51 thoughts on “Sasquan Final Hugo Ballot Adds Novel Three-Body Problem, Short Story “Single Samurai””

1. I’m not glad Marko Kloos withdrew his book, but since he did I’m very glad The Three-Body Problem took its place. I had been wanting to read that one.

2. I’m very glad to see The Three-Body Problem on the shortlist. I intend to vote for it and expect it to win Best Novel. I would have put it on the Rabid Puppy list if I had read it sooner.

3. sfadb.com updated with these new finalists.

4. Mark: You are one fast worker. I frequently use sfadb and appreciate all the time you invest in maintaining it. Certain types of award discussion would never happen without it.

5. Did the Hugo admins again update the range of nominating numbers? I’m curious how close behind these new additions to the list were: if they were close, then SP+RP likely didn’t have much more effect than the usual general consensus that some story was Hugo-worthy; if it’s a large gap then complaints about logrolling (unintentional, according to Brad & Larry) would be more valid.

6. The numbers given are the total number of ballots that voted in that category; why would they change?

7. Earlier in the process there was an announcement to the effect of, “In Best Novel, the (unidentified) top nominee on the ballot got x nominations and the (unidentified) bottom nominee on the ballot got y nominations”. More detail will be given after the awards are announced at WorldCon, but I was hoping for just a bit more information now—particularly as that might make the extent of the Puppies’ impacts on the nominations more clear.

8. I have added the nomination ranges. For reasons unknown to me, they are not in the press release sent to me, but they were included on HugoAwards.org. So I thieved them.

9. This is no doubt obvious, but Vox’ statement highlights the problem with slates: when you concentrate nominations on a small group of works, selected by one or two people, you run the risk of eliminating works that even those people would have preferred if only they had read them.

   The effect of this depends on the size of the slate. If your recommendation list is 20-30 works long, you’re reducing the risk of this happening. It is possible that 20-30 work long lists still have an overall bad effect on the process and I’m certainly glad recent events have given me cause to think harder about that.

10. Thank you, Mike. Now I just need to find where the old values were…

    Who was it that was doing this sort of statistical analysis in the last few days, does anyone remember?

11. Here is a screenshot of the April 4 values. I don’t have the interim set, from after the first ballot correction.

12. Waiting to see if “Three Body Problem” is forced to withdraw since it was effectively an alternate in the Rabid Puppies Slate.

13. GK: I would have been willing to wait longer to see another contrived way to remind us of your agenda.

14. @GK: In what way is it “effectively an alternate” in the Rabid Puppies Slate? The stigma that attaches to works from the puppy slate, after all, is that they got on the ballot due to shenanigans rather than merit.

    The Three-Body Problem, by contrast, was pushed off the ballot by puppy shenanigans. It would seem to be entirely untainted.

    I won’t vote for any puppy-tainted nominee, but at this point I’ve got no qualms about voting for the Three Body Problem. I detect not a whiff of puppy stink on it.

    What am I overlooking? Or is this just another manifestation of the hilarious puppy urge to declare any possibly outcome a victory?

15. I haven’t read it so I can’t comment. I’d be more than happy to and will as part of this whole thing. I do take my votes seriously.

    Association with Vox though has forced too otherwise worthy candidates out. This was a book that was discussed on Vox’s site at some length. I’m fine with it being there; what you still fail to get is while we aren’t thrilled with bad works we do indeed intend to give all finalists a fair shake because the upbuilding folks in puppies want good works to win.

16. @laertes You’re not overlooking anything, it is indeed another manifestation of the puppy ability to shoot off their own foot, and declare a Stunning Victory for Free Exercise of Gun Rights

17. Quick google search this is Vox before this was announced on Twitter…a detailed search will show up more on his site including a thread containing me:
    https://twitter.com/voxday/status/584293220550631424

    But hell, don’t let facts get in your way.

18. @GK: Well, I’m certainly ready to be persuaded that the work got on the ballot because of puppy electioneering, but so far you’ve made a weaker case than nothing at all. The story appears to be that the puppies, through ignorance, pushed a worthy work off the ballot. When one of the beneficiaries of your shenanigans recoiled in horror and honorably fled the ballot, it managed to get where it deserved to be in the first place, and where it surely would have been but for the shameful puppy campaign.

