Memories of Tonight’s Hugo Ceremony

While I was in an elevator leaving the Hugo ceremonies, Frank somebody looked me in the eye and said “How’d you like that. That’s what you wanted, wasn’t it,” in a surly voice. Since he was being rude I told him to get off my case.

But let me answer Frank’s question now. The whole situation is a tragedy. It would have been a worse tragedy if any of these slate nominees had been rewarded with a Hugo. For that reason, yes, the outcome was what I voted for.

That should not detract from the accomplishment of Hugo ceremony hosts David Gerrold and Tananarive Due in pulling off a ceremony that was often funny, rich in creativity, and somber when appropriate (Gerrold was reduced to tears by seeing Nimoy on the in memoriam list).

Things began with a giant grim reaper figure lumbering onstage accompanied by an evil assistant. Three Star Trek redshirts, led by Due, battled with them and the lone survivor, Due, cleared the stage so that a reluctant David Gerrold could follow her out.

Some other highlights were Robert Silverberg’s “blessing of the Hugos” — a reminiscence of the “tension, apprehension and dissension” that plagued the 1968 Worldcon, including intermittent clouds of tear gas drifting up from downtown Berkeley, and to dispel similar tensions in 2015 he ended by taking out a tambourine and performing the Hare Krishna chant sung by street-roaming initiates back then.

Later, Connie Willis took a turn on stage, talking about her experience being bitten by a bat, and a mild concern about possible vampirism. Then she reassured Gerrold and Due about the challenges of emceeing the Hugos, remembering half a dozen things that have actually gone wrong at Worldcons, and suggesting a couple more that haven’t gone wrong yet but could, all of which despite being comedy seemed to leave Gerrold and Due a little more shaky than before she started.

During the introduction, Linda Deneroff of Sasquan’s WSFS Division laid the foundation for Hugo voters exercising the no award option. And it came up several times in the pro categories, as you know, though at the beginning there was a whole string of fan categories which had winners and the night seemed darned near normal for a little while.

TAFF delegate Nina Horvath was the presenter of all the fan categories. Gerrold personally handled most of the categories where there was no winner (though not ONLY those categories, so it wasn’t entirely a tell.) And for the dramatic categories he was assisted by a lifesize Dalek, which provided considerable amusement.

The acceptances were fun, best of which was Pat Cadigan reading Thomas Heuvelt’s speech from a tablet, with her characteristic asides and humorous timing. Campbell winner Wesley Chu obviously enjoyed himself, spontaneously falling to his knees before the bearer of the Campbell tiara so it could be placed on his brow.

Although I had a press seat in the balcony, the house lights were so low I couldn’t see a screen or write a note. Thus the File 770 Hugo coverage was provided by commenters watching the livestream — you all did a hell of a job, and extra credit for finding links to the voting stats and other commentary!

Definitely buying a tablet or something before I tackle another Worldcon though. This hotel computer is so limited — can’t edit or post photos, can’t copy between windows, etc. etc. But I will recharge my Kindle and be back at work in the morning.

795 thoughts on “Memories of Tonight’s Hugo Ceremony

  1. And as I said in my review: I’m never going to have the slightest shred of respect for the story opinions of anyone who prefers “Damaged” to “Turncoat.”

    Well, you know, having read your poorly written and ill-thought out review, the fact that you prefer trite, facile stories over ones that are actually good is really your problem, and not ours.

  2. @Protest manager

    Well, no, because I haven’t read Damage. I didn’t like Turncoat at all, though, so I suppose that Damage wouldn’t have a high bar to clear if I had read it.

    I see you’re still ignoring that TDTWTUD struggled more than any other nominee that stood against only Puppy competition. Look at the full results: http://www.thehugoawards.org/content/pdf/2015HugoStatistics.pdf
    TDTWTUD took 4 passes. Julie Dillon, Journey Planet, and Wesley Chu all won in 1 pass and Laura J. Mixon won in 2 passes. That does not look like the Hugo voters as a whole were super duper enthusiastic about TDTWTUD to me.

    (Note: I don’t think the same approach can be applied to other categories. The Hugo voters voted overwhelmingly to reject Puppy candidates, and that greatly benefitted candidates who faced little to no non-Puppy competition. Other categories, with more non-Puppy candidates, will have required more passes to select a winner.)

