(1) Michael A. Rothman accuses Fandom of disillusioning his teenage sons.
I took my kids to WorldCon to expose them to Fandom and I’ve consciously shielded them from any of the politics of the kerfuffle associated with the literary “sides” that were in play.
When we attended, we had good seats and they were excited to see if some of their choices would make it.
Let’s just say that my boys ended up being exposed to some of their categories being utterly eradicated from eligibility due to this thing that I’d shielded them from.
They couldn’t understand why their short story choice evaporated into something called “NO AWARD.”
As I briefly explained, the audience was cheering because of that decision and the MC made a point of saying that cheering was appropriate and boos were not.
My kids were shocked.
Shocked not by not winning but by having an entire category’s rug being pulled out from under it and then having all the adults (many of which were old enough to be their grandparents) cheering for something my kids looked at as an unfair tragedy.
I’ll admit to having feared this outcome – yet this was my children’s introduction to Fandom.
We are driving home and they are of the opinion that they aren’t particularly interested in this “Fandom” thing.
I find that a great shame – and I blame not the people who established the ballots to vote for (for my kids enjoyed a great deal of what they read on the ballots), but as my kids noted – they blame the ones who made them feel “like the rug was pulled out from under me.”
…I’d offered Fandom my boys – my boys now reject them.
(2) Larry Correia on Monster Hunter Nation – “Sad Puppies 3: Looking at the Results”
…Editor Toni Weisskopf is a professional’s professional. She has run one of the main sci-fi publishing houses for a decade. She has edited hundreds of books. She has discovered, taught, and nurtured a huge stable of authors, many of whom are extremely popular bestsellers. You will often hear authors complain about their editors and their publishers, but you’re pretty hard pressed to find anyone who has written for her who has anything but glowing praise for Toni.
Yet before Sad Puppies came along, Toni had never received a Hugo nomination. Zero. The above mentioned Patrick Nielsen Hayden has 8. Toni’s problem was that she just didn’t care and she didn’t play the WorldCon politics. Her only concern was making the fans happy. She publishes any author who can do that, regardless of their politics. She’s always felt that the real awards were in the royalty checks. Watching her get ignored was one of the things that spurred me into starting Sad Puppies. If anybody deserved the Hugo, it was her.
This year Toni got a whopping 1,216 first place votes for Best Editor. That isn’t just a record. That is FOUR TIMES higher than the previous record. Shelia Gilbert came in next with an amazing 754. I believe that Toni is such a class act that beforehand she even said she thought Shelia Gilbert deserved to win. Fans love Toni.
Logically you would think that she would be award worthy, since the only Baen books to be nominated for a Hugo prior to Sad Puppies were edited by her (Bujold) and none of those were No Awarded. Last year she had the most first place votes, and came in second only after the weird Australian Rules voting kicked in (don’t worry everybody, they just voted to make the system even more complicated), so she was apparently award worthy last year.
Toni Weisskopf has been part of organized Fandom (capital F) since she was a little kid, so all that bloviating about how Fandom is precious, and sacred, and your special home since the ‘70s which you need to keep as a safe space free of barbarians, blah, blah, blah, yeah, that applies to Toni just as much as it does to you CHORFs. You know how you guys paid back her lifetime of involvement in Fandom?
By giving 2,496 votes to No Award….
Oh, and all that bullshit you spew about fighting for diversity? Everyone knows that is a smokescreen. You talk about diversity, but simultaneously had no problem putting No Award over award nominated females because they were nominated by fans you declared to be sexist. Wait… So let me see if I’ve got this straight, you denied deserving women like Toni, Cedar, Kary, Jennifer, Shelia, and Amanda, just to send a message, but we’re the bad guys? I don’t think so. Or as one of our female nominees said, this Puppy has been muzzled. http://cedarwrites.com/this-puppy-has-been-muzzled/…
…Here’s something for you crowing imbeciles to think through, the only reason Vox didn’t have Three Body Problem on his nomination slate was that he read it a month too late. If he’d read it sooner, it would have been an RP nomination… AND THEN YOU WOULD HAVE NO AWARDED IT.
(3) Barb Caffrey – “Nightmare at the Hugo Awards: No Award ‘Wins’ Five Times…including for Best Editor Categories”
Look. I understand that the SF&F community has been rent asunder over the past few years. But one thing I thought everyone could all agree on was that books do not produce themselves.
To have a book that reads well, you need not only a good writer with an interesting plot and some excellent characterization, but a highly competent editor to pull the story into its best-possible form.
Why? Well, the best writers in the world can and often do make mistakes, and it’s up to your handy-dandy, trustworthy, hard-working editor to fix them.
The people who were nominated for Hugo Awards all have a great deal of experience as editors behind them. None of them were people who just came in off the street and started editing yesterday; most have edited for at least ten years, and some a great deal more…even the casual fan is aware of Toni Weisskopf of Baen Books and Sheila Gilbert of DAW Books, to name two fine editors who were passed over for “no award” in the long form category, because these two ladies have had long and successful careers as editors to date.
How “No Award” can be voted for by anyone in good conscience over either of them bothers me.
(4) Vox Day on Vox Popoli – “They proved Larry right”
This is the difference between game designers and normal people. We think, we HAVE to think, in terms of consequences, both obvious and non-obvious. We started last year with 1,100 reliable anti-Puppy votes and 160 reliable pro-puppy votes. That meant we were 900 in the hole before we even got started. That’s why I was urging everyone not to adopt the tactics of the other side and mass-mobilize. Last year wasn’t a good test because I wasn’t involved in the organizing and the Dread Ilk really didn’t get involved. There was no point in throwing the full weight of our effort into this year’s awards when we had the chance to see a) what our core forces looked like and b) what their maximal forces looked like.
That’s why I told everyone that this year was about the nominations and the best we could reasonably hope for was to provoke them into voting No Award… which they dutifully did.
Our execution wasn’t flawless. I made two mistakes, one which was fortuitous as it permitted Three Body Problem to make the shortlist and win, and one which was stupid as it cost us a 6th category in novelette. Our discipline could also have been better, although I don’t see that it would have made any difference at all with regards to either the nominations or the awards. But I trust the moderate approach is now sufficiently discredited in everyone’s eyes.
(5) John C. Wright – “Smeagol Nielson Hayden” [sic]
Besides, like me, they came to have a good time and to celebrate our mutual love of science fiction, and applaud in the fashion of good sports what we each severally take to be the best the genre offers. I thought there would be no incident.
I am sad to report that I was mistaken. The Archmorlock himself displayed his courage against the short and girlish figure of my meek and gentle wife.
At the reception just before the Awards Ceremony itself, my lovely and talented wife, who writes for Tor books under her maiden name of L Jagi Lamplighter, and who had been consistently a voice of reason and moderation during the whole silly kerfluffle, approached Mr. Patrick Nielsen Hayden at the party to extent to him the olive branch of peace and reconciliation.
