aka Recent studies have shown that approximately 40% of authors are sad puppies. The rest of us just drink.
Today’s roundup delivers alisfranklin, John C. Wright, Alexandra Erin, Kevin J. Maroney, Betsy Wollheim, Dave Freer, Lela E. Buis, David French, thezman, Eric Flint, Joe Sherry, Scott Seldon, Lis Carey, Lisa J. Goldstein, Larry Correia, Jeff Duntemann, and Declan Finn. (Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editors of the day Tuomas Vainio and Laura Resnick.)
alisfranklin on Unassigned Readings
“As for gaming the Hugo Awards it is surprisingly…” – May 18
You want to talk about slates of nominees and culture wars and take-overs? Fine, let’s talk about that. Because you know what I want to see for the 2016 Hugo awards?
I want to see Welcome to Night Vale up for awards in Best Novel and Best Dramatic Presentation. I want to see Stephen Universe and Agent Carter and whatever anime is big right now. I want to see Homestuck. I want to see something from the OTW and I want at least one videogame up for Long Form and one DLC/expansion up in Short Form. I want to see fanfic writers and fanartists up for their categories. I want to see someone get nominated purely on force of their Tumblr.
Whether or not I like the individual nominations doesn’t matter. I just want to see them, because seeing them will tell me the Hugos are relevant again. That they mean something to kids who were born after the invention of the personal computer, let alone born this century. You want to talk about logrolling an awards ceremony? Tumblr fandom is orders of magnitude bigger than the voting pool for the current Hugos. If y’all want those awards, they’re yours. No old greybeard muttering about “true fans” and “golden age SFF” can take that away from you. Literally not; by numbers alone there just aren’t enough of them.
John C. Wright
“WSJ on SJW” – May 18
A lamebrain and lazy Wall Street Journal article: http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-culture-wars-invade-science-fiction-1431707195
For any reader without the patience (or the nose-clothespin) to wade through this, the summary is: “We asked two white guys with lots of awards and they said the system was fine and the Sad Puppies are pulp-writing carpetbagging racists.”
First, the issue is not about literary fiction versus pulp adventure fiction. The Social Justice Warriors do not write literary fiction, they write boring lectures and finger-wagging trash. They are members of a clique who have controlled the awards for about a decade.
They excuse the poor craftsmanship of their meandering tales by claiming them to be written to erudite and aethereal literary standards beyond the grasp of the hoi polloi. (Or they would say, if they were literary enough to use phrases like the hoi polloi (a Greek remark!), or drop Gilbert and Sullivan allusions casually into their sentences.)
For the record, I write literary fiction, and Larry Correia writes pulp, and he and I are on the same team.
Alexandra Erin on Blue Author Is About To Write
“Situation Normal: All Fisked Up” – May 18
So Brad Torgersen, leader of the Sad Puppy campaign for this year, has a post up on his blog called “Fisking The Broken Narrative”. Fisking, for the uninitiated, is an art from in which one takes a written work, quotes the whole or majority of it in-line, broken up with zingers a la Mystery Science Theater. At least, that’s my understanding of the typical fisking. The Sad Puppies seem more inclined to just rant and rave in the interstices, and Torgersen in particular spends more time reacting to what it would have been convenient for his narrative for the source editorial to have said than he does responding to the actual text…..
Mr. Maroney, the individual whom Torgersen was attempting to fisk, did in his source attempt to gently clue the Puppies in to the inadvisability of labeling their opponents “reactionary” while holding a stated goal of “stop people from trying to change things and bring it back to the way it used to be”, but all Torgersen appeared to take away from it was “STOP SAYING MEAN THINGS”. We could speculate about whether this was due to an inability to comprehend the point or a tactical decision to only respond in ways that further the Puppy’s narrative, but I don’t see the percentage in it.
Kevin J. Maroney in New York Review of SF
“The Puppies of Terror” – May 17
The Sad Puppies are a group of writers and other fans dissatisfied with what they saw as a trend in the Hugo process toward overrepresentation of “liberal” works at the expense of traditional, meat-and-potatoes science fiction and fantasy. So in 2014 they gamed the Hugo nomination system to place nominees in several Hugo Award categories. What the Puppies did was very simple: They encouraged people to buy Worldcon supporting memberships and vote for the Puppy slate of nominees, and they got one or two nominees into several categories. These “Sad Puppy 2” nominees failed to land any trophies; in fact, with the exception of Toni Weisskopf in the Best Editor, Long Form, the SP2 finalists came in last in every category. And, like any well-intentioned, thoughtful group of principled actors, the Sad Puppies responded by encouraging the attention of a group of woman-hating terrorists.