    I’m not sure if you will have seen this, but perhaps these awards deserve your time and support more than awards you dislike: https://www.blackgate.com/2015/09/10/a-proposal-an-award-for-sf-storytelling/

  3. And for the record, the pet in TDTWTUD is a goldfish, not a cat. I’m not entirely sure how the two could be mixed up considering how recently a voter must have read it and how big a feature it is in the story.

  4. @Protest Manager: “And as I said in my review: I’m never going to have the slightest shred of respect for the story opinions of anyone who prefers “Damaged” to “Turncoat.””

    I am curious that life is so black & white for you, while it seems that many who post here (including me) are comfortable with shades of gray, with the idea that different people have different tastes, can like different stories, can have differences in how they value different story elements.

    You seem to think that just because they like a story you don’t, it invalidates every opinion they might have about other stories. I have yet to meet a person whose story preferences are 100% identical to mine; the more stories you compare the more likely you’ll find a difference of opinion.

  5. Meredith: And for the record, the pet in TDTWTUD is a goldfish, not a cat. I’m not entirely sure how the two could be mixed up considering how recently a voter must have read it and how big a feature it is in the story.

    Given the error naming the title of Levine’s story, the major plot error described for TDTWTUD, and the major plot error described for Ancillary Justice, one might almost get the impression that the reviewer hasn’t actually read the stories on which he’s commenting.

    However, the fact that the blog only has one post in it certainly indicates a wealth of experience at reviewing SFF. Clearly, this is someone whose expert opinion carries weight!

  6. @JJ

    Isn’t the goldfish on the cover of the voter packet version, too?

    I did go and read Damage. I’d say that its better than Turncoat, and certainly much better written, but I didn’t like it all that much, either. Tastes vary; its one of the things that make people interesting. 🙂

    I hope Protest manager supports Maynard’s initiative. I think the Puppies would be much happier if they focused on celebration rather than destruction.

  7. You can’t expect him to tell the difference between a goldfish and a cat; that’s totally unreasonable. It’s not like it was something obvious and memorable like a revolver vs an automatic. I mean, cats and goldfish are virtually interchangeable!

  8. I love looking at what people don’t say, as much as what they do. Here’s some things no one has said:

    1: No one’s said “No, PM, ‘Damage’ is not a Hugo worthy story”, so there’s no point comparing it to “Turncoat”.

    2: No one’s said “No, PM, “Scraps’ wasn’t a loser by the end of the story”. Now, they’d be wrong to claim that, and I could pull up the quotes to prove it, but no one has even tried to claim that “Damage”‘s main character isn’t a loser.

    3: No one’s tried to claim that Hugo voters don’t prefer stories about losers. And that’s the key point. The stories you prefer are always going to suck, because they’re stories about losers. And very few non-losers want to read about losers.

  9. @JJ

    1: No, the Hugo Voters do not value quality. Because if they did, The Day the World Turned Upside Down would not have won a Hugo Award.

    The characters are worthless, the world-builing is moronic, the plot, to the extent one exists, is trite, tedious, and boring. That one isn’t “different people have different values”, that’s “only someone with worthless taste could think this has any value.”

    2: “You no longer feel the Hugo Awards have value for you. That’s fine. Don’t pay attention to them any more” Oh no. The Hugo Awards are a sure mark of total crap. I’m very much going to pay attention to them, because anyone who gets one will get put on a permanent “do not read” list.

    3: “As far as “burning down the Hugos”, gosh, aren’t you so cute. The Puppies — as they discovered on August 22 — are a small minority,” Um, no. At 2500 -3500 people, the people who control the Hugo Awards are a small minority of science fiction buyers. Which is why winning a Hugo Award no longer gets a book a sales bonus: your taste sucks, and the vast majority of SF/F voters have figured that out.

    As for burning down the Hugos, well, there’s 1200 of us who were members of Sasquan, which means we all get to nominate next year. It’s my hope we can get the top 7 in every category. After that, I doubt many of us will waste any money joining the Con, because at that point we can trust all you petulant children to “No Award” everything for us.

    4: As for EPH, you’ll probably be able to get 2 – 3 Best Novel nominees. 1 – 2, occasionally 3 in the other story categories, and most of the rest I think Vox Day and his minions will grab all the rest, including all the “Fan” categories. So you all have fun with that.