Before she could finish her sentence, however, Mr. Hayden erupted into a swearing and cursing, and he shouted and bellowed at the tiny and cheerful woman I married.
(6) John C. Wright – “In Memoriam”
My fans voted for the works of mine they read and judged worthy in record numbers. (In terms of raw votes, my nominated works received more votes than some of the masterworks mentioned above.)
But those who are enemies of all honest men turned out (as expected) in even more record numbers: however, listening to the backstage chatter among voters after the awards, I heard not one comment, no, not one, of someone who said they voted for ‘No Award’ on the lack of merit of the works nominated.
And if you haven’t had a surfeit of John C. Wright’s abuse, it gets a lot more overwrought as he builds up a head of steam.
(7) And Wright passes along a fresh Hitler video about the fate of the Puppies.
(8) Matthew Foster – “The Hugo Results – Don’t Be A Dick”
Fandom said, “Dude, you are way over-thinking this. Those guys are dicks!” And…well…I think Fandom pretty much nailed it.
So, if it was a puppy, Fandom rejected it. They celebrated everyone who got on the ballot fairly (even those in categories where they ended up with zero competition) but didn’t get near any pup nominee. They threw the party-asshole out the door and went back to dancing. This works out better than my way of doing things. I might be more consistent, but there is nowhere to go with mine, and not much fun. Fandom booted the pups, put on blinders to ignore the wreckage, and had fun.
(9) Nicholas Whyte on From The Heart of Europe analyzes the Hugo nomination statistics and points out a few items that almost made the final ballot despite the Puppy deluge.
At the nominations stage, there were also very few near misses, thanks in part to the lock that the Puppies managed to achieve on this part of the process.
- The tightest squeeze for the ballot was in Best Fancast, where The Coode Street Podcast missed by one vote, Verity! by three and The Skiffy and Fanty Show by nine.
- Saga vol 4 missed Best Graphic Story by a single vote (was it eligible?) and the latest Schlock Mercenary by nine.
- Seanan McGuire’s Each to Each missed Best Novelette by three votes, and Kai Ashante Wilson’s The Devil in America missed it by seven.
- Maurine Starkey missed Best Fan Artist by three votes, and seven others were less than ten below the cutoff.
- The Drink Tank missed Best Fanzine by eight votes. For Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form), Agents of Shield: Turn, Turn, Turn missed by nine votes and Game of Thrones: The Lion and the Rose by ten.
- The Book Smugglers missed Best Semiprozine by 10 votes.
- Charles E. Gannon’s Trial By Fire was 11 votes off the Best Novel ballot, and Andy Weir was likewise 11 behind Wesley Chu for the Campbell Award.
(10) John Scalzi on Whatever – “Being a Jerk About the Hugos: Not as Effective a Strategy as You Might Think”
[Lists 10 things Puppies did that he classifies as “jerk moves,” then concludes –]
The Hugo vote against the Puppy slates was not about politics, or cabals, or one species of science fiction and fantasy over another, no matter what anyone would like you to believe — or at the very least, it wasn’t mostly about those things. It was about small group of people acting like jerks, and another, rather larger group, expressing their displeasure at them acting so.
Mind you, I don’t expect the core Puppies to recognize this; indeed I expect them to say they haven’t done a single thing that has been other than forthright and noble and correct. Well, and here’s the thing about that: acting like an jerk and then asserting that no, it’s everyone else that’s been acting like a jerk, is the biggest jerk maneuver of all.
(11) Michael Rapoport in The Wall Street Journal – “No ‘Puppy’ Love at Science Fiction’s Hugo Awards”
In response to the Puppies’ success, thousands of anti-Puppy fans bought Worldcon memberships, enabling them to vote on the final ballot and turn aside the nominees from the Puppies’ slates. According to Worldcon organizers, 5,950 convention members voted on the final Hugo ballot, topping the previous record by more than 65%.
The increase in participation in the Hugos is the important thing, said author Brad Torgersen, a Sad Puppies organizer. “If participation grows, the Hugos mean more,” he said before the results were announced. That “goes way beyond which ‘side’ can construct victory narratives.”
But author Adam-Troy Castro, an opponent of the Puppies, wrote in an online post that the results “mean one thing: fandom rose up in revulsion and cried, ‘We don’t want this system gamed with block voting. You want to win a Hugo, win it the way you’re supposed to: by blowing away the readership with such brilliance that people can’t abide the idea of NOT giving you a Hugo.’”
(12) Tegan Moore in Slog on The Stranger – “I Went to the Hugo Awards in SpokaneThis Weekend. Here’s What I Saw”
Surprisingly, the mood in the auditorium was genial and relieved. It was almost over. My illustrious companion and I passed a flask of Scotch. We decided we would drink every time someone said “George R.R. Martin.” The flask was nearly empty before the winners were announced.
The first contested award went to the only non-Puppies nominee on the ballot. My illustrious companion clenched her fists in the air.
“Yes,” she hissed. “That’s the bellwether. They won’t win a damn thing.”
(13) Peter Grant on Bayou Renaissance Man – “A second look at the 2015 Hugo Awards”
My overwhelming emotion in this whole mess is sadness. I’m watching people tear apart one of the great institutions of science fiction, purely because they can’t bring themselves to agree that every fan of the genre has a place within its tent. It’s not one side doing it – it’s both. The SJW’s, who consider themselves ‘true’ Fandom, insist that SF/F is their genre and they alone get to decide who and what belongs to it. Those of a more conservative and/or orthodox bent disagree, and say that political correctness should not be the standard against which works of imagination and literature should be judged – but they can be very disparaging of the other side in how they go about that. (Perhaps that’s not surprising. Mutual tolerance and respect have been largely conspicuous by their absence in this field for many years.)
(14) John ONeill on Black Gate – “Dear Puppies: Your Taste Sucks”
In short, the Puppies insisted that their team had been unfairly shut out of the game for too long, and gamed the system so that their superstars could finally take the field. And when they did, it became painfully obvious fairly quickly that this team simply couldn’t play ball.
The Puppies have stayed in their echo chamber for long months, and to be honest, I don’t expect even this stinging repudiation of their selections to penetrate it. My guess is that they will lay this burden at the feet of another liberal conspiracy, or simply claim that the vast majority of the Hugo electorate voted against their slate without bothering to read it (just as I did).
But when your only defense is to convince yourself that the electorate spurned you because they found what you did to be against the very spirit of the Hugos and your ballot to be wholly illegitimate, then you’re hiding sub-standard taste behind moral bankruptcy.
I’m certain the Hugo vote is just the beginning of the discussion, not the ending that so many fans had sought. But at least, on one topic, we finally have general agreement.
Dear Puppies: your taste sucks.