    If it finishes ahead of the puppy nominees, that’ll represent a stinging defeat for the idea that the puppy slate was necessary to bring worthy work to the attention of the hugo voters.

19. Here’s my take on the numbers:

    Novel: was 256–387, now 212–387; one double Puppy replaced with non-Puppy.
    (Small change in numbers.)

    Novelette: was 165–267, now 72–267; one Rabid Puppy replaced with non-Puppy.
    (Big change.)

    Short Story: was 151–230, now 132–226; one Double Puppy replaced with a Sad Puppy.
    (Small change. BTW, I must be missing something: how did the high number change?)

    Pro Artist: was 136–188, now 118–188; one Double Puppy replaced with a Rabid Puppy.

    I’ll focus on Best Novel, because outside the Puppies lists, there were three novels I’d heard being talked about a lot: Ancillary Sword, The Goblin Emperor, & The Three-Body Problem. (Also The Martian, but that probably wasn’t eligible.) And now they’re all there.

    It seems that the combined SP+RP lists were only a little more powerful than the weakest of the “Internet consensus” candidates—and that there really was this sort of consensus. My prediction is that there will be a large gap between The Three-Body Problem and the best performing un-nominated book.

    Reading VD’s blog, it seems Rabid Puppies supporters were asked to nominate the whole slate as-is. (Coming from the Sad Puppies side myself, that was an unpleasant surprise to me.) Assuming most of them did so, the size of the RP contingent can be guestimated:

    From the Short Story numbers you get a maximum of 30–50 “pure” RP voters. (Why not 151?132 = 19? Since most Sad Puppies supporters I’ve heard from have said they varied from Brad’s list, their effect was weaker than their numbers.)

    From Novelette, even assuming that all votes for “Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus” came from Rabid Puppies, the maximum number of RP-leaning nominators is 165.

    It’s harder to be clear about the size of the Sad Puppies-leaning electorate from these numbers alone; someone’s done some analysis but I can’t find the blog post now. I’m guessing around 150 or so, and probably stronger than RP, but I’m not at all confident in this guess.

20. J.C. – The Dread Ilk, the loyal readers of Vox Popoli, at least, were expected to vote the straight ticket. And when I opined it looked to me like they had maintained discipline Vox highly approved of the remark on his blog.

    I think the real controversy was the back-and-forth about whether the two slates carried with them a call to vote now and read when you get around to it. Correia denied this, and the Dread Ilk took offense as well. However, the other day Doug Wardell went off-script in a comment on Monster Hunter Nation and admitted he was waiting to read everything when it came to him in the Hugo Voter Packet… Doesn’t mean others failed to read the stuff, though it’s an amusing gaffe.

21. Interesting analysis, J.C. I’ve been doing some of this work on my website Chaos Horizon; that might have been the post you were looking for. The top number changed in Short Story because that was must have been the Bellet story that was withdrawn. You’re lower than me on your guess of RP voters. Using the Best Professional Artist category (which placed a RP pick with the recent change), I’m guessing 100+ Rabid Puppy voters. Keep in mind the low number in the Short Story could be the John C. Wright work, which wasn’t on the Sad Puppy slate. Since all 151 of those votes could have been RP votes, subtracting the new number doesn’t necessarily tell us how many RP there were.

22. RP, and didn’t vote slate.

23. GK: You don’t have to vote the slate to make me happy, though how will you be able to show your face at the next Ilk convention?

24. GK thinks it will get voted down purely because VD said he enjoyed it. Apparently the SJW contingent will cut off their own noses to avoid letting VD smile.

25. Tintinaus: Did you think GK needed a translator? I assure you, everybody understood what he meant.

26. That’s a bold prediction on GK’s part, and when it’s tested against reality in a few months we’ll learn something.

    I think that anti-puppy voters are going to vote against works that the the puppies promoted with their slates, on the principle that organizing slates is unfair because it artificially magnifies the voting power of small factions. So we’ll vote against works that the puppies actually did help, but not against works that they somewhat pathetically claim that they wish they had helped but didn’t because derp.

