By Chris M. Barkley
HATE: it has caused a lot of problems in this world, but it has not solved one yet.
–Maya Angelou
In the waning hours of July 31, my partner Juli Marr and I submitted our ballots for this year’s Hugo Awards. The next morning, I attended the funeral mass of Margaret Kiefer, a longtime member of Cincinnati Fantasy Group. As I sat and filled out my ballot, I could not help but think of the life she led, my life in fandom and the events leading up to Puppygate.
Margaret Ford Keifer worked as the principal’s secretary for Loveland City Schools for over 30 years. She was also a volunteered her help for the Loveland Historical Society Museum, the Cincinnati Pops, and a longtime member of the Loveland Women’s Club. In addition, she was a member of St. Columban Church for 58 years. Margaret was a founding member of the Cincinnati Fantasy Group and attended 66 consecutive Midwestcons, the last of which she attended this past June, just weeks before her death. She was also the last surviving member of Cincinnati’s only Worldcon, Cinvention, which was held in 1949.
At Margaret’s service, I heard several testimonials to her strength, fortitude and devotion to her community. Warren McCullough, one of her former school principals lauded her as the woman who saved his educational career. Several previous principals had left recently and he was the third hired in three years for a troubled elementary school that no one wanted to send their children. He described that first meeting where he was introduced as being very tense and after what he called a “rousing call to arms” to save the school, his speech was met with dead silence. At that point, Margaret Keifer, who was seated in the front row of the assembly, stood up and faced them down and loudly declared, “I will follow this man…and I will take the first bullet for him, too!” McCullough stated that his career as an educator took off after that incident and was incredibly grateful for her support.
Her parish priest, Father Lawrence Tensi, adamantly refused to call her a mere volunteer, but as true disciple in the purest sense of the word, as one of the few people in the community who could be counted on time after time to organize, work and deliver whatever was needed.
Contrast this with Mr. Beale, who, on the surface seems to have some moderate amount of talent as a writer, editor and publisher, who has gone out of his way to trumpet and advance notions of homophobia, sexism, racism with provocative slander, libelous insults and threats, wildly delivered with what I can only describe as a pseudo- intellectual flair. However, those talents, which could have been used for the betterment of literature and culture, are instead being used to soil and defame it. Beale’s latest attempt at seeking attention, a worldwide call for a boycott of all TOR authors and books, is as pathetic as it is futile.
All of the activities of the Sad and Rabid Puppies might have been easily laughed off, had they not made good on their threats and effectively gamed the Hugo Award nominations this year.
Millions of words have been spilled, pounded, spit out, spit upon, leveraged and expounded upon this subject by thousands of commentators, bloggers, pundits and literary critics since the nominations were announced.
I tell friends and acquaintances that are not familiar with sf fandom that this is not the first fannish feud to spill out into the consciousness of the public, nor will it be the last. With internet connectivity, hair trigger tempers and the willingness of people to stay up WAY PAST their bedtimes to correct stuff on the internet, it is certainly the most public display of asshattery in fandom that general public has ever seen.
I consider what Brad Torgenson, Larry Corriea and Theodore Beale have collectively done, is a direct attack on what fans, writers, editors, publishers and literature itself. And I consider this attack on fandom and the Hugos is a personal attack against me.
My involvement with the Hugo Awards began back during my high school days, when my good neighbor Michaele loaned me her copy of the SF Book Club omnibus edition of The Hugo Winners Volumes 1 and 2 edited by and with introductions by Isaac Asimov, which covered nearly all of the short fiction winners from 1955 to 1970.
(A side note: I wish all of the Hugo winning stories were still readily available, if not in book form, at least as inexpensive ebooks or linked online, so that everyone can appreciate the wide spectrum of authors, stories and styles that have won over the decades.)
These stories blew away my teenaged mind. What I completely ignored at the time were Asimov’s references to the conventions themselves. They referred to these World Science Fiction Conventions, were held in different cities in the US and overseas but not where future conventions were going to be or how to attend them.
Eventually, in 1976, my best friend Micheale and I found our way to the 27th Midwestcon and found out firsthand what conventions were all about. I missed the 1976 Worldcon, MidAmericon in Kansas City, but I attended the first of my 26 Worldcons the next year in Miami Beach.
