aka There are few things in this world that can simultaneously delight and dismay in the same manner as a Puppy dinner party.
The lead dog returns in today’s roundup which starts with Brad R. Torgersen, followed by the rest of the team, Brianne Reeves, David Gerrold, Adam-Troy Castro, Kristene Perron, Roger BW, Ace, EJ Shumak, Lisa J. Goldstein, Lis Carey, Barry Deutsch, Sarah A. Hoyt, Vox Day, and Jim C. Hines. (Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editors of the day Jim Henley & Morris Keesan, and ULTRAGOTHA.)
Brad R. Torgersen
“Fisking the broken narrative” – May 17
Someone forwarded me a copy of Kevin J. Maroney’s editorial from the April New York Review of Science Fiction. I don’t normally read Maroney’s column, and I don’t even normally read NYRoSF, but some of Maroney’s commentary screams BROKEN NARRATIVE at such a high decibel level, I thought it might be worth it to examine some of that commentary in close detail….
The only real way I see the Hugos being a “smoking ruin” is if the CHORFs fulfill their stated pledge to bork the 2015 awards by placing “NO AWARD” at the top of every category; thus no awards will be given. This will be an entirely self-inflicted wound (by the so-called devotees and cherishers of the Hugo) because clearly you have to destroy the village, to save the village. I mean, that’s just good common sense. If you love a thing and think it’s awesome, you absolutely must obliterate it — to keep it from falling into the wrong hands. Because this is what open minds and open hearts do. They destroy something they claim to love, so that something they claim to love can be kept pure. Because the “wrong” people must never be allowed to have it the “wrong” way.
If there is any other way to leave the Hugos a “smoking ruin” this year, I haven’t thought of it yet.
This is not to counsel despair. But we need to be aware that the battle against the arrayed forces of assholery will, at times, be unpleasant to watch and wearying to fight. But the fight is genuinely important, and it won’t win itself.
—Kevin J. Maroney speaking for himself
Thanks for the pep talk, Kevin! I agree with you wholeheartedly! The Forces of Assholery have been trick-or-treating at my virtual doorstep for 45 days and counting. They’ve smeared me, smeared my family, smeared my friends, and smeared Sad Puppies 3. Again, clearly the way the Forces of Assholery save the thing they love and cherish, is to be complete pricks to whoever they feel like, whenever they feel like, badger and threaten and cajole and shun and shame, all that good old fashioned 12th century village stuff. Torches and pitch forks! Tie them to the stake! Burn them! Infidels!
Or maybe “your” side needs to just settle down and vote on the ballot like normal?
Brianne Reeves on Bree’s Book Blog
“2015 Hugo Awards and the Sad Puppies Slate” – April 9
Politicking has always gone on at the awards, to some degree or another. We’re not so naïve as to be unaware of that. Authors and publishing houses have always campaigned for works to be chosen. After all, the Hugos does provide a sales boost.
However, the dominance of a slate that advocates the blind nomination of works based on political ideology is fairly unprecedented.
Because the voting population for the Hugos is fairly small, approximately 2,000 voters for the most popular category and much fewer in less popular categories, it’s easy to skew the results of the nomination process. And, of course, when it’s derailed and by a large, but distinct minority of voters, the rest of the community is going to be upset.
Slates themselves are problematic. They reduce the number of potentially nominated works, undercut the deliberations that go into the nomination process, and potentially flood the awards with non-vetted works (read: works that have not actually been read). This means that the stories we are awarding may be extremely obscure, non-representative of the genre and its advances, or non-representative of the stories readers want to consume.
It should also be noted that slates are distinct from suggested nomination lists. Plenty of people put up lists of works they think work well in categories and suggest their readers, friends, fellow SFF lovers read the list when considering who to nominate. To me, this is a distinctly deliberative act. It allows for people to read and decide on their own without suggesting or advocating blind voting (to me the biggest problem with slates). They are often include far more lists of works than the voter can nominate and act as a substitute longlist for readers. This is especially important for readers who want to sample and become more involved in categories like short fiction which have a much smaller readership.
The creation of a slate for political reasons is objectionable. What I will say here, is that the use of politics in this case is a limiting factor and detracts from the inclusive and representative goals we have for the Hugo. Again, they are within their rights to limit based on this factor, but I think that it suffers from a lack of consideration for new types of stories, and increasingly popular stories in the genre.