    GK thinks that I and voters like me are lying when we talk about principle, and we’re in fact motivated primarily by hatred of he and his. If he’s right, then Beale’s kind words about The Three-Body Problem will lead to us voting it down along with the rest of the puppy nominees.

    We shall see who’s right and who’s wrong when the votes are counted.

27. I thought I was explaining it to GK. He didn’t seem to want to own the reality of what he insinuated. Watching him dance around the truth was getting boring.

28. The behavior of one individual cannot be projected up a whole group of voters. After all… do you expect me to believe that everyone that nominated Red Shirts read it?

    Why surely soomeone who’d vote to nominate something by John Scalzi simply because they liked John Scalzi would they?

    They it is just crazy talk.

29. I’d buy Lorentz a beer if I was going. That guy has hard job made even more difficult but he appears to be still doing his best even when dealt a bad hand. I hope his efforts will not get lost in all the fighting. Congrats to the new nominees as well, getting nominated is an honor regardless and this year there have been more nominees than ever before 🙂

30. @nate “they it is just crazy talk” indeed.

    I don’t know if whatever point you’re trying to articulate deserves the effort, but if you decide to restate it, remember to proofread.

31. J.C. Salomon:
    Short Story: was 151–230, now 132–226; one Double Puppy replaced with a Sad Puppy. (Small change. BTW, I must be missing something: how did the high number change?)

    That means that Annie Bellet’s story was the one that got most nominating votes, I guess. Now that it was eliminated, we know that the second got only four votes less, so margins are terribly small among some of the Puppy works.

    From the Short Story numbers you get a maximum of 30–50 “pure” RP voters. (Why not 151-132 = 19…

    I don’t think that’s correct or I misread what you mean. 19 is the difference between RP-only and SP-only short stories.

    It seems that the combined SP+RP lists were only a little more powerful than the weakest of the “Internet consensus” candidates—and that there really was this sort of consensus. My prediction is that there will be a large gap between The Three-Body Problem and the best performing un-nominated book.

    That’s possible, but I think there was also some buzz around City of Stairs, Lock-In, Annihilation and Station Eleven, for example. They may not be that far behind.

32. Novella range 145-338

    Note that this entirely disproves all of the claims that the Sad Puppies or Rabid Puppies are bloc votes. Every single novella on the shortlist is a Rabid Puppy recommendation. And yet, there is a 193-vote variance between them. That considerably exceeds the 25-vote variance in Best Fan Artist, in which there were no Puppy recommendations.

    Meanwhile, there was a 3-vote variance back in 2008 between Scalzi (Best Novel), Stross (Best Novel), and Scalzi (Fan Writer).

    So, the anti-Puppies are trying to claim that a 193-vote variance in a single category is a bloc vote, but a 3-vote variance ACROSS CATEGORIES where one category historically gets about 2.5x the votes of the other is not. To simultaneously make both claims requires a) dishonesty, b) a stunning level of statistical ignorance or c) a willful determination to not look at the evidence.

33. VD, that’s wildly incorrect.

    Every single novella on the shortlist is on the Rapid Puppies slate, AND some of them are ALSO on the Sad Puppies slate. Thus, high end is RP + SP and low end is only RP.

    It’s true that there’s some variance in RP and SP blocks across the board, but they are still tactically-voting blocs.

34. Furthermore, if simple numbers are proof of a bloc, it’s likely that Scalzi’s Last Colony (41), Stross’s Halting State (40), the fan-writing Scalzi (43), David Langford’s Ansible (41), New York Review of Science Fiction (41), the movie Enchanted (44) and related work The Arrival by Shaun Tan (44) are all part of the same conspiracy. Probably also the novella “The Fountain of Age” by Nancy Kress (39) and the novelette “Dark Integers” by Greg Egan (45).

35. ‘Waiting to see if “Three Body Problem” is forced to withdraw since it was effectively an alternate in the Rabid Puppies Slate.’

    Actually what’s far more interesting is that the possibility of some sort of SP/RP-SJW consensus about Hugo-worthy nominees isn’t as far-fetched as one might suppose.

