story categories and is more easily applied to the novels and novellas.

   Some points to consider: are the rules sensible, do recent past Hugo winners live up to these rules and do the current Puppy nominees live up to the rules? I can’t list all Hugo winners but I think a good way to test the water would be to consider Ancillary Justice from last year (as it gets a lot of Puppy hate) and Marko Kloos Lines of Departure because it was a Sad Puppy nominee from an author who has distanced themselves from the campaign and who has withdrawn. Also both books have a military setting and are part of a series. Obviously the books are judged against my subjective judgement but using the rules as a strong guide.

   Rule 1 and 1a are reasonable but the devil is in the details. Obviously tastes differ about the proportion of character to plot but it does allow people to make a distinction about books such as Station Eleven or the Bone Clocks which have sci-fi setting but which focus on character.
   Ancillary Justice easily clears rule 1 and 1a. The story certainly grabbed me by the collar and the characters provoke empathy.
   Lines of Departure. Plot is OK, although it does run into an issue of being just-a-bunch-of-stuff-that-happens. In part this is because the underlying causes of the inter-human conflicts aren’t explored and the motives of the aliens are unclear (beyond they want our planets) – that is defensible because it is how the main character experiences the war. Character? A bit thin. I’m guessing the author didn’t want to much soul searching for the main character but some of his later actions make more sense if he was a lot more bothered by earlier events (in previous book) than he appeared.

   Rule 2. This is the rule that looks most like a rallying point from previous attempts to explain Puppy sadness. The thing is as committed leftist and supporter of feminism and a range of other social justice issues I cannot fault it. Good fiction doesn’t stop for a sermon. The thing is good MESSAGE fiction shouldn’t stop for a sermon. I can think of really only one truly great piece of political fiction that really just stops for a hefty chunk to give a lecture and that is 1984, which has a section in the middle which is an extract from the “book”… but, you know, ORWELL. Anyway, as written I think rule 2 is great. I doubt many people of my political leanings would disagree.
   Ancillary Justice – if it breaks for a sermon then those pages must be missing in my copy. Meaning and ‘message’ (there isn’t much a message) arise from plot and characters. I guess the message is don’t piss-off Breq.
   Lines of Departure – no mid-book sermon. If there is a message it is that politicians and generals are selfish idiots but that message is a natural outcome of the setting. It would be weird for the central character/narrator to not think that.

   Rule 3. Respect the reader. Maybe his means something that I don’t get or maybe it means exactly what it says. I agree that a story should credit the reader with intelligence, independence of thought and diversity of views. It is the rule that many of this year’s nominees in other categories (mainly RP rather than SP) fall down on. John C Wright fails badly here. It is also the most pro-‘SJW’ rule in the list – although I assume that wasn’t the intent. Readers are “are city-dwellers, rednecks, bored housewives, computer programmers,” and every shade of gender, sexual preference, occupation, socio-economic class and ethnicity. Don’t treat any section of your readership with contempt. Good advice. Pretty much what the people labelled “SJW” have been saying. Go for it.
   Ancillary Justice – credits the reader with enough intelligence to puzzle through some non-standard pronoun use and linguistic gender markers. Doesn’t lecture, doesn’t hammer the reader on the head with a lecture on linguistics. Assumes you, the reader, can cope and moves on.
   Lines of Departure – male and female characters, at least one gay character (actually I’ve lost track as to whether they only appear in book 3). All could be better drawn but that is a flaw in the overall level of characterisation (i.e. all characters are a bit thinly drawn). The non-American characters are super-thin. Non-European characters amount to little more than a name. The book assumes familiarity with a lot of military fiction tropes. However I don’t think it particularly disrespects the reader.

   Rule 4. This rule, based on the explanation, doesn’t mean “only sales matter”. It is a good attempt to get at an issue that has only been expressed clumsily by other puppies. Building a wider readership is important and an award should contribute to that. Of course there are multiple directions this can be done. Books like Skin Game do it one way and books like Station Eleven do it another. As a rule though it actually works against the puppies more than for them – GRRM and Gaiman are the heavy lifters in this area.
   Ancillary Justice – hmm, I don’t think it is a great piece for sci-fi evangelism but it does demonstrate that a military space opera can be a lot more than a military space opera.
   Lines of Departure It is an inward looking book in terms of audience. That is OK but it doesn’t score high on this rule other than Kloos being a an interesting newish author selling to an established audience. I don’t want that to sound too dismissive – it was an entertaining book.

