aka One To Forsee For Puppies
Reactions to Edmund R. Schubert’s withdrawal as a Hugo nominee dominate today’s roundup, illustrated here by quotes from Lou Antonelli, N. K. Jemisin, Deirdre Saoirse Moen, George R.R. Martin and Dara Korra’ti. Annie Bellet elaborated on her own withdrawal in a comment left on Jim C. Hines’ blog.
The rest of the roundup takes note of new voices like Michael A. Rothman, Rachel Iliffe, John Popham, Moira J. Moore and Brenda Noiseux, and hears more from Amanda S. Green, Will McLean, Sandy Ryalls, T. L. Knighton, Vox Day, Sean Wallace, Nick Mamatas and others. (Credit for these titles belongs to File 770 contributing editors Laura Resnick and Matt Y.)
Lou Antonelli on Facebook
I don’t know how useful it will be to attend an event whose master of ceremonies is openly antagonistic to most of the potential honorees, and who is already predicting the outcome (below) and has – in other places – essentially vowed a blacklist (“It will take people a long time to forget how you tried to destroy the Hugos” or something to that effect). I mean, if I win one, will he hit me over the head with it? Where’s MY Safe Space?
https://twitter.com/nkjemisin/status/592824983774179329
https://twitter.com/nkjemisin/status/592825415145811969
https://twitter.com/nkjemisin/status/592825835930910721
https://twitter.com/nkjemisin/status/592826303138639873
Deidre Saoirse Moen in a comment on Sounds Like Weird
[Edmund] Schubert stated on the IGMS website that he didn’t know about the slates until afterward, and I’ve updated the post with a link to his statement. (I’d seen the link mentioned before my post, but I wasn’t able to get through to the site at that time.)
While I can see an argument for doubting his word, I’m of the “I take people at their word unless I have a reason not to” school of thought.
George R.R. Martin on Not A Blog
“Schubert Withdraws” – April 28
Edmund R. Schubert, the editor of ORSON SCOTT CARD’S INTERGALACTIC MEDICINE SHOW, has announced his decision to withdraw from the Hugo race…
I understand the reasons for his withdrawal and applaud his integrity. It cannot be easy to walk away from a major award, perhaps one that you have dreamed of someday winning. And this takes courage as well; like the others who have dropped off the Puppy slate, he will undoubtedly come in for a certain amount of angry barking from the kennels.
Dara Korra’ti on crime and the forces of evil
“edmund schubert bows out” – April 28
Edmund Schubert says he’s published queer authors in Intergalactic Medicine Show, and will continue to do so, and he says that’s with the full support of Mr. Card. Also stories by and of women, and various racial groups and religions. That’s good.
But I’ve got an assortment of assaults and a hospital visit and more money than I want to think about and years of lost time and decades of living in various degrees of fear all spent fighting for my legal and occasionally physical life against Mr. Card’s allies, and, to a lesser degree, Mr. Card himself. He and his friends on the social right have quite literally cost me and millions like me untold amounts of both blood and treasure.
And his erstwhile allies still are, across the globe, American fundamentalists exporting their religion of hate, getting execution laws passed, spreading the same lies they weren’t able to sell at home any longer.
So don’t expect that to stop mattering to me. And never, ever, dare tell me that it shouldn’t matter. Because, maybe, for you, it doesn’t have to. But to me? That’s quite a luxury. One I will never have.
Annie Bellet in a comment on Jim C. Hines’ “Choosing Sides”
Thank you for writing this post, Jim. The Us vs Them and points scoring thing overtaking what the Hugos should be is exactly why I withdrew.
I should clarify though that when I say I didn’t do it because of pressure from either “side” I am not saying there wasn’t pressure (I had plenty of messages on all sides telling me to hang tough, that my story was amazing, that I shouldn’t decline just because of who might have voted for me, etc, and messages saying I should be ashamed of myself, that I’d stolen the nomination from a real writer who actually deserved it, etc). I’m saying I made my decision for many other reasons. It’s one reason I took nearly two weeks to withdraw, because it was a very tough decision and I wanted to make sure I was doing it because it was right for me, for my own reasons, and not because of what people around me were saying was right or wrong. Because I wanted to make sure my withdrawal was for me and that it could be something I felt comfortable with instead of just a reaction to other people’s pain.
Hope that clarifies.
Michael A. Rothman on Facebook – April 28
For the Big-F Fandom community who feels aggrieved that people are acting unethically or against what you feel is right, then let me make a suggestion. [This is coming from a guy who participates and runs standards organizations, so it’s not exactly coming from someone who doesn’t have a clue.]
– Change the rules to match your expectations. That means no hidden agendas or intent, be forthright about what WorldCon and more specifically the Hugos are about and form the rules around that.
If you don’t do that, all your belly aching is just that. Pathetic whining that no adult should be doing and nobody who isn’t in your clique will respect.
If you set rules, you are drawing a line in the sand. Nothing more, nothing less.
All this argument over seemliness and the proper type of voter etc. is just not professional and not what people in the real world do. You come off looking silly and quite pathetic.
Rachel Iliffe on Rachelloon Productions
“#SadPuppies : Stop the Hugo Awards Bullies?” – April 28
In 2013 when I first started this blog one of my first posts was about the STGRB controversy. For those of you who don’t know, STGRB stands for ‘Stop The GoodReads Bullies’, and was a group who formed one side of another SJW conflict—however, this was a little different to the more recent debacles we’ve grown to love.
