aka The Summer of our Manufactured Discontent
In today’s roundup: Sarah A. Hoyt, Vox Day, David Gerrold, Steven Brust, John Scalzi, Peter Grant, Laura J. Mixon, Laura Resnick, Spacefaring Kitten, Chris Gerrib, David Gerrold, Adam-Troy Castro, Lis Carey, Larry Correia, Brad Johnson and mysterious others. (Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editors of the day Nigel and DMS.)
Sarah A. Hoyt on According To Hoyt
“Fun House Mirrors” – June 17
But I’ve been on a slow simmer since the Irene Gallo comments, and that was brought to a boil yesterday.
Why yesterday, you ask?
Because the hypocritical scum (I apologize to any scum I might have offended) who runs file 770 has been gleefully linking anything of mine that even uses the letters H-u-g- and o in the same paragraph, but yesterday I wrote about his hypocrisy in taking a sentence of mine out of context and linking it with a clever-daft punchline of the “Hydrophobia that falls on you from nowhere” to imply I was homophobic.
Did he link yesterday’s post? Are you kidding? Even though he’s fairly sure his blinded followers will rarely click through, he couldn’t afford to explode his narrative. He’d on the flimsiest of “evidence” – i.e. my refusal to go into details on same sex marriage and other accommodations for more “exotic” orientations in a post to which it wasn’t even incidental – declared me homophobic, and he couldn’t risk the narrative being exploded.
I confess that when my Baen colleagues were making fun of file 770 and going on about “Mike Glyer, Fifty Hugos” (the number of nominations he’d had) I thought they were being a little mean. After all, the man was just well-intentioned and blinkered, and believed the narrative.
Guys, I was wrong, you were right. He’s not deceived, but he willfully deceives. He is not a useful idiot, but one who would seek to make idiots out of others. He’s not the sheep, but the judasgoat.
Why does that matter to me? Why do I get so upset if it’s not true? Isn’t it an axiom (at least on the left side of politics) that you only get upset if it’s secretly true?
[I reminded Sarah A. Hoyt the roundup titles are a trope, not a comment on the writers quoted. She did not take me up on my offer to run another excerpt, so I can only commend the entire post to you — “Dispatches From Another World” – June 12.]
Vox Day on Vox Popoli
“Updates” – June 17
Since many of you have been asking, no, no one has received any response from anyone at Tor Books or Macmillan. We know at least some of the emails have been read by the recipients. Be patient, we have to give Macmillan time to investigate the situation and discover for themselves just how dysfunctional and unprofessional their U.S. subsidiary is. Remember that Julie Crisp, Editorial Director of Tor UK, left the company “following a review of the company’s science fiction and fantasy publishing” in May, and her public behavior was unobjectionable in comparison with that of Irene Gallo, Moshe Feder, and Patrick Nielsen Hayden.
Also, Jagi has asked that when you send her your pictures of your Tor books, please tell her what state or country you are from. She’s received them from 65 people to date.
David Gerrold in a comment on Facebook – June 17
So, Vox Day has declared a boycott of Tor Books.
I expect this will be as effective as the Baptist boycott of Disney World.
Apparently the sad puppies are planning to boycott Tor, my publisher. I'm scared.
Oh, wait, no I'm not.
— Steven Brust, pjf (@StevenBrust) June 17, 2015
@aiabx @cstross @StevenBrust Write it under a woman's name. They'll never notice you at all.
— Judith Tarr (@dancinghorse) June 17, 2015
Apropos of nothing, my thoughts last October, when a bunch of shitballs threatened to boycott Tor because of me: http://t.co/U5fRWkFnSQ
— John Scalzi (@scalzi) June 17, 2015
Peter Grant on Bayou Renaissance Man
“The blindness of the ideologically bound” – June 17
And so, when Ms. Gallo accused me – me – of being ‘unrepentantly racist’ purely because I happened to support the Sad Puppy cause, that was the last straw. I’d heard that lie from SJW’s before, of course, and been able to get over it . . . but lies like that are like the Chinese water torture. Sooner or later, something’s going to snap. Her accusations were, to me, unforgivable; and since she’s never seen fit to retract them, they still are. Since her employer has seen fit to allow her, and others like her, to pontificate about something of which they apparently know absolutely nothing, to make false accusations and toss denigrations around like confetti, doing so on company time and using company computers and networks . . . that employer is complicit in the whole mess. Hence my outrage against Tor. Hence the boycott for which I will call on Friday if Tor and its holding company, Macmillan, don’t act against those responsible.
I won’t take this any more. I know I’m far from the only Puppy supporter who’s had enough of the SJW’s lies and slanders and libels. They want a war? They can have one.
Laura J. Mixon
“I stand with Irene Gallo, and I stand with Tor” – June 17
Bullies and abusers rely on the larger community’s desire for comity—our willingness to live and let live—to impose their will and silence dissent. In such a case, it’s incumbent on people with standing in the community to speak up against them, providing a counterweight to their destructive ideas. By speaking when she did, in my view, Irene was doing what other thought leaders in our field like N. K. Jemisin, John Scalzi, and the Nielsen Haydens have done: guarding the health and well-being of our SFF community by standing up against hate speech.