We all have limitations in our reading. Time, length, interest are all factors we have to balance. I think it is inkeeping with the spirit of the award, however, to push ourselves to read what we may otherwise ignore or not prioritize. As readers, we should always be pushing ourselves to empathize and expose ourselves to stories that are not familiar to us or that show a part of humanity we may not often see.
David Gerrold on Facebook – May 17
Yes, there has been pushback to the sad-rabid slates — because too much of the rhetoric from sad-rabids justifying the slates has not been about the merits of the nominated works, but about the context of the awards — the existing narrative, created by the sad-rabid supporters themselves, is that the slates are motivated not by merit, but by a political agenda. And the larger body of fandom has been appalled by that. That’s the source of the pushback. Not the mythological SJWs. Nor any other acronym of disrespect.
The Hugos are not awards for political correctness. They are not awards for any political opinion. They are awards for merit. They are a recognition of what the community deems as “best of the year.”
The awards are voted on by a large disorganized body of people — a continually evolving, changing, amorphous body consisting of whoever bought a Worldcon membership that year and felt likle voting. Sometimes you vote for a story, sometimes you vote for an author you like, and sometimes you even vote for a friend, but in general the awards represent a cross-section of the opinions of those involved in the Worldcon.
To ascribe any kind of conspiracy to a circumstance that is rooted in anarchy is to misread the evidence.
But … even more to the point, to expend so much time and energy on this effort has to be seen as an eyebrow raiser. Is this the most important thing you can be doing with your time? Reading some of the discussions, I’ve rolled my eyes so hard so many times, I can describe in great detail what the bottom of my brain looks like.
Real writers don’t worry about awards. Real writers write. (In my never-humble-opinion.) Real writers don’t worry about feuds. Real writers write. (IMNHO.) Real writers cherish their time at the keyboard as so precious that any distraction at all is seen as the enemy.
Adam-Troy Castro
“On the Roar of Approval For Self-Defenestration” – May 17
You’re a decent person. You really are.
Oh, sure, you have some bad habits, some irritating beliefs, some things you do that get on the nerves on people around you. But by all the low bars, you’re a decent person. You don’t molest children. You don’t attack people with broken bottles. You don’t set bombs. You’re good to your family and polite enough to people who are polite to you. In some ways, you’re admirable. Even noble. Your worst enemy, considering the way you live your life, would acknowledge it.
But then we get to the part of you that is objectionable. You’re just a little bigoted, just a little misogynistic, just a little homophobic, just a little xenophobic – any one of those four things, to some level, in some combination.
You are not any of these things to the degree of all-out, full-bore toxicity. They are trace elements, the same things that many of us have. Maybe they are a bit stronger in you than they are in some people who we would consider more enlightened – and maybe you have many compensating virtues.
As a character flaw, this is like a managed medical condition, in that it is possible for you to live with it comfortably, and for you to control it without causing too much offense to others, possibly even without them being visible to others.
But here’s the problem. You then surround yourself with the wrong people.
Kristene Perron on The Coconut Chronicles
“The Evolution of Cinderella” – May 17
There is one aspect of the Sad Puppies I am interested in, however, and that’s the assertion by many of their supporters that the sci-fi of old was better, purer, and more important than its modern day incarnation. Men in space ships, having adventures and solving problems with technology, that is “real” science fiction.
Anyone who waxes poetic about any kind of halcyon age makes me roll my eyes. And, when it comes to stories and storytelling, that kind of “Back in my day…” thinking is absurd. By such standards, Cinderella would forever and always be the story of a commoner marrying into royalty because the original was the “true” version regardless of social changes. In the 1600’s, the original story of Cinderella was subversive. In the 2000’s the original story of Cinderella is irrelevant.
I can and do still read and enjoy the “old time” science fiction stories, sexism and racism be damned, but my world has evolved and I expect stories written today to reflect those changes. If Crocodile Dundee was made today and the crotch grabbing scene was still included, I would boycott the movie and I would encourage everyone else to do likewise. There’s still room for stories of men in spaceships, having adventures and solving problems with technology but, given social changes, how could anyone complain that there is also room for science fiction stories of women and non-binary genders of all colours having adventures in all kinds of places?
Roger BW’s Blog
“Thoughts on the 2015 Hugo Awards” – May 15
But forget about the specific politics of this case. What institutional slate voting gets you, no matter how well-intentioned or how much it is aligned with your own views, is political parties. Nothing can get onto the ballot unless it’s part of a slate, so the people who run the slates become the kingmakers; any author who wants any chance at an award has to get in with one of them. (We’ve already seen popular works getting knocked off this year, and once the full nomination totals are revealed after the awards are made we’ll have a better idea of what missed its one chance at a Hugo.)