The basic background was this: a number of popular intersectional feminist book-reviewers had been declared ‘bullies’ by a group of mostly independent authors whose books had been criticised by them for reasons of sexism etc. Now, the timeline here was very murky, or at least it was when I first became aware of it, concerning who had stated this whole thing. There were accusations of ’rounding up mobs of fans’ flying back and forth from one side to the other (I’m sure the SJWs have a word for that in their Newspeak lexicon… eh, I probably don’t want to know) and of course, accusations of doxxing, threats and harassment.
Those who supported STGRB claimed that their books had been criticised unfairly, and that when this occurred more often than not the friends and followers of these feminist reviewers, many reviewers just as popular, would immediately give their book a correspondingly poor rating on Goodreads without even thinking of actually reading it for themselves—and with many of these being indie authors, drive the average rating of the book down significantly and negatively impact the impressions of potential readers.
Amanda S. Green on Mad Genius Club
“And the tantrums continue” – April 28
The logic of so many of them fails on almost every level, from assigning SP3 as some sort of partner or even tool of GamerGate to fear that if SP3 is successful we might — gasp — get a writer like Diana Gabaldon winning a Hugo and we mustn’t have that because she writes icky romances.
Give me a freaking break. (Yes, I said something different but I’m censoring myself this morning.)
I think it was this last one that sent me screaming into the night. The fear that someone who writes fantasy with a distinct romance bent might be nominated, much less win was so over the top. It was as if those making the complaint truly believes science fiction and fantasy are still pure genres. Obviously they haven’t read much lately. If they had, they would see that there is genre crossing all around. Yes, you can, with a lot of searching, find a pure hard science fiction novel, but they are few and far between. Fantasy has, for years, had some aspect of mystery or romance or the like in it. The mixing of genres, when done well, is a good thing.
I’ll repeat that, mixing of genres when done well is a good thing.
It helps by bringing in readers who might never have picked up a science fiction or fantasy book. That brings more money to the writers and publishers. It will bring in even more new readers as word of mouth spreads. Where is the harm in all that?
The very fact that some of those who are anti-Puppy are afraid that icky romance writers might invade their ivory towers of Awardland simply proves what so many of us have been saying. Those folks have gotten too comfortable with their hold on the awards and refuse to admit, even to themselves, that there might be award-worthy books outside their comfort zone.
John Popham on The Infinite Reach
“The House of Many Rooms” – April 28
Of course, it is an ill wind that blows no one good. If nothing else, the sturm und drang surrounding the Hugos appears to have re-energized the larger science fiction community’s engagement with the Hugo voting process. George R. R. Martin commented in his blog post What Now? that a air of complacency has surrounded the nomination process in recent years, with many Worldcon members abdicating the nomination process to a small group of Worldcon insiders. As I pointed out in 2,122, for every voter who submitted a nominating ballot this year, at least seven of the ~16,000+ eligible voters did not. I’d expect to see next year’s nominations get a lot of love from the science fiction community. With more fans voting, the 2016 nominations should represent a much broader cross-section of (lower-case) fandom’s population.
It remains to be seen, however, whether the Hugo Awards’ current open nomination process will survive beyond 2016. George R. R. Martin wrote in the same blog post that Worldcon members currently in control are crafting changes to the voting rules. The proposed changes are intended to preclude interlopers from nominating ‘undeserving’ authors and their works for Hugo Awards in the future. By definition, such rule changes would have to limit the democratic nature of the nominating process; shifting influence from the general public (who can buy a supporting Worldcon membership for $40) to insiders who can be, it is supposed, counted on to nominate works that reflect the will of Worldcon’s current movers and shakers.
Moira J. Moore on Archives of the Triple S
“moiraj.livejournal.com/364402.html” – April 28
Many people have come to feel that it doesn’t matter who gets what award at the Hugos this year, because the whole thing is tainted. There will always be an asterisk beside the awards handed out. To me, Schubert’s announcement is a stunt. Schubert is rejecting what has turned out to be a worthless award – leaving it so late that they can’t actually take the name off the ballots – and trying to look like he’s taking a moral stand, when he’s really just making the Sad Puppies’ argument for them. And pimping out his magazine.
Will McLean on A Commonplace Book
“Keep Calm and Carry On” – April 28
Team Puppies are not, in my opinion, covering themselves with glory at this time. The Sad Puppies are in the awkward position that their slate got a lot of mutual votes from the Rabid Puppies. So they must dance an awkward dance between “We have no association with the Rabids, although we have obviously benefited from their nominations” and “We refuse to disavow the Rabids in any way, because you can’t make us and we don’t want to, and we’re not saying we don’t approve of them, but we won’t say we do approve of them either.” I think they fall between two stools.
Brenda Noiseux on Women Write About Comics
“Hurtful Fandom and the Damage of the Puppies” – April 28
Since the location of each year’s Worldcon is selected by the World Science Fiction Society (WSFS) two years prior to the date of that convention, dedicated volunteers are working for two years to produce a great experience for their fellow fans in the community. On top of that, committees bid for the site of the Worldcon, a process that can take an additional one or more years. That means that volunteers could be working on a convention three to four years in advance.
Which brings me to why the slate voting campaign has bothered me so much that I don’t want to think about it. Producing Worldcon and celebrating the winners of the Hugo Award is a gigantic all volunteer collaborative effort. For a small group of disgruntled fans, to take advantage of a loophole raises a giant middle finger to all those who dedicated countless hours to the hard work of making the Worldcon, the science fiction and fantasy community, and ultimately the Hugos better. That people who claim to be fans and part of this community could do something so hurtful, feels so personal and leaves me feeling raw.
Yes, there are issues in the literary science fiction community. Yes, there needs to be more diversity in the works that are encouraged and celebrated while at the same time retaining the high standards. Yes, there needs to be an embracing of new fans, younger fans, more diverse fans.