Some feel the stark terms Irene applied to the Sad and Rabid Puppies movements in her FaceBook post—racist, misogynist, homophobic, neo-nazi—were too harsh and too broadly applied. That she spoke out of turn and had no business criticizing the Sad and Rabid Puppies campaign while promoting a Tor book. They protest that their views are not extreme, and using such terms unfairly maligns them, by lumping them in with someone they don’t support. Some members of the Sad and Rabid Puppy campaigns have indeed distanced themselves from Beale, and perhaps they were initially unaware of just how extreme his views were.
I believe that communities can grow and change. People can learn; viewpoints can shift. I have a seed of hope that someday, through continued dialog and education, we can find a way through this and mend some of the rifts that this conflict has exposed.
But there is no getting around the fact that a misogynistic, homophobic white supremacist, who has spoken approvingly of shootings and acid attacks on women, and of Hitler and the Holocaust, who has called a respected SFF scholar and popular writer an ignorant, “not equally human” savage, stands at the heart of this conflict. Beale’s followers and fellow travelers may not themselves hold all the bigoted views he does, but information on who he is and how he feels about women, people of color, LGBTQ people, and others has been widely shared by now. If people are emailing you calling for Irene to be fired, they are unavoidably supporting Beale’s hate-filled agenda.
Laura Resnick on Facebook – June 17
I’m guessing that, for a raft of reasons, Tor and Macmillan will not meet any of these demands, and so it seems likely the Puppies will boycott the biggest publisher in our genre starting on Friday. I’m skeptical that a few hundred people will have an effect on a program the size of Tor, and also skeptical that their numbers will grow. So I’m more concerned about what persons, organizations, or businesses will be the Puppies’ next target. I didn’t think they would stop with the Hugos, and I’m skeptical they’ll stop with Tor, either.
https://twitter.com/tuesdayreviews/status/611230746921963520
Spacefaring Kitten on Spacefaring Extradimensional Happy Kittens
“Answering Peter Grant” – June 17
Sad Puppy activist Peter Grant was one of the most vocal people pushing for this week’s hatemail campaign directed at Tor….
He says:
I’ll do my best not to stoop to name-calling, with the exception of referring to the other side as ‘social justice warriors’ or SJW’s. I do so only because I have no other name in my vocabulary to adequately or accurately describe them. If anyone can suggest a better, more acceptable alternative, I’ll be grateful.
I replied in the comments that the best alternative would be Happy Kittens. Sadly, it seems like my comment was deleted.
I’d like to rephrase my suggestion here: please drop the SJW and start using Happy Kittens if you insists on having a handle for the people who are critical of Sad Puppies. It’s not offensive. It’s kind of funny in the same way as Sad Puppies. It looks ridiculous in an angry sentence. Plenty of good reasons.
Chris Gerrib on Private Mars Rocket
“Puppy Bites Woman AGAIN, Pictures at 11 !!!!” – June 17
I find a notable fact buried in the piles of puppy-doo.
I’m going to dig said fact out and clean it up for you. I’m doing this because facts have been one thing in short supply in this debate. For the most part, what we get are vague statements that some unnamed person committed some undefined offense sometime during a large event. But now we have a fact.
Per Vox, 765 individual people emailed Tor complaining about Gallo. That sounds like a lot, except, 79,279 people bought a copy of Redshirts in 2013. So, if you take 765 and divide it by 79,279, you get .00964. In other words, less than 1% of the people who bought one book from Tor are complaining. You’d have to magnify that complaint number by an order of magnitude to get anybody’s attention.
David Gerrold in a message on Facebook – June 17
A friend has pointed out to me that any attempt to calm people down is doomed unless everyone involved wants to calm down. He then went on to point out that too often there are individuals who will have a vested interest in escalating the uproar. It increases their visibility — and their illusion (delusion?) of power.
It is — according to my very wise friend — a kind of ferocious madness that has to reach a peak before it can burn itself out. It cannot be calmed and those… efforts are doomed. It has to be inflamed by those who are enraptured by the heat they can generate and like any addiction, the dosage has to be increased, they can only crave more and more — until the whole thing becomes a bonfire and they are finally, ultimately immolated in the flames.
He might be right.
I’ve seen flame wars online that have destroyed whole forums — and I’ve seen the perpetrators of these flame wars move from forum to forum, leaving a trail of ruined relationships behind them. I cannot think of a single instance where a call for peace was effective. Even Gandhi died by a bullet.
Adam-Troy Castro on Facebook – June 17
I have heard more than one person say that they’re dreading Worldcon.
I won’t say that this is what the Sad and Rabid Puppies want as a group, even if I do think it’s what of a couple of the individual standard-bearers want. I will say that it is certainly what a great number of the trolls slamming so-called SJW writers on their behalf want. (And I do think it would tickle Beale the Galactic Zero no end. This is the guy who cheers spree killers, after all.)
Alas, I am not going to Worldcon this year. It would take an unexpected windfall of colossal proportions. Maybe next year, or the year after.
But if I was, “dread it”? To hell with that. I go to have fun, to catch up with old friends, to make new ones, to find treasures in the Dealer’s Room, to talk about my pop-culture obsessions and to hear others talk about my pop-culture obsessions. I’d be going, this year, to see my friend David Gerrold in his Guest of Honor gig and to see him and my friend Tananarive Due nail their Hugo-hosting gig. You think, if attendance was in my cards for me, I would waste more than one millisecond of brain energy on the premise that some no-neck gibberer with a fixation on his own imaginary oppression might say something nasty to me?