36. Chaos Horizon: Yes; it was your site I was thinking of; and thanks for pointing out that Bellet’s withdrawn story must have been the top nominee. And of course all my estimates ought to be redone (I knew it was too late at night to be doing statistics) but I see you’ve already posted Ballot Changes: Updating the Hugo Math.

    Mike: Unlike Correia & Torgersen, VD explicitly said, “They are my recommendations for the 2015 nominations, and I encourage those who value my opinion on matters related to science fiction and fantasy to nominate them precisely as they are.” (Sad Puppies later made explicit what they’d thought was implicit.) Doug Wardell, about whom you said, “went off-script in a comment on Monster Hunter Nation and admitted he was waiting to read everything” identified himself as a Rabid Puppies supporter in that same comment: he was decidedly on-script.

37. To clarify: (Sad Puppies later made explicit what they’d thought was implicit: Read and nominate what you think worthy; and here are some things we recommend for your reading list because we think you’ll like them.)

    (Mike: if you want to edit my previous comment instead of having this correction floating below it, go right ahead.)

38. So now that VD has blessed “The Three-Body Problem” as a Rabid Puppies alternate, if it loses the Hugo, that would proves how the SJWs will dogmatically vote against anything the Puppies say they like… and if it wins the Hugo, that would prove how the Puppies truly have their finger on the pulse of great SF.

39. I’m looking forward to Mike’s compilation of reactions to the inclusion of The Three-Body Problem on the ballot, to see what the No Award side now has to say.

    If the argument for NA was that the Puppy slates kept the worthy candidates off the ballot, now, Lo!, the worthy candidate is on the ballot. Will this change minds, or will the candidate now be rendered unworthy by its presence on the ballot, or be relegated to collateral damage?

40. Seth: Bingo. Vox Day and his pals are playing “heads I win, tails you lose.”

41. “GK thinks that I and voters like me are lying when we talk about principle, and we’re in fact motivated primarily by hatred of he and his.”

    No we know you are. We know you are because there were other slates _this_ year that have been linked and _none_ of the hate is showering on them. There has been plenty of dancing around what a slate is, but the slates existed. We also know this because as VD points out the variance was _less_ in years where non-puppy slates existed by _total percentage_. That is, the facts are against you.

    Also note how this is discussed upstream, “I won’t vote for any puppy-tainted nominee, but at this point I’ve got no qualms about voting for the Three Body Problem. I detect not a whiff of puppy stink on it.”

    It has a stink. Puppies liked that story and it was discussed for inclusion. Now, I think voting against it is absolutely ridiculous on those grounds. If it sucks vote it down, if it doesn’t vote it up and all of that. But every fact is against you. You have declared voters voting on “whiffs” and a more diverse voting pattern in the “block” voting.

    So do tell me more about how we “ruined” the Hugos.

    @Kitten,
    “Furthermore, if simple numbers are proof of a bloc, it’s likely that Scalzi’s Last Colony (41), Stross’s Halting State (40), the fan-writing Scalzi (43), David Langford’s Ansible (41), New York Review of Science Fiction (41), the movie Enchanted (44) and related work The Arrival by Shaun Tan (44) are all part of the same conspiracy. Probably also the novella “The Fountain of Age” by Nancy Kress (39) and the novelette “Dark Integers” by Greg Egan (45)”

    That you posted that without a trace of humor is telling. Here’s things the non-blind see. The voting went up by at least four fold. The overall percentage differences is larger between the candidates. If diversity of the electorate is the goal it happened in our world not yours.

    @JC

    RP did the same and you are being an idiot trying to split hairs and drive a division in allies. You are either bordering on concern trolling or you are taking steps that Brad and Larry have been very careful to not take. You are also casting one man’s words onto an entire group. I read. I voted off slate. You are in short starting to be a bit of a dick.

    @rcade

    No we are playing “facts”. He did like three body. He regretted not posting it shortly after posting the list. He claimed it was worth a hugo immediately before the replacement in what I linked. We like facts. We’re in the objective reality group remember.

