(1) I encountered this oasis while researching today’s scroll — Nelson Lowhim’s clever story “Sasquan, worldcon and the science fiction convention”
…Leaning back and inhaling the sterile convention center smell, I realized that I’d sat on a book. I pulled it out from under me and examined the cover: on it a gallant woman rode a chariot being pulled by naked men. They were headed to a shining light at the end of the road.
It was thin, the book, and so I read through it, the writing clean enough for me not to stop and the premise interesting enough for me to flip the pages. When I was finished, unsure with the ending, I threw the book on the table where it collided with the sculpture.
It was then that I noticed a shift in the atmosphere and the smell of something like rotting feet. Out from the shadows in a corner stepped a large man. I froze. For not only was he large, not only did he wield a large sword, but he moved with the kind of nimbleness that signifies a specifically potent violence.
“Treat the book with a little more respect, small man.”…
(2) Marko Kloos – “My Sasquan Weekend”
So we were at the Hugo Losers party, mingling with old and new friends and generally having a good time, when GRRM had a special surprise for us. He brought out a table full of trophies made from 1950s hood ornaments which he called the Alfies, after Alfred Bester, the winner of the inaugural best Novel Hugo in 1953. George started giving them out to various people who would have been on the ballot without the slates, especially in those categories where the nominees all came from the slates.
And then he awarded one to Annie Bellet, who withdrew her short story from the ballot the same day I withdrew my novel…and I thought to myself, “Self, he may call you up there too.” The room was packed with people, many of them authors and editors of works you’ve probably read, and I basically had two or three minutes to think up something to say that wouldn’t make me look like a giant jackass.
(3) Angela Blackwell on Bull Spec – “The Exploding Spaceship Visits Sasquan – Worldcon 2015”
Panel organizers appeared to try to bring diverse authors onto panels but like many conventions could really have used some oversight from a diversity coordinator. Many “diverse” authors were on panels with topics which had nothing to do with the type of writing they do. It looked as if someone said, “Oh, we need diversity on this panel so let’s randomly pick a diverse author we used somewhere else instead of broadening our panelist pool and finding a diverse author who fits the topic”. Also “diverse” authors need to be put on panels about the subgenres they write about not just on generic panels….
Next year’s Worldcon will be in Kansas City. We hope their panel organizers learn from the many comments on Twitter and Facebook as well as at the convention about how different authors were placed on panels and what panel topics were chosen. All the members of the community need to feel welcome and none should be stuck in a “diversity” box, or a “minority political opinion” box.
(4) Ellen Datlow has over a hundred photos from Sasquan, many from GRRM’s Hugo Losers Party, posted here.
(5) Lou Antonelli on Facebook
Thought for the Day: In light of the way he depicts social occasions in his fantasy writing, I was rather surprised anyone would accept an invitation to a private event from George R.R. Martin. (wink)
(6) Campbell nominee Rolf Nelson – “Sasquan post, obligatory”
I wasn’t sure what to expect. I certainly didn’t expect being totally ignored, but that’s largely what happened. No offers of being on panels. No interviews. Nobody to introduce me. No packet available that was supposed to be ready for me. No open attacks on me. No large shows of support for the puppies. (Some background on the puppies here: http://sfauthor.net/burning-down-the-house/ ; I was a “rabid puppy” nominee. Five second recap: the insiders worked the nominations and voting in back rooms and parties for years, and didn’t like it when an outsider did the same thing, out in the open, and better, shutting them out of a lock on the awards). Normally new writers are loaded up with panels and shown around and introduced to folks. For me and most of the non-TOR-books nominees? Nothing. So I wandered around, watched, listened, talked to a lot of “average SF con attendees.” They were mostly nice, and most knew little or nothing about the whole puppies thing. Most who knew something had a warped left-wing version of events in their heads. I managed to line up 3 interviews of my own by walking down to the press room and asking “want to interview a rabid puppy?” including one with Amy Wallace of Wired (http://www.wired.com/2015/08/won-science-fictions-hugo-awards-matters/ ) who talked to me for 20 or 25 minutes, but didn’t use any of it (flatly contradicted what I said, in fact, perhaps because I was recording the interview, too, so she could not out-of-context sound-bite me).
(7) Melinda Snodgrass – “There Is and Was No Conspiracy”
So now I have to address the boatload of idiotic conspiracy theories that have sprung up from the fervid brains of the Puppies both Sad and Rabid.
No, George did not know in advance who had won and who had lost. He had to wait for the pink sheet that detailed the Hugo nominations before he could figure out who was going to receive an Alfie. I know because I had to check in with him when thing were running late for presenting the awards, and he told me in harried tones that he had had to wait for the breakdown to come out and everything was running late.
No, George did not buy 3000 memberships and tell them how to vote. Has anyone looked at fandom? Herding cats wold be easier. And seriously — George is the guy who loves this award. He would never, ever game his beloved Hugos.
No, the Puppy votes were not “discounted”. It’s the Australian ballot. It’s confusing. Here’s a link where Ranked Voting is explained. Try to understand. So you don’t get your money back.
No, you can’t sue. You have to show harm before you can get into court, and you have to have standing to bring a lawsuit. If someone calls you a banana that might hurt you deeply, but the court will not provide a remedy for your pain. You voted/you lost. If your argument had merit I’d be suing over the 2000 election. Let it be noted that I didn’t.
(8) Jim Hensley on Unqualified Offerings – “Social Engineer-ing”
Ken Burnside writes the best “pro-Puppy” retrospective on the Hugo Awards that I’ve seen. It’s frank about the pain he felt from the way some people treated him during the controversy but impressively free of bitterness. The piece is long, but what interests me most is something he doesn’t quite say, and possibly doesn’t quite realize. Here’s what he does say, about what he identifies as the “Heroic Engineer” genre, also known as competence porn:
Heroic Engineer Stories drive a lot of sales. Nearly every SF author I know who doesn’t need a day job writes an action-adventure series, where the Heroic Engineer/Officer/Competent Protagonist Solves The Problem. They sell, and they sell to a male demographic, often current or recently retired military, and that demographic skews conservative.