Over the years, I have volunteered my time to help or head up various Worldcon Press Offices and other duties on 17 occasions, charged with trying to explain fandom and the Hugo Award to the mainstream press of the host city and accommodate fan writers as well.
However, I feel as though my important contributions to the Hugo Awards have come in the last sixteen years. I, along with a number of fellow fans and activists in fandom have been at the forefront of some of the fundamental changes in the Hugo award categories.
We fought for these changes, to the Best Dramatic Presentation, Best Editor categories and the creation of the Graphic Story and co-sponsoring the Fancast category were necessary to keep the Hugos diverse, fairer, engaging and most importantly, relevant in the 21st century.
I must admit, I was in a somewhat of a state of shock when the nominations were formally announced back in April. Almost immediately, some factions inside fandom wanted the Hugo Awards suspended immediately or stopped altogether. Others have organized to either shun or vote No Award in all the categories where Sad/Rabid Puppies nominees are dominate.
Then, as the story spread, news outlets, pundits and commentators outside fandom started to weigh in; Salon.com, Slate, National Public Radio and even the National Review went out of their way to get a grip on what most of them characterized as the ‘geek culture war’.
I do not believe in destroying the Hugo Awards in order to save it.
I repudiate the No Award movement and those that support it. I believe that a No Award given in any category damages the prestige and reputation of the awards. I will vote No award above a nominee in a category ONLY if I can determine if it is warranted by my personal standards and taste, NOT because it was part of a knee jerk reaction to what has happened or for any other political concern. Those who do so blindly, without any consideration of the work itself, are, in my opinion, NOT ethical votes. (And I can report that I cast at least one vote for a nominee in all of the fiction categories.)
Secondly, when an institution is under attack, you fight back. Not with irrational hate speech, subversion of the voting rules and threats but with reasonable speech, more impassioned defenses and more democracy.
I am heartened that from what I have observed, our communities of fans, authors, editors and artists have collectively risen above this controversy. The Puppy movement and their supporters wanted to prove a point; that a small number of voters can impose their will on an unsuspecting public. They have wholeheartedly made their point.
However, in doing so, the Sad-Rabid Puppies have lost the war. Despite their fervent claims, I think the tide of public opinion has turned decidedly against them. Fandom does not have to obsess about the Puppies and their overall effect because whatever influence they had has waned as the controversy has played out.
Their seemingly endless displays of ignorance, buffoonery, arrogance has not gained them any more traction or supporters for changing or eliminating the Hugos. Since the beginning of this crisis, Supporting Memberships for Sasquan were sold in unprecedented numbers. It is my fervent hope they were bought for the sole purpose of voting for the Hugos this year. I also hope that on the night of the Hugo Ceremony, those of us who have opposed this farce will be vindicated.
Science fiction, fantasy or literature as a whole, is not about the future or the past. It is all about the time it is written. It is about the consequences of change, for good or for ill. There will never be any definitive, wholesale agreement from anyone on what it means, what it should contain or what stands for; that’s a debate for historians, literary critics, fanzines and bloggers.
Personally speaking, I don’t believe in applying any sort artificial means of affirmative action to either the voting process or the awards, as the Sad Puppy contingent has asserted with their actions. And, if you think these sort of controversies all come from the conservative wing of fandom, I offer this, an amendment that was briefly considered by the 2009 Worldcon Business Meeting:
4.3.3 Short Title: Female Hugo Award Nominees
Moved, to amend the WSFS Constitution by inserting the following
into the end of Section 3.8: 3.8.nIf in the written fiction categories, no selected nominee has a female author or co-author, the highest nominee with a female author or co-author shall also be listed, provided that the nominee would appear on the list required by Section 3.11.4
This amendment, proposed by a feminist blogger named Yonmei, who was not in attendance at the convention and Hugo Award winning fan writer/editor Cheryl Morgan (who was). Yonmei conceived it as a way to spark a debate at the Business Meeting about the lack of women on the ballot and described on her blog this way:
…it occurred to me cheerfully that as a WSFS member, I could propose an amendment to the Hugo rules. A sort of Joanna Russ amendment. An “up yours!” amendment to all the fans so smugly certain that the only reason there are so many all-male shortlists in the Hugos is because men are just more excellent writers of SF/F than women are: if women were as good as men, this reasoning goes, there just naturally would be equal numbers on average from year to year.
