aka Muttropolis.
Last roundup tomorrow, July 6.
Banner art changes tomorrow.
What the future holds for File 770 arrives tomorrow!
Meanwhile, roundup content today is provided by Lou Antonelli, Joseph Tomaras, Jonathan Crowe, Laura “Tegan” Gjovaag, Mark Ciocco, Lis Carey, Len Schiff, and Bonnie McDaniel. (Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editors of the day Will Reichard and Brad J. Book cover lifted from Will Reichard’s “Wishlist: Soviet Space Dogs”.)
Lou Antonelli on This Way to Texas
“Genrecide” – July 5
The dispute that arose when the Sad Puppy selections did so well in the Hugo nominations has probably created a permanent split of science fiction fans – not one created by the literature, but for social reasons.
Both sides have said such horrible things about each other that I doubt the rift will ever be healed. I wouldn’t be surprised if some semantic distinction arises later – such as the Sad Puppies’ type of fiction being called spec fic as opposed to science fiction.
Teresa Nielsen Hayden and her blog Making Light started the civil war when she realized her chums – the usual suspects – were not getting their Hugo nomination notice emails as usual. She blew up and started the vituperation a week before the actual announcement was made – proving the point, as Larry Corriea was pointed out, that there is an insider clique after all.
Mike Glyer, who’s been running his fan site File 770 since dirt was invented, unfortunately has kept the wildfires burning by collecting up Puppy posts and republishing them on his site. The comments threads there have become the clearing house for all Puppy Kicker resentment.
I don’t believe either side of completely right or completely wrong, but it really doesn’t matter anymore, because regardless of how or who started it, and how it ends, thanks to the internet too much has been said attacking too many people by so many people that there will probably be a long-term drop in readership and popular support.
Perhaps in the future people will say they read magic realism, or space opera, or dystopia, or alternate history – but as a result of the Puppy Wars, no one will actually want to admit they read “science fiction” because of all the negative connotations in the wake of the current unpleasantness.
Joseph Tomaras on A Skinseller’s Workshop
“I Lied: A Few More Words about the Hugos” – July 5
….As more people post their ballots and/or their critical response to the items on the ballot, I have been surprised at how critical judgment on Kary English’s “Totaled” has lined up. People who fault contemporary SF for leaving too little room for ambiguity have criticized it for unclear, unreliable narration in the early sections. (To which I respond: As if a recently revived brain-in-a-jar would be a reliable narrator.) People who have a habit of calling for “good stories” in the whiz-bang mode of military SF have praised the story for its emotional trajectory. It has scrambled the factional lines, and that, I think, suggests a few points in its favor. There is room for dispute over it, and is worth being revisited and debated on aesthetic grounds.
What I think is indisputable, unfortunately, is how thoroughly English herself stumbled over the politics of this year’s hyper-politicized Hugo. She went months after the announcement of the ballots before disavowing both the Sad and Rabid Puppies slates on which she had been placed: Long enough that most of the anti-canine wings of the Hugo electorate had already dismissed her as a fellow traveler, but not long enough to avoid the wrath of the Rabid Majordomo himself. I take this as an object lesson in how the center-right, quasi-depoliticized “common sense” that passes as “moderation” in the U.S. context can succeed, in a global context, only in pissing people off, whether in small matters (e.g. the Hugos) or in big ones (e.g. Guantánamo, drone bombings).
Jonathan Crowe
“Best Saga Proposal Revised” – July 5
So the proposal for a Best Saga Hugo Award (see previous entry) has since been revised: they’ve abandoned getting rid of Best Novelette, which was needlessly zero-sum, and have lowered the minimum word count. The proposal now says 300,000 words; the draft posted to File 770 at more or less the same time says 240,000. A series cannot win more than once, but it can certainly be nominated multiple times (so long as two new installments requalifies it) until it wins — I think of this as the “my favourite series better damn well win this time” provision.
I’m still not a fan: it’s going to be a popularity contest for very popular (if not always good) ongoing series. And any minimum word count is going to be exclusionary. A 240,000-word lower limit would have rendered ineligible the original Foundation trilogy — which won a one-off “Best All-Time Series” Hugo in 1966.
And as far as I can tell the amendment would still allow series to appear on the Best Novel ballot when the final installment is published, like The World of Time did last year.
