Pixel Scroll 12/6 From the Mixed-Up Pixels of Mrs. Basil E. Frankscroller

(1) WITNESS FOR GOLLUM. Well-known Tolkien scholar Michael D.C. Drout is quoted in the New York Times’ “Is Gollum Good or Evil? Jail Term in Turkey Hinges on Answer”.

Michael D. C. Drout, an English professor at Wheaton College who edits an annual review of Tolkien’s works, is observing the situation from America. He said that those experts will be assessing the most complicated character in the English writer’s already complex world.

“I don’t think there’s any consensus that Gollum is evil,” Mr. Drout said in an interview. “He is the most tragic character in ‘The Lord of the Rings.’ ”

Middle Earth, the place where Gollum began his life as a creature named Sméagol, is full of complex characters and allegiances. But a single gold ring, forged with a dark lord’s evil powers, has the power to rule them all. Sméagol catches a glimpse of the ring, murders for it, and possesses it for centuries until it is mislaid and found by another hobbit. Sméagol struggles to redeem himself, but his obsessive bloodthirst for the ring wins out. He accidentally destroys himself and the ring, but also saves Middle Earth in the process. (It is the hobbit hero Frodo who gets most of the credit.)

“The context is this: Gollum accidentally, not intentionally, saves the entire world,” Mr. Drout said.

Mr. Drout said that no one would’ve appreciated the existential debate over Gollum more than the author who created him. Painfully and pitifully, Sméagol almost succeeds in overcoming his evil side, but fails. It is a scene that is said to have upset Mr. Tolkien to the point of tears as he wrote it, Mr. Drout said.

“He didn’t see him as irredeemably evil,” he said of Mr. Tolkien. “He saw him as someone who had been destroyed by this evil ring.”

(2) COMIC CON IN INDIA. The fifth Delhi Comic Con drew an estimated 40,000 people last weekend.

Thousands of fans cheered and clicked pictures with their favorite comic characters Saturday at India’s annual comic book fest at a sprawling fairground in southeast New Delhi.

The fifth Delhi Comic Con had something for everyone who attended on this mild, wintry day. Die-hard fans came dressed as their favorite comic characters. Others crowded the more than 200 stalls selling comic books, graphic novels and merchandise on cartoon characters.

There was real live entertainment, as well.

Crowds of college students and young people cheered and roared as Kristian Nairn, best known for his role as Hodor in “Game of Thrones,” ascended a stage and addressed them. Nairn was mobbed as eager fans pushed to get themselves clicked with the star of the popular television series….

Indian mythological heroes, dressed in gaudy costumes with bejeweled crowns and sparkly clothes, added to the carnival atmosphere, ready to oblige fans with an autograph, a selfie or a photograph.

Indian comics have seen a revival in the last decade thanks to new funding and technologies for printing, animation, digitizing and distribution.

(3) STAR WARS REWATCH. A new installment of Michael J. Martinez’ Star Wars rewatch has been posted: ”Star Wars wayback machine: Star Wars (or A New Hope if you prefer)”.

I know this movie by heart. In fact, while in my 20s and firmly in my barfly life-stage, several friends and I recreated the entire movie over pints at the pub. We didn’t miss a line. There are few cultural touchstones so firmly rooted in our global community as this one.

But I’m now looking at it with fresh eyes, and asking myself…is it really any good? Does it stand up to the test of time and the grey clouds of cynicism accumulated with age?

Largely, yes. Enthusiastically, yes. Are there things that I’ve noticed now, years later, both good and bad? Absolutely. Is it dated? Sure, but not as bad as you think. But ultimately, I think it works. The resonance it has in our culture is well deserved.

(4) STANDLEE ON SMOFCON. Kevin Standlee is running short notes on his LiveJournal about this year’s SMOFcon.

At 4 PM, I went to the panel about administering the Hugo Awards. A year ago, a panel on this subject would have been lucky to draw more audience than panelists. This year, it was standing-room-only. Had we two hours rather than one to discuss how the Hugo Awards are administered, we could have filled it.

 

After breakfast with Linda Deneroff, Mo Starkey, and John Sapienza, I went to the first panel of the morning, presented by Andrew Adams based on work that René Walling has done to accumulate available demographic information about Worldcon members. The slide above shows the memberships over time, attending and supporting, both in absolute numbers (line) and percentage (colored bars) for the 2015 Worldcon, showing how the numbers changed over time. (The upper line and the upper colored section are supporting members; the lower are attending.) Sasquan really was different. There were many more very interesting charts in this presentation, and you can see some of them if you click through the photo above, but Andrew said he’d publish the entire slide deck later and asked us not to keep taking photos.

