aka The Hugo Chronicles: Puppies of Spring Barking
Today roundup features Steve Davidson, Aditya Manu Jha, Kevin Harkness, Nick Mamatas, Scott Bakal, Vivienne Raper and Spacefaring Kitten. (Title credit belongs to — Anna Nimmhaus, who was inspired by The Phantom Tollbooth, and John Seavey.)
Steve Davidson on Amazing Stories
“FANS Need to Take the Moral High Ground” – June 26
I would like to call for the following actions on the part of fans everywhere:
First, the crafting of a formal statement that articulates the position that Fandom and Fans (which includes authors, artists, editors, podcasters, bloggers, fan writers, fan artists and everyone) do not game awards (or other fannish institutions) for personal, political or financial gain. Further, that individuals who may be eligible for awards state formally that they do not grant permission for third parties to include them or their works in voting campaigns or slates or organized voting blocs and that if their names or works are found on such, it is without their express permission.*
Second, the creation of a publicly accessible web-based archive that publishes the above statement and allows individuals to publicly endorse the statement.
Third, that an amendment to the WSFS by-laws be written and formally adopted (after the appropriate votes), stating that the members of WSFS do not endorse or support voting slates, voting campaigns or organized bloc voting for the awards that WSFS oversees. Further, that rules be crafted that would allow WSFS to deny or withdraw membership privileges from individuals who violate the by-law.
Fourth, that SFWA craft and adopt a formal statement that engaging in actions the same as or similar to those described previously are considered by the organization to be unethical and unprofessional actions on the part of its members that could result (after proper internal review) in censure or withdrawal of membership privileges.
https://twitter.com/LibertarianBlue/status/614954954764238848
Aditya Mani Jha on The Sunday Guardian
“How a hate-mongering group gamed the Hugos” – June 28
Vox Day and his sexist, homophobic lobby group Rabid Puppies have “played” the science fiction world successfully and tarnished the Hugo Awards, perhaps irreparably….
…What the Puppies (both sets) did was publish a “voting slate,” a curated list of titles that they urged their follows to put on the ballot. It worked, and how: out of the 60 nominated by the Sad Puppies, 51 were on the initial ballot. The corresponding figure was 58 out of 67 for the Rabid Puppies….
To top it all, Day has put himself on the slate: twice over, actually, which has made him a double nominee for this year. His publishing firm, Castalia House, has received nine Hugo nominations in total…
Kevin Harkness
“The Hugo Awards Controversy” – June 27
Cent One: The Sad and Rabid Puppy slates don’t work, and will eventually turn around and bite the people who created them. By showing the effectiveness of recruiting voters, you make this into a contest of numbers, not quality. And, considering demographics and mortality rates, I think the 21st century is going to beat the 20th in that fight.
Cent Two: Their reasoning isn’t going to win the Puppies a new generation of converts and so boost their numbers. For example, one of the Puppy arguments I’ve run across is that Hugo-winners are preachy, the so-called SJWs (sidebar: I’m ashamed to say it took me forever to figure out who they were mad at, Single Jewish Women? Slow Jesuit Wardens?). But have the Puppies read Heinlein or Niven and Pournelle? Their old-timey sic-fi adventures are infomercials for their politics, and not very subtle ones either. By the time I was 18, I was yelling, “Shut up and tell the story!” at my last Heinlein books. A second irritating point is the puppies claim the current Hugoists are too literary . . .for a literary award. Yikes!
As a writer with no awards and never a hope for a Hugo, I can say this with the utmost objectivity: stop messing with the system just because the results offend you. Create your own awards. Or better yet, vote as an individual and leave slates for the world of politics. I’m afraid I won’t change a single Puppy’s mind with this blog, because for them, the Hugo Awards are political. It follows then that writing itself is political, and, by extension, all art. If art is political, it must serve the politics of its maker. Come to think of it, that’s what Chairman Mao said. Maybe he was a secret Puppy.
https://twitter.com/NMamatas/status/614888459057016832/photo/1
@mari_ness Well, me for one.