Laura “Tegan” Gjovaag on Bloggity-Blog-Blog-Blog
“Hugo Blatherings” – July 5
Still, it means I’m going to be part of Worldcon for at least the next two and a half years. I’ll be voting in two more Hugos after this one. And I’ll be trying to actively look for things to nominate, as well. I’ll be checking out Renay’s Hugo Spreadsheet of Doom and the Hugo Nominees 2016 Wikia regularly once I’ve finished with this year’s packet to look for suggestions to read. I’ve already got a couple of things I plan to nominate, and a few more I haven’t finished reading yet but I think might make my list. I’ll post a few lists of possible nominations as I go, and once the deadline for nominations has passed, I might even post my actual nomination form.
The round-ups at File 770 have slowed down, mostly because there just isn’t that much to talk about the Hugos right now. Everyone is busy going through the packets or have finished voting and are just waiting for the convention. I fully expect another fake outrage to be manufactured soon, but I can’t guess what direction it will come from. I’ve been continuing to read David Gerrold on Facebook… he’s the guy that got me into this whole kerfuffle in the first place. I don’t think I would have cared as much if not for him.
Mark Ciocco on Kaedrin Weblog
“Hugo Awards: Novella” – July 5
The other shorter-than-a-novel-but-longer-than-a-short-story category, these tend to be longer reads, which is a shame because I didn’t particularly care for any of them. It’s also one of the weirder categories in that three of the five nominees are from the same author. Two of the stories are also significantly expanded versions of much shorter stories (which, given my complaints below, would probably have been much better for me). None of the nominees are particularly terrible, per say, I just failed to connect with them, and it makes me wish there was a little more variety here. I don’t want too dwell on this, so let’s just get to it:…
[Comments on all five nominees.]
For the first time this year, I’m actually thinking about deploying No Award on my ballot, if only to get past the ridiculous notion that one author wrote the three best novellas of the year or something. I mean, I guess such a thing is possible, but not with these three stories. That being said, Wright also wrote my clear favorite of the bunch, so I’m not slotting No Award very high.
Lis Carey on Lis Carey’s Library
This is a Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form nominee for the 2015 Hugos. This is not a movie with any deep thoughts in its head. It’s pure, fun, over-the-top adventure, with colorful space battles and explosions…..
Bonnie McDaniel on Red Headed Femme
“The Hugo Project: Campbell Award” – July 5
(Note: This is the latest in an ongoing series of posts reviewing as many of the 2015 Hugo nominees as I can before the July 31 deadline, and explaining why I will or will not vote for them.)
The John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer advertises itself, famously, as “not-a-Hugo,” celebrating what the Worldcon community decides is the best new science fiction/fantasy writer of the year. Unfortunately, like so much of the rest of the ballot, this category has been tainted by the shenanigans of the Impacted Canines.
(Forgive me for sounding testy. Several weeks of slogging through godawfully bad stories not worth their weight in puppy piss will do that to you. I mean, if you’re going to behave lawfully-but-unethically and game the awards, can’t you at least nominate something halfway decent? Apparently not, as most of the ballot proves.)
Listed from worst to best….
[Comments on all five nominees.]
Check out @CoraBuhlert's guest column "SFR and the Hugo Awards" in the free @SciFiRomance Quarterly #7 http://t.co/2EEdJ3p2L4 #scifiromance
— ThGalaxyExpress (@ThGalaxyExpress) July 5, 2015
[Nothing to do with Sad Puppies, but an interesting article.]
The Sad Puppies Desaturation Fund To Promote Whiteness In Science Fiction Awards #BadCharitiesToDonateTo
— Len Schiff (@Golem_of_Queens) July 5, 2015
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Who the hell gives their kids things to read without reading them first? Or at the very least being aware what they are giving them.
My parents? And while I admit they veered between depraved indifference and homicidal fury when it came to raising kids, I think the ‘read whatever you want; here’s how to circumvent the gatekeepers’ part was good parenting.
I still can’t hear ‘CHORF’ without my brain shoving it into a Ghostbusters quote.
“Many CHORFs and SMOFs knew what it was to be roasted in the depths of the Slor that day, I can tell you!”
Stevie on July 6, 2015 at 11:50 am: That’s Sheila Gilbert, not Gibson.
[pre-reading books for your kids]
We gave up on that early. By age 8 or so, my daughter read as quickly as my wife did, and had more free time to do it in. (At one time, my family was about 1% of the total circulation for the library they were using.)
Other than a single post about fiction with older protagonists I’ve been lurking here since the beginning of the puppy thing. Thanks Mike for the great work.
I’m another of those readers who followed the Hugos but never got involved. My reasons were (a) I’ve never been involved in fandom, (b) those who were nominating and voting didn’t seem to need my help in calling attention to great stuff, and (c ) $40 is $40.