Change is never easy nor does it happen overnight. Positive organic change is happening in the science fiction and fantasy community, and I’ll keep doing my part and putting in the hard work to help it along.
Sandy Ryalls on Black Gate
“The Proxy Culture War for the Soul of Middle-Earth” – April 27
Privilege Distress and the Proxy in the Proxy War
Privilege distress is better defined here than anything I can manage. For those who aren’t going to read another article: privilege distress is the feeling of unease felt by people who are having injustice that works in their favor re-addressed.
It’s a permanent fixture in the culture war, and most political discourse. There’s a reason that Republicans play well with white men and Democrats play well with women and members of racial minorities. That reason is that the broad strokes of the culture war are whether we want a society which favors those it favors, or whether we want one which works for everyone.
One of the major fronts of the culture war in the age of the Internet Native is the ongoing clash between the Social Justice (SJ) movement and the self-proclaimed Men’s Rights Activists (MRAs). Media is a pretty big part of that front because it’s a major principle of the overarching SJ philosophy that culture is important and shapes the rest of society.
SJ activists want geekdom (along with the rest of society) to be a safe, inclusive space.
The MRAs don’t think there is a problem and look upon attempts to change our culture with suspicion and hostility.
To MRA’s, the fact that women have buying power in the media sphere and people have ways of having social discourse that doesn’t pander to white maleness is a threat. This isn’t just ideology. It’s also identity.
I mention the Republicans because Coriella did. Because he flat-out crowed that the vandalization of the Hugos was an act of red state, culture war, privilege distress and he linked it to the gamer movement which responded to mild criticism of some video games with death threats, the leaking of personal information, and a threat to shoot up a university.
The proxy part is where this intersects with geekdom. One of the unfortunate shared experiences of most geeks is bullying. Most geeks feel outside of social normality because they’ve been put there by other people. The trauma carried by a lot of geeks surrounding this is very real and very unfortunate.
It’s also true that, in a lot of ways, the SJ philosophy is born of an intellectual liberalism; that its adherents go beyond geekdom; that it can often take a snooty, condescending tone; that outrage is certainly in its playbook; that problematic parts of geekdom can be caricatured in ways that are reminiscent of the bullying faced by a lot of white male geeks.
This makes it very easy for the places where the MRAs meet geekdom to paint the places where the SJ activists meet geekdom as judgmental, insurgent, outsiders intent on stripping away their solace and condemning them for the unforgivable sin of being a weirdo. To tie that white male geek identity with an antipathy to SJ activists as a group rather than engaging with the issues which are actually being fought over.
T. L. Knighton
“Tale of Two Fandoms” – April 28
First, let’s look at the CHORFs. Yes, I’m going to use it, and I really don’t care how bad someone we accuse of being a CHORF claims it’s never going to be a thing. Mostly because it is, so she can get over it. CHORFs also tend to lean left politically, but not universally.
The CHORFs tend to prefer more literary science fiction, which is fine. I don’t care for it, but the world isn’t built around my preferences. However, that’s not where it ends. The CHORFs seem to feel that they are the arbiters of taste and decency. They feel they’re also the arbiters of morality. They know why a bisexual person disagrees with them about things, and it’s things like self-hate and homophobia (and a bi person can be homophobic? Does that mean a black person actually can be racist?) because no sane person could possibly disagree with them.
CHORFs tend to control awards, because historically they’ve been the group that really cares about that sort of thing. They’re the masters of the whisper campaigns, the rallying of their buddies to get their names on the ballot quietly and behind the scenes, but would never do something as unseemly as try to rally supporters in public…unless they do it, then it’s totes different because reasons.
Mark Hemingway in The Weekly Standard
“Revenge of the Nerds” – April 27
[Note: TWS has given a new timestamp to the same piece linked here on April 17, if you were reading the roundup then.]
For more than 50 years, the Hugo Awards have been handed out at the annual World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon) to honor the best science fiction and fantasy writing of the previous year. But when the nominees for this year’s Hugos were announced, it touched off a firestorm unlike any in the awards’ history.
That’s because so many of this year’s nominees are perceived (not always correctly) to be conservative or libertarian. A group of right-leaning science fiction authors organized a campaign to stuff this year’s Hugo Awards ballot with writers they felt had been overlooked.
Kgbooklog in a comment on More Words, Deeper Hole:
Maybe it’s time for a new rule: If 10% or more of the finalists decline their nomination, the Hugo Award is canceled for that year and the time and space reserved for the award ceremony is used for the Business Meeting instead. (If I’m counting right, we’re up to 7.5% this year so far.)
Vox Day on Vox Popoli
Vile Minion pride – April 28
Dear Evil Legion of Evil, It has come to my attention that our vile faceless minions, in their abject loyalty to Our Evilness, crave more than the mere lash of our whips, the daily sustenance of SJW blood, and the occasional bones of an SJW on which to gnaw. Such is their pride in the growing spread of the dark shadow over lands hitherto unengulfed that they have begged for badges of recognition with which they can strike yet more fear into our craven and cowardly foes.
It is, of course, exceedingly risible to imagine that we should raise them up to the extent of providing them with names. Or, as one minion, who is unfortunately no longer with us after an accident that involved six Hellhounds and the untimely ringing of a dinner bell, once had the temerity to suggest, pay them wages. But it occurred to me, in a stroke of Indubitably Evil Genius, that it might be useful to be able to tell the difference between these otherwise indistinguishable, and indeed, faceless, creatures. Therefore, in my Tender yet Sinister Mercy, I have graciously acceded to their pleas.