— Nick Buy My Book Mamatas ??????????????? (@NMamatas) June 27, 2015
@jeffvandermeer During QA I hope someone asks "Who do you like for the Hugo Awards this year?"
— Nick Buy My Book Mamatas ??????????????? (@NMamatas) June 27, 2015
Scott Bakal on Instagram
Catching up a little bit with some news: I’m honored that this piece I did for Tor and @irenegallo was given a Distinguished Merit Award from 3×3 Magazine along with 10 other pieces. Thank you to the judges! It’s special because this is one of my recent favorites.
https://instagram.com/p/4cNh0LpKH5/
https://twitter.com/OddlyDinosaur/status/614827808674697216
Vivienne Raper on Futures Less Traveled
“Reading the Rockets – Best Graphic Story” – June 27
[Reviews all five nominees.]
#1 Saga Volume 3
I was reading Saga before the Hugo nomination for Volume 3. I love this series and the strange future-fantasy world the author has created. Volume 3 isn’t the best volume, but it’s hard for me to judge as a standalone as I’ve read the others.
The series follows two former soldiers from long-warring alien races and their struggle to care for their daughter, Hazel, as they’re chased by the authorities. Hazel is born at the beginning of Volume 1 and narrates part of the story as an adult.
Saga has lost narrative momentum as the series has progressed, but I’ve found it remains imaginative and entertaining. I don’t think there’s one baseline human here. In Volume 1 artist Fiona Staples even solved one of my longstanding character niggles – how do you dress a person with more than two legs? (Answer: a prom skirt)
There are flying tree spaceships. There are Egyptian lying cats. There are family feuds, blood feuds, assassins, deaths, births, love affairs, lots of running away. The standard palate of all-purpose human conflict that has driven good storytelling from time eternal. Big thumbs up from me.
Spacefaring Kitten on Spacefaring, Extradimensional Happy Kittens
This. Was. Shit.
Moreover, Wisdom from My Internet is hard evidence of the fact that there were at least 200 sheer, hundred-percent, honest-go-god trolls sending in nominating ballots. It’s a collection of supposedly humorous, bad to reprehensible tweets with no SFF content whatsoever and — let’s face it — it’s on the ballot to piss off anybody who voted for Kameron Hurley last year.
The time I had to use to write these three sentences is all I’m going to devote to discussing this drivel.
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@toniee
I think that Nick is right, and that thriller and romance are even further to the right than sci-fi. Both those genres have strong enough trends that I feel like they can be summed up, largely accurately as “Manly Men Defeat the Scary Others” (thriller) and “Manly Men Take Charge In the Bedroom” (romance). As with all things, there’s something of a sea-change going on (thank-god), but that’s where it is right now.
@RAH at 5:35:
That’s Not What You Meant
Get your Puppy Bingo cards here,
I was really happy not knowing about Covington/Turner Diaries Guy 1.2.
Blindsight and Echopraxia gave me fresh hope for the genre. These are challenging works, and I personally don’t yet have a full understanding of all the ramifications. I can’t even summarize my thinking on them at this point.
But, I am sure that these are the sort of works we should be spending time on, giving awards to, and hoping for more of.
I was in B&N the other day looking for SF. Saw the Baen books by Larry Correia. Before that puppy started making messes all over the place I would have picked one, because I like Baen military SF – decided to pass based on the name of the author. Still will buy Baen books.
I don’t remember Baen the publisher making a statement about the puppies. Did I just miss it in the TORrent of words? Has Baen seen a change in sales?
Brian Z — “For once I agree with Peace is My Middle Name.”
Huh. I don’t know about Peace, but reading that makes me have second thoughts about my second thoughts about defining slates.
I think this is the point, Brian, where you can throw us all into confusion by recommending good ideas, instead of sealioning and gaslighting.
Kyra on June 28, 2015 at 4:24 am said:
Nominating for the Hugos is hard.