As I recall (and anyone can verify by going to www.thehugoawards.org), the 2007 and 2008 ballots were particularly top heavy with male nominees. In retrospect, it would have been an interesting debate but a majority of those attending voted down the opportunity to debate the issue. I can only tell you that I voted against it because I did not believe that imposing a rather extreme measure at that point in time was unnecessary. I believed those nominations were aberrations and not the result of systemic sexism on the part of the fans voting.
Had she done any research at all about the history of the Hugo Awards, Yonmei would have known that these fans that she deemed as clueless, had also given the award on multiple occasions to the likes of Anne McCaffrey, Alice Sheldon (writing as James Triptree, Jr.), Ursula K. LeGuin, Vonda McIntyre, Susan Wood, Kate Wilhelm, Joan Vinge, C.J. Cherryh, Connie Willis, Lois McMaster Bujold and a host of others.
We can only speculate what Ms. Russ, a writer I admire and respect, would have thought about such an amendment. (For the record, I am of the opinion that there would have been a gratuitous amount of eye rolling on her part.)
You can read more about this kerfluffle and draw our own conclusions from this link from Mike Glyer’s File 770: https://file770.com/?p=1304
Take particular note of the exchange of messages between Yonmei and Jo Walton. It is typical exchange between someone who feels that her dogmatic approach and theory is superior to the experiences of the person who is actually in the situation. Dogma and opinions do not win arguments, logic, reason and facts do.
(You will also note, with some measure of irony, that Jo Walton went on the win the Hugo and Nebula Awards for her 2011 novel, Among Others.)
I never talked Margaret Keifer about Puppygate. I don’t even know if she was aware of the situation. I am fairly certain, knowing her, that she would have thoroughly disapproved of the actions of the Puppies. Her life‘s story stands in stark contrast to everyone involved, especially Theodore Beale’s.
I do not obsess about it but I have been wondering whether he really understands that a life is a legacy for those who follow him.
There is room in fandom for rational discussion, debate and even dissent. There is no room however, for empty rhetoric and false conjecture, death threats, bullying, hateful and blatant racism, sexism and gay baiting, which is what the Sad Puppies now stand for, forever tarred with the same brush as and the Rabid Puppy crew, whether they like or not.
Moreover, this means that while we may have to listen to the inane and idiotic diatribes of Theodore Beale/Vox Day, we do not have to endorse or accept them.
Margaret Keifer’s life is an exemplary example of what every fan’s, every person’s life should be.
What Theodore Beale and his followers have forcefully shown, is that they are incapable of empathy, kindness or human decency.
They have my pity, and little else.
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The Hugos were wrecked because bad writers were writing crap, but they were winning awards for conforming to cute ideas of inclusion.
Oh, which stories were those? I’m sure you’ve read all of the nominated works over the last five years or so and can tell us which stories had “cute ideas about inclusion” but were not good SF/F. Please, list those out and let us know how they won because of their cute ideas.
It’s fine to have stories with people of all sorts in them; the problem is the stories were very stupid, and often not SF/F at all.
Often not SF/F? Which ones? I’ll give you If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love as a freebie (even though I think it was SF/F enough to merit inclusion). Which of the other stories nominated over the last half-decade weren’t SF/F? You did say “often”, so you better have a large list of non-SF/F stories nominated for the Hugo over the last five years.
Here’s some math for you: Over the four prose categories in a period of five years, there should have been roughly 100 nominees (there are a few less than that due to a couple of short ballots in the Short Story category). How many of those were not SF/F? 50? 40? I’ll bet you can’t even point to five.
WE DON’T CARE.
You don’t care so much that you came over to write an angry fact-free screed in which you ran your mouth a lot, but probably don’t have the facts to back up your bluster. I’d say you care quite a bit.
