(1) The stars came out for White House Astronomy Night.
Watch live as the @WhiteHouse hosts #AstronomyNight at 7pm ET. Here's what to expect: https://t.co/3B56ANr3oe pic.twitter.com/MCnBJRjbNi
— NASA (@NASA) October 19, 2015
Why are moon rocks tastier than earth rocks? Because they're meteor! #astronomynight pic.twitter.com/ZYKV96MZT3
— MythBusters (@MythBusters) October 19, 2015
This #AstronomyNight, @POTUS called the @Space_Station! See our Tumblr blog for a breakdown: https://t.co/MYIV9j822y pic.twitter.com/GSWGOvzqHK
— NASA (@NASA) October 20, 2015
https://twitter.com/NerdyWonka/status/656273938650021890
(2) New interview with Liu Cixin conducted by Yang Yang for China Daily.
When, in a telephone interview, China Daily reminds him of that comment, he replies: “It’s not a joke. Aliens may arrive at any time. When it happens, everything, social and economic reform, educational problems, international conflicts or poverty, will become much less important, compared with the alien crisis.”
Big countries such as China and international organizations such as the United Nations need to be ready for such an eventuality, he says.
“It does not necessarily involve a lot of money and human resources. But we should prepare, in the fields of politics, military, society and so on. The government should organize some people to do related research and preparations for the long term.”
Unfortunately, he says, “no country seems to have done this kind of thing”.
In the postscript for the English version of The Three-Body Problem, translated by Ken Liu, Liu Cixin says: “I’ve always felt that extraterrestrial intelligence will be the greatest source of uncertainty for humanity’s future. Other great shifts, such as and ecological disasters, have a certain progression and built-in adjustment periods, but contact between mankind and aliens can occur at any time. Perhaps in 10,000 years the starry sky that mankind gazes upon will remain empty and silent, but perhaps tomorrow we’ll wake up and find an alien spaceship the size of the Moon parked in orbit. … The appearance of this Other, or mere knowledge of its existence, will impact our civilization in unpredictable ways.”
(3) Bob Byrne’s “The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Tying in the BBC Sherlock Special” at Black Gate has a lot of good information.
Back in July, what seems to be the most popular ‘The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes’ post appeared here at Black Gate. I looked at what I think went wrong with season three of the BBC’s Sherlock. I included the just-released ninety-second, ‘first look’ video for the upcoming Special, to be aired around Christmas. And I pointed out it seemed to be full of the “Look how clever we are” bits that I lamented in my post.
Now, just about everyone, including myself, loves that the Special is set in Victorian times; unlike the episodes in the first three seasons. Cumberbatch and Freeman would be given their first (and quite likely, only) opportunities to play Holmes and Watson in the Doyle mold. I view it as a chance for the show to get back on track and reclaim the multitude of fans it lost during season three.
(4) Brad Torgersen, in a comment on Kevin Trainor’s blog, now says:
I had multiple conduits for suggestions, and the comments section was just one conduit.
But he doesn’t identify what those sources for the majority of slated Sad Puppy 3 fiction were.
(5) Francis W. Porreto does not approve – “Really Quickies: From The Garbage Heap” at Bastion of Liberty.
If you’d like a gander at “how the other side emotes,” take a look at this post at this hard-to-describe site, particularly the comments that follow commenter “alauda’s” citation of this bit of dark foreboding. These past two days a fair amount of traffic has come here from there.
Note the complete lack of rational analysis. Note the immediate and unconditional willingness to condemn me, as if the scenario I wrote about were something I actually want to happen.
(6) Alyssa Rosenberg, while commenting on “The downside of cultural fragmentation” in the Washington Post, touches on a familiar topic —
Debates over what kinds of books, movies, television shows, comics and video games get awards are often a proxy way of debating what our cultural values ought to be. The alternative slates that attempted to wrest control of Hugo nominations were based on the idea that awards voters had over-prioritized identity politics over the quality of writing and plotting; GamerGate erroneously asserts that there’s a movement afoot to ban or stop the production of video games with certain themes or images. While I don’t agree with the premises of either of those two cultural movements, I do think left cultural criticism has sometimes asserted political litmus tests for art in recent years, and that elements of the right, spurred by the sometime success of this approach, have fallen into the same patterns (for a good example, see the suggestions that the action movie “Mad Max: Fury Road” was anti-male).
