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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“Re-Nominator”
@ Stevie
Actually, EPH fixes the social problem as well. Without the disproportionate effect of slates the slate voters (a) can no longer abuse the Hugo voters package to vote for stuff they’d otherwise buy and (b) will think twice about spending $40 for the privilege. Once they can no longer cause a nuisance their participation will drop and it – again – won’t matter that much under what self imposed rules anyone nominates.
Came across this from an old con brochure at fanac.org:
“And everyone, above all, please be courteous to your fellow human being. We are here to celebrate Science Fiction. We are all in this together. Enjoy.” –Larry Carmody, Chairman
The problem is that at the moment there is no hard evidence until the voting finishes. I suspect the additional supporting memberships are non-Puppy supporters but we don’t know or know what mix of non- v Puppy the extra voters are. Nor of the non-Puppy voters what proportion are more inclined to ‘no award’.
If the vote is massively anti-Puppy there is a good (but not predictable) chance that the Puppies of either stripe will get bored and go away – perhaps either declaring the Hugos a lost cause or that they saved them by bringing in new members, or both (or that the vote was rigged or that the new supporting members had their votes bought etc.
If it is more ambiguous then slate voting will look more feasible and the conflict will continue.
Yeah, that bugaboo, math — except that EPH means the average fan can continue to do what they’ve always done, i.e. put down five candidates in each category. It’s how the votes are counted that changes, not how you nominate.
And anyone who wants to discuss EPH further is welcome to join the thread over at Making Light, I’m not sure why someone thinks we should rehash it here. At this point I’m beginning to see suggestions of wrecker behaviour, or at the very least a sprinkle of sand into the gears…
I prefer to think of that as let’s-all-get-into-this-spaceArk-and-leave-the-planet option. Or the oompa-loompa option after that story early in the Dahl story when Wonka closes his factory after frustration at all his rivals stealing his ideas by bribing his workers – except there won’t be oompa-loompas (which is a pity because I can only imagine that would enhance the WroldCon, particularly as more unpleasant guest met ironic ends and they sing a song)
@tuomas gets his first trip to the rodeo! (IIRC.)
Mk41 — “I don’t think Brian Z can reasonably be accused of gaslighting.”
I think you’re right. I don’t know what my fingers were thinking of. Bad fingers!
Yeah, that bugaboo, math — except that EPH means the average fan can continue to do what they’ve always done, i.e. put down five candidates in each category. It’s how the votes are counted that changes, not how you nominate.
The trick may be convincing people that it’s still in their best interests to nominate as before. The math is not intuitive, although it is elegant.
I’m beginning to see the proposal as a very good solution, but without education, voters might be confused into thinking they ought to nominate fewer works. So I highly approve of Kilo’s efforts to make the math clear to everyone.
Well, we already have filkers so we’re halfway to glorious oompa-loompa utopia. Now all we need is to seed worldcon with ironic death traps…
Maybe Brian Z can gives us some Wonka themed filks. He must be a bit tired from his socratic-trolling.
Nominating is easy.
Nominating well is hard.
I think the true nuclear option would be to obtain a significant quantity of uranium and use it as the core of a bomb detonated by simultaneous explosion of multiple conventional charges, which would cause the core to go critical in a chain reaction resulting in a massive explosion and release of deadly radiation over large areas.
I don’t advocate for it or anything; I just have a very literal mind.
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
Eh. Let Voxie waste energy trying to deny it.
In any case it’s naive to the point of stupidity to think that any of the Pups –ringleaders or supporters — can be convinced through argument at this point in time. These people are in their hermetically sealed echo chambers and that constantly repeated robots lie is just another shibboleth.
“Dayslaters”
“The Docketeer”
Laura
I’m hoping that as we get closer to Worldcon people will get to grips with ‘what happens if we do nothing’, not least because the ‘do nothing’ option would result in having to read yet more total garbage next year, with the certainty that we would still be presented with the slush piles rejects the following year, at which point I set my controls for the heart of the sun because anything is better than having to read this stuff.
Imagining the horrors ahead as Wright produces novel length allegories about the Supreme Court, and VD embarks on linked novellas on the purity of womanhood untainted by education, should be sufficient to convince people who actually read the nominees that enough is enough.
And yes, it is rather elegant…
Stevie, even if EPH is accepted this year, it won’t take effect until 2017, because that vote has to be ratifed at Midamericon. So unless fandom manages to swamp the Pups slates by sheer weight of numbers, we’ll probably see more garbage for 2016.
John Seavey — Multiple charges? The implosion design is a bit tricky to get right; you need very exacting timing and specially-designed capacitors to set off the charges symmetrically. The gun design is a lot simpler, if less efficient.