Spacefaring Kitten on Spacefaring Extradimensional Happy Kittens
“Cedar ‘Go Buy A Shooter Bimbo Shirt’ Sanderson” – June 17
Cedar Sanderson is the third member of the Mad Genius Club in this category, and she has produced what is probably the single best blog post in the voters packet I’ve read so far that has actually something do with SFF. In it, she ponders the shortcomings of generic fantasy on the lines of Diana Wynne Jones’ Tough Guide to Fantasyland which is a book I should probably read sometime. The text would be stronger if Sanderson had gone into specifics and given some more concrete examples of bad fantasy, but it’s not bad as is.
H.P. on Every Day Should Be Tuesday
“Review of Rat Queens vol. 1: Sass & Sorcery by Kurtis J. Wiebe” – June 17
Each of the four members has her moments, the story is intriguing enough, and the comic is genuinely funny. They’re foul-mouthed, horny, and have a distinct tendency to cause disproportionate property damage. And can drink their rival adventurers under the table as easily as they kill their enemies. They’re joined by a host of cool minor characters, from a long-suffering captain of the town watch who’s sleeping with one of the Rat Queens to the friendly rival adventurer group named the Four Daves (exactly what it says on the tin) to a villainous local merchant to one very annoying town watchman. All in all, it probably has the best combo of awesome female characters around.
Lis Carey on Lis Carey’s Library
“Best Editor, Long Form — 2015 Hugo Award Nominees” – June 17
[She reviews all five nominees. I excerpted the one that struck me as the most favorable.]
Sheila Gilbert: Ms. Gilbert is, with Betsy Wollheim, Publisher at DAW. Ms. Gilbert did provide both a list of edited works, and sample chapters. Her writers include Seanan McGuire, Julie Czerneda, and Jacey Bedford, and the sample chapters include both science fiction and fantasy. Within the limits of my ability to assess her work as an editor, I’m very impressed. There are also some new works added to my To Be Read list.
Font Folly
“Hugo Ballot Reviews: Graphic Story” – June 17
[Preceded by reviews of all nominees.]
Rat Queens is hands-down the winner of slot number one on my Hugo ballot in this category. And with Zombie Nation at number five, the only thing left up in the air is where how I’m going to rank Saga, Sex Criminals, and Ms. Marvel, because I want all of them and Rat Queens to take home an award, dang it!
Larry Correia on Monster Hunter Nation
“Somebody sent me a Sad Puppies holster” – June 17
I’ve not been saying much about the Sad Puppies controversy lately, because right now it is out of my hands. Some employees of a publishing house said some pretty outlandish things, and their customers are ticked and writing lots of letters. I’m staying out of that one.
But some author friends had this made for me and sent as a gift. I’m pretty sure they don’t want to be identified.
Sad Puppy 1911 Holster Right Hand
Tor & File770 insiders say #SadPuppies are setting bad examples by getting high on unicorn farts. Heeellooo, colors of the rainbow!
— finger chomper (@sadrbtpuppies) June 17, 2015
https://twitter.com/Cherokee_Viking/status/611347536373157888
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@Peace is my Middle Name:
Oh god yes. I treasure my JOURNEY omnibus, and those Jonny Quests, and I loved his superhero comics too.
Authors most represented on my physical shelves: mystery writers Ross MacDonald and the unjustly neglected Ross Thomas. Ann Tyler. William Boyd. SF/F writers: Moorcock; Delany; Zelazny; Wolfe. Maybe even in that order.
Authors most represented on my e-shelves: Harry Connolly. Mike Carey. Er, Jim Butcher. Very probably in that order.
You people are entirely impossible to keep up with, you know?
And all praise Mike for that, OGH be his Name. I shudder to think what we’d be dealing with without that triage.
In regard to Critical Mass of Assholes: There’s a nifty little book written by a Harvard Business School professor called The No Asshole Rule In it, he discusses the toxic effects of allowing assholes to thrive in your company, and strongly encourages the following of a “No Asshole Rule” — namely, no matter how good a single individual’s performance in your company may be, retaining that worker is not worth the overall damage to the company that (s)he does. In it, he mentions that the “Zero Asshole” level is rarely attainable in practice, but that by striving for it, most workplaces can manage to keep the level down to a single asshole, which is survivable. He also mentions the problem of multiple assholes competing to be the biggest asshole and how it inevitable drives the company culture to become worse for everyone and, eventually, to become unviable.
One thing I found amusing when reading the book was the bluntness of the title, which the author mentions he was originally not set on. But the informal essay he wrote that became the backbone of the book had that title, and everyone told him to just leave it alone, because it was better to get right to the point than dance around it.
I have a Hugo voting related question for anyone in the know. The vote is done by “Instant Runoff Voting” — is that essentially the same thing as Single Transferable Vote as outlined here by the estimable CGP Grey? (If you haven’t watched his full video series on voting systems, you are missing out. Go, watch, learn, enjoy.)
