(1) SPEAKING OF FREE SCROLLS. R. Graeme Cameron will start a “SciFi Fiction Magazine” for Canadian writers if his GoFundMe appeal generates $1,500. Issues will be a free read.
When I was a teenager I decided I wanted to be a Science Fiction Writer. Fifty years later I’m a curmudgeonly pensioner who never sold a darn thing, not one novel, not one story. Del Rey books rejected one of my novels with the comment “We don’t like your main character and we don’t think anyone else will either.”
As a life-long beginning writer I know your pain. Always dreaming of that first sale. That’s why I’m starting up POLAR BOREAL, a Canadian SF&F fiction magazine actively encouraging beginning Canadian writers to submit short stories (3,000 words or less) and/or poems. The magazine will be free to anyone who wants to download it, yet all contributors will be paid on acceptance (if I can get the money) at one cent a word for short stories and $10 per poem.
(2) THE CLASSICS. Alexander Dane makes it sound like every day is Black Friday…
(3) NOT EGGSACTLY SURE. TV Guide promises “The 15 Coolest Easter Eggs from Star Wars: The Force Awakens”. SPOILER WARNING, naturally, but my question is – how many of these are really Easter Eggs as opposed to simple casting reveals? Do I not understand what an Easter Egg is? Straighten me out here….
(4) WILD GUESS. Umm, maybe look at the MidAmeriCon II committee list and use the contact information?
Does anyone know how I can get in touch with a 2016 #Hugoawards ceremony administrator?
— Wesley Chu (@wes_chu) January 15, 2016
(5) HOW AUTHORS DON’T GET PAID. Philip Pullman has resigned as Patron of the Oxford Literary Festival the organization has announced. The reason is very simple.
Our President, Philip Pullman, has resigned as a Patron of Oxford Literary Festival because they do not pay authors.
He explained his decision:
My position as President of the Society of Authors, which has been campaigning for fair payment for speakers at literary festivals, sat rather awkwardly with my position as Patron of the Oxford Literary Festival, because (despite urging from me and others over the years) it does not pay speakers. So I thought it was time I resigned as a Patron of the OLF.
The principle is very simple: a festival pays the people who supply the marquees, it pays the printers who print the brochure, it pays the rent for the lecture-halls and other places, it pays the people who run the administration and the publicity, it pays for the electricity it uses, it pays for the drinks and dinners it lays on: why is it that the authors, the very people at the centre of the whole thing, the only reason customers come along and buy their tickets in the first place, are the only ones who are expected to work for nothing?
(6) I SEE BY YOUR OUTFIT. Y-3 creates spacesuits for Virgin Galactic pilots on world’s first commercial space flights
(7) BUGS, MISTER RICO! The newly-christened “Las Vegas of ants” is visible on Google Earth.
Not far from the Grand Canyon, near a landmark called Vulcan’s Throne, the ground is dotted with strange, barren circles, visible from orbit.
Evidence of an alien encounter? Nope. The likely culprit is actually ants — a lot of them. So many that the scientists who discovered them are referring to the area as “the Las Vegas of ants.”
Physicist Amelia Carolina Sparavigna, a specialist in image processing and satellite imagery analysis at the Polytechnic University of Turin in Italy, noticed the bizarre polka- dot features while studying the dimensions of the Grand Canyon rim in Google Earth.
(8) VOX DAY COLLECTIBLES. Vox Day devoted a post to Camestros Felapton’s “Hugo”/Lego “Sad Larry” trading card.
While they, apparently, are occupied with making Lego figures of us. It seems that is what they do when they are not obsessing over what they think we are thinking. Even in light of how poorly they anticipated me last time, it’s mildly amusing to see that they still don’t understand my perspective at all.
The Dread Ilk commenters, however, were more concerned that Vox get a “Hugo” trading card of his own, so Felapton reassured them in “Vox links to the Larry pic” —
Vox appeared in an earlier post and has a new figure in a couple of days – with a flaming sword no less!
So it looks like we won’t get to riff off Lucy’s “Was Beethoven ever on a bubblegum card?” after all.
(9) GRABTHAR’S HAMMER OF LOVING CORRECTION. Steve Davidson’s self-imposed moratorium on writing about Sad Puppies at Amazing Stories has ended in the only way it could. Here are a few salient paragraphs.
In moving forward, I believe it is important that the message sent last year be reinforced this year. We’ve already seen at least one author declaring that begging for votes is no longer a problem. If we do not want that mindset to take hold, we will continue to repudiate slate voting this year.