  10. No one’s tried to claim that Hugo voters don’t prefer stories about losers. And that’s the key point. The stories you prefer are always going to suck, because they’re stories about losers. And very few non-losers want to read about losers.

    I see you come from the Donald J Trump school of literary criticism. Please tell us more about your non-loser preferences….

    ::pets Protest Manager on the head::
    ::washes hands::
    ::adds 64864327e231bfd6007d9f0bfb1051ce to killfile::

    I would strongly suggest a Do Not Engage for this particular troll. Unoriginal, obvious, and irrelevant. Heck, s/he doesn’t even pun.

  11. Oh, Protest manager. Nothing so obvious that you can’t miss it. What about those 2,078 people who ranked No Award ahead of “The Day the World Turned Upside Down”? And yet you posture as if all Hugo voters wanted it to win.

  12. @Meredith

    No, I don’t care at all what BS you or others spout about TDTWTUD. I don’t care whether or not Hugo voters were “enthusiastic” about giving it a Hugo. All I care about is that it did indeed get a Hugo Award.

    Cat v goldfish: For the record, that was the absolute worst story I’ve read since high school. I’ve done my best to forget as much about it as I can, because it was such a wretched pile of crap. And, happily, I’ve read about 30 much better stories since then, so I’ve managed to wipe some of the details away.

  13. @Mike: You are very kind not to mention the logical fallacy that if 3,000 Hugo voters is a tiny minority of fandom somehow 1,000 Hugo voters must be a majority.

  14. Protest manager: Why? Why try to destroy an award that other people value and you don’t care about? Why not just ignore it, maybe with some bonus headshaking and mutterings of “it takes all kinds”? I honestly don’t understand your motivation here.
    There’s a pizza place here in town that I think sucks, but other people like. I don’t try to burn it down, I don’t harass the owner, I don’t bother their patrons. I just shake my head and go eat somewhere else. If people ask me where they should eat, I tell them my opinion once, and then if they eat there anyway and like it, I just shrug.
    Because different people like different things, and that doesn’t make the different things evil. Not even cilantro. It’s certainly not worth spending hard-earned money to try to destroy.

  15. @Soon Lee

    1: Yeah, you’re all so comfortable with “shades of gray” that every single Puppy nominee outside of dramatic presentations got No Awarded. Yeah, right.

    2: I laid out the differences between Turncoat and Damage. Winner v. loser. Rational v emotional and whiny. If you prefer the second to the first, then you’ve got nothing to offer me, other than I can be certain that I will hate anything you like.

  16. Mike,

    2000 people voted for Skin Game. 2674 voted for No Award. “The Hugo voters” preferred No Award over Skin Game. No?

    “The Hugo votes” are the 2500 – 3500 people whose votes are the only ones that matter WRT the Hugos, given the the way that voting is done for the Hugos. Yes, ~6000 of us voted. But the 2500 “Puppy haters” and ~1000 “moderates” decided pretty much all the awards. You can pretend otherwise if you wish, but that’s what the numbers say.

  17. Protest Manager — anyone on who was a long time Worldcon member could have told you what the result was going to be. The people who make up those 2,000-3,000 No Award Voters don’t like folks that try to game the Hugos. Sad Puppy 1 and 2 plainly demonstrated that you game the awards and your candidates either finish last or below No Award. Ask the Scientology folks how their attempt to buy Hubbard a Hugo worked…

    Mess with the bull, you get the horns.

  18. Mark: I live in the Chicago area. There’s plenty of good pizza to choose from around here. (For chain stores: Best deep dish: Lou Malnoti’s. Best thin crust sausage: Gino’s East. Best stuffed spinach: Edwardos.)
    Now I might possibly lie down in front of someone’s car and beg them not to go to the so-called “Chicago” pizza place in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, because that was VILE, but you know what? If they insisted that they absolutely had to, I’d have shaken my head sadly and *let them go*. And gone to the creperie, myself. Mmmmm, crepes.