(7) After Steve Davidson of Amazing Stories picked apart the Trek-related fanhistory in Kevin Trainor’s post on Wombat Rampant, Dystopic followed with his own critique of what Davidson had to say about Trainor on Declination.
As my readers probably know already, I consider myself somewhere on the Puppy spectrum of the Science Fiction community. There’s quite a bit of difference between the Sad Puppies, who one might call the reformists, and the Rabid Puppies who are mostly of the opinion that Worldcon and the Hugos should be burnt to the ground and set on fire by their own Left-wing, Social Justice proponents.
Either way, though, both camps agree that the existing community is hopelessly corrupt, cliquish, and prone to a particular animus against Conservatives and Libertarians. This prejudice is such that their works are repeatedly voted down from awards, publishers like Tor Books are run by individuals openly hostile to alternate political affiliations, and backroom deals are made to secure nominations for authors based on political backgrounds and special interests.
Steve Davidson of Amazing Stories confirms this for us in a ridiculous post, so loaded up with Strawmen that he might as well be the Scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz. Let’s allow him to hang himself with his own rope, shall we?
(8) Workaholics actor Blake Anderson appears in the Halloween episode of The Simpsons:
“Well, you know, we kind of feel a little disrespected by Homer and we show up at his doorstep basically looking for revenge,” Anderson explains. “So it turns into a full onPanic Room situation, where he’s kind of stuck in the attic and looking for him. We’re out for blood for sure.”
In the vein of the Treehouse episodes, Anderson says this one is not necessarily “piss your pants” scary, but, he assures, “me and Nick Kroll definitely brought our creepy to the table for sure.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kd_tIn2xsLc
(9) Is this a clue to the future of Game of Thrones?
@livingston_tony Jon Snow from Game of Thrones passed me in Belfast City Airport tonight looks surprisingly healthy
— Tony Livingston (@livingston_tony) October 19, 2015
(10) Today’s Birthday Boys
- October 19, 1903 — Tor Johnson is born Karl Oscar Tore Johansson in Sweden. Especially known for his appearance in Plan 9 From Outer Space, although he had credits in all kinds of things, from the movie musical Carousel to Walter Cronkite’s You Are There nonfiction TV show.
- October 19, 1945 — John Lithgow is born. Acted in Twilight Zone, Third Rock from the Sun, Buckaroo Banzai…
(11) Today’s Birthday Book
Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 is 62 years old today. Phil Nichols explains:
FAHRENHEIT 451 was deposited for copyright at the Library of Congress on October 19, 1953. Both the first edition hardbound and mass market paperback carry this publication date, although the paperbacks actually reached the market a month earlier.
The McCarthy era’s climate of fear lingered beyond 1953, however; in spite of the book’s initial critical success, the first paperback printing took seven years to sell out.
(12) Diana Pavlac Glyer was very pleasantly surprised to find her forthcoming book Bandersnatch mentioned in a recent Publishers Weekly post, “Exploring C.S. Lewis’s Lasting Popularity – 52 Years After His Death”.
Coming in November, Bandersnatch: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and the Creative Collaboration of the Inklings (Kent State University Press) by Diana Pavlac Glyer and James A. Owen shows readers how encouragement and criticism made all the difference in books written by the Inklings. A companion coloring book by Owen is expected next spring.
(13) Learn how to make your pumpkin look like a galaxy nebula.
(14) Io9 says “The Glorious Poster For Star Wars The Force Awakens Has A Giant Planet Killer On It”. Almost needless to say, you can also see the full, high resolution poster there.
(15) This collection of “13 Creepy Bits of Bookish Trivia” at BookRiot lives up to its headline. Here’s one of the tamer entries.
