Pixel Scroll 9/13/16 I Know Why The Crottled Greep Pings

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Art by Camestros Felapton.

Art by Camestros Felapton.

(1) TALKING ABOUT “DESTROY” OR “DIG” COLLECTIONS? Neil Clarke, editor of Clarkesworld, raises the question of whether special collections for underrepresented communities is a good idea.

(2) THE ELDER CLODS. The Huffington Post continues to cover the full horror of this year’s presidential election: “Stephen King Compares Donald Trump To Cthulhu; Cthulhu Issues Angry Denial”.

(3) NEXT FROM LIU CIXIN. Death’s End, the last book in Liu Cixin’s trilogy which started with The Three-Body Problem, will be released September 20. A preview can be read here on the Tor/Forge Blog.

And the author’s next translated novel is announced in a tweet from Ken Liu.

https://twitter.com/kyliu99/status/775716534358597632

(4) AUTHOR LIFE. What is Joe Hill doing today?

So we’re doing #authorlife today. Okay. I’ll play. I’ll try to write 1500 words on a new novella (the last in a book of four), working longhand in an oversize National Brand account book. If it goes badly, I’ll accept 1000 words and hope for better tomorrow. When I’m done (1 PM? 2?) I’ll have a salad and read forty pages of A MAN LIES DREAMING, the current book (starring Adolf Hitler, PI, no, really). The afternoon is for office chores and email. If I can I’ll write a snail mail letter to a friend. Because I like doing that. At some point I’ll also listen to a chapter of the current audio book (PRINCE CASPIAN). Over the course of the day I’ll have four cups of tea. Three black, no cream, no sugar. The last is green and has honey and lemon. It all sounds very exciting, doesn’t it? Living life on the edge, that’s me. I’d like to be more physical but haven’t been on any kind of regular exercise schedule since before THE FIREMAN book tour. Hummmm. I also started playing piano this year for the first time since I was 13, and come evening I like to practice for a half hour. But I won’t today cos one of my fingers is f’d up. Maybe I’ll have an episode of THE AMERICANS. Then it’ll be 10PM and I’ll go to bed, like an old person. Shit. I think I’m an old person.

(5) I’VE HEARD THIS SONG BEFORE. Cora Buhlert’s “The Three Fractions of Speculative Fiction” jumps off from a Nathaniel Givens article recently linked in the Scroll, analyzing the sources of complaints about Hugo Award winners, then goes back to 2013 when Sad Puppies had barely begun for an eye-opening comparison of Hugo complaints then being made by fan critics and iconoclasts totally unrelated to the Puppies. Extra points to Buhlert for remembering what those other voices were saying.

Nonetheless, I did remember that there was a controversy involving the 2013 Hugos at the time, a controversy I chronicled in several posts here, here and here.

Interestingly, most “The Hugos are broken” complaints that year came not from the puppy side (though Larry Correia waded into the fray, being his usual charming self) but from overwhelmingly British critics, who complained about the alleged lack of sophistication of the nominees. For examples, check out these posts by Justin Landon, Aidan Moher, Adam Callaway and Jonathan McCalmont.

The critics who wrote those posts are not puppies. Quite the contrary, they are probably the polar opposite. Where the puppies complain that the Hugos aren’t populist enough and reward obscure literary works, these critics complain that the Hugos are too populist and not sophisticated enough. However, if you read through those posts (and particularly Justin Landon’s remains a marvel of condescension) you’ll notice that their criticisms of the Hugos eerily mirror those made by the sad and rabid puppies a few years later: The Hugos are broken, they are dominated by a small and incestous clique of aging babyboomers who have been attending WorldCon for decades and/or an equally incestous clique of livejournal posters voting for their friends, those cliques are hostile to outsiders and disregard everybody who doesn’t attend cons as “not a real fan”, only works that appeal to that clique of insiders are nominated and the books/authors the critics like are never nominated. So the Hugos should be burned to the ground or reformed to represent all of fandom or maybe a new award should be established to better represent what’s best in SFF. And as if the puppy parallels weren’t striking enough, many of those posts also contain some bonus condescension towards women writers and writers of colour. Oh yes, and they all agree that Redshirts is an unworthy nominee. Ditto for Lois McMaster Bujold and Mira Grant/Seanan McGuire. Opinions are divided on Saladin Ahmed.

So what is going on here? Why do two seemingly diametrically opposed groups make so very similar points? …

(6) TODAY IN HISTORY.