Kevin J. Maroney in New York Review of SF
“The Puppy Fight” – May 18
The entire Puppy movement, rhetorically, is based on the idea that the science fiction enterprise has changed tremendously and not for the better, since the fabled Golden Age when all of the Puppies were young. The head Sad Puppy himself, Brad Torgersen, has taken to referring to his enemies as CHORFS, “Cliquish, Holier-than-thou, Obnoxious, Reactionary, Fanatics.” So, yes, the person who is bravely positioning himself as the force that will stop the people who want to change things believes that his opponents are “reactionaries.” This is, apparently, someone whose understanding of words is limited to “what sounds like an insult?”
Lela E. Buis
“Is there too much diversity in SF&F?” – May 18
So, is there really too much diversity on the ballot? This might not be a popular observation, but I can personally see a clear political agenda, at least in the US and Northern Europe, to increase acceptance of diversity. Everyone must have noticed this. Diversity is billed as a good thing, something we should respect that can bring in new ideas and new ways of doing things. It also implies acceptance of differences like gender, LGBTQ status, religion, disability, race, national origin, etc., etc., etc. But, the truth is that diversity makes us all nervous. Political scientist Robert Putnam, researching community trends in 2000, made the inconvenient discovery that greater diversity in a community leads to less trust, less volunteering, less cooperation, less voting and less civic engagement in general for average members of the community. As a liberal, Putnam was so disturbed by this finding that he waited until 2007 to publish the results, i.e. that diversity damages communities.
Betsy Wollheim on Facebook – May 16
I’ve been silent about the whole disgusting Hugo mess, but frankly I’m shocked by some of the mainstream coverage it’s been getting. For the record, many people on the “puppy ballot” were never asked permission, like my business partner, Sheila Gilbert, who has no affiliation with any puppies, but will not withdraw because (in my opinion and that of her authors) she damn well deserves a Hugo after 45 years dedicated to editing Science Fiction and Fantasy. Personally I think the puppies are fucked. There has always been a “Wellsian and Vernian” split in the field, but this takeover of the award is just abominable! Not only New Republic has spoken out against them, but now, the Wall Street Journal.
Betsy Wollheim on Facebook – May 16
I am personally grateful to George R. R. Martin for bravely supporting the rational and historical side of the Hugo brouhaha. As someone who has been attending conventions since age six (1958) I can say there have always been political divisions in our field, but prior to the internet neither political side has had the power (nor inclination!) to game the field’s most prestigious award. If you look at the novels that have won the Hugos over the decades. You will see that as many are great adventure yarns as books with political messages. It’s really pretty even. But this current fiasco is just plain disgusting. Also, as an editor, it makes me angry to see a writer as important as GRRM having to spend his valuable time informing ignorant people about the history of worldcon and the history of the Hugos.
Dave Freer at Mad Genius Club
“Who we write (and publish) For.” – May 18
It’s been very revealing during the various bursts of rage at the Sad Puppies by traditionally published authors and their publishers. We’re getting to see that dislike, that disdain, that ‘second (or possibly far lower) class citizen, should not be allowed to vote, aren’t ‘Real Fans’, should be put in a dog-pound (we’re not human, and there is no need to treat us as such, apparently. Now I do understand that as far as this monkey is concerned, but most of the pups, their supporters and friends are as human as their detractors.) You get editors like Betsy Wolheim at DAW telling us filthy hoi polloi “as an editor, it makes me angry to see a writer as important as GRRM having to spend his valuable time informing ignorant people about the history of worldcon and the history of the Hugos.” Thanks Betsy. A good spin attempt to blame us for GRRM’s decisions. He’s adult, he can decide what he wants to do. We pig-ignorant revolting peasants can’t actually MAKE him do anything. He wasn’t going to write any more if Bush was re-elected IIRC. The tide of BS from this has overflowed my gum boots.
