Pixel Scroll 8/4 The Dead Wallaby of Clown Town

Money, money, money – we cover the spectrum from scarcity to infinite wealth in today’s Scroll.

(1) David Pascoe (“Trekking With The Green-Eyed Monster” on According To Hoyt) knows something that nobody else knows. ‘Cause he made it up:

It occurs, what with the Hugo voting just finished, and the results to be announced in a couple of week, that most of the Puppy Kickers are suffering from an excess of envy. I mean, think about it: the prospect of Jim Butcher (or Kevin Anderson, etc.) receiving a shiny, rocket-shaped object is so painful to them that they’re willing to ruin the award’s (remaining shreds of) credibility to prevent it. It’s accepted wisdom at this point that a move to limit voting to attending memberships will be advanced at the WSFS business meeting at Sasquan. While there’s a good deal of speculation over whether such a motion will even get approved (what then, would supporting members get for their hard earned filthy lucre? How could WorldCon possibly garner any kind of diverse, international support by shutting out anybody who can’t afford to fly across an ocean to come to the majority of conventions?), that it’s not reduced to backroom rumor mills is a sign of how strong the desire is to keep out the undesirable types.

Use this link to keep track of new business actually submitted to Sasquan.

(2) Bob Eggleton has some more anecdotes and critiques about Worldcon art shows, and in the last paragraph alludes to professional shows that are competing effectively for artists’ attention, which may be the most important influence on the fate of the Worldcon art show.

Illuxcon had risen in 2008 and, it started being for many pro artists the model for such a quality artshow. Security, professional hangings, a sense of overall quality to the show and one where artists, art fans and art collectors could come and be treated all well. No politics or stupidity or getting caught in some “fan” feud or political battle. Everyone gets on. Everyone does fairly well. Spectrum Live also fills a similar need. So maybe there is hope, but it requires a new and consistent sustainable model for such shows.

(3) Ahrvid Engholm’s post about Girl With The Dragon Tattoo author Stieg Larsson at Europa SF reminds readers about Larsson’s beginnings as a fanzine fan, and draws attention to a successor’s work on a new Millennium series novel that is coming out late this month.

An avid science fiction reader from an early age, he became active in Swedish science fiction fandom around 1971; co-edited, together with Rune Forsgren his first fanzine, Sfären, in 1972; and attended his first science fiction convention, SF•72, in Stockholm. Through the 1970s, Larsson published around 30 additional fanzine issues; after his move to Stockholm in 1977, he became active in the Scandinavian SF Society where he was a board member in 1978 and 1979, and chairman in 1980. In his first fanzines, 1972–74, he published a handful of early short stories, while submitting others to other semi-professional or amateur magazines. He was co-editor or editor of several science fiction fanzines, including Sfären and FIJAGH!; in 1978–79, he was president of the largest Swedish science-fiction fan club, Skandinavisk Förening för Science Fiction (SFSF).

The Swedish morning paper Dagens Nyheter August the 2nd published an “exclusive diary” by David Lagercrantz, covering his work with writing the new Millennium novel.

(4) Responding to a report that “Most of the [Hugo] votes were cast in the final week before the deadline, over 3,000,” Vox Day suggests —

Something to consider: on July 24th, I posted my complete Hugo recommendations. I am NOT saying those are all Puppy votes, only that there may be a connection.

(5) J. A. Micheline explains “Why I’m Boycotting Marvel Comics” at Comics Alliance.

First, came your quiet decision to hand the new Blade book over to two white creators. To be clear, I have no reason to think either creator will do a bad job on this book, but I was disappointed that one of Marvel’s most prominent black heroes would be handed to white people yet again.

I feel like I have to say this five or six times. Whenever this comes up, I get a tsunami of white people wondering what my problem is and suggesting I’m racist for saying white people can’t write about people of color. It’s not that white people can’t; it’s not even that they shouldn’t (except in some circumstances that I have written about almost ad nauseam recently) — it’s that white people are the ones who, historically and systemically, are consistently offered the opportunity. And in 2015, perhaps the right thing to do is to let people of color have a turn.

But that wasn’t the dealbreaker for Micheline, it was the string of gaffes that followed, beginning with —

The moment you and I really started having a problem, Marvel, was when your editor-in-chief all but laughed off the numerous critiques of the variants. Axel Alonso’s interview with CBR was unspeakably condescending and horrendously dismissive. From using scare quotes to frame the discussion to referring, to outcry from David Brothers and other readers/critics as a “small but very loud contingent,” to — and this is the part that I pretty much can’t forgive — indicating that we had suddenly learned the phrase ‘cultural appropriation’ and were eager to use it in an essay.

(6) Monty Python’s Terry Gilliam will appear at Live Talks Los Angeles on October 19, 2015 at the Alex Theatre. It’s the launch event for Gilliam’s memoir.

