323 thoughts on “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Puppy 5/12”

1. Tannasmarchar – “Vignette,” eh? So? What is a “vignette” but a very small story? By their very nature they need to stand alone, and need to be well-crafted to be effective.

   Can you be a little more descriptive about what you found not to like? (Bearing in mind that “strength” is not solely exemplified by shooting people or tearing things apart. The courage and strength needed to sit by a beloved’s side, to be the comfort and presence, and afterwards, to go on with life and keep growing, when what you want is the release of drinking, or killing or howling at the heavens in pain. Believe me, getting drunk or destroying something is a lot more attractive than opening one’s eyes again, picking up the pieces and going on to rebuild)

   Define how this is not a work of “science fiction,” where the act of dreaming the dream is itself a piece of SF story-telling. Is not the change in scenario, to transform the injured love to a creature that can exact the vengence not itself a trope in SF? (what else is it but a different transform to being able to put on powered armor to extract your revenge? Or the simple transformation into another species that has been covered by many writers. Or the creation of a cyborg.

   Just because the storytelling mode is something that may be unfamiliar, or not to your liking, doesn’t mean that the work doesn’t embody craft and skill, nor that it should be excluded from the bounds of science fiction or fantasy. Evidently there were enough people who thought it met the criteria of excellence in the field for it to be nominated last year for the Hugo, and was considered enough SF, and the writing excellent enough, that Swirsky’s fellow authors saw it as a worthy enough exemplar of their craft to award it it the Nebula/ (also, at least in the case of the Hugos, the WSFS nominating rules, quite wisely, make no attempt to provide any definition of just what SF or fantasy *are,* recognizing that, as as field, such a definition would be constantly in flux.

   Would the field exclude as a dramatic work “The Tempest?”

   How about Moorcock’s Eternal Champion series?

   Or the Barsoom novels?

   How about “Lathe of Heaven,” which might be seen by some to be aught but a fever dream?

   Remember, what *you* may regard as the limitations of SF/F may not map onto what others see as within the explored boundaries.

   You found “If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love” to be unreadable.

   I found Wright’s parody painful to slog through, and I’m too disinclined to replace the laptop else I might have yielded to the habitual dead-tree edition’s reader impulse to throw against the wall, violently.

   Which is fine. * I’m not trying to dictate what you can read, nor what it is that you feel worthy to nominate for a Hugo award.*

   I don’t think Weber’s “Safehold” series gets enough Hugo nominations love. But I don’t think that the reason is some Super Sekret Cabal blocking the nominations. It could be that my tastes aren’t matched by enough of the people who, having gone to the effort of committing to the expense of supporting the World Science Fiction Convention, self-select to nominate and vote.

   Although the awards may be seen by some to be the be-all and end-all and sole purpose of the annual WorldCon, they are only one facet. In fact, of the World Cons I’ve gone to, I think I attended the awards banquet all of twice. These days, with teenagers to shepherd back and fforth I don’t have time (or funds) to even attend. Would I like to go? Damn right – have a days-long party with thousands of my closests friends who I only see twice a year? Count me in!

   Somebody up-thread said that they saw their nomination and voting to be their “dictating” what SF/F encompassed. They were wrong. That nomination and ballot dictates only what the person *nominating and voting* sees as being included within the bounds of SF/F.

   And this is what slate voting does, it refuses to recognize that SF/F is a huge field, still growing and maturing. It tries to say “This only is worthy! None others will be considered!”

   That is like trying to dictate that the only way to travel from point “a” to point “b” is by shank’s mare, and doesn’t even admit the existence of trains, planes, automobiles, boats or (in the Skiffy universe) passenger rockets, jet packs and flying cars.

2. Rev. Bob

   From my experience both sides of the political spectrum enjoy mangling words for rhetorical effect.

