(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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Kevin I know to you this is easy & obvious & makes sense. You’ve explained it to me at least three or four times. I know it’s hard for you to comprehend that some people really can’t think that way. I looked at the transference of votes this year, looked at my husband, and said “that’s why I leave off people once I’ve voted no award”. He sorta gets why I do it now.
But seriously not only have you explained this to me 3-4 times on others blogs but those other blogs were explaining it using other words and even numbers/charts/graphs.
I was in a car accident in March 2012. During cognitive therapy I stopped treatment because the therapist kept insisting she could teach me certain types of math/problem solving that just thinking about causes panic attacks and spending 1+ hours working on makes me literally suicidal (I have meds for this). After 3x week for 4-6 weeks of going home suicidal even with doubling my meds I decided living with some cognitive brain damage for life was ok. Yes I did try other options before giving up. I’ve had problems with those kinds of math since I was a kid. I’ve been suicidally depressed since I was 8. I really do know what my limits are.
Keep in mind that something that is simple to you might really, really not be simple, or even possible for someone else.
My husband and I used to get in fights all the time. I think it’s simple and obvious to put things back from where you took them out. His brain does not work that way. He moves an object and has no clue where that object started from. He has a basic idea fridge, shelf (not necessarily which), side of room (sometimes). For years I’ve been getting really frustrated that he can’t do such a “simple/basic” task as put things back where they came from. One day I realized he just doesn’t have awareness of that kind. You can’t imagine how much easier my life is now that I don’t expect him to do this “simple/basic” thing.
So when I asked “please don’t explain it to me”. Yeah I meant please don’t. I don’t think it’s super complicated. It’s just not the way my brain works. Hopefully your explanation helped someone else. Sometimes taking someone at their word is a really lovely thing to do. Especially when a woman asks “don’t explain”.
As rightfully pissed off as everyone is, I’m going to second OGH’s call, and propose that we grade puppies on a curve: IMO, civil engagement while posting in a known unfriendly space from a Puppy nominee who was fairly quiet merits non-dogpiling, particularly when he’s congratulating the non-Puppy winner of his category, and acknowledging Wes Chu’s deservingness. That speaks well of Jason, and is noteworthy, given what we’ve seen from so many other Puppies.
…while fully acknowledging the fact that Jason still has a lot of puppy talking points in him. RedWombat’s summation was amazing, and that one is the one I’d most like Jason to respond to.
@Jason, if you’re still reading these, some thoughts at random:
1) Good luck on your next book. Deadlines are a rhymes-with-witch, but they help focus the mind.
2) Second, kudos for coming here and being civil, and not drive-by. I appreciate it.
3) I don’t think your Campbell work was bad, or shitty. A lot of the other works by Pup nominees were, though.
4) I think you got sucked into a situation you didn’t fully understand. One of the hugely important keys for me–a playwright (and SFF writer like you, though not with as many credits)–in the whole Puppy mess is that both Larry and Brad were, like you, recent Campbell nominees. That’s a huge honor. It means the Worldcon voters those years (2011 for Larry, 2012 for Brad) decided, out of the 200+ eligible writers, they were one of the best 5. It’s a big deal for me because I spent a year and a half, and five drafts, on a fantasy novel, The Lords of Perth, which was good… but never even got an agent. It got 3 full requests (out of 22 agent queries). If I’d been lucky enough to have it published, I would’ve been overjoyed. If it had been nominated for a CAMPBELL I’m finding it hard to imagine a situation under which I ever would’ve turned around and criticized Worldcon, for anything. Ever. A Campbell nomination = fandom really likes you, keep going.
5) Similarly, in 2014, Sad Puppies 2–despite the obvious slating and campaigning from that year, Larry’s novel, Warbound, beat out Mira Grant’s Parasite for the 4th-place slot (Grant is a very popular member of fandom), finishing way above “No Award,” and Brad’s novella came in third in category, out of 5. That says a couple of things:
a) If there had been any sort of bias against conservatives, neither Brad nor Larry would ever have gotten a Campbell nomination.
b) Despite the excess campaigning from SP2, despite the fact that Larry got Vox Day on the ballot “out of spite,” fandom liked Brad and Larry’s work enough to vote them way above No Award, and above other candidates. True, neither of them won, but no one’s entitled to win a Hugo. That again says “we, the voters of this year’s Worldcon, still like your work.”