Gilliamesque-hc-s-227x300In Gilliamesque, his “pre-posthumous memoir,” he offers an intimate glimpse into his world in this fascinating book illustrated with hand-drawn sketches, notes, and memorabilia from his personal archive.

From his no-frills childhood in the icy wastes of Minnesota, to some of the hottest water Hollywood had to offer, via the cutting edge of 1960s and ’70s counter-culture in New York, L.A. and London, Terry Gilliam’s life has been as vivid, entertaining and unorthodox as one of his films.

(7) Larry Correia is selling a second series of challenge coins. Jack Wylder gives the details at the link.

2) Instead we’re doing it through the MHI Swag page: https://mhiswag.myshopify.com/ Important: Do NOT order yet! Wait until all 12 designs are finalized and up there so you only have to order once. Even if you’re planning on buying a complete set, hold off- we have a few other items we’ll be introducing along the way that might interest you. In fact, I’m not even going to put them on the site until all has been revealed…

This is the first of the series —

ProvisionalPUFF

(8) At Bloomberg, Noah Smith writes about “Star Trek Economics: Life After the Dismal Science”.

I grew up watching “Star Trek: The Next Generation” (easily the best of the Star Trek shows). There’s one big, obvious thing missing from the future society depicted in the program. No one is doing business. There is almost no one buying and selling, except for a few species for whom commerce is a form of traditional religion. Food and luxuries are free, provided by “replicators” — machines capable of creating essentially anything from pure energy. Recreation, provided by virtual reality, is infinite in scope. Scarcity — the central defining concept of economics — seems to have been eliminated.

Is this really the future? Is it possible? Is it something we want?

Wait ‘til Smith discovers the Culture novels of Iain M. Banks…

[Thanks to Martin Morse Wooster and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Kurt Busiek.]

363 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 8/4 The Dead Wallaby of Clown Town

  1. And at the halftime mark, Lord of the Rings has roused itself from its slumber and is winning across all categories. It’s far from over yet but … our challengers have an uphill battle at this point.

  2. 1. The Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien
    2. The Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien
    3. The Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien
    4. The Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien
    5. The Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien … but from the brackets, Zelazny should’ve ended up in second place …possibly tied with Freedom & Necessity.

  3. @seth gordon

    I think Nick’s analogy is a little off. The slate making of the puppies resembles ‘Machine Politics’ more than it does the tactics of communists. Though I know all of you are bitterly opposed to slates, the reality is that the creation of a slate mostly just resembles the creation of a political party, with the same general underlying logic behind it to boot. Prior to the creation of the puppy slates, in what I generally perceived as your idealized form of worldcon democracy in action, potentially hundreds of ‘candidates’ would each draw support from a few potential voters. Those few voters would then managed to get the work on the ballot. The rest of the crowd would then familiarize themselves with the works that got noticed by only a few and then make a more informed decision from among the five.

    Essentially, that was the same state of affairs that existed in the United States after the revolutionary war, (in a loose sort of way), except for the overshadowing presence of Washington as the general who had won the war. Presumably, whoever followed Washington would have come from a massive pool of potential candidates in a similar sort of winnowing out process, except people like Thomas Jefferson had other ideas and did the functional equivalent of creating ‘slates’ for people to cast their votes for.

    I guess what I’m saying is that a lot of folks seem utterly revolted by the notion that slates actually occurred and the fact that they were successful, but the reality is that this process in a democratic pool is not unusual at all and usually the first group that organizes successfully in the chaos is the one that reaps disproportionate rewards for doing so. So, I don’t really find the notion of a slate repulsive. It’s just a tactic that people use that becomes less successful over time, (unless the party in question is really, really good at ‘Machine’ politics).

  4. Though I know all of you are bitterly opposed to slates, the reality is that the creation of a slate mostly just resembles the creation of a political party, with the same general underlying logic behind it to boot.

    Yeah, I don’t think most Hugo voters want political parties in the Hugos, either.

  5. Cassy B on August 5, 2015 at 1:33 pm said:
    Paul, doesn’t that make Puppies, well, anti-capitalism? If Puppies don’t like a corporation giving big contracts to people, I guess that Puppies must be communists…

    Well it makes them anti-capitalists. Now if only there was a name for an ideology that was simultaneously rightwing, anti-capitalist, nationalistic and prone to conspiracy theories in which there is an international plot by socialists and major corporations to deprive folks of what is rightfully theirs…but I just can’t think of a name for it. I went through the whole dictionary from A to M and from O to Z and I couldn’t find anything like that (oh I skipped F because it has swears in it)

  6. 1. The Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien
    2. The Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien
    3. The Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien
    4. The Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien
    5. Blood Merdian, Cormac McCarthy

    As much as the shine has come off of Tolkien since I was a tiny kid reading it for the first time, it’s probably the most-read book in my collection. The paperback box set my mom bought me for Christmas around when I was 10, in… ’82? ’83?, is completely falling apart from having been read probably 20 times. Maybe more. When the first LotR movie came out, after it was done I had a semi-panic attack worrying I’d die in a car crash or something before the next one came out. And had the same thing the next year. I even eventually learned not only to dig Tom Bombadil, but to look forward to his parts. The parts I found exciting when I was a kid (Moria, the Inn at Bree and that whole fleeing-the-Shire bit, the battles – the fun stuff), while I still dig most of them (particularly fleeing the Shire) quite a bit, I’ve found I’m stoked on the moments of calm, on the travel scenes (seriously) – the stuff that almost bounced me off the books when I was 10.