 

How to Call Out Other Conventions. This was a discussion about how and whether you should point out other groups’ mistakes, particularly the most egregious ones that could poison your convention’s relationship with hotel facilities. I found it very interesting listening to the stories behind the panel title, but I was so sleepy that I couldn’t concentrate that well.

(5) ASTRONAUTS SEND MESSAGE ON CLIMATE CHANGE. Sasquan GoH Kjell Lindgren is one of the astronauts in the video “Call to Earth: Astronauts Send a Message from Space to Global Leaders at #COP21 Urging Action on Climate Change”.

In less than three days, an outpouring of messages streamed in from astronauts around the world – eyewitnesses to profound changes to our planet they’ve seen first hand while in orbit. The messages were produced by members of the Association of Space Explorers (ASE), the professional association of flown astronauts, cosmonauts and taikonauts. ASE assists members to communicate their unique perspective of Earth to help stimulate humanity’s sense of responsibility for our home planet.

Also in the video was Wubbo Ockels, Ph.D. Space Shuttle, the first Dutch citizen in space, who said “Our Earth has Cancer and I have cancer too.” He was filmed the day before he died.

(6) BUCKELL. Tobias Buckell offers 28 solid ideas for finding focus in the task of writing.

There are two places to lose focus. One: yourself sitting down to do the work. Two: inside the work as the work itself loses focus. I’ll tackle number one, as I think that was what was being asked.

Caveat: I believe most writing advice is only as valuable to someone as it works. In other words, I believe all writing advice is a hack to get you to a finished draft and help you find tricks to get there. You try something. If it works, it goes in your toolbox. If it doesn’t, you mark it as not currently effective and move on….

11) Don’t tell anyone about what you’re writing about before sitting down to do it

12) Tell someone how cool what you’re writing about is right before sitting down to do it

I really like this pair. Obviously the answer is to use the alternative that helps you. Larry Niven always perfected his story ideas by explaining them to select people before putting them on paper. In contrast, if I tell somebody an idea, then I never feel the need to actually do the writing…

(7) WRIGHT. Someone showed John C. Wright Liu Cixin’s remarks about the Sad Puppies in Global Times, which triggered Wright into writing a post headlined “Liu Cixin to Sci Fi: Drop Dead”.

Within the same fortnight that David Hartwell announced that the World Fantasy Award trophy would no longer be a bust of Lovecraft, but instead be the head of someone whose sole qualification to represent all of fantasy literature is her skin color, Liu Cixin, the first chinaman ever to win a Hugo Award has publicly spit in the face of those of us who voted for him….

That means that this man is gullible enough to believe either what his translator, or Tor Books, or the mainstream news told him, namely, that we who voted for him were motivated by race-hatred against non-Whites. So we voted for a non-White because his book was good, not because his skin color was correct. Because we treated the award as if it were for the merit of science fiction story telling, not as if it were a political award granted to whatever most helped the far Left. We ignored race. By Morlock logic, that makes us racist.

I realize, my dear readers, that if you read THREE BODY PROBLEM, and weighed its merits, and in your honest judgment you thought it was the best SF novel of the year, and your judgment does not matter because you are not the correct sort of people to have opinions.

Even though your opinion in this one case agreed with our Leftist insect Overlords, the mere fact that the opinion was your taints it.

You are wrongfans.

(8) COLLECTING HEINLEIN. Black Gate’s John ONeill compares the collectible paperback market for science fiction’s Big Three – Asimov, Clarke and Heinlein – and comes away surprised by the demand for Heinlein.

Whatever your opinion on their relative merits, it’s hard to argue against the fact that Heinlein has endured longer than Asimov and Clarke… and virtually any other Twentieth Century genre writer except H.P. Lovecraft, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Philip K. Dick. Much of his work is still in print in mass market paperback today.

Even more impressively, Heinlein has stayed popular and in print with virtually no help from the film industry. With the notable exception of 1997’s Starship Troopers (and the much lesser-known films The Puppet Masters, from 1994, and Predestination, 2014), Heinlein has endured chiefly on his own steam.

(9) MORLEY REMEMBERED. Available online now and for the next few weeks is the BBC 4 radio production 1977, about the creation of the soundtrack for Watership Down.

In 1977 the bestselling children’s novel Watership Down was made into an animated film. Malcolm Williamson, Master of the Queens music, had been hired as the film’s composer. But all was not well. Williamson, a notoriously difficult and complicated man, was under extreme pressure; it was the Queens jubilee year and he was over commissioned. When the film’s conductor, Marcus Dods, arrived looking for the film’s score he found to his horror that all that existed were two small sketches of music which amounted to no more than seven minutes of screen time. With an expensive orchestra and recording studio booked for the following week, the film’s future looked to be in jeopardy. In desperation he turned to the one person he knew could help; composer and arranger Angela Morley. But she, for her own reasons, was going to need some persuading…

Morley needed persuading because this would be her first high-profile composing job after transitioning to female. Morley later worked on other genre music projects, too, scoring for TV’s Wonder Woman, and assisting John Williams on several films including E.T.