- J.M. Barrie, author of Peter Pan, is rumored to have been quite the odd character. However, after his brother died in a skating accident, Barrie would routinely dress up in his dead brother’s clothing in order to ease his mother’s grief. The tragedy of his brother’s death would come to inspire the character of Peter Pan.
(16) Tonight was the Terry Gilliam talk at the Alex Theatre. Crusading photojournalist John King Tarpinian snapped a picture of the marquee.
(17) Chuck Wendig in “About That Dumb Star Wars Boycott” begins…
Let’s imagine that you are, as you are now, a straight white dude. Except, your world features one significant twist — the SFF pop culture you consume is almost never about you. The faces of the characters do not look like yours. The creators of this media look nothing like you, either. Your experiences are not represented. Your voice? Not there. There exist in these universes no straight white dudes. Okay, maybe one or two. Some thrown in to appease. Sidekicks and bad guys and walk-on parts. Token chips flipped to the center of the table just to make you feel like you get to play, too. Oh, all around you in the real world, you are well-represented. Your family, your friends, the city you live in, the job you work — it’s straight white dude faces up and down the block. But on screen? In books? Inside comic panels and as video game characters? Almost none. Too few. Never the main characters.
It feels isolating, and you say so.
And as a response you’re told, “Hey, take what you get.” They say, can’t you have empathy for someone who doesn’t look like you? Something something humanist, something something equalist. And of course you can have that empathy because you have to, because this is all you know, because the only faces and words and experiences on-screen are someone else’s so, really, what else are you going to do?
Then one day, things start to change. A little, not a lot, but shit, it’s a start — you start to see yourself up there on the screen. Sometimes as a main character. Sometimes behind the words on the page, sometimes behind the camera. A video game avatar here, a protagonist there. And it’s like, WOO HOO, hot hurtling hell, someone is actually thinking about you once in a while. And the moment that happens, wham. A backlash. People online start saying, ugh, this is social justice, ugh, this is diversity forced down our throats, yuck, this is just bullshit pandering quota garbage SJW — and you’re like, whoa, what? Sweet crap, everyone else has been represented on screen since the advent of film. They’ve been on the page since some jerk invented the printing press. But the moment you show up — the moment you get more than a postage stamp-sized bit of acreage in this world that has always been yours but never really been yours, people start throwing a shit-fit. They act like you’re unbalancing everything. Like you just moved into the neighborhood and took a dump in everybody’s marigolds just because you exist visibly.
(18) Amy Sterling Casil recommends The Looking Planet.
During the construction of the universe, a young member of the Cosmos Corps of Engineers decides to break some fundamental laws in the name of self expression.
https://vimeo.com/107659154
[Thanks to Will R., JJ, John King Tarpinian and Amy Sterling Casil for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jack Lint.]
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Could it be First Fifth?
The Calvert Journal has a great issue called Soviet Space Dreams. It includes an article by the costumer designer for Tarkovsky’s Solaris.
The problem with Wendig’s parable is that too many white guys are convinced it’s reality. The most persecuted, underrepresented, oppressed group in America are straight white Christian men – according to straight white Christian men.
I like that pumpkin.
Also, congratulations to your wife and her new book!
I’m no expert on Twitter so I may be making an ass of myself here and if so I apologise, but I had to scroll down for ages until I found a tweet that was pro-boycott. When I did it seemed to be four or five idiots. The vast majority were anti (with a smattering of spambots exploiting the attention). Wouldn’t we have all been better off ignoring the idiots?
RE #4: To be fair to Brad, he’s been on the “multiple sources” thing for a long while He’s still avoiding the whole “Wait, how is this open and transparent, as you claimed?” question, or Correia’s comments that the ELoE had a hand in curating the list.
The rest of his comments is still classic Torgersen projectionism of course.
ETA: That comment is quite spectacular, the more I parse it.