Fans who discover a loophole in the voting rules don’t seek personal advantage – they bring it to the attention of other fans and make proposals at the business meeting and generally use their new found knowledge for the benefit of the whole. (Or, if unhappy with the process, they go off and do their own thing, which is then rewarded or ignored based on the merit of the accomplishment, not a tally of internet one upsmanship points.) Hugo voting actions this year should send that message. Therefore –
I will be nominating and voting for the Hugo Awards this year in the same way I voted last year: I’ll read and watch and listen to everything I can on the final ballot, will vote my conscience and will make sure that any work that appears on a slate (a voting list with a political agenda behind it) will be below No Award and off the ballot.
(10) RATINGS TIME. Gregory N. Hullender of Rocket Stack Rank says:
We analyzed all the RSR data to come up with a list for Best Editor (short form) Hugo nominations.
We construct several different lists, using different assumptions, and urge fans to use our data to make their own lists, so I don’t think this amounts to a slate.
This should be fun reading for anyone who’s really into short fiction, since I don’t believe anyone has ever done this kind of analysis before.
If anyone feels to the contrary — there are any slate-like tendencies in play here — please share your analysis.
(11) WE ALL DREAM IN GOLD. Since we always try to cover Guillermo del Toro’s doings on File 770 whenever we can, John King Tarpinian was disgustipated (I think that’s the technical term) that I overlooked this golden opportunity in my post about the 2016 Oscar nominations.
Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs, Guillermo del Toro, John Krasinski and Ang Lee will announce the 88th Academy Awards® nominations in all 24 Oscar® categories at a special two-part live news conference on Thursday…
(12) SHRUNKEN HEADS. Cass R. Sunstein at Bloomberg News breaks down “How Facebook Makes Us Dumber”.
Why does misinformation spread so quickly on the social media? Why doesn’t it get corrected? When the truth is so easy to find, why do people accept falsehoods?
A new study focusing on Facebook users provides strong evidence that the explanation is confirmation bias: people’s tendency to seek out information that confirms their beliefs, and to ignore contrary information.
I thought so. Or is it just confirmation bias at work if I agree that Facebook lowers my IQ?
(13) FOREVER DIFFERENT. Tobias Carroll checked with “28 Authors on the Books That Changed Their Lives”. The New York Magazine article has contributions from SF authors Elizabeth Hand, Ken Liu, Cathrynne M. Valente, Kelly Link, Jeff VanderMeer, and Jo Walton, among others.
Maria Dahvana Headley, author of Magonia and The Year of Yes “This question is both easy and difficult! I grew up a very rural and very gluttonous reader, in Idaho, about ten miles outside a town of 500 people. Essentially, I spent my reading childhood playing with other people’s imaginary friends, and I’ve grown into the kind of writer who does the same thing. So, in that regard, everything I’ve ever read has been life-changing. The first massive Rock My World book, though, was Toni Morrison’s Beloved, which I read when I was 17. Not only was I clueless about race in America at that point, coming from where I came from, I was also clueless about living female genius writers. I didn’t know there were any. Up to that point, I’d read almost entirely white men. KA-BAM. I got blasted out of the universe of dead white boys, and into something much more magnificent. Morrison’s way of flawlessly entwining her haunting with her history left me dazzled, sobbing, and bewildered. Morrison is obviously a genre-leaping master of style, and reading her not only made me aware of what was possible as a writer, it led me to all of the poets, songwriters, playwrights, and librettists who continue to influence my work today.”
(14) BOWIE AND SF. Jason Heller’s Pitchfork article “Anthems for the Moon: David Bowie’s Sci-Fi Explorations” is one more list of SF parallels and influences on Bowie’s work. Moorcock, Heinlein, Bradbury, Dick, Burgess, and others are mentioned.
In its celebration of androgyny, glam also lined up with Ursula K. Le Guin’s visionary 1969 novel The Left Hand of Darkness, which takes place on an alien planet where transitions between genders are as routine as any other biological process—a concept that certainly resonates with Bowie’s aesthetic. “Androgynous sexuality and extraterrestrial origin seemed to have provided two different points of identification for Bowie fans,” notes Philip Auslander in Performing Glam Rock: Gender and Theatricality in Popular Music. “Whereas some were taken with his womanliness, others were struck by his spaciness.”
(15) MARS MUSIC I. Matthew Johnson adds another number to that award-winning musical, The Martian.
(With apologies to David Bowie)
Hello, I feel I have to remind
You that you kind of left me behind
Is there life on Mars?