   Rule 5. Paulk acknowledges that it is more complicated than that. Statistically increasing size can improve representation but it is 1. a matter of diminishing returns and 2. it can also REDUCE representation is sample bias increases at the same time. For example if the President of Turkmenistan decides he wants a Hugo and deploys a section of his Civil Service to buy memberships and vote then that increases the number of voters but makes the overall representation overly skewed to the opinions of the President of Turkmenistan. Who matters as much as how many when it comes to representative results.

10. The traditional position is that in the order of Nature man is lower than the angels, a linchpin between the spiritual and material, but that in the order of Grace the saints, and particularly the Blessed Virgin, are exalted above the angels.

11. @David:
    Raising my hand to note that I studied Greek and Latin in college. Also have studied Middle English, French, German, Russian, and Japanese. An English “the” in front of an in-language article is inappropriate in all of them. It’s equivalent to writing the United States of the USA: people might do it, especially non-native English speakers who aren’t perhaps Americans, but it’s not correct, and a professional writer who purports to be familiar with the languages in question should know better. And, frankly, express themselves better.

    My single biggest frustration with this entire kerfuffle (which has otherwise been mostly entertaining, I admit. It’s been a while since there has been a really juicy fandom kerfuffle.) is the poor writing. It’s a literary award, but the S/RP nominees are mediocre at best and those defending the S/RP movement are mostly incoherent.

    I don’t mind the delusions of grandeur, that’s part of the pleasure of reading the various S/RP blogs–let’s face it, Mr Torgersen spent years getting his ass handed to him on other blogs before he gathered up his balls and went home. It’s been fun watching himself set up a little fiefdom of like-minded LARPers who all enjoy hanging out inside the paper bag they collectively can’t argue their way out of.

    But the writing, puppies, the writing! It hurts my heart. If you are going to write up your turgid, masturbatory power fantasies for the amusement of the internet, please, please take advantage of spelling and grammar checks.

    That is why fen are mocking Mr Wright–he thinks he’s wielding lightning in the battle of words, but they are only Lampyridae.

12. David: Is the argument here that he does not know what Greek articles are?

    No, that he made a mistake and is doubling down on it rather than admit error. Pride.

    As for your last sentence, I assume you are trying to be ironic rather than argumentative. I have seen little but irrationality and, indeed, “hubris” on this thread, and certainly no charitable desire to “help the pious Mr. Wright” avoid that sin.

    You’re new here, so you’ve probably missed where I’ve pointed out that he’s also sinned by committing false witness. https://file770.com/?p=22617&cpage=12#comment-265739 As a “faithful Roman Catholic” he should be concerned; his final judge is believed to be tougher than the Hugo voters.

13. …why not best SF and best Fantasy for Novel, Novella, Novelette, Short Story, and Flash Fiction….

    Think of all the fun debates we could have over the boundary between SF and F to add to the ones we already have over the boundary between SFF and all other literature. I actually think that might not be such a bad idea (perhaps leaving aside the flash fiction and not necessarily keeping the current divisions between word counts) – I definitely get the impression from many online comments that a significant portion of fandom thinks of the Hugos as primarily a science fiction award and that fantasy may therefore be disadvantaged in the competition for awards. Which may be a problem worth fixing or not.

    Regarding “gerrymander”, I think I may have been a bit hung up on the most common usage involving drawing boundaries for partisan advantage. A quick check reminds me that the word can also, as you say, be applied to drawing boundaries in the deliberate pursuit of other, arguably worthier goals, which gets me closer to sympathising with the way you want to use it. Though I still think it a bit unfortunate that you don’t use some other word less loaded with negative connotations. I don’t think there’s anything improper about people advocating for changes in the Hugos, even ones that may directly benefit them, in as direct a democracy as I understand the WSFS business meeting to be. It would be another matter if the WSFS business meeting was a representative democracy with considerable not very accountable power and perks accruing to the elected representatives.

14. @Nyq Only — Very well said, and pointing to how close yet so far apart we are. We can agree on principles, but as you put it, the devil’s in the details, and one man’s vulgarity is another man’s lyric, to quote (IIRC) the Supreme Court.