Andrew:
>> Which makes it sound like violent technology porn — which it would be, except that it’s one of the most beautiful, touching, moving things I’ve ever readin the comics medium, it does things with visual storytelling I didn’t know were possible, and it’s a character-driven story with almost no humans and very nearly no dialogue. It is, among other things, a story about innocence and what that really means, and… oh, it’s just *lovely*.>>
Yeah, what he said.
Jenora:
>> I had never known this book existed, but just that combination… the man behind Pirate Corp$ and the woman behind Scary Godmother. The brain, it melts.>>
It’s great. It’s touching and warm, with great characters and stirring heroics. It’s not a laugh-fest like much of Dorkin’s solo work, and it’s more realistic than SCARY GODMOTHER…well, for values of “realistic” that say all the local dogs are part of a group protecting the neighborhood from dangerous mystic incursions…
Doc:
>> Do so many of you really think you wouldn’t recognize J. K. Rowling?>>
I know what Rowling looks like enough that in a context where I’d expect to see her (at a con where she was a guest, say) I’d recognize her, but if she passed me on the street I wouldn’t.
What, like “Tis Pity She’s a Whore” and “A Chaste Maid in Cheapside” and “The Revenger’s Tragedy”?
(Not a theater person, just into restoration drama for a while)
@rrede
While I didn’t bounce off of TBP, it felt extremely inconsistent to me.V ybirq gur obbx jura Lr Jrawvr jnf ba fperra, naq V sbhaq vg fhofgnagvnyyl yrff vagrerfgvat jura fur jnf bss-fperra. Gur frpgvbaf jurer Jnat Zvnb yrnearq gur uvfgbel bs gur vainqref jbexrq jryy rabhtu, naq vg’f gurer gung gur obbx sryg zbfg nyvra gb zr, va n tbbq jnl. Bhgfvqr gur ZZB, guvatf jrera’g fb tbbq. Rirel gvzr Fuv Dvnat ragrerq gur fprar V tebnarq n ovg. Gur birenyy cybg bs gur abiry qvqa’g pncgher zr, naq Jnat Zvnb uvzfrys sryg yvxr yrff guna n yvivat, oernguvat punenpgre naq zber yvxr n jnyxvat pnzren gung Yvh Pvkva hfrq gb cerfrag gur riragf bs gur fgbel.
Gur obbx jnf vagrerfgvat nf n serfu crefcrpgvir, srryvat yvxr vg jnf phg bhg bs qvssrerag pybgu guna zbfg Ratyvfu ynathntr obbxf. V rfcrpvnyyl nccerpvngrq gur Phygheny Eribyhgvba nfcrpgf bs gur obbx. Gung nfvqr, V’z hygvzngryl qvfncbvagrq va gur obbx. Vg srryf yvxr gjb frcnengr abiryf jbira gbtrgure: gurer’f n Uhtb jbegul fgbel srnghevat Lr Jrawvr, naq ubj naq jul n uhzna pbhyq or oebhtug gb gur cbvag jurer fur orgenlf nyy bs uhznavgl. Naq gurer’f n fgbel nobhg n fpvragvfg naq n pbc gung V’q chg orybj Ab Njneq. Gur birenyy obbx vfa’g onq, ohg qhr gb gur vapbafvfgrapl vg’f abg va gur fnzr yrnthr va zl zvaq nf NF be GTR.
I look at all the rot13 and I see the language of the Necronomicon.
Seconding the rec for “The No Asshole Rule.” I’d love to send a copy to every HR department in the world.
Your description of the “No Asshole Rule” makes me wonder if the principle of “addition by subtraction” is a more primitive expression of the same beneficial outcome.
Crap am still catching up (4 more pages- so far!), but have run into a problem for my Juneteenth – which it already is here in GMT+8 land – plans. Looks like Tor books from my usual sources (Google Play for ebooks, and Bookdepository for paper) are actually tagged to Macmillan/ Hachette/ Titan as publishers. Is this just a cross-border thing or am I just not finding the correct editions?
Worst case scenario, I’ll amble over to the nearby brick and mortar and pick up something, am pretty sure I saw Tor on some of the spines there.
FYI, the next 2 Brandon Sanderson Mistborn novels are also available for pre-order
Hahaha. I have caught up in the comments. Whew. Well anything I would comment on has been discussed pages and pages ago.
Thanks for the book reccommendations! Phylis Gotleb I really enjoyed. Also I would add Edgar Pangborn to the list.
I am down at my parents for the week and looking at my Dad’s bookshelf in the new house. He has an amazing collection of great SF. When I was a kid I would look at the wall of books by his bed, custom sized for paperbacks and running for yards. Standing on the bed I would run my fingers along the spines and stop and pull out a book to adventure in; something new each time.
My first books were Burroughs, then Tom Corbet Space Cadet, then Alan Nourse.
Don’t know if this has been mentioned among the animal POV books, but I said last night that it was one of my gateway books when I was a kid, and I still love it to this day.
Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH.
Or you might listen to what people are saying and, if you disagree, actually address the substance of their arguments. Is everyone who doesn’t think the birthers know what they are talking about a group? Is everyone who dislikes people cutting in lines ahead of them a group or side? Is everyone who dislikes gerrymandering of voting districts a side?
We don’t have leaders, we don’t have a platform or centralized call for concerted action, we don’t have a discernable agenda. The main thing most of us have in common, besides being SFF readers, is the opinion that organized slate voting is bad for the Hugos.
