aka Don’t ask for whom the puppy barks, it barks for thee.
Today’s roundup brings you K. Tempest Bradford, David Gerrold, Redneck Gaijin, Spacefaring Kitten, SL Huang, Brandon Kempner, Alexandra Erin, and Robert J. Bennett. (Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editors of the day James H. Burns and John King Tarpinian.)
K. Tempest Bradford
Unintended Consequences – A Post About The Hugos – May 11
There’s a fun irony in the fallout from the Sad Puppies/Rabid Puppies Hugo thing.
There are now over 8,000 members of Sasquan (WorldCon). The con gained over 2,600 supporting memberships since March 31st of this year and about 350 attending memberships. I think it can be safely assumed that several of the 1,948 people who bought supporting memberships before March 31st were slate voters and GamerGators. Not a majority, perhaps, but a sizable chunk. And some of the post-March 31st folks might be puppy supporters. However, I’m fairly sure that an overwhelming majority of these new members are anti-slate or anti-puppy.
That’s thousands of people who don’t think that diversity is a dirty word, who don’t consider the larger number of women and authors of color on previous year’s ballots to be affirmative action or diversity for the sake of diversity or political correctness gone wrong.
That’s thousands of people eligible to nominate for next year’s Hugos, and with a big incentive to do so.
Uh oh. *giggle*
David Gerrold on Facebook – May 11
If we see 3000 or 4000 or even as many as 6000 (or more) Hugo votes and no sad-rabids win, then that will have to be seen as a very aggressive smackdown not only of the slate nominees, but also of the thinking behind the slates.
Seeing as how people on both sides are now saying, “Read the nominees, vote your conscience,” if such a smackdown occurs — even to the point of a couple “No Award” categories — then what?
(The day after the ceremony, it’s traditional for the committee to release the vote tallies. It will make for some very interesting reading and there will likely be a great deal of discussion and analysis.)
There are several possibilities:
1) The sad-rabids could acknowledge that people voted their consciences and the best works won. Because some of them have claimed they are for diversity and inclusion (insert eye-roll here) they might then pat themselves on the back for at least getting some of their candidates on the ballot and promise to come back next year.
2) Also possible, the sad-rabids could double down and claim that the voting was somehow unfair and that the secret cabal of leftist Social Justice Warriors had gamed the vote. (Insert another eye-roll here. Anyone who’s ever tried to organize fans knows that herding cats is easier. With cats, you only need an open can of tuna. With fans, you need pizza, beer, and a sneak preview of the next SF blockbuster, and the results still aren’t guaranteed.)
….If we have 3000 or more fans nominating for the 2016 awards, then it means that anyone trying to run a slate and game the nominations is going to have a much harder task.
So the unintended consequence of the sad-rabid exercise will have been to put more money in the Worldcon treasury and energize fandom to be more engaged in nominating and voting for Hugos. This is a good thing. (The analogy of white blood cells rushing in to fight an infected wound might be appropriate.)
Adult Onset Atheist
“Post Nuclear SNARL” – May 10
I personally don’t think the No Award option is nuclear enough. I would kinda like a refund on the purchase price of the books, and I would certainly like to prevent people in the future from being hoodwinked into purchasing any of these novellas by reading the endorsement implied by seeing “Nominated for a 2015 Hugo Award” on the cover. I would like these novellas to have never been nominated, and I believe that could be done. I almost would like for these novellas to have never been written, but I am afraid that is not possible.
Because Worldcon owns the Hugo trademark intellectual property they can manipulate it in order to maintain its value. They have done this incrementally in the past by adjusting the rule-set needed to be nominated for, or win, a Hugo. They can do it again by removing nominees that loose to “No Award” from the list. This would prevent unscrupulous publishers from realizing an increased prestige or profit as a result of stuffing the nominating ballot boxes.
I have no idea how to go about creating such a rule, or even proposing such a rule for that mater, but I do think it would be a good move. It may even be necessary, as the puppy thought police are not the only ones who might gain from a critically injured Hugo award process. The puppies are not the only ones who have the wherewithal to corrupt the nominating process for their own gain, and they are not even the ones who could do it best.