  • September 13, 1977 – Jay Anson’s The Amityville Horror is published.

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOYS

  • Born September 13, 1916 — Roald Dahl
  • Born September 13, 1939 — Richard Kiel

(8) NOT ALL CATS ARE SJW CREDENTIALS. L. Jagi Lamplighter, in “The Bifrost Between Calico and Gingham”, explains the difference between Sad Puppies and those who are satisfied with the Hugos, using “Cat Pictures Please” as an illustration [BEWARE SPOILERS].

I have been asked what the Puppies—Sad and Rabid alike—are objecting to? If they are not racist or homophobes—ie, if it is not the author’s identity that they object to—why do they think that so many of the stories that have been winning the Hugo and the Nebula are receiving their awards for the wrong reasons?

I think I can explain. I will use, for my example, the short story that won the Hugo in 2016: “Cat Pictures Please.” ….

So, to Left-Leaning readers, “Cat Pictures Please” is a witty story with a common, but perhaps new-to-them, SF premise, which also reinforces their idea of truth about the world and comes to a delightfully-satisfying conclusion.

The mixture of the simple SF premise, the wit, and the satisfying political leaning make it a very delightful story indeed.

To anyone who is Right-Leaning, “Cat Pictures Please” is a witty story with a common, and perhaps not-so-new-to-them, SF premise, which is full of concepts and moral choices that grate on them the wrong way, and the end is, while a bit amusing, rather unpleasant.

The first group says, “This is a great story!”

The second group says, “Look, I’ll be fair and overlook all the pokes in the eye, but as I am regarding the story through my blurry, now-painful eyes, I want to see some really fantastic science fiction. Something that wows me so much that I am going to think it is worth putting next to “Nightfall” or “Harrison Bergeron.” And I just don’t see it.

 “Your stuff is not new. If you take today’s problems and put them in space, that’s not science fiction. You need the new, the controversial, to be SF. 

“Where is the stuff that’s going to shake my world and make me think, the way the Hugo winners of years gone by, such as “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”, did?”

(9) HOW HUGO VOTING CHANGES MAY WORK. Cheryl Morgan wrote an analytical post after watching the MACII Business Meeting videos – “WSFS Has Spoken – What Does It Mean?” —  which I just got a chance to read today. I found Cheryl’s speculation about the impact of the changes to the Hugo voting rules very interesting, indeed. Here’s just one brief excerpt:

So I have no objection to the detection of “natural slates”. Politically, however, I suspect it will be a minefield. If, next year, when EPH is used on the actual voting, people who are not on the Puppy slates get eliminated by it, I think that there will be an outcry. Fandom at large is expecting EPH to get rid of all of the Puppies, and no one else. It will not do either. People are not going to be happy.

Another potential issue here is the effect that EPH will have on Helsinki in particular. Finnish fans will presumably want to vote for Finnish works. Because there are a lot fewer Finnish writers than non-Finnish ones, there will be much less diversity in their nominations. I suspect that EPH will see the Finnish votes as a slate and kick some of the nominees off. That too will make some people unhappy, including me.

(10) JEOPARDY! Another science fiction question on Jeopardy! This one was worth $800 in Numerical Literature. Steven H Silver sent a long a screencap, and confirmed “They got it right.”

jeopardy-que

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Steven Silver, Rose Embolism, Mark-kitteh, and Steve Davidson for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]

 

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207 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 9/13/16 I Know Why The Crottled Greep Pings”

  1. @Lee:

    Love (NOT!) that oh-so-casual assumption that nobody progressive has ever heard of emergent-AI fiction before. Some of us are in fact old enough to have seen 2001, or even (dare I say it?) to have read the book. What makes “Cat Pictures, Please” such a good story is its sure-handed characterization of said emergent AI.

    Piker. I compared it in my mind to “Computers Don’t Argue”, written long before those decadent sixties. That was from the non-decadent sixties.

  2. @Cora
    Several of the bloggers criticising the 2013 best novel Hugo shortlist are pretty damn condescending towards the nominees, particularly Justin Landon’s post. And the targets are Lois McMaster Bujold and particularly Seanan McGuire (whom he compares to a soap opera actress),

    Oh yes, I remember well. McGuire’s multiple nominations in the shorter categories also got a number of my fellow bloggers upset.

    All this sort of mostly went into the memory hole with the rise of the Puppies and their actions.

  3. @Bruce: I have a lot of respect for Clarke, and particularly for Clarkesworld’s commitment to printing fiction in translation, and having that as a reliable regular feature, rather than a “special project.”