For this reason I will be voting “No Award” over any slate-nominated work this year, and I shall probably not bother to read it either. I’m glad to see that some of the slate-nominated authors have had the grace to withdraw once they found out what had been done, and disappointed that so many of the others haven’t.
In the long term, I don’t believe changes to the nomination procedure are worth it: technical solutions to social problems rarely work. Getting more people to nominate seems like a worthwhile effort. Clearly not all that many people are actually reading SF short stories in magazines any more; should Hugos even be awarded for them at all now?
Ace at Ace of Spades
Sunday Morning Book Thread 05-17-2015 [OregonMuse] – May 17
As we talked, I told him about Ace’s interview with Larry Correia concerning the Sad Puppies controversy in that by pursuing this strategy the publishing houses are ignoring huge markets of people willing to buy books and are cutting their own throats. He broke in saying, “I know, I know…But look…you gotta stop thinking. Just stop thinking! Thinking about all this will drive you crazy! Don’t go to bookstores, if they even still have any where you live. Don’t look at other books. You’ll just wonder how in the world this thing even got published,” and then told me some more anecdotes about how the sausage is made…
It was sad. He’s a good guy, and was just as frustrated about it all as I am, but he’s stuck fighting a bunch of Goliaths who only look for certain types of books (that support the current narrative and are framed by the postmodern cultural marxist analysis of race, gender, class) and is left trying to sneak in what stories he can, however he can.
EJ Shumak on Superversive SF
“WorldCon Members review GOBLIN EMPEROR” – May 17
First we will look at the positive response to this novel, comprising about 25% of the group. Bill, after reading all the other nominees, believes that this work will be at the top of his Hugo award list. He likes politically based tomes and enjoyed this iteration of that concept. Though the book was, admittedly, not what he had expected, he had a pleasant experience and was very positive overall.
Another vocal supporter had much good to say about the concept and purpose to the book. In many ways his reasons for liking the book paralleled the reasons others disliked it. He felt it exemplified white privilege imposed upon black (or Goblin) society. He felt we need to consistently look at and focus on our societal problems with racism and sexism. He felt we should examine these problems deeply, while assuming ignorance. While agreeing with another reader that the work was truly a lecture, he asserted that it was “…a lecture we need to have…”
The rest of the group was solidly in full disappointment of the work. Several people actually opined that this kind of lecture and message fiction was the best possible justification for the sad puppies’ slate. Mike loved the story through to the middle and then it overcame him to the point that he observed he could now understand the sad puppy position.
Lisa J. Goldstein on theinferior4
“The Hugo Ballot, Part 10: Novellas” – May 17
[“One Bright Star to Guide Them” by John C. Wright.] …Tommy goes to his old friend Richard but discovers that Richard now serves the Winter King. There’s a battle with the king’s servants, and at the chapter’s end “the smell of the sea filled his nose, and Tommy could neither see nor breathe.” We don’t get to see what happens next, either. Instead, unbelievably, the next chapter starts with Tommy meeting another of his old friends, Sally, and telling her what had happened. It’s as if someone had taken an entire book, cut out all the interesting parts, and published the rest. (Amusingly, in “John C. Wright’s Patented One-Session Lesson in the Mechanics of Fiction,” included with Wright’s stories, he stresses the importance of “showing, not telling” to the narrative.) Gradually, though, the story grinds to a start. It becomes the usual fantasy quest: Tommy has to go various places, do various things, collect various objects….
Lis Carey on Lis Carey’s Library
“Flow, by Arlan Andrews” – April 17
As the opening section of a novel, this is great. As a complete novella nominated as a complete story, not so much. I don’t think it’s asking too much that a nominated piece actually fit its category in ways beyond arbitrary word count. This doesn’t. It’s not a novella; it’s a novel fragment.
Barry Deutsch on Alas
“A Quick Primer For Those Who Wonder What The Issue With Slate Voting And The Hugo Awards Is” – May 17
THREE POPULAR PROPOSALS TO REDUCE THE INFLUENCE OF SLATE VOTING
Many have suggested that all that’s needed to reduce the influence of Slate voting is more voters, that is, for a larger number of people to vote in both rounds of Hugo voting. However, since Slate Voting is a strategy that mathematically allows a collectively organized minority to overcome the preferences of a disorganized majority, I don’t have much confidence in this proposal. (Although it is a nice idea for other reasons.)