I’ve never made it to the level Brad or Larry has. I have a real problem with the psychic disconnect whereby you’re nominated for a major award, and turn around 3 years later and say “I could never win this award, so I’m gonna campaign to piss people off.” DUDE. YOU (LARRY) WERE NOMINATED FOR THE CAMPBELL. OBVIOUSLY YOU HAD ENOUGH GOODWILL TO GET ANOTHER NOMINATION AT SOME POINT. Pat Cadigan, an amazing writer, went 20 years in between nominations, for God’s sakes.
And then for finalists for Worldcon’s most prestigious award falsely claim there’s some kind of political clique which is conspiring to keep you from awards, leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Worse, Brad insulted basically the entire voting body of Worldcon, saying that ppl who voted for Ancillary Justice and Digger didn’t really like them, but that they were “affirmative action picks.” Do you get why people–not the least of which the authors themselves–would be angry and hurt over that?
Look, man. You’re neither Larry nor Brad. And that’s appreciated. But there are a lot of pros and longtime members of fandom here. I’ve been writing for 13 years, created a lot of good work (WRNG in Studio City, L.A. BEER, a whole lot of really good plays), and I can confirm my only response to being nominated for a major award would be “Thank you. I’m going to continue to do really good work. If I do anything else as amazing as the thing you nominated, I hope you’ll consider it.”
As RedWombat noted, having Brad state (by implication) that she didn’t deserve her Hugo for Digger hurt. Brad’s multiple, unprovoked slams were nasty, and false, and hurtful. He’s never owned them nor apologized for them, and he should.
The Sad Puppies, as a group, wronged a lot of good people who didn’t deserve it–RedWombat, Mike, Anne Lenckie…Rachel Swirsky, whose short story “if you were a dinosaur, my love,” beat out Sarah Hoyt’s story for a nomination. As a result, Hoyt led a hate campaign against her and the story, smearing and insulting her six ways to Sunday, for nothing. Rachel Swirsky did nothing to deserve the shitstorm she got from the Sad and Rabid Puppies. She wrote a story that 63 nominators in 2014 thought was amazing (and me). For that, she is held up as a horrible writer and a horrible human being who wrote something that is bigoted and classist and not sci-fi… and this led by Hoyt, who’s never acknowledged that if “dinosaur” had somehow been disqualified, Hoyt herself would’ve been next in line for a nomination for Best Short Story. Given having one guy on File770 call my work “shitty” or deal with what Rachel’s had to, I know which one I’d choose.
Several people who were initially on SP3 made very, very difficult decisions to remove themselves from it, precisely because of this stuff. I can’t imagine how hard it must’ve been for Marco Kloos, Annie Bellet, and Edward Schubert to decline nominations–or for Juliette Wade to decline membership in SP3–particularly since, in the first 3 cases, it would’ve been their first.
You don’t have to answer for Brad and Larry as an individual, but you do have to answer for your membership in Sad Puppies the group, because of the hurt and dishonesty Sad Puppies, as a group, engaged in. There were always options–as soon as Marco & Annie declined, as hard as it would’ve been for you, you could’ve followed suit. You could’ve done something to speak out against Brad and Larry’s attacks when the campaign was going on, or just engaged with the community here.
This is way too long a comment, so I’ll end by crediting your engagement, and encourage you to keep pushing to examine the behavior of Sad Puppies 3 as a group, and really read RedWombat’s combat about her Hugo, and the 8 years she spent working on the graphic novel, and take it in.
I may be projecting on this, but was our guest saying that File 770 is a safe space to come to and ask for civility, while saying it would be useless or painful to try the same thing with the Puppies?
Huh. If so, not surprising, but worth examining a bit.
Or I suppose it could just be the assumption on his part that it’s all the non-Puppies’ fault and the Pups don’t need civility. Can’t tell.
Tasha Turner on September 3, 2015 at 1:00 pm said:
I’m sorry.
I’m sorry Kevin. I may have I overreacted. It’s been a long couple of weeks personally and long few months online. I should have turned my iPad off and stuck to reading books today.
I’m going offline now. Have a good night all.
5) Similarly, in 2014, Sad Puppies 2–despite the obvious slating and campaigning from that year, Larry’s novel, Warbound, beat out Mira Grant’s Parasite for the 4th-place slot (Grant is a very popular member of fandom), finishing way above “No Award,” and Brad’s novella came in third in category, out of 5.