Nominating for the Hugos takes dedication.
Nominating for the Hugos is a COMMITMENT.
This.
My only quibble is that I am arrogant enough to believe that I can rank which of the nominations are Hugo worthy. It was much easier this year, as I refuse to place slated works above No Award (though a few got ranked below).
@ NelC
I don’t think Brian Z can reasonably be accused of gaslighting. I just checked the definition again and don’t see it. I’d say it’s a mixture of sealioning and concern trolling.
Bandit: Toni Weisskopf runs Baen. There’s no distinction between Baen and the Sads; they’re almost as closely linked as the Rabids and Castalia.
@Nick @TheYoungPretender thanks. For romance, is it just in the sexual roles of men and women or is it right wing in other ways? I heard article on the radio recently which claimed that romance is feminist as it is produced by mostly women for women. I didn’t hear most of it though so I didn’t get any of the finer arguments.
Romance is a genre with an enormous range of sub-genres (I speak as a romance reader) and whether you think the genre is conservative or not might depend on which sub-genre you are looking at. But, overall, as a genre written primarily by women authors primarily for women readers, quite a lot of it is liberal in orientation. Homosexual relationships have been around in romances for quite a while now, for one. Even best-selling mainstream authors have had positive depictions of gay couples for a long while (Jayne Ann Krentz, for one). And, of course, by now, gay romance and eroticism is its own popular category.
There are authors writing openly feminist works — such as Courtney Milan with “The Suffragette Scandal.” Many of the historical romances being written now tend to focus on strong-willed female characters who are in defiance of social limitations. Which isn’t to say that there isn’t also a lot of traditional elements to relationships also present.
What I don’t see a lot of is overt political discussion in the romance I’ve read — I.E. I don’t see discussions or exploration of climate change or political structures, etc. Sff is a genre that seems to have that type of exploration built into it by the nature of what it is — the focus on community and relationship in the romance genre allows it to sidestep political discussions.
SBJ
I think that what has happened with Peter Watts is that he has taken neo-Darwinism to its logical conclusion, without pausing to ask himself whether neo-Darwinism actually fits the evidence; I can say, from personal experience, that Neo-Darwinism doesn’t fit the evidence, and the attempt by its progenitors to jump up and down on micro-biologists did hamper research for some years.
The micro-biologists finally concluded that there was no point in trying to appease people driven by ideology, and got on with experimenting in reality; a concept that in itself is highly problematic for Watts. It’s much less problematical for me since my reality consists of trying not to die whenever the bacteria colonising my lungs forget the first rule of parasitism : don’t kill your host.
My lungs are colonised by a strain of hyper-mutating multi resistant mucoid pseudomonas aeruginosa which is a single entity; it is impossible to kill the entity as a whole but a small number of intravenous antibiotics will kill some of it. There is one antibiotic which doesn’t kill at all; instead it interferes with the quorum sensing ability ie. its communications, making it less likely to decide to do the microbial equivalent of invading Poland.
By this point you know where Watts slime mould came from: what he hasn’t really grasped is that in itself the ability to hyper mutate undermines the neo-Darwinism theory which says that the vast majority of mutations are destructive; if this were the case the bacteria in my lungs should have hyper mutated themselselves out of existence long ago. They haven’t, they don’t, and they won’t, and since that is the case one needs to construct a hypothesis to deal with it. Indeed, the bottom line of lateral gene transfer is that we are not driven by genes, selfish or otherwise, the organism selects the genes, not the other way round.
Part of the problem with the two books so far is that Watts hasn’t really got to grips with the contradiction between his two models. He can have his slime mould which is a single entity, just as the one in my lungs is a single entity, he can have the ability to communicate, to make plans, to sacrifice bits of the whole for the benefit of the whole, all of which the bacteria colonising my lungs do. But that can’t coexist with Neo-Darwinism in general, and selfish genes in particular, because they contradict each other.