Another proposal is the 4/6 proposal, in which individual Hugo voters can only nominate four works per category, and there will be six nominees per category. In this case, rather than a successful slate controlling 100% of nominees in each category, it will only control 66% of nominees in each category. If there are two slates, then the most successful slate will control 66% of nominees, while the next most successful slate will control the remaining 33% of slots. This seems like an insufficient solution, to me.
The proposal I favor is “Least Popular Elimination,” in which voters could still nominate up to five works per category, but the votes are counted in a way that mathematically favors works that appear on the broadest number of voters’ ballots while diluting (but not completely eliminating) the power of slate voting. A detailed explanation of “Least Popular Elimination” voting is available here. While LPE voting is not as intuitive as the other two proposals, I believe it would be more effective
Sarah A. Hoyt on According To Hoyt
“The Privilege Of Not Caring” – May 17
So who am I betraying by not conforming to the baneful Marxist stereotype of who I should be? Oh, right, the SJWs. That’s okay, I’m fine betraying them. Or at least fighting them. Hard to betray what you never belonged to. And, you know, most of them, even those with exotic names and claiming exotic identities (rolls eyes) are pasty-assed white people with real privilege as defined by having money and having attended the best universities and hanging out with all the “right” people and having the “right” (left) opinions. If they knew the meaning of the word privilege, they’d see it all over themselves.
But there are more egregious definitions of privilege. You see “check your privilege” is a tool of would-be elite whites to keep competition and challengers in check, while riding to glory by defining themselves as champions of the downtrodden. (It’s an old game, in place at least since the French revolution, but it’s the only one they have. Remember they lack both empathy and imagination. And since they have more or less overtaken the press, no one on the street realizes how old and tired this “clever” gambit is.)
Vox Day on Vox Popoli
“Sexism and ideological bias in science fiction” – May 17
TOTAL: 65.7 women have won 24.7 percent and 19 conservatives have won 7.1 percent of the 266 Hugo Awards given out since 1996. This is despite the fact that conservatives outnumber liberals by a factor of 1.6 in the USA, which means that conservatives are underrepresented by a factor of 11.3, versus women being underrepresented by a factor of 2.
Now, if the SJWs are to be believed, sexism is a serious problem but there is absolutely no evidence of left wing ideological bias. They keep repeating this despite the fact that the anti-right wing bias in science fiction is observably 5.6 times worse than the purported sexism about which they so often complain.
Jim C. Hines
“’Do You Wanna Take The Hugos?’” – May 16
[First of two stanzas]
To the tune of “Do you want to build a snowman?”
Brad
Larry? Do you wanna take the Hugos?
Come on let’s change the game.
I’m tired of those liberals
Like criminals
Who steal our rightful fame!
This used to be our genre
But now it’s not.
They make all the puppies cry.
Do you wanna take the Hugos?
(And also puff up both our egos…)
Discover more from File 770
Subscribe to get the latest posts to your email.
ULTRAGOTHA – It’s very very good and very very relevent to their interests.
Which ones? The Hunger Games are popular but I’d argue about it being good, the world built in those books make no damned sense. Half a King was very good, but aside from it having a younger character coming of age and accepting responsibility there wasn’t anything YA about it, by those parameters The Goblin Emperor is a YA book.
Movie tie-ins: Would 2001 have counted? 😉
@Matt Y: “Half a King was very good, but aside from it having a younger character coming of age and accepting responsibility there wasn’t anything YA about it, by those parameters The Goblin Emperor is a YA book.”
YA is whatever is published as YA. It is not any more complicated than that.
Matt Y –
Try my list of authors above. Start with Diana Wynne Jones or Robin McKinley or The Abhorsen series by Garth Nix. (Disclaimer, I have not yet read Clariel and do not know how it holds up to the others.)
@lori — that’s a great statement. Thank you.
@Laura
Excellent. And now I must suggest THREE-DOGGY PROBLEM.
YA is whatever is published as YA. It is not any more complicated than that
It is when you’re trying to determine what sets it apart in order to distinguish the category. I read Half a King and had no clue it was listed as YA, just saw an Abercrombie book, ditto The Graveyard Book. Because it’s listed as such seems a weird definition.
Perry Rhodan may not have won a Hugo, but the series and its authors featured in a track of programming at the 1990 Worldcon in the Netherlands. More here auf Deutsch…
@ Aaron – And yesterday, Brad Torgersen claimed on DAW publisher Betsy Wollheim’s wall that DAW being overlooked in the Hugos is another wrong that Sad Puppies is trying to redress.
Let’s walk through this slowly.