” I have in my hands letters from people who walked out, and wrote to me, saying, “I didn’t agree with a lot of what you said, but after that ceremony . . . . maybe you were right all along?” ”
It’s like equal shades of “the lurkers support in email” and ” “I have here in my hand a list of…”
Who could have known that categorising people who primarily go to Star Trek cons as being fans of Star Trek rather than fans of the SF genre is a strawman argument?
She’s repressing me!
Alyssa Rosenberg isn’t quite wrong in that excerpt here, but it suffers from “both sides do it”-ism. While it’s certainly true there’s a long line of cultural criticism in terms of politics/ideology on the left, in recent decades it’s the American rightwing that has been the most vocal in not just analysing, but demanding its media to be politically correct. Both GamersGate and the Puppies come out of that mindset, though one should always remember the former got started because an a-hole called Eron Gjoni tried to use 4chan to harass his ex-girlfriend and succeeded all too well
Multiple sources. I’m guessing their names are Larry, Teddy, Kate, Sarah and John.
I like the Wendig thing. On the flipside to that, it can be extremely difficult sometimes to find things that aren’t written from my perspective (or a similar one). I had such difficulty finding Thai literature written by actual Thais. 99% of what’s readily available is crappy travel writing by backpackers who’ve basically spent the last decade or more destroying the islands, or farang fiction, usually set in Bangkok, which holds absolutely no interest for me.
Either way, though, both camps agree that the existing community is hopelessly corrupt, cliquish, and prone to a particular animus against Conservatives and Libertarians. This prejudice is such that their works are repeatedly voted down from awards
Silly me, I thought awards were something the best works were selected to receive.
Instead, the underlying logic here seems to be that somehow Conservatives and Libertarians begin by intrinsically simply having awards, but then the evil existing community comes along and votes them down, unfairly taking away their goodies.
All of it orchestrated somehow in back room deals, a theory with no supporting evidence or suggested mechanism at all.
The paranoia is deep here.
“The Looking Planet” looks really cool. I went to the link and read how it was produced, that was interesting, too. Especially that they used a nearly dead Brazilian language as the alien tongue and one of the native speakers is the lead character voice actor.
Too bad it premiered in 2014. It seems to have won a ton of awards in 2015. I’d like to see it, but it doesn’t seem to be rentable or buyable yet. :sigh: I can’t get out to movies much anymore.
and forgot to :tick:
ETA: Congrats to your wife, Mike.
The filer they come, the harder they scroll…
It’s always Chapter 5 somewhere…
Chapter Five is alive!
I observe yet again that the Puppies are very tiresome.
(2) Liu Cixin says his favourite SF is 2001, which is pretty consistent with how 3BP read and why I liked it quite a bit but not as much as the other 2 works on the ballot.
(4) It’s barely worth digging over, but Brad’s original claim was that it was “conducted 100% in the open, democratically, using a democratic process.” and other slight variations on that theme, which is why people keeping on pointing out it wasn’t.
(7) I stopped reading the Dystopic article once I hit his defence of Climate Change Denial. Nope.
(14) I know I shouldn’t get too optimistic, but the poster and trailer are like catnip for my inner fanboy
(17) I really only have sustained applause for Wendig’s post. Whether the boycott thing is a Chan-joke or whatever, his wider point is spot on.
_____________
Recommendation time!
The novella “The Bone Swans of Amandale” by C.S.E. Cooney. It’s in a collection called Bone Swans which is reasonably priced in ebook and is worth spending money on. The collection itself has a gushing introduction from Gene Wolfe, and here’s quite a good review:
The 2015 story I’m recommending is a reconstructed fairytale. I find these sorts of stories rather dangerous – it’s far too easy to misjudge your mashup, go too twee or too grimdark, or forget to make the characters real. None of these are a problem. Mid-way through the story a new element gets added that had me convinced that the author had gone too far, but instead it pulls the whole thing together. I’d like to gush further but I fear spoilers.
Wait, the lurkers are supporting Torgersen in physical mail?