I don’t know whether Watts is working up to that realisation in book 3, or whether he’s still trying to reconcile the irreconcilable. I’m certainly looking forward to the next book…
As a statement of intent, such a motion would be appropriate as a resolution of the WSFS Business Meeting, which would then go into the Resolutions of Continuing effect. However, any attempt to put enforcement teeth into such a proposal that amounts to the Administrators having the authority to pick and choose whose votes can be counted in the way suggested is likely to be looked up on rather criticially by the members of the Business Meeting. The proposal isn’t illegal, though.
It would also be legal for the Business Meeting to adopt such a resolution while also suggesting that future Hugo Administrators include it on the Hugo Awards ballot.
Also, posting things on web sites is not the same thing as actually submitting them to the WSFS Business Meeting. If none of this makes it to the meeting and some of you say, “Why didn’t WSFS consider it? It was talked about on File 770!” that is why. Any two members (supporting or attending) can submit business. The deadline is August 6. Read the Business Meeting page at the current Worldcon’s web site and the more detailed Guide to Business Meetings as well.
Democracy is hard work. Harder for some of us than others, says the person who has to actually try to administer this circus.
@Sweet thanks for that, very illuminating. I don’t know much about romance and while I’m unlikely to want to read any I find it interesting that it seems to be quite a unique genre in it being made by women for women.
@mk41
I dunno–in the last set of comments, Brian Z came in vigorously implying that Dr Who voters were slating (I think on the basis of Dr Who episodes making the ballot and Dr Who fans having the capability to talk to each other) and then after multiple people pointed out how the evidence really pointed to multiple enthusiasts *independently* nominating favorite episodes of their favorite show, turning around and claimed he never said they were slating.
That looks like gaslighting to me. I think NelC’s comment stands.
Kevin
Thank you for working so hard for all of us; I’m not going to adopt the royal ‘We’, for obvious reasons, but I am very grateful to you.
and maybe that’s why I spent so many years single – just getting the joke in before anyone else does :-D.
@Stevie that sounds horrible. Is it a permanent condition or is there any chance of it clearing?
Further bouncing off what Sweet said–although it is a genre created by women for women, I’ve never been made to feel unwelcome by women either as a reader or a writer or romance/erotica (the line between them is fuzzy, IMHO). It’s actually a genre where the gatekeeping is done by men who feel that they have to enforce gender roles–“Why are you reading that stuff? It’s for GURLS!”, essentially. It’s a shame, because I think there’s a lot of good stuff in there that’s not getting the recognition it deserves because SFF fans just don’t walk down the Romance aisle. (Lucky for me, Uncle Hugo’s doesn’t separate it out that way.)
@ Cat
Ah, ok, I missed that. Thanks.
NelC,
Finally you have discovered my true purpose.
What about a rule to the effect that people who explicitly say they want to destroy the Hugo Awards are not eligible for the Hugo Awards?
As I understand it (although I welcome factual corrections!), both Mr Beale and Mr Marmot have explicitly stated that they want to destroy the Hugo Awards, to render them valueless and without esteem. If this is the case, then nominating them for Hugos would be an insult to them, and they should therefore be ineligible.
Years ago, I participated in a discussion at Foolscap with Fred Pohl titled “What would you bring to the first Worldcon, besides Frederick Pohl?” At the time, I didn’t know the history of him trying to attend. I just thought he had somehow missed it.
Thank you, mcjulie, for the Kirkus Reviews link.
paulcarp: So you edited it back to misspell Frederik in spite of me? Ook ook.
RedWombat: Part of your experience is the extra shock of discovery. It’s not that a lot of this is brand-new, as that it’s been there but you didn’t know it. But the stuff you did know is still true. Bujold is one of the most popular authors in the field. Jo Walton really is that nice and cool a person. You have cool fans, and podcast sponsors who give you neat stuff and have supplied you well in advance with things to say when senile. I, at least, have to stop and reaffirm things like that when a bunch of crud discloses itself to me.