Redneck Gaijin on Redneck Gaijin’s Pitiful Little Life
“A post, in which I waste time and annoy Puppies” – May 11
It’s entirely possible to obey all the rules and still take an unfair advantage. It happens all the time in real life, which is why children of rich people get richer and children of poor people generally stay poor. It’s why black people in America are generally confined to slums and low-paying jobs and considered as criminals until proven otherwise.
Obeying the rules doesn’t mean you played fair. It might just mean you’re a very successful weasel.
“It’s your fault we won, because you didn’t bother to vote, because you didn’t organize your own slates, so nyah!”
Maybe so. As I said in my prior post, the Hugos themselves are not really important. I’ve never voted in the Hugos because I have better uses for my money, and also because I haven’t much interest in reading 90% of what gets nominated.
Neither I, nor anybody else, thought the Hugos were so important that it was necessary to devote the time and energy into campaigning for people to spend $40 or more simply to ram through a super-slate of politically acceptable works- until now.
Now that it’s happened, a lot of people are appalled- but the most appalling thing is that it was done with less than 20% of the vote.
Or, to put it another way, over 80% of voters casting Hugo nomination ballots did not vote for a single Sad/Rabid Puppy recommended work or creator.
So the 20% get to rule over the 80%, and in the minds of the Puppies, this is fair… because it’s them doing the ruling.
Spacefaring Kitten on Spacefaring, Extradimensional Happy Kittens
“Preliminary Thoughts Before Embarking on an Expedition to Planet Wright” – May 11
I’ve decided to read — or try reading — everything on the Hugo ballot this year, and that means there’s more than one novel’s worth of fiction by Wright I have to slog through. There’s a human experiment aspect to all this, as well: it will be interesting to see a) if I can make it at all, b) if I can give a sensible account of the experience and c) if I can do a more-or-less balanced review of this stuff knowing what kind of a person has written it.
I don’t hold any delusions of being completely objective, of course, because there’s no such thing as complete objectivity outside mathematics. Acknowledging Wright’s beliefs probably affects my judgment of his fiction in some way. What the effect will be exactly, remains to be seen.
Reading SFF
“Review: On a Spiritual Plain by Lou Antonelli (2015 Hugo Nominated Short Story)” – May 11
On a Spiritual Plain by Lou Antonelli is the second story from this year’s Hugo Awards ballot that I have read. I did not have high expectations of this year’s short story ballot because all nominees were nominated because of their presence on the sad and/or rabid puppy slates. (I did not like a single one of last year’s sad puppy nominees.) Totaled, the first story I read, was not a great story, but at least it had some positive moments. In contrast, On a Spiritual Plain fits right in with last year’s sad puppy nominees.
The story’s protagonist is the chaplain of a small human outpost on an alien planet. This is a bit familiar. One of last year’s sad puppy Hugo nominees by Brad R. Torgerson also featured a chaplain of a small group of humans on an alien planet. Now, this year Brad Torgerson put together the Sad Puppies slate. I guess he has a thing for chaplains in the military. Hm. I don’t have to understand this, do I?
Cirsova
“Post-mortem of A-to-Z challenge & Hugo Awards” – May 11
Based on some of the nominating numbers I’ve seen and taking into account a large section of the sci-fi blogosphere’s determination to nuke the Hugos from space, I have some worry for the smaller categories. From what I understand of how No Award works, if it gets a plurality in a category simply because of people who are voting a straight No Award ticket, it will knock out all of those works in minor categories voted on by folks who were actually approaching each category in earnest and trying to vote out of the five based on individual merit. Hopefully the number of jerkass ideologue who REALLY want to spend $40 just to vote a no award straight temper tantrum ticket and smash the trophies so that no one can have them constitutes such a small fraction of the Hugo voters that they won’t edge out even the most obscure categories.
SL Huang on Bad Menagerie
“Statistics of Gender on the Hugo Writing Nominees: Probabilities and Standard Deviations” – May 11
This will tell us whether a given gender distribution is within what we’d consider an expected year-by-year fluctuation from 50/50, or whether, assuming a 50/50 gender split, it would be…well, an extreme outlier.