    Blood Meridian (I think it qualifies, no? There’s definitely some weird stuff going on that seems a little magical realism or speculative to me) is one of the grimmest and at the same time beautiful books I’ve ever read.

    If Blood Meridian doesn’t qualify, then Joe Abercrombie’s “Red Country”. Yeah, I kinda dig the grimdark.

  7. A few comments on various things.

    There hasn’t really been any indication from the Puppy side as to why they selected some of the entries other than they wanted to keep SJW’s off the ballot and any attempts to get them to do so have been met with the usual responses.

    For me, and for a lot of others, what it came down to is that things I liked and put on the nomination ballot that I felt were worthy of Hugo consideration never had a chance. My ballot was filled out with that in mind.

    The frog discussion brings to mind Connie Willis’ first published story, Santa Titicaca, about sentient frogs (which has rightly never been reprinted). One time when someone brought a copy to her at a signing where she was next to GRRM, George started going “Ribbit, Ribbit”. That story also disqualified her from winning the Campbell award several years later when she next published much better stories.

    Finally, in regards to the novelizations of Lord of the Rings movies, I had a bookseller friend relate an instance when someone was asking when the other two books in the Hobbit trilogy would be out, apparently thinking they were the actual novelizations of the movies.

  8. I’m calling a tie on all the sections.

    I’m finding that I’m using different criterea to judge depending on the pair I’m trying to choose between. So I can think that LoL < SG and SG < LotR and LotR < LoL all at the same time.

    Tomorrow it may be different.

  9. Oh, and I guess one more thing: God Stalk!

    (posting this’un to get follow-ups, because I forgot to do that the first time)

  10. 1. THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING OF ERRETH-AKBE
    The Tombs of Atuan, Ursula K. Le Guin

    Ursula plunged her nameless blade into the single rheumy eye of the Tolkien. It fell to its knees and then toppled sideways into the rotting parchment that lined its lair, shuddered once, and was still. “No living man am I,” she said, quietly, because who has time to think up dialogue when they’re fighting for their life? “No, wait. Maybe ‘I am no man!’ would sound better? Less… wordy?” The Tolkien seemed to disagree, but said nothing, being dead.

    2. THE TWO-FLOWERS
    Small Gods, Terry Pratchett

    THE RUNNERS-UP

    3. THE RETURN OF THE KIN
    Nine Princes in Amber, Roger Zelazny

    4. THE RED BULL OF WESTMARCH
    The Last Unicorn, Peter S. Beagle

    THE SPECIAL CATEGORY

    5. THE MONSTERS AND THE CRITICS
    A supernatural mystery I am considering writing, based in the theatre district of medieval Edo, concerning the deaths of many prominent playwrights during the run-up to a drama competition; it will be titled The Noh Award.

    Seriously, though, something by Tim Powers, maybe Last Call?

  11. 1. The Tombs of Atuan, Ursula S. Le Guin. I read both the Earthsea trilogy and LOTR at 13 and again in my thirties, and Earthsea held up much better – the prose was more lucid, the underlying ideas fresher and the unfortunate implications fewer.

    2. Small Gods, Terry Pratchett. It’s a novel of ideas and stretches the potential of fantasy more than LOTR did. Maybe I’m not being entirely fair to LOTR, given that it was the trope-maker for much of what is now tired and cliched in the fantasy genre, but on the other hand, there’s a reason those tropes became tired. And all other things being equal, I’ll pick a book that doesn’t idealize premodern monarchy over one that does.

    3. Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien. It’s a close one, and I enjoyed the Amber series when I was younger, but whatever I said about him above, Tolkien was a grandmaster and Zelazny doesn’t quite make it.

    4. Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien. What I said above about Zelazny is even more so for Beagle.

    5. The Imaro series, by Charles R. Saunders. They’re inspired by a set of legends that few fantasy authors have explored, the hero is worthy of Conan, and Saunders has the chops to do the subject justice. The treatment of female characters is a bit behind the times, but Saunders also gave us Dossouye, so I’m inclined to give him a pass. Seriously, if you like high fantasy and haven’t read Imaro, go buy the books now.

  12. IDK —

    Though I know all of you are bitterly opposed to slates, the reality is that the creation of a slate mostly just resembles the creation of a political party, with the same general underlying logic behind it to boot.