News Flash: #VoxDay blames Social Justice Warriors for Male Pattern Baldness. #HugoAwards #Rabidpuppies
— Terry Frost -Physical Media Forever- he/him (@terryfrost) August 25, 2015
(15) Milo Yiannopoulos on Breitbart – “Set Phases to Kill! SJWs Burn Down The Hugo Awards To Prove How Tolerant And Welcoming They Are”
The facts of this case are the same as in gaming and in every other industry that social justice warriors touch. They do not care about art forms. They do not care about science fiction. They do not even particularly care about talent. They care about enriching and ennobling themselves and their friends, and pushing a twisted, discredited, divisive brand of authoritarian politics.
Worldcon is now designing a Byzantine new rule system designed to thwart a Puppies resurgence in 2016. But anyone who loves sci-fi knows that no matter how air-tight the bad guy’s rules seem, the good guys will find a way through. Does anyone really think SJWs can design anything without leaving an unguarded exhaust vent?
(16) Sarah A. Hoyt on According To Hoyt – “Burning Down The Field in Order to Save It”
Turned out I did [care]. Yesterday was even more of a victory to the Sad Puppies than I expected. And I wish it hadn’t been. And I’m absolutely serious about this.
I don’t mean I wish a different set of books/stories had won. That is only to the extent that the DELIBERATE and PARTISAN slighting of such unexceptionable luminaries as Kevin J. Anderson and Jim Butcher (Yes, yes Three Body Problem. Well, I didn’t find it worth it, but I bet you half the people who voted for it voted either under the illusion they were favoring Chicoms OR as a slam against the puppies.But quite beyond that the block voting for the clumsy Ancillary “but pronouns” would have won first place if it weren’t Australian Rules) is a blot on the face of our genre and makes me sigh and roll my eyes.
(17) Mytheos Holt on The Federalist – “The Hugo Awards: Why The #WaronNerds Is A War on Art”
The Hugo Awards have shown us that this is impossible. The Social Justice Left will not be satisfied unless it has complete control over the spaces it infiltrates. If it cannot control a space, it will burn it down and salt the earth. If they could, they would probably torch every script of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew for being anti-feminist, every score of Mozart’s The Magic Flute for its unflattering depiction of its one mulatto character, every print of Apelles’ Venus Anadyomene for catering to the male gaze, and every other work that portrays, or was written by, someone with objectionable politics. This book burning bonfire of the vacuous would be large enough to be seen from space, if the satellites weren’t taken down for being too phallic.
What Nerds Can Teach The Rest Of Us
Nerd communities have seen proof that social justice politics cannot be tolerated, because it will sooner immolate the very institutions it inhabits than tolerate the existence of disparate elements. The utter destruction of the Hugo Awards is a warning not just to nerds, but to Western Civilization that social justice is anti-social, anti-justice, and anti-just about everything else. It is to the body politic what an autoimmune disease is to the human body.
(18) Amy Wallace on Wired – “Who Won Science Fiction’s Hugo Awards, And Why It Matters”
After midnight, Martin announced that for the first time (and hopefully the last) he was bestowing his own awards—dubbed “The Alfies” in honor of Alfred Bester, whose book The Demolished Man won Best Novel at the first-ever Hugos in 1953. “This year all of us were losers,” Martin said, explaining that the Alfies, each made from a streamlined 1950s hood ornament, were his attempt to take a little of the sting off.
Late Saturday, Worldcon released data from a parallel universe, one in which the Puppies hadn’t intervened. That let Martin give trophies to the people who would have been on the ballot, as well as some extra winners decided “by committee, and that committee is me,” Martin said.4 Sci-fi writer Eric Flint got an Alfie for his “eloquence and rationality” in blog posts about the Puppy kerfuffle. So did legendary author Robert Silverberg, who has attended every Worldcon since 1953, just for being himself.
The biggest cheers, though, broke out when Martin honored two people—Annie Bellet and Marko Kloos—who’d been first-time Hugo finalists this year until they withdrew their names. The new data showed Bellet would’ve been on the ballot anyway; the Alfie clearly stunned her. “I want these awards to be about the fiction,” Bellet said, “and that was important enough to me to give one up.”
The final Alfie of the night went to Kloos, a German-born writer (now he lives in New Hampshire), for turning down his Puppy-powered nomination and making room for the winner, The Three-Body Problem. “I may get nominated again,” he said after shaking Martin’s hand. “But knowing why I got this and who gave it to me—tonight, this beats the shit out of that rocket.”
(19) Damien G. Walter on The Guardian – “Diversity wins as the Sad Puppies lose at the Hugo awards”
While we can write off the Sad Puppies as the clown show they proved to be, we should also give them a tiny thank you for the result of their actions. For many years, it was possible for sci-fi fans to thoughtlessly dismiss their diversity failure. When the sci-fi imprint Tor UK published (statistically incomplete) data blaming the lack of diversity in genre on a shortage of submissions, many hundreds of fans took to social mediaf to voice all the commonly heard excuses (“women just don’t write science fiction” and so on). The real problem for writers from any excluded background is not the extreme chauvinism of people like the Sad Puppies. It’s the general apathy to the entire issue of diversity which so often silences new authors from different backgrounds.
So. Thank you Sad Puppies. You have woken sci-fi fandom from its slumber and proved that diversity in sci-fi really is a problem. There will never be another WorldCon or Hugo awards where diversity is not addressed. Diversity will now be carried to every new world and parallel dimension we visit. And sci-fi writing will be all the stronger for it. The future of humankind is global and many-hued. By reflecting that reality, sci-fi makes itself a fit literature for and of the future.
(20) Andrew Wheeler on Comics Alliance – ‘Ms. Marvel’ Wins at Hugo Awards Dogged by Politics
The sci-fi and fantasy prose fiction that dominates the Hugos and the WSFW has experienced a steady progressive evolution in recent years, with more diversity in both talent and output — a phenomenon that may feel familiar to comics fans. Sci-fi has always provided intellectual refuge for liberal-minded writers and fans, but only recently have those writers made serious inroads into the sci-fi establishment.
The Sad Puppies exist as a reaction to that shift, but while the gradual liberalization of sci-fi has been organic and rooted in fandom, the conservative backlash was deliberately orchestrated to place politics first. The balance of the final ballot shows there was no organized liberal bloc vote equivalent to the Sad Puppies’ efforts, with several popular minority writers surprisingly absent.
Supporters of the Sad Puppies effort have indicated that the failure of their nominees to win any awards vindicates their belief that the Hugo Awards put politics ahead of quality, but of course, it demonstrates the reverse; the Sad Puppies nominees were chosen because of their politics first, and the voters were right to reject them.
(21) Vox Day is getting to work on next year. But then you knew that.