15. David: “That may be your motivation”

    If you’ll notice, I wasn’t involved in that discussion, I was just sitting here enjoying the topic drift. It did get off “ooh, look at JCW’s mistake!” to a general and rather interesting discussion of the quirks of language acquisition pretty quickly, with a detour into whether or not wordpad supports Greek characters. (I see no encoding listed in the debug view of the page, and I’ve noticed encoding errors before – the really basic ones, like smart quotes showing up as question marks. Are we Unicode compliant here?)

16. @ Scott Frazer and @ Going to Maine

    Those are both excellent and much more appropriate. Thank you.

17. “the natural reaction of real men to homosexuals is to beat them to death with ax handles and tire irons” – John C Wright

    I just want to keep that front and center while we faff about some insignificant half-assed throwaway remark he made.

18. Rule 0. NO SLATES

19. mintwitch–

    Grammatically, you’re right about “the hoi polloi.” Shall we have this discussion at the Alhambra, or perhaps near the La Brea Tar Pits? (For non-Spanish-speakers, the latter works out to “the The Tar Tar Pits,” and was named for the non-redundant “Rancho La Brea,” or “Tar Ranch.”)

20. Not only shall we have it Vicki, we did have it, a day or two ago.

    You know, before you were sent here to read off an index card.

21. Laertes:“the natural reaction of real men to homosexuals is to beat them to death with ax handles and tire irons” – John C Wright

    I just want to keep that front and center while we faff about some insignificant half-assed throwaway remark he made.

    Yep.

    And that’s not the original version of his text either, which included a nasty homophobic slur.

22. Steven Schwartz ” Very well said, and pointing to how close yet so far apart we are. ”

    It kind of ran away from me but yes, I think if the Puppy spokespeople try to articulate better an aesthetic or style or artistic agenda then they could be interesting. Paulk’s rules are a positive development from the puppies. They allow for dialogue and informed disagreement. Even if a person disagrees with the rules they are rules that can be respected and used as a basis for evaluating work. That will still be subjective but at least it will be coherent.

    …and also on balance the SP slate sort of sucks very badly when those rules are used as a guide.

23. Hi Jon,

    If you have a better word than gerrymander (which is definitely imperfect) I am totally open to using that word instead. I think there’s a strong tendency to compare the Hugo vote to other elections we know about—mostly our neighborhood or national political elections—so nothing will ever quite map perfectly.

24. >> Given your attempt at irony rather than argumentation, I can say that the points in my original comment have remained unchallenged by you, at least in any meaningful fashion.>>

    “This is a stupid, unworthy argument, and I shall prove it by joining in!”

25. “Shall we have this discussion at the Alhambra,”

    Or by the River Avon (the river river). It is a tendency in modern English that predates modern English. It is unpolicable because once your brain sticks “noun” on something or “proper noun” on something, no etymological argument on Earth is going to stop you using it that way.

26. The problem with “gerrymander” is that it contains an accusation of cheating and/or dishonesty.

    The NFL just changed the rules for conversion field goal attempts such that they’re a bit harder to perform. Do you see “gerrymandering” here? It’s a rule change intended to bring about a particular result. To my eyes, it seems about as similar to gerrymandering as SDV-LPE.

    I get that you don’t think changing the rules is necessary. It’s dishonest to accuse the people who do of “gerrymandering.” You should stop doing that.

27. And if you’re insisting that you shall keep using that word unless you’re provided a better alternative, I suggest you instead call it “fruit bat.” It’s no less incorrect than calling it “gerrymandering” and has the additional virtue of not being a vicious lie.

28. >> Building a wider readership is important and an award should contribute to that.>>

    I don’t think I agree with that.

    I think awards should, ideally, celebrate the best work in the field, not the best ambassador to newcomers. That could, of course, be a separate award category if people wanted, but it’s not the point of the awards themselves.

    It’s true that the effect of prestigious awards is to drum up sales, whether from the existing audience in the field or newcomers, but I’d strongly question whether the fact that awards are used for marketing purposes should mean that winners should be chosen with an eye toward how well they’ll work as promotional tools for the field.

    An excellent promotional tool, in competition with an even better work this isn’t a great promotional tool, should probably lose, at least in theory.