When the Puppy thing blew up I wasn’t involved enough to know whether they had a point. I followed the first few outraged responses, found myself getting drawn in, and landed on File770. When I realized that I cared, I figured the least I could do was fork over two Jacksons to add my voice. I’m voting this year for the first time, will nominate next spring for the first time, and the process has been fun enough that I plan to hang around for a second time.
So I have mixed feelings about the puppies: I’m pretty sure they don’t have a point and even if they do their taste in nominations is, um, not mine. On the other hand, they got me involved. So thanks, puppies, for that.
And thanks again Mike for this service.
@ Kurt
I’m willing to bet that someone will point it out to him. We do have Puppies a-reading.
I had to look up superversive.
So what is superversive fiction’s message for LGBT children ? How is that circle squared ?
My mother’s main tactic was to flood me with so many books that I wouldn’t easily find the time to wander onto shelves she’d rather I didn’t. (The other tactic was to put books on shelves I couldn’t reach, but that only worked until I hit my growth spurt at twelve and was taller than her.) It worked most of the time. 🙂
It helped that I was deeply uninterested in protagonists over a certain age (25ish) until I was middle-teensish.
That is, incidentally, why I read all of Anne McCaffrey’s dragon books as a preteen. She was trying to distract me from The Crystal Singer.
Around here, one of the rites of passage is reading To Kill a Mockingbird in the 9th grade. Atticus Finch is one of our culture heroes, and the book itself addresses issues that are essential to understanding our local culture. That is the standard I use whenever I hear this books about what is appropriate for teenagers: If they can handle Mockingbird, can they handle this?
Lazarus *cough* Long *cough*
More seriously, in other words, don’t write stuff about real characters living in a real universe.
Seriously. She’s WAYYYY old enought to know better.
I’m relatively sure it’s along the lines of ‘stop existing you horrible little Sodomite’.
Good point. And going back to both Lamplighter and Hoyt’s manifestos it is notable that 1984 fails their criteria repeatedly; grey goo (the two key characters aren’t principled rebels they just want to have sex), gloomy-endings, lack of a positive up-lifiting message, agit-prop (the central anti-government figure is a Trotsky analog) – and yet 1984 is repeatedly referenced by the political milieu they speak from. Mind you I have always suspected that many on the write have only partly read the Cliff Notes of 1984 and Animal Farm…
Morris
Thank you; Sheila Gilbert it is. I also fear that I misread Camille as Camilla, in quoting from ‘Science Fiction Culture’. However, I’m fairly sure it is page 195 of the book…
My oldest son is a David Weber fan*. I have little enough time to read the kind of novels that I like; I sure as hell am not going to sacrifice that time in order to keep up with the kind of novels that he likes.
*not that there’s anything wrong with that
Oh, I was reading all kinds of stuff with no supervision whatsoever, from the time I was three: Heinlein, Le Guin, Agatha Christie, James Herriot, Jack Vance, James Thurber, M.C. Escher, Asimov, Tolkien, Andre Norton, P.G. Wodehouse, John D. MacDonald, Zelazny …
I just had little interest in the sorts of tragic-ending-set-in-the-real-world Great Literature I was assigned in school.
Thanks Mike for doing the round-ups. Very useful, and helpful in not getting sucked into reading the comments over at any RP/SP leaders’ blogs.
I think the puppy position suffers from reading it, much like their nominations do. The more people who read what the Puppies say (which is usually internally inconsistent and incoherent, see Lou A above) and sprain their eyes because they roll so violently, the more damage they do to their own cause (however it is defined at any particular moment in time, given the tendency for self-propelled goalposts)
I did also try to read the superversive manifesto. I thought it was liberals who were supposed to live in a bubble, and conservatives be the ones grounded in reality, or do I have the narrative wrong again?
What happens when these isolated kids go to college? Or do they still cluster together in groupthink when they get there, too?
I probably sounded more rigid than I intended.
I meant it’s a good idea to pre-read or be familiar with whatever one hands directly to one’s children because it has one’s implicit approval when they are young. Let them read whatever they will at the library or from other sources and be willing to talk to them about it. Remember what one liked oneself at that age and be understanding of a little trashy or dubious work.
Another mostly-lurker here to thank Mike for the daily roundups. Both the roundups and the comments have been educational, entertaining, and infuriating by turns. I didn’t know File 770 existed before the puppy mess, but I’m so glad I found it.
Conversely, if people hadn’t read the “realism” preached by Steinbeck and other “realists,” they might have never known about the problems Steinbeck pointed out and they might never have been outraged enough to try to change them.
We have a word for left-wing political movements in the West whose members insulated themselves from viewpoints outside their sect while reassuring one another, in progressively (ahem) more strident tones, that their party line was consistent with the will of the majority, or at least, that the majority would go along with it if they weren’t constantly duped by the Enemy.