I’m not much good at maths (application rather than inclination – I grasp stuff fast but never practiced it enough to get anywhere, the hidden flaw of having the parent who doesn’t like maths stay at home with the home educated children) but I’m perfectly capable of listening to people who do grasp whatever the maths in the particular situation are. If the many smart, dedicated and (as far as I can tell) honest people who have worked on and looked over E Pluribus Hugo tell me I should be able to nominate as usual, I see no reason to disbelieve them. People don’t tend to be shy about pointing out maths flaws when they see them.
My optimism and faith in fandom generally makes me believe that an influx of honest people making nominations can swamp any effort by the puppies to completely overwhelm the nominations again.
That said, I’ve been reading the Related Works category this afternoon, and I want to tear my eyes out. I *know* the people that nominated some of this steaming pile of guano never read it or have no idea what “related” means.
good point
Meredith” I’m not much good at maths
The files Kilo put together might do for you: pictures of what’s happening. (I looked at the PDF version, rather than the Powerpoint version. Not that fond of Powerpoint, even though I once put one together for work.)
Particularly on the Internet.
Lori
I know. However, if EPH is passed the incentive to thoroughly piss people off diminishes; VD would be down to one last shot for those who cannot hope for a nomination in any other way, and I personally would feel a lot happier about slogging on if there was light at the end of the tunnel.
So EPH has to be voted this year and ratified next year; SP 4 can slate to their hearts content, secure in the knowledge that authors are going to have to ask themselves whether they really want to be known as someone who hasn’t a hope in hell of getting a nomination without people cheating on their behalf, and is willing to take that nomination anyway…
Stevie — got it! I just didn’t want anyone assuming that EPH is going to be an instant cure-all.
I’m very hopeful that next year’s nominations will be more robust than this year’s, and like you, I’m definitely seeing it as the light at the end of the tunnel. I don’t think I can stomach another year of drek.
I stripped all the puppy candidates of any ranking on my ballot after the Gallo incident, so if there isn’t a non-slate candidate (or if there is but it isn’t award-worthy) “No Award” occupies a lot of my ballot. Sigh.
Spent much of the afternoon and evening with fannish friends (some also commenters here, others conrunners and writers). You will be pleased to know we spent a lot of time discussing our 2016 nominations and sharing books that are due over the next six months.
Unfortunately not:
http://www.thehugoawards.org/content/pdf/2014HugoStatistics.pdf
Best novel ~1595 ballots
Ancillary Justice 23.1% ~ 495 nominations
The ocean at the end of the lane 13.7% ~ 219 nominations
Warbound 11.5% ~ 183 nominations
The Wheel of time 10% ~ 160 nominations
Neptune’s brood 7.5% ~ 120 nominations
A slate of a mere 200 nominators would take 3 slots (treating Warbound as regular for the sake of brevity). A slate of 300 would take 4 slots. You’d have to double the number of nominators to stop the slate.
For best short story it’s worse. The number one nominee received about 79 nominations, second has 73 nominations. You’d have to triple the number of nominators to get the first two regular nominees above a slate voting block with a mere 200 members.
Stated by VD today : This is how I am voting in the Best Short Story category. Of course, I offer this information regarding my individual ballot for no particular reason at all, and the fact that I have done so should not be confused in any way, shape, or form with a slate or a bloc vote, much less a direct order by the Supreme Dark Lord of the Evil Legion of Evil to his 386 Vile Faceless Minions or anyone else.
Of course, when other people make pissant comments like that, he dismisses them as “whiny little gammas”. Must be Aristotle again.
Reading the related work section of the packet is a bit like reading the comment section if a You Tube video – in one case that is almost literally true.
you have to despair when ‘a bit dull’ ranks as relative high praise for the best nominee in a literary award category.
I don’t know if it will affect your vote or not (it won’t change mine) but Vox Day seems to have now disowned Kary English and isn’t voting for Totaled at all.
I guess that might affect someone’s vote if they were on a “do the opposite of what Beale says” plan, which is a pretty easy-to-manipulate stance.
But if they’re voting the way they’re voting either because they want to register a protest against slates, or on the merits of the work as written, then what Beale says about how he’s planning to vote* makes no difference.
*plus, of course, whether Beale is able to vote at all is an open question, along with whether he’d actually vote the way he claims he’s going to.
I’m keeping a list on my desktop of Things To Nominate when the time comes around. As I read things, I note them down, with links if available.
I’m definitely looking forward to Seveneves by Neal Stephenson and The Philosopher Kings by Jo Walton. Would that be nominated in tandem with The Just City, as was Blackout/All Clear?
It wont change my vote because Totaled was the benefuciary of shenanigans regardless and the story did not get over my additional criteria for slate nominees.