How does this make us a side or group?
[And I’m soooo far behind in comments….again.]
Re: Not recognizing authors.
Midamericon in 1976 — I was gofering for the con, and was acting as a Usher at the Hugo Award Ceremony. Since the guy running the show knew me he put me in charge of making sure that only SWFA members were put in a certain seating section he’d blocked off for them.
Well, all was well and good when those I was checking had a badge, however I ended up carding a great many folk that I didn’t recognize, and I wanted to melt into the floor with embarrassment. Note, the authors I carded were amused not upset (I suspect my distress and dismay were obvious) and I am exceedingly grateful for their tolerance of the situation.
@Stevie : whaddaya got against English lit types, you elitist chorf? Kidding, of course. In the real world, word my sistah!
I had to Google that expression, but having done, so: YES! The author points out that the “stars” of the company (the assholes who are tolerated because produce) are generally inflating their own performance by depressing the performance of everyone around them with their behavior and attitude, and that while a manage might worry about losing the productivity of the “star asshole” by removing her/him, the overall productivity of the workplace goes up because the “star asshole” is no longer parasitizing (consciously or unconsciously!) off the rest of the workers in the company.
Here’s another example of similar ideas applied to blogspace in an essay I stumbled across a few months back: Well-Kept Gardens Die By Pacifism.
This applies strongly to the current outrage attack going on over at Reddit about the banning of harassing subreddits being “Nazi Censorship”, which was summed up nicely by this comment someone left in one of the rant threads:
First they came for the fat people haters. I did not speak out, because I don’t hate fat people.
Then they came for the racists. I did not speak out, because I am not a racist.
Then they came for the transphobic subs. I did not speak out, because I don’t hate transgendered people.
Then they didn’t come for me, because I’m not an asshole.
(Someone else ended this with, “And then they came for me, and I invited them in and we had a great party!”)
“Or you might listen to what people are saying and, if you disagree, actually address the substance of their arguments.”
Well, I could, but the issue is obviously much more important to you guys than it is to me, which means I’d be in the unenviable position of trying to argue a point that I don’t really care all that much about with people who apparently have a lot invested in arguing the other side of it.
@IDK: I, among many, am glad you’ve stuck around despite the fact that you’ve got some opinions that aren’t widely shared here. You’re an interesting and decent person and I’m glad to be sharing this space with you.
Not recognizing authors:
Years ago I managed a small chain bookstore in Northwest DC. One day an older man with a trim beard came in to help what might have been his grandson but I think was actually his son pick out summer reading books. Then he brought them to the counter and laid down his credit-card to pay.
It read “Anthony M. Hecht”.
I realized I was waiting on one of my very favorite (then) living poets. And I could even, now that the name was in front of my, match the face to his author photos. So with very great dignity, I…
…gaped. Literally gaped, as in, not literally meaning figuratively but making a dead-fish face. Then I recovered my eloquence.
“Y-Y-You-You’re Anthony Hecht!” I informed him.
“Yes I am,” he said.
Simon:
Plague Dogs! I remember, after reading Watership Down for the first time and loving it, thinking I would give some of Adams’ other books a try. But the opening of Plague Dogs was so depressing (the thing about a dog having to swim in a tank until he nearly drowned) I gave up pretty quickly.
Then I tried Shardik, but my teenage brain had no idea what that was about.
Total agreement on the We3 recommendations upthread. Just a great little graphic novel.
@Chris Hensley: “There are only a couple of people in these round ups whose posts I actively avoid reading, but Paulk is getting close to joining them.”
And just think: she’s running SP4.
@rrede: “Then often at the restaurant, the waiter found it ludicrous that we were sitting there peacefully reading together–almost in some cases as if it was indecent.”
Do you know Bill Hicks’s bit on reading at a Waffle House? (Link contains fuzzy video and NSFW language.)
@rochrist: “I saw a mention of how weird V C Andrews got.”
The incest in Flowers in the Attic wasn’t weird enough? (I saw the movie while I was in college, and picked up the second book – thinking I’d be able to continue right along. Let’s just say it didn’t go well.)
And… caught up!
I’m not seeing a whole lot of “arguing the other side” though…there’s not a lot to really argue about because Slates R Bad MMKay. The Puppies know darned well they broke the Hugos (temporarily) because that’s what they set out to do. The only arguing going on seems to be the Puppies screaming about how It Had To Be Done Because SJWs. Since they’ve failed, every time, to back up their points with anything resembling facts or evidence, threads over here are mostly people going “What excuse are they going to try to float next, and will it be even more ridiculous than the last one?” (It’s going to be hard to top Sarah Hoyt’s this week, I must admit) then veering off into book discussions and recommends.
May Tree: Kinda. Since we’re not going for multiple winners, unlike the video, there’s no first-place vote allocation; just last-place deletion and reallocation until one work remains.