Four years alone could be a slog
I guess I ought to keep a log
Is there life on Mars?
On Mars a man dies by his wits
He even has to science his shit
Is there life on Mars?
The greatest scientist on the planet
I can plant it and grow it and can it
Is there life on Mars?
Disco hell is kind of groovy
Matt Damon plays me in the movie
Is there life on Mars?
Four years is a long time to be alone
There might be a new Game of Thrones when I’m done
Is there life on Mars?
(16) MARS MUSIC II. And Seth Gordon likewise swings and sways to a melody in his head…
As I walk through the valley with the sand so red
I take a look at my suit and realize that I’m not dead
’Cause I’ve been science-ing this shit for so long that
Even Houston thinks that my ass is gone…
[Thanks to Bret Grandrath, Rob Thornton, John King Tarpinian, Will R., and Nick Mamatas for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Hampus Eckerman.]
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@Zenu
I had 4 separate kinds of lists. If a list falls clearly into one category than trying to push it into another in order to make another totally different type of list not look like slate is comparing apples to oranges.
Go find a list similar to RSR. Someone/group taking all their reviews for the year & creating a best of ranked list. But please try to keep it apples to apples. If you continue with apples to oranges I won’t continue responding. I feel I’ve been quite clear on why your example is different from RSR IMHO and we are just going around in circles getting nowhere.
Let’s keep apples together with apples — there’s really only one other statistics-driven site, and I have covered Chaos Horizon just as often.
Mike Glyer: Let’s keep apples together with apples — there’s really only one other statistics-driven site, and I have covered Chaos Horizon just as often.
Except that’s not really apples vs. apples. Firstly, with the exception of summing up totals for the Sad Puppies 4 slate and pointing out the SFWA Recommendation lists, Chaos Horizon generally only compiles statistics of awards lists. They’re not really a review site. And they don’t come to File770 and continually post links back to their site on a daily basis. In addition, CH tends to be far more agnostic about where they source their lists than does RSR.
To repeat: Steve Davidson’s How to recommend without slating is an excellent take on the topic that I am in agreement with.
While I do not like the approach RSR is taking, it doesn’t qualify as a slate IMO.
In this I am in complete agreement with JJ: No slates, period.
I don’t care if they are Puppy slates, Anti-Puppy slates or any other sort. Slates damage the Hugos, and yes, though we have No Award as a backstop, I prefer not to have to deploy it.
Let’s also not forget that EPH still needs to be ratified this year before it can be adopted next year. And even when EPH is deployed, it is not a silver bullet; it should mitigate the worst of damage from slates but it does not neutralize them.
So by all means let’s get EPH ratified, but let’s also keep reinforcing the message that slates are not acceptable.
I agree with Shao Ping and with OGH, and indeed with Zenu. I have found it very difficult to vote in the Best Editor categories in the past, and I welcome further information to help me decide. And I simply don’t see how RSR is uniquely and dangerously authoritative and influential. The comparison with George R.R. Martin’s influence is interesting and instructive.
@Mike: “When Larry Correia started Sad Puppies as a brand to get his novels nominated for the Hugo — he failed the first two years, although he did get some people nominated in other categories. He succeeded in 2014 and 2015 (as part of Sad/Rabid Puppy slates, but he declined the nomination).”
I believe your math is off. SP1 was a complete failure for Larry in 2013. SP2 got Warbound onto the 2014 ballot, a nomination he accepted. He declined his SP3-generated nomination in 2015. That’s three years, not four… SP4 is the attempt to game the upcoming nominations.
I may be overlooking a 2012 campaign, but even if that’s the case, it didn’t carry the SP brand.
Rev. Bob: Your Sad Puppy count is right. But Corriea did a 2012 Hugo appeal, quoted below.
I did some quick research while writing my comment and ended up conflating this 2012 “Sad Larry” Hugo campaign post with the later ones —
In the 2012 post, this was the iconic image of Larry sadness — finding all the donuts gone.
I hate it when their are no donuts left. I’d be sad too if someone left empty boxes food boxes lying around. When you finish the last donut in the box throw it out. Less people will be sad by being misled by empty donut boxes.
This comment brought to you by #BeResponsibleThrowOutEmptyContainers Group
Tasha Turner: I’m holding off saying anything witty-like about his apparently plan to wash down that donut with a soda because I might have done that once myself…
LC does seem to have a thing about polar bears, doesn’t he?