(10) BULK SALES. Hey, John King Tarpinian saw rafts of these at his local CostCo and shot a photo.

GRRM at Costco by JKT COMP

Let Suvudu’s Shawn Speakman fill you in on the details —  “Gifts For the Geek – Day 6: George R. R. Martin leather Box Set”.

I’m always on the hunt for leather books!

George R. R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones Leather-Cloth Boxed Set fits that bill. It is a gorgeous representation of the bestselling series, perfect for that Game of Thrones fan in your life.

The books are not full-sized but instead of a traveling variety, easy to take with as well as looking beautiful on the shelf.

(11) EMPIRE PERIOD ARCHITECTURE. “Alamo Drafthouse Unveils ‘Star Wars’ Themed Movie Theater” at ScienceFiction.com.

If you happen to be curious about what it would be like to see a movie on the Death Star, you don’t need to travel to a galaxy far, far away. You can just head to Omaha, Nebraska. The Alamo Drafthouse just opened a Star Wars-themed cineplex that’s absolutely astounding.

There’s a 10-foot replica of the Death Star in the front lobby, and from the looks if it, you can purchase tickets at an Imperial Command center.

(12) SISTERS. The new Tina Fey/Amy Poehler movie Sisters will be released on the same day as The Force Awakens. How will they fight for their audience share? With a Star Wars trailer of their own called “Sisters – The Farce Awakens.”

(13) ALIENS DIG SECONDHAND SMOKE. Saturday Night Lives presents the Pentagon debriefing of three subjects of the first verified alien abduction.

An establishing shot of the Pentagon took us to a room where National Security Agency dudes Aidy Bryant and Bobby Moynihan are interviewing the three participants in “the first verified alien abduction.” Cecily Strong and Gosling are all lah-dee-dah groovin’ on the cosmic beauty of the mind-expanding, I’ve-seen-God-and-all-the-colors-of-the-rainbow Kenny-G-type experience. Then there’s McKinnon, slumped in her chair in a K-Mart blouse and jeans, her hair a rat’s nest, cigarette in hand, relating a series of experiences that were much more, let’s say tactile, than teleological.

 

[Thanks to Petrea Mitchell, JJ, Brian Z., Andrew Porter, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day ULTRAGOTHA.]

374 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 12/6 From the Mixed-Up Pixels of Mrs. Basil E. Frankscroller

  1. Funny how a guy from a theoretically-Communist country is so strongly in favor of direct individual democracy instead of autocracy and hand-picked candidates.

    Historical communist regimes have produced very authoritarian personalities, but in theory, the endpoint of communism is perfect democracy, very similar to what an Anarcho-syndacalist would advocate. A lot of communists have gone through history screaming at the various appalling regimes adorning themselves of the name “You ain’t no communist bruv!”, and quite a high number have paid, as the saying goes, the ultimate price for it.

  2. I understand your anger and disappointment about many things that have been said and done this year. But:

    “They take it as gospel that we’re pretending to like the stuff we say we like.”

    And then:

    “But sure, they like their SF too.”

    Give the bridge building some thought. Seriously.

  3. @Peace

    Having spoken to some III percenters (politics means you meet people! Crazy people!), well, there’s a little caveat to a lot of their melodramatic pledges not to put Americans in internment camps, take their property, limit their assembly rights: most of them would have no trouble doing all of the above to “those” people. Oh, they (the IIIs) are not racist – it’s just that all of those Muslims and brown people et al. aren’t “real” Americans.

    @Et al.
    So Brian Z’s back? Is he saying anything that is not tedious or showing that he’s deliberately missing the point?

  4. Brian Z on December 8, 2015 at 4:44 am said:

    Give the bridge building some thought. Seriously.

    How’s the bridge building working for you?

  5. @Brian

    I tried that. I tried my damndest to bridge build with the puppies. I tried to reason, to see their point of view, to make connections.

    And what did I get for it? Brad Torgersen saying that I wanted to put him a box car to Siberia. Not just other ‘SJWs.’ Me, the bridge builder who had tried to forge peaceful, respectful relations.

    So, No. The Puppies seem to think Delenda Est is the SOP in dealing with non-Puppies. I’m done deluding myself otherwise.

  6. Brian, that was not an ironic or sarcastic statement. They like their sf. I’m not sure anyone actually denies it, however much they question their taste. On the other hand they don’t seem to think we really like our sf at all. Liking sf is not really the common ground you seem to think it is, even when you ignore all the rest. How I feel about it is irrelevant. That is how they present, that is what they think of us, and that is what the puppies facade was built on. But you still think we’re the problem. We’re not perfect, inasmuch as we’re a ‘we’ at all. But we’re not what they say we are. Do you agree? There’s not going to be any bridge until they concede our humanity, and allow that we really like what we say we like. But if they were to do that, they wouldn’t need to be puppies at all.