James Worrad: I’m no expert on Twitter so I may be making an ass of myself here and if so I apologise, but I had to scroll down for ages until I found a tweet that was pro-boycott. When I did it seemed to be four or five idiots. The vast majority were anti (with a smattering of spambots exploiting the attention). Wouldn’t we have all been better off ignoring the idiots?
If I understand your post correctly, you’re complaining about the Twitter hashtag linked in Chuck Wendig’s blog post — which is just a very, very small part of that post. Would we have all been better off ignoring Wendig’s post? No. I don’t think so. It’s substantiative, and it’s awesome.
Among Umberto Eco’s fourteen points about Ur-Fascism is this:
Rings any bells?
Well he is a postman. Perhaps he has a special affection for physical mail?
And clicky
Oh, and well done Canadians!
Well, I can see why Kevin Trainor’s attempt to “fisk” Steve Davidson’s post failed miserably.
I honestly haven’t agreed with every post SD’s made, but this one is hugely on-point. This is an incredibly apt description of me:
I’ve got no problem with Star Trek fans and Star Trek cons — when there are ST fans at the cons I attend, I’m totally geeking out right along with them. I’m taking photos of, and praising, their ST cosplay.
But I don’t want to attend SFF cons which are all Star Trek, all the time, anymore — and I have absolutely no problem with people who do. Why does Trainor insist that this is an either/or situation? There is plenty of room — and plenty of cons — for all of us.
Trainor talks as if all the Trek-only cons have disappeared, extinguished by the fans that want their cons to cover a wider range of SFF. This is total bullshit. Not only are there fan-run ST cons like Treklanta, Starbase Indy, STARFLEET International Conference, and Galaxyfest, there are tons of commercial ST cons, too. No one has been “kicked out” of fandom simply because their “thing” is limited to Star Trek.
I also find it hilarious that Trainor says:
when it is the Puppies who keep insisting that there is something wrong with Worldcon because it is not as big as all the commercial conventions, which have 100,000 – 200,000 attendees.
Seriously, do the Puppies not understand just how incredibly idiotic they look when they keep making all of these contradictory arguments?
And we all know the problem with being “hard to describe.”
Don’t forget the other bit about how Torgersen composed the slate that came out before they got their “100% open and democratic” talking point straight. Namely Michael Z. Williamson getting a query from Torgersen as to what Williamson had done in 2014 that he could put on the slate. Resulting in “Wisdom From My Internets” getting on. It’s not even so much that 15-20% of the nominators block voted the nominations as that the combined slates were created by 5 people.
Snowcrash: “RE #4: To be fair to Brad, he’s been on the “multiple sources” thing for a long while He’s still avoiding the whole “Wait, how is this open and transparent, as you claimed?” question, or Correia’s comments that the ELoE had a hand in curating the list.”
Wait for it – he’s going to resort to “I have already answered that question multiple times, so go look it up!” when people continue to point out his credibility problem. And never provide an exact link to a post that, you know, actually answers the question.
@Anna That list makes for pretty depressing reading; I kept mentally checking off points – seen that done, read that…
From the Torgersen response (#34)
“Just don’t say nobody tried to stop the inevitable plunge off the cliff. You will have shoved your wagon to the edge, and tipped it over yourselves.”
Ah, the “You’ll be sorry!” approach. Tiresome, indeed.
Or maybe “You’ll rue the day!” (to quote Real Genius).
snowcrash on October 19, 2015 at 11:57 pm said:
Served with a large dollop of “I used to be neutral but then the other side drove me to …”
Paul Weimer: From the Torgersen response (#34): “Just don’t say nobody tried to stop the inevitable plunge off the cliff. You will have shoved your wagon to the edge, and tipped it over yourselves.”
Ah, the “You’ll be sorry!” approach. Tiresome, indeed.
Yeah, you just have to roll your eyes at those ineffectual retorts. Trainor’s parting shot is:
The question is whether a lot of the fans who felt shafted, dishonored and disrespected by the whole awards banquet debacle and the poo-flinging preceding it are going to want to bother with it any more.