Brandon Kempner on Chaos Horizon
“Hugo Award Nomination Ranges, 2006-2015, Part 3” – May 11
Even though the number of ballots are soaring, the % ranges are staying somewhat steady, although we do see year-to-year perturbation. The top nominees have been hovering between 15%-22.5%. Since 2009, every top nominee has managed at least 100 votes. The bottom nominee has been in that 7.5%-10% range, safely above the 5% minimum. Since 2009, those low nominees all managed at least 50 votes, which seems low (to me; you may disagree). Even in our most robust category, 50 readers liking your book can get you into the Hugo—and they don’t even have to like it the most. It could be their 5th favorite book on their ballot.
Alexandra Erin on Blue Author Is About To Write
“Sad Puppies Review Books: Corduroy” – May 11
Reviewed by John Z. Upjohn, USMC (Aspired)….
I take it back. This bear isn’t even a delta male. He’s a full-on gamma. His sad little quest ends in a pathetic anticlimax as the night security guard—a proper man—literally puts him back in his place, where he stays until the girl comes for him.
And then the little girl does come back and buys him, and sews a button on him anyway. The Feminazis talk about agency, but where’s his agency in all of this? He never found his button. He never got a chance to be a man. Instead he needed the girl to “fix” him, playing mind games on him all the while.
“I like you just the way you are,” the temptress coos, “but I’m sure you’d be more comfortable if you let me, oh, I don’t know… change everything about you.”
@RichardFPenn I suspect that very few voters for the Sad Puppies slate were literally dogs. Though it's hard to tell on the Internet.
— Not-So-OK Boomer (@Rand_Simberg) May 11, 2015
Hush Puppies community created on Facebook – May 11
Hush Puppies is for fans of science fiction, fantasy & other geeky pursuits who do not want the drama generated by Sad or Rabid Puppies.
the hugo awards grind to a halt as an excited @SamSykesSwears runs in and squeals he seen a big green lizard outside
— a taction for the take-tack on the terror shank (@robertjbennett) May 12, 2015
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Cat: I had to spend over an hour weeding the garden this morning. Some feel a childish need to see if they can bait others into explicitly doing things that I have said I won’t host. The price for their success is that I am moderating all their comments now.
Lori, yup. Sounds about right. Public relations seems to be a weak point.
Are we really discussing the state of American “journalism” in online venues?
Of course the articles both pro and against are a mess – the people that write most of them have no idea what they are writing about – they pick up the top of the noise – and as in any conflict, it is the ultra-radicals that are at the top. Moderates are simply not interesting. Making up your mind based on that is a bit weird.
And here I was thinking we had all read at least a few stories about what trusting the news without thinking can lead to…
Fair enough, Mike. How do I get out of such a Purgatory?
“I have no idea whether I’m simply going to vote for him because he’s one of my favorite authors …”
The award is for best novel, not best author.
“Is Cory Doctorow wrong to say that the Sad Puppy slatemakers were right wing? That VD is a white supremacist? Or that the slates were ideologically designed to exclude anyone they considered a SJW?”
I don’t really care whether Cory Doctorow is right or wrong, however, as much study as people have devoted to the subject, it should be manifest that the slates were not “ideologically designed.” To claim otherwise just conflates the attitides of the slate-makers with their artifact.
Look at how many of the recommendations are writers who have a personal connection with Brad Torgersen through Writers of the Future of Analog, or in the case of Rabid Puppies, have a strong connection to the Dread Ilk or Castalia House. All the stories may have some general quality of non-SJW-ness, but very few (the Wright stories would be an exception) are notable entries in anyone’s culture war. Anybody crafting an ideological slate would, for the most part, have picked something else. This is a roster of the slate-maker’s pals and mentors.
The award is for best novel, not best author
And I’d bet most authors would rather earn the award than be handed it for any other reason than people felt that their book was the best.
@Lori
You don’t plan on voting No Award in all categories as a statement, including those that have non-Puppy, though. I mean, I’m presuming that you’re going to vote on something for Best Novel and maybe Best Dramatic Presentations? Frankly, in one of the categories that I’ve read just about everything in, I too was underwhelmed by most of the nominees and toyed with the idea of No Award until I read one I thought was worth voting for. Vote No Award over what you think is bad writing; don’t shut out all categories because of the politics of the situation. Your approach is one I actually find commendable.
@Cat
That wasn’t what I said. I feel that your decision to punish non-slate authors who did get nominated simply because you disagree with the slate and those behind it strikes me as petty.
The comment about EW was more in regards to your tone policing. With all that has been said on the matter, you have your work cut out for you.