“Of this, that, and the other thing”
All right, a few things that require addressing. First, the Closed Brainstorm meeting to discuss the 2016 strategy will be Thursday, August 27th, at 7 PM EST. Annual and pre-existing monthly members only, since we don’t want to share our thoughts with the SJWs. No decisions will be made, this is simply what it’s called, a brainstorm session. I’ll also share some information about the No Award vote that has been brought to light; still working on documentation.
(22) Stephen Wise – “Hugo Awards and Politics”
The backlash against the Bad (and Rabid) Puppies resulted in 5 awards going to no one. Did the authors who were nominated for Best Novella, Short Story, Related Work, Editor Short Form, and Editor Long Form deserve the nomination? Perhaps. Was cheating the cause of them to be nominees in the first place? That’s the public perception. So by voting No Award, the 5950 members of World Science Fiction Society essentially said that they didn’t want politics in play for the Hugos. But it’s unfortunate that there may have been deserving authors who were cheated out of this recognition thanks to the maneuverings of a few individuals. Would I have voted the same? Probably. Because once an award is contaminated, there is no rightful winner. And once you start playing political games, then the award itself becomes invalid.
(23) Foz Meadows on Shattersnipe: Malcontent & Rainbow – “Hugos & Puppies: Peeling The Onion”
I guess what I want to say is this: despite what the Puppies think, the rest of us aren’t interested in diversity without quality, and as we’re all acutely aware, the failure mode of diversity is stereotype, which concept isn’t exactly on handshake terms with quality in the first place. That we want to celebrate historically silenced voices and perspectives doesn’t mean we’re doing so purely to spite you, or that we’ve lost all sense of judgement: if our tastes extend to seeing in fiction those versions of ourselves you’re disinclined to write, then who are you to tell us we aren’t entitled to our preferences? Nobody is saying you can’t tell your stories; we just might not want to read them, the same as you evidently have no desire to read ours. That’s not the genre being attacked – it’s the genre changing, and whether you change with it or not, we’re still going to like what we like.
Stop fighting the riptide, Puppies. As any Australian could tell you, it’s the surest way to drown.
(24) Space Squid – “The Squiddies Quiz”
[Question 5 of 12.]
Are you on your game? Do you have all the right high-fashion cosplay accessories? Do your boardgaming moves bring all the boys to the yard? Warning: If you’re not up on the 2015 Hugos dustup, you might want to bing up “hugo is sad in 2015” before daring the rigors of the quiz.
- You’re the Hugo Awards czar. After your awards got disgraced, it’s time to pick a new award design to replace the shiny silver rocket. Your best choice is: a) a shiny silver rocket encrusted with poop b) a bronze sculpture of an imaginary multi-ethnic group of scifi writers holding hands around the earth c) a shiny silver rocket ejecting certain unnamed persons into space d) a gold-plated carjacking diorama
[Thanks to David K.M. Klaus and Editor D for some of these links.]
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Meredith: For what it’s worth, Dad found that doubling his usual vitamin C intake for a few days after anything involving anesthetic seemed to help his recovery time. I haven’t really noticed the same results, but then science shows I’m not Dad, so I pass it along as a thing that might help.
And agreed about the problems in sorting “I’m voting against slates” from “I’m voting against crap” when the slate is so full of crap.
Yes, I was trying, probably badly, to make the point that although I’m a new voter because of this year’s events, I’m not going to lose interest and stop nominating or voting after a year or two, which Brian Z stated he believed many new voters would do.
As for neutral: well, I personally decided that despite my basic antipathy to the puppies’ politics, motives, and tactics, I’d give them a chance to see if they really had nominated excellent works. I did not find that to be the case and voted the vast majority of slated works below no award. I don’t know if that really makes me neutral. I don’t think I am, but I tried very hard to be fair. As Meredith says, though, that doesn’t look much different than an across-the-board no award vote.
I guess that’s my other point: I don’t appreciate the idea that I’m a sheep who merely followed SMOF or SJW marching orders. I’m an individual who takes the Hugos seriously, despite never previously participating, and I made my own choices for my own reasons.
Hey Fuckwit Weasel Boy(formally known as Brian Z),
You FAIL!
You didn’t read what I said. You made your response all about YOU and not about the thousands of people you have denigrated and insulted with your staements about THEIR motivations for voting.
You do know you are a shitty person don’t you? You are incapable of empathy and fail in basic cognition of reality.
Seriously, FWB, go die in a ditch!
@Rev. Bob (in reference to Brad Torgersen’s ‘Emmanuel Goldstein’ screed):
You finally made me curious enough about the evil-Saul-Alinsky-playbook trope to find a copy of the book itself. I’m plowing through it, just to see if anything like ‘make you so frustrated or angry, that you say or do something rash, and then they’ve got you’ is in there.
First, man, what a freakin’ windbag. When someone finally invents a TARDIS, I vote we immediately[1] send a squad of combat editors back to 1971 to put Alinsky’s prose on a diet. If this is the standard blueprint for USA leftist revolutionaries’ social activism, it’s no wonder they have no influence outside Communist-controlled portions of Madison, Berkeley, and Chapel Hill.
This is semi-close, but no cigar:
I cite this pair of paragraphs to illustrate a general trait of this (mostly rather tedious and florid) book: I’m over half-way through skim-reading the thing, and so far all of its specific recommendations concern how a radical organiser should deal with one’s backers, and have little or no concern with the opposition. Even the above-cited passage has Alinksy stress getting labelled as ‘dangerous’ in order to build credibility with one’s own side.
Around page 130, Alinsky finally starts talking more directly about the opposition. Under ‘Tactics’ on page 135, we finally get this much and no elaboration on it:
That’s about as close as Alinsky comes to the ‘rile them up for a gotcha’ notion Torgersen attributes to him.
[1] Well, at any time, actually.
Tintinaus: I feel you have personally insulted me with the positions you have put in this thread and demand an apology.
In response, Brian Z: How have I offended you in saying that? I certainly don’t mean to offend.
Wow. The Shoving Foot In Mouth Award goes to BRIAN, with extra bonus for the “I don’t MEAN to offend…”
Having worked as a translator for a long time, I can tell really easily if a translation is good or not, sometimes even in language pairs I don’t know. Ken Liu’s translation of TBP is excellent, for example, although I don’t know the original.
A translation can really make or break a book. Case in point, Ancillary Justice, which has sharply divided the Italian reading public into two factions: those who read it in English and loved it, and those who read it in Italian and didn’t finish it.
“Editore” in Italian means publisher. The closest word I can find for “editor” is “redattore”, but it generally applies to newspaper editors.
There are people working as editors in Italian publishing, but, true enough, there is no specific word for it. Sadly, the money is so scarce these days that “editor” might well be translated as “intern with a fantastic education and great skills in turning a piece of good prose into excellent one, who has been working for free for the publisher for three years and is about to have to go flip hamburgers full time because otherwise can’t make the rent” or even “Bank employee who held on to his unpaid internship at a publisher until the publisher went bust”.