   Also, my diagnosis was really a suggestion as to the cause of what is a commonplace error in Wright’s blog writing. As such it was just as much a diagnosis as the various theories floating on this blog about why the Sad Puppies think and say the things that they do. On multiple occasions Wright has mentioned on his blog that he is a terrible speller and makes extensive use of spell check and malapropisms by him are regularly pointed out. Since my son’s diagnosis I have learned that 25% of the US population has some degree of dyslexia (it may be higher in males than females) and 90% of people diagnosed with a learning disorder have dyslexia. This informs my speculation.

   But all of this obscures my point. Whether Wright is a dyslexic or not it is the mocking of someone for a spelling error for a blog post that I am disagreeing with. Because it suggests that this behavior is okay. It isn’t your finding the possible typo that attracted my attention. It was, “If a typo, it speaks ill of his ability/willingness to proofread, resulting in unintended humor.” Much of how I perceive this type of behavior is informed by my son’s experiences; my experience in repeatedly needing to explain my son’s disability to principals, teachers, family members, etc.; watching videos of men and women in their 40s and 50s breaking into tears when talking about the prejudice and ridicule they have faced and how people’s comments about their reading and writing convinced them (and often their parents) believe that they were profoundly stupid.

   You know what? Those that mocked the people in the videos and mock my son, they didn’t do it because they thought any of them had dyslexia. They did it because spelling errors and poor reading are signs of laziness, stupidity, and carelessness. Comments like yours simply provide shelter to that attitude.

   But I get it. You didn’t mean to insult my son. You didn’t mean to insult dyslexics. You just found another approach to attack an author that you don’t like. It’s just that the specific approach you used helps marginalize a group. Am I hyper sensitive? Perhaps. Are African-Americans and women hypersensitive to some things as well? Also, perhaps. But rather than doubling down it would be nice if people would occasionally just say, “I didn’t think of what I said that way. I probably should have approached that differently.”

   As to whether you or Wright would be livid that I defended one or the other of you, I couldn’t possibly care any less. Especially since I wasn’t particularly defending Wright so much as I was saying there is a large group of people that are marginalized by society and comments like yours help perpetuate that marginalization. Think of it as a micro-aggression if you’d like.

3. @Tannasmarchar: “C.L. Moore’s Jirel of Jory would laugh at the modern female character.”

   Cassandra Kresnov, Jin Li Tam, Jay Lake’s Green… these are not characters to be laughed at.

4. “But I get it. You didn’t mean to insult my son. You didn’t mean to insult dyslexics. You just found another approach to attack an author that you don’t like. It’s just that the specific approach you used helps marginalize a group. Am I hyper sensitive?”

   Are you aware of the Visual Word Form Area, which is probably genetic. Dyslexia definitely is.

   It just might be, as Pournelle had one of his characters say, “Evolution in action.”

   Surely everyone in Science Fiction believes that Evolution is good?

   And those that do likely do not understand that religiosity has been selected for.

5. The Leash of Heaven

6. SDCC might be run by a “non-profit” but that doesn’t make it any less of a business entity, designed to make money. I mean, the NFL was a non-profit up until 2015.

   Yes, and the NFL wasn’t the same type of non-profit. It was tax-exempt but not charitable (a 501(c)(6) business league). SDCC is exactly the same corporate/legal form as SWOC, the parent non-profit corporation of this year’s Worldcon (a 501(c)(3) charity). I’m guessing that most people think that “non-profit” = “charity” in all circumstances, but that’s not always the case. There are many non-profit, tax-exempt entities that are not 501(c)(3) charities.

   All (or possibly nearly all; I’m not completely sure) Worldcons held in the USA since at least the 1980s have been run by 501(c)(3) tax-exempt charitable non-profit corporations. The ones in Canada, Scotland, England, and Australia have been the closest equivalents in their countries. (UK law makes charitable status much more difficult, but has a legal form called a “company limited by guarantee” that is similar to a US non-profit/not-for-profit/public benefit corporation.

7. Beyond Anon – “Surely everyone in Science Fiction believes that Evolution is good?”

   Uh, no? Evolution is *cruel and merciless*.

   Just because something is real, powerful, influential, and omnipresent doesn’t make it good.