  7. Nigel:

    But you still think we’re the problem. We’re not perfect, inasmuch as we’re a ‘we’ at all. But we’re not what they say we are. Do you agree? There’s not going to be any bridge until they concede our humanity, and allow that we really like what we say we like.

    If the concession you want is to allow you really like what you say you like, that door is open. Get thee to sadpuppies4.org and have at it.

  8. 1. I think it is in fact possible that the Sad Puppies did not intend to take over the whole ballot. They may have had a sufficiently weak understanding of the voting system as to believe that if they got a third of the votes, they would get a third of the ballot. One beneficiary of the Puppy campaign (not a member of the core group) actually said they thought something like this.

    The Rabid Puppies are another matter. I’m sure VD knew exactly what he was doing. His aim is not to get awards for friends of his, but to destroy the process. Note the difference between BT’s ‘if you like what you see – and I think you will’ and VD’s ‘I suggest you vote for this exactly as it stands’.

    2. As far as I can see it is true that if a special-interest group aims simply to get something it likes on the ballot, EPH will make it easier for them. If you vote only for a single work, EPH tends to boost your vote – not in an easily calculable way, which means this feature is hard to use strategically, but this may not matter if you have no aim other than getting your favourite nominated.

    3. If, on the other hand, they aim to take over the whole ballot, EPH makes this harder. But not impossible; a slate still can win, even with a relatively small share of the vote, if other votes are sufficiently divided. This might happen in the smaller categories, and I’m afraid it may become more likely in the larger categories, as we draw more voters in, making votes more diverse. (If the voting body expanded really massively, to Goodreads levels, votes would probably become less diverse, but here’s little chance of that happening.) This is clearly not a demerit of EPH; the present system is even worse in that respect. But it casts doubt on whether EPH is an adequate solution.

  9. If the concession you want is to allow you really like what you say you like, that door is open

    It’s not what I want, it’s what you want. That concession is a necessary condition to your bridge-building, and it’s only in the gift of the puppies, not me, not us. That door is always open. But they’re the ones who have to walk through it, not me. I like what I like. They like what they like. Now all they have to do is say the same. We’re still insect overlords, of course, but one step at a time.

  10. Andrew M on December 8, 2015 at 5:08 am said:
    1. I think it is in fact possible that the Sad Puppies did not intend to take over the whole ballot. They may have had a sufficiently weak understanding of the voting system as to believe that if they got a third of the votes, they would get a third of the ballot. One beneficiary of the Puppy campaign (not a member of the core group) actually said they thought something like this.

    That may be the case, but they did seem pretty comfortable with having taken over the entire ballot when they had done so.

  11. Has their rhetoric changed? No? So, no. If it was meant to be a gesture it was undermined almost immediately by Paulk et al.

  12. Nigel on December 8, 2015 at 5:28 am said:
    Has their rhetoric changed? No? So, no. If it was meant to be a gesture it was undermined almost immediately by Paulk et al.

    Given that at it’s heart the gesture amounts to “You should no longer simply nominate your preferred works as you have done for years but you can instead participate in a new process for which we are the gatekeepers” it doesn’t seem particularly generous of them.

  13. So Brian Z’s back? Is he saying anything that is not tedious or showing that he’s deliberately missing the point?

    No. He’s still dodging, weaving, dissembling, prevaricating, and outright lying. Nothing new for him.

  14. I think people were justifiably suspicious that it was a gesture to optics more than anything else, while still being a potential step in the right direction.

  15. Looking at the last couple of pages, despite all the blank spots, I think Stephen Colbert had the general sentiment pegged when he said He believes the same thing Wednesday that he believed on Monday, no matter what happened Tuesday. Events can change; this man’s beliefs never will.

  16. I would like to say that I am pleased SP4 is being built much more around user participation.

    It’s still wrongheaded and destructive, to be sure. But I’m pleased at anything that focuses SP supporters on fandom and fiction that they actually celebrate. That was sorely missing last year.

    I much prefer the Puppies converge around avid support for their favorite works, than around avid rage at my favorites. Avid supporters I can actually talk to. Avid supporters might even be more interested in supporting their favorites than in tearing other peoples’ down.

  17. He may not know the “puppy” camp gave him the rocket, since he first stated votes went to him when Kloos withdrew, which seems to be a comment on the nomination stage, then that he would have still had a slim chance of winning, which makes no sense. He has misunderstood, understandably given how complicated the voting system is.