@snowcrash: “SDV-LPE (can we also start sourcing better names? The guys at Making Light hare looking for one)”
One of the suggested names is ONEVOTE; that’s what I’ve been using, since I like it best.
“I don’t really care whether Cory Doctorow is right or wrong.”
I care.
That was a very destructive lie that can cause actual harm to real people.
It ought to be retracted. And people here should not be gaslighting the people that are willing to call out that sort of hateful behavior.
“Anybody crafting an ideological slate would, for the most part, have picked something else. This is a roster of the slate-maker’s pals and mentors.”
I can’t help thinking that anyone crafting a slate based on -quality- would have chosen something else, too. Out of 14 Puppy nominees for novella, novelette, and short story, I’m stunned at how badly written, clumsy, clunky and amateurish some of these re, and disappointed at how stale and wooden others are. I’ve only read two entries that are engaging reads. I don’t mean “my sort of story,” since none of the 15 are really my sort of story. But I can enjoy work that’s not my sort of story, as long as the writing is polished and the storytelling is capable–which description doesn’t apply to 12 of the 14 Puppy nominees in the shorter fiction categories.
Whatever criteria they were using, “well-written prose telling a good story” doesn’t seem to have been it. Reading these works, it’s really hard to avoid the conclusion that the criteria were “Brad & Larry’s pals” and “writers in whom Vox Day now has a financial interest of some sort.”
If you think it should be retracted, perhaps on his blog or twitter account is a better place to tell him about it?
@Cirsova
There is a huge difference between “disagree with the slate and those behind it” and “disagree with slates”. The first may be petty; the second is principles.
Most of the people that go for “slate under NA” would not have cared who put the slate forward and what was on it – it is a principle stand against a practice that should have never had happened.
as much study as people have devoted to the subject, it should be manifest that the slates were not “ideologically designed.”
I wouldn’t say ideologically designed, however they whipped up people into an anti-SJW frenzy to vote for their friends/interests. Ideologically fueled maybe.
Given that Castalia House is VD’s explicitly ideological hobby horse, stuffinghis slate with Castalia House nominees is bot self serving and ideological.
There’s no doubt in my mind that personal politics played a part in the Slatening, as the constant refrain heard from the Puppies is that they’re reacting against their perceived “SJW” foes. That the slates themselves aren’t 100% packed with anti-SJW types doesn’t mean that the slate-maker’s politics weren’t important.
Mike
Your view seems to be that this is good old-fashioned nepotism at work; there may well be a substantial element of that but from my perspective, on this side of the pond, it looks more like US culture wars being fought on the premise that the world consists of the U.S.
I am trying to give the slate a fair chance, and I’m plodding my way through stuff which was hackneyed and trite 40 years ago, along with a view of Christianity which bears little or no resemblance to that in Europe, where most of us regard Creationism as a joke. The stuff about ‘taking back the Hugos’ seems remarkably similar in tone to to the rhetoric of Christian Dominionism, again something originating in the Southern Baptists etc. which is confined to a small part of the US.
This looks ideological as well as nepotistic…
Stevie: “Your view seems to be that this is good old-fashioned nepotism at work; there may well be a substantial element of that but from my perspective, on this side of the pond, it looks more like US culture wars being fought on the premise that the world consists of the U.S.”
Don’t think I’m trying to talk you out of your perspective.
But for those already immersed in the US culture wars there’s some value in pointing out the several ways in which the slates fall short of their expressed noble purposes.
The anti-SJW ideological filter is more obvious from what they omitted than what they included. When Ann Leckie is rejected by the puppies because of Affirmative Action Gender Cooties, that’s ideological.
Because I haven’t seen any lists of titles recently, and I think those are more fun than watching people trying to rationalize shooting 14-year-olds, some possibly-relevant titles from Alfred Hitchpup:
The Puppy Who Knew Too Much
The 39 Pups
The Puppy Vanishes
Spellhound
Puppies on a Train
Dial P for Puppy
To Catch a Puppy
and, last but not least,
Psycho
>> Reading these works, it’s really hard to avoid the conclusion that the criteria were “Brad & Larry’s pals” and “writers in whom Vox Day now has a financial interest of some sort.”>>
It would seem, from the slate, that the driving principle behind this is a group of writers thinking/saying of themselves and their friends, “We should be getting awards. We’re not getting awards. This isn’t fair. We should get them.” And all the discussion of SJWs and conservatives and message stories and diversity and conspiracies is all just rationalization, little more than that day’s explanation of why they’re not winning awards.