    And why should picking a good book be anything like picking a political party, you twit?

  13. 1. THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING OF ERRETH-AKBE
    The Tombs of Atuan, Ursula K. Le Guin

    2. THE TWO-FLOWERS
    Small Gods, Terry Pratchett

    3. THE RETURN OF THE KIN
    Nine Princes in Amber, Roger Zelazny

    4. THE RED BULL OF WESTMARCH
    The Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien

  14. idon’tknow: I guess what I’m saying is that a lot of folks seem utterly revolted by the notion that slates actually occurred and the fact that they were successful, but the reality is that this process in a democratic pool is not unusual at all and usually the first group that organizes successfully in the chaos is the one that reaps disproportionate rewards for doing so. So, I don’t really find the notion of a slate repulsive. It’s just a tactic that people use that becomes less successful over time, (unless the party in question is really, really good at ‘Machine’ politics).

    What you seem to have missed is that Worldcon Fandom was quite WELL AWARE that the ballot could be gamed in this way. Participants in the process prior to the Mentally-Impaired Puppies, also had enough honor and respect for the award not to do this. So yes, we’re utterly revolted, disgusted, and angry about this.

    So, now that we know there’s a segment of the population which has no honor, and would not recognize the same if it walked up and bit them — we’ll modify the rules to curtail the power of slates. And I’ll pray that we have enough people interested in the Hugo nominations next year that we’ll drown the Puppies’ candidates before they take their first breath.

  15. Kurt wrote: ” I don’t think most Hugo voters want political parties in the Hugos, either.”

    I’m a founding members of Novelists, Inc, as well as a past president of the organization, and a current opinion columnist in its monthly publication. The premise of Ninc is that it’s for career novelists, for people doing this as a profession, for people writing book after book, year after year, across any/all genres of commercial fiction, in traditional publishing and (since a rules change several years ago) in self-publishing, too. Membership stats are relatively stable in one particular area: every time we’ve done a survey, the average Ninc member has published 16 novels. (At my first Ninc conference, I was a zygote who’d published only 2 novels. Now I’m closing in on 30 books.)

    Two of the fundamental rules of Ninc are (1) no awards and (2) no politics. Because both things are extremely distracting and completely unproductive.

    The 5 founders, all of whom had served as BoD officers in other national writing organizations, felt so strongly about “no awards” in Ninc that they wrote it into our Bylaws. (For those who’ve never run a nonprofit corporation, changing bylaws is a big undertaking–and a BoD that violates the org’s bylaws can easily be impeached.) And every time I see squabbles over the Nebulas, Hugos, Ritas, etc., I bless the founders’ wisdom in ensuring we can’t have awards in Ninc–a decision that the career novelists in Ninc, most of whom have belonged to other orgs (where awards are regulrly squabbled over) have never challenged.

    “No politics” is not in our bylaws, but it’s in our operational rules for all our social media. And that one is very easily enforced since, as soon as someone introduces partisan politics or a political comment, multiple membrs immediately step in to remind them that we don’t do that sh*t in Ninc. We talk about legislation that affects publishing and professional writers, as well as related matters (ex. the DoJ antitrust lawsuit against 5 major publishers and Apple), but we don’t ever talk bout “conservatives” and “liberals,” etc.

    I have been very active in Ninc for most of my career… and you know how many members’ politics there are similar to my own? I have absolutely no idea. I’ve been an opinion columnist for Ninc for the past 7 years, and I would consider my job there very poorly done if anyone reading my column knew my politics. Because in Ninc we focus on the craft and business of being a career writer. We talk about contracts, publishers, marketing, sales figures, online bookselling, brick-and-mortar stores, distribution, new technologies, self-publishing, finding the steam to write your 40th novel, developing your foreign rights market, getting into audio, building a better website, attracting more traffic to your website, selling more books, writing faster, weird historical or forensic research questions, whether to use a pseudonym for a new subgenre, and so on.

    We never talk about whether you, or I, or some other writer is liberal or conservative. Because such questions are completely irrelevant to the craft and business of being a career novelist and have no place is a professional discussion among writing colleagues.

    So this hysterical emphasis on partisan politics by the Puppies (and, indeed, it tends to be emphasized in sf/f, in general) always strikes me as completely unprofessional.

  16. I’m holding out hope that Kate Paulk will operate on a less spoiled-brat-licking-the-game-pieces level than Correia, Torgersen, and Beale and instead put out a recommended list with at least 10 works per category in eg. alphabetical order so as not to encourage a slate. If the *Puppies put out an actual list of recommended works, I’d be happy to read through it and look for good stuff. There were a couple of decent puppy nominees this year. Unfortunately, the best writers tended to bow out.

    The idea of a recommended list of MilSF, Libertarian-oriented SF, gun porn SF, Julius-Evola-as-superhero SF… whatever… is kind of appealing. There’s a lot of stuff out there and it’s easy to get stuck in your own particular favorite sub- or sub-sub-genre and not catch all sorts of amazing stuff. The reading list I’ve gotten from file770 alone during Puppygate has been great.