In 2014, DAW editor Sheila Gilbery was on the ballot for Best Editor. She was also on the ballot for this in 2013, a year in which a DAW book was on the ballot for Best Novel, and different DAW writer was on the ballot (multiple times) in non-novel categories. In 2012, DAW editor Betsy Wollheim won a Best Editor Hugo in 2012, a DAW writer took home a Hugo for Best Fan Writer, and another DAW author was on the ballot multiple times in non-novel categories. Dan Dos Santos, who has done many DAW covers (including most of mine) was on the ballot all three of those years for Best Professional Artist.
But in 2015? There’s not a single DAW author or artist on the ballot, and there were none on the Puppy slates. (And, no, Puppies, don’t point to the slate-pick of Sheila Gilbert on the 2015 ballot. She didn’t need Puppying to get on the ballot, since SHE WAS ON IT in 2013 and 2014. You’re not getting a DAW editor ON the ballot, but you do apppear to be keeping DAW authors and artist(s) –off- the ballot.)
So heres hoping the Puppies stop “helping” DAW.
Jim Henley:
Sure it is. What about something published as both YA and non-YA? (Actual example: the later Harry Potter books were simultaneously published in both categories. The Orange Prize given to Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was specifically awarded to the “adult” edition.)
@lori You know, that thing of there being so many fewer books is a big one. Albums used to be like that: you could like the Rolling Stones or the Beatles or a couple of other biggies, but everybody knew the main ones, and your only choice was to know them really well if you wanted to argue about them. Even within the limited field of SF/F, I really can’t see how anyone could begin to actually keep up these days, let alone have common knowledge to argue about. I used to rely on things like the Hugos to help me, but even that’s becoming a thing that’s too big for anyone to really know inside out. On the one hand: a great problem to have. On the other…
There is the occasional original media tie-in book. Usually when this happens the people who own the property do all they can to make sure it never happens again.
Points to @laura for first use of “puppy” as a verb I’ve seen.
Well, a gerund, anyway.
@Matt Y: “It is when you’re trying to determine what sets it apart in order to distinguish the category. I read Half a King and had no clue it was listed as YA, just saw an Abercrombie book, ditto The Graveyard Book. Because it’s listed as such seems a weird definition.”
I submit it’s the opposite of a “weird definition.” But I won’t waste your time by trying to get you to agree on the point right this second. I will say that if there’s ever a YA Hugo category, voters will have a reason to notice such things.
Also, I am now seeing a happy externality: WordCon members asking their kids what they should nominate and/or vote for in the category. Fandom fun for the whole family!*
*I realize many fans don’t have teenaged kids, or any kids. That’s fine. Many fans don’t read short fiction. Those fans don’t vote or nominate (one hopes…) for Best Novelette. Presumably, voters who don’t read or have a family connection to readers of YA fiction won’t vote or nominate for it either.
But I didn’t go out and try to brute-force a nomination procedure to exclude works of that type from the Hugo ballot, nor did any other Fen.
Interestingly, over in the Nebulas the grognards orchestrated a None of the Above to punish the Orbit series for being too good. (you have to scroll down to comments: look for Dozois).
http://www.tor.com/2011/02/20/hugo-nominees-1971/
@Jack Lint, I am reminded of Bill Gates’s aphorism “A’s hire A’s; B’s hire C’s.”
Hugo nominated novels from the last 20 years that might qualify as YA.
Brightness Reef by David Brin
Jack Faust by Michael Swanwick
The Rise of Endymion by Dan Simmons
To Say Nothing About the Dog by Connie Willis
A Civil Campaign by Lois McMaster Bujold
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by You Know Who
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by The Usual Suspect
Hominids by Robert J. Sawyer
Ilium by Dan Simmons
Singularity Sky by Charles Stross
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Morell by Susan Clarke
Spin by Robert Charles Wilson
Accelerando by Charles Stross
Redshirts byJohn Scalzi
Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance by Lois McMaster Bujold
Throne of the Crescent Moon by Saladin Ahmet
(This represents 16 of about a hundred. However, I haven’t read everything, and I can’t very well consider what I haven’t read. Of course, I am assuming YA is for teenagers rather than children.)
“The Hunger Games are popular but I’d argue about it being good, the world built in those books make no damned sense.”
Are you suggesting that when a decadent elite ruling class presides over a restive rural population, it might not be the best idea to conscript randomly selected minors to engage in combat to the death on reality TV?
@ Will: “Even poor VD sounds harried sometimes.”
I want a citation.