Let’s zero in on the last sentence. It states that SF competence porn sells to people who see themselves in the protagonist. They are pleased to read stories in which they recognize people like them.
Which is exactly what gets called affirmative-action “box checking” when the protagonist is female, non-white, queer or some combination of those. Often, particularly when Puppy advocates are writing, when readers derive pleasure from seeing themselves in those protagonists, they are accused of favoring representation over quality, even though representation can be a marker of quality.
I remember when I first saw Apollo 13 in the theater, my overwhelming, thrilled reaction was: “My people!” Those very clever, very white nerdboys in Mission Control, trying to save the lives of the astronauts via kitbashing and pedantry reminded me of myself and my friends in a way hardly any screen protagonists had heretofore. And you know, there’s nothing wrong with that. And there’s nothing wrong with an ex-service-member deriving pleasure from stories about guys kinda like him saving the world with shop tools and shaped charges.
But there’s also nothing wrong with a black woman deriving pleasure from stories about black women on Mars, or gay men enjoying stories about gay men dealing with unexplained phenomena. This even goes beyond the issue of representation-as-quality – that stories with people of color, LGBT folks and women of agency better reflect the world as we know it and our plausible futures. While the old stereotype of science-fiction and fantasy as nothing but wish-fulfillment stories was unjust, wish-fulfillment remains an element of much fiction, and most adventure fiction. There’s simply no case that non-white, non-straight, non-male readers’ enjoyment in seeing themselves reflected in fiction is somehow less legitimate than the pleasure that “a male demographic, often current or recently retired military” takes in the same phenomenon.
(9) After Chris Meadows meets Michael Z. Williamson at the gun show, he reviews and approves Kate Paulk’s plans for SP4 – “Whether Sad Puppy or opposed, fans are people, too” .
That’s a much better way to approach the matter than coming up with a slate with just a small number of candidates, the way Brad Torgersen did last year. As Paulk points out later in the livestream, Torgersen didn’t fill every category on the Sad Puppy slate with five candidates, but its having fewer than five left room for the Rabids to come in and piggyback on them by putting five on theirs. It also resulted in some candidates that Puppies might have nominated, such as the Heinlein biography, getting left out because Torgersen didn’t know about them to put them on the slate. Listing all suggested nominees will make a lot more sense.
More importantly, it’s also the way that a lot of other places make Hugo recommendations. That’s how John Scalzi’s “Fans Award Recommendation Threads” work, for example—people plug stories they personally think are worthy and recommend that others read them. And people have historically been fine with that kind of thing. There’s no attempt there to make a specific list of just a few works in each category. There are also people out there attempting to list and discuss every possible eligible work for 2016, so people will know what’s available.
Torgersen might have meant the 2015 slate as a list of recommendations for things people should read and then nominate if they liked them (though he wasn’t really very clear about that in the original announcement), but the problem with a list that has just a few candidates on it is that a lot of people will choose to nominate it as-is without actually bothering to read the works on it. They might not feel like they have the kind of time it would take to read everything, but that list is right there and it’s easy to copy and paste. Hopefully more people will be moved to nominate stuff they actually read this year.
(10) Elton Gahr on Life, the Universe, and Sci-Fi – “My Controversial Opinion on the Hugo Awards”
I know I’m a bit late commenting on the Hugo awards, but the recent Hugo awards controversy annoyed me enough I wanted to comment with my own super controversial opinion on the Hugo awards. I apologize before I tell you because I know that it’s going to surprise and possibly upset some people, but the award for the best science fiction story, novel, etc should go to the, wait for it… Best story.
Basically what I’m saying is that most of the people involved in the argument are wrong regardless of which side you’re on (though I’ll admit if it makes you feel better that some are more wrong than others). If you’re voting for people instead of the work of fiction they wrote you’re wrong. I can understand not voting for someone if you really dislike them simply because you don’t want to support them. But voting for someone because they are a white male, a black Hispanic woman or an aboriginal Australian when you don’t believe their story is the best is just wrong and it doesn’t really matter why you’re doing it. Ignore the author and vote for the story you like the best. That’s what the award is for….
I have no problem with people putting together a list of stories that they think are the best though it seems clear that isn’t going to be a good idea. I’m also very pleased that more minorities and women are writing science fiction. Part of the reason I read science fiction is to see the world from the point of view of people who see it different from me. And if they write the best science fiction story in their respective categories they deserve to win, but honestly anyone who votes for them because they are a minority or a woman when they don’t believe it’s the best story is voting wrong.
So that’s basically it. My controversial opinion about the Hugo Awards is that the rabid people on both sides of this are idiots. If I heard someone saying that women or minorities shouldn’t be involved in science fiction I’d have a hard time not punching them in the face. It’s 2015 and we are supposed to be past that type of thing. But I really don’t feel much better about the people on the opposite extreme. If you won’t vote for someone just because they are a white male then there is no difference at all. If you assume someone is racist because they disagree about what the best story then you need to consider that they might just like something different than you and that’s O.K. and if you vote for someone who didn’t write the best story to make a political point you’re helping to prove the people on the other side right.
(11) Jonathan Jones in the Guardian – “Get real. Terry Pratchett is not a literary genius”
It does not matter to me if Terry Pratchett’s final novel is a worthy epitaph or not, or if he wanted it to be pulped by a steamroller. I have never read a single one of his books and I never plan to. Life’s too short.
No offence, but Pratchett is so low on my list of books to read before I die that I would have to live a million years before getting round to him. I did flick through a book by him in a shop, to see what the fuss is about, but the prose seemed very ordinary.