The real reason is, “We wants it, and anyone who stands between us and it is bad, and must be defeated, so we gets it, gollum.”
Which, ironically, is exactly what drives the rightwing Culture Wars in grownup politics in the US as well.
… Although in the U.S. culture wars it’s arguably about the right losing ground that it once held, while the puppy authors don’t seem to have had writing quality that would ever have been Hugo worthy, even in the areas that they once held.
That said, Correia framed SP1 and SP2 in strictly ideological terms, and the rhetoric that Torgersen, Day, and Hoyt have deployed has tended to take an ideological tack. We might think of them as aspirational culture warriors.
Well, sure, but how are you going to get people to pony up $40 for that? Much as they might admire your work, few are going to rush to spend that kind of money just to buy you a nomination.
Whether or not Torgersen is a true believer in his SJW conspiracy or not, that’s what gets the rubes out of bed in the morning. There are bunches of mostly-white mostly-male mostly-feeling-entitled-and-frustrated people who can’t be arsed to vote for books they love but will stand in the rain for days for a chance to stick it to people they hate. Get them on your side and you might be able to accomplish something.
But nobody’s going to thank you for leading the reavers to their planet. So, best think ahead.
Will McLean: It’s probably more important that we agree what the filter is than that we agree on the use of the word “ideological.”
However, part of my criticism of the Cory Doctorow summary is that he should know what an ideology is.
The many inconsistencies between the justifications given for the slates and their composition is not a product of poorly-applied ideological principles, but from being governed by ambition and justified by a bundle of unsystematized social ideas.
On the question on how people are going to vote, my intention is to a weighted reading of all works.
The weighting relates to any slated items which will get downgraded a %. Anything that ends up in the Geat-good area will stay, anything else will either be left off or placed below No Award.
The only other criteria I am using is the Castalia House Rule, which has works associated with that publisher struck from the ballot. That includes not obbious works like the Sci Phi Show and Letters from Gardner which was printed in the Sci-Phi journal.
“Sci-Phi journal.”
Which reminds me; does it violate the “pro market”-ness of a venue if they ask for people who submit writing to them to promote the market — before hearing if they’re in or not — and saying: “It wont get an inappropriate story published and it wont stop a perfect story being published, but there is always more submissions than space, so if I have to choose between two roughly equal stories I will give the edge to the person willing to help promote the magazine even before they get a sale.””
I find this skeevy, at the least, but I don’t know if it affects “pro market” status.
Steven Schwartz on May 12, 2015 at 2:39 pm said:
“Sci-Phi journal.”
“Which reminds me; does it violate the “pro market”-ness of a venue if they ask for people who submit writing to them to promote the market — before hearing if they’re in or not — and saying: “It wont get an inappropriate story published and it wont stop a perfect story being published, but there is always more submissions than space, so if I have to choose between two roughly equal stories I will give the edge to the person willing to help promote the magazine even before they get a sale.””
I find this skeevy, at the least, but I don’t know if it affects “pro market” status.”
I don’t know if asking authors to promote them on social media affects their pro market status. The poor grammar and misuse of apostrophes in that quote concern me almost as much.
@Cirsova: I can see why you think those who chose to vote straight “No Award” over everything are petty. What you may not be taking into account is that they are repudiating totally a ballot produced by what THEY consider an unethical and dishonorable method. Neither you, nor I, nor anyone else have the right to tell them how to vote.
All of the Worldcon-going Fen have known for years that this was a weakness of the system, but everyone considered it a point of honor NOT to use this to get something on the ballot. And along comes a group that seems to have no grasp on either ethical or honorable behavior — and to top it off insist that the rest of us have been conspiring against their favorites(!) — and then they go and do what they accused Worldcon’s members of doing.
The “No Award” for slates group is acting from their grasp of ethics and honor, and I will confess that at first I was of that group. After a couple of weeks to cool down, I decided to look at what the Puppies had assembled, and found pretty much what I expected from what they got on the ballot last year. So they’ve had two chances to impress me, and nope, not my cup of tea.