From the 2012 post linked by OGH:
From the 8 January 2013 post:
From LC’s 16 January 2013 post:
From LC’s 14 January 2014 post:
The earliest reference I’ve found is from his 12 January 2011 post, Correia on the Classics, where he lists twelve things to put into your books to make sure they appeal to award juries. The twelfth is:
Where are all these books about polar bears that he’s been reading? (Also wondering which book, if any, had a victim who was a thinly veiled Dick Cheney.)
@Mike Glyer
Your self restraint is admirable.
@Nicholas Whyte
Polar bears show up seasonally on Coke (TM) products in the winter as well as a number of kids winter fiction books. It would be nice if LC included a list so we could go out and find to enjoy.
@Tasha,
dying polar bears?
@Nicholas:
“Dying polar bears” is a dog-whistle for environmentalism in general and global warming in particular. Fracking and evil corporations both hit the conservative/libertarian “unfettered free markets are the best!” ideal, along with another whack at global warming. As for the harem-dancing* Dick Cheneys, the best I can do there is note the Marmot’s book about an evil lesbian President who was an obvious Hillary Clinton stand-in. I guess he figured there must be loads of novels that similarly demonize the Shrub’s puppetmaster.
Basically, it all boils down to “libruls r bad” expressed in several uninventive ways. A good editor’s first note would’ve been to pick one good dog-whistle per post, rather than slathering ’em all onto every one.
Personally, I keep wondering what all these ostentatiously-Christian conservatives have against protecting the environment. Do none of them remember the command to be “good stewards” or the admonition that one cannot worship both God and Mammon?
* Hey, he keeps harping on the thin veils. No, I don’t like the image, either.
While I might share your assessment of our 43’rd president, I don’t think we should go there. President Bush, or George W Bush please, the man was president and I’d like to keep my sense of smug superiority over those who constantly use terms like Hitlery and Obummer. Let’s not be those people.
@Iphinome: (“Shrub”)
The way I see it, “President Bush” is ambiguous; there have been two, father and son. I got used to thinking of H.W. as “Bush” – and it makes perfect sense to me that the child of a bush is a shrub. Thus, “Shrub” economically conveys “the President Bush who is the son of the first President Bush” with only five characters, and contains no inherent insult to his character. I suppose I could go for “Junior,” but that’s inaccurate.
Now, the puppetmaster crack is a different thing, but there seems to be little debate about that point. Both major political sides seem to accept that Cheney was the one running the administration from 2001-2009.
Putting that aside, I just really want to know if there actually is an award-winning (or even shortlisted) book featuring either (pre-2011) dying polar bears or (pre-2012) a thinly veiled Dick Cheney?
There’s a killer polar bear in LC’s own Hugo finalist Warbound, but that is too late to fit.
“Thinly-veiled Dick Cheney” would match up with Stross’s world-walker books, but AFAIK none of them were nominated for either the Hugo or the Nebula. They are, however, published by Tor.
At Iphinome “Shrub” is acceptable because Molly Ivins said so. Molly coined the name and used it to title her book. That’s enough for me.
Tasha Turner said: “If you continue with apples to oranges I won’t continue responding.”
I’m good with that. Let’s agree to disagree. You have your definition of slate – I will have mine.
So next year “my” response to Sad Puppies V is going to be … “meh”.
Excellent point by Soon Lee. The fans will have to see this through. They have two anti slating proposals to ratify. I hope they ratify both but at least EPH.
Ms. Lee, I assume you are a fan and by that I am thinking of GRRM’s fan verses reader distinction. As a reader, I have faith you and other fans will pull the bacon out of the fire. If you don’t, I will probably just stop caring and continue reading.
As a person, it irritates me greatly that a bunch of right wing nuts would interfere in the conventions and traditions of the Worldcon fan because of a political non sense and false victimization. If puppy whining was truly about the quality of the books being nominated I would be less offended but clearly that’s not the case. Now the ball is in your court. Smash it. I have faith you will do so and am relieved that these matters are voted on only by people who care enough to show up.
As to anti-puppy slates, we can debate that in a transition year but it has been debated once already. Right after the Hugo award, there was some number crunching and the case was made at “Making Light”. I took from that discussion that it simply wasn’t going to happen on a meaningful scale. Slates work for the pups because of the political message that serves as an organizing tool and the leadership of authors who use it as marketing tool. Scalzi and GRRM already sell lots of books, and they don’t need to target market to a fringe group.
We have gone from the term slate to the term influence. I am good with influence particularly in the esoteric categories. Getting additional participation in these areas is a function of education. Readers will often just leave it blank making it more vulnerable to mischief. I would like to see similar work in other categories. Even with the additional readers that came to the rescue last year, I am almost convinced that you will have to “No Award” the “Editor Long Form” category – although GRRM will preach against it.