  19. @PM,

    In that case do you hate of all of the following?
    David Weber, John C. Wright’s “The Golden Age” trilogy, Robert Heinlein’s “The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress”, Iain M. Banks’ “Player of Games”, Frank Herbert’s “Dune”, Vernor VInge’s “A Fire Upon the Deep”, Neal Stephenson’s “Snow Crash” (and “The Cobweb” too), Charles Stross’ “Accelerando”, Kage Baker’s “Empress of Mars”, Larry Niven’s “Ringworld”, William Gibson’s “Neuromancer”, Terry Pratchett’s “Guards! Guards!” and Elizabeth Moon’s “Speed of Dark”, Isaac Asimov’s “Foundation”, Roger Zelazny’s Amber series, Orson Scott Card’s “Ender’s Game”.

    Because these are but a few of the writers & stories that I love.

  20. Protest manager: 1: No one’s said “No, PM, ‘Damage’ is not a Hugo worthy story”, so there’s no point comparing it to “Turncoat”.

    In fact, in my opinion, “Damage” is certainly worthy of consideration as Hugo-worthy. Its style, prose and plotting FAR outclass that of “Turncoat”, which in my opinion was clunky and massively flawed. There certainly is a point in comparing the two stories, because while they utilize similar plot themes, “Damage” is far superior to “Turncoat”. And many other people commented here on File770 saying that they thought the same. Your opinion is in the minority.

    Protest manager: 2: No one’s said “No, PM, “Scraps’ wasn’t a loser by the end of the story”. Now, they’d be wrong to claim that, and I could pull up the quotes to prove it, but no one has even tried to claim that “Damage”‘s main character isn’t a loser.

    At no point in “Damage” was Scraps ever a “loser”. Not in the beginning, not in the middle, not at the end. Scraps was an incredibly intelligent ship which was able to recognize that, no matter how much it loved its pilot, its pilot was a destructive asshole who was going to cost millions of people their lives for no constructive purpose. Scraps chose to do what was best for humankind rather than follow their own selfish desires to serve their owner.

    Protest manager: 3: No one’s tried to claim that Hugo voters don’t prefer stories about losers. And that’s the key point. The stories you prefer are always going to suck, because they’re stories about losers. And very few non-losers want to read about losers.

    No one’s tried to claim this, because it is a ridiculous assertion to begin with. Hugo voters prefer stories they like. Period. Full Stop. End Of. The fact that you don’t happen to like the same stories as the majority of the Hugo voters simply means that your taste is in the minority. Claiming that people whose taste differs from yours are “losers” because they like different things — well, that’s the sort of thing a kindergartner would say.

  21. Protest manager: 2000 people voted for Skin Game. 2674 voted for No Award. “The Hugo voters” preferred No Award over Skin Game. No?

    Yep. The majority of the Hugo voters preferred No Award over Skin Game. I’ll tell you why it went below “No Award” on my ballot. It was okay, but neither gripping nor exciting.

    I’ll normally read a novel the size of Skin Game in an evening. It took me a WEEK to read Skin Game — because I kept putting it down to go do other things that were more interesting. I had to FORCE myself to read the entire book — otherwise I would have set it aside after 50 pages or so.

    It’s the umpteenth book in a series, and there was very little character development in it, because the author relied on the reader having read all the previous books in the series and having a fully-fleshed-out background for all the characters. The novel referred to events which had occurred previously in the series — and clearly from the references these events had significance — but because I didn’t know the backstory of the events, that significance was lost on me. Because of the missing character development and backstory, the characters and story were shallow and not absorbing or interesting. I actively resented having to waste my precious book-reading time on a story that was nowhere near to Hugo quality. Damn right it went below No Award.

    I am sure Skin Game was a worthy entry in the series. But as a standalone novel, it didn’t come even close to being Hugo-quality. In fact, there were a great many Dresden Files fans who posted on File770 threads saying that they love the series, and will continue to read it avidly, but had to admit that Skin Game wasn’t Hugo-quality.

    Again, the only thing this proves is that your opinion of the SFF works on the Hugo ballot is in the minority.

  22. @Caly

    Why did the Hugo voters this year decide to vote No Award for every single work supported by one of the Puppy groups? Why did they cheer every time their spite was successful? Why did the MC tell the crowd that cheering “No Award” was allowed, but booing it was not?

    Once you have the answers to those questions, you’ll have the answer to yours. Because once upon a time I did value the Hugo Award. Because once upon a time the Hugo Award went to stories with reading.