That word is losers.
Right-wing movements in similar bubbles haven’t lost yet, if only because certain patrons can ensure that for the time being, money keeps flowing into the bubble.
Another mostly-lurker here, grateful to Mike for providing the space and doing so much good work (sadly unappreciated by some) in compiling the roundups. Like others I’ve seen commenting about this, I had drifted away from reading much fiction for various reasons. This year’s kerfuffle has gotten me reengaged and excited again, and I definitely plan to continue following File 770 — even if I weren’t hooked on the filking, where else could I find a bunch of people who are this dangerous to my (recently reinvigorated) book-buying budget?
Is Wesley Chu the SF author the same as Wesley Chu with several non fic books about data mining? Just wondering.
And you can use find/replace on that true statement and change “Steinbeck” to “Dickens”.
Incoherent shouting about how some blog post needs to be printed out and nailgunned to the arse of the idiot who wrote it
Steinbeck isn’t suitable for children? Steinbeck? What the everloving porridge nuggets are they talking about? What’s next, you can’t read some of the most universally acclaimed great works of fiction, because they might not have a My Little Pony ending? Have these people never read fairytales? No, not the Disney cartoons, the actual fairytales?
Give? You mean as in schools? Depends on how rich you are. When do kids start reading them? As soon as they find them. I was five, maybe six when I read Steinbeck and about two years older for the original Grimm’s fairy tales, both from the books on the shelves at home; other classics I got from the library and nobody ever supervised what books I chose after Grimms.
In schools here, for Shakespeare, they’re twelve. For things like King Lear (with the eye gouging and so on) or Hamlet (suicide) or Romeo and Juliet (seriously dodgy priest-facilitated underage sex, along with a large dose of stabbings, and various kinds of suicide).
🙂 I now have a vision in which the Trotskyist newspaper sellers of my younger years are magically transformed into right-wing sellers of Baen published ebooks.
I do understand that. If you haven’t lived it, Steinbeck and Hemingway and Dostoyevsky and Flannery O’Connor and George Orwell are good eye-openers.
I just wasn’t into any of them in school, where I had to read them.
I would really rather not go into why, but I was (albeit probably an unfair and snarky adolescent on top of things) unimpressed by their revelations.
andyl:
It’s interesting to see what people were reading at school. IIRC our school was fairly lax when it comes to mandatory reading; the only book I absolutely remember reading was Häräntappoase by Anna-Leena Härkönen, which was a huge hit in Finland in the 1980s as both a book and a TV series. A nice coming-of-age novel from a (then) young author. We had “themed” mandatory reading, though, which lead me to read at least Dracula, Lord of the Flies and The Idiot.
In general, I’ve understood Finnish schools have mostly focused on Finnish literature: Aleksis Kivi’s Seitsemän veljestä (Seven Brothers, one of the very first novels written in Finnish), Tuntematon sotilas (Unknown Soldiers, a war story about later half of WWII, between Finland and Soviet Union). Not all nationalistic, though: my wife also brought up Animal Farm, Fahrenheit 451 and A Doll’s House (by Henrik Ibsen).
And yeah, about parents reading what their kids are reading… Nope, not gonna happen. I’ve superficially screened the books I’m reading to my son now (he’s turning two next month), but I certainly won’t be pre-reading them when he learns to read by himself. That may lead to some discussions after the fact, but I’d rather trust my son to make reasonable decisions himself (or for the school to make them, as was the case with Of Mice and Men).
Mark Dennehy:
Yojimbo has been remade in a lot of versions, but i’ve got a special love for the viking version. When The Raven Flies inspired a lot of RPG campaigns. Old classic vendettas and wonderful icelandic setting. The language in itself is so beautiful.
Michael:
Not just outraged — books like THE GRAPES OF WRATH and OF MICE AND MEN are about understanding and compassion. Exactly the kind of thing that’s behind the good works that Lamplighter thinks people won’t do unless the fiction they read never shows them a world where it’s lacking.
Steinbeck was assigned reading in my USA school at age 13. Fortunately we’d been in training for literary heartbreak already; Where the Red Fern Grows was assigned to ten year olds
@ Shambles
Probably “look at how happy you would be if you were straight! Live that way and you’ll have a nice, fulfilled life!”
Basically the Orson Scott Card view.
@cmn
No, Wesley Chu isn’t Professor Wesley W. Chu who has written on data mining.
Thank you, Mike Glyer, for these round ups, and thank you, everyone, for the conversation and recommendations.