Really, lots of readers only care about the big one. A little education and influence would be helpful.
@Nicholas Whyte:
The first possibility that comes to mind is Stross’s Merchant Princes series, but that series has a distinct lack of polar bears. So.
Larry Correia is way more into normative gender roles than I am, so maybe I missed something, but I never thought it was a manly-men ideal to be so peevish. I even saw a lot of those stupid “man law” commercials a few years ago, and don’t recall a singly man-law enjoining one to whine about shit you don’t got.
I don’t know where you get this from. Short fictions problem has been so many people nominate different work it doesn’t reach the 5% rule. That doesn’t mean nominators and voters don’t care. It means there is so much good short fiction out there that there is no consensus early on for what is the best of the year.
Hugo categories come and go/change as the times change and the information the average fan has access to or believes is important to honor changes.
When I first began voting for Hugos I learned their history and have continued doing so. This was before puppygate. If I’m going to be involved in something it behooves me to learn about it so when I’m opinioning I don’t look too foolish due to lack of knowledge.
The editor categories have been controversial since inception with a number of voters always putting No Award as a protest vote to the category itself. I believe this year at the business meeting a proposal will be made to replace the categories with something easier for todays nominators and voters to feel knowledgeable in.
Turning to someone else to tell you how to vote because you don’t have the knowledge is the opposite of typical nominating & voting behavior. Normally if you don’t have the knowledge to nominate you leave those areas blank. Your supposed to nominate what/who you feel is best based on your actual reading/viewing/listening. At voting time we have information provided in the voters packet, finalists websites, purchasing/getting from library their work from the year in order to make an informed decision. Leave things you don’t have an opinion on off your ballot. Use No Award for protesting categories, protesting slates (how no award came to be), work you don’t believe should have made it to finalist stage.
The whole point is Hugos are supposed to be about what individual fans found to be really good the previous year and want to give an award to.
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I think it was an 80s thing. When I was very young — in the 70s — I don’t remember a social norm that Christians and Republicans were assumed to be against environmental protections. I mean, Nixon formed the EPA, right? But the Reagan era, which was also the religious right era, seemed to cement anti-environmentalism as one of the tribal markers for both groups.
The puppies are mostly younger than I am, so they would have grown up with that norm already established.
That seems to be a now thing. The “men’s rights” and Gamergater types seem to have established a norm — on the Internet, anyway — that the thing you do to prove your manliness is pout, moan, whine, and generally act like a spoiled brat.
I’m not sure where they originally got this idea from — the logic might go something like “I prove my manliness by asserting male privilege, I assert male privilege by aggressively assuming entitlement,” but it seems to have rooted pretty deeply in certain sub-cultures.
I hope they don’t ratify both. I hope they ratify EPH but not 4/6. 4/6 weakens EPH. EPH is mathematically stronger the more nomination votes there are, so going from max. 5 to max. 4 makes it less effective.
“The editor categories have been controversial since inception with a number of voters always putting No Award as a protest vote to the category itself. I believe this year at the business meeting a proposal will be made to replace the categories with something easier for todays nominators and voters to feel knowledgeable in.”
That sounds good. I will leave it to the fans but it sounds good.
“Turning to someone else to tell you how to vote because you don’t have the knowledge is the opposite of typical nominating & voting behavior.”
Unless you think counter slates are viable, that’s a straw man argument.
“Normally if you don’t have the knowledge to nominate you leave those areas blank.”
Yes that’s what happens. So for those areas where it isn’t based on what one has personally read, education would be helpful. Again, if providing more information will influence greater participation, that seems to be a good thing.
“At voting time we have information provided in the voters packet, finalists websites, purchasing/getting from library their work from the year in order to make an informed decision.”
That’s good at voting time I suppose. I am focused on the nomination process.
“Use No Award for protesting categories, protesting slates (how no award came to be), work you don’t believe should have made it to finalist stage.”
To pick a nit, the best editor award isn’t about a work. It is about a person. I don’t see a need for the award at all but if the fans like it that’s fine.
Worldcon fans may have some hang over assuming they fix the nomination process. Pups might hang around for a year or two trying to pick off the odd category. But their attention will lag at some point and they will forget about paying the membership fee.
“I don’t know where you get this [lots of readers only care about the big one] from.”