    I agree that there’s zero contradiction between having special spotlights, and having those authors and segments routinely well-represented. I don’t think Clarke’s arguing otherwise.

    What he is saying (and has said before) is that he doesn’t find spotlight issues to be very helpful to the cause. Since they explicitly segregate stories, the question he’s asking is whether the one-time boost to authors (and specifically in a segregated context) is actually successful at achieving the real goal: seeing those groups well-represented routinely, in non-segregated, non-spotlight TOCs.

    I suspect that the Fireside report is weighing on everybody’s minds now. And it might not be entirely fair to use that as our only yardstick for spotlight projects – because some groups really have achieved an incredible, and highly-welcome, boost in representation and visibility. I think women, POC, LGBT*, and translated work have all been making tremendous gains. So, Lightspeed might do all its special issues and publish those same authors year round, and still have only 2 stories out of 66 by black authors. Clarkesworld might have this great translation project in every single issue, and still only have one story out of 56 by a black author.

    Which is scant comfort if you’re a black author or reader; and at the same time you’ve got editors making serious diversity efforts, that are (for various reasons) reaching other groups first.

    Point being: I really like that Clarke is explicitly looking long-term, and putting money and effort behind it. I don’t think he’s making the all-or-nothing argument you’re seeing. And, I also like that he opens the question to conversation, and is very much encouraging discussion rather than shooting critics down. 🙂

  4. Musing further over Cora’s (5), I feel compelled to dig back into old posts of Abigail Nussbaum’s, which were quite certainly my own introduction to the Wonderful World of Hugos.

    A couple of pull quotes:

    The ballot for this year’s short story category functions quite well as a snapshot of 2010’s short fiction scene, and the Hugo award’s interaction with it. You’ve got one of the most popular, and most talked-about, short stories of the last few years. You’ve got two of the award’s darlings, including one who has had a story on at least one of the short fiction shortlists for four years running. And you’ve got a story from a new and much-lauded online short fiction venue. Unfortunately, the ballot also functions well as a snapshot of the reasons that the Hugos so frequently disappoint me–its stories prioritize sentimentality over quality of writing or ideas; what little fantastic invention there is in them is staid and predictable; even the one deserving piece is derivative, much to its own detriment.

    — 2011 Short Story Shortlist

    And:

    [ The Hugos are, and have always been, a popularity contest. But then,] that’s not a compelling argument for remaining invested in the Hugos. It’s easy to point a finger at award-pimping because it’s a relatively new phenomenon that has dovetailed with an obvious shift in the Hugo’s tastes, one that has resulted in shortlists that have been less interesting and of an overall lesser quality, but the truth is that that shift may simply represent a fundamental problem with the award itself. Last year after the nomination period closed Justin Landon made a powerful argument for just not caring about the Hugos anymore, and while I’ve obviously failed to do that it certainly is true that in the last few years, as each Hugo ballot has been announced, I’ve found myself feeling less and less invested in the award. Whatever the reason for it, an award in which a joke story is in the running for best short story of the year is not in good health. An award in which a single author receives 20% of the fiction nominations is not in good health. An award in which a concerted and open ballot-stuffing campaign bears fruit, very nearly to the point of affecting its tentpole category, is not in good health. I’ve spent the last few weeks in a flurry of pre-Hugo reading and consideration, but the truth is that when I look up from that work and consider the award dispassionately, I find that I feel about it the way I felt about the Nebulas seven or eight years ago–as if the Hugos had grown increasingly irrelevant as a yardstick for excellence in the field.

    — 2014, Thoughts on Award Pimping

    As I mentioned, neophyte that I am, these are my own foundational texts on the state of the Hugos. Ultimately, while I find Cora’s piece thought-provoking, I’m not sure I agree with its conclusions. I’m not really sure that anybody feels “well-represented” or thoroughly impressed by Hugo finalist lists; if you’re looking for that, you’re likely to be disappointed. I’m not convinced that Cora’s “third fraction” really does exist, as a cohesive whole; that there’s a large distinct group that are routinely enthused and satisfied by the Hugo finalists as a whole.

    Instead, I lean towards Camestros’s “biggest jury” approach: the strength of the Hugos is that we’re all part of the discussion; that it becomes possible to elevate niche pieces that wouldn’t be recognized otherwise.

    The unstated thesis here is that over time, most of the group decisions will be good enough that most of the finalists will be noteworthy. But it absolutely doesn’t follow that there’s some specific group who have recently begun nominating for the Hugos en masse and getting exactly what they love most.

