(1) From the SuperversiveSF livestream, Kate Paulk’s statement on SP4 at 1:05:42 (transcription provided by Mark):
For starters the word slate is not going to appear anywhere. For second [Cross talk] I am not doing a slate, I am doing a list of the most popular works in all of the various categories as submitted by people who read on any of the various blogs that will have me. And I’m going to post ultimately the top ten of each, with links to the full list of everything that everybody wanted to see nominated, and I’m going to be saying “hey if you really want to see your favorite authors nominated your best bet is to pick something of theirs from the most popular in the list as opposed to the least popular”. That is going to be what it is. I don’t care who ends up on that list. I don’t care if David Gerrold ends up being the top of the list somewhere. That’s not the point, the point is that I want to see the voting numbers both for nomination and for actual voting go up above 5,000 up above 10,000, because the more people who are involved and who are voting the harder it is for any faction including puppies to manipulate the results.
(2) John C. Wright – “Neither Do They Grok Nicknames”
How is it that these mackerels have gained hegemony over our cultural institutions, down to and including such trivial corners of life as the Hugo Awards?
These are the same people who did not comprehend that obscure nuance of the English language known as a “nickname” was when used in my Hugo-nominated story One Bright Star to Guide Them. Instead it was generally agreed by the consensus that I had forgotten the name of my own character, on the grounds that she was a woman, and therefore hated by the author. I wish I were kidding. These people are deranged. It is not due to a physical damage to the brain, but to spiritual. Pride and ire darken the intellect.
(3) MRMADWRITER – “Merit’ vs ‘Politics’ in Fiction”
How is it that we live in a time where gender is the dominating topic, and the white male is pushed into a grave and buried in it. I thought equality stood for, if anything the treatment of all ethnic groups respectfully. True equality would be difficult to achieve in regards to the world that we live in today, hence the fact that how well you do in life, is purely based on merit and your determination to succeed. There a plenty of stories where people at the bottom of the barrel have risen to the top. It’s a matter of thinking outside the box and sometimes taking risks. But the Sad Puppies campaign is evidence that free expression, and the position of writer is now under intense scrutiny. If you don’t fit the narrative of the other side, your work is not even worth their time.
(4) Mark Ciocco on Kaedrin Weblog – “Hugo Awards: The Results”
So the Puppies did not do so well in the final voting. I was basically expecting this, though perhaps not to this flagrant extent (the 2500 Absolute No Awarders number is pretty eye opening). More evidence for my Action and Reaction theory, and I stand by most of what I said there. One thing I hope I’m wrong about is “No Award” being the worst possible outcome. It’s always been clear to me that the current Puppy approach does not work (assuming you’re actually trying to get your nominees an award and not, say, burn the whole thing down). My recommendation for Kate Paulk: Please, for the love of God, do not put together a slate. Focus your efforts on garnering participation and emphasize individuality. If you’re dead set on listing out nominees, go for a long reading list as opposed to a blatant slate. Brad Torgersen called for nominees early this year, and the grand majority of them didn’t make his slate (and some things appeared on the slate that weren’t discussed? I think? I don’t really feel like digging through that.) Perhaps coordinate that effort and be inclusive when you list out eligible nominees. We’re all fans, let’s write this year off and try not alienating everyone next year (that goes for everyone, not just the Puppies). Forbearance is a good thing.
The notion that voting on the current year gives you the ability to nominate next year is a brilliant one that might actually keep me participating. That being said, if there’s anything like this year’s clusterfuck brewing, I’m out. I can forgive this year because I think even the Puppies were surprised at how successful their slate approach was. I can understand the Noah Ward voters too. But if the same thing happens next year… I don’t know, why bother?
(5) Cathy Young on Real Clear Politics – “Mutiny at the Hugo Awards”
It’s also telling that Mixon bent over backwards to stress that she supports the righteous anger of the “oppressed” and that most of Requires Hate’s victims were themselves female, gay, transgendered, and/or nonwhite. When a commenter argued that treating members of “dominant” groups as acceptable targets was precisely the mindset that enabled Requires Hate, Mixon insisted that “a case can be made for marginalized people’s right to punch up.”