I get the term “The Big One” from GRRM as that is the term he uses. I find it squares with my general impression. I get the term “readers” also from GRRM where he makes a distinction between fans and readers. I get my impression that readers are more focused on the “big one” from multiple discussions where Hugos are discussed and observing the focus of the discussions but more recently from statistical data that shows nominations falling off in number after “the big one”.
Not taking anything from your point that nominations in the short story category are scattered and still have strong interest.
Thanks Cally. I stand corrected.
Where are all these books about polar bears that he’s been reading? (Also wondering which book, if any, had a victim who was a thinly veiled Dick Cheney.)
Those books pretty much only exist in his head. In reality, not so much. At least insofar as such books are “loved” by award juries and voters. The closest one could come would be a novel like KSR’s 2312. On the other hand, lead whining puppy BT complained that it was terrible that Redshirts beat 2312, but logic and consistency isn’t a strong suit for the pups.
I really, really, really wish stylish worked on the iPad. I’m jealous of those who can use it.
Today’s reading is not Hugo related. Voices of the Dragons by Carrie Vaughn.
@Mark – thanks muchly. The information is useful.
I wrote my piece yesterday early and under pressure because it was “editorial time” and I had no editorial. (I want to avoid turning that platform into an “all the silly things puppies say” post – though one thing that JCW said ought to be an article all by itself, his (concept? theory? wishful thinking?) that only someone who has had stories published in the field (and were presumably praised and well-received) are the only people worthy of shining his shoes. It plays into my theory that we’re in for very rocky future in fandom as influential voices arise that have absolutely no background in fandom (or, their claims to the contrary, have obviously not learned anything with their time in fandom because if they come at fandom with mundane expectations, we end up with authors who think they DESERVE a Hugo Award, believe that they inhabit a plain of existence loftier than a fan’s and think it’s ok to use the institutions of fandom as nothing more than a place to try and sell more books. But I digress).
Intent is a big part of the equation in dealing with “slates”. I tend to believe that the definition of slate incorporates a political agenda component.
That being said, I think the most important statement I made in my piece on how to recommend without slating is this one: the Hugo awards are not just “one fan, one vote”, they are “one fan, one influence”.
I would be categorically opposed to any organized action that seeks to imbalance that equation, whether it is called a slate and/or has a political agenda behind it or not.
The whole idea is predicated on equality. The voting methodology prior to the puppies was – everyone’s nominations count equally. If people were banding together and trading votes, it is apparent that they did not succeed in influencing others with that methodology.
Anything that could be taken as a suggestion as to how you ought to nominate or who you ought to vote for ought to be nipped in the bud. We should, and should WANT to be gathering as large a group of nominations as possible.
And we should constantly caution newcomers to the fold that fandom only really works well when it works slowly. That relatively unknown writer you stuck on your ballot? Someone else will see the long list and check it out. They’ll tell others. If the story is good, notice will percolate through the community.
Nuance is appreciated here so I’ll also mention that, in general, there’s nothing wrong with telling someone else “oh, this novel was great, you ought to read it; I think I’m going to nominate it this year”; nor is there anything inherently wrong with looking for ways to objectively analyze things like “best editor” – but everyone ought to be cognizant of the “times we are a-livin in”; Trufans with Hugo experience dating back more than 5 years know what’s right and what’s wrong when it comes to how people vote. We experienced a major upset last year that attacked one of the core principals of fandom. People are going to be gun-shy and maybe a bit sensitive. (understatement. and, such reactions are not necessarily unjustified in all cases.) If your goal is to advance fandom and try to make things better, it might be wise to hold off a bit, or be careful about what you say and how you say it.
Steve,
Thanks for posting here. I thought the tone of your last paragraph:
was patronising and ill-judged. I’m going to continue to write “What I’m voting for” posts, as I have done for years, whether or not you think they should be avoided.
@Nicolas, I see post at SFF communities all the time about “I am going to vote for …” and “I am pulling for…”. It’s all good natured fun for the community. If I recall correctly even GRRM does predictions which isn’t exactly the same but is similar.
@Steve – You know more about this than I do but I don’t find the Reverend Wright influential other than as to what not to buy.
I can’t be bothered reading back to which Puppy was moaning about what with regard Cheney, but Charlie Stross’s “Merchant Princes” series has an alternative earth (and a few other more alternative earths) has an alternate Cheney carpet-bombing a continent (alternative America) with H-bombs, killing millions of medieval-level innocents in retaliation for nuclear terrorism from a faction of one family. Who were already dead. And the family of which had relocated out of that world.