Nate on The Pan Galactic Blogger Blaster
“Slight Design Change” – April 26
I am Number 1.
I am Nate… and I approve this message.
Dammit.
[Vox Day wrote that the first batch of numbered icons was gone in 45 minutes.]
Sean Wallace on Facebook – April 28
Without context, for James Nicoll, Mike Glyer, Michael J. Walsh, and Nick Mamatas: “Highlights included moderating the guest-of-honor interview with Tor publisher Tom Doherty (in which he revealed the facts that ebooks account for only $400,000 of Tor’s $100,000,000 annual gross sales, and that it now takes printing three mass-market paperbacks to sell one (it used to be that you only had to print two to get one to actually sell); and that SF (as opposed to fantasy) actually grew eight percent for Tor last year).”—Robert Sawyer’s website, 2005
Nick Mamatas in a comment to Sean Wallace on Facebook – April 28
Last year Tor grossed seven dollars, and killed and ate interns for food, and took out four mortgages on the Flatiron Building to get John Scalzi on the Dayton Daily News best-seller list for a single Thursday afternoon and in fact they are already bankrupt, out of business, and everyone has been fired and Tor exists only as one of those fannish in-jokes in the Hugo Awards, like Cordwainer Bird. Forever and ever, Amen.
[And finally, Sad Puppies meets Godwin’s Law.]
La scalata fascista del premio Hugo per la fantascienza http://t.co/DllfqArup3 #hugoawards via @carmillaonline pic.twitter.com/vzrtiiIfMv
— occhiopesto (@occhiopesto) April 28, 2015
Seen on Facebook today… 🙂 pic.twitter.com/Vz9kMw48Ax
— AmyCat ???? #ByeDon! (@BookUniverse) April 28, 2015
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Unless Day is using xdpaul to test out his more outré beliefs and strategems.
What would be the point of Sockpuppets if that wasn’t your goal – he says some of the same things and his ability to ignore what was said and repeat his original point is fun. That said, when he started with the tortured English word dumps, I was wondering about Wright.
Of course, he could just be an average fan who has yet to make up his mind and we’re being nasty to him. You know I typed that with a straight face 🙂
It occurs to me that one of things Torgersen and Correia Just Don’t Get is that the typical SF writer, and certainly the typical Hugo-winning SF writer, is almost as egotistical as they are.
By which I mean: if I ever get nominated for a Hugo, I would want to know that It’s All About Me—that it was my reward for my sublime literary genius. If I owe my nomination to people who primarily see me as representing some political movement, even a movement whose politics I agree with, then (a) I have to share credit with the movement, so it’s no longer All About Me, and (b) the same movement that made me one year can unmake me the next year. (“Sorry, Seth, I really liked your novel, but it’s Scalzi’s turn to be up, so be a good soldier.”)
Which is why nominees from the Puppy slate are turning down their nominations, and why the notion that some clique of SJWs has been manipulating previous Hugo ballots is so absurd.
You know, going out on a limb, I suspect the ‘average’ fan still probably hasn’t heard about this and doesn’t actually much care and isn’t going to be ponying up $40 to have their voice heard.
Separately, I do wonder if the publishers won’t just resolve this nicely and refuse to take part in the Hugo Packet or just give out bits – I’m not sure that $40 for a pile of stuff from Castilla House is going to float all that many boats. $5 seems a tad OTT too.
I’ve noticed that the voting packet (as reborn by John Scalzi) has been a big draw on the puppy sites – if it wasn’t to appear I wonder how effective management of the Flying Monkeys will be. Me? I bought an attending membership, a plane ticket and a hotel room and the novels… let the average fan draw their conclusions from that.
Actually, Cheryl Morgan already drew some conclusions about people like you Daveon, writing this in the SFWA Bulletin long before Sad Puppies:
“Firstly it is true that some Worldcon regulars have become a bit elitist. The vast majority of the people who attend Dragon*Con and San Diego ComicCon are primarily interested in TV and movies, with comics and video games next in their list. Worldcon has continued to insist on the primacy of the written word. Indeed, a few diehard Worldcon attendees still insist that works published on the Internet should not be eligible for the Hugos, because only words on paper matter. The devotion to writers is perhaps something that SFWA members should be grateful for. But it is also true that many people who go to movies and watch TV also read books. A popular writer can often find more of her fans at Dragon*Con than at Worldcon, simply because there are 10 times as many people there. Also the PR people from the big New York publishing houses won’t get out of bed for a convention of less than 10,000 people. They have budgets to worry about too, and they go where the big crowds are.
Part of this is the result of a ghetto mentality on behalf of older fans. Back in the days before Star Trek and Star Wars it really was a “proud and lonely thing to be a fan”. Nowadays vast numbers of people enjoy science fiction, but are they “fans”? The older fans say, “no, they are not part of our community, they don’t think like we do, they don’t have our shared history.” This, however, is a recipe for extinction. We live in a world of constant change and Worldcon, just like everything else, has to adapt to survive.”
Look up “A Future for Worldcon?” originally from the SFWA Bulletin in 2010. It goes into the complexity of Worldcon, and its future threats and opportunities quite well.
Nigel, this was so right on: This is not how people who love books talk about books, except maybe as a point of interest. They talk about books individually, critically. They talk about bodies of work. They talk about plots, characters, styles.