I know several people in the first category and I am in the second one, only by the time I transitioned banks were no longer hiring.
@Bruce Baugh
Thanks for the tip! I’ve had a lousy day because the insoles I’ve waited nine weeks for are the wrong shape, so something that I could control (or at least feel like I could control) for recovery is very appealing right now.
@spellproof
You make a good point: Fairness and neutrality aren’t the same thing. I think a lot of people tried to be fair or even generous, especially before the Puppies got really obnoxious.
The thing I found most difficult was ranking stuff I sort of liked, but that I felt wasn’t up to prior Hugo nominee standards. It took me awhile to settle on ranking them under No Award so that if my first choice (if there was one) and No Award failed then at least my vote would go towards making a difference between stuff I sort of liked and stuff I really didn’t.
ETA: @Tintinaus, I sympathise with your irritation but the die in a ditch bit was over the line, I think.
Mark Dennehy on August 26, 2015 at 6:31 am
Mark, et al…
First week of classes for me, so I’m still helping panicking freshmen learn how to handle their first science course. I did read this post with some interest, though, as this is something I’m curious about as well. There has to be a breaking point somewhere in which there isn’t enough overlap in nominations for EPH to help much, but I’m not sure where that would be. I’m not convinced it would be a literal break, though — I suspect that slates might just get a gradually increasing percentage of the ballot slots as the overlap in nominations on non-slate ballots decreases. On the other hand, slates will always nearly have the same number of nominations and points, so will compete with each other. I think the salient question is whether they can get enough points to put all their works into the above-fourth-place “safe zone” where they don’t have to be compared (with each other) for elimination. My thinking is that this would require not only a very low amount of overlap in non-slate nominations, but also a very large number of well-disciplined slate ballots. Even in this case EPH helps some (by making their job much, much harder), but as you point out, it’s something we can calculate (or simulate), and would be very interesting to know.
By the way, someone asked up-thread about the 2015 ballot data. As yet, I haven’t received it. They may have tried to find me at the business meeting on Sunday, but I had to leave right after the 4 and 6 debate to catch my flight home, so they wouldn’t have been able to. I put in an email request, though, so hopefully I’ll get something soon…
Regards,
Kilo
@Meredith: Thanks for the info on Standback! (I do have a lousy memory for names!).
I don’t think they’ve had time/inclination to respond to my lengthy post, but I will try to tag them as disagreeing, but not a concern troll.
@Standback: I saw you answered the question about EPH–first, I don’t have the background to understand the programming/mathematics of it (english major, jim), but I’ve read quite a few of the explanations supplied by numerous people here, and while I don’t see it as a perfect solution, it strikes me as the best possibility on the table at the moment.
I do find it bizarre you could talk at such length without acknowledging its existence.
And I’m not finding your hypotheticals to be convincing–but others who actualy speak the language have responded to you in any case.
So we’ll just disagree then.
My understanding is that it was sadder and uglier than that. I haven’t been to Wiscon in a long time and I don’t think I will make a great effort to go back, which is a pity because I had some great friends there.
@Keith:
Thanks for popping in! Let me reiterate my admiration for EPH, and for the work you’re putting into it 🙂
If you have time, could you expand on this? I think I understand EPH reasonably well, and I remain concerned about this particular point. I guess this partially depends on what constitutes “a very low amount of overlap” and what constitutes “a very large number of well-disciplined slate ballots.” Chaos Horizon estimates the Rabid Puppies at over 500. Is that “a very large number”? We’re struggling with the 5% rule – is that “a very low amount of overlap”?
I’d absolutely love to hear more. Thanks so much 🙂
@rrede:
Heya, I’m basically on vacation chasing my toddlers around, and haven’t managed to get back to responding. Sorry about that :-/ I did want to answer, and I’ll try to over the next few days.
I think I addressed EPH extensively, although possibly not in every post I wrote in this thread. I’m not really sure what you’re saying here?
I agree that EPH is a huge step, and very much the right direction when it comes to discouraging slates. I’m looking forward to hear more from the EPH folks, particularly when they run the 2015 nomination data. But from what I’m seeing, it seems that even with EPH, the short fiction categories are very vulnerable.
You write: while I don’t see it as a perfect solution, it strikes me as the best possibility on the table at the moment. I agree with you entirely. But then the question is, is it good enough to solve the actual problem we have facing us? If it’s not, then excellent as it is, we need to avoid saying “oh, in 2017 we’ll have EPH and everything will be great.”
@Rick “You finally made me curious enough about the evil-Saul-Alinsky-playbook trope to find a copy of the book itself.”
Thanks, Rick. Given how often the Puppies have been coming along and telling us that Alinsky is our Bible, it’s good that *somebody* has actually read him.
Meridith,
I can see your point about the ditch bit. I did wonder if I might get sin binned because of it.
I admit to being a bit easier on nominees than a few of the folks here. If I like it, I will nom and vote for it regardless of its quality. There is no dividing line labelled Hugo Quality that books have to rise above. Better written works will probably score higher, but overall I see my enjoyment of a work as being evidence of its worthiness.
Seeing people say “I liked this, but it isn’t Hugo Worthy” seems odd. Sure there might be other works that are more Hugo Worthy, but if you have been entertained, isn’t that enough?
Sure there might be other works that are more Hugo Worthy, but if you have been entertained, isn’t that enough?
Speaking from the utterly green position of someone who will be nominating for the first time next year, no, not for me. I won’t be nominating anything that I finished and thought “well, that was pleasant enough,” I’ll be nominating the things that I finished and thought “Dang. DANG. That was something! Man, I wish somebody local had read it so I could talk about it with them!”
“The Long Goodnight of Violet Wild” did that for me. The Fifth Season did that for me. A couple of others have so far, and I’m keeping track so I can nominate them when the time comes.
Yes, me too. Often it’s the chunky prose or a wording that doesn’t really work. These days, I prefer reading English books in English because so very often the translation into German isn’t very good (mostly due to the fact that publishers don’t wnat to invest in good translations). Which is a pity. Then there’s also the fact that some writers (for example Mercedes Lackey or Charles de Lint) simply don’t get translated into German. Same with a lot of comics, especially French and Belgian.
On the other hand, there are some books where people say that the translation actually improved the quality of the writing (very often Twilight of Fifty Shades of Grey are mentioned as examples for this).
Translating Fantasy or SF comes with additional challenges, especially if the writer is a creative wordsmith and uses descriptive names or invents their own language. Harry Potter is a wonderful example for this. Do you translate the names or do you not? There have been some interesting articles on that question and on how different translators/publishers handled the issue.
@Daniela
Tolkien has several fascinating letters that discuss the translation of his invented names/cultures. By and large he seems to have preferred transliteration.