  5. Sometimes I get the feeling that a lot of puppy-affiliated folks think that old-fashioned SF was generally conservative. Because, y’know, back in the fifties, everyone was Leave It To Beaver, and there were no liberals. Certainly there couldn’t have been a major left-wing movement in SF back in the late 1930s! And if there were, it would surely have been a tiny fringe thing, and not a big group with big names like Isaac Asimov and Frederik Pohl and Damon Knight and Don Wollheim.

    It’s easy to forget that when, say, Dune was published, the very word “ecology” was a political hot potato, and a lot of conservative SF folks were thoroughly indignant to see a novel which discussed it winning awards. I doubt Lagi was anywhere near as offended by the ideas in “Cat Pictures” as some were by all those “hippie notions” found in Dune. 🙂

  6. Oh, and I got distracted reading comments, and forgot what I was originally going to say.

    On the topic of special collections for the underrepresented, isn’t the best approach to do both? Some special collections to help call attention, for people who might be interested, and maybe expand the audience a bit, and then integrated the rest of the time.

    If Left Handed People Destroy Science Fiction gets some left-handed folks more interested in SF in general, and gets a few folks in general more interested in some left-handed SF writers, it seems like a win all around. More people will be reading SF and more authors will be among the ones people are looking for. All of which is going to help sell more magazines!

    Plus, if we publish that book, we can finally admit that it’s part of our sinister plot! 😀

  7. Xtifr on September 14, 2016 at 3:41 am said:
    Sometimes I get the feeling that a lot of puppy-affiliated folks think that old-fashioned SF was generally conservative. Because, y’know, back in the fifties, everyone was Leave It To Beaver, and there were no liberals. Certainly there couldn’t have been a major left-wing movement in SF back in the late 1930s! And if there were, it would surely have been a tiny fringe thing, and not a big group with big names like Isaac Asimov and Frederik Pohl and Damon Knight and Don Wollheim.

    It’s easy to forget that when, say, Dune was published, the very word “ecology” was a political hot potato, and a lot of conservative SF folks were thoroughly indignant to see a novel which discussed it winning awards. I doubt Lagi was anywhere near as offended by the ideas in “Cat Pictures” as some were by all those “hippie notions” found in Dune. ?

    I wonder if a some of the Puppies’ seeming ignorance on the history of liberalism in SF is down to today’s liberal ideals being tomorrow’s conservative bastions? Like how they don’t object to Star Trek even though it’s some of the most blatant message fiction out there.

  8. @Xfitr: Yes, it’s best to do both. But if you only do one, regular ongoing publishing is much superior to doing the special issues.

    Because representation isn’t any good if it’s ghettoised.

  9. (5) It certainly jibes with my memory that up to 2014, there was a yearly firestorm of criticism of the Hugo shortlist complaining that it was too right-wing, too same old same old, etc. If there is one nanometer-thin silver lining to the rise of the Puppies, it’s that the appearance of an actual conservative conspiracy got everyone to quit complaining about the imaginary conservative conspiracy that allegedly controlled the Hugos up until that point.

    However, I don’t see a need to invent a cohesive silent majority to explain why both groups came to the conclusion that the problem was a clique of old people. The narrative of “young people good, old people bad” is embedded throughout our culture and particularly strong in sf; start with the pervasive background anxiety about “the graying of fandom”, and it’s an easy leap to concluding that all those old people are the reason your favorite works aren’t getting any award love.

  10. Doctor Science asked:

    I haven’t really engaged meaningfully with anyone who uses “SJW” as a term of opprobrium, but some of you have really tried. Does Fred’s experience track with yours?

    I think he’s overthinking it, but it would take a long dive into cognitive psychology to explain why.

  11. The crazy thing is that the Puppies have a point about same old, same old, at least in some categories. Just look at things like Best Pro Artist – Between 2000 and 2010 there are only 15 different people nominated, and some of them were being nominated before 1980.
    That’s not a sign of the vibrant and diverse choices that one finds in the fiction categories.
    Confess, it’s not really my thing, fan artist even more so, so I rarely nominate.

  12. I don’t know about Ms. Lamplighter, but where I come from, reflecting upon religious issues and considering how to apply them to your own life is considered a good thing.

    IIRC, she was raised in a small, particularly insular, self-isolating Christian sect that actively shuns secular education (don’t remember which one, but her background has been mentioned here on File770 before.) Not an environment that prides nuance and introspection.

