The editor fails to hide how ornery all this Puppy news makes him, in today’s Scroll.
(1) D23 is this weekend and attendees received this Drew Struzan poster for Star Wars: The Force Awakens. It’s a souvenir edition — Struzan will create another primary poster for the film.
(2) Just in time for WorldCon, “Tragedy of the Goats”, Francis Hamit’s epic story about, sex, security,and science fiction Fandom. Download it to your Kindle today and read it on the plane. (No puppies were harmed in this production.)
(3) Spokane Public Radio devoted about three minutes to “Worldcon Brings Science Fiction and Hugo Awards to Spokane”
Tom Whitmore, head of publicity, spoke to me over Skype and explained the twist in this year’s awards. Normally their 10,000 members nominate freely, but this year two writers groups formed a coalition to lobby for certain scifi works.
Whitmore: “And they were very successful in getting the nominations out there. This was not against any of the rules, it’s just not what’s been done in the past, it was against social norms.”
Hugo Awards recognize science fiction works, as voted on by Worldcon members.
And, he says, it has upset a lot of other members. Critics say these writer groups want to make the nominees more homogenous like the genre used to be, ie: winners would be less diverse.
That doesn’t sit well with one very-well known, award winning female writer. Vonda McIntyre will be a guest author at the convention.
McIntyre: “The most amazing writer going when I first started was Samuel R. Delaney…”
A science fiction writer who’s black, and gay.
And who’s named Delany.
(4) If Tom Knighton hadn’t titled his post “Why I no longer care” it would be easier to focus on his actual point:
I read for fun. If I want to challenge myself, I read non-fiction. I’m a damn political writer. I challenge myself daily. I read fiction for fun, and it’s not your place to suggest I challenge myself in what I do for pleasure. It’s not anyone’s place.
The truth is that those books I’m told I should challenge myself over are books I don’t want to read. I don’t care how it handles homosexuality. I care whether it tells a good story and whether I’ll like the protagonists. Now, if those protagonists are homophobic, I’m 99 percent sure I won’t like them. I don’t need to be told that the protagonists are gay, straight, trans, or whatever. That’s not pertinent to my interests. Whether the story is fun, is.
Somewhere along the line, folks got hung up on sex and sexuality. It’s pretty annoying.
However, it’s become clear that for some people, a book’s “message” is vital. Even books from bygone eras aren’t safe from being dissected for their social message rather than their story.
I’ve been one of those trying to argue that message fiction was a bad idea. I still think it is. But now, I just don’t care what those folks do.
(5) George R.R. Martin pre-interprets how any of several possible Campbell Awards winners will be an early sign of how the wind is blowing on Hugo night.
If Wesley Chu takes the Campbell, as he should, I think we will be in for a fairly reasonable night in Spokane. There will be some winners from the slates, and some categories will go the No Award, but most of the rockets will actually go to deserving work. If Chu wins, I think the vast majority of the fans in the auditorium will be more happy than not by night’s end.
If No Award wins, however… if No Award takes the Campbell, it will represent a huge and ominous victory for the “nuclear option,” for the faction of fandom that wants to destroy the village in order to save it. A victory by No Award in this category will signify that the voters decided to throw the baby out with the bathwater, and will likely betoken a long ugly night ahead, with category after category going to No Award. Myself, I think this unlikely. I think the hardcore “vote No Award on everything” voters are a small (if noisy) minority. But I could be wrong. It could happen.
And what if one of the four Puppy finalists takes the tiara?
That would represent a victory for the Puppies, certainly. But even there, certain distinctions should be made. Rolf Nelson was a candidate of the Rabids, but not the Sads. A victory by Nelson would be a singular triumph for Teddy Beale and the most extreme elements of Puppydom… and could suggest even worse results ahead, up to and including VD actually winning one or both of the Editing Hugos for which he is nominated.
Kary English, on the other hand, represents a much more moderate side of Puppydom. Though initially put forward by both the Sad and Rabid slates, VD later dropped her and removed her from his suggested ballot entirely when English put up a couple of blog posts that distanced herself from the Puppy party line.
(6) Miles Schneiderman of YES! Magazine joins the ranks of finger-waggers who haven’t bothered to learn how to spell “Torgersen” in his widely-linked critique “Sad Puppies, Rabid Chauvinists: Will Raging White Guys Succeed in Hijacking Sci-Fi’s Biggest Awards?”