No, they didn’t. Warbound came in fifth, barely beating out No Award by just over 100 votes. Warbound came in third in the first pass, but that’s not how finishes are calculated.
The Chaplain’s Legacy came in fourth, beating only fellow Puppy nominee The Butcher of Khardov. Once again, you seem to only be looking at the first pass, and that’s not how finishes are calculated.
For reference here are 2014 Hugo stats.
The Pups seem to really dislike or (sometimes) completely misunderstand IRV. I wonder if that’s why some of them are so convinced that things are rigged? Subliminally, they know IRV isn’t good old fashioned American first past the post voting.
After reading Rolf Nelson’s incredibly grim and unfun opinions, I had to know more about him. Check this out:
http://www.lawrencemschoen.com/news/eating-authors-rolf-nelson/#more-2078
You think GRRM knows grimdark? Joe Abercrombie? Warhammer 40k? Rolf Nelson knows grimdark. Rolf Nelson is pure grim darkness. The only fun he will acknowledge is killing things. He doesn’t even enjoy food.
Also, I totally get his short story now. It was basically a list of things that happened, in order, during a sea^H^H^H space battle. No sense of human interest, nothing but soldiers attempting to kill other soldiers.
Rolf Nelson is pure grim darkness. The only fun he will acknowledge is killing things. He doesn’t even enjoy food.
He seems like he’d be a lot of fun at parties. Or really, anywhere where there were humans with functioning souls.
Cons are really hard places to be, if you have trouble standing or walking for long periods of time. Power chairs are a great way for folks who otherwise couldn’t attend to enjoy cons, and no one should sneer at people for using them. Or for being fat.
This was a particularly dickish insult (in the original essay). I immediately thought that if a writer critical of slates and the puppies had expressed similar thoughts about, say, the attendees at Libertycon, the puppy talking points would be “look at this smug elitist treating regular people with such contempt.”
For some reason, I just keep picturing Rolf Nelson saying “what is this emotion which you call ‘joy’?”
Kevin Standlee said:
Although uncalled-for, that was a good explanation. I’d like to offer the following suggestion to make it even clearer:
Add this after the bolded text: “Redistributing means that you ( a ) cross out each ballots’s number 1 choice; ( b ) subtract 1 from all the other numbers, so that the number 2 choice becomes the number 1 choice, the number 3 choice becomes the number 2 choice, etc.; and ( c ) place the ballots in the remaining stacks according to the new number 1 choices.”
only be looking at the first pass, and that’s not how finishes are calculated.
I wonder if they think that the votes on each pass are completely separate and new? because that is so not how it works; the totals are running totals.
::Jaw drops::
Dude, you’re supposed to grow OUT of being emo, not INTO it.
Yeesh. When I’ve been able to make a living with the written word, it’s been with horror: ghosts and spectres, vampires, the whole deal. And yet (like a lot of horror authors) I’m pretty mellow and cheery as an individual. I put the grimdark into my work, where it’s appropriate, and choose not to make it a lifestyle. I hope Mr. Nelson gets a mental break at some point.
Notice that his most memorable meal is one that he doesn’t really remember what he ate other than it was “lots of breakfast food”, and there was jam and syrup.
That’s really sad. He has the germ of the right idea and he’s grown it all wrong. Yes, home-made bread is good and tasty and cheap, and yes, eating what you catch and kill is normal and it’s a damn sight more humane to the animal than factory farming and yes, if you have good produce then simple cooking is wonderful; but he’s doing it out of spite for fancy things, not love for simple things. Bad coffee is not just as good as good coffee. You can pee in your cup of stewed overextracted black water all you want and talk about how my fresh-ground kenyan beans with the pinch of salt is all fancy-pants, but you’ll still be drinking pee and I won’t be wasting the efforts of the farmer who grew the beans and the people who shipped and packaged and sold them on. And there’s not a damn thing wrong with “fancy” food. Dammit, two centuries ago, a hamburger was fancypants food because we didn’t have mincers yet. Today we’ve invented dozens of other tools. Given time, they’ll be normal. Fifty years from now, if we’re still eating steak, it’ll be sous vide cooked before being seared because that’s the best way to cook them and that’s what you’re meant to do when you cook meat, you don’t waste it by making it less palatable just to try to look hardass to other people.