I like it when others seem to also appreciate something I do, but I never count on it, and I’m seldom greatly bummed out when it doesn’t happen. Part of being a serious long-time sf/f/h fan is, for lots of us, watching and even contributing to the evolution of critical language and standards suitable for the purpose: getting past autodidactic and/or engineering-fetishizing sneering at academic literary criticism to see what’s out there that’s genuinely useful, applying and adapting, inventing where it’s appropriate, and cycling through response and counter-response again and again to make it all better. And, of course, there’s simply talking with other enthusiasts about our various loves and loathings. And talking and talking and talking and talking. 🙂
Rating systems don’t have any real significance in this kind of fannish exchange. They fail as reliable measures in so many ways, all long known and well understood, that they don’t mean much more (and often less) than the state of the weather the day I read a great story.
Bruce,
I think you have articulated better than anyone else why Beale’s (and other puppies) reliance on rating systems shows how far outside fandom they are.
‘Remember that you said that.’
I will. And I think in the next few years you will march on to conquest after conquest in your imaginary culture war claiming victory after victory; but the Hugos will have moved on, and since most people here only really care about that and and not about your play-war, nobody will even notice. You really only have one more throw next year, and then probably only if you succeed in marshaling Gamergate, and if you do, well, you might be immune to further alienation, but your already backpedalling allies aren’t, because if you;re toxic, then every GGer is that multiplied. After that either Worldcon will have got its act together or counter-slates will.
Obviously I can’t rule out you finding new and novel ways to aggravate people, but if I were to guess I would say what you really want is for even people who loathe you to acknowledge what a masterful and significant wargamer you are. But it took you three years to work out how to, effectively, tilt an internet poll enough for people to actually notice and get mad about it. Is that the face of modern warfare? Next, go forth with your arms and armour and vanquish the mighty foe of a million Facebook likes? Nah, you’re peaking on this particular field, wherever else your career trajectory ends going.
It is true that Worldcon is not Dragoncon. It is also true that Worldcon isn’t IKEA. If I want to go to a convention like Dragoncon, I’m going to Dragoncon. And if I like to the torture of buying furniture that I will swear at for hours, then I’ll go to IKEA.
The point is that conventions should be different so that different people still will find something to their taste. Worldcon is a convention for mostly readers. I think that is kind of nice.
xdpaul, quoting Cheryl Morgan:
Quite so, and in fact if you actually paid any attention to the history of the convention, it has actually done so, to the point that a fair number of the fans who are still alive who attended it in the 1960s and 1970s stopped going and react with disdain over “their” Worldcon having been stolen from them. They went off and formed tiny little events (I’ve attended and enjoyed some of them) that met their needs better. Conversely, the mega-events like ComicCon can trace their ancestry back to Worldcon; those events, however, choose to anchor themselves in one spot and pursue a growth strategy. Worldcon, by its peripatetic and decentralized nature and 100% volunteer ethos, is almost certainly constrained to around its current size; however, size isn’t everything.
“Adapting to survive” does not mean giving in to the demands of a sociopath to turn over everything we own and hold dear on threat of being burned to the ground.
Next time I see Cheryl I’ll tell her you said that quoted that with me in mind. She’ll find it most amusing.
Amusingly, she was also thinking more thinking, I suspect, about the people who didn’t think her works ought to have been up for the Hugos, not to mention people who seem to think she shouldn’t exist at all. I’m pretty sure that a person who supports Beale or John Wright using her, especially, as a fig leaf, will be a cause for much hilarity.
I’ll also note that five years after she wrote that I attended the largest WorldCon in decades… funny that. The Puppy slate still didn’t win.
I’m an organizer of parties. Most of them give a little bit for everyone. Everyone should feel at home. Those are big affairs, half people mingling, rest doing a lot of different activities. Sometimes they clash because of different cultures.
But sometimes it is smaller parties. Specialized. For those who love one thing. And those who *really* love this things comes there. The die hards, the enthusiasts. Those you don’t see at the largest parties, because they think they are too big. That there is too much else going on so they feel crowded out. Have a harder time finding what they are looking for. Who they want to talk to.
I prefer the smaller places. And I never go to the SciFi Convention in my hometown because it is mostly for movies, actionfigures and games. Never seen an author there.
So I would hate it, really hate it, if Worldcon turned into a Dragoncon. And that is what I have to say about it.
“If you’re more popular than him how come he sells more books and has 20 times more people following him on the Twitters?”
Because he has the largest publisher in SF actively pushing his books. I don’t. That being said, I expect to sell more books than him within 3 years. As for Twitter (checks) I have 5,315 tweets and 1.71 million monthly impressions. Scalzi has 70,000 tweets and something like 8 million impressions. I would assume the fact that he has tweeted nearly 65,000 times more than me has something to do with his larger Twitter following.
The potentially significant observation is that with far fewer tweets and followers, I create more than one-fifth number of the impressions.
“When will your optioned stuff be coming out? And which TV shows have you worked on?”
I have rejected five requests for options. I have no interest in Hollywood. And while I’ve never worked on a TV show, I was a board member and owner of a television station that was sold to ClearChannel for $50 million.
Then there is games. John worked as a writer on one game that flopped. I’m the lead designer on six games right now, lead producer on one.
‘No, Sun Tzu wrote about the consequences for those who refuse to know their enemies.’
Yeah. At the end of the day, it’s all about you wanting to be known.
I don’t suppose Amanda S. Green has provided any cites at some point for the alleged anti-Puppy fear of romances? (I read the linked post, and didn’t see any there.)
The only time I’ve seen romances enter the conversation yet was Eric Flint asserting in one of his posts that the Puppy faction would recoil from them.
““Adapting to survive” does not mean giving in to the demands of a sociopath to turn over everything we own and hold dear on threat of being burned to the ground.”