  17. Vicki Rosenzweig : FWIW (maybe not much) I followed Laura’s link to GRRM’s blog, and found that the problematic comment was from someone who I have annotated as “old Usenet troll.”

    Ah – that would be Jordan Bassior. Think “Brian Z” if Brian was obsessed with spouting tendentious rationalizations about guns, kneejerk right-wing pro-Americanism, and libertarianism, rather than just Puppy-poop.

    And strangely enough, he styled himself “Jordan S. Bassior”. Just like “John C. Wright” or “Michael Z. Williamson”. Do we have enough data to justify a law about preening full-of-themselves right-wing jerks yet?

  18. Mazel tov, cmm!

    1) Le Guin
    2) Pratchett
    4) Beagle

    I bounced off LotR hard several times when I was a child and a teenager, before I finally ground all the way through it, finding it splendid, edifying and hard to chew.

  19. Bracketage:

    1. LOTR (Toughest decision of all)
    2. LOTR (I’d put Feet of Clay or Wee Free Men over Small Gods, and then we might have a harder decision for me here)
    3. LOTR (Easiest decision of all; do not care for Amber)
    4. LOTR (Love the movie of Unicorn for Alan Arkin’s Schmendrick, love Beagle in general, but meta always loses to ur in my estimation)
    5. So many choices here, but screw novels: either “Tower of the Elephant” or “Bazaar of the Bizarre” (if you’re going to force me to pick a novel, then Miéville’s Scar)

  20. 1. THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING OF ERRETH-AKBE
    The Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien
    The Tombs of Atuan, Ursula K. Le Guin

    2. THE TWO-FLOWERS
    The Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien
    Small Gods, Terry Pratchett

    3. THE RETURN OF THE KIN
    The Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien
    Nine Princes in Amber, Roger Zelazny

    4. THE RED BULL OF WESTMARCH
    The Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien
    The Last Unicorn, Peter S. Beagle

  21. @CPaca: “And strangely enough, he styled himself “Jordan S. Bassior”. Just like “John C. Wright” or “Michael Z. Williamson”. Do we have enough data to justify a law about preening full-of-themselves right-wing jerks yet?”

    As someone who regularly uses his middle initial in Real Life, I should hope to provide at least some evidence against the “middle initial means RWNJ” theory…

  22. Well, that’s enough for me. I’m sort of tired of the insults and so forth that are some peoples’ first and only responses around here. Thanks for the discussions about books and so forth. They were fun.

  23. Leguin, Pratchett, LOTR, Beagle, GOD STALK!

    Ahem.

    Thank you, everyone who liked the frog thing! I just wrote a much longer one about Bob and a unicorn and sent it off to a pro market, so if it actually sells, I will have derived at least one thing of value from Puppy shenanigans…

  24. 1. THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING OF ERRETH-AKBE
    The Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien
    The Tombs of Atuan, Ursula K. Le Guin *
    *Including everything else by LeGuin.

    2. THE TWO-FLOWERS
    The Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien
    Small Gods, Terry Pratchett **
    **Including everything else by Pratchett.

    THE RUNNERS-UP

    3. THE RETURN OF THE KIN
    The Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien
    Nine Princes in Amber, Roger Zelazny
    Never even read the Zelazny, I’m still voting for it.

    4. THE RED BULL OF WESTMARCH
    The Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien
    The Last Unicorn, Peter S. Beagle
    Which one would I want to reread more? Unicorn in a heartbeat.

    Yeah, it’s strange considering I played so much D&D in junior high and have not only read but written a fantasy novel (unpublished) that I bounced off of Tolkein, but I couldn’t even finish Return of the King.

    THE SPECIAL CATEGORY

    5. THE MONSTERS AND THE CRITICS
    What Book Should Have Won?
    KYRA: THE BOOK.

    Barring that, A Midsummer Night’s Dream by Shakespeare, straight up. Runner up: The Sandman, all ten volumes.

  25. Lori Coulson on August 5, 2015 at 3:03 pm said:
    …So, now that we know there’s a segment of the population which has no honor, and would not recognize the same if it walked up and bit them…

    Uh-huh. I was raised in a tradition where, in an election (…and depending upon the stakes…), one might stoop to voting for yourself – but for heaven’s sake, one would never demonstrate that one was a self-serving, grasping fool with no honor by admitting in public that one was voting for oneself.

    Yet I see that both Beale and Wright have announced that they are voting for themselves, “in every category possible”.

    Proving themselves to be people without any sense of honor.