8. “It won the Nebula, didn’t it – so it is representative – at least of what the publishers and others want as SF/F today. And the stuff I saw in Asimov recently only reinforces the image. Thanks, but no thanks.

   C.L. Moore’s Jirel of Jory would laugh at the modern female character.”

   Winning a Nebula or a Hugo doesn’t mean that is what readers what. It means that in that year, the people that voted on the award found that work to be one of the best. In this case the SFWA decided that Swirsky’s story was the best of that years. The WSFS decided it was good, but not the best.

   If you don’t like the stuff, though… that’s a different matter entirely. That’s up to you. But that doesn’t make it bad fiction. It just means you didn’t like it.

   And considering that C.L. Moore stopped writing at the beginning of the sixties, I’m not sure how her fictional characters opinions of things are even slightly relevant.

9. @Darrell: “Whether Wright is a dyslexic or not it is the mocking of someone for a spelling error for a blog post that I am disagreeing with.”

   You still don’t get it.

   I don’t think Wright made an accidental spelling error. I think he made a deliberate word choice. I found humor in that particular choice, because I think he intended it as a zinger yet I found it to fall flat. To the degree that I mocked anything, it was his decision, not a slip-up. I looked at an insult and said, “really, that’s all you’ve got?”

   It’s not about dyslexia. It’s about what I believe to be a failed stylistic effort. I’m sorry you see it otherwise.

10. Togerson’s recent musings are certainly speculative fiction, in that there’s a lot of speculation going on and most of it’s fictional.

    BT – I’ve noticed that some people (who were opposed to the Sad Puppies effort) are actually reading the contents of the Hugo final ballot, and are shocked to discover that a) some of the work really is Hugo-worthy

    Not sure who ‘some people’ are or ‘some of the work’ is. I love the qualifier for that though, a few say English’s story is good and it still works and it paints a positive picture as though it’s all been worth the nonsense.

    Golly, I am pretty sure the point of Sad Puppies 3 was to make the final ballot more inclusive, not less. Didn’t we say that?

    You sure did, you made it more inclusive for friends and financial interests!

    Oh, SP3 pointedly criticized affirmative action — which makes demographics paramount over content and quality —

    Yet failed to provide examples, because making this accusation is way easier than backing it up. When in doubt, just make it over and over again and hope it become true. You know why people are making you out as racist/sexist? It’s because you throwing out unspecified accusation that people were only nominated because of their gender or race (not to mention it’s ridiculous since it would require the individual voters to each be doing so). So yeah, you might get that label when you point to people who’ve worked hard and say they didn’t earn their award, that it was because of their gender/race.

    I am glad there are readers who are willing to let the works on the ballot do the talking, as opposed to a stupid narrative.

    And let’s be clear: the narrative is stupid

    I agree, it’s not about a bunch of misogynists/racists. That is a dumb narrative even if it includes individuals who’ve said awful things. Almost as dumb as the one about SJW cabals. It’s a group of people who knew they couldn’t win the award on the back of their own work and decided to be petulant babies about it instead of being honored to even be held as equals to masters of the genre. That’s not as much fun as a rip-roaring good story though.

    individuals who’ve made it their job to kick out the “wrong” fans for having the “wrong” kind of fun while enjoying the “wrong” sorts of SF/F.

    Who are these folks? Because I’ve only seen these claims made by Sad Puppies. Most SF/F fans enjoy works all over the spectrum. Sad Puppies however appears to have been set up because the “wrong” books were getting awards because the “wrong” Fans were voting for them and you consider those books the “wrong” kind of SF/F. You’ve even explained how it’s wrong! You’ll burn out the bulb on your projector at this rate.

    People will go elsewhere

    If those are the people who want to dictate what people should be voting for instead of letting the fans vote as individuals, asking why it isn’t like another convention, slinging accusations of affirmative action, and explaining how they don’t care about Worldcon, it’s traditions or the opinions of the people who vote within it, good. If you can’t be respectful go elsewhere.