    No more.

    @Jim

    Let me explain it to you, I’ll use small word:

    Yes, we “Puppies” are a small minority of Hugo voters. No, the people who like the kind of things we like are not a small minority of all science fiction and fantasy buyers. While your world appears to revolve around Hugo voting, mine does not.

    That clear it up for you?

    Oh, and someone on the last page whined about “gray goo” usage.

    A “gray goo” scenario is where nanotech runs wild, and everything gets eaten. If that’s the totality of your story, it’s probably a failure.

    A “gray goo” story is an “oh, the world sucks, my life sucks, whah, whah, I’m so sad and angst” story. It’s an undifferentiated mass of misery and whining. TDTWTUD is pretty mud the Platonic Ideal of such a story.

    Finally, I created my WP blog because I wanted to write a review comparing Turncoat and Damage, and didn’t think Mike’s blog was the right place to do that. Will it get many more reviews? I doubt it. I’ve got plenty of other places to do that.

    But I do love all you all going for the ad hominem, rather than, you know, actually responding to the review. Thank you for living down to my expectations.

  23. @Protest Manager:

    Let me explain it to you, I’ll use small word:

    I would expect nothing more! I mean less!

    Yes, we “Puppies” are a small minority of Hugo voters. No, the people who like the kind of things we like are not a small minority of all science fiction and fantasy buyers. While your world appears to revolve around Hugo voting, mine does not.

    That clear it up for you?

    You seem to be under a misimpression. I know perfectly well this is your unearned conviction. So your delusion of grandeur doesn’t need “explaining.” That you believe a majority of all SF readers in the world are down with The Parliament of Beasts and Birds and Zombie Nation is still hilarious. And you’re not a nice person, so there’s no reason not to openly mock you.

  24. @Lori

    “The people who make up those 2,000-3,000 No Award Voters don’t like folks that try to game the Hugos”

    Bull. Because if they didn’t like people who game the Hugos, they would have run Scalzi out of town years ago for his “pimping the Hugos” posts. And if they didn’t like people gaming the Hugos, they would have put in a two round nomination system, rather than EPH.

    The “No Award”ing and EPH both come front eh same place: not an opposition to gaming, but an opposition to anyone other than the “in” crowd doing the gaming.

    And hey, you win. The “in” crowd is going to get to do mostly whatever it wants with the Hugos. But now it’s clear to everyone else that the Hugos are nothing but a circle-jerk. So, enjoy your “victory.”

  25. @Jim, I believe the bit you quoted sums up to “The Lurkers Support me in email”

    Loser-troll remains boring. Revenge-troll appears to be more skilled, but unfortunately relies too much on Words mean What I want them to Mean.

  26. Protest manager: Why did the Hugo voters this year decide to vote No Award for every single work supported by one of the Puppy groups? Why did they cheer every time their spite was successful? Why did the MC tell the crowd that cheering “No Award” was allowed, but booing it was not?

    There were varying reasons people voted “No Award” to Puppy entries — as you would know if you had read a significant number of comments here and elsewhere on the Internet. A lot of people voted “No Award” because the quality of the Puppy works ranged from decent-but-unexceptional to mediocre to execrable. A lot of people voted “No Award” because the slating, while legal, was extremely unethical, against the spirit of the Hugos, and unfair to all the people who voted their own preferences instead of voting someone else’s slate. Both of these are perfectly legitimate reasons for voting “No Award”.

    Why did people applaud (I’ll point out that the cheering diminished significantly after the first “No Award”)? Because they were hugely relieved not to see Hugo Awards go to poor quality works. They care a great deal about the Hugos, and they were happy not to see them tainted by being awarded to unworthy works.

    The MC did not tell the crowd that “cheering No Award is allowed”. The MC told the crowd not to applaud individual titles as they were read, but to hold the applause until the end of the nominee list. The MC told the crowd that applause was permitted and booing was not allowed as a way to protect the Puppies. Because if he had allowed responses of the audience after each title was read, if he had allowed booing, the fact that the non-Puppy entries were greatly liked and the Puppy entries were greatly disliked would have been massively apparent.