    I wanted to get others’ opinions of Slacktivist (Fred Clark)’s post, What SJW really Means.

    I personally do not believe that SJWs have invaded/corrupted Worldcon/the Hugos as the puppies believe, but I do believe that SJWs as villified by the right are a real thing and are sad, pathetic losers. The problem comes with outgroup homogeneity–the idea that all people who are looking to level the playing field for people of all races/sexes/etc can be lumped in with the lunatic fringe of Girls You Wish You Hadn’t Started A Conversation WIth At A Party.

    (Two recent examples from the pathetic lunatic fringe come immediately to mind. The hula girl incident and the Hugh Mungus incident.)

  13. It must be me. I’m beginning to think that my reading of science fiction works since (umm ’66?) has been an entirely shallow enterprise (and,apparently, despite my formal education in analysis and critique since the mid ’70s).

    I can’t for the life of me remember a single read in which I said to myself “oh, that statement is just so politically misaligned with my personal beliefs that I must throw the book against the wall, wash my eyes with bleech and drink until blackout right now”.

    I do remember saying to myself “hmmm, that’s an interesting perspective that I hadn’t considered, though I disagree with it”, or “that’s just plain stupid”, or “wow, anyone expressing that view publicly would probably get stoned” or even “hmmm. Maybe I was wrong about that, have to give it some more thought.”

    (Note: most, if not all, of those thoughts were thought while reading Heinlen)

    Is it me? Is it because I have confidence in my own self and beliefs that books can’t offend me to the same degree that people can? Is it a failing on my part that I treat this SF stuff as both entertainment and thought-provoker, not as political screed?

  14. Emergent AI is an time-honored trope. DARL I LUV U. Nomad. I have No Mouth and I Must Scream. Colossus. V’ger (aka, Where Nomad Has Gone Before). I’ve written at least one myself, with some concern that it would be taken as cliche by the rest of the writing group.

  15. I can’t for the life of me remember a single read in which I said to myself “oh, that statement is just so politically misaligned with my personal beliefs that I must throw the book against the wall, wash my eyes with bleech and drink until blackout right now”.

    Flashback. Dan Simmons.

  16. My guess is that most Filers have formidable backgrounds in SF/F. It is strange that Puppyland asserts some sort of genre experience that the “SJWs” supposedly lack. Perhaps it is some collective self-reinforcing conviction that they use to assert their importance over other “lesser” fans among themselves.

  17. @Standback: This is at least the second time I’ve felt Clarke was bloviating in a way that was distinctly lesser than his own and several peers’s/rivals’ actual publishing habits. He does better than he stands back and critiques, basically. 🙂

  18. And if we’re talking about emergent AI, there’s also Heinlein’s Moon is a Harsh Mistress, which was almost certainly my first encounter with same.

  19. Funny, I could’ve sworn I’ve read a lot of John C. Wright pissing on Le Guin’s Omelas in his usual inimitable (thank god) style. Suddenly it’s her criteria of excellence?

    I think we can allow that Lamplighter might like some works that her husband does not, so I don’t see that as a contradiction. However, the thing that is odd about her liking for The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas is that one of the most obvious readings of the story is that it calls into question the foundation of Christianity – and if that isn’t something that she would call “a poke in the eye” then she’s using strange criteria for what counts on that score.

  20. I can’t for the life of me remember a single read in which I said to myself “oh, that statement is just so politically misaligned with my personal beliefs that I must throw the book against the wall, wash my eyes with bleech and drink until blackout right now”.

    Wright’s “The Golden Transcendence”. Also, the time I read an entire Leo Frankowski novel thinking it was a biting satire of gamerguy fantasies. There are probably more but in the cosmos there is balm as well as bitterness, and that balm is nepenthe.

    (Oh – and visual novels probably don’t count, but I just had this exact reaction to the Heart World intro scene in Amnesia: Memories.)

  21. Psychological counselling presented as the best response to depression is apparently offensive to Ms. Lamplighter as well.

    I have two possible explanations of Lamplighter’s objections on this point. The first is that JCW has expressed a fairly anti-science view of the world that is driven by his fundamentalist Catholic beliefs – he’s a creationist, for example, and denies the validity of evolutionary theory. One could assume Lamplighter shares some of her husband’s views and then read her comments in that light, and then her anti-medicine position makes some sense.