David French at National Review
“Sci-Fi’s Sad Puppies” – May 18
A literary revolt against political correctness It turns out that pop culture doesn’t inexorably drift toward political correctness. The forces of “social justice” are not invincible, and conservative artists do have cultural power. Just ask the very angry, very frustrated members of the science-fiction Left.Conservatives are by now familiar with the depressing pop-culture script. Angry at perceived injustice or exclusion and eager to spread their particular brand of “social justice,” the Left targets for transformation an artistic medium that was previously not overtly or intentionally politicized. Within a few short years, the quality of art — or its popularity — becomes far less relevant than either its message or the identity of the artist. As part of this process, prestigious awards are no longer a means of rewarding the best work but rather a means of rewarding the best work from the list of acceptable choices. [The remainder of the article is behind a paywall, cost 25 cents.]
thezman
“Sad, Rabid Puppies on the Front Lash” – May 18
The only area of fiction with a male audience is sci-fi/fantasy. So-called serious fiction was taken over lunatics and feminists to the point where it has no audience outside of the academy. The fiction that sells best is the rape fantasy stuff popular with middle-aged white women. Otherwise, fiction for men is mostly aimed at harmless weirdos who prefer to be the female character in on-line games.
That’s why the lunatics are making war on sci-fi and fantasy fiction. They sense this group of white males are weak and can be bullied. After all, a guy who gets beat up for wearing his Frodo costume to school is not going to push back against the heavy weights of the genre. At least that’s the assumption. It’s why the cult has made a fetish of bullying, by the way. They want it as their exclusive tool for socializing children.
Eric Flint
“WHAT THE HELL, LET’S DO IT AGAIN – STILL MORE ON THE HUGO AWARDS” – May 18
James May, who keeps posting here, is the gift that never stops giving. In one of his most recent posts, he insists once again that the SJW (social justice warrior) hordes are a menace to science fiction. So, in this essay, I will go through his points one at a time to show how ridiculous they are whether examined in part or (especially) as a whole…..
In one of my former lives I was a TA in the history department at UCLA. In that capacity, I read and graded a lot of essays written by students in which they attempted, with greater or lesser success, to advance an historical proposition.
So far, James May’s essay advancing the proposition that science fiction as a genre—or at least its most prestigious awards—have been overwhelmed by a radical lesbian-centric racialized feminist crusade is getting an F. He’s made no attempt to substantiate a single one of his claims. Literally, not one.
Charmingly Euphemistic
“Received my Hugo voters’ reading packet today” – May 18
Slates are extremely powerful. In normal voting everyone reads different stuff and has different tastes, so no one work will receive more than maybe 10% of the nominating votes. But slate voters agree to vote on the same five nominees for each category. This means a slate needs to come up with about 10% of the nominating votes to sweep every category. The 90% of individual voters are swamped and overwhelmed by the 10% of slate voters. Lest you think I am exaggerating, over two thirds of the slots on this year’s Hugo ballot are on the Sad Puppy Slate or the Rabid Puppy Slate, or both.
I am really afraid that if these slates see any success at all, it will be slates all the way down from now on. Therefore, in order to whatever I can to discourage slates in future years, I plan to only vote for non-slate works above “no award.”
While the extreme sexist and racist attitudes of some of the slate organizers sickens me, it is the damage to the Hugo awards that will be done by slates that motivated me to get involved this year. I don’t want slates of progressive writers either.
Joe Sherry on Adventures in Reading
“Hugo Nominee / Voter’s Packet Available” – May 18
You can find Zombie Nation online, but there’s no way to tell what is included in the nominated collection. I’ve been boldly reading the comic from the start, powering through, but I’m only up to 2013 strips, so it’s taking a while. But, you can look at any 2014 work from Zombie Nation and use that to evaluate Carter Reid for Fan Artist if you don’t want to wait for Zombie Nation to hit the voter’s packet (or attempt to read five years of strips).
Scott Seldon on Seldon’s SF Blog
“Ann Leckie – What A Hugo Award Winner Should Look Like” – May 18
I quickly followed reading Ancillary Justice with the sequel, Ancillary Sword. It was as good and as engrossing, bringing with it new aspects of the universe and the characters. If a sequel ever deserved as many awards as the original, this one certainly does. It is a magnificent world given to us by a magnificent writer. I can’t way for the third book. I definitely have a new author to add to my list of favorites. I can’t wait to see what she does next. Her nomination for this year’s Hugo Awards is justly deserved.
Lis Carey on Lis Carey’s Library
“One Bright Star to Guide Them, by John C. Wright” – May 18
This wants so badly to be an allegorical fable in the manner of C.S. Lewis’s Narnia. And it fails so, so badly.