Translation is fairly easy to judge (my job used to be writing quizzes on books, aimed at assisting young readers, and it was surprising how difficult a mediocre translation could make it), but I don’t see a good justification for Best Translator. I’m willing to change my mind in the face of a persuasive argument. 🙂
Best Poetry would be interesting, but I know almost nothing about the field of sf/f poetry outside the filks that happen here. I suppose it depends on the volume, and that probably depends on whether awarding original work or filk-type fanwork is the aim.
I hope to use my nominations on work that I love rather than just like. I like lots of things, and I’d like to aim high.
@Tintinaus
Seeing people say “I liked this, but it isn’t Hugo Worthy” seems odd. Sure there might be other works that are more Hugo Worthy, but if you have been entertained, isn’t that enough?
Not for me. I draw a distinction between “just okay” and “entertaining” and “knocked my socks off.” For example, I recently read a military SF novel, The Machine Awakes, by Adam Christopher. I liked it well enough and felt it was a good example of its genre, with competent writing and some interesting ideas, but no more than that.
On the other hand, Elizabeth Bear’s Karen Memory, Naomi Novik’s Uprooted, and the book I just finished, Paulo Bacigalupi’s The Water Knife–all three knocked my socks off. Karen Memory was tremendous fun, Uprooted was dark and poignant and wonderful, and The Water Knife was a frighteningly plausible near-future SF thriller. I’m still thinking about them, and they’ll all be on my ballot.
So yes, for a lot of us there’s a significant difference between “entertaining” and “Hugo worthy.”
@Standback: hope the toddlers are not exhausting you too much—and that there is some real vacation in there!
No problem—I think we got some wires crossed earlier, and I am sorry for the concern troll cracks.
There’s also the fact that wow, this is one of the longest, fastest-moving threads in a while.
You did start discussing EPH (but not at the time I was writing my lengthy response to your response to my challenge). I did try to skim what you wrote, but it didn’t make much sense to me.
But then the question is, is it good enough to solve the actual problem we have facing us? If it’s not, then excellent as it is, we need to avoid saying “oh, in 2017 we’ll have EPH and everything will be great.”
I’m still not sure who the “we” is here—but I don’t think I have seen anybody saying it’s the perfect solution—and I’m also not sure if there’s only one problem. However, my original point remains: what other possible solutions are even being discussed seriously?
IF we have EPH in 2017, then it will be possible to see what it solves. From my perspective (which I’d define as old and cranky), waiting until there’s some theoretical PERFECT solution (“the perfect is the enemy of the good”) would be worse, and since (again from my perspective), the “problem” is a complex of human behaviors, there isn’t any easy solution or any single solution.
I think that the WSFS and the Hugo system have been lucky and somewhat privileged enough to be sheltered (relatively) from the cultural conflicts (I really really HATE the war terminology) that have been ongoing for a while in the larger culture and appearing in the SFF sub-cultures (more in some areas than others).
Since one of my areas of study is just those conflicts in sff (starting with Racefail ’09) and because of my own experiences as a fat queer woman in sff fandom (then and now), the….surprise?….shown by some of the regulars in the WSFS has been somewhat surprising. (I’m finding some of GRRM’s claims about the wonderful lovingness of sf fans to be a bit saccharine and rose-tinted and unrealistic too, but that’s only somewhat related.)
Things have changed. They will continue to change. From what I have read, the EPH is a good first step. Do you have any others to discuss?
No rush to answer—I’m getting ready for classes to start, am behind in everything, and have meetings most of tomorrow—I’ll be skimming through threads reading but have to limit myself to fun time on FIle 770. Plus there’s some new fun stuff to read which has to be squeezed into the schedule.
Ditto-ing the distinction between “just entertaining” and “good enough to nominate for a Hugo.” I find Scalzi’s stuff fun, entertaining, and almost compulsively readable at times, but haven’t seen anything I’d nominate for a major award. That’s true of lots of stuff–in fact, I have a System. The bookshelves in my bedroom are where I put the INCREDIBLE FANTASTIC OMG THIS STUFF IS BRILLIANT AND WONDERFUL AND EVEN LIFE-CHANGING stuff, and the bookshelves in the library are where “this is fun and I’ll probably re-read again sometime or used to read a lot in the past and don’t anymore but don’t want to give up.) There are about twice as many bookshelves in the library as in my bedroom. (Then there are my WORK bookshelves in my campus office and in my new home office). (My new Kindle apparently allows more categories than “author/recent/title” so I can now obsess about where to put things in that space, sigh).
So far as nominating goes, given the choice, I prefer to nominate things which grab me by the lapels and are so good that I have to nominate them. Where possible, I try to leave one slot in a category for a pick from my heart rather than my head, but if five choices I’ve read/seen are so good they have to be on my nominating ballot, then that’s what happens.
Over the years, my choices have seldom matched the final nominees in large numbers (I don’t think I’ve done better than three of the eventual nominees in any of the fiction categories). I’m fine with that. I’ve actually read quite a few things I just hadn’t read before the nominating ballot came out which were better than what I nominated. I trust that the fans taking part in the nomination process, nominating what they’ve read and liked, will pick nominees deserving of nomination. Even stories I’ve read which I would not have nominated or given a Hugo are still good stories..
That’s why this year has been disheartening. Way too many of the nominees were just not very good. I’m a fan of KJA’s work. I’ve been reading his stuff for more than 25 years. I hadn’t read his nominated novel when the ballot came out. I picked it up shortly after it got nominated. It was work getting through it, I put it down more than once and had to force myself to finish it. It saddens me that he got nominated for an over-written and average (at best) novel.
JCW’s work on the ballot ranged from enjoyable to unreadable and every single one of the stories was a “message” story. Most of the short fiction had a “message”, for all the protestations about message coming from the Puppy camps.
Up to this year, I’ve pretty much stayed out of fandom for more than 20 years. For good or ill, I’m back now. I’ll be nominating and voting next year and for the foreseeable future. I feel sorry for people like Resnick, Gilbert, Brozek, English, Weisskopf and others. But I can’t fault people for voting as they saw fit.
I hope this causes more people to take part in the process. The Hugos “belong” to the people who nominate and vote from year to year.
spellproof:
Your point seemed clear to me, and very interesting.
We don’t know how many of the the “strict No Awarders” were longtime Hugo voters, attending members who don’t normally vote but did this year, or people who signed up as a result of the controversy. I do think if someone signed up “for the controversy” to vote down the puppies without evaluating the work on merit, there is not much evidence (yet) that they are going to nominate and vote in a serious way in the future. I have no idea what percentage of No Awarders that is.
The terms come from this analysis:
https://chaoshorizon.wordpress.com/2015/08/25/2015-hugo-analysis-best-novel/
You and I fall in this middle area:
Since I voted two “puppy picks” (a novella and a fan writer) #1, or three if you count VD’s recommendation of 3BP, I guess that would make me a “Sad Puppy leaning Neutral” in Kempner’s analysis. I don’t know which category you fall in. The distinction is a bit fuzzy.