Kathodus: After reading Rolf Nelson’s incredibly grim and unfun opinions, I had to know more about him. Check this out.
Schoen is a highly-experienced, deeply-appreciative gourmand. I can only imagine, after receiving this response, that he laughed the entire time he was posting it.
@Kathodus: (Rolf Nelson eats stuff)
I suddenly wish I’d posted my buffet comparison here instead of in the 9/2 comments. That whole “it’s just fuel” attitude is the perfect capper for it. Who cares about the content when it’s just words on a page or fuel for the body, right? Just shovel whatever’s handy onto the buffet, and screw anybody who’s prissy enough to complain…
Food as just fuel
Definitely a Dumarest of Terra flashback.
@Aaron: Ah, frack. You’re right, of course–failed to calculate out all the way–but that partially undermines my point about how they really had no excuse for feeling unwelcome or claiming conspiracy. They still don’t, and the stuff about the Campbells still stands.
Speaking as someone who gets hungry almost never, if I treated food only as fuel I would almost never eat. It has to taste good otherwise I get bored and do something more interesting.
(If anyone has recommendations for tasty but easy recipes that require very little in the way of chewing or being able to open your jaw, I’m all ears. I only have two soups that I regularly rotate, plus one or two that are more involved and I make less often.)
You’re right, of course–failed to calculate out all the way–but that partially undermines my point about how they really had no excuse for feeling unwelcome or claiming conspiracy. They still don’t, and the stuff about the Campbells still stands.
The point about the Campbell’s still stands. The point about their nominees being given a fair shake by the Hugo voters in 2014 stands too. I read both of those stories. Based on quality I ranked Warbound behind No Award and The Chaplain’s War fourth. They got the consideration the quality of the stories deserved.
Well, I like my chilli, but if you’re thinking more simple soup, how about some faux-ramen?
@Mark Dennehy
I think chilli would be too chewy (I really can’t move my jaw much right now), but the faux-ramen looks both tasty and at least potentially doable. Thanks!
(I’m also combing through your chilli recipe to see if there’s anything I want to incorporate into my chilli recipe if I ever feel like fancying it up. ETA: Always reassuring when the recipe makes it clear that lots of beans are involved. So many skimp on the beans.)
@Meredith — if you have a decent blender, smoothies might be an option. There are the usual sweet fruit-based ones, but there are also savory ones (basically cold blended soups). Here are links to a few recipes.
@Lexica
I don’t; my kitchen is in a state of rebuilding and so I’m a little light on equipment at the moment. The closest I’ve got is a mini food processor and it isn’t really built to handle liquids. As a matter of fact, my first thought on waking up was “bugger, I really wish I’d bought a blender and just dealt with not having anywhere to put it; smoothies would be ideal”. 🙂
Meredith, my comfort food is miso soup with soba noodles. If you buy the miso paste (any Southeast Asian supermarket will have it, and maybe even the mainstream supermarkets now), you can make the broth to precisely your taste, and the noodles go very soft. You can add whatever veg you like, but you don’t need to. You can also buy frozen gyoza and chuck those into miso broth, again with them going very soft and easy to eat.
It’s not something you want to eat every day but when you’re out of energy or inspiration, it’s the easiest thing next to packet soup you can imagine.
@Ann Somerville
Despite my best efforts (and salt addiction – for health reasons, even) I’ve never been able to get along with Miso soup. Occasionally I have another go at trying it in case my tastebuds have changed, but I’m not sure I’m up for that while not feeling super great.
ETA: The frozen gyoza tip is very intriguing though, especially if the chicken in the Mark’s faux-ramen ends up being too difficult.
Meredith, if the miso doesn’t appeal, you can cook the soba or gyoza in chicken stock or whatever you like. I like miso but I understand it’s not to everyone’s taste. It’s definitely superloaded with salt (which is why I shouldn’t eat it but I do 🙂 )
Meredith: Despite my best efforts (and salt addiction – for health reasons, even) I’ve never been able to get along with Miso soup. Occasionally I have another go at trying it in case my tastebuds have changed, but I’m not sure I’m up for that while not feeling super great.
I love Japanese food — and pretty much any food from Asian countries — but I cannot abide miso. It tastes like old socks to me. (But then, I’m not much of a fan of tofu, either.)