And unlike a pure STV system, we have No Award, which does two things. First, No Award is treated in the voting like any other candidate (meaning that anything put below No Award *cannot* be helped by your ballot to win over anything that you put above No Award; all it can do is if one of the things you put below No Award MUST win because all your above-No-Award works have already been eliminated, you can at least use your ballot to try to nudge the results to give the award to “Meh” over “ARRG ICK GET IT AWAY FROM ME”. If you have no preference as to which works are the worst, then leaving them off your ballot (under No Award) ties all unvoted on works for last place. This does mean that on any category where you intend to use No Award, you should make an effort to view/read/experience/research the candidates you know nothing about rather than simply leaving them off the ballot, because by leaving, say, an unwatched film off the ballot you are automatically marking it in last place. Which may be what you want to do, but it is something you only want to do deliberately.
The second thing No Award does is the No Award Showdown. This has never actually made a difference in the awards so far, but it could.
Remember how I said No Award was treated like any other candidate? Well, the last step in determining the winner of the award is to bring No Award back from the dead if it didn’t win by itself, and compare it, ballot by ballot, with the provisional winner (hereinafter “pw”). If No Award appears over the pw on a ballot, or if No Award appears and the pw does not appear, that’s marked as a point for No Award. If the pw appears over No Award on a ballot, including if the pw appears and No Award is not included at all, then there’s a point awarded to the pw. If neither the pw nor No Award appears on the ballot, no points are awarded.
If No Award wins this showdown, no award is given. If the pw wins, the pw is judged the Winner, and the award is given to that work/person.
Clear as mud?
Oh! Forgot to mention, I gaped so long at Anthony Hecht’s he actually asked, “Is there something wrong” with his American Express card.
And I have now reread Sucker Punch. Final judgment: it will be enjoyed by the people who like that type of story. Not quite as circular as that sounds; it’s a fairly well-done MilSF vignette of the weapons porn variety. Unlike some of the Puppy nominees, it’s not a mystery why there would be readers with a good opinion of it.
But no, not especially memorable for me.
@MRC
Inconsistent seems like a good word to describe TBP. V nyfb rawblrq gur cnegf bs gur obbx eryngvat gb Lr Jrawvr, n crefba fb snfpvangvat gung V jnf vagrerfgrq va ure fgbel rira jura vg jnf cerfragrq va gur sbez bs na vasbqhzc. Gur ZZB jbexrq sbe zr nf jryy, naq V nccerpvngr gung gur obbx yrg zr chmmyr bire gur ceboyrzf va gur fnzr jnl gung Jnat Zvnb qvq orsber gryyvat zr gur nafjre. V’z na ZZB tnzre zlfrys naq favpxrerq n ovg ng gur vqrn gung cynlref jub svtherq bhg gur frperg ner nyy rqhpngrq ryvgrf, fvapr gur tebhc bs crbcyr jub znfgre nal bgure fbeg bs bayvar tnzr ner n zhpu zber qvirefr ohapu, ohg V pna yrg gung cnff.
Jnat Zvnb whfg qvqa’g jbex sbe zr nf n punenpgre gubhtu, abe qvq Fuv Dhvnat, cebonoyl orpnhfr gur obbx fcrag gbb zhpu gvzr gryyvat zr ubj vagrerfgvat naq njrfbzr ur jnf naq abg rabhtu gvzr onpxvat vg hc. Naq gura gur obbx whfg sryy ncneg sbe zr ng gur raq. V jnf jvyyvat gb ohl gur inevbhf eryvtvbhf natyrf gnxra ol gur phygvfgf ba Rnegu gbjneq gur cebfcrpg bs na nyvra vainfvba. Avuvyvfgvp oryvrsf nera’g haxabja, naq crbcyr unir chg gurve snvgu va fgenatre fbheprf bs cbgragvny erqrzcgvba nf jryy. V whfg qvqa’g oryvrir gung gur nyvra jbeyq, cbchyngrq ol perngherf jub jrera’g arprffnevyl rira uhznabvq, jbhyq unir fhpu n zveeberq ernpgvba jvgu frtzragf bs gurve cbchyngvba vqrnyvmvat bhe jbeyq. Gur nyvraf qvqa’g frrz nyvra rabhtu va trareny tvira gung gurl’er rkcyvpvgyl abg sebz n irel Rneguyvxr jbeyq. Gurl unir na nhgubevgnevna tbireazrag, nccneragyl guevir haqre gur fnzr pyvzngr naq ngzbfcurevp pbaqvgvbaf jr qb, naq inyhr erfbheprf naq zngvat bccbeghavgvrf. Gur frafr bs ubeebe V’q sryg rneyvre va gur obbx rincbengrq bapr gurl jrer vagebqhprq, naq V ortna gb jbaqre jul vg jnf fbzrubj bhg bs gur dhrfgvba sbe gur gjb fcrpvrf gb funer. V jbhyq unir engure gurl’q fgnlrq oruvaq gur phegnva, rfcrpvnyyl fvapr gur raqvat bs gur obbx jnfa’g rknpgyl ebhfvat naq frrzrq gb yrnq engure oyngnagyl vagb n frdhry.
Gung’f abg gb fnl vg’f abg n tbbq obbx. Vg’f jbexvat jvgu fbzr irel vagrerfgvat vqrnf, naq V nccerpvngr vgf bevtvanyvgl. Ohg vg’f orybj GTR ba zl onyybg. V’z fgvyy guvaxvat nobhg NF, juvpu vf n gbhtu bar orpnhfr vg unf srjre guvatf V’q pevgvpvmr ohg nyfb qvqa’g unir gur zbzragf bs snfpvangvba V tbg ng n srj cbvagf va GOC.