29. Of all JCW’s faults, the Hoi Polloi early doesn’t seem worth bothering with. It might not be classical Greek, and he might be a bit of a part for even mentioning the Greek connection, but that’s how the phrase is used in modern English, which is what he was writing. Languages evolve. That is part of their function and much of their charm.

    P.S. the preview thing seems to be working in Chrome for Android, which I don’t think anyone else has mentioned.

30. Depends on the particular result, doesn’t it?

    If the particular result is “Make sure that Starship Sofa guy never wins Best Fanzine again because Best Fanzine belongs to *us*, goddammit,” then yeah, I am happy to call that gerrymandering.

    If the particular result is “Create a new category for book editors to win because they a. powerful and b. increasingly annoyed at not winning Best Editor”, then yes I am happy to call that gerrymandering, especially given that the editorial work of a book editor is utterly invisible to 90% of Hugo voters, which is why they weren’t winning.

    I don’t believe I referred to any particular anti-slate recommendation, or the idea of anti-slate recommendations in general, as gerrymandering. I’ve just noted that they’ll likely be useless. Feel free to show me where I have, or to apologize for claiming that I did.

    Yours in Christ,
    Fruit Bat.

31. Oh please. At 12:55 you referred to ANY change in the Hugo rules as gerrymandering. So no, I’m afraid no apology will be forthcoming.

    For my part, I won’t bore you with a similarly pompous demand for an apology. I’ll simply ask that you call me stupid without implying that I’m being dishonest. “Gerrymandering” is a cheap shot and you bloody well know it.

32. Linking to evidence of that aforementioned Wright slur use:

    http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2015/04/john-c-wright-tries-to-cover-up-that-hes-a-wannabe-gay-basher.html

    And while hunting for that again I rediscovered this gem too, found in the Hugo Awards nominated Transhuman and Subhuman:

    “If you doubt me, ask a partisan of sexual liberation why copulating with one’s adult sister, (with her consent of course), or with a menstruating fourteen-year old, (with the parent’s consent, of course), or with the corpse of one’s wife, (with her permission granted in her last will and testament, of course), or with an ape, (assuming she gave consent in sign language to the best of her ability, of course; or her owner gives consent on her behalf), in each case where actual coupling takes place, is evil, sick and perverted, whereas sexually stimulating the private parts of a person of one’s own sex, a situation where no copulation can take place, is nonetheless a cherished and romantic fulfillment of utterly natural longings which law, custom, society, public opinion, and the Roman Catholic Church must not only tolerate, but support, applaud, and approve. Ask them.” 

    And then I remembered that time he regretted not punching an ailing Terry Pratchett:

    I sat and listened to pure evil being uttered in charming accents accentuated by droll witticism, and I did not stand up, and I did not strike the old man who uttered them across the mouth: and when he departed, everyone stood and gave him an ovation, even though he had done nothing in his life aside from entertain their idle afternoons.

33. “It kind of ran away from me but yes, I think if the Puppy spokespeople try to articulate better an aesthetic or style or artistic agenda then they could be interesting. Paulk’s rules are a positive development from the puppies.”

    I agree — and it serves to draw an even sharper line between the “Hey, we want to do something within the community (at least in theory)” puppies and the “burn it down” puppies (Kratman & Beale)

    “They allow for dialogue and informed disagreement. Even if a person disagrees with the rules they are rules that can be respected and used as a basis for evaluating work. That will still be subjective but at least it will be coherent.”

    And we can then get down to detailed (and possibly even useful) discussion about what constitutes message, what constitutes story, etc., etc., and so forth. Even if it’s not useful, it’s a significant improvement.

    I am reminded of Bill James’ list of questions for Baseball Hall of Fame candidates; it wasn’t a definitive tool, but it at least allowed one to shape the argument, and to pull out motives that some people might not find desirable in argument — “He was my childhood hero” is great, but does that really mean what’s best for the Hall of Fame? I think that for the Hugos to work, (and I think this list actually helps) we have to refocus not on “What’s best for my favorite author/genre/book/theme/etc.”, but what’s best for the Hugos, and what’s best for SF as a whole.

    Now, I am also vividly aware that that’s a giant kettle of worms, but at least it’s a more interesting one.