    The other explanation is that she was trying to come up with “pokes in the eye” that weren’t “the part of the story about the gay pastor triggers my homophobia” and really had to stretch to find some.

  22. There’s an interesting subgenre of SF I think of as “stuff clearly written specifically to annoy me.” Part of the joke is that it’s invariably widely lauded despite being obvious shit. 2312, for example, and The Wind Up Girl. Throw in a little global warning and it doesn’t matter if the book is basically recycled Disco Era (or in the case of TWUG, Escape! era) tropes with a delightful sprinkling of racism, people will fall over themselves handing the authors awards.

    The stuff by right wing wackaloons is less annoying because nobody expects me to think their worldview is reasonable.

  23. There certainly isn’t a silent majority which cohesively approves of all the Hugo finalists. That would be terrible. But if group A is saying ‘none of these choices are any good’, and group B is also saying ‘none of these choices is any good’, it does imply the existence of a group C which is distinct from both of them. And while group C is clearly not homogeneous, I think it does have a certain degree of convergence – only the convergence is on things that stand out in some way, do something distinctive rather than just being typical of their author or subgenre, and yet have some degree of broad appeal which the more intensely ‘literary’ stuff often lacks. The voting system, which rewards cross-group appeal, rather encourages this. This tendency to converge on distinctiveness explains why Hugo finalists can be very various (I mean, whatever you think of the 2013 finalists, they weren’t all the same), and yet in a way represent only one fraction of the field.

    Regarding artists: if you take ‘Best Artist’ literally, it’s quite likely it will be the same person year after year. That’s an inherent problem with person awards. We solved it with Best Fan Writer by adopting a tendency to give it to a fan writer who had done something distinctive that year. There isn’t something clearly parallel with artists.

  24. There’s a clause about the Artist having to have produced at least one work in the year in question isn’t there? Which is not of course to say that that work is what they must be judged on.
    A healthy nominating pool would strike me as one where the top 15 jostled together a lot. Seven consecutive wins for same person (not in my chosen period I recognise) and Chris Foss never having even made the shortlist strikes me as a sign that there are an unhealthily small number of nominators, many of whom tend to look at who was nominated last year to make their selections.

  25. 1) As someone who wasn’t a regular reader of short fiction in the past, the special issues have been a great entry point. After finding authors highlighted there that I particularly enjoyed, I’ve sought out other writing by them.

    8) Lamplighter’s hypothetical description of Puppy response to “Cat Pictures” uncannily corresponds to how I felt reading her husband’s nominated stories in 2015. Those were not compelling or well-written enough to make up for the poke in the eye.

  27. So by logical extension, is the next step:

    If a man isn’t back in Kansas when he’s 50, he has no ruby slippers?

    (I’m wearing my red sneakers today so in theory when it’s time to go home, I just have to tap my heals together three times. Or take the bus.)

  28. Darren Garrison on September 14, 2016 at 7:40 am said:

    (On a different note, I’ve finally found a group with a name as silly as the sad puppies–the “fancy bears“!)

    Ahh the fancy beers. They travel around the world visiting out of the way little pubs and sampling obscure micro-brews.

  29. This is actually pretty nice, though — found it via Lamplighter’s blog posts:

    Somebody’s gone and set up a “Puppy of the Month” book club!

    Yes, I know, it’s full of Puppydom and it’s got “HUGO DELENDA EST” stamped on its banner. But… it’s Puppies actually reading and talking about the books they like! Talking about the books. That’s fantastic.

    I wish them well. Reading awesome stuff that you love is awesome; I’m glad that some of them are doing that, and shifting the spotlight to something constructive.

  30. I’m surprised Wright is a Creationist, given that the Catholic Church has been perfectly fine with evolution (with the exception of the soul, which they consider to have been specially and specifically created) since before Wright was born. Nuns teach evolution in Catholic schools. He wouldn’t be the first Catholic to disagree with the Pope, of course.

  31. Really, _Cat Pictures Please_ was a lovely story. Sure, the idea wasn’t new, but there are times you just want to rest your brain and watch an old idea handled deftly. I would have thought Puppies of all people would understand this.

    In the meantime the AI is a genuinely nice individual who wants to help people–and old fashioned good guy. I would have thought Puppies of all people would warm to such a person.

    Furthermore the AI is very bright and possessed of lots of information but has problems figuring out how humans will generally react–socially awkward in other words. I sympathize, since I went through that stage myself (and sometimes still find myself in it.). Surely many fans have had the same experience? Puppies too?