The usual intent of those who troll is to incite an overreaction that they hope embarrasses their target(s) and cause a distraction. Thankfully, the law of diminishing returns also applies to trolls, and by now the Puppies’ routine has gotten old. Yawn.
I confess I would also offer Wakulla Springs (one paragraph at the end teasing an actual creature from the black lagoon) and The Ink Readers of Doi Saket (an oriental setting, a society that believes in the power of wishes, does not make it fantasy) as freebies.
And they didn’t win either. Odd that.
nickpheas: I confess I would also offer Wakulla Springs (one paragraph at the end teasing an actual creature from the black lagoon) and The Ink Readers of Doi Saket (an oriental setting, a society that believes in the power of wishes, does not make it fantasy) as freebies. And they didn’t win either. Odd that.
I’d second your judgment on these. I was utterly mystified at Wakulla Springs‘ nomination. An enjoyable story, yes; SFF, absolutely not.
I could make a bit of a case for Ink Readers, which I really liked and thought did have more of an element of fantasy to it.
The Ink Readers of Doi Saket (an oriental setting, a society that believes in the power of wishes, does not make it fantasy) as freebies.
I didn’t like Ink Readers much (I ranked it last on my ballot in the Short Story category last year), but I recall there being more fantasy elements than that – didn’t some sort of water goddess creature thing kind of appear? Its been a while since I read it, so I may be misremembering.
Oh, and this suggests a disastrous misunderstanding of what the Hugo voting process involves.
Aaron : “Aww, you Puppies are so cute when you try to use big words and concepts you don’t understand.”
Dan : I think you protest too much. Evolution has reproduction at its core.
Reproduction of what, Dan? Not organisms, but the genetic information contained within those organisms and in related organisms.
As Aaron says, you’re using big words and concepts you don’t understand. I have to disagree with him though – racist fuckwits aren’t cute.
Zach: Our grandparents fought Hitler; you guys sent an angry tweet to Hobby Lobby.
Nigel: Oh, and this suggests a disastrous misunderstanding of what the Hugo voting process involves.
Not to mention being untrue. My grandparents fought Hitler, too, and my father served in another war. The idea that Puppies are somehow better people than the people they scorn as “SJW”s, because of anything their ancestors have done, is laughable.
I’ve contributed both a fair bit of money and a considerable amount of my own time and energy to efforts to improve human rights. You gamed the Hugos. I’m sure you’re very proud about your contribution to humanity.
@Zach,
Aren’t you a clever parrot, here, have a peanut.
Astonishingly, one’s grandparents fighting Hitler does not actually mean one fought Hitler oneself by some genetic transitive property. One is still required to go and have one’s own achievements.
Aaron : Homosexuality evolved into each of these species, so pervasively so that not only is it impossible to say that homosexuality is “against evolution”, it is almost a certainty that it is an inevitable result of evolution.
Consider – the most successful species on the planet is the ant. The vast, vast majority of ants never reproduce.
Consider – the limiting factor on early human populations would never have been the ability of the group to reproduce – it would have been the ability of the group to find enough food during the periodic lean times. This may be why we evolved pan-sexuality to begin with.
Jayn : Anyone with the slightest understanding of what evolution actually MEANS might realize that that having an occasional homosexually oriented human in your bloodline might therefore be an advantage.
Or, more simply, that having a strong sexual drive in your bloodline which occasionally produces homosexual offspring as an epiphenomenon is an advantage. Or having the potential for sexual bonding with different genders in your bloodline is an advantage. Or…
@Zach
Here’s the last five years of Hugo winners. Tell me which ones were crap and why they won their awards for conforming to cute ideas of inclusion? I’m comfortably certain that you haven’t bothered reading any of them.
2014
Ancillary Justice
Equoid
The Lady Astronaut of Mar
The Water That Falls on You from Nowhere
2013
Redshirts
The Emperor’s Soul
The Girl-Thing Who Went Out for Sushi
Mono no Aware
2012
Among Others
The Man Who Bridged the Mist
Six Months, Three Days
The Paper Menageria
2011
Black out/All Clear
The Lifecycle of Software Objects
The Emporeror of Mars
For Want of a Nail
2010
The City & The City/The Windup Girl
Palimpsest
The Island
Bridesicle
You caught us. This is all about our lacking in Hitler. Or, you know, the idea that you can keep more than one thought in your head at a time.