I don’t mean to pick on this particular author, except that the huge fuss attending and following his death this year is part of a very disturbing cultural phenomenon. In the age of social media and ebooks, our concept of literary greatness is being blurred beyond recognition. A middlebrow cult of the popular is holding literature to ransom. Thus, if you judge by the emotional outpourings over their deaths, the greatest writers of recent times were Pratchett and Ray Bradbury. There was far less of an internet splurge when Gabriel García Márquez died in 2014 and Günter Grass this spring. Yet they were true titans of the novel. Their books, like all great books, can change your life, your beliefs, your perceptions. Everyone reads trash sometimes, but why are we now pretending, as a culture, that it is the same thing as literature? The two are utterly different.
(12) Damien G. Walter – “Sorry Jonesy, but I can write for the Guardian and love Terry Pratchett”
I never had the good fortune to meet Terry Pratchett, but I’ve been reading his books since I was eleven. My favourite Discworld tomes – Mort, Small Gods and Going Postal – have been read a half dozen times each at least. I also hold a Masters degree, have been a senior university lecturer, and am a columnist for The Guardian, the very same bastion of middlebrow values that Jonathan Jones penned his opportunistic attack on Terry Pratchett. Unlike Jones however, I see no conflict in being both an intelligent educated human being and loving the fuck out of Terry Pratchett’s discworld books.
(13) Christopher Priest – “You Don’t Know What It Is, Do You, Mister Jones?”
Finally, the works of Sir Terry Pratchett. I have been provoked to write this essay today by an article in the Guardian’s blog, by the newspaper’s arts correspondent Jonathan Jones. As a display of closed-minded prejudice, and an astonishing willingness to brag about it, there have been thankfully few precedents. Here is how Jones starts:
It does not matter to me if Terry Pratchett’s final novel is a worthy epitaph or not, or if he wanted it to be pulped by a steamroller. I have never read a single one of his books and I never plan to. Life’s too short. No offence, but Pratchett is so low on my list of books to read before I die that I would have to live a million years before getting round to him. I did flick through a book by him in a shop, to see what the fuss is about, but the prose seemed very ordinary.
Unsurprisingly, the online comments on this pathetic piece of ignorant journalism have swarmed in (at the time of writing, just under one thousand), and for once almost all of them agree with each other. I will be surprised and disappointed if Mr Jones retains his job with the Guardian, at least in the capacity of an arts correspondent. I have rarely seen a letter of resignation so overtly and shamelessly revealing as this. I was forcibly reminded of a letter my old friend John Middleton Murry wrote to the Observer many years ago on another, not dissimilar, matter: ‘I note your organ does not have a reporter in Antarctica, and suggest that this would be a suitable posting for Mr Martin Amis.’
I should add that Terry Pratchett and I were respectful colleagues rather than personal friends. We knew each other better in the days when we were teenage hopefuls, trying to get our first stories sold. The years went by, we found our publishers and we went our separate ways. I doubt if Terry ever read my books – I read only a few of his. Terry does not need me to defend him – Jones’s article is contemptible.
But I would say that of all the writers I have ever known, or the books I have ever read, Terry Pratchett’s seem to be a dead cert for long-term classic status.
(14) Scott Lynch on Storify – “That awful, awful SJW message fiction”
(2) It's wall to wall female characters mixed in with male characters. Even in the military. Even the INFANTRY. This is treated as normal!
— Scott Lynch (@scottlynch78) August 31, 2015
(15) OK. Now it’s been said.
We got a great Best Novel in #hugoawards from the ISS but disappointed nobody said "No Award them from orbit, it's the only way to be sure!"
— Robot Archie???????????????????? (@RobotArchie) September 1, 2015
Bingo?
(16) Angelique Trouvere has a request:
Some merriment, circa mid-1970s, at a New York STAR TREK convention… That’s also Elyse Pines (Rosenstein) second from left in front, Joan Winston on Jeff Maynard’s lap (sadly, both Joan and Jeff are also gone), “Patia Von Sternberg,” redheaded, fourth from left in the back, and a very popular helmsman, under the beanie….
I’ve attached the photo you included [in Toni Lay’s obituary] of the group shot from the early Trekcon with George Takei and I had a question that I hope you may be able to help me with:
There is a woman sitting next to Elyse on the far left–she’s wearing a red jacket and a white top with dots – she’s an old friend from the cons who moved to L.A shortly after that pic was taken. I visited her there but lost contact with her. It’s been so long that I can’t be sure if her first name is Barbara or Sharon. This photo was also published in Joan’s book, “The Making of the Star Trek Conventions” but it’s a grainy b/w. Would you know her or know someone who might?
If you have the answer e-mail me at mikeglyer (at) cs (dot) com and I will pass it on to Ms. Trouvere.
(16) The one true reason why people are writers:
https://twitter.com/KameronHurley/status/638782719435120640
(17) Just what do the Orks want anyway? Multiplexer gives this neglected sociological question extended thought at Critical Hits.
Coda
Generic evil for the sake of being evil is boring. The most banal and dull of demi-humans benefit from a bit of motivation, incentives, history and background. Why are the Orks in the dungeon? What do they get out of being in the dungeon? Did they come from a village? How is that village? Can the PCs learn anything about this culture while killing things and looting their stuff? Maybe they have something and the local magistrates want it more?
No one is what they seem and everything has little pull-able threads that unravel into a tapestry of background, story, and tale.
Or maybe the Murder Hobos only want to roll bad guys and take their stuff.
(18) We end today with this highly scientific excerpt from io9 – “Archeologists Tracked Lewis and Clark by Following Their Trail of Laxatives”
Eventually, researchers came across some information that helped clarify things… and that information came from their latrines. Lewis and Clark were fairly well-equipped and well-trained, even if only by the standards of the day. Given what those standards were, it’s surprising that they only lost one person during their trek. According to their own records, they bled people who were feverish, they gave purgatives to people who felt weak, and they administered potassium nitrate (a preservative substitute for salt) to people suffering from heat stroke and dehydration. They also brought along the wonder drug of the day, mercury chloride (otherwise known as calomel), as a pill, a tincture, and an ointment.