34. Laertes,

    I did no such thing. I wrote:

    “The Hugo Awards are already regularly gerrymandered even if the people who attend the business meeting and launch proposals are not themselves direct beneficiaries. The splitting of editor into Long Form and Short (which I’ve benefitted from), Fancast, the redefinition of pro* and semi-pro, are all attempts to change the rules in order to change outcomes.”

    That is not nearly the same as: “At 12:55 you referred to ANY change in the Hugo rules as gerrymandering.”

    In fact it isn’t the same at all. Now all we need do is determine whether you’re too stupid to know the difference between my comment and yours, or if you’re just a liar who is hoping that repetition will make your claim believable.

    So, go on, do explain where you located the claim that ANY change is gerrymandering in what I said.

35. @XS I can’t even parse that first Wright quote. I can’t for the life of me understand what the hell he is on about, only that he is quivering with indignation but has to stop along the way to his point to establish the ownership of every woman involved, which distracts him so much that he the point gets bored and takes off to go shopping, or maybe bowling.

36. …Is it your position, then, that you didn’t intend there to define “gerrymandering” as “an attempt to change the rules in order to change outcomes?” Because that’s what you did. But if you didn’t intend to, that I’ll withdraw the accusation of dishonesty and accept it as merely a botched bit of writing.

37. I am not enamoured of those rules. They seem to have been crafted to specifically explain retroactively what was wrong with “If you were a dinosaur”. Which at this point I am really really sorry I did not vote for when I had the chance.

38. Next thing you know, people are going to be criticizing Wright for not using “tous pollous” (the accusative case of “hoi polloi”). Now that I’m thinking about it, is that even the right case? I don’t know ancient Greek, just English and some Spanish and Swedish.

    Either way, Wright has said plenty of things more illogical, mean-spirited, and stupid than sneering at people who aren’t cultured enough to reference Victorian-era opera.

39. “If you doubt me, ask a partisan of sexual liberation why copulating with one’s adult sister, (with her consent of course), or with a menstruating fourteen-year old, (with the parent’s consent, of course), or with the corpse of one’s wife, (with her permission granted in her last will and testament, of course), or with an ape, (assuming she gave consent in sign language to the best of her ability, of course; or her owner gives consent on her behalf), in each case where actual coupling takes place …”

    Only John C. Wright could write a single sentence so vile it gets him barred from zoos, morgues, schools and family reunions.

40. Nyq –
    Kate Paulk’s manifesto is interesting:
    1.Story first. This doesn’t mean that other things aren’t important. It just means the most important thing is a story that grabs readers by the collar and hauls them into its world.
    a. Characters nearly first.
    2. Meaning and message should arise naturally from the characters and plot, not stop the action for a sermon.
    3. Respect the readers.
    4. The award that matters most is people buying the work.
    5. More voters and more votes mean more representative results.

    If that’s the criteria one then I’d imagine she must be against Three Body Problem winning.

    The story is mostly setting the table for the trilogy and is moving the pieces for where they need to be. That doesn’t mean it’s bad but 1.A the characters and their development are a low priority for the tale. Meaning and message are discovered through the characters but it’s literally being pushed onto the characters instead of naturally evolving through conflict. Readers are respected though, the translator does a fantastic job filling in blanks without stepping on the story. It’s really popular in Japan, so I guess 4 works? The book represents a wider audience but it’s also a book that’s inward looking in terms of audience appeal.

    I don’t think one of the better books on the ballot holds up to her list. My own rules go: ‘Did I really like this book?’. It checks out.

41. @Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
    “I am not enamoured of those rules. They seem to have been crafted to specifically explain retroactively what was wrong with “If you were a dinosaur”. Which at this point I am really really sorry I did not vote for when I had the chance.”

    Well, let’s see:
    “It just means the most important thing is a story that grabs readers by the collar and hauls them into its world. ”

    Certainly, IYWAD did that to me; I was dreaming along with it the moment it started.
    I was vastly more grabbed by this than either, say, “Parliament of Birds and Beasts” or “Turncoat”.

    “Characters nearly first. Characters readers can relate to and empathize with (this does not mean readers need to like them, nor does it mean readers have to be exactly the same as them.”

    I had no problem relating to and empathizing with both the narrator and the idea behind the dinosaur partner. More so than any of the characters in the above-cited examples.