I’m not a sociopath. As it happens, I’m actually unusually empathetic. I understand your pain. That’s why I gave you the opportunity to back down.
I don’t expect you will. But at least you’ve had the chance. Of course, the most ironic outcome will be if you try to go scorched earth and fail. Because then you won’t have burned down everything you hold dear, you’ll have handed it over to me intact. And I don’t even want it.
“I weep for you,” the Walrus said:
“I deeply sympathize.”
With sobs and tears he sorted out
Those of the largest size,
Holding his pocket-handkerchief
Before his streaming eyes.
That Calvin and Hobbes comic is perfect.
Beale obviously never learned that actions speak louder than words.
‘I’m not a sociopath. As it happens, I’m actually unusually empathetic. I understand your pain. That’s why I gave you the opportunity to back down.
I don’t expect you will. But at least you’ve had the chance. Of course, the most ironic outcome will be if you try to go scorched earth and fail. Because then you won’t have burned down everything you hold dear, you’ll have handed it over to me intact. And I don’t even want it’
Am I the only one who reads these as though it’s Bane talking?
You understand pain, but intend to give it if you don’t get your way, but you don’t really care.
The only pain I’m experiencing so far are from my sides hurting from giggling.
“I’m not a sociopath. As it happens, I’m actually unusually empathetic. I understand your pain. That’s why I gave you the opportunity to back down.”
understanding does not equal empathetic … unless you misspoke, which I doubt.
Matt Y, I’m reminded of a friend’s great line about an old furor in another field of niche publishing (the details are irrelevant for this purpose): “He think he’s Reed Richards. But he’s really just Willie Lumpkin with the Power Cosmic.”
“The only pain I’m experiencing so far are from my sides hurting from giggling.”
If you think it’s all so funny, why on Earth are you all bitching and moaning and whining and crying and shrieking about how the rules must be changed?
It’s very strange. All of you keep alternating between claiming that you are laughing so very hard, and producing sob stories about how terribly awfully painful this is.
Why, a neutral observer might suspect that you’re not being entirely truthful!
“I understand your pain. That’s why I gave you the opportunity to back down.
I don’t expect you will. But at least you’ve had the chance. Of course, the most ironic outcome will be if you try to go scorched earth and fail. Because then you won’t have burned down everything you hold dear, you’ll have handed it over to me intact. And I don’t even want it.”
Great moments in fantasy kink.
I’m sorry, I really don’t want to mock, it’s just that I am trying to pinpoint where this kind of language comes from and I can only make sense of it if VD has a really weird power exchange fantasy going on in his mind. I’m glad he’s having fun with it, frankly. I’d hate to think it’s only the people pointing and laughing that are having a ball.
yeah .. keep laughing at the boggart! Picture him as Snape in a dress …
For a “smart guy” he has a hard time differentiating between individuals and groups.
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan:
“Your Kink Is Not My Kink And Your Kink Is Just Kind Of Stupid”?
“If you think it’s all so funny, why on Earth are you all bitching and moaning and whining and crying and shrieking about how the rules must be changed?”
Quick clue: There isn’t a “you all” here. Some of us are laughing. Some of us want to change the rules. Some of us want to change the culture. We’re not united, we’re SF fans.
Well if you lump all the individuals reacting to you as one amorphous unit instead of just different separate entities reacting to this nonsense sure it must be confusing.
There are a lot of people who are reacting who’ve written at length about their issues and reasons. As I’m not them, I can’t speak to their reason. I can tell you I’m laughing because you act like a poorly written comic book villain and it’s funny. The rest of this is little more than a fart in an elevator and will be an amusing anecdote later.
Sorry we’re not all lock-step reacting the same way, I’ll report to my SJW Illuminati rep and check what the marching orders are again.
“I’ll report to my SJW Illuminati rep and check what the marching orders are again.”
Don’t talk about the fnord conspiracy in front of people! We might have to re-educate them again, and that takes a fnord lot of time!
But, since you asked, it’s just a jump to the left and then a step to the right.
You turned down the options eh? Good for you. And all those games! And the publishing company! My goodness you’re a busy little bee aren’t you.
Get back to me when you start to outsell him with your fiction – because, honestly, that I gotta see. When are you learning to write anyway?
“I’m not a sociopath. As it happens, I’m actually unusually empathetic. I understand your pain. That’s why I gave you the opportunity to back down.”
That has to win the internet for today. Thanks!
“It’s very strange. All of you keep alternating between claiming that you are laughing so very hard, and producing sob stories about how terribly awfully painful this is.”
As a few others have said, you’re conflating everything we’re saying and confusing us for being the same person – I suppose that’s understandable given… oh, yes, you don’t sockpuppet do you 🙂
I’m laughing at you and your pompus facade, yes. I am annoyed at how you’ve dumped a lot of utter crap onto the ballot. I was in pain while I tried to read John Wright’s god awful prose.
I am in two minds about what should be done, as, frankly, the business meeting is early in the morning and I rarely rise before noon at Conventions and I am sure wiser heads than mine will sort through what needs to be done. Other people have a different opinion.
Of course, given you aren’t going to be there in person and nor are any other puppies, as far as I can tell, what every happens isn’t going to really involve your desires.
And yes, Matt Y, I’m now reading all of those in Bane’s voice. 🙂
Petrea Mitchell: The strategy for nearly all of Amanda S. Green’s posts that I’ve read has been to pretend there really is a terrified response to a satirical idea somebody else blogged about as a joke.
And yes, Matt Y, I’m now reading all of those in Bane’s voice. 🙂
I don’t think Mr. Beale has a snowball’s chance in hell of managing Tom Hardy’s gravitas.