Despite all these disclaimers, Mixon’s exposé was too politically incorrect for some. Writer and blogger Deidre Saoirse Moen, who drafted the “Puppy-Free Hugo Awards Voting Guide,” also opposed the award to Mixon, at least partly because “it just feels like a white woman elder putting the younger woman of color in her ‘place.’” That Mixon ultimately got the award could be seen as repudiating the extremes of left-wing cultural politics. But in a way, it also affirms that criticism of such extremes is allowed only from within the true faith and from within the establishment (Mixon happens to be married to current SWFA president Steven Gould).
In this stifling atmosphere of “progressive” authoritarianism, the Sad Puppies’ mutiny makes sense.
Those who revile the Puppies as bigots if not outright fascists point to the pseudonymous Vox Day, a.k.a. Theodore Beale, the leader of his own “Rabid Puppies” faction whose Hugos slate largely overlapped with Sad Puppies. A writer and indie publisher kicked out of the SWFA a few years ago, Beale is also a prolific blogger who urges a radical Christian takeover of America and espouses views that actually can be called racist and misogynist with no exaggeration. (Among other things, he maintains that blacks are inherently more violent and less civilized than whites, that female suffrage is bad because women will “vote for whomever they would rather f***”, and that curtailing female education is rational because “a society that sends its women to college stops breeding”).
It’s hard to tell to what extent Vox Day’s public persona is performance art played for shock. In any case, this year’s Sad Puppy leaders, Correia and Brad Torgensen, repeatedly stated that they do not share Vox Day’s views and regard him as an unpleasant tactical ally, the Stalin to their Roosevelt and Churchill. (Hoyt, in turn, has written that she find his views “repulsive.”) They didn’t quite disavow him; but Torgensen has told Wired magazine that even if they had, their detractors would have found some other reason to demonize the Puppies.
Given the tenor and frequent sloppiness of anti-Puppy critiques, Torgensen is almost certainly right. Thus, in a Chicago Tribune piece on the Hugos controversy, Roosevelt University professor Gary Wolfe mentions Vox Day and his inflammatory views—then adds that “others” in the Puppies’ ranks “have even argued against women’s right to vote.” But Vox Day is the only one who has done that. Far more typical of the Puppies’ views is Best Fan Writer nominee Sanderson, who considers herself a pro-equality, anti-misandry feminist—and who nonetheless got skewered as an “anti-feminist” for (among other things) defending astrophysicist Matt Taylor’s public appearance in a shirt with scantily clad women on it.
As for Vox Day, the Puppies say that the progressive guardians of the fandom and WorldCon voters played right into his hands by “no-awarding” the categories with only Puppy nominees. Vox had planned to instruct his followers to vote “no award” on everything, in the explicit hope that a large number of “no awards” would help him “burn down” the Hugos.
(6) Louis Antonelli on Facebook
OK, it’s been a week since the Hugo nuking and Sasquan convention ended. I’ve gotten a lot off my chest and aired a lot of grievances. Seven days. I’m actually feeling played out. At this point, I think I’ve made all the points I’ve needed to make, done all the good I could. I’m feeling like it’s time to turn the corner, close the chapter on this fiasco and move forward.
A little Facebook poll – what do y’all think? Give me a “Like” or thumbs up if you’d to see a change in focus. That’s not to say I’ll always be a sweety pie – but let’s face it, both sides have had a lot to say and think this past week. I’d like to know what you think – is it time to move on?
(7) Steven Barnes on Facebook
On SJWs, racism, and the attempted control of language
There is a story that the Buddha was lecturing, and a man mocked him, insulting everything he said. Finally, the Buddha paused. “Excuse me, my friend,” he said. “If I offered you a present, and you declined to accept it, to whom then does the present belong?”
“To you” the man said smugly.
“Precisely. And if you offer me insult, and I decline to accept it, to whom then does the abuse belong?”
And the man was speechless.
####
I don’t respect shifting language for political purposes. It feels like Orwell’s “Newthink” to me. Very close to what NLP refers to as “slight of mouth” patterns. Here’s a pair of examples, one from the Right, one from the Left.
- Social Justice Warrior. Look at those words, and the only thing it could mean denotatively is someone willing to fight, and die, and change the world to achieve an idea of equality and justice. Literally, I can think of nothing I’d be more honored to be considered, and nothing that more accurately describes the human beings I respect most in all the world. The attempt to demonize it is nothing more than a linguistic mind control.