Calomel was often used to treat those with syphilis (mercury does work against the bacterium that causes syphilis, but it takes out the host as well, so don’t try it at home) along with nearly everything else, including constipation. And an expedition that ate mainly the game they could catch along the way would have suffered from constipation regularly. In their journals, Lewis and Clark regularly make note of someone having to take one of Dr. Rush’s Bilious Pills (because constipation was thought to be caused by an excess of bile) and spending the day purging.
If you know that you and your men are going to spend a day expelling everything they’ve eaten for a week, you make sure to dig a latrine. Most of the mercury that the men ingested went out of the system again, which means that over a century later, historians and archaeologists were able to pin down where Lewis and Clark had stayed by testing old latrine contents for mercury.
[Thanks to Paul Weimer, Martin Morse Wooster, and John King Tarpinian for some of these links. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Kurt Busiek, with a signal boost by Shambles .]
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Wesley Chu and Time Salvage eligible for Hugo 2015. Great afternoon read. Kept me off of File770 for over 8 hours which says something. His writing seems smoother than the Tao books. Worldbuilding was decent but bleak, plot was reasonable, ending has me looking for the next book. The main protagonist was well done and I liked the growth we saw him go through. I’m still not happy with the way Wesley portrays women. I had a hard time making it past the first chapter because of this. After that it got better for a while and then I was so caught into the story that it was more annoying than anything.
For people interested in Annie Bellet’s books, the first 3 books in the Twenty Sided Sorceress series are on sale at the moment, at $1 for the three of them.
http://anniebellet.com/books/the-twenty-sided-sorceress-box-set/
Iphinome:
And why wasn’t STATION ELEVEN on the ballot?
Jason:
I think it probably varies.
How hard was it, for instance, to write WISDOM FROM MY INTERNET? And if the Sads are so determined to award only the best books, regardless of who they’re by, why was it taking up a ballot slot that could have gone to someone else, except that Brad Torgersen asked Michael Z. Williamson what he’d done that was eligible for a Hugo, and Williamson offered up WISDOM so Torgersen slated it. Isn’t that about who the book was by rather than what the best book was?
@Jason Cordova
I have no idea of what you’re capable of (and, compared to other puppy nominees, you seem to have the ability to honestly assess your own work, which indicates some potential for improvement), but I’m afraid your nominated work in the voter packet was simply WAY short of the quality that I would expect the writing of a “best new author of the year” to have.
Why? You were nominated because you were a buddy of Torgersen’s, and because he & Vox Day were able to recruit a few hundred people who were willing to vote a straight party line ballot, whether or not they read the nominated works. Do you feel you earned that nomination? Are you proud that you kept Andy Weir (to name only one name) off the Campbell nomination ballot?
The anger against the puppy nominees is not simply because your writing is poor—as you rightly point out, who knows how you’ll write in the future. But by forcing your way onto the ballot, you’re forcing out writers who write well THIS YEAR, and that’s where at least my anger comes from.
Thanks for your response. When I read “shitty, shitty nominees” that made me wince, too.
People like Jagi Lamplighter who are not here to pick a fight, and handle themselves in a way that is worthy of respect, should not be dished with abusive language. It’s perfectly possible (as some commenters have already shown) to disagree with her characterization of the Puppies’ goal without any of those words George Carlin did his routine about.
I will say there are other occasions when trolls have come along and Aaron did an effective job deconstructing their claims.
Everyone has been over the same ground so many times now some fine points tend to be lost. Pretty much, if I had written any of the slated fiction I’d say I had done a good job. Just because I didn’t want to vote the stories a Hugo didn’t mean they weren’t professional level work.
Lis,
So are you suggesting I go over to Vox Day’s site, shake my finger at him and tell him “Bad Vox. Bad!”? Because if you are, I can already assume what he will do.
Laugh. Chortle. Laugh some more. Chortle once more. Then guffaw, because he really doesn’t care.
Haven’t you figured it out by now? Vox does not care. He would burn this whole thing to the ground and use the smoldering ruins to roast marshmallows.
As for what the other Puppies did (re: accusations of false reviews), I do recall a prominent-ish blogger calling for deliberate one-star reviews to be placed on all Puppy-nominated works, and soon after quite a few one and two-star reviews landed. If the timing was incidental and purely coincidental, then yeah, some apologies are owed. I recall a few one-star reviews left on my work I submitted for the Hugo packet. I shrugged and ignored it, like I do most of my reviews. Why? Because it’s entirely unprofessional for the author to comment on reviews (in my opinion). However, I also understand how Puppies feel because roughly at the same time, every single mid-major news publication seemed to run the same article attacking Puppies for being and promoting white, Mormon males. I know that would have pissed me off. Again, though, it could have all been purely coincidental.
And yet… that remarkable timing…
Then came the accusations of racism, and the “I’m sorry you were offended” non-apologies which followed. Puppies retaliated, and normally sane people on both sides began to utterly lose their shit. I think it was about June when I told my fiancé “This isn’t going to end well for either side.”
Right now, both sides need to step back and breathe. The outside world is looking at fandom and saying “What the fuck is up with the nerd-herd?” You know it’s bad when people who don’t usually care about things are wondering why we’re at one another’s throat.
I wrote a piece over at the Mad Genius Club awhile back commenting about how, even though we disagree and fight (and fight some more, and fight again because… hell, we forgot, but let’s keep fighting!), we’re still fandom. All of us. We seem to have forgotten that somewhere along the line.
In the end, while at the conventions we choose to attend or the online forums we populate, all we have is one another.
the first 3 books in the Twenty Sided Sorceress series
bought!
@Mark Dennehy on September 2, 2015 at 7:27 am:
People make FAKE manuka honey? Holy God, why? That stuff tastes like chemically-treated butthole. It’s a crime against everything that is good about honey.
@Jason
Yes, calling the nominees shitty was, at minimum, tarring with a wide brush. Disliked, perhaps. Not Hugo-worthy, certainly (or even not Not-a-Hugo-worthy!). It was an over-generalisation, and perhaps you should be either less keen to throw yourself in front of it, or to at least understand the sentiment behind it.