I’m sorry, if Of Mice and Men is somehow too down, has Lamplighter read any of the fairy tales or myths? Try re-reading “The Little Mermaid” or “The Red Shoes” or “Persephone” or well you get the picture. Tragedy distilled.
ETA Gah, ninjaed by Mark Dennehy
Conversely, maybe I wasn’t a very compassionate teenager.
The updates have been interesting and useful, and clearly required a lot of work. The comments have often been fascinating. Thanks to Mike and all from me, too.
For some reason, tragic and depressing fairy tales didn’t bother me half as much as stories purporting to be set in the real world.
Hey wait, what’s depressing about the myth of Persephone?
Kurt Busiek at 10:14 am:
What, no love for a story about the “Fandomness” of genre, and the return of sensawunda to SFF?
@valor,
Hey, did you get round to finishing the Amber books? What did you think?
I think I read John Steinbeck’s short story “Flight” in fourth grade. Pretty much all I remember from it is the line “Thou? A man? Thou art a peanut”, and the fact that the main character becomes infected with gangrene and dies (is shot, IIRC) in the end.
Well it certainly seems consistent with the last few David Weber books. “What David, you’ve an 800 page manuscript, the first 400 pages of which are spent recapping the goings on in the last dozen books and then delivers the big fight scene that was inevitable two books ago, with entirely predicable results? Fantastic. I’ll tell the printers to clear the presses.”
@Mark Dennehy
Oh, I’m pretty sure I mentioned Akira Kurosawa, so his stuff was covered. 😉
The six pomegranate seeds she ate on the last day before gaining her freedom from Hades – to quote a gangster movie, “Just when I thought I was out… they pull me back in.” 😀
@Peace
Fall & Winter mean Demeter is missing her daughter, and Persephone is missing her mother.
ETA it may have been the best of all possible endings but it was not necessarily a happy ending in my view.
I get the impression from Hoyt and Lamplighter that they think readers don’t have any backgrounds of their own to bring to books and stories: we’re all blank slates.
That doesn’t do anything to improve my opinion of the assorted canines.
Thanks Andy!
Re kids’ reading/parents screening — SOOO glad my parents didn’t do that. They were very over-protective about TV and movies (I literally didn’t see an R rated movie until I was actually over 17; they thought that Welcome Back Kotter and the Simpsons were both “against our family values” (their usual phrase when denying permission to watch a tv show.
But they paid little to no attention to our reading, at least not until my dad looked up one day to see me deeply engrossed in a “bodice-ripper” style romance and snatched it away. Ironically, it was one of the less-“dirty parts” ones, since Kathleen Woodiwiss and Rosemary Rogers tended to have less lurid covers.
Anyway I was reading from the adult section in the library from an early age but only partially read a great many books, because I became disturbed and weirded out by characters having sex or things seeming too dark (I particularly remember trying to read some of Joan Aiken’s adult books and finding them really uncomfortable–I had already read and re-read everything our library had in her kids’ books). I remember in particular sampling and rejecting a lot of mystery novels. But at nearly the same time I was devouring John Saul and Stephen King and Dean Koontz books, which aren’t exactly sweetness and light. I guess I didn’t mind if the heroes suffered a lot or not all of them survived, as long as they were definitely the good guys. I also hated unreliable narrator books, probably for the same reason.
We were speaking of Joan Aiken the other week around here, I think, and I never got a chance to mention my very very favorite of her books, which is shamefully unknown compared to the Dido Twite and Arabel series — Armitage, Armitage, Fly Away Home. It’s a collection of linked short stories where, thanks to wish the mom makes while pregnant, extraordinary things happen all the time to the kids, but only on one particular day of the week. The different chapters are different occurrences that happen. I remember a unicorn named Candleberry living in the garden, a cardboard town made of cereal packets that becomes real, and a ghostly governess. Love that book, and delighted to have recently found it in a kindle edition. Saving it for a re-read sometime soon.
I still haven’t forgiven Steinbeck for the Red Pony, which I read as a child.
Thought? Is Lamplighter definitely American raised, or like Hoyt is she from a different culture? It’s very hard to tell with a name like hers, which would be entirely natural as a character from a steampunk book with goblins.
“There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays,
“And every single one of them is right!” – Kipling
It is disconcerting when writers want to narrow the possibilities of fiction. If you don’t want to write or read a certain type of story, don’t write or read it. I don’t understand wanting to stop others from writing or reading certain types of stories.
And did you lose your first pet before or after reading it?
(I seem to remember reading it around age ten as part of a school curriculum and I’d already had one cat who’d had to be put down by then so it didn’t have the full wallop at the time but I wonder if that’s down to timing?)