@Ann Somerville
Salt is actually good for me (within reason) because it makes it slightly easier to keep my blood pressure from taking a sudden dive off a cliff (it raises blood volume – which is why it’s bad for high blood pressure). I’d love to love miso (not least because an easy high salt content meal would be incredibly useful), but the miso and my tastebuds have yet to make friends. 🙁
I’ll console myself by nibbling on one of the fancy salts my sister gave me for my birthday…
@JJ
That’s pretty much my problem with it. But surely it must not taste like old socks to everyone, because otherwise why would anyone eat it? What am I missing?? The hidden appeal of miso, I wish I knew it.
“The hidden appeal of miso, I wish I knew it.”
Going to Japan made a big difference to my appreciation 🙂 Not an option for everyone, I know.
@Ann Somerville
Mm, middle sister and I were too young when my Dad was invited over to give a lecture on home education, so only my eldest (living) sister went with him (middle sister and I spent the week in my mother’s secondary school instead, alternately getting doted on and tormented by the students). I doubt at that age I’d have developed much appreciation for the food, though. It mostly instilled a deep appreciation for Frosties in my sister.
The Japanese people that came to stay with us from the home education network usually just brought sweets and tea (and toys) rather than anything savoury. They knew their audience of small children. 🙂
Meredith, the range of sweet things the Japanese can buy and eat is truly gobsmacking. I predict an epidemic of diabetes II in a few years.
So many kitkats. <3
Meredith, have you thought about crockpot cooking? I’m really happy with Fresh From The Vegetarian Slow Cooker. (I would eat vegetarian if I could; my cardiac circumstances require a certain amount of meat.) Setting up recipes like these and then having a whole bunch of meals’ worth of good eats is thoroughly satisfying, and a lot of these are very light on the chewing and rending and all.
“So many kitkats. <3"
Picture a group of late middled aged to elderly Australians outside a ferry terminal shopping, greedily scoffing green tea kitkats to which they had been introduced for the first time.
And the joy of finding the cheesecake and strawberry flavours 🙂
Not to mention the castille cake and the delicious Japanese take on creme caramel!
Ann, I’m having diabetic tremors just reading your comments. Pusher. 🙂
@nickpheas: No, there weren’t multitudes of polyamory meetup posters at Sasquan. Might have been a few. At random gencons, there are typically a couple of ‘live the dream’ posters, and flyers on the freebies table. They don’t stand out unless, perhaps, one is obsessed with other people’s sex lives.
@Ray: the xkcd survey
http://xkcd.com/1572/
because, why not?
I particularly liked the question that asked, of integers 1 through 5, which you like best on a scale of 1 to 5.
@Mark Dennehy:
Probably Anchor Steam no-adjective? Inoffensive lager-relative w/ a bit of malt and some fruitiness, but nothing special. If you ask for just a local San Francisco beer, that’s what you’ll get — a pity, as Anchor also make a worthy porter. Anchor Brewing Company are a bit stodgy and slow, being large for a craft brewery and the foundational brewer of the entire microbrewery movement. (My parents were devotees from the 1940s on, but not of the lagerish thing.)
The good news is that about everything else from US & Canadian microbreweries is more interesting than Anchor Steam no-adjective. And not everything tastes like licking an oak tree, either. i.e., not just IPAs, not even in Portland. Porters, stouts, brown ales, bitters, barley wines, bocks, saisons, hefeweizens…, good examples of all can be found. Hipster attitude strictly optional.
Or, more succinctly: What @Kathodus said.
(I am, #inallmodesty, a skilled beer drinker, one of the finest beer-tipplers tippling today. {hic} )
@Teemu Leisti (about USAian political parties as seen from Europe):
When the late, great Gore Vidal ran for junior Senator here in California, one of his standard lines concerned being a candidate with ‘the Democratic branch of the Property Party’. (He certainly got my vote.)
@Meredith
Glad to help 🙂
Also, don’t forget cheesecake is remarkably easy to eat 🙂
I have a thai pea soup recipe around here somewheres as well if that appeals.
And if you like squash, laksa is brilliant.