Yes, but we’ll try not to hold your blind allegiance to Vox Day and his publishing house against you.
…as long as you ignore us voting in a bloc for what we were told to vote for.
Nah, we’re mostly just laughing at you constantly pretending that you’re victims, this is a war, and that this is anything greater than a group being duped using basic outrage tactics to put more money in the pockets of their ‘leaders’.
Had to read ‘Wisdom from my Internets’. That pretty much was my definition.
We don’t care so much we’ll post blocks of texts showing just how little we care! And your words are nothing to us! NYAH! I USE THE CAPSLOCK OF NOT CARING, STUPID SJWS!
Baah.
Repeating what RedWombat said earlier: A fine crop of trolls. Getting a bit dry though. Needs watering.
As for Uganda and Zimbabwe (and really, Dan, you want to be lauding those two countries?), as Kathodus said, the major push behind their anti-gay rhetoric has been the US fundamentalists.
Also, evolution: it is not, as you seem to think, a positive force upon individuals. To be fair, it’s been popularized in this way, but evolution is simply the lack of fatal effect upon a population, not on individuals. Genes like those causing Huntington’s or Duchenne’s are not eliminated from the population despite being fatal diseases, because there’s no evolutionary push to remove them. Similarly, human behaviors — although polygenic in origin — are not eliminated from a population, because there’s nothing to stop a homosexual from propagating offspring. Although you’re afraid of things that are different from you, which is very clear in your attempts to troll this board, there’s nothing abnormal about homosexuality, nor of transgender people. What’s abnormal is your red pill-ish community attempting to drop “reality bombs” when none of you have the remotest connection to reality.
@Zach – So how does your revolutionary cadre differ from this “cozy circle of conformists”? Maybe if you explain your wonderous literary aesthetic to us barbarians, maybe you could win us over. As far as I can see, you are all bark and no bite.
@Ginger – When the trolls get as high as an elephant’s eye, it’ll be harvest time.
…some of them strike me as being pretty high already.
So, I’m going to bet that we never see Zach again. Anyone want to bet against me?
WE DON’T CARE. We don’t care about being outnumbered. We don’t care about the names you call us. We don’t care about your feelings. We don’t care about your stupid little club of cozy conformers. We don’t care when you lie. So keep right on bleating.
If that’s the case, Mr. Zachary, why are you even here?
I certainly don’t care (as in “give a shit”) about Mr. Beale. This means that I NEVER go to his blog to comment. The fact that you dropped in here to post this frothing little screed means that you are, in fact, lying through your teeth.
If y’all really didn’t care, you’d put together your own awards and go off to your own little island forevermore. After all, if you don’t care, why would it matter to you if the Hugos are taken over by SJWs and/or Tor? You’d just write them off and do your own thing.
But you aren’t doing that, are you? Hmm…..
Brian:
A long, long, long list of people, here and elsewhere?
Kyra:
The history of arranged and political marriage would seem to smack that one on the head.
Also rape, but then, when he says “people,” he seems to mean “men.”
I’m almost absolutely certain that Zach has never put on a military uniform of any kind … whereas I have.
he’s living vicariously through Brad T and he-who-must-not-be-named …
try doing something for yourself Zach, but that would involve moving out of your mothers basement … so .. no
The Hugos were wrecked because bad writers were writing crap, but they were winning awards for conforming to cute ideas of inclusion.
Unsupported claim that Hugos are affirmative action awards: Check.
It’s fine to have stories with people of all sorts in them; the problem is the stories were very stupid, and often not SF/F at all.
Unsupported claim that Hugoes are going to stories that aren’t even genre: Check.
we know that in the absence of any real injustice to fight, you guys will make crap up.
Projection absurdly lacking in self-awareness: Check.
So for those of us not content to let Tor and their marketers do our thinking for us, we’re damn well going to vote for what we like.
(Or for what some blogger tells us we like…)
Tor is the cabal that secretly runs the Hugo awards: Check.
WE DON’T CARE.