    And it has a happy ending, which I thought Puppies liked. *I* like it, anyway.

    Okay, it was a bit light and fluffy. But poke in the eye? How? The only thing I see that might be a poke in the eye is that there is a gay man in it who ends up happier when he acknowledges his sexuality and comes out of the closet.

    And hey, if “It’s okay to be Takei” is a poke in the eye, then maybe the real problem lies with the reader.

  32. He wouldn’t be the first Catholic to disagree with the Pope, of course.

    As an adult convert, JCW is often to the right of the Pope on a lot of issues. “More Catholic than the Pope” as it were.

  33. @Standback

    So what makes a book a viable candidate for Puppy Of the Month? Easy:
    *Any novel nominated by the Sad Puppies for a Hugo nomination
    *Any novel nominated by the Rabid Puppies for a Hugo nomination
    *Any work listed in Appendix N of Gary Gygax’s D&D Dungeon Master’s Guide
    *Any work published by Castalia House
    *Any work selected by a Contributor that isn’t shouted down by the rest of the contributors as an inappropriate selection

    I’m glad that they’ve created a safe space for themselves.

  34. @Cora: there is a huge difference between “bonus condescension towards women writers and writers of colour” and specific comments about specific writers getting nominated on the basis of who they are rather than their work. Landon objects to the almost-ritual nomination of almost every Bujold book, which is something a lot of people had been noting for some time. He also looks askance at McGuire’s unprecedented number of nominations (which make room for all sorts of snark — do you have something against soaps?); I admit I was surprised at just how good some of those were, because I found the first Toby Daye book very weak and the Newsflesh books a trial to read due to slapdash plots and less-plausible-than-cardboard villains.

    Lee:

    Love (NOT!) that oh-so-casual assumption that nobody progressive has ever heard of emergent-AI fiction before. Some of us are in fact old enough to have seen 2001, or even (dare I say it?) to have read the book.

    Or When Harlie Was One, or even that icon of libertarianism The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (ninja’d by Joe H!).
    wrt Bujold: my favorite is still A Civil Campaign; it may have started with the bones of a Regency novel, but some of the bones were replaced by prosthetics and an entirely different flesh hung on the skeleton. The fact that Pups would squick over a woman falling for a trans man is a very late-arriving bonus; so many people (not just Miles) take the next step in their own development.

    Xtifr: not just the ecology in Dune but the drugs — AFAICT it was the first book to have a beneficial psychoactive (even if it wasn’t as saturated as The Santaroga Barrier a couple of years later).

    NickPheas: the problem with Pro Artist is that there isn’t nearly as much room. A prolific author might produce two novels a year; Whelan said in a Locus interview (some time ago) that he was doing 2-3 covers per month. I get the impression that the explosion in SF publishing hasn’t done much to widen the field; ISTM there are more books covered by type styles and processed photos rather than original art.

    steve davidson (re hurling a book due to offense): I came close with The Plague Dogs, which has an incredibly swinish comment about women in the first chapter; I couldn’t do that in the restaurant where I was reading, but after finishing I was looking for a phantom tollbooth to refund my wasted time.

  35. As an adult convert, JCW is often to the right of the Pope on a lot of issues. “More Catholic than the Pope” as it were.

    “Is the Pope Catholic? It is the courage to ask tough questions like these that defines and justifies the Right.”

  37. @Petréa Mitchell:

    I think he’s overthinking it, but it would take a long dive into cognitive psychology to explain why.

    This is probably a joke. I’m probably reading a funny funny joke seriously again.

    ………but if it’s not a joke I would love to accompany you on that cognitive psychology dive. Just sayin’.

    And as for emergent AI, I can think of a Hugo finalist for best novel in the last decade that featured one. It was Wake by Robert J. Sawyer. I didn’t like the novel, mind you. And I knew it wasn’t a new concept then, too.

    (I stayed up too late last night reading “The Girl Who Was Plugged In”. I probably read it a million years ago, but daaamn. That prose was mind-blowing.)

  38. Is Flashback the one where Peak Oil makes windmills stop working? The one with what seems to be a dig at Nunavut?

    (One of the Northern Ontario independence guys got really cranky when I suggested since NO is part of Ontario at present, if it becomes a new province it could call itself Someofit)

  40. I’m surprised Wright is a Creationist, given that the Catholic Church has been perfectly fine with evolution (with the exception of the soul, which they consider to have been specially and specifically created) since before Wright was born. Nuns teach evolution in Catholic schools. He wouldn’t be the first Catholic to disagree with the Pope, of course.