    Especially when the shake-up was conducted 100% in the open, democratically, using a democratic process

    Really? Please tell me how when you asked for people to make recommendations, didn’t use them and had Correia bragging about how the slate was put together by Evil League of Evil authors is democratic? (citation: http://monsterhunternation.com/2015/02/02/sad-puppies-3-the-slatening/)

    Better yet, who gets to decide who the “wrong” and “right” voters are?

    I’m going to guess you do since you decided that Worldcon voters weren’t voting on the right things.

    I think the furor over logos (Sad, vs. Rabid) is one of the silliest red herrings in this entire thing

    Sad Puppies is the silliest kind of Red Herring for the Rabids, I agree with you there.

    Because ultimately this isn’t even about Sad Puppies, or what we said, or did not say, or what we did, or did not do.

    Bullshit, it’s completely about what you did and what you said. At least man up and take responsibility.

    Or least have more respect for the intelligence of your fans and write better excuses.

11. Samuel R. Delany (who has a couple of those rocket awards) is well-known to be dyslexic. In a long-lost (to me, anyway) interview, Fred Pohl discussed how difficult it was to edit Delany’s large manuscript for “Dhalgren,” because some number of the apparent text errors were intentional, while others were just the dyslexia talking.

12. My reply to Brad Torgersen:

    “Especially when the shake-up was conducted 100% in the open, democratically, using a democratic process.”

    This is false.

    Most of the Sad Puppies 3 slate selection process was not conducted in the open. You took comments on a blog post, then ignored some of those suggestions in favor of choices that came from somewhere else. Per Larry Correia in posts on his blog, the final slate was prepared in consultation with authors calling themselves the Evil League of Evil (you, Correia, Vox Day, John C. Wright and Sarah Hoyt).

    A process isn’t democratic and open if the final say rests with a small number of people you’ve hand-picked to make the choices.

    You’ve never answered questions about how the Evil League of Evil created the final slate — where it was discussed, whether there was a vote, and so on.

    Since you’re claiming the whole thing was “100% open,” post the links to the public discussions where the Evil League of Evil worked on the slate.

13. Megan Baxter on Smorgasbook: http://smorgasbook.blogspot.fi/2015/05/hawksbill-station-by-robert-silverberg.html

    I posted the following into the comments there:

    ***

    >> The first cover, on top:

    It presents us a grey monotone picture with a silhouette of human being in the middle. The face is drawn with sharp, crude lines, and does not posses any kindness to it. Typically, authoritarian futures are depicted through darkness. There is no choice for the individual, only what is expected of him regardless of his or her own wishes. While the opposite of an authoritarian future is usually a cloudless blue sky or a splash of vivid colours. You know, limitless choices and things to look forward to.

    Thus based on the first cover, I would expect to read something related to a dystopia. The only splash of colour on the cover – orange – is the colour of fire, a force of destruction. Therefore when a human being is drawn with flames, it must be a story about either an individual rising above to destroy the dystopia, or the individual struggles onwards under the yoke of control by the authoritarian future.

    Side note, in politics, the colour orange is often associated with liberal values. So, if we google what year the book was published in and in what country, we can with somewhat ease determine what political views would have been considered liberal at the time.

    >> The second cover, on left:

    “Time travel is a one way trip… and this is the far, far end of the line.”

    That line on the cover does not really paint any overly optimistic expectations for the story. Clearly, the characters on the cover are stuck in the past without any hope. Therefore, the man crouched before the giant purple trilobite is not doing it to inspect the beast, not to mention how his face remains void of any elation caused by the discovery. There is a crutch on his right side. Hence he must be an aged man of limited mobility before the sea and a beast, at the far, far end of the line. I have seen subtler hints towards the desire or willingness to commit a suicide.

    Alternatively he could be inspecting whatever is left of someone who committed a suicide, or possibly he could be the culprit lingering on a murder scene.

    As for the younger man running at the background, it seems that he is running towards the older man. Hence, the younger man is showing some interest towards the other. Does he represent a fleeting hope in a doomed world?