No, the REAL question is why any of these people who had never participated in Worldcon or the Hugos before felt such a compelling need to come in this year and try to take that awards program away from the people who created it and have nurtured it for six decades.
“We’re going to bugger off and take our money with us, and your con is going to die!”
I’d really like to believe that this is a promise and not just an idle threat. Sadly, the Puppies’ forté seems to be idle threats.
@JJ: “No, the REAL question is why any of these people who had never participated in Worldcon or the Hugos before felt such a compelling need to come in this year and try to take that awards program away from the people who created it and have nurtured it for six decades.”
I’ll go you one better. If they were so concerned about the Hugos and so convinced of Worldcon’s imminent demise, why not make like good vulture capitalists and let Worldcon crash, then pick up the now-worthless Hugo rights for a song? They’d get to run the award however they wanted, without the fuss of a big public fight…
Sheesh. You’d think these free-marketeers don’t know how capitalism works or something.
Congratulations to Diana Pavlac Glyer!
Perhaps if Brad was so worried about people tipping the wagon over the cliff he shouldn’t have set it on fire? While that might not have been the only way to get it into the river, it wasn’t a completely crazy one.
Mauser: [No Awarding] All slates is NOT a valid response, because the criteria “Was it on a slate?” is not in line with the object of ranking items by their relative quality
Neither is nominating things simply because they were on a slate “in line with the object of ranking items by their relative quality”. And yet, the Puppies did it anyway.
At least “Was it on a slate?” IS in line with the object of ranking items on principle — “Was it gamed onto the Hugo ballot, rather than making it there on its own merits?”
Let’s be honest, here: if the Puppy works were good enough to make the Hugo ballot on their own merits, they wouldn’t have needed a bunch of sycophants nominating from a slate to get them there. But they weren’t. So they did.
And the Puppies totally blew it. Because before, Puppies could at least claim that “their” works deserved a place on the ballot. But now, they’ve proven that all they could find to place on the ballot was mediocre — or worse, absolute shit.
Don’t try to pretend that none of those 2,500 people actually read those works before voting them under “No Award”. A very great many Hugo voters did read the works — as you Puppies would know, if you ever bothered to poke your head on the Internet outside the Puppy kennels. There are detailed reviews of Puppy works all over the Internet. And they are almost universally bad.
The Star Wars Episode VII trailer looks absolutely awesome. I can’t wait to see it — I’m gonna have to do the mega-screen, like I did with The Martian. I’ve also got Aftermath on the way from the library.
And the deterioration of Darth Vader is incredibly creepy.
JJ wrote: “Trainor’s parting shot is: The question is whether a lot of the fans who felt shafted, dishonored and disrespected by the whole awards banquet debacle and the poo-flinging preceding it are going to want to bother with it any more.”
Wait, there was an awards banquet at Sasquan? With rubber chicken and bouncing potatoes? THIS IS SOMETHING I WAS NOT TOLD! NOW I SEE THE EVIL SJW COVER-UP. I USED TO BE NEUTRAL UNTIL …
@JJ
It does look rather awesome, doesn’t it. The plot I’ve assembled in my head from tiny shards of scenes is probably totally wrong, though.
I wasn’t very fond of Steve Davidsons text, starting his own little cultural war. And it was so americanized. In sweden, the debate is over. The conservatives believe as much in global warming as anybody else. And it seems like the same in most of Europe.
Also, I have memories from 20-30 years ago when the progressive left had quite a lot of ideas they said were grounded in science, but turned out to be total bollocks. Things like suppressed memories that caused a lot of innocents to be jailed and caused a crisis in our psychology departments.
So his text was mostly polarizing without reason. Pity.
David Langford: I USED TO BE NEUTRAL UNTIL …
Sir, I hope you will allow me the honor of purchasing you a beverage at the next con we both attend… WHEREUPON I WILL ATTEMPT TO SAY SOMETHING CLEVER ENOUGH TO MAKE YOU SPRAY IT, AS YOU JUST CAUSED ME TO SPRAY MINE…
Hampus Eckeman: I wasn’t very fond of Steve Davidsons text, starting his own little cultural war. And it was so americanized. In sweden, the debate is over. The conservatives believe as much in global warming as anybody else. And it seems like the same in most of Europe.