Also, Day is vandal with delusions of grandeur. He is irrelevant to trying to constructively find a way out of this. Lis named 6 people, who have been variously critical and /or outright attacking prior nominees and winners as “tokens” and “affirmative action picks”. None of them were Day. Yet you jump straight to him – why?
Also – you say “I’m sorry you were offended” non-apologies which followed. “ . Who are you referring to? And for illustration, please refer to my comment here.
ETA: On the alleged call for false reviews – wasn’t this what Day (and various MadGenius jumped on the bandwagon of) was claiming that Glenn Hauman (IIRC) was asking for? If so, you will find that Glenn’s actual comment was quite different. I only say this as if you’re criticising someone for over-generalisations, perhaps you should be more accurate in your own claims as well.
Jason.
Yeah, not much point in telling Beale he’s being a jerk; he does revel in it.
Now, have you said anything to Larry, Brad, Wright, Hoyt, Antonelli, the Marmot…? No? Why not?
There’s no way you can make the insistence from Brad and others that the last however many years’ winners, mentioning specifically the women, the non-whites, the gays, are “affirmative action” wins that no one could really enjoy but were voted in only because they ticked the right demographic and ideological boxes, not racist, sexist, and homophobic. Or Beale’s and Wright’s assorted rants–including some of Wright’s nominated works, most notably Transhuman and Subhuman. Or Brad’s childish attempt to insult John Scalzi by suggesting he might be gay, and then clearly not understanding that what angered Scalzi and others was the assumption that being gay was a demeaning, terrible thing. Or the racist, sexist, homophobic “jokes” included in Wisdom From My Internet.
I could go on with yet more examples, but either you get it or you don’t.
Prominent-ish Blogger calling for deliberate one-star reviews
No. Or if it did, let’s see a link. What I did see was a reminder that our reviews–whatever their content–could also be posted on Amazon.
That those reviews were often one or two stars is entirely on the quality of the nominated work.
Larry and Brad not winning the Campbell when they were each nominated is the origin of this Sad Puppies campaign, but no rational person would take being considered “only” one of the five best new writers as an insult. And the direct and active insults to past winners and to nominees and voters started openly with Sad Puppies II.
So no, sorry, not at all a response to insults and disrespect from non-Puppies. You guys, or at least the self-named Evil League of Evil, started this fight, and then we’re outraged when we didn’t go whimper in a corner and hand over the shiny rockets.
You seem like a nice enough guy, but the ignoring who the aggressors are and attempts at “both sides” dodging got tiresome way back in the spring.
Always worth reiterating in case anyone wonders why people dislike the puppies so. Particularly if the people doing the wondering are puppies.
First one-star reviews and then accusations of racism and then insincere apologies. There the puppies were, minding their own business, when suddenly! One star reviews! Racism! Non-apologies!
One or two things, yes.
GRR Martin’s “Where’s the beef?” blog post should have been enough to end the argument about the Hugo awards being dictated by political exclusion, rather than good old-fashioned story-telling, months ago.
OK, let’s take L. Jagi at her words. The Sads wanted to see quality works win. What though was the result of their actions? To enable the rabids. To serve as Vox’s stalking horse. Perhaps the Sad plan was to squeeze a bit of stuff which would not have been otherwise read on and still allow genuine quality like Jackalope Wives to win while ensuring that people read their first Lou Antonelli story?
Didn’t happen. And now L. Jagi, your husband condems everyone else to hell, demands genocide and the Sads vow to do the same bloody thing again! I can just about be charitable and accept that your actions were not initiated out of spite, but if they were not, why do they continue?
Jason Cordova: I also understand how Puppies feel because roughly at the same time, every single mid-major news publication seemed to run the same article attacking Puppies for being and promoting white, Mormon males. I know that would have pissed me off. Again, though, it could have all been purely coincidental… And yet… that remarkable timing…
Dude. You’re not seriously buying into Torgersen’s ridiculous accusation that all those articles were the result of PR Releases sent by PNH or Tor or, hell, any Hugo voter who’s not a Puppy? Because if you are, I’m going to have to revise my “more rational than the average Puppy” estimation of you downward.
Do you understand how online news sites work? They have someone (usually numerous someones, usually unpaid or low-paid interns) trolling widely across all the other internet news sites looking for “breaking” news. When they find some, they copy the article, change a few words around, do a Google or two to add a bit of supplemental material, and — if they’re super-ambitious — contact one or two people for a quote.
As soon as one site published a story on the Puppies, it was inevitable that a whole bunch of other sites were going to jump on the bandwagon. If you insist on believing that that is due to anything other than capitalism and pandering to the public’s appetite for sensationalism, then there is probably no help for you.
Jason Cordova: Then came the accusations of racism
Based on ample evidence, as others have pointed out. Look, if somebody is going to be offended at being called a racist, then it’s really in their best interests not to say racist things, and not to join a group headed by people saying racist things. This isn’t a hard concept. People who do these things don’t get to be offended at being called a racist. They’ve brought it on themselves.
Just to remind Mr Cordova:
Glen Hauman’s alleged call for fake reviews: “It might be a good idea to take a look at the reviews and see which ones are helpful. If you’ve read the works, you should add your own review.”
Irene Gallo’s alleged non-apology: About my Sad/Rabid Puppies comments: They were solely mine. …I realize I painted too broad a brush and hurt some individuals, some of whom are published by Tor Books and some of whom are Hugo Award winners. I apologize to anyone hurt by my comments.
@Quinchan: “Some of them must have gone to Libertycon. Which is a fan-run convention, not an industry one, right?”
Correct. LibertyCon also makes a deliberate effort to put “attending pros” as well as the named guests on panels. But then, it also has a paid membership cap of 750 people, specifically to make the con easier to manage.