Whenever he pops up, he appears to be having the time of his life and reveling in all the attention.
@rcade Well, when you put it like that…
Will: “So my question is this: I can’t believe it was any less difficult in fandom in the late ’60s. Would you agree? And if so, do you have any insights on how the community negotiated that?”
I will start the ball rolling as best I can, anyway. In the late ’60s, as always, the world included people who were BOTH politically and culturally conservative, and some who were only one or the other.
SF fandom in general was prone to attract people who were interested in the expressions of what was then called the “counterculture” — rock music, sex outside of marriage, bawdy humor and art, underground comics, antiwar sentiment, New Wave sf, etc.
And as a corollary, fandom attracted some people who enjoyed sf, and were politically conservative but sympathetic with the manifestations of counterculture. The attraction of sf fandom generated enough social gravity to keep everybody in the same orbit, yet they did not necessarily all feel aligned. As an illustration, though it dates to much later, I remember running Westercon programming in the early 1980s and scheduling Jerry Pournelle talks with complete confidence he would pack a room, while at the same time there would be fans avoiding and scoffing about the item.
Addendum: Not all of the puppy nominees are badly written or poor choices. I read Annie Bellet’s “Goodnight Stars” and liked it very much, and I had started reading the first book in Marko Kloos’ series (in preparation for Lines of Departure) and liked it quite a bit too. Very distinctive voice for the narrator and nice worldbuilding in the initial setup (I was at the point where he was just leaving Earth to join up with the military when Kloos dropped out and I decided to put the book on the back burner to concentrate on active nominees).
Hey guys, it’s mid-May. Since we’ve all resolved to be more attuned to eligible short fiction this year, please let me know any eligible novella-on-down stuff you’ve read so far that you personally consider nom-worthy. NB: No interest in being pointed to the Wiki that’s trying to track all eligible works. I’m interested in specific stories that have made you go, “Hey now!” Title, author, venue. Seems like it might be a fun topic.
@ Nate Harada : “Some organizations do give out awards for media tie-in fiction.”
Yes. And I don’t object to the assertion that media tie-in can be good or award-worthy.
I object to the notion that media tie-in is so similar to original fiction (in terms of creation, editing, world-building, characters, premise, the possibility of accurate attribution for its contents, etc.) that it should be in the same category as the existing Best Novel for Hugos. I think it’s apples and oranges (which was also what I thought of having an entire multi-book series last year as a nominee in the Best Novel category).
Just a note: Jack Faust is *not* YA, unless YA has gotten a lot more explicit and warped since I was a YA. 🙂
@laura Oh, I’m probably running a risk of touching a live rail here, and maybe I’m reading into it, but sometimes there are these notes where you can almost hear him pulling out his hair in exasperation that it hasn’t completely succeeded yet. (FWIW, I think he honestly can’t see why Aristotle doesn’t “work” on people.) And then there’s a post about the composting book where he really does seem to think this symbol of all that’s Hippie is fascinating anyway, or a statement about dogs going to heaven that actually doesn’t sound intended to be ironic, or a mention of Newhart (imagine Vox Day, king of all evil, sitting watching Newhart), and I think, he gets tired too, and the mask drops a little. Absolutely none of which makes me feel for him or his project, but I think the out must always be there. He’s human.
Steven, have you read Nina Kiriki Hoffman’s Catalyst?
@Petréa Mitchell: “Sure it is. What about something published as both YA and non-YA?”
Sorry, I missed this first time round: “something published as both YA and non-YA” is clearly published a YA. It is also published as something else, but it’s for certain published as YA. So it counts as YA.
In practice, conrunners are going to have no more interest in gatekeeping the YA-ness of YA noms than they are in ruling on the SFnicity of short story nominations. YA will end up being whatever the nominating members consider to be YA. But publishing categories make a perfectly good first approximation to go by.
rcade Are you suggesting that when a decadent elite ruling class presides over a restive rural population, it might not be the best idea to conscript randomly selected minors to engage in combat to the death on reality TV?
Well that too. But they’ve clearly shown that they have the technology to clone and genetically create entirely new animals along with vasts swatches of vegetation in a completely controlled environment within the space of just a year for a televised game, I wondered what the point was of having a rural population doing the mining and farming at all. They could literally make new species for that direct purpose, the book never seemed to stop and question the moral ambiguity of such or potential environmental impact of such. It was like the author decided it would be cool to have in the book even though it undermined the entire society she created and made everyone in it look like they should be wearing safety helmets at all times.