The few works that were readable were nothing to write home about, and sure as hell didn’t belong on a Hugo ballot, in my very humble opinion. And there was one that didn’t come from the slate that I can’t figure out why it was nominated, so the normal selection process can produce clinkers too.
Slinging hateful terms at folk who do not agree with you is not likely to convince them to listen, much less pay heed to what you have to say. It will make them less likely to pay attention to anything you say in the future.
I can’t help myself:
Reservoir Puppies
Plan 9 from Outer Puppies
Close Encounters of the Puppy Kind
The Puppymass Xperiment
When Fandoms Collide
Had we done Lem yet?
Tales of Pirx the Puppy
Any of the Russians?
Hard to be a Puppy
The Land of Crimson Puppies
Puppy on the Slope
Puppy in the Anthill
Professor Dowell’s Puppy
The Amphibian Puppy
Alice: The Puppy from Earth
The Puppy and the Darkness
The Were-puppies of London
Where Late the Sad Puppies Barked
Doghouse-Five
The War Puppy and the SMOF’s Pain
Thanks to everyone who responded to my suggestion, even if the responses were mostly opposed.
My thinking was something along the lines that the nomination process should be a bottom-up consensus of worthiness, but the slate voting resulted in an de-facto top-down imposition. To counteract that, the pool of potential voters could be motivated to switch to actual voters with feedback from seeing the results. Or something like that.
I am not sure I understand all of the objections. From the voting stats at chaoshorizon, it looks like the reason the slate did as well as it did was largely because of lack of turnout/nominator apathy/ignorance of the options/choice paralysis (or some combination thereof). But seeing the running results might well encourage more nominators reading the available works, voting on them, and thus a greater bottom-up consensus. Yes, it might look like a furore while it’s happening, but we’ve certainly got a furore now, true?
@Annie Y:
I really don’t see how that’s a bad thing. More choices visible; more ways to reach a consensus — and I don’t see how something that is actually unworthy would get promoted, given greater visibility.
@Soon Lee:
Hm. I’ve been thinking about this, and while it is problematic, there may be ways around it. Could a small bloc really prevail against a large enough pool of voters?
Maybe it would at least be interesting to do some test runs of such a system, with and without a bloc of slate voters, to see how it works out. It could be called “Not Actually the Rocket”. . .
The Time poll was too open, though, allowing multiple votes via scripts and multiple proxies. The Hugo nominations are locked down to the member, or so I understand.
@Owlmirror
Too many people deciding that a choice is safe because it is very popular (and deciding to use their 5 votes elsewhere) for example. That can kick everyone’s favorite out (as a side effect of too much strategic voting). Not so far-fetched especially in the small categories where a few votes are enough to get the results turned around.
Anything that promotes strategic voting is kind of against the spirit of the nominations – you nominate whatever you find Hugo-worthy independently from what everyone else thinks.
The King of Puppyland’s Daughter
Pup-In-The-Mist
Puperation Chaos
How Puppies Would Have Practiced Their Art Upon the Gnoles
The Unpleasant Puppies of Jonathan Hoag
@influxus & @Steven Schwartz (regarding stories about statistics):
A while back, I found the MathFiction site. Here’s the page for probability/statistics, specifically. 70 titles, it says.
I think it’s time to do Heinlein.
To Sail Beyond the Doghouse
Puppydom in Eternity
The Sad Puppies of Earth
The Past Through Puppies
Expanded Puppyverse
I Will Fear No Puppy
A Puppy in a Strange Land
The Moon is a Harsh SJW
Double Puppy
The Rolling Puppies
Puppies of the Sky (not to be confused with Puppy in the Sky)
Revolt in 2015
Methuselah’s Puppies
The Number of the Puppy (or The Puppy of the Beast)
The Puppy Who Sold the Moon
The Menace from Worldcon
The Door Into Puppies
Puppy Ship Galileo
Starship Puppies (see also The Star Puppy)
Starman Beale
Pupkayne of Mars
Sixth Puppy
Growls from the Grave
Theodore and Puppies, Inc.
Between Puppies
Beyond This Puppy
Citizen of the Worldcon
For Us the Puppies
Puppy Road
Red, White, and Blue Planet
…but definitely not Time Enough For Puppies. Instead, I’ll end with:
The Puppy Masters
@Kurt Busiek: “The Unpleasant Puppies of Jonathan Hoag”
That was also published as 6 x P, wasn’t it?