    >> The third cover, on the right:

    On the first glance I thought that three spheres on the background were three moons. A guess that the group of men standing on a cliff are explorers on a brand new world. Yet upon closer inspection the largest of these ‘moons’ seems to be physical continuation of the mountain at the background, or at least perched at the mountain top. The two others could be similar round rocks perched at the tip of a mountain.

    I do not know how well you know your stories of Ancient Greek, but it seems to be a reference to Sisyphus and his task. Gods punished Sisyphus with a task to roll a stone to the tip of a mountain, only to have the stone roll down for all of eternity. An endless and hopeless task. Hence the possibility that these men have successfully rolled three massive round stones up a very jagged mountain is kind of telling; they have nothing better to do.

    Hence the men standing at the edge of the mountain might not be gazing for the vast world around them, they might be ready to jump down. Crossed arms are usually a sign of discord.

    Now, with another glance, the largest of the ‘moons’ could be that Hawksbill Station mentioned on the cover. Strangely asymmetric dome construction, but who are we to judge the architecture of the future? Which would make the sphere on the left the Sun, and the one on the right the Moon. Except that doesn’t make sense. If the one the left is the Sun, how could it lit a full Moon on the right?

    So yeah, I am going with three round stones at the top of a mountain. I am not expecting anything pleasant, even if the background has blue skies.

    ***

    So when it comes to those three covers for Hawksbill Station, those do not make me expect a swashbuckling adventure full of laughter and action. The covers are not misleading. So yeah…

14. “Brad Torgerson, early on, actually wrote a blog post which compared this to the Civil War. It appears he has a marked tendency to make such rather grand comparisons. That blog post disappeared, but I got an e-mail of the post when it was live.”

    That post made it to Google’s cache. I posted a copy of it on my blog:

    http://workbench.cadenhead.org/news/3742/brad-torgersens-science-fiction-civil-war

    The best part is where he compares himself to a self-sacrificing Civil War general.

    That’s a pretty dodgy comparison to use when running a campaign against “affirmative action,” but I like to think he chose it because he knows his side is going to lose.

15. Tuomas, if you posted that all over there… was it really necessary to post it here as well?

16. Alexvdl: At least Tuomas didn’t open by posting links to the same arguments about gender balance in SFF that he’s put up twice (at least) and had demolished twice.

    So it’s some sort of improvement.

17. So Torgerson still hasn’t answered all of the questions about ‘transparency’ and ‘democracy’?

    I am shocked, shocked, I tell you!

18. I’m Immensely looking forward to ‘Mad Max: Fury Road”; in the short term I anticipate lengthy diatribes interpreting John Scalzi’s recent Readers Request post on how to raise strong women as a disgraceful pandering to Charlize Thieron’s character in the movie.

    This should take us all the way through to the 2016 Hugos, particularly since it looks as if the movie is going to make very large sums of money, which the puppies will obviously deny because nobody could possibly wish to see a SF movie involving a female protagonist forcefully objecting to the classification of women as breeders.

    Watching the trailer has now been added to my rewards list, alongside cream cakes and single malt whisky, for my successfully making it through another entry on the puppies slate; I’m duly grateful to those responsible…

19. @alexvdl, well, my answer to that is a simple no. For example, I go through the blog posts from top to bottom. I read each of them once, unless there is discussion going on that I wish to be part of. So in all fairness, I cannot expect others to do what I do not do myself.

    Thus, since the blog above consists of summaries, the comment made elsewhere, is also a valid over here. And since the primary purpose of comment sections is to allow discussion, participation, I decided to post the same thing here. A place known for avid commenting.

20. @Stevie https://file770.com/?p=22495&cpage=5#comment-261312

    Um… It is a Mad Max movie… it is going to have cars… action… violence… the usual stuff legends.

    This is the main trailer for the movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEJnMQG9ev8

    The Puppies are going to be upset if it turns out to be a dull two hour long ovular. And they would be rightly upset, as the trailer promises cars, action, violence, the usual stuff of legends.