Lisa J. Goldstein on theinferior4
“The Hugo Ballot, Part 11: Novellas” – May 18
I love the idea behind “The Plural of Helen of Troy,” by John C. Wright. There’s a City Beyond Time, Metachronopolis, with shining towers and bridges and gardens. Fog caused by too many time changes shrouds the lower towers, and in the upper stories live the Masters, who control the forces of time. Unfortunately there’s something of a fog on the story as well.
Larry Correia on Monster Hunter Nation
“Sad Puppies 3: The Ensaddening” – January 26
It is that time of year again. If you’d like to nominate good books, stories, and related works for the Hugos so that the biggest award in sci-fi/fantasy isn’t just a Social Justice Warrior circle jerk, you need to get yourself a supporting membership to Sasquan before the end of January.
Declan Finn on A Pius Man
“Sad Puppies Bite Back, V: a Puppy Wins the Hugo” – May 18
[DF adjusts speakers. SWAT team Irish step dances down the street, never to be seen again. DF sighs, moves to mailbox, muttering] I wonder if John C. Wright will loan me some of his Vatican Ninjas. It’s not like he gets SWATted like this. He’s a living brain in a jar, what are they going to slap the handcuffs on?
@tcmccarthy_ I've been hoping that the Sad Puppies phenom will lead to a separate SF fandom. If you hear anything about this, please tweet!
— Jeff Duntemann (@JeffDuntemann) May 18, 2015
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Annie: I suspect I’d have a security problem if I was using a Tolkien naming scheme, once I set up the “Speak, friend, and enter” security mechanism to go alongside it.
JJ: Yeah, the sunk cost fallacy is very real. When it comes to in-groups fueled by manufactured outrage like the Puppies or Gamergate, people are essentially buying into an alternate reality one easy payment at a time.
“How many Hugo supporters/nominators/fans didn’t know what the SP3 crowd was doing before the start of April?”
Raises hand.
I read fiction, I follow James Nicoll’s LJ, but I had seen no reason whatsoever to pay attention to VD before now.
(I am seriously considering converting to a full membership just to hit the filking room and sing all the Puppy songs)
Steve Moss:
The world might need muscles and guns, but it needs a lot less of it than it has. And I personally didn’t find 1632 to be an excellent work, I stopped after the first book and will not continue. It was too simplistic for me, everyone being to nice. But it is perfect for my fathers taste, it is right up his alley. He’s going to love it.
Hampus Eckerman — If Flint wasn’t to your taste, have you tried Stirling? I recommend “Island in the Stream of Time” or the other side of the coin: “Dies the Fire.”
I’m a little curious if anyone else here has a SFF based naming scheme for their computers?
I’ve been using characters from Alien for a while, tho’ I’ll probably need to jump to Aiens soon.
Beale then saw SP3 as a stalking horse and created RP.
I think that the invitiation to #GG to get involved is extremely important. GG has been willing to throw many at various projects for a while, and given that it was the rabids that swept the field I rather suspect that this is another instance of them stepping to the fore.
“John Wright At The Bat” is truly amazing.
But.
It’s Kloos.
Not Koos.
(Yes, I know that was the original author’s typo, but still, fixin’s required!)
“How many Hugo supporters/nominators/fans didn’t know what the SP3 crowd was doing before the start of April?”
I was ignoring their existence. I was at Loncon; I was even at some of the discussions. Still did not take them seriously this year – last 2 years were not that spectacular. And I still had a faith that even they won’t go and ruin it for all – we all are fans and so on (even VD). Well… without the second slate, I might have been right.
Of *course* all the computers have Tolkien names! How could they not? So far the desktops tend to have the names of Wizards or Noldor, the laptops are Rangers and various Elves. When we get around to tablets or other small devices they shall doubtless be Dwarves. I don’t have a smartphone yet, but when I do it shall be a Hobbit.
1633 was a lot of fun, I thought. It should have come with a side of beer and pretzels, but I enjoyed reading it.
In the later books I enjoy the discussions about tech and how knowledge of and from the future is changing the period. The prose is okay and the characterization is not great, but it’s still fun. I would never call it ‘great’, though.
Yep, I was blissfully ignoring their existence as well. So congrats on them for being hard to ignore anymore I guess.
Lori Coulson:
No, I have never even heard of it and can’t seem to find it anywhere?
May Tree, re “Kloos” I read that line a dozen times and didn’t even see it! Thanks! hopefully Mike won’t mind fixing the typos later.