Phylis Gotlieb’s “Sunburst” was one of the earlier SF books I read.
I was too young to get a lot of it the first time, but I sure loved the scene with the little telekinetic kid — about my age — walking down the air.
I’ve reread it multiple times, and I still have my edition with the psychedelic drug trip multicolored Rorschach cover (Now there is a book that has had some really regrettable covers, most worse than mine).
Peace
Zelazny studied Jacobean theatre for his research, as well as developing considerable skills in fencing; these two came together in Amber.
It’s long since I last took up a foil in anger, but fencing is an art which is profoundly practical. The air around us is divided up into sectors, hence all the incomprehensible archaic words for a particular sector, and all of our body governed by them to respond in some way.
I used to love fencing, before my lungs disintegrated, and I still love it, even though I can no longer take part for more than a few minutes. I cannot comprehend a mindset where someone want to destroy something…
@Laertes
I imagine we probably agree on a lot more than we disagree about. If people were to really nail me down and force me to say exactly what I thought about the whole thing, I would say that I think the tactic of slate voting is, at best, dubious, and at worst shameless grifting for Castalia House because they originally said they wanted to give authors that never got a seat at the table a seat at the table. In that case, why didn’t they nominate some of the names they mentioned like Wolfe? No, the bulk of the nominations were Castalia House nominations, with a hugely disproportionate number going to a single writer.
However, eventually, I suspect there will come a time when the fires will down down some and people will really want to talk. When that time comes, there have to be people around who haven’t set their stake in the ground so far in one direction that those conversations will ultimately be fruitless.
Believe me, my opinions are much less popular when I talk to those guys right now, which is why I only make brief trips there at the moment to get the mood of the room most of the time. But I read everything that everyone is saying and try to parse through what is just a hyperbole and the tidbits that seem to be things they legitimately believe.
@idontknow:
I’m also glad you’ve stuck around. You’re an ethical person and you add a lot to th conversation.
This may be a silly place, but different perspectives are really helpful.
I once went up and fangirled at Steve Wozniak while we were all waiting for a concert to start. He was with some vaguely familiar guy whom I didn’t place until much later – Richard Branson.
Clearly I need to importune CGP Grey to do a video just on the Hugo voting system!
With regard to recognizing famous people: I did a year of penance for my sins in L.A. (doing script coverage) and never had much luck at all spotting the Famous Faces out of context. They really don’t look the same in ordinary makeup and under regular lighting as they do in front of the cameras or when sitting for a professional photo shoot for a magazine or book cover. What you usually get is a sort of deja vu feeling, like “Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?” which almost always results in you staring at them longer than is polite while your brain tries to run face recognition programs.
Like, I’m pretty sure I spotted Sarah Michelle Gellar while shopping for groceries one time, and once I had a meeting with another script coverage person and he said “Hey, look over there, it’s Tony Bennet!” (who I still did not recognize…) You can recognize faces in context pretty easily if you see them at a premier or in a meeting or when attending a filming/taping session on a live set, but in the grocery store or coffeehouse? Pretty much no. At least for me.
@Lis Carey
I thought it was okay. Not stellar, but okay. I doubt I would look at it in a vacuum and say, ‘okay, whoever wrote this is deserving of the Campbell award for the year.’
My answer was becoming wall’o’text and so it is now here: transfering-a-vote.
Short version – sort of.
So funny story, and my apologies for those of you who have heard this one (and for the wall of text.) Ironically, it happened at the Hugos.
I have a fairly mild case of face blindness–not so bad that I can’t recognize anyone ever, but bad enough that I used to worry I wouldn’t recognize my first husband when I went to pick him up at the airport, and I once didn’t recognize my mother after a month away on a trip. (Thankfully my current husband is covered in tattoos which is much easier to work with, and my mother has stuck with the same haircut for years. Hair changes are hard on me.)
I can learn a person, but I have to do it the way I’d learn to recognize a strange dog–there’s not a thing in my brain that fires specially to sort out humans. (I was quite astonished to learn that most other people DO have a thing like that!)
So I was at the Hugos in 2012, and the thing they do not warn you about is that you are too nervous to eat beforehand, often for most of the day. So once they’d done my category, and all the crying and shouting and cheering was over, suddenly I was sitting there going “I WOULD CUT SOMEONE FOR A CHEESEBURGER RIGHT NOW.” I was RAVENOUS. I was ready to sneak out and go find a diner, corset and all.
So an hour and some change later, during which I think dark and starving thoughts–damnit, GRRM! Tighten up that acceptance speech! Some of us are dying here!–it all ends, there’s a party, and the party has free food.
Authors are like locusts on free food. The only thing worse is art students, who can skeletonize a cow in three minutes if you put it out a gallery opening. And the party that year is in uncomfortably close quarters in a suite of bedrooms, rather than a ballroom, so the crowd is dreadful, but suddenly–NACHO BAR! And the only thing between me and the nacho bar is a short curly-haired man in a black suit who is blocking my path to the nachos!
I may have…ah…corset wearers of certain proportions in the audience will know what I mean…boob-checked him a little. I mean when there’s steel boning and you’re DDD, you can kinda use those things like elbows. It wasn’t entirely intentional, I was just really really focused on nachos at that moment, and face blindness and…goddamn, this guy does seem familiar…where have I seen him…?