  26. Rev. Bob : As someone who regularly uses his middle initial in Real Life, I should hope to provide at least some evidence against the “middle initial means RWNJ” theory…

    Nope. Sorry. And here we have a discussion of probability vs memetics

    That group X has a higher chance of characteristic Y than normal (that P(Y | X) > P(Y | ~X) if I can recall my notation even slightly correctly) does not mean that characteristic Y is an indication of group X (that P(X | Y) > 0.5).

    UNTIL SOMEONE NOTICES AND PROPAGATES A MEME ABOUT IT

    At that point, P(Y | X) starts increasing and P(Y | ~X) starts decreasing, until it DOES serve as an indicator. If we get this baby up and going, with a name like “Paca’s First Law of Political Nomenclature” and spread far enough, then the only people styling themselves with middle initials will be RWNJs and a few confused and hopeless souls who haven’t gotten the message yet.

    Application of this to one of the RWNJs I mentioned and Big Silly Porn ‘Staches is left as an exercise to the reader.

  27. @ kathodus: “Unfortunately, the best writers tended to bow out.”

    That will be even more so next year.

    In addition to people pulling out, there were a number of people this year who declined to be on the slate in the first place. And that was back when no one has any idea what a huge, stinking, noisy cesspool the Puppy mess would become.

    After this year–and especially now that VD is not only involved, but is the media poster-boy for the Puppies and the most influential Puppy, and Puppying has become largely ynonmous with “intent to destroy the Hugos”–no writer who is serious about this as a career (rather than as a penis-enlarging pastime), no one with any common sense, and probably no one who isn’t a Puppy insider or vocal Puppy sympathizer is going to want anything to do with the Puppies or their slates.

    In 2016, it will be well-known that getting on a Puppy slate aligns you with a faction that publicly, nastily, and repeatedly insults fans, WorldCon attendees, WorldCon volunteers, major publishers (and, in particular, the genre’s biggest publisher), specific editors, past Hugo nominees, past Hugo winners, major writers, minor writers, fanzines, fan bloggers, reviewers, etc. That’s not a perceived-alliance that many writers want if they’re serious about this as a profession. It will also be well-known that, particularly via VD, writers on the slate are being nominated by a momvement that has vowed to use its block voting power to destroy the Hugos. Who wants to be a nominee positioned for THAT? Additionally, I think the vote is likely to reveal that being on a Puppy slate means you’re very likely to lose to No Award, which isn’t an experience to be courted.

    Almost everyone would like to be on a Hugo ballot… but hardly anyone wants to be on a Hugo ballot THIS way.

    Probably no one will object to being put on a recommended reading list. But if they again crate voting slates and ask permission, a lot of people are likely to refuse. And if they create slates without asking permission, which VD stated is his intention, people will probably make public statements to dissociate themselves from it.

    Puppy shit is just not something a pro writer needs in his/her career, and the event of this year have made it clear what to expect from being on a Puppy slate next year, and I think the awards ceremony will make that even clearer.

  28. Laura Resnick on August 5, 2015 at 1:38 pm said:
    Cassy B — ah-hah! So the Puppies are Marxists! THAT’S why they’re so obsessed with Marxists!

    There was a 19th Century political philosopher who was basically the first to demonstrate that the technological base of a society determined much else about that society: the relationships between its inhabitants, the way it was governed, the relationships between societies, etc.

    It was such an important insight that this idea of the primacy of technological change in human affairs helped give birth to new genres of literature, as writers explored the possibilities implicit in thinking about how the ever-accelerating forces of technological change would affect us.

    So at some level, every science fiction writer is working in a genre of literature that owes its existence to the key insights of Karl Marx.

  29. 1. THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING OF ERRETH-AKBE
    The Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien
    2. THE TWO-FLOWERS
    Small Gods, Terry Pratchett
    3. THE RETURN OF THE KIN
    Nine Princes in Amber, Roger Zelazny
    4. THE RED BULL OF WESTMARCH
    The Last Unicorn, Peter Beagle
    5. Abstain, on the grounds that there are far too many contenders I haven’t read. But a plea for Pratchett on the basis of his whole body of work, in which he shows how ridiculous humanity can be and how wonderful humanity can be, often both at the same time, and without either one ever precluding the possibility of the other. It’s enough to give you hope for the Puppies.
    And that seems to be the end of this exercise. Or will we find more hoops to jump through tomorrow?

  30. I’m holding out hope that Kate Paulk will operate on a less spoiled-brat-licking-the-game-pieces level than Correia, Torgersen, and Beale and instead put out a recommended list with at least 10 works per category in eg. alphabetical order so as not to encourage a slate.

    I see this as unlikely. Thus far, the pattern for Puppy authors is that the less accomplished the author actually is, the more vehemently they engage in slate-mongering and the more pro-slate they have been. Correia’s efforts paled in comparison to the more modestly accomplished Torgersen’s attempts to push the slate, and the nonentity Beale and garbage author Wright are some of the loudest pro-slate voices. Hoyt’s a niche writer who has latched onto the idea of a slate with a vengeance. And so on. Butcher and Anderson, on the other hand, have been mostly lukewarm in their support of the Puppy slates.