    That’s not even close to what he said. He said that many votes went to Three-Body Problem after Kloos withdrew, which is true: Many Pups who would have otherwise voted for Kloos’ work probably ended up voting for Cixin’s book.

    What he is saying, and is made clear by his next line “That’s something I didn’t want to see”, is that Cixin understands that Puppy bloc voting support is something that taints his award. You can see it in JCW’s comments that suggest that because the Pups voted for Three-Body Problem, that Liu somehow owes them respect. Cixin is making clear that while he is appreciative of the award, he would have preferred to win without bloc voting support. He understands, as you seemingly do not, that it is the Pups who have imported politics into the Hugos, and that their efforts serve to lessen the value of the prize.

    When he says his book would have had a slim chance to win without the Puppies, he is talking about the voting round, not the nominating round. He thinks that had there been no Puppies supporting him, he still might have won, but realizes that it would have been a slim chance.

    In short, if one actually reads what he says, it is clear that Cixin understands the voting process of the Hugos, and also understands the Pups.

  18. JJ: “Leckie’s tweet may be a response to this review of the Ancillary series by a Puppy who apparently read 3 completely different books from the ones I read.”

    That would be unlikely, considering the amount of traffic I get:p Chekhov’s deus ex machina, that’s clever, I like that. I didn’t mention it in the review, but one of the things I do like about the books is how differently people have interpreted them. I may not have enjoyed the two sequels as much as everyone else, but they are well crafted novels!

    Also, please don’t lump me in with the Puppies. While I apparently have leanings towards (some of) the types of stories they enjoy and don’t hate them with the red hot passion a lot folks do, I’ve never nominated one of their suggested works (for instance, my novel ballot last year had The Three Body Problem, Annihilation, A Darkling Sea, and others not on any Puppy Ballot) nor am I adverse to voting for non-puppy works on the final ballot (i.e. I voted for Ancillary Justice ahead of all Puppy works a couple years ago).

  19. @ Andrew M.
    “But it casts doubt on whether EPH is an adequate solution.”

    EPH was a compromise solution where one of the main briefs was to not change the existing nomination process as experienced by members. If EPH turns out to be insufficient (and the time limit added to the proposal allows several years to determine whether it is or not), there are other approaches that could accomplish the goal of weakening the effects of slating. Some are more tweaks like EPH, some redesign the whole nomination process. If EPH looks to not be effective enough (I firmly believe it will be at least partially successful) there is time to set up a committee to investigate and suggest further changes.

  20. I’m optimistic about EPH in the Best Novel categories, and I’m pessimistic about in the short fiction categories. Best Novel gets enough attention for EPH to dampen a slate; short fiction is still so scattered it will have a tough time competing.

    OTOH I’m seeing a lot less interest from the Puppies in short fiction – e.g. 136 notes on Best Novel, compared to only 10 for Best Novelette. I don’t know if the Puppy support base will continue to be riled up long-term over “let’s get our usual 1.5 nominees for best novel and also let’s block out a bunch of categories we don’t actually care about.”

  21. Aaron: maybe he was talking about the final voting – it doesn’t make sense either way. In a “puppy-free” match up between TPB, Ancillary Sword, The Goblin Emperor, Lock In and City of Stairs, without the 500-odd puppies who ranked his book in first place, what possible chance could he have had?

  22. Also, JCW fancies himself a lot smarter than he is.

    He does give that impression. The archaic and pompous, yet curiously ill-chosen vocabulary is a bit of a giveaway.

    Andrew M on December 8, 2015 at 5:08 am said:

    I think it is in fact possible that the Sad Puppies did not intend to take over the whole ballot. They may have had a sufficiently weak understanding of the voting system as to believe that if they got a third of the votes, they would get a third of the ballot.

    The Rabid Puppies are another matter. I’m sure VD knew exactly what he was doing. His aim is not to get awards for friends of his, but to destroy the process. Note the difference between BT’s ‘if you like what you see – and I think you will’ and VD’s ‘I suggest you vote for this exactly as it stands’.

    I think you’re right. And it’s why, if the Sads had been at all apologetic — you know, we didn’t really mean to take over the whole ballot like this — I would have been pretty forgiving.

    But, they made their choices. And aligning themselves with the Beale and the Rabids was one of them.

  23. Aaron: maybe he was talking about the final voting – it doesn’t make sense either way. In a “puppy-free” match up between TPB, Ancillary Sword, The Goblin Emperor, Lock In and City of Stairs, without the 500-odd puppies who ranked his book in first place, what possible chance could he have had?

    An honest one.

  24. maybe he was talking about the final voting – it doesn’t make sense either way. In a “puppy-free” match up between TPB, Ancillary Sword, The Goblin Emperor, Lock In and City of Stairs, without the 500-odd puppies who ranked his book in first place, what possible chance could he have had?