@bandit – I think that’s the ultimate career impact a lot of this will have. Nothing like an organized blacklist (much as some people would love to claim there is one!) but just a vague “oh, HIM.” If you keep associating your name with unpleasantness, you’ll eventually get a Pavlovian response where people see the name and make that connection to drama and wander on by.
We KNOW that people react to stories differently if they don’t know the author names. Blind submissions happen for a reason. There are all kinds of biases. So I would be deeply astonished if there aren’t editors and reviewers out there who go “good story, but getting involved with this is more trouble than it’s worth” and just let it pass. There are a crapload of good authors out there. Nobody gets in trouble for the author they don’t review or the story they don’t buy. And nobody’s colluding, and there’s not a massive repository of Authors We Don’t Work With stored somewhere, it’s just a lot of individuals going “I don’t have time for drama right now” and moving on to something that doesn’t have bad associations.
And for readers, I suspect there’s a tipping point between “I have heard this name!” where they are more likely to pick it up, and “Haven’t I heard somethng bad about this?” when they aren’t. Any publicity is only good publicity to a point.
Whether this is good or bad or fair or unfair is another matter. I just suspect that it’s true.
Tonielee
Thank you. It’s permanent; treatable, but permanent. The only person I know in which the colony actually died had spent six months in the Intensive Care Unit with interstial pneumonia, which, for obvious reasons, isn’t something anyone would do if they could avoid it.
However, I am very fortunate to live in a country where medical care is free at the point of use; I would not have survived very long in a for-profit system. I greatly sympathise with those who are less fortunate than I am.
On the other hand it does provide the opportunity to consider whether Peter Watts has got to grips with thinking through the consequences of the life form he postulates. I’m not sure that he has; as stories go the selfish gene is an exciting one but it crashes as soon as the existence of lateral gene transfer is proven, which is why Dawkins et al spent years denying the possibility, notwithstanding the evidence.
The other aspect was the claim that genes providing multi resistance to antibiotics placed a heavy burden on the entity and that therefore bacteria would not want to carry the load. That looked great in theory, until they realised that resistance could be conferred by dropping genes rather than adding them, at which point the whole argument falls apart…
Stevie, fascinating stuff. Living the sf adventure, are we? 🙂
Just my two cents on nominating for the Hugos:
I knew every time I nominated for the Hugos that I hadn’t even remotely come close to reading all the material out there which might be good enough in my view to warrant nomination. There’s no way I could, given the volume of material there is every year.
I nominated anyway, whenever I had nominating privileges. I just put together a list of the “best” works I’d read up to that point which were eligible and picked the ones I most wanted to see on the ballot. Same with the Campbell, the Dramatic and other categories.
You see, I never looked at it as my having read enough to decide what should be nominated. I always figured that other fans would nominate from works they read and liked. The works with the broadest support would be nominated. In that sense, nominating even when you haven’t read a ton of material is a good thing. The more nominators you have, theoretically, the stronger the process-as long as the nominators act in good faith and nominate works they READ and LIKED.
I can accept nominations made in such good faith. Once the final ballot is in place, I read whatever I can which is new to me and judge it according to my tastes. That’s how I vote as well.
So, by all means, please nominate the works you like and think worthy from what you’ve read, no matter how much you’ve read. No one has to read everything in order to have a valid opinion. Just nominate/vote for stuff you feel merits your support.
Thank you, Kevin Standlee, for trying to administer this circus.
@Bruce – “You know what won’t shake your faith in fandom?”
It’s sort of amazing they’re beating the “bots” drum. Because again… anonymous Reddit posts, since deleted, and likely planted by Vox. These folks need a new hobby.
Brian Z @ 1043:
Pay Attention To Meeeeee
Get your Puppy Bingo cards HERE
To clarify something that was said earlier:
was there in fact a hidden filker-related slate during the mid-80s, or was that just gibberish?
@Danny:
I suspect it was a piece of deadpan humor.