21. Years ago, a youngish member of LASFS mentioned that he was seriously dyslexic, but manage to get pretty good grades anyhow, even before this malfunction was generally recognized. “I paid Serious Attention to what the teachers (and everyone else) said, and thought intensely about it” was about the way he put it. I thought then (& still do) that Club & Convention fandom could profit from having a whole lot more of people like that.

    Otherwise… I seem to be strongly oriented towards the written word (even though I seem to read mostly by word-shape, and my spelling isn’t at all good). But if I happen to realize that a person is dyslexic I’ll make a lot of allowance … especially since that LASFS guy was also obviously Brilliant. (Errr… ummm… I tend to remember people much less by name than by physical appearance/movement. I don’t know if they’ve come up with a Name for that quirk.)

22. “In short, the SPs arguing at Glyer’s are having their asses handed to them …” — James May on Torgersen’s blog today.

    https://bradrtorgersen.wordpress.com/2015/05/13/musings-not-sorted/#comment-12392

23. rcade: When someone who’s had his ass handed to him as many times as James renders an opinion on ass-handing, who are we to doubt him?

24. Tuomas: “ovular”? What kind of word is that, and what on earth does it mean in this context? It’s also impressive to find that there’s anyone who’d genuinely think that the presence of a significant female character makes it very likely that the film won’t actually be two hours of exemplary gratuitous vehicular carnage…but not in a good way.

25. @ Craig R.
    This is completely off topic, but as a Weber fan, I don’t get the love that many seem to have for the Safehold series. I enjoy the building blocks he used to build the world, but I feel like he has used all the same parts much more effectively in previous works. Notably the Safehold series is a much less focused rehashing of parts of the Dahak series, specifically the third book, along with a seasoning of Weber’s-Musings-On-The-Industrial-Revolution-And-Enlightenment from those books and parts of the Prince Roger series.

    Then it’s mushed into an allegory on the Protestant Reformation that I don’t feel meshes with the rest of the setting very well and is dealt with rather ham-fistedly. All the church leaders are corrupt and completely without true conviction or belief. Any that are honest in their faith rebel against the church at the first opportunity. For a world where their church doctrine has a lot more ‘evidence’ backing it up than any earthly religion has had, the dearth of significant characters that support the church out of principle rather than greed or self interest is notable.

    Weber’s written stories around these ideas and settings before. And I think he did it much, much better (and certainly shorter. He covers almost as much ground in half of one of the Dahak books, where as Safehold is on 8 and counting) the first times around. But many, many people love them. So what am I missing?

26. @rcade
    Isn’t James May the guy who posts on both Torgerson and Correia’s blogs, with every post being basically ‘everything the puppies are doing is something that the SJWs did first and worse and besides they forced us to do it, I have links to tweets that prove it!’?

    I’ve never seen him actually debate anything, just rant. It was a bit sad, I’m sure that there are people like that in the other side, but I try to avoid them- he seemed pretty popular over there.

27. “ovular” = tainted with girl cooties. (Contrast with “testicular”.)

28. Darrell on May 13, 2015 at 12:36 pm said:

    Thank you for your post.

    My brother is moderately dyslexic and dropped out of HS before dyslexia was widely known to be a real problem. He (and many others) just thought he was stupid. He did finally persevere to get a GED in his 30s.

    I think we all need to be reminded that words can sometimes hit more targets or hurt more deeply than we intend.

29. @rcade:

    That comment is fascinating. If the SPs are requiring their community to read Gender Trouble before commenting on AJ, no wonder they hate it.

30. “Isn’t James May the guy who posts on both Torgerson and Correia’s blogs, with every post being basically ‘everything the puppies are doing is something that the SJWs did first and worse and besides they forced us to do it, I have links to tweets that prove it!’?”

    Yes, he is.

    He also has some extremely long rants on his blog about the evil SJWs in SFF claiming that they are super racist, sexist and who knows what else, which are just bizarre on every level. He is written literally hundreds upon hundreds of pages explaining this in ridiculous detail.