    You seem to have missed where he had it would have been a slim chance. Selective reading seems to be your thing. In addition, had there been different nominees, the voting would have been different. How can you be certain that voters would have voted the same way had there been a different array of books nominated? You seem to think a loss would have been a foregone conclusion for Three-Body Problem, but that seems to be based on nothing but your own wishful thinking.

    The real point is that whether Cixin is right or wrong about what his chances would have been, what he was saying was not what you were claiming he was saying. Once again, you have misrepresented the truth, and whether it was intentional lying or merely the fact that you are sloppy and don’t read very well, it demonstrates that your opinion on these matters is of no value whatsoever.

  25. Honest because people you dislike were not participating?

    Larry Correia, Jim Butcher or John C Wright fans ranking the five works I just mentioned on their ballot is dishonest how?

  26. Honest because all the voters would have been voting for their honest favorites, rather than some of them voting for what Beale ordered them to.

  27. @ Nate Harada
    Is anybody else having a seriously hard time winnowing down their Hugo long-lists into a manageable nominating length? Yeah, but mostly with short stories, probably just because I reas more of those to begin with. Now that I’m delving into more novellas and novelettes, same problem. I never realized how much really excellent work is being produced! Overall a great problem to have, huh? 😉

    @ Amina
    I was a leeetle bit disappointed in the conclusion to Ancillary Mercy. Somehow it didn’t work for me.
    It’s been inactive lately, but there’s a thread for dicussing the Ancillary series. I’d be interested to read your impressions and to discuss here:
    Little Orphan Ancillary

  28. Aaron, quit foaming at the mouth. There’s no way to reconcile the number of puppy voters placing TBP in first (or second) place with the argument that TPB only received votes because Kloos withdrew.

  29. It is very easy. If it us possible to say that TBP won because of the puppies, then they were slating and it won by dishonest means, not because of perceived quality.

    If it hade bern honest voting, then nobody would have known who voted for what. Then TBP wouldn’t have been “a puppy choice”. Only something some people voted for and some not.

  30. Morris Keesan said:

    The article in The Independent, and other sources, suggest that Morley’s transition occurred after the end of The Goon Show‘s run.

    Yes, Morley transitioned in 1972, over a decade after the end of The Goon Show. (But the same year as the “Last Goon Show of All” special, for which she was not available, and I’ve wondered if her surgery was why.)

    Since I know that I’ve heard Morley’s name announced at the end of Goon Show episodes (before I knew that she was the same person who had been earlier announced as Wally Stott), I wonder whether the BBC retro-fitted her name into later broadcasts, which would be enormously enlightened of them.

    I know I’ve heard recordings of Goon Show reruns which had a contemporary BBC announcer talking over the original credits, so it’s possible.

  31. Paul,

    I tried that. I tried my damndest to bridge build with the puppies

    I know you did your best because, as someone who didn’t know your work before this year, I thought your early kerfuffle position was very “open” to the Puppy point of view. I, in fact, couldn’t decide if you were a Puppy cheerleader, or just someone trying super hard to be fair.

    This remained a question for me almost all the way up to WorldCom(or at least till voting closed), when you became a bit more open to the negativity you got from the Puppies. Up until then you did your damnedest to stay impartial and the only reason you weren’t successful was the pups themselves doubling down on their double-downs, proving Steve Colbert right again when he said that Reality has a well-known liberal bias.
    Given I now know the reality, I can’t give you kudos enough for your efforts.

  32. There’s no way to reconcile the number of puppy voters placing TBP in first (or second) place with the argument that TPB only received votes because Kloos withdrew.

    You know, people wouldn’t say you lie about what others have said if you would stop lying about what others have said. That’s not what I said and that’s not what Cixin said. As I pointed out before, when Kloos withdrew, many who would have voted for him threw their support to Three-Body Problem. That’s at least some of the “Puppy” support you have claimed was instrumental in the book’s Hugo win.

    The simple fact is that you’re dishonest at every turn. You can’t on the one hand claim that Cixin would not have won a Hugo without Puppy support, and simultaneously claim that support that would have gone to Puppy-pick Kloos did not go to Cixin. The only person who has even brought up the notion that Cixin only got support because Kloos withdrew is you. It’s not what I have said, or what Cixin said. In short, you’re lying. Again.

    Basically, you’re spreading pure bullshit, and everyone knows it. The real question is, after trying unsuccessfully for months to sell your lies, why do you keep doing so? We know you’re lying. You know we know you’re lying. We’ve told you we know you’re lying. And yet you still lie. Are you so morally bankrupt that you cannot communicate without lying?