    Gerrold did this to save the Puppy nominees from the humiliation of having to hear no applause, or even booing, directed at their particular works. You Puppies ought to be sending David Gerrold a goddamn thank-you note for having the compassion and empathy to save your nominees that embarrassment and humiliation.

  27. Why did they vote “No Award”? A few reasons. The most important one, and the one that anybody who knows the history of the Hugos would know about, is that Hugo voters punish anyone who games works on to the ballot by downvoting them. Look at Hubbard’s novel in the 1980s.
    You like Heinlein, right? I grew up reading Heinlein. He taught me many of my ethical codes. Here’s a quote from “Have Spacesuit, Will Travel”:

    The rules permitted a contestant to submit any number of entries as long as each was written on a Skyway Soap wrapper or reasonable facsimile.

    I considered photographing one and turning out facsimiles by the gross, but Dad advised me not to. “It is within the rules, Kip, but I’ve never yet known a skunk to be welcome at a picnic.”

    Kip’s dad was a wise man. When people bring skunks to the picnic, the rest of the picnickers downvote them. Especially when the skunk-bringers insult the other Hugo voters, and many of the past Hugo winners, by claiming that they don’t actually vote for the works they think are best.

    The other important reason is that the works the Puppies gamed onto the ballot weren’t all that good, in many people’s opinion (including mine).

    But please do make a case for me as to why “Wisdom from my Internets” was worthy of a Hugo award. So far I’ve seen literally NOBODY, including its author, making that case. And explain to me why Eric S. Raymond was a more worthy Campbell nominee than Andy Weir. I’d be REALLY interested to see that.

  28. Protest manager: The “No Award”ing and EPH both come front eh same place: not an opposition to gaming, but an opposition to anyone other than the “in” crowd doing the gaming.

    Where has anyone said that this was the reason for voting No Award and EPH? Many people have explained their reasons for voting for those things — and not one has given the reason you’re claiming. You are pretending that you are a mind-reader and that you know better than people know themselves why they voted the way the did.

    Scali’s recommendation posts are not a slate, and they not in any way equivalent to what the Puppies did. You know this. You are claiming they are the same as a pathetic attempt to justify the Puppies’ actions because you can’t come up with any legitimate reasons for their slates.

    EPH will de-magnify any slate — whether it comes from Puppies, or Doctor Who fans, or whoever it is you’re calling “the in crowd”. If you really believed that “SJWs” have been gaming the Hugos for years, you would be welcoming EPH with open arms. The fact that you are not doing so proves that you know the claims about SJWs gaming the Hugos for years are false.

  29. Right. So when Scalzi hosts multiple uncurated recommendation threads hundreds and hundreds of posts long, with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of entries, unranked, with nobody saying “vote for these specific works” it is EXACTLY THE SAME THING as a list of 1-5 works explicitly called a slate, or such a list where people are explicitly told to vote for those works to stick it to the SJWs.
    I’m sorry, you’ll have to try again; that dog won’t hunt.

  30. Why did the Hugo voters this year decide to vote No Award for every single work supported by one of the Puppy groups?

    Because they weren’t very good. Its really that simple. The best Puppy nominee was Skin Game and it was just a rehash of the same kind of plot that dozens of urban fantasies use every year, and not particularly great at it either.

    You say Hugo voters like stories about losers. Except that the protagonist in The Goblin Emperor doesn’t lose. Neither does the protagonist in Ancillary Sword. You claim the protagonist in The Three-Body Problem is a loser, but Da Shi pushes everyone else to keep fighting. The central characters break up the treacherous group that has been betraying humanity. They do things to make their situation better. Your “review” shows that you either didn’t read the books, or didn’t pay attention when you did.

    Because if they didn’t like people who game the Hugos, they would have run Scalzi out of town years ago for his “pimping the Hugos” posts.

    That’s not gaming the Hugo nominations, and no matter how many times you Pups stomp your feet and whine that it is so, no one will agree with you.

    But now it’s clear to everyone else that the Hugos are nothing but a circle-jerk.

    You Pups are so cute when you are completely delusional and claim to speak for “everyone else”. Go back getting your easily bruised ego gently stroked by the other denizens of Baen’s Bar.

  31. @JJ

    ‘At no point in “Damage” was Scraps ever a “loser”. ‘

    It was at times like these that I loved my pilot most fiercely. Commander Ziegler was the finest pilot in the Free Belt, the finest pilot anywhere. He had never been defeated in combat.