I imagine him more like Bender, from Futurama.
Petréa Mitchell: The “alleged anti-Puppy fear of romances” is the observation (attributed to Mercedes Lackey in one of these roundups) that since romance fans far outnumber SF fans, a very popular romance author could, if she (or he) so desired, encourage a few hundred of her most loyal readers to buy Worldcon memberships and nominate romances for the Hugos.
As with the Puppy maneuvers, this would indisputably conform to the letter of the Hugo rules (even if the stories nominated had no discernible SF content), but the spirit of the rules… maybe not so much.
Nobody has actually done this, of course, because (a) popular romance authors (unless they are also SF fans) really don’t care about the Hugos, as opposed to VD, who merely talks about not caring about the Hugos, and (b) popular romance novels can look to their royalty statements for proof of their popularity, as opposed to VD, whose clever formula for “how popular I am” reminds me of Hollywood accountants’ formulas for “how much money this movie lost”.
Nah, Bender would tear the Hugos down just to steal one for himself and if confronted would proudly admit that he was doing so for himself and not even pretend at any other altruistic reason.
Bane in DKR on the other hand ‘liberates’ Gotham while telling the people it’s for their own good and telling Batman that he gets to watch his city burn.
I have rejected five requests for options. I have no interest in Hollywood. And while I’ve never worked on a TV show, I was a board member and owner of a television station that was sold to ClearChannel for $50 million.
You’re too modest. You neglected to mention the year you helped raise about $50K for various feminist organizations.
“I imagine him more like Bender, from Futurama.”
I’m old school and imagine him sounding more like Daffy Duck.
xdpaul (who was, as he says, addressing someone else, not me): Pro Internet tip, my fine editorial volunteer, Morzer. Address posters by the handle they provide for themselves.
Years ago, I noticed that two people I know in the open-source / free software movement with famous ‘handles’, Eric S. Raymond and Richard M. Stallman, were both the target of rather vicious personal commentary, and a great deal of that appeared, oddly enough, to involve their being named very abstractly by their Unix usernames, as ‘esr’ and ‘rms’. Look, for example, at the archived prior ‘talk’ pages for the Wikipedia page concerning Eric S. Raymond, where this rather disgusting mostly-pseudonymous mudslinging campaign was thrashed out and eventually expunged when Wikipedia got serious about enforcing its Biographies of Living Persons policies.
But, long before that, I started making a point, in talking to some of the mudslingers, of referring to their targets as real people, i.e. referring to them as Eric and Richard. In particular, I talked to Jim Thompson, one of the few mudslingers against Eric to provide his real name, proved to him that the pseudonymous Web pages he was citing as sources were scurrilous and inaccurate, and kept using the name ‘Eric’ to stress that he was maligning a real person. This latter device seemed to eventually get through Jim’s thick armour of self-justification, so points to Jim. And our discussion was later cited as third-party data to remove the scurrilous flamer crud from Eric’s Wikipedia page.
And this is why I make a point of referring to Theo as Theo (or Mr. Beale), because I’m tired of seeing real people treated as abstract hate objects, no matter how much they troll from behind moustache-twirling Internet handles. You think my sneaky personalisation ploy is disrespectful? OK, that makes sense, since I’m a Bad Person[tm]. But I have a cunning plan [m’lord].
Rick Moen
[email protected]
“I’m glad he’s having fun with it, frankly. I’d hate to think it’s only the people pointing and laughing that are having a ball.”
John Scalzi liked to play that game too. He even pretended all the attention we paid him was “adorable”. And then, after a while, he would crack and all the anger would come pouring out. Now, maybe you do think this is all hilarious. A lot of my supporters certainly do. But I tend to suspect you’re merely engaging in the usual rhetorical posturing.
So answer me two questions honestly, Anna. Do you genuinely think SP/RP dominating the Hugo nominations is funny? And do you truly want to see us take even more nominations next year?
Vox Day is a real person. Would you insist on calling Mark Twain “Samuel” because you can’t comprehend pen names? Would you do it as some stalwart rage against depersonalization?
Mr. Beale moves the goalposts again!
clif @ 7:52 am- Three points. First, there are unwritten rules in baseball? Soccer? I grew up playing baseball. I’m the commissioner (pro bono) for a 1,200 child youth soccer league. I’m unfamiliar with the idea of “unwritten” rules. In my experience, groups that have “unwritten” rules tend to be small and close knit verging on being a secret club or society of some sort (or my beer drinking friends- we make up all sorts of ad hoc punitive rules). If this describes past Hugo voters, then it demonstrates the problem. The only thing we are debating is the label.
Second, there is no accounting for tastes.
Third, I think it is telling that you are referring to my alleged leaders. To whom are you refeering? Corriea? Torgersen? Day? Please let me know. And I would appreciate the basis of your accusation that I have a “leader” or am otherwise a “follower”.
Alexvdl @ 8:58 am- For a narrow definition of “fandom”, you are correct. But it is that narrow definition which demonstrates the SP/RP strength. When it comes to all of SF/F “fans”, Corriea and Torgersen are closer to the mark than most of their naysayers. Something GRRM implicitly recognizes when he laments the Hugos transitioning from the Oscars to the People’s Choice Awards.
Daveon @ 8:05 am- On the issue of being your “little aquatic mammal friend . . .”, what is meant by that? I don’t believe we’ve ever met and I don’t even know your name so the “friend” is out of place, but I will let it slide. What do you mean by “little aquatic mammal”? I’m curious. I’ve always been partial to otters.
And you are correct that readers of books self-select. What you might consider poor, they may consider great. But as long as they put their money down, their vote is as good as anyone else’s. Which is why the screaming of “trufans” at the participation of “ordinary fans” makes me shake my head.