@ Aaron: “Correia has been flogging the “Hugos for tie-in novels” horse since at least SP2. He’s been boasting about how awesome the tie-in novel he’s writing will be at the same time. ”
Ah. Okay, THERE’S a little light shed on the Puppies’ burning desire to see Hugo recognition for media tie-ins….
Matt Y: It’s not like elites haven’t been ridiculously, almost insanely self-destructive and oblivious before.
Milt – Hugo nominated novels from the last 20 years that might qualify as YA.
But unless they were published as YA, they apparently don’t qualify as such. It’s goofy.
I said it in another thread, but well written YA is being honored already and has been nominated in the past, there’s no need to set a kiddy table, as long as they’re good they’re welcome at the adult one.
There are a few individual tie-in novels I’d have nominated in their respective year; Paul Cornell’s ‘Human Nature’, for example, was better than the Hugo-nominated episode that adapted it, and Kate Orman’s ‘The Left-Handed Hummingbird’ is a terrifyingly intense first novel. But that was during a period where the Doctor Who series was being left alone to do whatever it felt like because it was off the air, and that’s no longer the case. (Ditto with Trek right after the 60s cancellation.)
But in general, there’s just too much caution and oversight to make me think you’ll see many Hugo-worthy tie-ins.
My apparently controversial claim cashes out as, “The publishing and bookselling industries exist*! And it’s their business to get books in front of the audience they think most likely to buy them. They spend all week modulo PTO trying to do this. If they think a book has teens as its primary market they are going to make a point of saying so.”
* Yah yah massive changes yah yah time of transition etc. Sure, absolutely! But even in the era of Goodreads and self-publishing, the people bringing a work to market have an incentive to reach the right readers.
@ Ultragotha: “I’m not convinced by your arguments as reasons not to vote for tie-ins for Best Novel.”
I see your point. The award is “Best Novel” and it’s not ever subtitled “based on how the novel was created.”
But (I’m repeating myself now, but here goes) I nonetheless feel that media tie-in and original fiction are so dissimilar in terms of how the sausage is made that, if there were to be Hugo recognition for a tie-in, it should be nominated in Best Media Tie-In. In much the way that I think if a multi-book series is to be nominated, it should be in a Best Multi-Book Series category, rather than as 3-6-12 books being entered into Best Novel (as happened in 2014).
“Steven, have you read Nina Kiriki Hoffman’s Catalyst?”
I have not. However:
(spoiler warning)
I generally don’t think of YAs as including parades through downtown Wittenberg as the women of the town are stripped (virtually) of their garments while Mephistopheles explains exactly what would be required to get each one into bed, for example — or threesomes as political manipulation.
I might be wrong; but I guess I don’t see if Jack Faust is YA, why there is a separation of categories at all; there’s nothing in it that marks it as different.
Bruce – It’s not like elites haven’t been ridiculously, almost insanely self-destructive and oblivious before
In 75 years of The Hunger Games no one managed to realize the resources they used for a game to kill children might better their own existence? The starving people in the books never bring it up even. That’s not insanely self-destructive, that’s just moronic.
And as a side-note for “Best Tie-In Novel”: If it had been an award, it would have gotten Mike Ford some Hugos, which would be a good thing.
(As a side note: the World Fantasy Awards, while admittedly not the Hugos, had no problem awarding “Best Short Fiction” to a poem — the aforementioned Mr. Ford’s brilliant “Winter Solstice, Camelot Station.”)
@mike Thank you–that is fascinating stuff.
“The attraction of sf fandom generated enough social gravity to keep everybody in the same orbit, yet they did not necessarily all feel aligned.”
It’s really interesting to me how you put this–very carefully, I am guessing. Which I love. The other day I was thinking about the quote from Hamlet:
“I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.”
I love the concept of space that’s getting played with there–it’s metaphorical space, exactly, if I’m interpreting correctly, the way you’re describing.
Does that seem right? That maybe there was a sense that we had more space for different alignments? I’m very interested in how folks got that view, because it’s always challenging (human for it to be challenging). Maybe the dreams are on my mind in part because I’m most of the way through Lathe of Heaven. In any case, thank you again.
Jim Henley: Great idea! I have two so far:
Novella – What Has Passed Shall in Kinder Light Appear” by Bao Shu, F&SF, March/April 2015 issue
I won’t spoil it because I liked the way it gradually crept up on me what the author was doing, but it posits a China where the narrator is an old man remembering the 2008 Olympics opening ceremony as the high water mark of Chinese and world development, and the downslope that follows. Probably not for everybody, but I was very drawn into both what he was doing with Chinese history, and the story of the characters themselves.