Davidson wasn’t “starting his own little cultural war”. He was addressing the one which already exists in the U.S.
You have to remember that he’s not addressing you or other Europeans, he’s addressing the issues raised by Trainor — which concern U.S. cons, U.S. politics, and U.S. conservatives.
As far as the Puppies are concerned, you’all don’t exist — or, at least, you’re unimportant in terms of SFF fandom and politics. If Davidson had addressed the European point-of-view in his essay, he’d have missed the mark on the points he needed to make.
JJ
I read the wretched things until my eyeballs decided I was an idiot, and my liver could take no more.
AsI have noted before, at length, I really wanted the Hugo to go to Sheila Gilbert, so I voted for her notwithstanding the slate, and bought some of the books she edited last year, based on the sample chapters she provided in the Hugo package of all the works she had edited, which would not otherwise would have come my way.
It was a bravura display of doing the things editors should do, for their writers and for fandom. I voted on merit, hence the rotating eyeballs; the fact that the writers either couldn’t write at all, or couldn’t write to Hugo standards, is what got them placed below no award….
Stevie: I read the wretched things until my eyeballs decided I was an idiot, and my liver could take no more… I really wanted the Hugo to go to Sheila Gilbert, so I voted for her notwithstanding the slate, and bought some of the books she edited last year, based on the sample chapters she provided in the Hugo package of all the works she had edited, which would not otherwise would have come my way. It was a bravura display of doing the things editors should do, for their writers and for fandom. I voted on merit, hence the rotating eyeballs; the fact that the writers either couldn’t write at all, or couldn’t write to Hugo standards, is what got them placed below no award.
And this… THIS is what the Puppies simply do not seem capable of understanding: that all of the rest of us simply nominate and vote for what we love, regardless of what the Puppies shove in front of our faces and tell us we HAVE to vote for.
I personally think Sheila Gilbert has done a lot of really awesome work, too — and the fact that she respected the Hugo voters enough to actually take the time and effort to provide material for the packet made all the difference in how I voted.
The perpetual outrage machine spins on, I see
Wake me when they do something new…
@ Anna F.D.D.
There is a sense that Torgerson is Gabriel d’Annunzio, at least in his own imagination.
You mean when someone teaches an old pup new tricks?
*drops a quarter in the bad joke jar*
I personally think Sheila Gilbert has done a lot of really awesome work, too — and the fact that she respected the Hugo voters enough to actually take the time and effort to provide material for the packet made all the difference in how I voted.
She was the one editor I placed above No Award on my ballot, in large part because of what she put in the packet. I could figure out what she did in 2014, and as a result, had a good idea of the merits of her nomination.
For all the hand-wringing the Pups do about Weisskopf, they seem completely oblivious to the fact that she gave Hugo voters no reason at all to vote for her. She included nothing in the packet, and merely pointed to the entire line of Baen books as evidence of her editing. But that’s the same qualification Minz had as well. How was Weisskopf’s nomination different than Minz’s? Just pointing to the entire 2014 Baen catalog doesn’t actually tell me what, if anything, she actually edited. Based on that information, how could I vote either her or Minz above No Award?
The Pups seem to think I should have voted for Weisskopf because they like her and just trust their say-so that she is a worthy nominee. But that’s exactly the sort of cronyism they claim they are railing against (let’s leave aside the fact right now that the Pup slate was nothing but an exercise in cronyism). I’m not going to vote for or against something because someone else told me to. I’m going to vote for or against something because I evaluated it, and there was no way to evaluate Weisskopf, so into the No Award dustbin she goes.
Popping in rather late to note that (15) really isn’t the most creepy thing about J M Barrie. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._M._Barrie#Llewelyn_Davies_family