Claim of unconcern which he generously shares with us because otherwise we’d have been totally unaware: Check.
Yeah, i’m concluding this guy is a Puppy supporter.
@Dex
And to save him having to prove his other main point, the unseemly dominance of Tor in those years:
2014: Tor 3, others 1
2013: Tor 1, others 3
2012: Tor 2, others 2
2011: Tor 0, others 4
2010: Tor 0, others 5 (wow, two Best Novels and Tor couldn’t even steal one of them)
As I’m not the first to point out, Tor seems to have done better since the Puppies came along. Maybe it’s the weaker competition.
@Kurt:
Which (a) explains a lot about his behavior toward Lydy, and (b) doesn’t surprise me at all. (Actually, I’m sure he thinks women are people, albeit inferior ones. But his subconscious may be begging to differ.)
@RedWombat: Ayup. Although my daddy told me it was when the trolls were high enough hide the hippos, it was time to harvest. He may have been kidding; we don’t have hippos around here. Just mean crayfish, and snapping turtles. How high is an angry elephant’s eye, anyway?
@Ginger – I suppose it depends what the elephant is looking at…
Snapping turtles, oof! First time I saw one of those jump, it shocked the bejeezus out of me. Turtles shouldn’t be able to jump like that! I could understand the hissing, but the damn thing nearly levitated.
@Richard Brandt
They obviously weaponized Irene Gallo for this year’s go-round. But fear not, for Grant tells us that his embargo is totally working!
I missed the trolls, now they are gone and I can’t play with the trolls 🙁
Camestros Felapton wrote
Oh, did we harvest them too soon? I hate green trolls. Sour, bad for the digestion, and get mushy too fast.
Snapping turtles are effing scary. Truly, I would rather vaccinate the lions with a syringe pole than deal with snappers, especially the alligator snapping turtles — you know, the ones with long snaky necks so they can whip their heads around?
@Ginger
How high is an angry elephant’s eye, anyway?
Depends on if you’ve been watering them. I saw a movie once about watering elephants but that’s all I remember.
Astonishingly, one’s grandparents fighting Hitler does not actually mean one fought Hitler oneself by some genetic transitive property.
Both of my grandfather’s fought Hitler. One of them even went off and fought Tojo after spending some time fighting Hitler. Do I get a button or something?
Crossposted with permission from Patrick May over at Making Light: (LINK) – the following text is Patrick May’s post:
I finally got some free time to run some tests on EPH vs Slates. For those not wanting to click, the results from the 1984 data in the Novel category are:
With 43 slate ballots (10% of the number cast) added, the result would have been identical to the actual 1984 result.
With 85 slate ballots (20% of the number cast) added, one slate work would make the list, bumping off “Millennium”. This is quite different from the current rules where only “Startide Rising” would remain out of non-slate works.
With 128 slate ballots (30% of the number cast) added, two slate works would make the list, bumping off “Millennium” and “Tea with the Black Dragon”. Again this is quite different from the current rules where the only non-slate work remaining would be “Startide Rising”.
Even with 170 slate ballots (40% of the number cast) added, both “Startide Rising” and “The Robots of Dawn” would remain on the nomination list under the EPH rules. Under the current rules, slate works would sweep the category.
In the Short Story category:
With 28 slate ballots (10% of the number cast) added, the result would have been identical to the actual 1984 result.
With 57 slate ballots (20% of the number cast) added, two slate works would make the list, bumping off “The Peacemaker” and “Servant of the People”. This is very different from the current rules where less than 15% of the voters could sweep the category.
Even with 113 slate ballots (40% of the number cast) added, “Speech Sounds” and “The Geometry of Narrative” would remain on the nomination list.
@Cassy/Patrick May – My, that’s an improvement!
@Cassy B
Thank you very much for posting that, and thanks to Patrick May for doing the work. Looks like (very broadly) in the various scenarios EPH saves several works from being slated away compared to the traditional system, e.g. 1 slate work instead of 4, 2 instead of 5, etc. As everyone keeps saying, the issue is not whether EPH fixes the whole problem, but whether it is noticeably better than the alternative, and here is yet another set if tests that shows it is.