I’m not sure who you said that you were. But maybe now you know how the “puppies” felt when they were accused in such terms.
Tintanaus,
Of course I read what you said (and meant no offense). Did you vote No Award in #1 when you could have picked Mike Resnick who has got 37 Hugo nominations? Did you vote No Award over everything that appeared on one of the “puppy slates”? I don’t know if you did or not, but if you did, like thousands of others, you voted a slate which has been getting attention on the internet since April:
http://deirdre.net/the-puppy-free-hugo-award-voters-guide/
Yes, it is possible some people read the works Resnick, Sheila Gilbert, etc., have edited and came to the conclusion that those editors were not deserving of consideration for a Hugo. (I found it hard to rank them all so I left the category blank.)
Others, it is probably fair to say most, clearly voted for political reasons (whether to reject the tactic of slate voting by fighting fire with fire, or to object to something they didn’t like about the authors or the works).
Note this comment from Kempner:
Tintanaus,
I made it to your recent comment to Meredith where you stated your voting philosophy:
I take it that means you didn’t no-award all the “puppy picks.” So welcome to the Neutral Zone. Does it feel better? Now, how do you think the puppies feel?
The validity of Resnick’s latest nomination and low finish has little to nothing to do with his prior record as a writer or anthologist and everything to do with this:
Who here read issues of Galaxy’s Edge in 2014?
My first Worldcon cost me about $200 — DisCon II. Carpooled, shared hotel room, and had about $100 in my pocket to spend at the convention.
And I’ve been the person with their sleeping bag in the closet (MAC I) because I was the smallest fan, and sleeping there left the passage to the bathroom clear.
There are ways to do Worldcon on the cheap…even today.
Unless you’re really shy/awkward around people.
@Nick Mamatas:
I read one issue of Galaxy’s Edge last year, mostly to get a feel for the magazine, but also for a Larry Niven story. Though I doubt I would have nominated Resnick for E-SF for it, I wouldn’t have voted him below No Award based on its quality. It’s a good magazine which varies in quality from story to story-just like most magazines do. I read a fair amount of short fiction.
ETA: I take your point though, as I doubt many people have read the magazine.
I didn’t, and that’s one reason I left the category blank, since it wasn’t easy for me to evaluate those editors.
But you raise an interesting question. I see this language from the Hugo Awards website:
I have to say it isn’t clear (from that wording at least) that you are only supposed to evaluate their editing work in 2014 without reference to what they did in 2013, etc.
The name of the annual category makes it perfectly clear that one is supposed to judge the prior year’s work. It is why there is a year engraved on the plate.
But “at least one of which must have been published in the year of eligibility” makes it perfectly clear that the eligibility criteria require having a significant history of editing work. Why would that be the case if their past editing work is not relevant? You can’t call that crystal clear.
Brian Z: Here’s a simple hint: if someone demands an apology, then, if you genuinely meant no offense, you say “I’m sorry.” You don’t talk about all the ways you didn’t mean it or were misread until and unless the other person says they want to talk about it. Or, at absolute worst, until after you have apologized. And then you have to tread carefully so as not to walk back the apology.
As the all too familiar analogy goes, if someone says, “you’re standing on my foot”, you don’t explain how you never meant to be standing on their foot until you have removed your foot from theirs.
It’s absolutely crystal clear, Brian. One simply cannot edit a chapbook featuring one story by one’s best friend and then run for Best Editor, Short Fiction. That’s why prior experience is put in there. There’s no hint that the quality of prior editorial work is to be taken into account.
3.2.1: Unless otherwise specified, Hugo Awards are given for work in the field of science fiction or fantasy appearing for the first time during the previous calendar year.
There is nothing in 3.3.9 that specifies that previous work be judged, only that it must exist.
Resnick got on the ballot because he was on the Puppy slates. He was on the slates because he is Brad’s “Writer Dad.” (To his credit, he instantly denounced Beale as “certifiable” and wanted nothing to do with the Rabids.) The circulation of Galaxy’s Edge is minute. There is nothing else going on there.
@Standback
If you have time, could you expand on this? I think I understand EPH reasonably well, and I remain concerned about this particular point. I guess this partially depends on what constitutes “a very low amount of overlap” and what constitutes “a very large number of well-disciplined slate ballots.” Chaos Horizon estimates the Rabid Puppies at over 500. Is that “a very large number”? We’re struggling with the 5% rule – is that “a very low amount of overlap”?
Hard numbers? I dunno, but as someone pointed out, one of the good things about EPH is that we can find out fairly readily. I have my suspicions, just based on experience, but I’d rather just find out the answer. Once I finally get the 2015 data, that’s one of the first things I want to look into. EPH works because we assume there are some (10? 20?) favorites that many people liked. If there are no general favorites, then fandom as a whole really didn’t have a preference. In that case, one could argue that the slate — which obviously -does- have a preference — arguably deserves to win, or at least do well. I can, however, see a scenario (though an unlikely one) where we had dozens and dozen of truly Hugo-worthy works in a category, each nominated by just a few people. In that situation, I’m not sure how you’d pick a valid winner in any case. None of them are really better than any other.
Incidentally, I see some people focusing on points almost as though it were a way to express an order of preference for the nominees (“he gave this work his full point, while I divided it, so he loves his choice more”). That’s not really what points are for. Points are just the mechanism for transferring and concentrating support as fandom converges to the finalists. This is why (in general) points for surviving works increase each round, which is probably the single most important feature of EPH. As I mentioned in the debate, bullet voting (and I’m assuming you are voting solo and not colluding) doesn’t really help your favorite enough to matter. Low number of nominations, which you can’t increase, are what gets a work eliminated. Your favorite can have more points and still get beaten if the work it is being compared to has more nominations (see round 5 in in the PowerPoint linked on the business meeting agenda page for an example in 2013). The only way bullet voting can ever help is if you give your favorite enough points to put it into fourth place (or fifth, if 4 and 6 gets ratified) so that its nominations are -never- compared. You can only give at most an extra 4/5 of a point by yourself, and finalists will have 100-200 points. The odds of your 4/5 point being what’s needed to put your favorite in 4th place are really, really small — and you gave up the chance to nominate something else that you liked.
Kilo
@rrede:
Thanks, I appreciate that 🙂 I understand why my first post might have come across that way. No harm done.
I agree with a LOT of what you’re saying. I think EPH is fantastic; I think it’s going to make a big difference. I also think it’s a fantastic addition to the Hugos anyway, and I also love how straightforward EPH’s developers have been in saying “This isn’t a ‘slate detection’ fix, it’s not just about the Puppies; it’s a system that divides the ballot more equitably in the face of any large voting bloc, whether they’re intentional or not.”