    Paulk has almost nothing going for her other than being the slate organizer. I expect her to be even more obnoxious and aggressive when it comes to packing the Sad Puppy 4 slate with people with whom she wants to curry professional favor regardless of the quality of the works.

  31. I think of Kyra as more of a commentary, a wellspring of the mist fascinating margin discussions and parodies, than as a book. In this context, at least.

  32. Laura Resnick on August 5, 2015 at 4:07 pm said:
    Additionally, I think the vote is likely to reveal that being on a Puppy slate means you’re very likely to lose to No Award, which isn’t an experience to be courted.

    Eh, Beale has already lost to “No Award” … and he’s so dumb that he not only courted a repeat of the experience, he went out of his way to MAKE SURE it happens again.

    So he’ll be not just a writer worse than “No Award” – in a couple of weeks he’ll likely to also be WSFS-certified as an EDITOR worse than “No Award”.

    And this is the fate he voluntarily sought out.

  33. I was looking into Kate Paulk and saw that VD calls her “Kate the Impaler”, presumably a reference to her alternate history book about Vlad the Impaler. The only thing I recall from her during Puppygate was angrily denouncing being called a neo-nazi. That seems pretty neutral to me, despite requiring a mis-reading of Gallo’s statement. These mis-readings, intentional or not, are a problem on both sides when things get heated[1].

    Also just read VD’s latest about the Hugos, and I’m less inclined to hope that Paulk will act honestly. Particularly among the commenters on his blog, there seems to be a near-complete lack of interest in SFF (though VD and a couple of his “minions” obviously dig it), with the focus being instead this Quixotic armchair war they’re fighting against the world. As long as he continues to care about this issue (as long as the publicity keeps coming, I assume), I doubt there will be any puppy conciliation.

    ===================================
    [1] Not saying they’re equally problematic on both sides. From what I’ve read, the majority of *puppies commenting on Torgersen’s, Day’s, et al. blogs are not clicking through to the primary sources when a link is given and so end up playing a game of telephone, with the message given the spin of the puppy leader who posted the link.

  34. So, Brian Z prompted me to go off and read The Midnight Hour. Had I placed confidence in his comments, I would have been surprised to find a story rather than abstract pontificating on mental health and deception. My review is here.

    THE WINNERS

    1. THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING OF ERRETH-AKBE
    The Tombs of Atuan, Ursula K. Le Guin

    2. THE TWO-FLOWERS
    The Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien

    THE RUNNERS-UP

    3. THE RETURN OF THE KIN
    The Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien

    4. THE RED BULL OF WESTMARCH
    The Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien

    THE SPECIAL CATEGORY

    5. THE MONSTERS AND THE CRITICS
    What Book Should Have Won?

    I’m going to put in a vote for a book I personally treasure, even though I know it won’t go anywhere, and I can’t even claim it’s the best thing this writer ever wrote. Doesn’t change what it means to me:
    BEAUTY, by Robin McKinley

  35. “I suppose everyone does this for the first few weeks…”

    A few weeks? I married McJulie more than 17 years ago (after only 8 years of dating), and I still have the giggles and smiles.

  36. I was looking into Kate Paulk and saw that VD calls her “Kate the Impaler”, presumably a reference to her alternate history book about Vlad the Impaler.

    It is her cutesy “Evil League of Evil” name.

  37. Aaron on August 5, 2015 at 5:09 am said:
    >It’s not that VD is asserting the world revolves around him. It’s just that he thinks it’s a theory the rest of us ought to give serious consideration.

    I think little Teddy should be preparing himself for disappointment.

    Hell, Beale has had a lifetime of practice to prepare himself for disappointment.

    He’s a failed musician, a failed games designer, a failed wingnut columnist, a failed author (remember the piece of shit he cheated onto the ballot, only to see it judged BELOW “No Award”?), a failed editor, and Real Soon Now (when his “Rabid Puppies” campaign fails…) he’ll even be a failed vandal.

    The ONLY thing he’s succeeded at is “consistently being an asshole”.

  38. a failed author (remember the piece of shit he cheated onto the ballot, only to see it judged BELOW “No Award”?)

    Just so you know, Natalie Luhrs has been reading and livetweeting one of VD’s books for charity. She’s been posting recaps on her blog. She is hilariously funny, the book is painfully bad.

  39. @ Resnick: Brilliant comment (about Ninc). I’m in total agreement about politics, awards and writing.

  40. Laura, I’m fascinated by your comments about Ninc’s culture. It’s what I’ve always thought as “professional”, from the sound of it.