EPH is the best of the technical solutions proposed, and clearly superior to making no change.
Well, what we got to know is that the puppies are totally uninterested in Science Fiction. No talking about what books they liked, what they nominated, what they will vote for, what kind of movies they like, what they like in them.
Just some random attacks and a totally weird discussion about homosexuality. So they are here for the trolling and nothing else. As we already knew.
RedWombat: Turtles shouldn’t be able to jump like that! I could understand the hissing, but the damn thing nearly levitated.
I saw a box turtle do that once. It was startling, all right. (He’d just had the back end of his carapace bitten – hard – by another box turtle.)
@ Lydy
Wow, you were amazingly reasonable and courteous to somebody mansplaining your own life to you. If it had been me, there would definitely have been expletives.
And I suppose Dan’s sexism forms a nice symmetry with his racism and homophobia.
sez Zach on August 6, 2015 at 11:20 am:
I’m sorry, zach, but this just isn’t enough to persuade me that you really are completely disinterested. Maybe if you post, oh, I dunno, say 5 more messages’ worth of “I DON’T CARE! HONESTLY I REALLY AND TRULY DO NOT COME WITHIN A COUNTRY MEGAPARSEC OF CARING!! SEE ME NOT CARE AT YOU!!!”, that might be enough evidence to overcome my cruel doubts regarding your absolute, utter and complete, isotopically pure LACK OF INTEREST.
At least they stuck the flounces. That’s one of the more difficult things to pull off in trollnastics.
Aaron : Both of my grandfather’s fought Hitler. One of them even went off and fought Tojo after spending some time fighting Hitler. Do I get a button or something?
I have you beaten – MY grandkid actually killed Hitler. Twice. Or will kill him – the tenses get a little confused.
Well my dog dug a hole into an alternate reality, convinced Hitler to stay in Liverpool and set up an art school and eventually his daughter replaced Pete Best as the drummer in the Beatles (Ringo ‘Our kid’ Hitler).
Dan and Zach pretty much perfectly encapsulate why the Puppies’ support will always be small. They are like MRAs and GamerGaters in that when they spread their message to the world at large, most people look at them and say “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
Richard Brandt said
I thought it was, like, chocolate for elephants?
My dad didn’t exactly fight Hitler; Goering did drop some bombs near him, though. As a cadet in the Air Training Corps, my dad was training at Biggin Hill when the Luftwaffe paid an unexpected visit. He didn’t quite get to the slit trenches fast enough, and copped some shrapnel in his leg, which was enough to end his flying career before it got started. Waste not, want not, though: since he’d run away from home at 14 to become a fisherman, the RAF put him on one of their Air-Sea Rescue boats, to fish aircrew from both sides out of the Channel. He never talked about it, but it’s quite likely that he extracted more than a few too late to help, took them ashore to be buried.
Mmm, sorry, I got distracted, somebody said something about fighting, I think?
Cassy B.,
Let’s walk it through. I am going through this once more not to darken your skies with a cloud of winged harbingers of evil, but because you and a couple others (including maybe even Abi Sutherland!) seem genuinely perplexed with my comments and are trying to have a conversation.
When I’m served with replies, hold the posturing and I’d like an extra side of sincerity.
The written justification for EPH introduced as new business at Sasquan formally asserts that a “slate” (a nebulously defined pattern of campaigning for a number of items per category approaching or equal to five), quote, should, unquote, be able to get some things on the ballot. A common presumption here seems to be that no true fan would actually do so. (And many seem to presume that most of their fellow right-thinkers would use the no-award option when it happens. We’ll find out.) However, by justifying EPH in these terms, the amendment is doing the exact opposite. It is sanctioning if not actually encouraging future bloc voting campaigns. Under EPH rules:
1) in the best-case scenario, RP organizers and all other “slaters” past, present and future will spontaneously cease slate campaigning even though the Worldcon membership has formally sanctioned the use of that tactic, and simply leave you in peace.
That doesn’t make sense. If “no more slating” is the desired outcome, it would be more logical start by resolving that campaigning for slates is considered unacceptable by the membership.