31. @rcade https://file770.com/?p=22495&cpage=5#comment-261318

    I love that comment by James May. (Even if he is not the James May I think he may or may not be.)

    @Bruce Baugh https://file770.com/?p=22495&cpage=5#comment-261323
    “Ovular” is the feminist word for “Seminar.” No one likes dull seminars.

32. rcade: “The only time I’ve seen Torgersen talk about Worldcon growing in membership is when he’s pushing an argument that it sucks today because it isn’t inclusive of all SF/F readers.”

    I’ve seen a number of occasions where Torgersen has insisted that Worldcon is clearly “Doing It Wrong” because the total number of its attendees is a mere fraction of that of the ComicCons.

    Laertes: “It’s funny. It never occurred to me to go to a Worldcon because I just imagined that it’d be like ComicCon or E3. What I’m reading here makes it seem like I’ve got very much the wrong idea, and I might like it quite a lot.”

    The great thing about Worldcon is that pretty much everyone there — including the published authors — is there as an SFF fan. Authors often attend panels as ordinary audience members, and are willing to spend time talking with non-authors/fans in the hallway or the hotel bar. Authors (when asked politely and not in the middle of doing something) are willing to have photos taken of them/with them without any thought of charging the $80 fee an attendee takes for granted at ComicCon.

    The fact that the attendance at Worldcon is much lower than at ComicCons is a feature, not a bug. It’s an intimate, friendly atmosphere — compared to the cattle-barn crowd-crush at the megacons.

33. @rcade @3:42 pm

    Wow. I have wondered, given how … rehearsed so many Puppy speeches seem to be, whether they had a central gathering place where someone handed out the troops’ talking points for the day.

    Now I’ve seen it in action.

34. “I’ve never seen him actually debate anything, just rant.”

    I have yet to see James May respond to something I wrote with a comment that demonstrates any relevance to what I actually said. He reminds me of advice I heard on how to do well when you’re interviewed by a cable news channel: Don’t answer the question you’re asked; answer the question you wish you had been asked.

    All I know about May is that anything I post critical of Correia or Torgersen makes him mad. Why he’s mad is a lot more challenging to figure out. Ethics in game journalism? Men’s rights? The metric system?

35. A side note on dyslexia: For those who are interested, Jackie Stewart, the F1 racing champion, was dyslexic, and his autobiography, Winning is Not Enough, touches on the subject at some length, and in very interesting ways.

36. I’ve got to say that taking the existence of a prominent female character as reason to expect a well-publicized action movie over which many of the complainers had previously enthused to actually be a dull feminist lecture is very illuminating. It’s a great capsule moment, which can be admired and captioned “This Is Why We Should Be Disregarded, As A General Thing; or, Brother, Can You Spare A Clue”.

37. @Bruce Baugh:

    Yeah, everyone knows women can’t star in action movies, right?

38. Regarding voting No Award, I’d like to quote noted Puppy hero, Robert A. Heinlein:

    “If you are part of a society that votes, then do so. There may be no candidates and no measures you want to vote for…but there are certain to be ones you want to vote against. In case of doubt, vote against. By this rule you will rarely go wrong. If this is too blind for your taste, consult some well-meaning fool (there is always one around) and ask his advice. Then vote the other way.”

    How can the Puppies complain when others follow the wisdom of Lazarus Long?

39. I’ve seen a number of occasions where Torgersen has insisted that Worldcon is clearly “Doing It Wrong” because the total number of its attendees is a mere fraction of that of the ComicCons.

    He does seem to be only able to think of cons as commercial enterprises, either to sell stuff to rubes ala Dragoncon or to network. Like Correira he seems to have seen Worldcon only in those terms, never seeing himself as a fan among fans the way most other writers do.

    It’s depressing.

40. Torgersen is a hack, of course he only cares about numbers and popularity and nothing else.

41. @mickyFinn https://file770.com/?p=22495&cpage=5#comment-261302

    Yes… Those were destroyed to the degree in which creationists have debunked evolution in the past. *Cough.* But a nice day to you too.