    Whereas I—I was a frankenship, a stitched-together flying wreck, a compendium of agony and defeat and death unworthy of so fine a pilot. No wonder he could spare no soothing words for me, nor had adorned my hull with any nose art.

    No! Those other ships, those salvaged wrecks whose memories I carried—they were not me. I was better than they, I told myself, more resilient. I would learn from their mistakes. I would earn my pilot’s love.

    That is a loser. That is a battered spouse who keeps on going back to her abuser. Now let’s jump to the end:

    If my commander, my love, the fuel of my heart, desired something . . . then it must be done, no matter the cost.

    “Acknowledged,” I said, and again I was glad that my voice did not betray the misery I felt.

    Fire and explosion and death. Flaming fuel burning along my spine.

    I didn’t want to face that pain again—didn’t want to die again.

    But I didn’t want to inflict that pain onto others either. Only my love for my commander had kept me going this far.

    If I truly loved him I would do my duty, and my duty was to keep him safe and carry out our mission.

    Or I could indulge him, let him have what he wanted rather than what he should want. That would make him happy . . . and would almost certainly lead to our destruction and the failure of our mission.

    My love was not more important than my orders.

    But it was more important to me.

    Even when she finally does the right thing, Scraps is pathetic about it. The author could have had Scraps grow a brain, analyze the situation, realize that the murder of 26 million civilians would be counter-productive, and refuse / sabotage the mission on this grounds. He didn’t. The author could have Scraps stop being the battered spouse who goes back for more, and instead dump the jerk Ziegler, but he didn’t.

    He could have had Scraps improve and grow through the course of the story. He didn’t. In Turncoat, Benedict did grow. He did learn. He did think. And when the time came, he acted, and acted successfully. (And unlike Scraps, his “success” wasn’t getting himself killed, and then getting himself dug up by the other side.)

    I don’t know what story you read. But from what you wrote it doesn’t appeal to be “Damage.”

  32. Protest manager: The author could have had Scraps grow a brain, analyze the situation, realize that the murder of 26 million civilians continued ability of its pilot to engage in war would be counter-productive

    That is exactly what Scraps did. Scraps chose the course of action which would benefit the vast majority of humanity rather than the selfish option, which would have been far more devastating to humanity.

    Since you didn’t understand this, you may want to consider working on your reading comprehension.

  33. Protest manager at 6:28 pm said:
    2: I laid out the differences between Turncoat and Damage. Winner v. loser. Rational v emotional and whiny. If you prefer the second to the first, then you’ve got nothing to offer me, other than I can be certain that I will hate anything you like.

    Hi Protest Manager, given that you have been responding to other commenters, do you then hate the writers & stories I mentioned (re-listed below)? It’s a question I asked earlier upthread.

    David Weber, John C. Wright’s “The Golden Age” trilogy, Robert Heinlein’s “The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress”, Iain M. Banks’ “Player of Games”, Frank Herbert’s “Dune”, Vernor VInge’s “A Fire Upon the Deep”, Neal Stephenson’s “Snow Crash” (and “The Cobweb” too), Charles Stross’ “Accelerando”, Kage Baker’s “Empress of Mars”, Larry Niven’s “Ringworld”, William Gibson’s “Neuromancer”, Terry Pratchett’s “Guards! Guards!” and Elizabeth Moon’s “Speed of Dark”, Isaac Asimov’s “Foundation”, Roger Zelazny’s Amber series, Orson Scott Card’s “Ender’s Game”.

    Because these are but a few of the writers & stories that I love.

  34. Since you didn’t understand this, you may want to consider working on your reading comprehension.

    Given his various pronouncements, it seems that PM equates “having emotions” with “being a loser”. To be honest, PM’s various pontifications tell very little about the stories he is bloviating about, but speak volumes about him, and what a tiny, scared, weak-minded person he is.

    In any event, dumb Puppy is dumb, and not worth bothering with any more.

  35. Scraps was willing to risk death in order to prevent the murder of 26 million civilians. That’s not what I call a “loser,” though obviously your mileage varies.

    But it is worth noting that in the end, Scraps isn’tdead, but instead has a useful job that doesn’t involve catering to a jerk like Ziegler.