I mentioned Day’s unpersoning of English primarily because Lori was describing their vote as a response to the Gallo fake-outrage.
mk41: A slate of a mere 200 nominators would take 3 slots (treating Warbound as regular for the sake of brevity). A slate of 300 would take 4 slots. You’d have to double the number of nominators to stop the slate. For best short story it’s worse. The number one nominee received about 79 nominations, second has 73 nominations. You’d have to triple the number of nominators to get the first two regular nominees above a slate voting block with a mere 200 members.
2014 nominating totals really aren’t indicative of anything at this point. This year there were 2,122 valid nominating ballots (+500) from last year. (It’s estimated that around 300 of those were Puppies.) In addition, Sasquan has added almost 3,300 Supporting members and more than 700 Attending members since March 31.
If 3,000 people nominate next year (I’m guessing the number will actually be much higher), then the Puppies would probably need to number 600 of them to sweep the ballot in the Novel category*. Fewer would be needed for the other categories.
* This assumes that there will be 2-3 novel candidates with strong buzz next year, but this generally seems to be the case most years.
I’d expect that more people will be watching for slates next year, and any slate nominee will have to be very, very good just to get over that hurdle. They really poisoned their own well this time.
@JJ
If the slates don’t “sweep the ballot in the novel category” I don’t count that as a win. They didn’t sweep the novel category this year either.
Assuming you’re right, there are 3000 nominators next year, that’s roughly double the 2014 number. At 300 rabid puppies that’s the entire short story ballot swept by a slate. And that’s assuming the 1400 new nominators add to all categories equally which is highly unlikely.
Anyway, my point was that Laura Gjovaag’s hope this can be fixed by growing Worldcon is not realistic. I’m pointing this out because I believe it is a pattern among certain fen who don’t want to change the way things are, to give credence to this totally unrealistic scenario, that, if true, would get them what they want. It’s wishful thinking, she might as well count on care bear stares.
Well, I’m keeping notes of what I particularly enjoy in the way of new work; it helps me to wade on through the sludge that constitutes most of the Hugo contenders this year.
I will be taking nomination seriously; in the past I rather assumed that people more knowledgeable than I would be better placed to do the nominating, but Kyra and others have convinced me that I need to contribute, if only to give another input.
So, onwards ever onwards; the claim that Puppidum reflects the silent majority grows ever more hollow, and I will continue to adopt Treebeard’s philosophy when it comes to taking sides…
I’ll trust your math on this one, mk41, but I still want to be optimistic. While I’m still not 100% behind EPH, I’m not so naive to think it’s not needed. Just optimistically hoping that next year will be ok without it.
> “Would that be nominated in tandem with The Just City, as was Blackout/All Clear?”
My understanding is that they could be nominated as individual volumes, or as a “unit”. I suspect, although I am not 100% sure, that nominating both as a unit would not screw over the chances of one getting the individual nod because of how they are tabulated.
> “If 3,000 people nominate next year (I’m guessing the number will actually be much higher), then the Puppies would probably need to number 600 of them to sweep the ballot in the Novel category …”
I expect the number of Puppies nominating next year to increase as well as the number of non-slate voters. I also expect Puppies to still be a minority of the voters, but it might very well be the same percentage minority as it was this year.
(And I still wouldn’t be to thrilled if they “only” sweep or nearly sweep six or seven categories with their minority of the vote, instead of the ~13 they swept or nearly swept this year.)
I do intend to do my bit and nominate for next year’s Hugos. But I also expect to have not anywhere near enough success against slates unless and until the rules change.
Incidentally, I absolutely agree with those who have said that it isn’t necessary to have read Everything Ever Written In 2014 to nominate in good conscience, and I personally hope as many people as possible do nominate this year.
mk41: my point was that [the] hope this can be fixed by growing Worldcon is not realistic
Agreed, since there would have to be about 10 non-Puppies added for every Puppy to keep the slate from being able to take a sizable portion of the ballot.
With regard to next year, I’ll be attending the WSFS Business Meeting and voting for EPH, then helping to build the recommendation databases and encouraging all the fans I know to nominate — hoping for the best, but prepared for the worst (at least for one more year).
I haven’t read The Just City yet, but it is one of the ones I’m looking forward to …
Recently finished Joe Abercrombie’s Half The World, and I’m adding it to my current short list of potential nominees. (I swear I read more than YA fantasy, don’t know why it’s my whole list so far. Maybe it’s a particularly good year for it?)
Laura
And if next year’s garbage wasn’t quite as absolutely dreadful as this you and other fen could argue that there’s no need to vote to confirm EPH, whilst VD laughed at you for being so credulous and naive.