Heck, you could even amend the rules to state that if any nominees reach the final ballot as a result of lockstep voting (perhaps defined as most ballots having four or more identical nominations in a category) they are disqualified, period. Why not, if that’s what you want? It would be (at least) consistent!
2) In the second best-case scenario, SP realizes the errors of their ways and does a NESFA style recommendation list, and RP goes it alone with a similar slate like this year. You have now handed them a way to get 1-2 novels, 3-4 short stories, 4 novelettes, etc., while taking the moral high ground because you have already told them it is OK. Meanwhile you have 1 non-slate novelette and 1-2 non-slate short stories etc. for you to consider as Best of the Year. Meanwhile, how does the rest of fandom react? Do they organize bloc voting too? Probably. You’ve told them it is OK. If I have to witness such a ridiculous state of affairs, personally, it would be hard not to be tempted to lead the charge for the Small Beer Press Slate to ensure some Small Beer items make the ballot in each category, or a Lavie Tidhar Slate (to Tidhar’s horror I’m sure!) to ensure adequate representation for international authors. Hell, at the speed Ken Liu can translate cutting edge Chinese works, one could agitate for a couple hundred Chinese voters to ensure sure that Chinese novelettes, editors, fan writers and Related Works are never shut out of the awards again. Could there be a few hundred fans in China, Hong Kong, Taiwain, Singapore, and the global diaspora with an active online presence and a credit card who might like to see their favorite authors, editors and bloggers recognized?
But Scenario #2 isn’t very likely, because RP initially wasn’t going to copy the SP3 “slate of recommendations” model. The RP organizers were going to try to burn down the awards. They were talked out of doing that as a result of another group within fandom (the SP3 organizers) having a civil conversation with them and persuading them not to do it. (Remember that part.)
3) Next time, RP will do something else. This is the only likely outcome. It is the only outcome you are not preparing for. EPH potentially introduces all kinds of other wildcards that you cannot see just by modeling 1984 data or faux 2013+slate data. And if RP again raises the black flag in the future, what will the reaction of the rest of fandom be? If this is really what you want, you ought to prepare better. Hence the foghorn.
More FUD from Brian Z, I see.
“FUD-In-The-Mist”
Brian Z:
I sincerely believe you are being disingenuous and you are full of shit.
Mind you, full points for the previous “every vote is sacred and must be counted” debater smoothly moving to a view of “slate voters shouldn’t get any nominees”.
@MickyFinn, that’s a bit mean.
Our resident Deeply Concerned and Very Worried individual is simply operating under the Brad “I have Very High Standards for OTHER People” Torgersen model
In order to lie about EPH, Brian is lying about the fundamental problem with slate voting. He is arguing, in fact, style over substance. The problem with slate voting isn’t that it’s icky, tacky, crass, or otherwise distasteful. The problem is fundamentally that of enfranchisement. Slate voting permits a small precentage of voters to overwhelm the majority of voters, getting a disproportionate number of their choices on the final ballot, and disenfranchising voters not aligned with a political party. EPH is, fundamentally, about enfranchisement. It’s not about controlling people’s choices, behavior, punishing slates, or any of that noise. It’s just an attempt to preserve proportionality in the final ballot.
Apologies to all who are bored with this, and know all this.
MickyFinn I said ruling all lockstep ballots are disqualified would “at least be consistent” – I didn’t say it is a good idea. At least it wouldn’t sanction “slate voting” like EPH does.
Brian Z:
And there it is. Sad Puppy Brian Z, still with a sad puppy as logo on his personal blog, wants the slates to win. Nothing new. Move on.
This is an odiously untrue statement which has, I suspect, two goals. The first is to confuse and alienate WSFS voters who might be sympathetic towards EPH. The second is to force supporters of EPH to bloviate about the horrors of slates, so as to provide fodder for the puppy mills.
EPH is a mathematical solution to a mathematical problem; how does one adequately represent a diffuse body of preferences in the presence of a politically polarizing force? The act of nominating for the Hugos is not, primarily, a political act. The puppies turned into one. EPH attempts to ameliorate that, without indulging in additional political action. Ironically, of course, it requires engaging in the political process to depoliticize the nomination procedure. Where two or more are gathered together, there are politics.