- Racism. The primary definition of this term is, simply, the differential attribution of worth or capacity based upon race or ethnicity. Nice, neutral definition–anyone can have that, (probably most of us have a little of it) it is global and pervasive and would seem to arise from tribalism and the tendency of children to think their mommy is prettier, their daddy stronger. But over the last twenty years, academics have shifted that to be “perception of differential capacity based upon race or ethnicity PLUS the power to enforce your decisions and leverage your attitudes”. That’s another interesting “slight of mouth” pattern, because it leads to the attitude that disadvantaged groups “cannot be racist.” Since all of our cultural vitriol is directed at this term, it is an interesting “escape hatch”: WE can say whatever we want, YOU have to shut the @#$$ up.
I don’t buy either of these. I’ve been attacked by both sides for disagreeing with them, and that’s fine by me. So I state clearly, for the record: I think the term “Social Justice Warrior”, denotatively, is one of the finest things a human being can be. Want to use a different, connotative definition? You are welcome to do so, and in so doing, allow us to examine your values, politics and thought patterns.
I think “racism” is a perception, a judgement about human beings, separate from whether that perception is correct, and separate from the actions you take once you’ve come to that conclusion. I disagree that there are major differences between whites and blacks (for instance) morally or mentally, and believe that in almost all cases those who believe there are are being self-serving. That immeasurable human evil has flowed from those beliefs. The great Octavia Butler believed that the most dangerous quality of human beings is
- our hierarchical thinking.
- Our tendency to place ourselves higher on that hierarchy than others.
Further, almost everyone changes that definition so that THEY “aren’t racist.” THEY don’t burn crosses on lawns, use “The N-word.” They have black friends, or have dated/married a woman of the group in question. CAN’T be racists. Can’t possibly have an attitude about the AVERAGE member of the other group, or any sense that whites would have survived slavery and its aftermath with greater ease.
And on the other side, why, they can believe blacks are mentally, morally or athletically superior genetically…but they aren’t racist because they are members of a group with lesser power.
O.K. That’s all fine. If that’s the way you make sense of the world, and it works for you, I’m happy. Let me know how that works out. I’ll probably never accept either position, and if that bothers you, you may call me whatever you want, or think whatever you wish.
But come Christmas morning, that box will be under YOUR tree, not mine. Have fun.
(8) James Worrad – Sad Puppies, Post-Hugo Blues & Loose Genitalia…
“And what’s even sadder is this pathetic collection of power-hungry little Hitlers have destroyed what was once a genuinely respected award. “
Such is the outlook Kate Paulk, author, blogger and leader-apparent of Sad Puppies 2016 (Buckle yourselves in, folks!). A baroque example, admittedly, but at heart fairly typical of the SP campaign’s disconnect from the reality on the ground. To Paulk, if you didn’t use your vote like the SP’s told you then you were in lockstep with the shadowy cabal of mean, hissy-fitting SJWs/Communists/Decepticons. No excuses.
The idea most Hugo voters were motivated not by politics but by a wish to stick it to a bunch of pompous gits intent on ruining a much-loved event is not even laughable to Paulk. It’s more like she cannot even register the fact. To vote unpuppish was to be a… I dunno… a Stalin clone in a test tube or something. You were willing to burn the ground and salt your loins rather than let anyone else have it.
Any glance at 2015’s winners dispels this garish canard. How, for instance, would a mass ‘SJW hissy fit’ explain that win in the fan writer category, Laura Mixon’s takedown of a troll who hid their psychopathology behind a mass of faux social justice rhetoric? Surely a lockstep leftie march would have crushed that eventuality before it began? Instead the ‘Mixon Report’ won with votes to spare.
And why? Because fandom’s wide and battered middle finally woke up and drew a line in the sand. Against the worst excesses of leftwing hypocrisy on one hand and the most thuggish excesses of right-wing stupidity on the other. Simples.
[Thanks to Mark and John King Tarpinian for some of these links.]
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@mk41
Nope. On Brad’s call for suggestions post about 40 books were nominated, and the most nominations any single book got was 3. (less than 10%) This in a group (Brad’s fans) chosen for similar tastes in SFF.
When you see clustering tighter than that you can assume there is something more than shared tastes at work.
I recently finished Monster Hunter Nation … it was odd how often unloading an armory’s worth of ordnance delivered via dozens of lovingly described and catalogued weapons, failed to slow down let alone kill various monsters … and yet the solution to THAT problem was invariably “we need more and bigger guns!”