Six TIMES they peed!
Just finished Ancillary Justice. If Ancillary Sword is up to that standard, that’s another worthy nominee.
@Todd: I am one of that 80% that didn’t nominate.
Question for you: have you ever tried to nominate for the Hugos? It’s difficult.
I subscribe to Asimov’s and Uncanny. I read stories on tor.com that catch my eye. Occasionally people on my LJ friends list will link to something they wrote, or read and really liked.
But I’m 47 years old and a bit jaded. Ask me the title and author of a story, a month after I read it? That’s gonna be a tough one. Stories that wow me enough to burn the title and author into my memory are really few these days, and far between. Even if I get to read a list of titles at the end of the year (Asimov’s publishes an index) that’s not going to do much to jog my mind.
Right now, the nomination period starts at least a month after I’ve read any of the eligible stories, and in most cases anywhere from six to thirteen.
In order to nominate, what I really have to do is go to the effort to keep a record. All year. Up until now, the nominations process we had did well enough that it didn’t seem necessary.
This year, I’m doing it. Next year, I will nominate.
Which strongly suggests a thing we could do to lower the barrier to nominating, that would help me a lot: extend the nomination period. Why should I have to go to the trouble of keeping records of stories I liked? How about having online nomination ballots open for the whole previous calendar year? So that if I read and liked a story, I could just immediately jump onto the Worldcon website and record it on my nominating ballot. That would greatly lower the barrier to putting in nominations, and probably greatly increase the number of nominations in every category…which would be a good thing, right?
I see no reason why we couldn’t be doing that now. Hey, 2017 bidders: if there’s one of you who’ll commit to doing that, you’ll get my site selection vote.
(I just checked the WSFS constitution: it specifies that the nominees will be selected by a poll. There’s nothing at all that I could find which says how long or short the polling period has to be.)
Note that this idea is completely separate from any particular method of tallying. It’s perfectly compatible with SDV-LPE / ONEVOTE (which I support), or anything else.
Dark They Were and Puppy-Eyed
The Three Puppies Gambit
How the Puppies Came to Thlunrana
Unausprechlichen Puppen
The Odd Behaviour of the Puppy in the Night Time
The Ransom of Red Puppy
The Famous Jumping Puppy of Canine County
The Charge of the Puppy Brigade
The White Puppies
Puppy of Gold and Lead
The Puppy of Fire
A Wrinkle in Puppy
Maybe some mathfic. . .
A Puppy Named Möbius
. . . and He Built a Crooked Puppy
Division by Puppy
@Owlmirror:
I think that penultimate title should be a little different:
…and He Built a Crooked Hugo
Plus, while I’m here and we’re talking shorts:
The Man Who Traveled in Puppies
The Puppy of Lost C’Mell
Mother Huppy’s Littul Puppies
The Game of Rat and Puppy
The Dead Puppy of Clown Town
The Puppy of Bodhidharma
A Puppy named Shayol
The Crime and the Glory of Commander Puppy
@Jack Lint: “Unausprechlichen Puppen”
“Puppen” means “Dolls” in German,
“Puppies” in German is “Welpen” or “Hündchen”.
‘Nine Puppies in Amber’
This one comes from the heart; I managed to get through the retro reviews, including ‘Nine Princes of Amber’ put forward by a puppy guy in providing a Hugo sampler for the Members Package, by bribing myself with a large cream cake if I finished it.
I don’t want to be destructive, so could we develop an agreed basis for the size of the cream cake appropriate to those who stride forward and read the slates. Also, guidelines on how much alcohol we can award ourselves would be very helpful…
Uh… same people that calculate it now. Computers.
I’ve been involved in this process. I can tell you that someone gets to do the prep work to get that information into the computers. (It took me four days this week, with Excel and the digital version of the 1984 nominations, to count them up – what with listings in multiple categories, multiple spellings, and the file being 9500 lines long.) It won’t have improved since then, and the problems will be the same. And I have the free time.
(FWIW, Worldcons have been using computers since at least 1971. The amount of work involved behind the scenes is not small. Before the 90s, the software was pretty much write-your-own, and you had to have people with access to machines.)