Aaaaaaand I should have read though the entire thread before sticking my two dubious cents in. Apologies all.
My favorite work by Charlie Stross is the Merchant Princes series 🙂
With regard to Generation Ship novels that don’t suck, I read The Forever Watch by David Ramirez about a year and a half ago and really enjoyed it. I think it deserved to be more widely appreciated.
I don’t like GRRM’s definition of what a fan is. It’s a very personal definition that works for GRRM (and to be fair, it works for a percentage of Worldcon membership too) but is less applicable for people who are not GRRM, but who are IMO just as much fans in their own way.
Am I a fan or a reader?
– Well, I read F & SF, and as a WSFS Supporting Member I can nominate in this year’s Hugo awards.
– But I’m not much of a congoer (only been to a handful).
– But I did sign my name to the EPH proposal.
– And I do participate in some fannish activities (enjoying & talking about SFF books, TV, movies, comics) but not really others (cosplay, LARPing).
On some days I feel more like a fan than on others, but then other people who identify as fans can feel that way too.
(Oh and by the way, I am a boy person… It’s no biggie given the most famous Soon Lee is Klinger’s wife in M*A*S*H, and there is also writer Mary Soon Lee. But I wanted to mention it to correct an assumption.)
@Soon Lee
I don’t understand why you get mistaken for female. Your avatar is clearly a male head…
@tasha
Yup, Merchant Princes was my introduction to Stross’ work and it remains my favorite.
@ JJ and Tasha
I think if there is the implied or stated “I/we are an authoritative source” to go with a ranked list, that makes it a slate. And RSR has repeatedly represented itself as an authoritative source, going so far as to say
“If the goal is to genuinely try to recognize the best editors, I don’t think there’s any way for fans to do it without making use of outside information. (E.g. ratings of reviewers who really did read hundreds of stories.)”
In other words, “you’re not qualified to judge this, but since we’ve read the works and collated reviews from ourselves and our sources which were carefully-selected according to our preferences, we are qualified to judge this, and you should take our word for it”.
Nowhere in that quote from RSR is there an explicit claim that RSR is an authoritative source for the data beyond one’s own reading that they think voters should use to inform their opinion of the relative merits of the set of SFF editors eligible for the Hugo under discussion (unless one’s own short fiction reading is extraordinarily voluminous). To the contrary, there are explicit disclaimers that they intend their meta-analysis of the opinions of a fairly large number of reviewers to be only a starting point and suggestions for ways people might add to, subtract from or otherwise alter their rankings to bring them more into line with one’s own opinions as to what constitutes excellent editorial performance. For example:
This post presents that analysis as a baseline for Hugo Award voters to customize and produce their own list of nominees. – I think “starting point” would be better than “baseline” but it’s a quibble.
Here are examples of things that arguably should count towards an editor’s rating but which the charts above do not include. You should take a look and see if any of these is important to you. – suggesting you include, at your sole discretion, factors outside the scope of their analysis – not exactly “Respect our authority!”
You can also analyze the data differently. Here are a few suggestions: …We’ll offer three examples, based on different ideas a person might have. – suggesting you could legitimately make different analytic choices with the same data – ditto
From reading editorials and doing a few Google searches, we know of a few special things that the editors did personally that ought to figure into any ranking. In no way is this complete. We’ll happily amend this page to add new information that people bring to us. – admitting their listing of out-of-scope accomplishments must necessarily be incomplete – ditto redux
I therefore think the claim that RSR is implicitly presenting their analysis as authoritative and claiming that people therefore ought to vote according to their ranked list is, to put it mildly, hogwash. I suppose they could lard their writing with yet more disclaimers. For example, if you think they and all the prolific short fiction reviewers whose reviews they used as source data are chowderheads who wouldn’t know a good story if it bit them somewhere sensitive, you shouldn’t rely on their analysis. But that seems rather too obvious to need to be stated explicitly. I think they’ve done enough by clearly explaining what data they aggregated, and how and why they did so in the way they did, while also making some of their raw data available. And frankly, a little recognition that they’ve gone to a lot of effort to provide information that many people who don’t have time to do the same or a similar analysis from scratch themselves might appreciate wouldn’t go amiss, even if one’s opinion is they they haven’t made the best possible choice with every decision they made as to how (or, based on the opinions expressed by some to date, whether) to proceed and how to present their work.
Jon, I still disagree, but I do appreciate you taking the time and effort to write up your perspective so articulately.
@Jon
I believe a number of people have expressed appreciation.
You have a right to your opinions just like I do to mine.