That, right there, pretty much sums up Larry and Brad and JCMackerel: entitlement. “I got nominated therefore I should have won and since I didn’t it’s because those gamma rabbits didn’t appreciate my manly manliness because they are feminazi SJWs!”
Whereas I consider the nomination, being picked as one of the five best out of a field of hundreds, an honor. But I don’t write for a living, so what do I know?
It’s not the gun porn (I have owned guns for 40 years and carried a small handgun when traveling in some rough areas where a single woman might consider self defense) it’s the entitlement.
ETA: although carried to excess the gun porn is pretty icky. And I just don’t like ‘urban fantasy’ in any case.
+1 for John Christopher
@Dex
That too. Of course I come from a very anti-gun nation so that was really jarring for me and something I had even more trouble wrapping my mind around. The idea of taking a gun to work with me is completely alien to me.
The idea of taking a gun to work with me is completely alien to me.
As it is to the large majority of Americans. Unfortunately our politics here are far more money driven than by popular ideas. As the Puppy noms have shown a smallish minority of useful idiots can be mobilized to create effects that the larger majority does not actually wish.
I don’t understand. The puppies hate message-fic. So how can it be that Larry Correia writes gunhumper message-fic?
The puppies hate message-fic. So how can it be that Larry Correia writes gunhumper message-fic?
The Puppies are hypocrites and liars.
When I first read comment by Larry Correia, the Original Sad Puppy, I thought he was exaggerating the attitudes he had come against. Hugos 2015 showed he was not. There is very much an attitude of ‘I am right; you are wrong/evil because you disagree with me.’
My reaction is two-fold.
1) “Of course you know, this means war.” (Bugs Bunny)
2) Who died and made you God.
Dawn Incognito:“I just finished Spellbound and some of the deaths of the bad guys approached snuff for me. I understand some…let’s say satisfaction? in MilSF when a good guy defeats his enemy, but the descriptions of each soldier being maimed or killed seemed almost gleeful. It didn’t sit well.”
Cat:@Daniella my main objection to Correia’s work (the three books I’ve read so far) is I don’t want kids picking up that arrogant sense of entitlement that the main character seems to have. I don’t mind kids being interested in guns, but I wouldn’t encourage them to think “I’m the good guy by definition so I’ll just be a jerk all the time and anybody who doesn’t react with admiration must be evil.”
These two things are automatic kisses of death for me. I’d call it Goodkindian fiction if I could be certain there wasn’t another author that did a better job of encapsulating those nasty traits and more.
@Daniela
Ditto. I’m Canadian, so strict gun control, particularly in regards to handguns, is my default way of thinking. Which is why every gun free zone that Correia intentionally undermines pretty much kills the ability to suspend disbelief. If you want to write lovingly about guns, go for it. But don’t set up strawmen to knock done regarding safety.
Aaron, they don’t have to be hypocrites. It’s only “message fiction” if the message conflicts with one’s own worldview; otherwise it’s just the water one swims in. If one really, truly believes that macho men gotta be macho, women should keep out of the way and just kiss (and/or have sex with) the macho man, and guns are sexy and so are their descriptions… then there’s no message there, after all. <wry> While putting in a gay man suddenly means MESSAGE! Even if he’s macho. Because reasons.
On the other hand, people who interact with plenty of gay people in their lives, even if they’re not gay themselves, don’t see MESSAGE in the inclusion of a gay man. They might, indeed, see MESSAGE in the exclusion of any homosexual characters….
@Dex
I noticed that too — and while “quality of writing” is an arguable point, what *isn’t* is that much later McCaffery (and later Card) was part of series that began with award-nominated work. I think we’ve seen fairly conclusively that award-givers tend to reduce the chances of later works in series winning (not always, but often), and that might have a great deal to do with the pattern he’s seeing.
Heck — Chip Delany’s nomination pattern is the same. 😉
This in books, TV, movies, comedy, music. Not just sexism either.
Not to me! Though when I’m done with this job, we will most likely be a gun-free household again. Never touched the things til I transitioned to this line of work at age 37.
On Flint’s piece: Between 1986 and 2008 when he died, Arthur C. Clarke received exactly one major award nomination, for a Hugo for Astounding Days. This is not so different from the pattern Flint found for McCaffrey, Card, or Martin. Writers who keep getting Hugo and Nebula nominations in the tail end of their careers are rare, no matter how popular they are.