In other words, Torgerson seems to think there are merely a handful of science fiction and fantasy stories worth anyone’s time: the ones that are just plain fun. People don’t want uncomfortable ideas or unorthodox characters; they just want “a rip-roaring good story” full of “broad-chested heroes” with “pioneering derring-do” who, of course, “run off with beautiful women.” Anything else is false advertising, tricking the unsuspecting reader into a story with complicated messages and cultural commentary, when all they wanted was escapist adventure. Torgerson’s version of “old school” speculative fiction seems to be primarily for and about men. Get out of our treehouse, girls! We’re playing space pirates. Didn’t you see the sign?
Not only does this view denigrate women, it denigrates fans of speculative fiction. In fact, it disrespects the entire genre by negating the value of any story element that doesn’t contribute to the reader’s entertainment high. As the Canadian journalist Jeet Heer points out, “the faux-populism of the Puppy brigade is actually insulting to the right, since it assumes that conservatives can’t be interested in high culture.” The Puppy movement is anti-intellectual at its core, and thus anathema to the genre it seeks to redefine.
(7) Jugger Grimrod (would I kid you?) says the butcher’s bill at the Hugos won’t be as bad as you’ve heard, on Silence Is A Weapon.
Everyone says the Hugos will survive, and I tend to agree. I think the Puppy voters will get tired of throwing away their money in the name of making whatever statement they’re trying to make. They will also have a harder time maintaining the charade that their campaign is about anything other than self-promotion, because after this year there will be fewer neutral parties willing to appear on any slate. The nomination rules will probably be changed to make slates less effective, although I’m afraid that will make the whole process more confusing and could scare some potential nominators away. In the long run this will mostly be forgotten, but in the short term it probably means that at least two WorldCons are going to have their Hugos basically invalidated, and I don’t like that they have to make that sacrifice. In my opinion the harassment policy should be invoked against the Puppy organizers and they should be banned from the convention and disqualified from the awards on that basis. I get that the Hugo organizers won’t do this, they would argue that the integrity of the awards depends on strict adherence to the bylaws, not arbitrary decisions by administrators. I could make some counter arguments but I don’t want to go down that road right now. I will just say that when a group has a stated goal of disrupting the awards, it wouldn’t bother me at all if they were barred from participating.
(8) Brianne Reeves breaks down the Antonelli story from a politicial perspective in “Let’s Talk about the Hugo Awards (Now with more libertarianism!)”.
Most recently, a false police report was filed by a Hugo nominee against another, leading to a full WorldCon investigation and the nominee’s work being rejected from a magazine. In the fall out, death threats and harassment ensued. We’ll be talking a little bit about this. For the full background on the story, you can see some of the posts I’ll link below.
While the “victim” of the false police report has accepted Lou Antonelli’s apologies, the actions of Antonelli haven’t ceased to have consequences. Antonelli’s actions in particular aren’t really what I want to talk about. I’m going to be addressing the actions we have seen in our community more broadly. It feels a bit ridiculous that I should even have to do this; these behaviors are far from common. Unfortunately, they’ve insinuated themselves into our world.
I’m approaching much of this from a more libertarian perspective. This is for a few reasons (1) I think that a libertarian discourse about rights and the role of the state is fitting for the behaviors we have seen in this community; and (2) I think that a discourse about positive and negative rights is a broadly applicable approach for the rhetoric that accompanies the behaviors we have seen recently.
I believe Lou Antonelli acted on impulse, not in furtherance of either well- or poorly-considered libertarian principles, though Reeves’ post was interesting to me just the same.
(9) Marcus Bales’ poetic comment appears on Blog, Jvstin Style:
Ballade of Sad Puppies
[first of four verses]
Who knows within what hidden garret
Vox Day scribes his sexist rant,
or why Correia tries to parrot
his vicious views with careless cant,
or Torgerson begins to prate
of how their work has been ignored
providing cover for their slate
behind his merited award;
they’re powered by their privileged fear.
Oh, where are the pros of yesteryear?
(10) I often search Twitter for File 770 references but rarely for Glyer. It seems I have missed a few gems as a result.
https://twitter.com/benjanun_s/status/630820349010010112
https://twitter.com/benjanun_s/status/632156189296472064
Vile 770 speaks truth #SadPuppies Mike Glyer Aug 14,2015 16:16
Justice has been done — thanks for writing this post.Vile 770 is a kicker.