Ah. Book jackets. And Elizabeth Bear just introduced me two hours ago. But mostly book jackets.
“I shall dine out for years,” I said, “on the story of how I trampled Neil Gaiman on the way to the nacho bar.”
To his eternal credit, he laughed and said “When the story grows–and it will!–please make sure I am on the floor by the end, weeping and covered in guacamole.”
To give me what little credit I am due, that story has grown hardly at all in the telling. But yes, I once trampled Neil Gaiman to get to nachos.
I’m not saying that if I’d recognized him, I wouldn’t have done it anyway though. I mean, nachos.
I am conflicted about the Campbell because the only, so far as I can tell, non-Puppy on the ballot doesn’t really light my fires. The work is amusing, yes, but not … really what I think of as best new writer material.
Le Guin has stories from the point of view of a lab rat, a wolf (both in The Compass Rose), and a tree (in The Wind’s Twelve Quarters).
@RedWombat, I love you.
Hey thanks, that was very clear and understandable. I appreciate it.
Part of me loves the idea of doing the nominations by STV to get a list of five for the ballot, then doing the final vote as usual, but I’m doubtful people want to do the “rank your favorite five” thing twice in a row. I could be wrong, though! I do wonder if STV might answer any legitimate issues the Puppies have with feeling like conservative SF is unrepresented at the Hugos, even though those issues appear to be entirely in their Puppy-biscuit obsessed brains and not evident in reality. I find myself wondering if STV defeats slate voting, though.
That is such a RedWombat kind of tale. 🙂
NelC on June 18, 2015 at 4:47 pm said:
I tend to run into Greer Gilman around the Harvard campus, and also at folk concerts, and a year ago in the audience at a Shakespeare production. Before they moved to New York, I used to run into Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman at the same concerts, and one of our theatre subscriptions was the same series as theirs.
And I once surprised the late Marshall Dodge by recognizing him on an Amtrak train, as he was walking through carrying a bicycle frame.
Wait… Neil Gaiman is short??
I have more Philip K. Dick than any other writer on my shelves, 56 volumes, mainly because I got rid of most of my sf about 30 years ago but kept the PKD. No Heinlein since I dumped the old copies all those years ago. In the last few years I’ve acquired 12 Iain M. Banks novels, which puts him in 2nd place among sf writers. I also have over 40 books by Donald E. Westlake/ Richard Stark and over 30 each by P.G. Wodehouse and Iris Murdoch, perhaps an odd enthusiasm I pursued in the ’90s. Also an edition of Dickens ( I read all the novels when I was young) and all of Shakespeare’s plays, acquired one by one as I read them. Lots of Patrick O’Brian, Bernard Cornwell, Ian Rankin, Barbara Vine, Nicolas Freeling. I’m not much of a collector and tend to do drastic purges of my shelves every few years to free up space but I’ll probably keep most of these (not sure about Rankin and Vine).
On not recognizing authors – I had been roped into a “Science and the Discworld” panel at a con run by a friend.
I had shown up a bit early and went to the consuite for some tea. While I was there, an older gent came in looking for tea as well. We discussed the finer points of tea brewing and argued Asian vs British teas before I left for my panel.
Halfway through the panel, the same nice gentleman walked in. With the crowd’s reaction, I finally realized he was Sir Pterry.
@RedWombat: He should have known not to get in the way of the nachos.
Restoration drama! Be still my heart!
On sff: Many, many moons ago Roger Zelazny came to talk at my college. I remember sitting cross-legged in a room with about twenty people while he told anecdotes about a stay in Ireland while he worked on a screenplay, something about a shared phone system and a village operator who listened in and knew everything about everyone. He was utterly charming, and I was absolutely star struck. I still remember the goose bumps.
I know. I was thinking “Neil Gaiman is short?” but then I remembered just how tall Ursula is.
Mark Russell:Plague Dogs! I remember, after reading Watership Down for the first time and loving it, thinking I would give some of Adams’ other books a try. But the opening of Plague Dogs was so depressing (the thing about a dog having to swim in a tank until he nearly drowned) I gave up pretty quickly.
The animated adaptation actually managed to be even more depressing, complete with a misleading tagline on the cover to bait parents.
Way back when, several pages ago, someone mentioned Swann’s “Three Bags Full” as an animal protagonist novel. I second that recommendation with flags and fireworks. It’s a mystery novel, and the “detective” is a flock of sheep. And they really are sheep, not humans in sheep-suits. They’re terribly unreliable narrators, because they don’t understand humans at all well; there are whole subplots going on around them that they don’t even notice. It’s amazing.
@RedWombat
That is awesome. 🙂
Animal POVs: I’m glad my all time favorite Watership Down was recommended so many times. My animal suggestion is Raptor Red by Robert T. Bakker. A heart warming family drama from the POV of a female raptor. I wish the publisher would kindle-ize it, there might be a lot of interest now that there’s a new dino movie out.
Rot13: I got a malicious site advisory when I went there, just saying.
Calling cats: I have a big old clingy ragdoll who never needs to be called, because he’s always right there. If I say his name aloud, usually he’ll look up at me and meow in acknowledgment.
I’m only 5’7″! I…may have been wearing my New Rocks, admittedly.