    Also worth noting that Scraps isn’t responsible for its programming, intentionally written to make the AIs dependant on their pilots, nor is Scraps responsible for its previous traumas.

    And despite all that, Scraps pulls it together to prevent a major atrocity, at risk of its own life.

    So very much not a loser.

  36. @Cally:

    And explain to me why Eric S. Raymond was a more worthy Campbell nominee than Andy Weir. I’d be REALLY interested to see that.

    Just so you know, and in fairness to Eric, when nominated his immediate public reaction was that he really didn’t think he should get the Campbell, but that he would leave that judgement up to the voters. My own assessment was that it would be very strange to vote the Campbell to an author whose entire portfolio of SF works was exactly one short story. The Campbell is for best new writer, which ought to be based on a 1-to-2-year-seasoned SFF writer’s entire professional career so far.

    I liked that one single, first-ever story. I encouraged Eric to please keep at it. But I also agreed with his assessment.

    Disclaimer: Eric is a personal friend of many decades’ standing – albeit our personal politics differs considerably, of which fact he was unaware until April 2015. (We of the Scandinavian culture tend to be taught from a young age that we are not inherently interesting to others, absent specific evidence to the contrary, so I’d just never bothered to mentioned that I’m a damned neo-Keynesian liberal, there having always been more interesting things to discuss than the guy I shave.) Eric and I also co-authored starting around 2000, and co-maintain, a popular Internet reference essay. Discount my viewpoint on grounds of bias, if you think appropriate.

  37. @Jim Henley,
    About that allegation? I have a bone to pick with you.

    I can make that obscure joke, safe in the knowledge that only a small number of people, which includes many of the commenters here, will get it. It’s as if we’re all part of a Cliquish…

  38. Rick: I know that Eric Raymond didn’t think he was worthy. I’ve met him, myself, not that he’d remember me. I want to know why our Puppy interlocutor thinks that Raymond was more worthy than Andy Weir.

  39. @Cally:

    Oh, absolutely, and fair enough. Because Eric has, um, a famously healthy sense of self-promotion at times, I worry that people will think he was in the recent kerpupple yet another entitled jerk enraged because he didn’t get the award he felt he deserved, which just wasn’t the case with him at all.

  40. Mess with the bull, you get the horns.

    Or your ribs stove in, against the side of the barn. [/rueful]

  41. And… for those of you who’ve missed it, there is now a Long List Anthology Kickstarter, to put out an anthology of the non-Finalist stories from the Hugo longlist.

    The Short Stories and Anthology funding has already been achieved, the stretch goal to add the Novelettes is getting close to being achieved, and there is an additional stretch goal to add the Novellas.

  42. @Mike Glyer

    Oh, Protest manager. Nothing so obvious that you can’t miss it. What about those 2,078 people who ranked No Award ahead of “The Day the World Turned Upside Down”? And yet you posture as if all Hugo voters wanted it to win.

    I tried. It isn’t getting anywhere.

  43. “I tried. It isn’t getting anywhere.” Protestor isn’t going to reply to Mike’s post or to Soon Lee’s question about authors, because there isn’t any easy way to twist the meaning of those.

    Now, certainly, he is isn’t managing to twist the other things successfully, (see his comparison of a thread where hundreds of people share suggestions of books that they like to a slate where one person lists his friends). He probably feels that his arguments here make sense.

    Now, I don’t think he’s doing this intentionally, or being dishonest about what questions he pretends to answer, rather, I think that he is literally unable to perceive the ones that prove one of his assertions incorrect. As with the question on, ‘wait, so you hate Heinlein?’… It hits some kind of perceptual filter and is dumped before it reaches his consciousness. As a puppy, he *knows* that we really can’t enjoy Heinlein, and *knows* that anything we enjoy must be bad or wrong, so he never needs to think about what it means that we agree on some books.

    So I’d suggest that we might want to spend less energy here. There’s no point in trying to reason with the man, because as you can see from what he has written here, his thought processes are almost entirely feels-based. Just look at his word choices – everybody who he doesn’t like is a loser, or whining, or angry children, or burning things down. Zero factual content, all emotion. There’s no amount of facts or logic that will enable you to reach common ground with him.

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