All that being said, I also think the short fiction categories remain vulnerable to the Puppies, because nominations are too diffuse to match up against 500 or 1000 straight-slate voters – even with EPH. (We’ll know more with time; 2016 nomination data will be our best indication. If you’d like, I can try and explain why I’m worried EPH isn’t going to overcome the Puppies, and try to make those concerns clearer.)
And I also think we’ve got an outrage loop going on, one Beale’s fostering very deliberately, and we need to be looking for ways to tamp down on that. I don’t know of any good way to do that, but I think general awareness that it’s an issue is generally a good thing to keep in mind as we discuss and argue over the controversy.
@Keith:
Thanks! I agree with your description of the issue. Yeah, I guess I’ll just have to be patient and wait for the data. 🙂
I guess part of my question is how we extrapolate non-slate nomination patterns from 2015 to 2016. It’s not just more members nominating the same pieces, there’s a “number of unique works per nominator” that needs to be factored in (Chaos Horizon talked about this metric, and diffusion in short fiction nominations here). Ultimately, the difference in the voting body between the past year and next one may be too big to say anything meaningful before the 2016 nominations.
…OK, I might have to be patient until April 2016.
Nick,
Up until 2005, the requirement of four works didn’t exist.
The 2005 amendment:
The minutes have no discussion about “why prior experience is put in there.” I don’t know if the justification is online and I can’t download that 2005 zipped folder for some reason. But the apparent purpose in introducing the language “at least four (4)” is to mirror the language of the new Long Form category specifying four works.
You are mostly right, and I admit Galaxy’s Edge did have slightly more than four issues in 2014. But if the short form editor nominees included someone with only one collection in 2014, why not look at a couple of the past collections too since “four” is specified? Would “specified” have to be “including the words ‘four (4), and you are required to consider all four (4) of them'”? I just don’t think it was made completely clear how one is supposed to compare apples and oranges like a big monthly magazine and an occasional publication, is all.
Anyway. In the comment you were objecting to, I didn’t say that voters must have read Resnick’s work in ancient times before they can evaluate his current performance. Just that if they wanted to rank No Award #1, they might have taken a moment to think: “Hmm… this guy has 37 nominations – sounds like he’s a heavy hitter. I wonder if I should have taken a look at what he’s been editing before making up my mind that he sucks.”
Brian,
Why do you think pre-2005 rules have any bearing on 2014 rules?
Why do you think there was a change. Because it has become much much easier to be a short fiction editor now. I can get a friend to send me a story, publish it on my Livejournal and BOOM, I am an editor.
But if the short form editor nominees included someone with only one collection in 2014, why not look at a couple of the past collections too since “four” is specified?
Because the award is for work published in the prior year.
I just don’t think it was made completely clear how one is supposed to compare apples and oranges like a big monthly magazine and an occasional anthology, is all.
Most monthly magazines are pretty small these days—online zines run a handful of stories and limited features. Anthologies may or may not take up just as much time to produce.
Anyway, the same can be said for novels—is my work as an editor working with material in translation the apple to the orange of someone who works directly with authors to develop a manuscript, or is it the apple to the banana of someone whose boss just died and who gets handed a bunch of files that are 90 percent complete anyway?
Has it become “much easier” to have a print run of 10,000 copies?
The 2005 rules don’t have bearing now, but I wanted to understand why and how the change to “at least four” was made. It looks like the “10,000 print run” requirement had been intended to limit eligibility to a very small group of well-known “usual suspects” who approximately 100 percent of the Hugo nominators were quite familiar with and read on a regular basis. Nothing wrong with that, as far as it went. Which wasn’t particularly far.
Now, on the other hand, any old iron can be nominated and most of the Hugo voters have probably not read their work, nor would we know how to go about comparing vastly different kinds of editorial work, nor have all of us necessarily even heard of some of those people.
I think one can’t ensure “correct voting practices” in this kind of fan award category by legislation. It has to be done on an honor system. Nothing else works.
Frankly, I think that too much focus on the editing of the particular words that got printed or rendered on a page in the previous calendar year fails to get at the real point of best editor at all. I’d see the point as being “which of these editors has an exemplary vision for the field and has pursued it with a drive or passion worthy of praise from fandom?” Which is why I’d vote both for you and for the one who (as you put it) “got handed a bunch of files.” You are both worthy, in my book.
(I also think the split between Long and Short Form has become a bit silly and they could probably just get rid of it.)
Has it become “much easier” to have a print run of 10,000 copies?
No, much more difficult, though it became easier to have a readership equal to that number of copies via digital publication.
But back in the day, 10K copies wasn’t a big deal. Then the entire distribution system rationalized into a handful of firms doing most distro, and they responded to the new environment by slashing their lists.
Well… I think it would encourage people to read translations. There are enough conscientious Hugo voters that they would seek out the nominations and read them.
I think the role of a fiction translator is more than just the job of translation. In SF especially, where God knows you don’t do it for the money, especially in non-English speaking countries (the compensation for a book-length translation was back in my day about €3,000 – not bad if you take two months to translate a book, very poor if you spend six months over a Banks novel, as I did).
No, translators end up being the people who read a lot more of the field than is available in translation; they are the ones that need to be part of the community wether they want or can afford to participate in fandom or not. They need to know the writers they translate, they often communicate with them, they need to know the publishing field in their own country, and so on.
So come award time – and there is an award for Translation in Italy – they are voted on their popularity more than their skills. And that’s ok for me, even if it meant I lost a couple of awards.
There was an SFF Translation Award in the US, but it didn’t last, sadly.
http://www.sfftawards.org/
Heh. You know, Nick, you really had me going for a while there.
The award is for “work published in the prior year” only “unless otherwise specified.”
Best Editor is for a person.
All the awards go to people.
Hear, hear. Of course there are even starker occasions, I remember vividly the translation of Joe Haldeman’s Forever Peace where it seems the translator used a machine translation and then tried, and mostly failed, to knock it into shape. It was hilarious, but not in a good way.
Hear HEAR. In the end, I gave up translating, which I loved deeply and was good at, because it simply didn’t pay the bills, and would never in a million years have allowed me to move to London.
That is why I started to read in English, and also why my English became so good that it allowed me first to work as a translator and then to move to an English speaking country, which for Italians is pretty rare (or was then, things are changing now).
I am not saying anything. Especially about some of the books I translated. Nothing.
Yeah well, it depends. I am wildly in favour of neologisms, but not so keen on translating names and toponyms. But it depends. I can see why they did it in Tolkien. they did it badly, but I can see why.
That explains the coveted Best Author of a science fiction or fantasy story of between seven thousand five hundred (7,500) and seventeen thousand five hundred (17,500) words Award
Remember when you said earlier this evening that Resnick was nominated for or won many Hugos? Were they for Coolest Dude, or…?
The 2005 amendment limits eligibility to those editors who edited at least one thing in the previous calendar year – in other words, to editors who are currently active. But if you want to give it as a retirement present to a longtime editor you can do so on the basis of their whole career.