The real problem is that it’s very easy to manipulate people who want to believe that others share their values; VD is not good at social analysis but, like most highly egotistical people, he is contemptuous of those he perceives as his inferiors, and, like most highly egotistical people, he believes that just about everybody is inferior to him.
His motto is ‘never give a sucker an even break’, and he regards you as a sucker; he isn’t going to change. The laws of mathematics aren’t going to change either, however much you and others would like that to be the case. What we have to do is grapple with what is, not what we want it to be; unless we do that we will effectively preside over the destruction of the Hugos, whilst plaintively asking why people can’t be nice to each other.
Which reminds me of the magnificent short story by Terry Pratchett about the attempt to get Granny Weatherwax not to enter the witch trials at the annual fair because she always won:
‘The Sea and Little Fishes’
which is an absolutely wonderful dissection of just how destructive ‘why can’t we be nice to each other’ can be…
John Seavey:
Or just make the Hugo rockets out of uranium. Noone will want one, problem solved.
Ouch.
I’m not arguing that nothing should be done. The more I look at the math, the more I’m convinced of that. EPH so far is the best option. I am hoping for refinements that can make it better, but I haven’t got the brains to work out how to do that, personally. I suspect the best minds in fandom are already on it, and I trust them.
Even while I accept reality on the one hand, that we have to change it due to potential slates, there is the optimistic part of me that is hoping for a “fandom strikes back” moment for next year’s nominees. I keep hoping that folks who aren’t lazy, lying slate-mongers are able to dominate the nominations with good pieces that are actually worthy of the Hugo. Because I’ve just read more related work pieces and if I have to read this sort of garbage next year to vote, I may end up curled in a ball under my bed crying for half the summer. Between this year’s fan writer and related work… that’s almost enough to make me give up my love of fandom.
Beth in MA:
No, they have to be nominated separately, since the final volume (Necessity) isn’t coming out this year.
mk41:
It’s worse than that. Any reasonably attempt at dubling the number of nominators is likely to bring in people with slightly different taste than current nominators, i.e. it will increase the scatter. It is also likely to bring in people who nominate fewer works pr. category, because they’re less dedicated readers (and assuming they nominate in good faith.) So doubling the number of nominators will not automatically double the number of nominations at the top of the list.
tonieee back at page 2 at 8:35:
In my opinion the statement is too vague to be evaluated. SF contains many sub-genres, and so does non-SF literature. And what does “more right wing” even mean? Are we judging by the author’s opinion, or messages in the work? Are we focusing on economic issues, or social? Do we count number of authors, or number of books sold? Are we judging based on some kind of “average” political bent, or ignore moderates and count outliers on each wing?
But I think that for a guy like Hovington, SF is the perfect genre to write his version of history. I suppose he could also have written (quasi-)historical novels about the glories of antebellum South, but if he where to write “normal”, non-SF fiction, he would’ve had to actually, you know, stick to reality. And that would make it hard to push his ideology.
SF can be utopias or dystopias, it can describe societies completely different from ours. Whether the author writes a honest investigation of radically different social mores*, or she needs to ignore certain inconvenient truths in order to get her utopia to work**, or want to pretend the latest wingnut talking point is real***, SF offers a fabulous playground. This means that SF – despite puppy claims to the contrary – is well suited for message fiction. And it is perhaps particularly well suited for the more radical political messages – for visions of the future that diverge sharply from the most likely ones, and for visions of the present that diverge from the reality most people accept.
Because of this, it does not seem unreasonable that there will be more far-out political views in SF than in non-SF fiction. In theory there should be people from both the right and the left fringe – but at the moment USA seems to have a veritable cornucupia of right-wing wingnuts, and relatively few comparatively nutty lefties, which means that by some measures the wingnut attraction will pull the field to the right.
* Say, a society with different gender roles than ours, or without clear gender roles, or even with (*gasp*!) a language without gendered nouns.
** I’m looking at you and your perpetual motion engine, Ayn Rand.
*** Want to write a novel where a muslim illegal immigrant poses as the President of the US? Go ahead and call it “alternative history”. Those pinko liberal progressocommies can’t claim you’re wrong, but your fans will know the “truth” of your story.
There’s also the fact that he’s probably fibbing about voting. He isn’t registered with Sasquan, so he has no ability to vote on the Hugos. (Or rather, if he is registered he’s one of the anonymous members, which would be really weird given how important showing that he can do what he says is to him.)
Just so I am clear.
There is not a new anonymous statement that puppies are robots besides what was posted to redit before being deleted ? Wondering why this is still being flogged ? I thought people moved past it already ?
What is the consensus view – the ‘I am not a robot’ campaign was about the puppies being a silent majority or an oppressed minority ? I kinda got mixed messages there.