@Tasha,
Now that you mention it…
Actually that Gravatar image was in hopes of setting up a really lame #StarWars response. All that needed to happen was for someone to comment about my moon avatar, to which I’d say, “That’s no moon”. But noone never did.
[The image was taken down the eyepiece of a microscope & shows a bunch of yeast cells.]
@Steve Davidson: Indeed, in all modesty, you have one of the finest heart attack stories of our time. I’m really glad I live near two GOOD hospitals with competent ambulance services. I’ve never set foot in an ER or hospital where they haven’t given the patient SOME kind of medication either. That’s sorta their thang.
@Greg: Why are you so adamantly opposed to just putting the RSR recommendations in alphabetical order? Feels like you’re just ignoring the idea and hoping it goes away. Ranking may not be slating, but it’s slate-ish. Slate-adjacent. Close enough for slate work. It looks bad.
NO SLATES! They’re bad whether you’re a Puppy or not. NO RANKED LISTS either. The only time we should see ranking is after the Hugos when they hand out the vote total breakdown.
Now, if Larry had only stuck with Tasha’s philosophy of “Throw out the empty containers”, we’d all have been better off. Could we have forestalled all these years of unpleasantness if we’d just bought him lots of donuts?
@Nicholas Whyte: Maybe he’s against polar bears b/c he knows a guy who dresses like that (that photo is the definition of “dork in business casual”) has no chance against them, no matter how many pew-pews he has or how much he whines peevishly. He is NOT a manly man in any way.
Also, I would like to read “Dick Cheney vs. Polar Bears”.
@Rev Bob: you owe me brain bleach now. Shudder.
You have a right to your opinions just like I do to mine.
To be sure. But it would be nice if more people’s opinions were subject to change in the face of overwhelming contrary evidence, in less important things just as in matters of great consequence (e.g. anthropogenic climate change, use of vaccines, economic and health care policy making). If your and JJ’s shared opinion has explicit textual support in that post at RSR remotely comparable to what I cited, I’m still, as far as I can tell, waiting for it to be presented.
Jon: If your and JJ’s shared opinion has explicit textual support in that post at RSR remotely comparable to what I cited, I’m still, as far as I can tell, waiting for it to be presented.
I’ve already stated my reasoning, and I didn’t see that continuing to reiterate it would serve any constructive purpose. When you say “it would be nice if more people’s opinions were subject to change in the face of overwhelming contrary evidence” what you really mean is “it would be nice if more people’s opinions were subject to change to agree with my opinion” (and I will point out that your opinion =/= “overwhelming evidence”).
The ranked list posted by RSR is a slate, or close enough as makes no never-mind, no matter in how much special pleading you or Mr Hullender engage. RSR has indeed presented their list as “authoritative”, given the way they tell individual readers they aren’t qualified to decide on their own, while pointing out that RSR does have the expertise to do so.
Which is pretty damn arrogant and lame, in my opinion, because I read short fiction from magazines, and I read a fair number of anthologies with original stories, and I’ve never needed RSR to hold my hand while coming up with my Hugo nominations for Best Editor Short Form.
But then, according to Mr Hullender, I’m not capable of understanding math, so clearly he doesn’t believe that I’m capable of making a competent decision on the Short Form Editor Hugo, either.
@Soon Lee, I wish you’d had occasion to use that joke. I’d go find some other thread you’re on and set it up, but it just wouldn’t be the same.
Yes, and by arguing that OTHERS lack that capacity, that THEY will be seduced by a ranked list even though you are able to resist its “authority,” you are engaging in special pleading.
@Red Wombat —
I think you’re getting close to the dread god Taxonomy, which is not so much a difficult problem as a doom of insufficient heuristics.
My take is that this is all very simple; does it have any “should” in it, expressed or implied or plausibly discovered by the mechanisms of textual criticism?
If so, it’s somewhere on the awkward line between slate and campaigning. These things are undesirable.
“I read this book and I think it’s worthy of note” isn’t those things.
ANY ordinal listing has some should in it. Any big statistical listing has no “I” in it, it’s not about anybody’s response. So I think either is of highly questionable propriety.
Having a response to a work involves engaging with the work; reading it, viewing it, or listening to it, for the Hugos. That takes time. The Hugos came into being when the amount of time and the possible range of sources was much, much smaller than at present. It’s not clear the nomination mechanism scales arbitrarily in the face of those things.
There aren’t any workarounds for the “having a response” part, though. Not if “fan voted” is to mean something distinct from “tribal proxy warfare”.