I wonder how quickly the Puppies will spin that membership cap to paint themselves as part of some Elite Group…
@Joe H.: “I had a quesadilla and a couple of Surly Devil’s Works (porter with blackstrap molasses)”
How was the wheat germ bread? 🙂
@Jason Cordova: “I wrote a piece over at the Mad Genius Club awhile back commenting about how, even though we disagree and fight (and fight some more, and fight again because… hell, we forgot, but let’s keep fighting!), we’re still fandom. All of us. We seem to have forgotten that somewhere along the line.”
Some of us never forgot that. It’s too bad the Puppies did.
I suspect a fair amount of reviews, both positive and negative, get written and posted after Hugo packets arrive. I know I’m fairly well trained to at least star what I’ve read and I keep trying to get better at writing reviews. At over 200 books a year I’m not reviewing nearly enough but if someone reminds me I generally bop on over to Amazon and/or Goodreads and leave a review or two.
Lis,
I’m not ignoring who the aggressors are. Puppies launched the attack on what they believed to be an overly-insular nominating process (this is my understanding of it). Nor will I apologize for them. That is their job, not mine. I will never, ever apologize for the actions of others.
I didn’t come here to lecture. That wasn’t my intention (though you probably wouldn’t know it by the amount of typing I’m doing tonight). I can go to each and every individual’s website you mentioned and tell them… what, exactly? To apologize for perceived slights? That’d be just as insulting to them as it would be to you if I demanded something like from you. Perception colors judgment.
Snowcrash,
I jumped straight to Vox because he is the easiest example of someone who is out to blow up the entire process. He’s also the most vocal about it and (quite frankly) is the one who primarily wants to watch the world burn.
As for the “I’m sorry you were offended” comment, I will stand by it. Calling someone a Nazi is extremely insulting, no matter in what context (well, okay, grammar nazi might be the lone exception, I’ll have to check). Any other insult or name-calling probably would not have even come to anyone’s attention. But when people who have helped my career along are put into the same category as the people who murdered my grandfather’s brothers and sisters, parents, uncles, aunts, and cousins, well, I’m going to demand a real apology. Like “Holy crap, that was a remarkably stupid comment I made. I’m sorry.”
I read Ms. Gallo’s attempted apology. It was ill-conceived and poorly written. She owed it to herself to be earnest. However, I was not in favor of the entire “Boycott Tor” movement. That’s punishing authors who have no dog in the fight, and a completely irrational approach.
I also looked at Glenn’s comments about the down-voting of books on Amazon. I will admit that while it is not explicitly stated to down-vote any Castalia House books, it sure is implied. His comments at the end reinforce this perception:
*shrug* I may be reading too much into it, but that sure sounds like a call to down-vote books.
Rev Bob
I go to Libertycon every year. The concom doesn’t let politics get in the way of hosting a good con, even this year with all the SP/RP stuff going on. They are professional as well as extremely hospitable and nice. I doubt that anyone can claim this con as “their own” without hearing from Brandy.
Tasha
I have a hard time remembering to post reviews over at Amazon as well. I used to do about 100-150 reviews a year at a book review blog, but lately I’ve been slacking because life tends to do that. Of course, Amazon has the policy now that if you copy your review from off-site to theirs, they might flag it and not allow it. Not sure how that works though. Are their spider bots that good? If so, does that explain why they know my shopping habits so well that it’s frightening?
Jason:
You don’t think that’s because he was of the opinion that honest reviews of Castalia House books would be on balance negative?
I mean, I didn’t post any Amazon reviews on any of it, but if I had, they wouldn’t have been positive.
Kurt
I have no idea. I don’t know what Glenn’s private thoughts on the matter were, or intentions. All I can glean from his comments were that he wanted to try and game a system as a way to return the favor.
Big Hero 6! Indeed a great loss. Purest scientifiction, suitable for the whole family, what more could be wanted?
Scott Lynch tweets: hee.
Rolf is quite the special little entitled snowflake and sees reality from the opposite perspective of everyone else, doesn’t he?
Christopher Priest has said some… hmm… problematic things about books before, but he read the books before commenting on them. Plus he did it on his own website, not a newspaper’s.
Antonelli’s joke would have been funnier if we all hadn’t heard it before. That’s our Lou, endlessly creative. Someone tell him the one about the talcum powder!
I too highlight typos, grammar problems that make the meaning of the passage unclear, and blatant errors of fact that could have been fixed with a quick Google or Wiki search in my Kindle. I don’t know if the authors will ever see this or care, but it makes me feel better. I don’t do it when it’s obviously an OCR problem, because I’m not OCD.
I’d drink beer if it didn’t have hops. Hate the nasty bitter things and might actually be slightly allergic to them.
@Anna FDD: That teen should ask for a new host family. Or destroy her passport so she can’t be forced to go. She will be miserable, treated like a lower form of life, and preached at constantly. Small towns in Ohio can be quite charming, but she’ll be spending a great deal of money for endless agita. Oh, they also think Catholicism is the Whore of Babylon (that’s what they call it). And despite being mentioned in the Bible, alcohol is a terrible sin. So tell her not to unpack fully and be ready to run ASAP.
Bedtime. Nighty-night, commentariat.
@lurkertype
There are gruits and other un-hopped beers. Hops in beer was actually a pretty serious controversy back in the day. Hell, it makes the Puppies vs. The World issue seem minor, in comparison. I’m buzzed and feeling too lazy to use google at the moment, but my memory was that hops were brought over to England by the Danes (that’s what you call people from Denmark, right?) and the good (non-hop brewing) folk of England were pretty sure they were the Devil’s herb and no good for anyone, causing bloating and bloviating and JHVH knows what more, and petitioned to get rid of that foul herb. Or flower. Is hops an herb? But regardless, a variety of other herbs and combinations of herbs had (and, more and more, have) been used to bitter and/or clarify and/or act as antiseptics on beer before hops. I think ultimately, hops was just the most efficient bittering and anti-septic herb, so it won out. But for a while, there was ale and there was beer, where one was hopped and one wasn’t, IIRC. I’m pretty sure IRTC, but I can’t recall whether the hopped one was the beer or the ale.