    I broke down and downloaded Wright’s Dragon Award winning Somewhither … mostly because it was free for kindle unlimited and also out of some misguided idea of trying to be ‘fair’ … I’m maybe 20 or 30 pages in. There’s no doubt that this is heavy-handed message fiction of the most catholic kind and very little doubt about JCW’s creationism … just in the first 20-30 pages! Plus we already have references to the Knights Templar, Japanese Samurai, The Dark Tower, pre-native American religions etc …

    but mostly exposition with some awkward dialogue etc. But the premise IS interesting, I’ll give him that.

  42. Great article about Tschai, Paul! I’d comment on the article directly if the Tor website was actually letting me see comments … sigh …

  43. Aaron: “I have written a lengthy post-mortem about the Hugo results.”

    A good roundup. An additional point that you seem to have missed is how Weir and The Martian fared in 2015. Andy Weir was not on either the Sad or Rabid lists for the Campbell award last year. He was, however, 6th on the longlist. So he had support from non-puppies but was effectively denied a Campbell nomination in 2015 because the puppies preferred to slate their friends and political picks. In addition, The Martian was 12th on the Novel longlist – not enough to be on the finalist even without puppy shenanigans, and it probably would have been ruled ineligible due to the previous self-publishing, but not a result that fits the “trufans overlook Weir”-narrative.

  44. As an adult convert, JCW is often to the right of the Pope

    When a relative married a Mennonite, I did what anyone would do when someone of another faith marries into the family and got texts on the Anabapists. Thanks to a book called The Amish, I learned about a hilarious incident where the movement leaders had to deal with the fact a fire-breathing covert had excommunicated half of the members. The solution? Excommunicate the other half so everyone was on equal footing.

  45. Lurkertype:

    (9) How much English-language science fiction is published in Finland, anyway?

    I’m not sure what question you intend to ask here – but note that there’s nothing in the Hugo rules that says finalists have to be English-language. If enough Finnish fans nominate Finnish-language SF, those works will be finalists.

    There are also Finnish writers who have been translated to English. Given a typical delay for translated works, we can get finalists that were published in Finnish in 2016 and comes out in English translation at some time during the voting phase in 2017. Works published in Finnish some years ago and in English in 2016 are also eligible and potential finalists.

  46. Is Flashback the one where Peak Oil makes windmills stop working? The one with what seems to be a dig at Nunavut?

    Uh, I don’t think so?

    Here is a loooooong review of Flashback. And a forum thread on it (where Simmons is compared to Tank Marmot!)

  47. So he had support from non-puppies but was effectively denied a Campbell nomination in 2015 because the puppies preferred to slate their friends and political picks.

    I talked about that in my 2015 “What Could Have Been” Hugo Finalists post from back in May. Perhaps I should have brought it up again in this post, but it was getting really long and I didn’t want to rehash something I had already commented upon if I didn’t have to.

  48. “I have written a lengthy post-mortem about the Hugo results.”

    Apart from thinking “Glory Road” was a decent work, it was a good roundup. I got that book recommended by a friend a few years back and reading it, I found it a stupid, juvenile mess on the level of E. Jeffrey Lord’s Blade-books. The rank stupidity together with the sexism made me wonder how any person could think anything good of it.

    This comment has been a part of the continuing File 770 Diversity Of Opinion Signalling. Even hives have individuals.

  49. Ah, here’s what I was thinking of:

    Canada, used to dividing itself into smaller parts to appease ethnic groups, languages, and claims to prior ownership, […]

    Can’t be a dig at Quebec: it’s one of the (if not the, but I cannot be bothered to look up founding dates) oldest European settler colonies in Canada. It could be a dig at Ontario but I kind of doubt it.

    The rusted windmills stuff starts with this:

    Now all of that view — and further beyond the curve of the earth, north far onto the plains and Jim Bridger mountain wilderness of Wyoming and south beyond Pikes Peak deep into what had been New Mexico — is studded with abandoned wind-turbine windmills. There are hundreds of these windmills, thousands of them between the Canadian Wall and the point where the mountains dwindle to desert near what used to be the Mexican border, and each tall, rusted, abandoned windmill is 350-ft. or 400-ft. tall. The blades are frozen in place from the day the state utilities finally gave up on them.

  50. *high-five or equivalent acceptable signal of camaraderie to Hampus*

    It was the sexism of Glory Road that did me in. I can’t believe I read the whole thing…

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