    “Meaning and message should arise naturally from the characters and plot, not stop the action for a sermon. It’s natural for a commanding officer to let loose a lecture/tirade to a recalcitrant subordinate.”

    I think it’s perfectly natural for someone in a hospital waiting room to think about the $@(*)(*@&#)$(*@)&(@@!# fuckers who put their beloved there. So it passes this.

    “Respect the readers[…] Don’t assume they’re inferior to you – and if you do believe such a thing, try not to let it into your writing (and if you can’t, make sure an editor you trust cleans it out).”

    If my readers are the sort who would beat up on someone in a bar just because they’re different, they will get precisely the amount of respect from me they deserve. 🙂

    So, by my standards, it passes. And we can argue about whether it fits or not, but at least there’s a framework there.

42. Steven Schwartz “And we can then get down to detailed (and possibly even useful) discussion about what constitutes message, what constitutes story, etc., etc., and so forth. Even if it’s not useful, it’s a significant improvement.”

    Very true. I hope as well it gives a way for the Sad Puppies to backdown gracefully without losing face or conceding that they didn’t have legitimate grievances. A Sad Puppy 4 that was about promoting works of a certain kind rather than trying to game a slate could (if done right) could still be healthy, still trend to the right, still be argued against, critiqued etc but at the same time avoid toxicity. (Assuming that at least some of the Sad Puppy leaders are trying to act sincerely and in good faith)

43. @XS

    And while hunting for that again I rediscovered this gem too, found in the Hugo Awards nominated Transhuman and Subhuman:

    “If you doubt me, ask a partisan of sexual liberation why copulating with one’s adult sister, (with her consent of course), or with a menstruating fourteen-year old, (with the parent’s consent, of course), or with the corpse of one’s wife, (with her permission granted in her last will and testament, of course), or with an ape, (assuming she gave consent in sign language to the best of her ability, of course; or her owner gives consent on her behalf), in each case where actual coupling takes place, is evil, sick and perverted, whereas sexually stimulating the private parts of a person of one’s own sex, a situation where no copulation can take place, is nonetheless a cherished and romantic fulfillment of utterly natural longings which law, custom, society, public opinion, and the Roman Catholic Church must not only tolerate, but support, applaud, and approve. Ask them.”

    And this, among other reasons, is why that entire category went under No Award for me. I can tolerate an exceptional amount of asshattery — my job frequently requires me to interact with emotionally compromised individuals displacing their feelings all over everybody in the immediate vicinity in the first stages of grief. I do not, however, have to tolerate my relationship with my husband being compared to incest, necrophilia, beastiality, or the sexual molestation of a child in a thinly veiled critique of modernity pretending to be about science fiction. Also: speaking strictly as an irreligious agnostic raised by Buddhists and Shintoists, I do not have two damns to rub together about the Roman Catholic Church nor do I care what they do or do not tolerate, support, applaud, or approve, nor do I think their particular manias have any business impacting anyone but the members of their own particular religious sect. Their right to swing ends at my nose.

44. @Steven Schwartz
    “So, by my standards, it passes. And we can argue about whether it fits or not, but at least there’s a framework there.”

    So, what you are saying is,
    ‘SJWs! F&$% me. I mean, say what you want about the tenets of Puppyism, Dude, at least it’s an ethos.’

45. @cmm:

    If I recall correctly, humans rank above angels in Jewish theology or folklore (not sure where it falls because I’m not sure of the source) because they don’t have knees that bend, therefore they have to stand in G-d’s presence. Humans have the free will to do otherwise, but choose to stand.

    Huh. I had never heard that tidbit about angels lacking knees. But I do recall something about some Rabbis who were permitted to visit the Garden of Eden/Heaven, and saw Metatron there. . .

    Let’s see, I was thinking of Elisha ben Abuyah, and the page has the actual text I recalled from the Babylonian Talmud:

    Acher saw that Metatron happened to be granted authority to sit while he record the merits of Israel, and he said: “We have been taught that in heaven there is no sitting…. Perhaps there are — God forbid! — two supreme powers”. They brought him to Metatron and they smote him with sixty bands of fire. They said to Metatron: “When you saw him, why did you not stand up before him?” Then authority was granted Metatron to erase the merits of Acher.