I reserve all rights to be Xanatosianly wrong in the glaring light of the morning and google and all that.
I was under the impression that by “neo nazi” Gallo was referring to the Rabid Puppies group…which is mostly an extension of Vox Day (“two extreme right-wing to neo-nazi groups, called the Sad Puppies and the Rabid Puppies respectively” – emphasis on that respectively). Her apology for it seems fine to me.
This is, again, an argument that should have ended ages ago though.
Hi Jason!
I’m kind of impressed by how you have mostly managed to keep a cool head during all this and by how you have (by large) kept out of all things.
Personally, I do categorize Beale as a neonazi. I am biased in that he has heroised the man who tried to murder one of my friends and his wife. And that means that I will associate all rabid puppies with neonazis. Is it insulting for Beale? Maybe. But not as insulting as his behaviour is towards others.
In how I read Gallo, it was the rabid puppies she called neonazis – not the sads. This seems to be a big difference in how sads and others read her post.
http://blog.joehuffman.org/2015/08/30/sasquan-post-obligatory/#comment-87359
*sigh* just *sigh*
I tired. Someone got it into this poor guy’s head that the con existed to help him. Also calling someone who made no comment on his personal views and tried very hard to be nice, a freak.
He’s a stranger, and a rather hostile one at that, still… I feel sad.
Maybe someone will say something nice?
@Jason yes Amazon uses bots. I tend to edit my reviews for each place I’m reviewing. I’m more casual in tone and put more content notes on Goodreads. I’m a bit more formal on Amazon.
If I’ve bought/downloaded for free a story/book from Amazon depending on which device I’m reading it asks me to star (Kindle Paperwhite) or star and review (Kindle app on iPad). I’ve switched to reading most things on the Kindle Paperwhite so I don’t leave as many reviews. No idea why they do it this way.
Lioness
Pretty sure that comments made by both sides are going to stick around a lot longer than their usual shelf life due to this year. Such is the nature of the beast.
@Jason
On Glenn’s comments, there’s a world of a difference between what Glenn said, and what you accused him of – which was, let me remind you, of “calling for deliberate one-star reviews to be placed on all Puppy-nominated works”.
By the way, if you don’t see the difference, then have a word with Brad Torgersen and your fellows in MGC – their insistence that SP3 was a reading list and not a slate is dependent upon *far* narrower ground.
On Ms Gallo’s apology – so you’ve moved on this as well, from calling it a non-apology to a poorly written one? Look, I do not doubt that you were offended, and Ms Gallo acknowledges that in her apology. But deliberately mis-quoting her, and calling her apology something it is not…well, someone who strives for accuracy like you do can see why that’s problematic, right?
Oh, and since the Nazi comparisons are beyond the pale to you, can you have a word with Kate Paulk, next time you’re at MGC? I don’t doubt that some people in the fandom she so despises were offended by her words. Maybe she should do something about that?
@Jason Cordova: “I go to Libertycon every year.”
I used to go to LibertyCon every year. I was there this year. I do not expect to return. It has become clear to me that I do not fit in with the audience they wish to attract… and I have no desire to change to fit that mold. If you’re interested, I went into more detail about this decision back in June, at considerable length. (One error in that piece: I got my wires crossed on the “cribbage” comment. Doesn’t affect the main point, but it’s still something I wish I could fix in the comment instead of downthread.) If you don’t want to read the whole thing, this paragraph sums things up pretty well:
@Jason Cordova again: “The concom doesn’t let politics get in the way of hosting a good con, even this year with all the SP/RP stuff going on.”
Apparently you missed all the “I stand with Uncle Timmy” buttons last year, as well as the climate denialism that has infected the “science” track for the past several years. Or are those not “politics” to you? How about the con’s newsletter appearing on both Puppy slates? Still neutral?
Oh, Jason.
You’re coming here and telling us we’re being rude and should stop it, but you’re worried the Puppies will find you rude and condescending if you tell them they’re rude and should stop it?
It’s okay to tell us to knock it off with language you consider beyond the Pale, but not to tell the Puppies the same thing?
Here’s the thing. Like it or not, you are associated with the Puppies. You were a Puppy nominee, and unlike Kloos, Bellet, and a few others, you didn’t pull out and decline the nomination when you realized what happened. Unlike Kary English, you were not (that I recall) trying to reach out to non-Puppies during the period following the announcement of the ballot.
You may perceive yourself as a neutral party, but you don’t look like one from here, though you sound overall nicer and more rational than most of the more visible Puppies.
And you are seemingly willing to chastise “bad behavior” only from what you appear to regard as the “other side.”
Also, you seem to be upset only about rudeness and disrespect to Puppy-nominated authors, not to all the other nominees and winners for, at a minimum, the last five years.
Give it some thought please.
I’m not sure I could point to the number of blogs*/posts/tweets who have called everyone or just file770 & a few other special people/groups Nazis. I have noticed the lack of us screaming in rage and calling for heads or skulls for that particular offense. Nor have any apologies been made.
Given that I don’t have a lot of sympathy with those raging over 1 person making a statement that depending on how you read it probably referred to TB/VD being a neo-nazi and apologized for her comments.
*I’m unwilling to go reread their stuff a 2nd time to find exact quotes. I would say Google should have no problem finding the posts on ELoL throw the term around.
@Jason
Puppies launched the attack on what they believed to be an overly-insular nominating process (this is my understanding of it). Nor will I apologize for them. That is their job, not mine. I will never, ever apologize for the actions of others.
I’ve heard this one quite a lot; it’s usually in response to a suggestion that you are responsible for your choices about who you associate with, or support.
Now, I’m not suggesting anyone should be responsible for the actions of, say, random people on twitter who are posting on your hashtag, but the major figures? Yeah, you choose how far you support them, and you own that support.
I disagree, but the fact that you’re not characterising it as a death-threat makes you one of the reasonable ones. I’m not sure congratulations are in order.
This is, for me the biggest blind spot in the whole Puppy thing: everything is political. It’s just that it’s easier not to notice when they’re your politics on display. When I’m reading a book and I don’t spot the political component, I usually go looking for it rather than assume it’s not there.