I noticed that many of you have read Correia’s works. That is the way it should be. Way to go
@Clack: I’m at the most Social-ly Justice-ly of all the Ivy League schools.
Would that be one far above Cayuga’s waters, with the five suicide bridges?
Anyway, if you can spare a moment to describe this year’s academically fashionable progressive spectacles with which to interpret reality, I for one would be fascinated. The current pieties about decontextualisation and deconstruction, where the way the perceiver chooses to experience and interpret a phenomenon is deemed vastly more important than is the phenomenon, and what a writer says he/she meant by a word or passage gets overridden in favour of the most annoyed and voluble person’s personal interpretation of that word or passage, could use some competition, just to shake things up. I’ve rather enjoyed Reconstructivist Art as an aesthetic movement, and wish someone could construct an broader model and movement from it, though that seems unlikely.
@cmm
I have a friend who takes her gun with her to work (or rather she has to carry a gun while at work but leaves it there in the gun-safe). She works for the customs’ office and so is required to carry a gun.
Based on your decription I would assume that you’re a cop or work for customs. I’m pretty sure even security guards over here aren’t always allowed to carry guns.
Due to some research I was doing (Urban Fantasy in the Black Forests), I once pestered hunter friends to tell me everything about their rifles, when and how they are allowed to carry them and what regulations they would have to follow. Talk about burecratic paper-nightmares. And that’s only hunting rifles.
@Cat I only read the sample and there that feeling of “entitled jerk” already came through. Not the kind of character I like reading about. Not even in romance where they are usually called Alpha-assholes :-D.
Where have all the manly men gone (listening to where have all the cowboys gone while reading)
As far as getting out the vote, that is the one thing SP3/RP did exceedingly well at. They inspired record breaking voter turnout.
Thanks for the recs, I’m making a list.
I read the first Correia book and that’s a big “no” from me on handing it off to my nephew. For starters, I doubt he’d like it, I’m pretty liberal but my sister and her family are even more leftie than me, and he’d probably be turned off by the gun stuff. Second, I’ve sworn not to give any more money to the main puppies, and on the off chance my nephew actually likes Correia, he’d end up buying more of the books (or I’d end up gifting them to him, since I am the official Family Giver of Books).
That’s not to say all macho stuff is right out. I listened to the Weber/Ringo series with March to the Sea and all that and while I thought it was hammy and kind of dumb, I did enjoy it and it definitely felt like something that would appeal to YA readers.
No objections to sexual references (i.e. in terms of acknowledging that people have sex or want to have sex) as long as any action is offstage, and the whole book isn’t about that (I don’t think he’s up for deep explorations of relationships and gender yet).
Mostly I want to point him to more stuff that will get him excited like The Martian apparently has. I know during the time I was transitioning from YA to adult stuff, I read very indiscriminantly and a) read some really disturbing stuff I probably shouldn’t have (mostly in terms of violence) and b) bounced off a lot of books because I was completely freaked by the idea of sex and bailed on any book where anything sexual showed up. I don’t want him to run into too much stuff that doesn’t do anything for him or weirds him out and give up on the whole genre.
Someone mentioned Jurassic Park, I remember my brothers (none of whom were huge readers) all read that around middle/high school age when the movie or sequels came out. Crichton might be a good bet. Timeline was dumb as hell but would have appealed to me as a kid.
I’m also thinking Stephen King (I started reading King around that age, maybe a year or two later) but would have to be careful which King books. My first King was Salem’s Lot and it scared the bejeezus out of me but was contemporary at the time. I re-read it last year and it felt quite antiquated.
So the King books I’m thinking about are The Talisman and Eye of the Dragon, and Different Seasons. Maybe Firestarter tho that’s another one that hasn’t aged very well. The concerns of the 60s and 70s with government conspiracies and secret psychic projects and that sort of thing were much more part of the overall milieu at the time but I notice rereading the books that that’s one of the things that feels pretty dated now.
I appreciate getting linked to by Real Clear Politics, of course, even though I don’t think I skewered “the anti-misandry feminist” Cedar Sanderson as anti-feminist for defending Matt Taylor’s bimbo shirt, like the article states. Nonetheless, it’s an honor to get to represent the “frequent sloppiness of anti-Puppy critiques”.