    IDK, the crucial thing I think you’re getting wrong is a matter of purpose. Political parties, slates, and such are sensible things for elections that deal with the assignment of political power and responsibility. But there is no political power in the Hugos. This isn’t even like everyone at a game session voting on what to get for dinner, where everybody will in fact have that for dinner. Hugos have some economic value to the winner – a value that varies widely depending on a lot of factors about the person’s career, the overall state of the industry, current fads, and more – but they genuinely don’t impose any penalty on those who don’t get them.

    The Hugos are instead a poll of individuals’ preferences. Not what your faction endorses, but what you, the individual reader and viewer and listener, regard as best in various categories. Relying on others’ opinions is, for the Hugos’ purpose, as silly as saying “Well, most people aren’t allergic to this medication, so I must not be either”, when you are.

  41. I like to think this community has many years of happy life ahead of it in which, every so often, someone types

    “GOD STALK!”

    for no reason at all.

  42. Or to amp up the personal factor in metaphors: voting a slate as an expression of your individual judgment is like saying “Well, since none of the Puppies leaders are in love with or married to my spouse, I’m not either.”

  43. @ Lee
    Finally, in regards to the novelizations of Lord of the Rings movies, I had a bookseller friend relate an instance when someone was asking when the other two books in the Hobbit trilogy would be out, apparently thinking they were the actual novelizations of the movies.

    I believe it. While I was dubious about a live-action film of LOTR (given previous filmic attempts), I saw a preview during the summer and was immediately captivated (I recognized MORIA!), so I went to see it when it opened. And then saw it 45 times before it left the theatres (is it any defense to say I was housesitting/petsitting for my mum while she went to Hawaii to spend a week or so with my brother and sister-in-law, and I didn’t have any major work, and lots of free time). And I swear, every time I saw it, at the end SOMEONE in the theatre said loudly enough for us all to hear: “how can it end, they still have the ring!”

    Films cannot be made for fans of the book.

    (In other self defense, at my 40th high school reunion, people were reminding me that they only read LOTR because I badgered er encouraged everybody I knew back in the day.)

    This month is the 50th anniversary of my first reading of LOTR: I was ten. (I had read the Hobbit two years previously when a librarian told me I would like it because I liked the Oz books–in reality, I read the Oz books more or less continuously for years. I didn’t like TH; it was nothing like Oz! I came to reassess that evalution later on).

    A friend of my mother’s recommended it when we were on vacation on the ocean on the Kitsap Peninsula of Washington state–a perfect place to read LOTR. When we got home, I badgered er encouraged my mother to help me get copies (we had to visit every drugstore rack in Moscow, Idaho!). Then I proceeded to read it 100 times between age 10 and 17, keeping a numbered reading list (I was BORN to be an English teacher, people); then ritually re-read every year in August. I stopped reading it for a while when I became an Angry Young Feminist (ca 1982), but I never got rid of the books (and I moved often, and had to let some books go).

    When I saw the preview, I had to re-read it, and since I am no longer an AYF found that it stood up well (and started teaching it–my mom still thinks I’m cheating–and writing scholarship on it and the film, and, well, it’s been a lovely few years). I ground a lot of my sense of identity as an English prof in my early love for sff–though, when I got into my first academic programs during the 1970s, sff was still disdained, I was arrogant enough to think that MY evaluation of the works as quality outweighted my professors’ evaluation. Not only was I was using the New Criticial tools they taught me, but I soon realized that they had no in fact read the works. (Then years later when I return for my Ph.D. THEORY! Theory was the way out of the New Critical/canonical trap, for me at least.)

    I turn 60 this fall, and will be getting a Tolkien tattoo: Tree of Amalion

    It’s actually my second Tolkien tattoo: my first is my LOTR slash fandom pseud in the Beleriand dialect of Sindarin Elvish (on my right arm).

    The Tree (or my tattoo artist’s version of it) will be on my back.

    Reading Tolkien made me a nature poet and an animistic pagan (though I am currently neither). Plus, I had such a THING for Eowyn!

  44. Re: Tolkien

    For so many SFF fans, LotR is their gateway book, so it is pretty tough to read it just on its merits. Like Star Wars was for my generation. So I do find it fascinating reading reviews of LotR from people who first read it when they were older (like the medievalist Normal Cantor, who talked about it in Inventing the Middle Ages).

    Similarly for me, I only read Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea in my 40s, and found it hard to get into the story. That window had closed for me.

  45. I’m holding out hope that Kate Paulk will operate on a less spoiled-brat-licking-the-game-pieces level than Correia, Torgersen, and Beale …

    I don’t expect Paulk to be a bridge builder. She’ll use Sad Puppies to get as much attention as possible for herself and Correia’s endless right-wing pity party. This would best be achieved by pushing a slate and ruining another Hugo ballot, not being conciliatory and offering a recommendation list instead.

    I find it extremely odd that people are pinning any hopes on Paulk, as if she’s earned a role as a tastemaker/gatekeeper in SF. She’s an obscure indie SF author with one novel and 86 Twitter followers. Just because Correia and Torgersen chose her doesn’t make her an authority.

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