42. I know that Men’s Rights ACtivists are pretty pissed off about Mad Max: Fury Road because THeron’s character TOLD MAD MAX WHAT TO DO!

    THe horrors.

43. Rev. Bob: Absolutely. Alien, Terminator, Underworld, The Hunger Games, The Long Kiss Goodnight…all un-movies, not-happening. All of these movies were terribly dull and earnest, and had action (if any) only to browbeat men with their inferiority.

44. Steven Schwartz: One of General Patton’s biographers, Carlo D’Este, hypothesizes Patton was dyslexic based on his extreme difficulty with book-based learning. Patton continually struggled with whatever the difficulty was throghout his childhood, nevertheless made it through West Point.

45. Tuomas Vainio: “Thus, since the blog above consists of summaries, the comment made elsewhere, is also a valid over here. And since the primary purpose of comment sections is to allow discussion, participation, I decided to post the same thing here. A place known for avid commenting.”

    The comment in question:
    “So when it comes to those three covers for Hawksbill Station, those do not make me expect a swashbuckling adventure full of laughter and action. The covers are not misleading. So yeah…”

    So yeah… what? What’s your point? Surely only a 5-year-old throws a tantrum if they develop erroneous expectations of a book based on looking at its cover?

    All the people I know base their expectations of a book on the jacket copy, and on reviews or synopses they’ve read elsewhere.

    Anyone who picks a book based merely on its cover and is then disappointed has no one to blame but their own self.

46. Mmm. I think characterizing winning the Nebula as an indicator of what PUBLISHERS want may be a stretch too far. Associate members don’t get to vote on the Nebula–only editors who were also qualifying authors could vote. Something winning (or indeed, being nominated) for a Nebula means that other authors in SFWA liked it, or thought it was interesting, or wondrous or what have you.

    What authors think is slick and what publishers want is frequently wildly divergent.

47. When I was a kid (and younger adult than I am now), used bookstores were filled with books that had covers by artists like Richard Powers. I just don’t get the idea that it’s a sensible expectation that a cover will likely be representative of anything inside, as opposed to an unexpected pleasure when it happens. I remember when Barlowe and Whelan were marvels for being both reliably illustrative and really good, and have never expected that as the norm.

48. @Tuomas Vainio : Um… It is a Mad Max movie… it is going to have cars… action… violence… the usual stuff legends.

    I DID so like the Paranoia module – I think it was _The Yellow Clearance Black Box Blues_ – where the characters went Outside and ran into Mad Max style road warriors – decades after the oil ran out. Cue a chase scene with the characters being pursued by tattooed and leathered barbarians on bikes, pushing them with their feet and making engine noises. And the module gave the advice that if the characters were getting too cocky about it, they should start going downhill with the bikers catching up…

49. Ryan H on May 13, 2015 at 3:57 pm said:

    “Weber’s written stories around these ideas and settings before. And I think he did it much, much better (and certainly shorter. He covers almost as much ground in half of one of the Dahak books, where as Safehold is on 8 and counting) the first times around. But many, many people love them. So what am I missing?”

    In the department of true confessions my excuse is that I read Piper’s ‘Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen’ at a young and tender age and became mildly addicted to the whole “spaceman/time traveller/cyborg helps the ignorant/fallen locals to acquire technology and beat the pants off the bad guys” trope.

    Weber also tells a pretty good story. I agree he did it waaaaay more succinctly in the third Dahak book, though. I *am* getting a bit impatient with the snail’s pace of the Safehold books.

    I do not think any of these books are Hugo worthy, though.

50. @JJ https://file770.com/?p=22495&cpage=5#comment-261347

    The blog post I was commenting used the three covers as an example of how “Puppies” would expect them to contain straightforward adventure yarn.

    As I find myself leaning towards the Puppies side of this argument. I posted my thoughts on these three covers, and explained why after seeing them, I would not expect to find “straightforward adventure yarn.”

    So when it comes to saying: “Yeah…” I am just saying that those covers are not as subversive as they were claimed to be.

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