Mostly I want to point him to more stuff that will get him excited like The Martian apparently has.
If the engineering puzzle aspect of The Martian appealed to him, he might enjoy some of Niven’s short fiction, which tends to be fairly heavy on that sort of thing. The Flatlander and Crashlander collections might be of interest.
Could Eric Flint have shortened his piece to: “It’s a much bigger field than it used to be”?
I mean, I take his point about the people with all the shelf space not taking home a truckload of awards. But then I look at the last decade of Hugo-winning novels and I see five that I read and loved, five that I’ve heard good things about and will surely get around to reading one of these days, and one clunker that that pretty much everyone except me loved.
It’s all strong stuff, is what I’m getting at.
So did one of the four-footers have something better than Vinge’s Rainbows End in 2006?
Susanna Clarke doesn’t get much shelf space these days. That doesn’t change the fact that her debut (and, so far, only) novel knocked everyone’s socks off.
I used to read every Card I could get my hands on. Somewhere around the third or fourth Ender spin-off I got bored, and I don’t think I’ve read him in fifteen years. Is there some towering work of genius that I’ve missed? Did he pop out a Speaker for the Dead while I wasn’t looking and the Hugos are so corrupted that they haven’t brought it to my attention?
I mean, I love me some Elton John, and I hear the man can still fill a theater and put on a fine show. But the Elton John I love is the one who wrote Madman Across The Water, not The Lion King, and nobody’s seen that dude in forty years.
Daniela: Yup I’m a cop. Even tho I’m riding a desk these days I still wear a gun at work and any time I’m in uniform. I don’t carry off-duty out of uniform and most of my co-workers think I’m nuts. I think the people who do a lot of narcotics and gang enforcement stuff might have more to worry about people coming after them or their families, but I think that fear is overblown for most officers.
If I lived out in the middle of nowhere where it can take 15-30 minutes to get an officer to respond to a 911 call, I would probably keep a handgun at home for self-defense. Just in case. But I live in an area where response time is under 5 minutes, so I just don’t worry that much. Fear is the enemy and the powers that be want us to be scared all the time.
Some thoughts:
Once the SP4 manifesto manifests itself, and the participation guidelines become clear, do we:
1) Go to the relevant blogs and participate with our own “puppy-like” recommendations? (loading it up with message fic would be rude, right?)
or
2) Put together our own File 770 “puppy-like” works long list (minus the weeding), perhaps as an adjunct to a general recommendation list? You might call this the “show them how it’s done” (non-slate style) gambit.
or
3) Just watch and see what comes of it?
Will we be excluded somehow — by request/demand, through a litmus test, or post facto by curator moderation? Should we take part if we are “welcome” (however grudgingly)? I guess that’s the question.
I want to re-iterate that (given the sparse details we have) the SP4 nomination process looks easier for VD to game* than the Hugos, and it will be interesting to see what Paulk et al. will do if they get hijacked pre-Hugos (especially if they can see it happening before the process is closed). All VD has to say is “add your favourite CH & friends stories; here’s the complete list, wink-wink”.
*Note that this gets fishier (and would be a real canary in the puppy mine) if VD’s blog becomes an official SP4 vote vector.
@Andrew M
The rules are weird, and one of the things new voters stumble over all the time. I think I recall how we reached this state of affairs, though I might be misremembering, in which case I appeal to the collective mind to help: I remember the category’s creation being a response to the ‘Best Locus’ problem in the fanzine category. Locus Magazine was so dominating the category that it was deemed desirable to carve out a separate place for it and anything like it, while not obliging it to compete only with prozines. (Autocorrect wanted to change that to ‘prosiness’. Some days, I think autocorrect may be sapient and just messing with me.)
UncannyValley on August 31, 2015 at 10:23 am said:
Not only can you vote by paper mail, it’s the only method that’s guaranteed by the WSFS Constitution (emphasis mine):
Quote is from the 2014 Constitution because we don’t have the 2015 Constitution certified yet, but the section above is unchanged for 2015.
This year, there were 2,119 electronically-submitted nominating ballots and 3 paper ballots.
The medium of voting is irrelevant, however, as multiple people have explained to you. Nominations are free-form text, not a drop-down box where you’re limited to only choices someone else made for you. This gives you maximum flexibility, but it also leaves lots of room for mistakes. Indeed, Paul Cornell was done out of a finalist slot in 2009 because people gave such varied names of one of his works in Graphic Story (see the 2009 Hugo Nominations details) that the Adminstrator didn’t realize that three different works on the long list were actually the same work, and had their votes been combined, the work would have made the shortlist.