NelC @ 8:25 am- I agree. I used sloppy language. My apologies. I am indeed speculating that the ordinary fan, reading these blogs and articles, will have very little sympathy for the complaints of the trufan about the SP/RP breaking the “spirit of the rules” (clif aside). I believe it to be true, but I have no evidence for it beyond anecdotal.
Daveon @ 9:07 am- But they came back. And from all appearances, the SP/RP will keep coming back. So what are your goals and/or victory conditions? And are they realistic, in light of all the circumstances? So far, I haven’t seen any “trufan” come up with a rational way to deal with the SP/RP problem.
“When it comes to all of SF/F “fans”, Corriea and Torgersen are closer to the mark than most of their naysayers.” Well… fandom seems to keep rejecting them so…
‘Do you genuinely think SP/RP dominating the Hugo nominations is funny? And do you truly want to see us take even more nominations next year?’
For someone who claims to get emotions, you don’t understand them very well. ‘If they hate my Hugo gaming so much, how come they don’t take my grandiose utterances seriously? It doesn’t make any sense! No. It is they who are wrong. They do take my grandiose utterances seriously and are only pretending to HIDE THEIR FEAR.’
I don’t find them particularly funny, by the way. Either your heart’s not in it, or it’s completely in it and that’s all there is, and that’s sad. You’re a grown man, for God’s sake.
‘So far, I haven’t seen any “trufan” come up with a rational way to deal with the SP/RP problem.’
The SP/RP problem is a technical problem to do with how the voting system works and vulnerabilities that can be exploited by a small targeted group. Fair solutions to that problem will therefore be technical solutions promulgated by people with specialist knowledge of voting systems. Such solutions will be discussed and voted on by people who actually go to Wordcon and attend the meetings. I haven’t seen the SP/RPs propose any. In fact, the SP/RPs are hard pressed to really define what the actual problem is except in the vaguest of ways. SP/RPs commitment to the reform of the Hugos does not seem to extend to participating in the required processes, at east not significantly. I expect it will be all very messy and protracted, but you can keep sneering at ‘trufen’ who do the actual work and bear the brunt of wildly misdirected revenge attacks.
Daveon wrote: He writes like Beale
I probably shouldn’t step into what’s an ankle-biting subthread and basically a total waste of time, but: xdpaul’s writing style, his authorial ‘voice’, IMO differs quite significantly from Theo’s.
Can I ask for less time spent impugning motives and accusing X of being Y? Or, if you-plural are going to do it, kindly do it with panache as per the Paranoia LARP.
Rick Moen
[email protected]
“… Corriea and Torgersen are closer to the mark than most of their naysayers.”
You don’t understand SF/F fandom at all.
The Hugos and Worldcon aren’t about claiming every person who likes a SF/F book, movie or comic as a fan and considering them part of “fandom.”
Like every other long-time fandom institution, they’re about the community that has cared enough about them to nurture and promote them. Correia, Torgersen and Day aren’t part of that community, by their choice. Correia hates Worldcon and says he’d sooner go to “Mordor or hell” than attend the convention. Day says he wants to burn down the Hugos. Torgersen and Correia are in Utah, which is pretty close to this year’s Worldcon, but neither one is going.
The Puppies will never speak for SF/F fandom because they have so much contempt for it. They can claim to speak for a larger group of people who are casually interested in the genre, just like Republican politicians used to claim the “silent majority” was on their side, but good luck turning that into anything lasting.
Steve Moss – you’ve never heard of Sealioning? Because you’re very very good at it as your comment shows.
I have no victory conditions so your question is somewhat moot. Either the nomination process is made more robust so that slates and blocs become realtively ineffective, or they don’t and the Hugo withers, it will be a sad end to decades of history but vandals gotta vandalize I suppose? Alternatively, if the Hugo packet vanishes or becomes less interesting because I suspect the idea of giving away 6 or 7k of books every year for an award that’s been trolled so badly is unlikely to be an attractive marketing proposition for many publishers, then I suspect a lot of the Puppies will evapourate because they’re not going to get much for their $40….
Likewise I don’t see the price coming all the way down as Mr Beale wants because a) somebody who wants that would have to come to the WSFS meetings and do it, and b) the people who actually do all the work have to be able to fund the activities somehow and I fully believe Kevin Standlee on the economics of running an award like this.
My expectation is there will be a tweak to the nomination process which will effectively deleverage the ability of a strongly managed slate to dominate and the puppies will get bored and walk away.
Final point, I’m not the one telling us that it’s important to readers that the average Amazon score of the ballot is over 4 this year. If Amazon scores rate Lines of Departure above James Joyce, Vernor Vinge and quite a few others then it might be best to call it a day.
Hey, I will go to a Worldcon even without the Hugo Awards, as most of the puppies and their leaders don’t want to, that’s really their loss not mine.
xdpaul: If I actually knew Mark Twain, I’d definitely probably call him ‘Sam’ because that’s what people referring to him personally, in fact, did.
If I saw large numbers of people going around the Victorian Internet referring to ‘that sheepshagger mtwain’, I’d then make a point of saying ‘Oh, you mean my friend Sam, who writes as Mark Twain’, same as I have, in my devious and evil way, said to certain out-of-control flamers ‘Oh, you mean my friend Eric, sometimes called esr.’
I’m sorry if these fine points of featherless-biped psychology are difficult for you to grasp. You should get that looked at. But anyway, I’m perfectly happy with being a Bad Person[tm], so we both get what we want.
Rick Moen
[email protected]