    So at least Metatron, an angel, had knees, although the same text highlights the importance and universality of standing in heaven.

    (Standing being the equivalent show of respect to kneeling in Christian tradition)

    I’m pretty sure that standing is the equivalent of standing across traditions: You’re supposed to stand out of respect for anyone of higher or equal rank. Kneeling is to show submission or subservience, across traditions. I think.

46. Anna Feruglio Dal Dan ‘I am not enamoured of those rules. They seem to have been crafted to specifically explain retroactively what was wrong with “If you were a dinosaur”.’

    I suspect that you are right. But I think it is a healthy response from the SP camp. They have really struggled to express what they didn’t like about it and in part that was because they themselves hadn’t really thought about what they want from fiction in a positive sense. They didn’t have a good way of critiquing literature and (to over generalise a bit) possibly saw the notion of literary criticism as a tool of the enemy.
    What I like about Paulk’s rules is that they would have better expressed their objections to “If you were a dinosaur” – and may even have won some people over in positive way. A clearer aesthetic would allow them to acknowledge what was good about the piece whilst still objecting to it.

47. Laertes,

    I gave specific examples, twice. There is a difference between a rule change *that* changes outcomes and a rule change made *in order to* change outcomes. Giving people a category to win because they can’t win in the old one, or a creating a category in order to protect another category for one’s pals are cases of the latter. There are plenty of possible cases of the former.

    For example, look at the YA Hugo campaign. There’ve been a number of reasons given for it: YA is Big and Important, or YA Will Attract Younger Fans. These reasons are not associated with the outcome of the vote. If the YA Hugo campaign’s reasoning instead was We Must Preserve The Novel Category For Real Books and Not That Awful Harry Potter (and they’d need some mechanism to explain which books would be eligible for what category), and the category was created, yes, that would be a gerrymander—basically the creation of a new “district” to guarantee that some YA author would one one Hugo per year. The end result is the same either way, but the political motivation (incumbency protection, increasing the value for minority voters, etc.) is what makes something a gerrymander.

    I didn’t like all the recent dithering about the semi-pro category (see my comments above) but that wasn’t an example of gerrymandering; it was just a matter of a couple of people who didn’t know what they were talking about looking to eliminate a category and a couple people who kinda sorta did know what they were talking about redefining pro and semi-pro to save it. Regardless of one’s feeling about that rule change, it was based on some level of understanding of a changing field—online magazines are able to pay more (even “pro”) thanks to low overhead and have some sort of real circulation (more than 1000 readers) thanks to being online, and are these fiction magazines quite the same as the old non-fiction print magazines that used to dominate the category?

    Now if someone had created a demi-pro category for Clarkesworld in order to preserve semipro for Locus because goshdarnit Locus is just so great and the Hugos wouldn’t be the same without Charles Brown winning every year, that would have been a gerrymander.

48. Matt Y “If that’s the criteria one then I’d imagine she must be against Three Body Problem winning. ”
    🙂
    Yup. The plot is a bit haphazard. There is really only one well drawn character. The video game sections really do present sections of the story were famous figures from Chinese and European history stop to give lectures (oh!).

    It does better on 4 and 5 but it falls down on the first 3 key artistic crietria (4 & 5 are more pragmatic crietria)
    Still I really, really loved it*. I adored the bits on the real alien planet when they are unraveling the proton – it was like classic Stanislav Lem. Science as a fairy tale.

    [*this view is purely the view of this blog comment and should not be taken as an endorsement or an encouragement or discouragement to vote for said work. No log-rolling, branch stacking, slate endorsing, gerrymandering, gerry garcia, or jelly meandering should be inferred]

49. Sweet Jesus, Mike, you win some kind of award for today’s title.

    Alt-title: One Hundred Days of Being Stuck in a Crate Just Because You Ate the Goddamn Plum Pudding Again, if you Didn’t Want Me To Eat It You Shouldn’t Have Put it on the Table, Signed, Maggie, Your DOG

    Based on a true story. That one…it got away from me, yeah.

50. “‘SJWs! F&$% me. I mean, say what you want about the tenets of Puppyism, Dude, at least it’s an ethos.’”

    Brevity may be the soul of wit, but it did not serve you well here. Care to expand?

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