— Quilly Mammoth (@Quilly_Mammoth) August 15, 2015
[Thanks to redheadedfemme and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Cubist .]
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I’ll save you the trouble: Doctor Who wins.
I’d play a novelette bracket though.
OK a bracket to decide what is the SECOND best SF/F TV show ever. Darn, Adventure Time just won already. OK THIRD best show ever.
@RedWombat, Bloodstone75, Jim Henley, et al.
Yes, these Hallelujah filk deserve the Orson Welles’ slowclap.
I would complain that they’re stuck in my head now, but so was the original.
I think you misspelled My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.
My dream was to do live-action TV as its own bracket, with a separate animated bracket later.
ETA: There is the question of where to put the puppets (Thunderbirds, basically).
Jim Henley —
Wot, no Captain Scarlet, Joe 90, or Stingray? For shame, for shame!
@Jim
As Kyra found, you’ve got to draw some arbitrary lines for the sake of keeping it manageable, so live action seems a reasonable choice.
Puppetry: I think you misspelled Captain Scarlet there, but I’d probably leave puppetry off, not least because someone’s chances of having seen a show originally aimed at a younger demographic are heavily affected by exactly how old they were at the time of transmission.
Well, I won’t do it at all without Kyra’s blessing. For all I know she’s ready to get back into the bracket game.
What about live action Saturday morning shows like Electra Woman and DynaGirl, Land of the Lost, and the rest of the Krofft stuff?
I don’t know that they care that much about the Hugos. What they are trying to do is build in group solidarity, so a victimisation narrative suits them very well (as it does RH for the same reason.) Paranoia against the other is not just a given with people doing this, it’s actually necessary.
I agree that the Hugos don’t matter that much to them per se, but their narrative heavily depends upon the assertion that they represent the “true” fans of science fiction against those literary types who have taken over WorldCon. Soon after this Saturday, the actual vote tallies will be revealed, and I think it will tell a very different story. There were more than 5,000 votes cast in this year’s Hugo Awards, and I’m going to guess that well under a thousand of those were Puppy supporters. When a Puppy-dominated category like Best Novella gets buried under “No Award” by three to four thousand votes, it is going to be very difficult to maintain the “we represent the silent majority” stance the Pups have taken.
That won’t stop them from doing it. Paranoid conspiracy theorists always come up with some way to explain away reality, and the Pups have proven themselves to be deeply paranoid and deeply entrenched in conspiracy theory thinking. But it will make it a lot easier for everyone else to dismiss their assertions as just wishful thinking on the Pups’ part.
In short, after Saturday, there will be a pretty firm basis to point and laugh at the Pups.
The newest post by Hoyt reinforces the ridiculous false dichotomy between “literary fiction” and “Science fiction” that many of the Puppies seem to make.
http://accordingtohoyt.com/2015/08/16/its-all-about-the-bling/
My response on twitter was to bring up the counter example of Gene Wolfe.
@Paul: On the subject of false dichotomies, a few years ago I reread “Nightfall.” There’s a quiet passage as the gloaming deepens in the room where Asimov describes the atmosphere and, via good old objective correlatives, the mood. I was shocked by how powerful the writing was.
Almost-random example number two: Larry Niven’s short story, “Convergent Series.” That is sneakily a very deep work.
There’s a button ready to shift effortlessly to Hurrah, we have forced the evil SJWs to destroy the things they love! That’s what we intended all along!
Is there some method I’m missing of viewing all comments at once? Clicking “older comments” over and over to scan through 400+ of them, never showing more than a single page at a time, kind of a pain.
Best will be if Kary English wins short story and Dox Vey claims victory based on having used reverse psychology by leaving her off his own ballot.
I say we combine the three and create everyone’s new favourite show: Dr Starfly
assuming the Pups are No Awarded, the response will be more like “we ARE the silent majority of SF fans, but Worldcon is not representative!” Hoyt is already laying the ground for “Nobody cares about the Hugos any more, so it’s a good thing we didn’t win!”
Unfortunately, even though the award means nothing she pledges to keep fighting for it.
@Oneiros I’d watch that… should make a good Netflix series
Paul,
I have to give Hoyt one thing, the para that starts –
Is as good a take down on JC Wright as any I have read.