If chewing chicken breast is really going to be a problem, I would recommend dropping the chicken breast in a zip-loc bag of brine first: 2 cups water, 1/3 cup salt (sea salt or kosher, reduce to 1/4 cup if it’s just plain old table salt because that packs more), and maybe a fresh herb or two or a slice of lemon if you feel fancy). Leave it in there – in the fridge – for anything from 20 minutes up to three hours before cooking. It’ll come out much more moist and soft as a result. And sharpen your knife and slice finely 🙂
Also, risotto. It’s very, very, very, very easy to make, very filling, and you can thrown anything or nothing into it depending on your mood and it’s very easy to eat. Here:
https://youtu.be/xBG67dbEILY?t=6m32s
(BTW: Alton Brown. Holy carp, you guys need to export him more, he’s awesome. Just sayin’).
Actually no, I don’t remember what it was called but I got dragged to a small microbrewery bar by a friend who was working in SF at the time (and still is, a lot of folks in Dublin work for companies HQ’d in SF and we tend to do a week or two there every so often, or over in Portland or similar places). But he’s seriously into his craft beers (brews himself) and I thought he’d just found this isolated niche place. The beers there certainly weren’t available in the hotel bar. They did have the steam beer though. Eh, it’s not bad, I didn’t mind it. I tend to prefer things that have a bit more taste these days; ever since my wisdom teeth were pulled, if I drink more than about a pint of beer, I get this lovely sensation like someone’s shoving four knitting needles through my face where the wisdom teeth used to be (weirdly, wine will trigger it too; spirits won’t; ginger beer, even the alcoholic variety, won’t and neither will rice beer. It’s annoyingly erratic). So when I drink these days I tend to stick to smaller glasses and try fun stuff 😀
I can’t imagine how hard it must’ve been for Marco Kloos, Annie Bellet, and Edward Schubert to decline nominations–or for Juliette Wade to decline membership in SP3–particularly since, in the first 3 cases, it would’ve been their first.
We’re forgetting somebody else here. (Googles). Oh yeah, Dave Creek. He took himself off the list early on.
This is his website: http://www.davecreek.net/Explore_Dave_Creeks_fictional_worlds/Home.html
@brightglance, don’t forget Black Gate and Matt Surridge as well, who also declined their nominations.
@Meredith – Dal? Pea soup?
I like miso, so am not able to picture your objection- but I feel like there are a number of different styles of miso, aged differently and possibly with different tastes?
There are stronger and milder types of miso, though the milder ones are more readily available in Western markets anyway. The appeal is the same sort of thing as mushrooms or sourdough bread, which are also divisive flavors. Kind of a meaty, tangy, slightly gamy bouquet. (I get a hint of white wine from it, too.) I suspect there are people who just don’t taste them the same as others, and they get more of a sweat note from the tang and the meatiness.
@everyone
Thanks for all the further recommendations, I’m taking notes!
Starting on soup may have to wait a couple of days. I just struggled my way through a smallish yogurt without any bits. Good thing I don’t really get hungry! Siiiiigh. (I have a joint disorder, so… My jaw is deeply unhappy. Sockets from removed wisdom tooth+broken tooth? Feel fine! Apart from making me look like a bruised and lopsided chipmunk. Hmph.)
About those polyamory meetup posters: I bet he thought they were advertising an orgy or something. I can speak as someone who’s been to actual poly conventions and somehow never encountered an orgy, just a bunch of people sitting around and talking. And talking. And talking. Admittedly, I was one of their token monos, but I’m quite sure I’d at least have heard of such a thing.
Poly meetups are so a bunch of people can sit around in a room and talk about/bitch about/brag about their lives without having to do the whole Poly 101 thing Every. Single. Time. “Yes, I have two sweeties. Yes, they know about each other. Yes, they’re fine with it. Now about this hilarious thing that happened at the gas station the other day…..”
Soft foods: rice congee (porridge)?
There are numerous variants, from a watery rice soup to something thick like a porridge. The options of what to have with it (or in it) are at least as diverse: with egg, chicken, ground pork, salted egg, salty pickles, peanuts, fish etc. etc. etc.
Re: beer
There are a couple “root beer beers” on the market now and showing up in supermarkets. I’m not much of a beer drinker, so I’ve been trying these as I find them.
“Coney Island Hard Root Beer” was quite good, tasted just like root beer, apart from a tiny beer-ish bite at the end of a swallow.
“Not Your Father’s Root Beer” wasn’t quite as good. Tasted like root beer with unexpected spice notes, like cinnamon. Not *bad*, as such, and didn’t taste like beer, but that spice just takes it away from being “root beer”.