42. @ Tintinaus

    In fact let me ask a direct question:
    1.) Do you think the number of overall votes went up in this election
    2.) Is that a good thing
    3.) Did the diversity of votes (that is from top to the bottom of the nominated slate there was more percentage variation) than say the 2008 nominee list?

    If you answer “yes” to all three of these questions what the blazes is your problem. If no which and why. And don’t give me the slates are evil line because variation has proven we didn’t vote straight.

43. GK, care to comment on my previous post which showed how VD is lying through his teeth? You continue the same reasoning in comments above, even though the numbers make it 100% clear that RP bloc voted heavily with 120-150 votes.

44. Lois, I think there were actually very few people who said “I will vote No Award in every category,” or even “I will vote No Award first in every category that has any slated candidates.” (Not none, mind you–as has been said before, there are extremists on both sides–or every side, probably more accurately, since I think there are more than two “sides.”) I think that most of the potential No Award voters said something like: I will vote No Award above every non-slated candidate on the ballot, and rank the remaining candidates as best I can.” Even that was more extreme than a lot of people planning to make extensive use of No Award, I believe–there were lots of people who said, “I will try to read everything, but the slated works will have to be Really, Really good to be ranked anywhere on the ballot above No Award” (or, alternatively, “anywhere on the ballot at all”).

    I say all this not because I agree with voting No Award at all, but because I honestly don’t think the inclusion of The Three-Body Problem is going to change many minds on the extreme end(s) of the No Award spectrum . . . so there might not be all that many reactions for Mike to compilate.

45. The increase in the number of people nominating this year couldn’t *possibly* have anything to do with over 10,000 people from last year being eligible to nominate. Nope. It’s all down to the K9s.

    And the record number of people joining WSFS last year couldn’t *possibly* be due to WorldCon being in Europe for the first time since 2005 and the entire Wheel of Time (plus many other novels) appearing in the Hugo packet for a mere $40. Nope.

46. @gk “3.) Did the diversity of votes (that is from top to the bottom of the nominated slate there was more percentage variation) than say the 2008 nominee list?”

    umm, “Did the diversity of votes than say the 2008 nominee list?” (your question with the parenthetical insertion taken out) isn’t a question which makes sense.

47. If it was ‘discussed’ for inclusion, why wasn’t it included? If it’s not a ‘slate’ and purely a list, why not recommend 6 books? Or 8 or 10 or 15? Assuming you’re not trying to play silly buggers with the nomination process, except, you were.

48. GK,

    I don’t do slates. In Australia to vote for the Senate there is the easy slate way of doing it: Choose your favourite party by placing 1 next to them and their slate will be followed, or the hard way: number all the candidates, sometimes numbering up to 150. I number the candidates.

    I can’t remember if you said you didn’t nominate the slate or didn’t nominate at all. It doesn’t really matter. There is always variation in Slate voting, but that doesn’t mean that slates don’t effect outcomes and you are, frankly, either disingenuous or stupid if you say otherwise.

    To answer your questions.
    1: Huge turnout last year would lead to higher rates of nomination: Your Question is Invalid, but Yes
    2: Pretty much everyone says more people being involved in WorldCon, and therefore the Hugos would be good thing, so Your Question is Invalid, but Yes
    3: I don’t know anything about the 2008 nominating stas, but on general principals, if you are asking if there being a large gap between top and bottom ranked nominations is a good thing, well the answer is No.

    A large voting spread tends to show one of two things.
    1: Someone has gamed the system(cough, cough) or
    2: The quality of nominees is very poor and so a few preferred selections are getting the bulk of the attention.

    I hope this answers your questions. Have a nice day:-)

49. Voting spreads are gaming the system? At this point I have to stop trying to convince you. You have adopted a position that is unreasonable and allows you to work both ways (close votes bad! not close votes bad!).

50. GK,

    If you read what I said in answer to 3, you would know how I interpreted you rather mangled question. My answer was based purely on that interpretation.

    What I would expect to see in a good years nominating would be lots of small clusters with small drop-offs between clusters gradually tailing off to zero. Any time there is a large drop off between clusters there is a problem. I have already told you what those problems are likely to be.

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