Lori Coulson:
Do you mean “Island in the Sea of Time” by any chance? 🙂
Brian, I even fixed it when I decided to post a continuance earlier today 🙂 Meant to mention it and got distracted.
Hampus Eckerman:
S.M. Stirling’s series is officially called “The Change / The Event” series, and you can see the list of books in it here.
@Alexandra Erin: I think of it as more cognitive dissonance than sunk cost fallacy, reinterpreting facts and inventing rationales for their actions that enable them to maintain an internally consistent worldview. That’s why Brad blocked Paul Ebbs from his Facebook feed–Ebbs was confronting him with facts that challenged his worldview, so Brad’s mind resolved the inconsistency by deciding Ebbs was simply untrustworthy.
The flying saucers didn’t come this year, but they’re coming next year.
“Fandom has had a tradition of not excluding anybody for any reason, including some pretty horrendous behavior up to and including sexual harassment and assault.”
And a common concern is that some people are calling for exclusion on grounds far less dire — or, in some cases, by redefining trigger-words to apply in cases where they simply do not apply.
I can’t recall the number of times, particularly over this last year, when I have seen allegations of harassment made which literally boiled down to someone starting an argument, someone else taking an opposing view, and “harassment!” being called by the instigating party. Said party would usually declare victory, thereafter retiring to their preferred form of social media with carefully-culled excerpts from the exchange meant to show their friends how horrible their opponent was as a human being.
This seems to have become a recurring “debate tactic”… fully in quotes, because the intent seems not to be engaging in debate at all. It is simply a psychological yearning to have one’s own opinion (and thus righteousness) agreed with. Faced with disagreement, such people go on the attack in order to farm “grievance points” which they then exchange with members of their inner circles for sympathy — which is what they were looking for in the first place.
As such, I think we would be remiss to accept serious claims at face value. At this point, even if a close friend of mine claimed to have been “assaulted!”, and I saw not a mark on them, I would look into the matter to see if it had any merit or they were just having me on.
“As such, I think we would be remiss to accept serious claims at face value. At this point, even if a close friend of mine claimed to have been “assaulted!”, and I saw not a mark on them, I would look into the matter to see if it had any merit or they were just having me on.”
“Assault” isn’t striking someone. It’s putting someone in fear of violence. Hitting someone so as to leave a mark is “Battery.” So if your “close friend” said they’d been assaulted and you said “No marks,” that would be the end of your friendship right there, if your “close friend” had any self respect at all.
Calbeck:
I can’t tell if that lengthy post of yours is intended to refer to online harassment or harassment at conventions. Your post is so filled with generalizations as to be essentially meaningless.
Nowhere have I seen people “calling for exclusion on grounds far less dire — or, in some cases, by redefining trigger-words to apply in cases where they simply do not apply”.
Perhaps you can supply some real-life examples?
“The flying saucers didn’t come this year, but they’re coming next year.”
Always a boom tomorrow.
I did have a Lensman theme going on one set of computers, but our IT guy kept misreading “Arisia” as “Arista”.
Calbeck,
So it is assault only if there are marks? And this for a close friend? I hope that your friends know exactly how much you trust them.
What would be a proof for assault from someone you do not know? Broken bones? Worse?
As for the rest – common concern. OK – so if it is common, a lot of people had blogged/talked about it. Correct? Want to share a few examples? Both for the common concern and for actual cases like that.
PS: The fact that a word is not an insult or a trigger for you does not mean that it is not for the person you tell it to. Especially if you are warned about it or when you use it for the first time. Just saying.
@mickey finn: Not anymore, but my first NeXT cluster had machines named bleys, brand, corwin, deirdre, benedict and a main server named amber.
After seeing the screensaver for the IRIX boxes we got next, they became (IIRC) machines such as sapphire, turquoise, beryl, amethyst, with a main server named helix.
Not a translation error, but I always enjoyed Attack of the The Eye Creatures.
And while we’re on the subjects of MST3K and redundancy:
Attack of the the Puppy Creatures
Manos, The Hands of Puppies
@Calbek:
“And a common concern is that some people are calling for exclusion on grounds far less dire — or, in some cases, by redefining trigger-words to apply in cases where they simply do not apply.”
My post means exactly what it says in plain English. No political jargon, and no code words. It’s simple, if someone can’t take no for an answer, wants to play grab-ass without consent or make violent threats then I have no problem excluding them from a space until they demonstrate that they can behave themselves. I don’t feel a need to tolerate such uses of force, doubly so when they are being used against the people I care about. Which brings me to my second point.