UncannyValley on August 31, 2015 at 10:34 am said:
IMO, this is nearly impossible to fix as long as you want to give the members the ability to nominate anything they want. It’s not possible to create a database of every single work of SF/F published anywhere in the world last year, so you really can’t create a master list against which you can validate things. This puts the onus on the Administrators to try and figure out what voters meant. At least online ballots don’t have the problem of trying to read people’s handwriting.
Or do you personally think that the idea of having a master database of every single work of SF/F published last year is trivial? Unless you can include every possible work, creating a drop-down list database biases the awards toward only those works that appear in the database. That’s okay for the Locus Awards (which use their own Recommended Reading List as the database, with write-ins allowed), but problematic for the Hugo Awards.
UncannyValley on August 31, 2015 at 11:06 am said:
Possibly the Hugo Award Categories page on the Hugo Awards web site? Of course, Hugo Award nominating and voting is conducted by each individual Worldcon committee, and each committee’s web page designers have different opinions about how to organize their sites and how to design their online voting, so it is up to the individual committee to decide what sort of information to provide to voters.
UncannyValley on August 31, 2015 at 10:50 am said:
Administrators rarely try to normalize nominations that appear to be getting only a smattering of votes. Life is too short.
I saw the smilely. Did you honestly not know that there are no employees and that everyone working on Worldcon is a volunteer?
Meredith on August 31, 2015 at 11:15 am said:
Sometimes the Wild Kevin Standlee declares comment bankruptcy because of >2000 comments having accumulated while he was busy working on and attending Worldcon and driving home from Spokane.
Thanks. Although if we could accumulate all of the people offering to buy me drinks, I’d rather take full meals. 🙂
Tom Galloway on August 31, 2015 at 11:52 am said:
Quite. And this year’s Timekeeper is also an experienced parliamentarian (in non-fan venues) and is on the “career development path” to chair the meeting when she wants to do so. I’m deeply aware of the need to have a few more trained people coming up behind me, and have been looking for them for years. I’m the same age now as the late Bruce Pelz (the person to whom I would have deferred chairing this year’s meeting were he alive) was when I showed up in 1984, so the clock is ticking.
I’m not the only competent parliamentarian in WSFS, but I think I’m the youngest of the current “old guard,” and I just turned 50 years old last week. I hope I never forget the memory of being a neofan when I attended the 1984 Worldcon in Anaheim.
I also started subscribing to SF magazines in 8th grade. I know I got Analog and F&SF through high school. I liked F&SF better, but Analog was much cheaper 🙂
Nowadays there are so many sites that publish at least some of their stuff online for free (Uncanny, Lightspeed etc) that that probably isn’t necessary, but it would be nice to support one of the mags with a gift subscription. I would lean toward F&SF or Asimov’s of the “big 3”.
Why not just call every magazine that pays contributors in money (as opposed to copies) a prozine?
my son (17) really liked The Martian and liked Marko Kloos’s trilogy even more …
@cmm: Small budgets, big budgets, fairness.
@bloodstone75
4. Mostly ignore them and talk in here about what we think should be nominated and why. It would be amazing if Mike was willing to do an open post for each of the categories once every few days or something and we talk about what we’ve read and watched and why we think it’s worth a look.
I’d love to see what people have found worthy, especially for areas like short story where I know I haven’t read much of. Having concrete suggestions to track down would be a great way to look through the field.
Oh yeah, SF magazines and short stuff! I don’t recall how old I was when I first read The Hugo Winners vol. 1, but it blew my fucking mind. I subscribed to Asimov’s shortly thereafter.
Oh yeah I have read some of the first book in the Kloos trilogy and it struck me as something that would appeal to teen readers.
What about the James S.A. Corey (??) Leviathan stuff? I know there’s a show just over the horizon so that might be something for him to check out.
strongly recommended … but I don’t remember about the sex .. may be some
Best-of anthologies for fantasy and science fiction might be a good way to go too. And I have plenty of those in my own Kindle stash that I can loan him (through the Kindle loan thingie, assuming the e-reader he gets for his b-day is indeed a Kindle).