Geeez. They’ve just gone full on anti-intellectualism haven’t they?
Oh, and for Achievement in Whinging, Torgersen keeps on keepin’ on in the comments of the prior article on Hoyt. Poor Brad. If only there was some reason, some explanations as to why people were so meeeeeeaaaaan to him.
Daniel B — Generally, I click the “Older Comments” once, then edit the address line so that the page number is now “1”: e.g. “https://file770.com/?p=24426&cpage=1#comments”
@NelC
Really? Will that turn the comments into one verrrrry long page? If so, I’ve got to try that.
Oh, and for Achievement in Whinging, Torgersen keeps on keepin’ on in the comments of the prior article on Hoyt.
The level of conspiranoid delusion Torgersen is displaying in that comment is breathtaking. Of course, he also repeats his worn out lie that the slate process was “above board and democratic”. I wonder how he is going to feel on Saturday when it becomes apparent that the slate nominees got their clocks cleaned in the voting?
How is he going to feel on Saturday? Completely justified. The slate nominees getting their clocks cleaned will prove it’s all an evil SJW conspiracy, don’t you know.
Thanks @NelC! I actually have been doing that, but you’re still limited to, I don’t know, 40 comments at a time–editing the URL just prevents you from having to scroll to the “older comments” link. Useful, but still a pain. I know WordPress (which File770 uses) has settings for the number of posts to show, and there are plugins available to extend that functionality evidently (sadly, I just looked and couldn’t find anything that works from the client side). With all the huge 300 and more postings, it makes it very difficult to follow a sub-thread (or search for the latest outrageous thing somebody said) the way it’s done now. I hope Mike looks into making it easier.
@Oneiros: A moment of stunned silence followed by the clatter of a thousand fanfic writers’ keyboards.
Hoyt just says whatever comes to her mind, doesn’t she? No matter whether it bears any resemblance to reality or not. Here’s her take on history:
The problem with this is that it ignores actual U.S. history. The people who were naming the towns weren’t hardscrabble dirt farmers. They were the preachers – who often had the most education in the area. Or the wealthy landowners – who were rich enough that they and their children could get educations that sometimes even included going to college. Or they were wealthy merchants, or bankers, or local politicians, or some other member of the upper classes.
I have no idea whether the hardscrabble “commoner” colonists of the pre-Revolutionary War colonial era were lovers of Shakespeare, but the names of towns in the U.S. isn’t a guide to that at all. The names of towns are a guide to what the wealthy and influential colonists liked. Or what the royal governor liked. Hoyt should really stop opining on U.S. history. Her lack of knowledge concerning the subject becomes more apparent every time she does.
@Lis – Yup. In answer to the “Hey if SJW factions control everything, how DID you guys manage to sweep the nominations?” question, the answer will be, the evil SJW masterminds let it happen, focused everyone’s attention on us, and *then* fiddled the votes to deal a stinging massive defeat to the Puppies by having them No Awarded or ranked below No Award to try to make them go away once and for all.
But it won’t work, we will be back next year, stronger than ever, MWA HA HAHAHA!
etc.
Brad’s still sticking to the idea that he was open and transparent I see. Has he ever explained the open and transparent selection method? I know he’s refused in the past to say what he so likes about
Rubbish I found on rec.arts.funnyWisdom from my internets because it would be unfair to the other nominees, but surely if openness and transparency is such a key part of the appeal of puppism…Oh, and Brad, if you’re reading. I am pretty sure that while there might have been one or two people calling you those things, the vast, vast majority of the mainstream fans you despise so much have been calling you someone who proudly stands shoulder to shoulder with racists and homophobes. That’s not quite the same thing, we know that, though it’s still not something most of us would chose to do.
Bloodstone, WOW!
Cat, glad you liked Hangnail!
I suggest Dr Starfly the vampire slayer-files of thrones.
Why not have a Worst SF TV Show contest? The competition would be fierce. Space: 1999 vs. Lost In Space, for example…
I think no matter how bad the science fiction show, someone will have loved it and won’t understand all the hate.
Worst SF TV show: Small Wonder. No contest.