  33. Well, in a sense Liu did get support because Kloos withdrew. Because if Kloos hadn’t withdrawn, it would have been impossible for Liu to get a single vote, what with the whole not-being-on-the-ballot thing. I’m pretty sure that’s not what he meant, though.

  34. There’s no way to reconcile the number of puppy voters placing TBP in first (or second) place with the argument that TPB only received votes because Kloos withdrew.

    That’s not surprising because I can’t make sense of what this is supposed to mean. TPB wouldn’t have received any votes at all if Kloos hadn’t withdrawn. The puppies could have voted for anything and it wouldn’t have won if everyone else hadn’t voted for it, too.

  35. Brian Z said:
    There’s no way to reconcile the number of puppy voters placing TBP in first (or second) place with the argument that TPB only received votes because Kloos withdrew.

    Unless you have access to the actual ballots, no one knows WHO voted for what nominee. Or am I mistaken? So there is no actual data that says how many Puppies of any stripe voted for TBP, right? So your statement is completely unsupported by, you know, facts.

  36. I wonder if Brian Z would go away if filers stopped feeding him? Is it fun feeding the troll who keeps spouting the same nonsense month after month? What is it about human psychology which causes us to feed trolls for 9 months+?

  37. TechGrrl1972 on December 8, 2015 at 9:54 am said:

    Unless you have access to the actual ballots, no one knows WHO voted for what nominee. Or am I mistaken? So there is no actual data that says how many Puppies of any stripe voted for TBP, right? So your statement is completely unsupported by, you know, facts.

    We can make a plausible guess given what we know of the voting patterns overall. The margin between the top two novels in the final vote was small – and various people (well Chaos Horizon had a go, and I had a go) have estimated the relative sizes of the voting blocks.

    There were 453 1st preference votes for 3BP that in the race for 2nd place transferred to Puppy nominees. In the last round of preferences for 1st place, the difference between Goblin Emperor and 3BP was 200 votes. So there certainly is cause to say that Puppy votes made a marginal but significant difference – and given that ‘400’ is a common estimate for the size of the Rabid Puppy vote, arguably the additional votes were down to VD’s endorsement.

    Using the numbers provided, it is possible to run a hypothetical version of the 1st place race with those 453 ‘Rabid’ votes missing by deducting them from 3BP’s 1st preferences and then assuming all other votes went the same way. If you do that then Goblin Emperor wins by 253 votes.

    However, what we don’t know is how many votes 3BP lost because of VD’s endorsement in the final preferences. I don’t think it is too outlandish to think that a 200ish people vacillating between 3BP and Goblin Emperor may have been swayed towards GE because they dislike VD. Hard to know.

  38. Tasha Turner on December 8, 2015 at 10:04 am said:

    I wonder if Brian Z would go away if filers stopped feeding him? Is it fun feeding the troll who keeps spouting the same nonsense month after month? What is it about human psychology which causes us to feed trolls for 9 months+?

    Brian can be a bore but he also has a sense of humor and can sometimes be insightful.

  39. Camestros Felapton on December 8, 2015 at 10:57 am said:

    However, what we don’t know is how many votes 3BP lost because of VD’s endorsement in the final preferences. I don’t think it is too outlandish to think that a 200ish people vacillating between 3BP and Goblin Emperor may have been swayed towards GE because they dislike VD. Hard to know.

    Also, if the puppies hadn’t pulled their punchbowl trick, there would have been five different books in the mix. That makes guessing what *would* have happened even harder. It’s entirely possible that TBP would have won without puppy intervention. Or any of the other top four puppy-free books. We’ll never know.

    But claiming credit for that win after pushing it off the final ballot in the first place is just gross.

  40. Using the numbers provided, it is possible to run a hypothetical version of the 1st place race with those 453 ‘Rabid’ votes missing by deducting them from 3BP’s 1st preferences and then assuming all other votes went the same way. If you do that then Goblin Emperor wins by 253 votes.

    Speaking as someone who thinks THE GOBLIN EMPEROR should have won, then, if this is a brag (by Day) about the distorting power of the slate, I still oppose slates.

    If Cixin Liu would prefer to have won (or lost) based on actual reader support as opposed to tell-me-how-to-vote lemmings, then that would explain why he’d still oppose slates.

    And John C. Wright is a bespawling, gnashgabbing saddle-goose, a poltroon and a cumberworld.

  41. I wonder if Brian Z would go away if filers stopped feeding him?

    We all really liked Brian at one point, until his persistent habit of pretending you said something you didn’t to shift the argument emerged. There’s a holdover from his earlier, funnier days when we all got on that keeps people coming back, I suppose. He’s still one of the gang, in his way.

  42. Junego: I’m sure EPH will be at least partially successful; what’s less clear is whether it will be successful enough to make the process worthwhile. Imagine a distribution of votes, on which, under the present system, slates take everything, while under EPH, they get fives spots in four categories, four spots in six categories, and three spots in the remaining seven categories. Clearly EPH has been successful in mitigating the effect of slates; but the Hugos have still suffered massive damage.