Strong recommendation for The Expanse here. There’s a fair bit of swearing, moderate horror, not-incredibly graphic violence, and references to sex but nothign like the descriptions in, say Peter Hamilton or Richard Morgan’s books.
I like Eric’s approach, but I think he draws some spurious conclusions.
Agreed. I’m not sure where he’s going with the shelf-feet metric for popularity. As he suggests, many of the authors he cites boast those shelf-feet because they have a steady following and an ample back catalog, not necessarily because they have a single standout hit in any given year. But an award like Best Novel is exactly that: it’s an award for a specific book, not a lifetime achievement for a particular author.
I’m a librarian, and we buy pretty much every Mercedes Lackey or Jim Butcher volume that comes out, because they do have a loyal following and their books circulate in steady numbers. But in any given year, there are usually several breakaway hits, usually from newer authors, that easily trump the latest from a Lackey or Butcher in sheer number of checkouts.
Finally, the popularity thing is just a silly argument to me.
Yeah, that too.
cmm: Had you considered Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother? It’s technically YA, I believe, but very very adult in themes–basically, the narrator is a 17-year-old smartass who uses his mad computer skills against the Dept. of Homeland Security after a major (fictional) terrorist attack. It is pretty dark, though (think 1984 with as close to a happy ending as you could get), and there are a couple of minor sex scenes (not part of the darkness; typical adolescent stuff), so you might want to read it all the way through, first. (And there is a sequel which I haven’t read yet so won’t comment on.)
I do find it confusing, given that the puppy leaders are 12 dimensional chess players and masters of the Xanatos Gambit, that they are not backing large lists of favorites, ideally randomized with each page refresh. Since while straightforward slating would have impact next year, once EPH kicks in it will be counterproductive.
In the same fashion, by employing a large list of favorites they can deflect claims that they are slating their nominal enemies out of spite.
Of course such a random best list will not give them dominance over the Hugos but it would give them a proportional seat at the table, which is what they want…right?
Might give Andre Norton a try with him, maybe _Beast Master_ or the like. It might still be too old fashioned for him, but I find her stuff has aged a lot better than most juveniles (Heinlein’s juvies especially have aged very badly indeed.)
For more contemporary stuff, I’ve had a lot of recommendations for the Mars Escapees series.
@bloodstone75
I, for one, would be interested by option 2. But not to show anything to the puppies, but just because that would be interesting.
Don’t be afraid of sharing the information, and helpful information means some organisation, at some point.
Even before the puppy showed up, the nomination system was already sick, especially for the short stories, with repeated problems to find 5 stories that met the 5% limit. I don’t buy the story that this is only the field growing bigger. There is a lack of communication at play, here.
I read Little Brother and really liked it. I think some of the emotional stuff (particularly with his parents, if I’m remembering correctly) might be a little heavy for him, but definitely within the next year or two. If his older brother hadn’t decided books are boring and Minecraft is awesome, I’d think Little Brother would be perfect for him (he starts 9th grade this year).
I’m eagerly looking forward to recs season. Mostly I read novels. I’m not at all on top of the short fiction scene. But there’s no reason I have to let stuff like When It Ends, He Catches Her gather a year of dust before I notice it. Hoping my fellow villains will help me find that stuff while it’s still in season.
Even before the puppy showed up, the nomination system was already sick, especially for the short stories, with repeated problems to find 5 stories that met the 5% limit.
Which happened because there are simply so many excellent short stories published in each year, making consensus difficult to reach.
@Laertes
I shamefully just discovered Foster a few weeks ago. Really really good stuff.
On bank holidays:
There is a large but tatologically inefficient government department based in an office building exactly one mile from the centre of Whitehall, whose single purpose is to prevent it raining across Britain. You may think that the many civil servants in this department are spectacularly incompetent but in truth without tgeir efforts the whole if the United Kingdom and much of the Irish Republic as well would be perpetually flooded to biblical levels.
The parts of Britain most disliked and/or neglected by the government’s London based hegemony naturally get poorer quality service from this department – hence the high volume if rain in Cardiff, Manchester, Belfast and, of course, Glasgow.
Naturally on public holidays (which the British call “bank holidays” for reasons too terrible to disclose) they take the day off.
@Aaron
To be fair, from 1986 to the end of his career, Clarke only wrote three solo novels, two of which were further sequels to 2001.