@Nigel
I admit it – I lol’d.
But it is true isn’t it….
@Iphinome – You did your best. Good to see someone attempting to engage Rolf. His post makes it almost impossible for me to type this comment without being snarky. I wouldn’t waste any more energy on him if I were you.
Holy shit it’s hard to comment on Rolf without being snarky. I feel like a fucking saint right now.
@Jason
Calling someone a Nazi is extremely insulting, no matter in what context
Well, absolutely, if that is what happened. Look, this is where you fall straight back into the pool of puppy rhetoric that you claim to be out of. You’re taking a factual, documented event and rewording it to up the victim-ante. Gallo described the Rabids as Neo-Nazi. She did not describe the Sads as Nazi. Yet practically every comment by the SP about it persists in mischaracterising it. If you want to be offended by the other things she said, fine, make your case and be offended, but please focus on what was actually said.
You feel Gallo’s apology wasn’t earnest? How do you expect a carefully considered apology, that was no doubt checked over by a bunch of people, to be earnest?
I don’t think Jason missed it.
http://jasoncordova.com/2014/05/20/uncle-timmy-and-the-thought-police/
(No dog in this fight, I have no idea who the man is or what crimes he has committed)
Jason:
No offense, but what you seem to be gleaning from his comments, as evidenced by your references to people one-starring books without reading them, is directly contradicted by his actual words, which suggest that reviews be posted by people who’ve read the stuff. So your position seems a bit unbalanced — you’re willing to assume negative things not in the text but not willing to reason from something that is in the text.
Then again, you’re willing to come here and tell people what’s appropriate and inappropriate in terms of referring to the Puppy nominees (and I’ll even agree with you that “shitty” is overly harsh language for…well, a fair chunk of the slate), but you resist the idea of telling any of the aggressors anything about their language because it would be “insulting” to object to their insults. You’re eager to say that both “sides” need to step back, but the only people you seem willing to take to task for anything are the non-Puppies, while you keep explaining why the Puppies should reasonably feel bad to be called bad things, but keep avoiding any mention of what those oh-so-hurtful comments were in response to — the ongoing flood of CHORF and SJW and puppy-kicker and poofy pink Maoist Marxist Nazi affirmative action lying didn’t really like the books that won controlling cabal of bla bla blah.
I don’t particularly want you to apologize for other people, but I sure wish you’d stop with all this about how of course the Puppies feel bad after being treated like people who behaved appallingly but never managing to connect it to the appalling behavior and how it might have made people who didn’t remotely deserve it have less than ideal feelings themselves.
Or to put it another way, your refereeing and your perception of harm seem awfully one-sided.
Thanks Kathodus, I needed that.
Like Mike, I am not happy that language appeared in responses to ms Lamplighter’s post that she seems likely to find offensive (i.e. cussing). She certainly reiterated one of the puppies’ stated aims. We know of others, and their actions also deserve attention. “By their fruits ye shall know them” indeed applies to everyone.
My grandfather fought Nazis in North Africa, but Paulk’s Nazi tirade might as well be the results of a child daubing on the wall with finger-paints. These are not serious people.
Rev. Bob, I suspect you’re not going to like whatever answer you get re: “Uncle Timmy since, well
Oh, someone got to it already. Well then!
In that case: I got around to reading Linda Nagata’s The Red, and it is excellent milSF, though I suspect few puppies would enjoy it. Exoskeletons, rogue AI, rogue corporations, soldiers with near-telepathic connections to each other and command, and whose emotional states are “managed” in real time by their handlers. Lots of good stuff.
Just ignore the “It’s like Clancy!” blurb. That just…no.
“Rev. Bob, I suspect you’re not going to like whatever answer you get re: “Uncle Timmy since, well”
Holy crap, Uncle Timmy is an arsehole.
MaxL: I got around to reading Linda Nagata’s The Red, and it is excellent milSF, though I suspect few puppies would enjoy it. Exoskeletons, rogue AI, rogue corporations, soldiers with near-telepathic connections to each other and command, and whose emotional states are “managed” in real time by their handlers. Lots of good stuff. Just ignore the “It’s like Clancy!” blurb. That just…no.
I really enjoyed First Light and just got The Trials from my library yesterday and am really looking forward to it.
Any comparisons of The Red series to Tom Clancy should be ignored as invalid… his work pretty much went to hell after The Sum of All Fears, and Nagata’s first book is really good.
ETA: … so good that she self-published it initially, and the reception and buzz were so fantastic that it got snapped up and re-published by Simon & Schuster, along with a contract for the sequels.
Aside from the puppy kerfuffle, I hope Jason Cordova comes back to talk about book recommendations and other miscellany unrelated to political controversies. L. Jagi Lamplighter, as well.
MaxL: Rev. Bob, I suspect you’re not going to like whatever answer you get re: “Uncle Timmy since, well…
When the whole Archon controversy broke, I went out and researched it for myself. At that time there were dozens of issues of Revenge of Hump Day available online (he’s since removed them to hide the evidence).
I picked 3 of them, at random, from different years. Every single one of them had racist and/or sexist and/or homophobic “jokes” in it. It was like reading a newsletter that had been put together by a 10-year-old who thinks that racism, sexism, homophobia, and fart and poo “jokes” are really funny. I was sort of stunned that something like this actually seemed to have a clientele of dozens of readers.
The controversy stemmed from the fact that one of the main things Archon was supposedly Guest-of-Honoring him for was this fanzine full of infantile and offensive “jokes”.
I have no doubt that Bolgeo has contributed to fandom, and conventions, and has some loyal friends, and has done nice things for people. But really, is this the sort of person they want to hold up as a positive example?
#600!
Chapter 5 * 120! 120 Chapter Fives, Morty! 120 Chapter Fives! Rick and Morty 120 years dot com!
TOD L. GAWKS… as copies of a P.C. Hodgell fall off their shelves.