“At this point, even if a close friend of mine claimed to have been “assaulted!”, and I saw not a mark on them, I would look into the matter to see if it had any merit or they were just having me on.”
Seriously, that is three different kinds of f’ed up. Not all assault leaves easily distinguishable marks. Also, that’s no way to treat your friends, dude. That’s barely an acceptable way to treat your enemies.
There are times when one taking an opposing view is just that. Taking an opposing view for legitimate reasons. Then there are times when you take an opposing view when on purpose misreprenting what was said. Or when nitpicking, trying to find single sentences to attack. And there are times when taking an opposing view and loudly proclaiming it again and again after a while can turn into stalking behaviour.
Gamergate is an example of organized serial stalkers coming together in what is in practice harassment. But they might say that it is just taking an opposing view.
Had been digging through some old stories this evening and a title struck me as very… appropriate (even with no changes in it)
A Day in the Skin (or, The Century We Were Out of Them)
” At this point, even if a close friend of mine claimed to have been “assaulted!”, and I saw not a mark on them, I would look into the matter to see if it had any merit or they were just having me on.”
Trust me, as a BDSM-practitioner I know a lot about bruises. And not all “assaults” will create bruises. It is highly individual, some people (like me) hardly get bruises at all where other would be both black and blue. You can’t know this of others.
Assault also includes things as creating apprehension, offensive contact with the other, etc. Things that don’t leave marks. So your natural reaction should instead be to take care of your friend, ask him/her what happened, offer comfort.
You know, be a human being. Not a dick.
It’s not sfnal, but my naming scheme for my home network has always been TS Eliot poems. Desktops are things like wasteland and prufrock and hollowmen, laptops get named for cats in Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. (My current laptop is Skimbleshanks, but Mistoffelees and Macavity were the two prior ones.)
In college, I worked for a computing cluster that used “acts of god and pilot error” as the naming scheme for the workstations, and the servers were all horsemen of the apocalypse. (Or well, one of the machines was simply ‘apocalypse’.)
PS: The mail and web servers in that cluster were war and death, respectively.
John Seavey: “I think of it as more cognitive dissonance than sunk cost fallacy, reinterpreting facts and inventing rationales for their actions that enable them to maintain an internally consistent worldview. That’s why Brad blocked Paul Ebbs from his Facebook feed – Ebbs was confronting him with facts that challenged his worldview, so Brad’s mind resolved the inconsistency by deciding Ebbs was simply untrustworthy.”
Yes, I’d agree that for many of the Puppies, it just comes down to them dismissing and disregarding anything which does not match their worldview.
But with Torgersen? He’s perfectly aware that the “justifications” for the Puppy campaigns are a complete fabrication: he helped fabricate them. He just blocked Ebbs on Facebook because he couldn’t risk letting his sheep see any evidence inconsistent with the fabrications.
Katster: they may not SFnal, but those are awesome naming schemes.
My desktop machines are characters from the various Smallfilms children’s fantasies (especially the nordic Noggin the Nog and the animistic Ivor the Engine); servers are places from The Princess Bride; and convertibles and two-in-ones are (thanks to Tim Cook) flying cars.
Hmph. I name all my machines after the Three Stooges, but only because that gave me one more name than the Marx Brothers.
My hard drives and such are named after Jack Kirby monsters from early 1960s Marvel Comics. That’s sffnal.
Actually, since it’s their names, I guess that’s Stan Lee…
My machines and networks are named after demons, devils and vampires.
@Mickey aft work we’ve just got twenty six new servers, and the debate outs about which robots to name them after.
And indeed whether HAL 9000 and Ziggy can really be considered robots.
I use a Buffyverse naming scheme. Anya Buffy Cordelia Dawn Ethan Faith Giles Harmony though now that i think of it, Hartnell Troughton Pertwee Baker Davison might be a fun one to switch to, at least till I get to the second Baker….
Brian Z: Marvelous. But might you consider “John C.” instead of “John Wright”? Rhyming with Casey makes for a stronger echo.
Re: Servers– I worked in a company where all the servers were named after strip clubs in Times Square. Now that was challenging.
Kurt: Why do I read that as “I knew who Groot was before it was cool”?
Iphinome: I like the alphabetical sorting for your buffyverse naming scheme
@MickyFinn Thank you, it adds just the right level of anal retentiveness.