Some of those Puppy Bingo categories might be a bit obscure? Just in case:
Bats Are Bugs is distinguished from Just Plain Making Shit Up by intent: When the speaker presents a fact that’s in error and knows it to be untrue, that’s Just Plain Making Shit Up. If the speaker believes it’s true and is mistaken, that’s Bats Are Bugs (ref).
Cases in which the speaker doesn’t know if it’s true or not and doesn’t care are, technically, Bullshit, but that category is overbroad so I’ve resisted adding it. Such cases will be scored as Just Plain Making Shit Up or Bats Are Bugs at the judge’s discretion.
@RedWombat
Some truth to that.
I know that I personally have a Horrible People list, authors that I just will not buy, read, or support in any way. I’ve discussed the criteria for that list elsewhere – suffice it to say that an author really has to work hard to get on it. I think I may be up to a grand total of eight authors on that list, out of all the hundreds who work in this space.
On the other hand, there are certainly authors who aren’t on that list but who I’m very likely to pass by, just because they’ve been unpleasant or involved in some kind of drama. Not that I refuse to read anything they write, as a matter of principle, but the dust-jacket blurbs have to be pretty impressive if I’m going to get past the author’s name.
I think being polite, cool-headed, rational, and willing to keep your mouth shut most of the time may be a survival trait in this business. Making a big dramatic controversy may be great for gathering eyeballs in the short run, but it tends to cost you a lot more in the long run.
@ Robert Reynolds
Historically speaking, I agree with you. Because historically the $40 ($60) fee guaranteed that only those people participated who cared about the outcome. However, the situation has changed and we are now dealing with people who come to the process with an agenda.
That means we need to revisit the wisdom of the crowds and when we do, we find that crowds make better decision if they pool independent information.
That suggests two aspects for a code of ethics: (i) make an independent nomination, i.e. by sampling from several recommendation lists or avoiding recommendations altogether and (ii) make sure it’s information, i.e. check whether you are able to evaluate the category and whether your candidate is worthy. “liked” doesn’t cut it. If it does Wisdom from my Internet is a legitimate Hugo nominee because presumably the target audience found a thing or two in there, that they “liked”.
Acting in good faith includes examining your actions honestly, questioning whether your contribution is useful. That doesn’t mean you have to have read everything or “your” contribution isn’t valuable. But it may mean having to give up the “heck, I’ll nominate anyway” because if you do that, you don’t have much ground to argue against someone following a list of recommendations (i.e. a slate) based on the same principle.
Danny Sichel on June 28, 2015 at 11:34 am said:
P J Evans said it to Mike Glyer, and he hasn’t clarified what he meant. I’m curious, but I’m not one of the people allowed access to the 1984 ballots. In case there was really a slate of filkers in 1984, though, I’m going to be really happy.
Danny Sichel: Until people show they can tell the difference between a slate, a bloc vote, and a constituency exercising its self-identity, there’s really nothing to be gained by this discussion.
In 1984 Paul Willett was publishing The Philk Fee-Nom-Ee-Non. It got 19 nominating votes and made the shortlist.
If something can happen as a result of as few as 19 votes, what difference does it make what the voters’ intent was?
It was a very good fanzine. It was also a voice for filkers who felt underappreciated. Which was more important? Well, it finished third in the final voting and you really can’t rank that high unless somebody thinks your work is good.
Do you have evidence to back that up?
If not, please drop the talking point, this is the second time you try to circulate it and it’s ugly. If you persist, at least have the decency to ask Vox via throwaway e-mail address and include the reply in your accusation when you next repeat it.
Peace: @Danny:
I suspect it was a piece of deadpan humor.
Only partly – a filker did tell me they had done it. After the ceremony.
But there’s no proof, and no evidence, so it could have been someone pulling my leg. Certainly, if they did it, they’re better at it than the various juvenile canines.
Gabriel F said: “It’s sort of amazing they’re beating the “bots” drum. Because again… anonymous Reddit posts, since deleted, and likely planted by Vox. These folks need a new hobby.”