Jack Lint, you mean,
I think no matter how bad the science fiction,
Just imagine if someone said “oh, it’s so bad to hint that someone is Christian; even Theodore Beale doesn’t deserve that; I apologize.” I don’t know about you, but I’d think that person was anti-Christian. I’d be especially likely to think so if they had a habit of linking, say, going to mass or singing in a church choir with people or ideas they despised that had nothing to do with those things. So I think it’s reasonable to call Brad homophobic in light of his calling Scalzi gay and his subsequent retraction.
I also believe that people can learn better, grow and change, so when Brad has managed to post for a year or two without, for example, associating “pink and poufy” with ideas or people he despises, I’ll think about re-evaluating my belief. But until then, we have every right to think of Brad as homophobic himself and someone who supports racists and sexists and homophobes.
If you’re one of the people who thinks you have to go all the way to carrying out violence against people before you count as a ‘cist or a ‘phobe, this attitude is going to seem uncalled for to you; I get that. I’ll live with that.
@Aaron
I have to give Brad credit. He settled on his talking points at the start of SP3, and he hasn’t let little things like intervening events or other people’s arguments shift him from his course!
I have to give Brad credit. He settled on his talking points at the start of SP3, and he hasn’t let little things like intervening events or other people’s arguments shift him from his course!
Or even inconvenient things like facts.
Martin absolutely destroyed every one of Brad’s rationales with actual facts, and in the face of that all Brad did was shift the goalposts until it became clear that wasn’t going to convince anyone. Then Brad resorted to whining.
With Brad, it always comes back to whining.
Jim Henley @ 10:17 am: Yes.
@Cat
Brad has said a number of things that display homophobia. I do however appreciate Brad supporting the equal marriage result of the Supreme Court.
With Brad, it’s all about ‘the whining post’.
@NickPheas
I struggled with this I think you have to selectively apply the words to different things – ‘open and transparent’ to Brad I think means it was an openly announced slate whose entries were decided upon by Brad. ‘Democratic’ I think means the votes were cast (democratic!) and those votes were counted fairly (doubly democratic!).
How slating and dictated lists are supporting a democratic and fair process ? Well your guess is as good as mine.
@Shambles
Brad on gay marriage:
OK, it’s better than outright opposition.
Oh, and for Achievement in Whinging, Torgersen keeps on keepin’ on in the comments of the prior article on Hoyt.
The other thing about Brad’s long, whiny, and fact-free post is that he cautions Paul against allying himself with the evil SJWs, because those SJW will inevitably turn on him over some imagined crime and cast Paul as the villain. I’ve noticed the whine-brigade of Pups claims this all the time, but in practice it seems that it never actually happens.
It is, it seems, an article of faith among the Pups (and actually, conservatives in general), that their enemies are just second away from falling upon each other like a pack of wolves. On the other hand, we’ve seen the Pups turn on people they claimed to support who deviated from the ideologically-approved line: witness Brad lashing out at Juliette Wade, or the hand-wringing over Bellet and Kloos leaving the slate, or how Beale turned on Black Gate and English when they didn’t follow his lead all the way. Once again, the claims that the “SJWs” will turn on each other seems like nothing more than a case of the Pups engaging in serious projection.
@Mark
Thanks for the link.
Not full throated support but acknowledgement of the other.
Now if this recognition of the right of people who have differing views to exist/vote could be applied by Brad to the members of WorldCon we might get somewhere.
The people who were naming the towns weren’t hardscrabble dirt farmers.
Railroads, in the west, named a lot of places (you have to have some way to say where you are).
Most of the places I know about got the names of a prominent resident or a local feature. The really early towns tended to get named for where the first residents came from (see, in particular, New England).
@PJ Evans
I enjoy how they seem to miss the fact that a lot of place names happened to be native American and how many are named after the Classics. Driving through NY state is a role call of places mentioned by Homer. She also misses the fact that the first onset wave of settlers who could read were largely Purtians of one sect or another, which abhorred the theatre as filth. Shakespeare was essentially broad entertainment, the kind of which they were fleeing.
You know, I would happily give them all the Hugos if they promised to never talk about economics again. They just recently put out an argument against minimum wage so facile that it doesn’t even should an elementary understanding of the dynamics of wages and market effects in a modern economy.
@Dex
I am still trying to wrap my head around things I have seen repeatedly in the comments there. For example, a progressive income tax is bad because it encourages wealth accumulation ?
Seriously is this an actual debatable economic position ? It seems to be putting the cart before the horse to me.