There’s a great thread over at Making Light about proposed changes to the Hugo nomination process to prevent future manipulation of the process by organized slates.
One of the people who has assisted hugely in this evolutionary process, Jameson Quinn from electology.org, has committed to go to the WSFS Business Meeting at Sasquan to help present and explain the proposed changes, if he is able to get sufficient sponsorship. He’s set up a bare-bones GoFundMe for what I would consider an austere amount of funding (from what I can tell based on the costing, for a Motel 6 miles away from the con hotel), and if you’d like to thank him for his efforts and assist him in this, you can do so by going here to donate.
Disclaimer: I don’t know Mr Quinn from Adam, have never met him, and my only interest in this is seeing a change to the Hugo nomination process that will prevent any further large-scale manipulation by organized slates.
Bravo, Brian Z, bravo.
@toomanyjens, surely it would be:
Hugos, Puppies of Fate
Will,
I hope you aren’t leaving for good. I am mot sure if we can get JJ to be less err.. forthright? but I hope you consider this a good place to spend your time.
That being said… when you said We could have written a rule long ago you touched a pet peeve of mine since I don’t like having to make rules to get people to do what they know is right and respectful thing to do.
I work at a railway station and one thing we have to be aware of is customers being where they shouldn’t. A classic example is the ends of the platforms past the passenger area. You can tell where the passenger areas are because
1: There is a line of yellow tiles where the front of the train wil stop.
2: There is a row of Tac tiles so blind people know where to stop.
3: The tiled area ends and there is a set of monitors so the driver has a clear sight of the full length of the train.
4: There is a column of signal lights
5: The amount of lighting is halved in the non-passenger area.
We still get people who go past all these, and we shoo them back into the passenger area. About 1/10 people will be unwilling to take responsibility for their actions and complain that “You should put a fence up if you don’t want people going there.”
The thing is I don’t want to put fences and barriers all over the place. I shouldn’t need to since people do know where the lines are, and most of those who go over the line are decent enough to admit they have gone to far. It is only the f’tards who try to turn the blame on us for not stopping them doing something they know they shouldn’t.
Oops, messed up the formatting. Sigh!
rcade, your characterization and “summary” of Delaney & Shetterley’s discussion boils down to nothing more than cherry picking designed to cast things in the worst possible light.
You provided a link to the emaill discussion between Shetterly & Delaney (a private discussion that Chip granted permission to make public, I hasten to point out) and anyone who reads it in its entirety will see that you are cherry picking. The subject is not an easy one to discuss, but your take on it is extremely distorted.
Andrew wrote: “Well, to many people the Hugos are supposed to represent the best stories in Science Fiction…”
Which may be true but doesn’t accurately reflect the situation.
“Many people” can believe whatever they want to believe. The Hugos are not the “Many People Pick the Best Science Fiction” awards. They are the awards given out by the World Science Fiction Society.
Those awards, selected by a small, small subset of “many people” have become high profile awards (that “many people” had no hand in) for numerous reasons, including: they were the first such awards for SF; WSFS was, at one time, pretty synonymous with “fandom”; just about everyone on the industry side of things participates (and have for years); WSFS continues to represent a high percentage of very engaged and very experienced individuals (many academics, many reviewers, many editors & publishers, many long-time readers); the overall quality of the works honored over the years; tradition; economics; inertia.
They’ve never been a “people’s choice” award. They have always been awards chosen by a small group of self-selected interested parties. (Interested? Join WSFS.) They’ve always been received by “most people” as, at best, a decent guideline on where to spend a few book dollars and, at worst, something they never heard of.
@Tintinaus: so true.
Rules can have unexpected consequences. When paintball was first being developed, we had inadequate head protection, and too many customers were complaining about getting shot in the head. So some playing fields instituted “no head shot” rules and guess what happened?
The incidence of head shots CLIMBED. Players figured that since there was a rule against head shots, they could leave their heads exposed and they wouldn’t get shot. They didn’t put that together with their own “see target, shoot target” reactions.
Which may be true but doesn’t accurately reflect the situation.
I’m not sure how anything you wrote contradicts the statement that “to many people the Hugos are supposed to represent the best stories in Science Fiction”.
The size and nature of the voting pool doesn’t change this statement at all. To many people the Oscars are supposed to represent the best movies of the year. The fact that it is voted on by a small number of people who are all members of the Academy is entirely irrelevant to the belief held by many people on this point.