“The End of the War” by Django Wexler (Asimov’s June 2015) Military SF with the last exhausted remnants of two sides fighting a drawn out war of attrition. Suspenseful and moving.
There are 3 other novelettes (or novellas, not sure how you tell the difference) in that issue of Asimov’s and I found all of them very readable, though one (“Ghosts of the Savannah”) didn’t feel very SFF at all other than it was maybe set in precolonial Africa, or maybe on another planet all together but it could just as easily have been a historical setting. “The Ladies’ Aquatic Gardening Society” was amusing and very much in the “fantasy of manners” subgenre.
“Our Lady of the Open Road” was about one of the last of the touring rock and roll groups in a near future post economic downfall/post peak oil America. Good worldbuilding, but the story itself didn’t do much for me.
Of all of them, “The End of the War” has stuck with me and is on my list of stories to remember come nomination time next year.
BTW do we assume that the SF mags’ categorization of works as novellas or novelettes fits with the Hugos’ categorization? Because otherwise how are we supposed to know whether we are nominating in the right category without counting the words ourselves? (God that would be tedious….)
@Milt Stevens: Redshirts as YA? Spin as YA? Charles Stross as YA?
These things are not YA.
Sorry, I missed this first time round: “something published as both YA and non-YA” is clearly published a YA. It is also published as something else, but it’s for certain published as YA. So it counts as YA.
The only time I’ve encountered this was with Coraline by Neil Gaiman. It had both an adult edition and a YA edition. The clerk in the bookstore advised me to buy the YA edition because it was cheaper.
cmm: Thanks! That’s exactly the sort of thing I was hoping to get. I really appreciate your taking the time to share your enthusiasm.
Matt Y: On the other hand, there’s solid science going back most of a century showing, irrefutably, the costs in wasted effort and avoidable damage that has to be repaired from working more than about 45-50 hours per work week…and yet in many sectors, working more is both necessary because of how labor is structured and a source of active pride. It’d be like people glorying in untreated running sores, but it happens, and it’s proven essentially not possible to get anyone in authority to take it seriously nor even to let a lot of workers know that they have a grievance.
Social folly is a really human thing.
(I went with this one rather than, say, global political and economic response to climate change or the state of the financial sector and its propensity for 2008-style disasters because it’s less partisan.)
In 75 years of The Hunger Games no one managed to realize the resources they used for a game to kill children might better their own existence?
The denizens of the Capitol seem to have had things pretty good. They didn’t seem to suffer any lack in terms of material comforts. The rulers of the Capitol were deliberately oppressing the people in the Districts with the games because it was politically expedient to do so.
Jim Henley: One thing the Puppies thing has done for me was to push me to go back to reading SF magazines so I have at least some knowledge of works to nominate next year. I have been so into reading these last couple of weeks that I have watched exactly 2 TV episodes and 1 movie; I’ve spent all my free time in the evenings reading instead. (It does help that 3 of those nights we didn’t have electricity so movies/tv were not an option). I probably watch much less than average but that is low even for me. Although all of them could have been considered genre — an episode of Game of Thrones, an episode of Doctor Who, and an Indian movie that involved a ghost running for political office.
I know you don’t want a Google doc but aside from my own reading, I’m trying to work up a list of anthologies with original fiction published in 2015. Right now I’m just using Amazon as a source but I will probably reach out to publishers at some point to make sure I have as complete a list as possible. With all the self-published stuff though, it’s really hard to know where to draw the line in terms of too small/unknown to consider (adding everything is cluttering up the list bigtime) and also in determining if material is original or previously pubbed.
Happyturtle on May 18, 2015 at 10:35 am said:
@Milt Stevens: Redshirts as YA? Spin as YA? Charles Stross as YA?
These things are not YA.
Why not? I don’t recall these books being heavy on sex or violence. I could have read them as a teenager. I would have liked Stross because I always like funny stories. I would have thought Redshirts was OK. I would have had my doubts about Spin, but I probably would have read it.
@Matt Y It’s that they’re so greedy and evil! Seriously, the games are pretty minor in the overall scheme of resources. And they work so well…
I look at them kind of like the “wars” in 1984…keeping people divided and occupied.
There’s also a good metaphor in there about making people complicit in their own abuse. The longer it goes on…
I don’t recall Jack Faust being explicit about sex or violence. Of course, the Faust myth is dark, but who says teenagers don’t like dark stories. Hunger Games seems darker than the Faust legend.