    As for the idea of tweaking the system if it doesn’t defeat slates effectively enough, I think there may be a problem with this, because EPH has been widely advertised as a fair system. (The EPH FAQ – very unwisely in my view – says that if slates continue to get on the ballot under EPH, this is a fair and valid result.) So if slates do continue to do well under EPH, their supporters can say ‘Look, you adopted what you said was a fair system, and we are continuing to succeed under it. This shows that we deserve to win, because the books we like are indeed more popular than the books you SJWs like. And now you are trying to change the rules again to stop us. This is manifestly unfair.’.

  43. The only thing I would like to see prevented is the deliberate locking up of the ballot through politicized organization.

    EPH will help but not solve that issue. The nomination weakness remains; I do hope there will be a cultural shift with new voters choosing to vote individually. Time will tell.

    There will always be fannish blocks but hopefully disorganized ones 🙂

  44. Maybe paying attention to Brian Z only when he is funny or on point and ignoring his bad trolling behavior could be tried? I agree some of his filking is great. Reward good behavior and ignore bad? Just a thought from someone who spent way too much time on a “everyone should own guns” troll herself the other day. It is hard some days.

    In book news: I’m about to finish Heather Rose Jones’ Daughter of Mystery and want to thank everyone who recommended it. What a joy. I’ll be grabbing the next book in just a few minutes. Swords, manners, intrigue, romance (hetero & LGBT), cool magic/religious system, family, friendship, clothes, all packed inside great prose. I think it’s hitting most of my happy buttons.

  45. @Andrew M:

    I think EPH is as fair as it’s possible to get, under the constraints of actually being a popular vote, and avoiding an omnipotent moderator who can nix particular nominees at will.

    There must be some logical point at which you say, “OK, Voting Bloc X outweighs everybody else by so very much that we are going to accept their chosen preferences. Say, one hundred Bloc X voters to every non-Block voter. If you don’t have that point, it’s no longer a popular vote.

  46. Brian Z.: if your grand strategy is to keep insulting them until they’re all gone

    My “grand strategy”, as you put it, is not to engage with the Puppies unless and until they stop behaving like tantrum-throwing, bullying children, stop slating, stop politicking, and start behaving like rational, intelligent adults.

    Children get put into Time-Out because engaging with someone who is behaving badly just reinforces and encourages that bad behaviour.

    I’ll cut children some slack, because they have to learn how to behave. The Puppies are ostensibly adults, and have no excuse for behaving like tantrum-throwing, bullying children. I’ll engage when they stop behaving badly and deserve that engagement. So far I see no indication that this will ever happen.

     
    Brian Z.: If the concession you want is to allow you really like what you say you like, that door is open.

    No, it’s not. That’s not a “concession”. That’s one of the required terms for engagement. Since the Puppies refuse to accept that the humanity and preferences of Non-Puppies are part of the terms of engagement, there’s no possibility of meaningful engagement.

     
    Brian Z.: Get thee to sadpuppies4.org and have at it.

    No, Brian, you get over there and have at it. You have no credibility whatsoever. If you were really so concerned about the future of the Hugos as you claim, you would be over on the Sad Puppy blogs begging them to stop politicking, to stop slating, and to stop behaving like spoilt, petulant children — instead of telling everyone else here that it is their job to do this.

    But you’re not doing that. because that’s not your real agenda.

  47. Kurt Busiek on December 8, 2015 at 12:40 pm said:

    Speaking as someone who thinks THE GOBLIN EMPEROR should have won, then, if this is a brag (by Day) about the distorting power of the slate, I still oppose slates.

    If Cixin Liu would prefer to have won (or lost) based on actual reader support as opposed to tell-me-how-to-vote lemmings, then that would explain why he’d still oppose slates.

    I suppose a brag about his faction rather than his slate per-se. Either way it is a feeble brag. Every vote makes some marginal difference. That some puppies voted for a worthy winner in the end after so much disruption is not the world’s best redemption story. Rather like the guy on the second Death Star who installed the railings around the chute that Darth Vader throws the Emperor into, boasting that he helped defeat the Empire because he could have made the railings taller but chose not to.

    And John C. Wright is a bespawling, gnashgabbing saddle-goose, a poltroon and a cumberworld.

    And a flibbertigibbet to boot.

  48. Kurt Busiek: And John C. Wright is a bespawling, gnashgabbing saddle-goose, a poltroon and a cumberworld.

    Camestros Felapton: And a flibbertigibbet to boot.

    I hate to have to say it
    But I very firmly feel:
    JCW’s not an asset to the abbey.

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