I’d actually prefer it if people didn’t keep up with the “likely planted by Vox” bit, since it’s something he can plausibly deny that turns the conversation away from, “So wait, a random person said something anonymously on a forum somewhere and you took it as the official word of Tor?” and towards whether or not Ted Beale did something that nobody can prove one way or another.
Whether Beale planted the comment on Reddit or not, it’s an unsourced bit of hearsay that the Puppies worked themselves up into a frenzy over despite never having verified it, because it fits into their narrative that everyone dismisses them as a tiny and insignificant minority motivated primarily by spite, who are utterly impotent to affect anything that matters in any meaningful fashion. (Which is, I will admit, exactly why I dismiss them, but that’s primarily because it’s true.) The foaming over imagined slights far more important to me that who imagined them. 🙂
“The Muzzle Planet”
@Kyra: Thanks so much for your post on the commitment aspect of the Hugos. It puts into words my own long reticence to think about nominating. For instance, when I read some SP voters defending themselves by saying, “I did so read all the works on the slate before voting,” my immediate thought was, “But that’s not good enough.” That only familiarizes you with those particular candidates for that category. You should, I figured, also be familiar with a good three times as many works in the category to have at least some idea how those five stand relative to the whole.
Now I think, in the ordinary course, that’s too exacting a standard. In normal years with normal voting patterns, if I want to nominate just “The Litany of Earth” for best novelette because it blew my mind, it needn’t matter that I can’t compare it with a full 14 other possible nominations from the same year: that’s what other voters are for. Meaning, if they conscientiously nominate whatever they think is worthy, it will all shake out reasonably okay.
The immediate problem is that the Puppy Era is not the ordinary course. But since one of the partial answers to the problem of slate voting is a bigger voting pool, the way to a bigger voting pool may run through people like me lowering our standards for what counts as being qualified to vote until it includes us.
@mk41-Sadly, I’m afraid you’re correct here. The current system works when participants are acting in good faith. Strangely enough, I wouldn’t have that much trouble with Wisdom From My Internets being nominated if I thought that the nominators were acting in good faith-i.e., this is “good” and it’s SF-Related. I might want to find out what they were smoking, but I’d shrug my shoulders and go on about my day.
I haven’t nominated/voted in ages. It took the calculated actions of an individual with delusions of adequacy and a Scalzi-sized chip on his shoulder to pull me back into active involvement with fandom and the Hugos.
@ Brian All you have to do is ask. The most recent information on how to get the files is at
I agree – while Beale had good reasons to plant that message [to keep the outrage going, to encourage people to write physical letters] that is hardly sufficient reason to claim that it was likely he who planted it. In the meantime it is a distraction – people working themselves up over a message that ANYBODY could have written is silly.
I think that there is still a sentiment within fandom that surely we can sort this out without mathematically based proposals like E Pluribus Hugo, which just goes to show that even people interested in SF are still a bit scared of anything which looks like mathematics.
I chose the word ‘sentiment’ deliberately; anyone thinking about it would conclude that there is zero chance of VD complying with an honour based system, so talking wistfully about a ‘normal’ year, as Kari did yesterday, is feeling not thinking. There will be no ‘normal’ year without a mathematically based system; expecting those who administer the Hugos to make decisions based on anything other than maths places a vast and unsupportable burden on them.
The problem is that VD isn’t part of fandom, and he doesn’t want to be part of fandom; he wants to rule, not participate. I cannot see any method of preventing him ruling without EPH; he is increasingly isolated and outmoded by the pace of change, and his personality is such that he will lash out all the more because of it…
@Stevie I’m glad to hear you’re getting care. I also love in a country (UK) with a not for profit health care system. Our son spent most of the winters of the first few years of his life in hospital with serious chest infections and has had to have and will continue to have operations for his cleft lip and pallette which may also lead to minor medical problems later in life so I can really appreciate the benefits of a socialised health system.
I like that you use your experience to evaluate sf stories :-).