aka It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a sad puppy in possession of a published story must be in want of a Hugo
From rules wonk to rap filk, we have it all in today’s roundup courtesy of Adam-Troy Castro, Keith “Kilo” Watt, Jameson Quinn, Ian Mond, Kat Jones, Lis Carey, Joe Sherry, Reinder Dijkhuis, Brian Niemeier, Rebekah Golden, Lou Antonelli and Vox Day. (Title credit goes out to today’s File 770 contributing editors Kurt Busiek and Peace Is My Middle Name.)
Vox Day in e-mail – May 26
[How many GamerGaters were involved during the Hugo nominating phase? Vox Day says people overestimated in today’s comments.]
The GamerGate involvement in RP/SP through the nomination period is limited to two individuals, me and Daddy Warpig. We are both original GG (GG before Baldwin) and we are both Rabid Puppies.
There are a few GGers who have gotten involved post-nomination, but I don’t know how many. The RP are basically the Vile Faceless Minions plus a few Dread Ilk.
You may wish to note that there are more Vile Faceless Minions (366) than Rabid Puppy nominating votes. That’s because the extent of the Rabid Puppies campaign was a single blog post. Every Rabid Puppy is a VP reader. We didn’t need GG and we knew it, as you can confirm from our pre-shortlist discussions. There are some GGers buying supporting memberships. How many, I do not know.
Adam-Troy Castro on Facebook – May 26
Among the revelations in the “Return of Kings” blog post about how women in publishing are keeping true men writers down:
If you are a first-time writer and the acquiring editor decides that you’re an asshole — literally, if she is given reason to believe you’re an asshole who will be a pain to work with — she will likely make the decision to not buy your book.
This is represented as part of the shameful status quo that is keeping men down….
The other option is, of course, to not be an asshole, and is left unconsidered.
Keith “Kilo” Watt on Making Light
“E Pluribus Hugo: Out of Many, A Hugo” – May 26
In this thread we will hammer out the formal language of the proposal, any FAQs we wish to include, and strategize for the presentation at the business meeting itself. At this point, we’ll consider the system itself locked in, so we are really only looking at the language.
- RME instead of 6th place
- (1,1), (1,2), or (1,2,2) for ties in points
- Option 2a (if there is a tie for nominations, eliminate the one with fewer points; if there is a tie for both nominations and points, eliminate them both)
There is one more issue that is still up for debate: Should we explicitly empower the Hugo admins to use further tie breakers in the future if they decide it’s necessary? I’ve written the proposal and FAQ explanations assuming that we do, however, a case can be made for not worrying about giving them the power explicitly. We should settle that question here. I think that the way I’ve written the “empowerment” makes it okay to include it, but for myself, I don’t feel a strong need to. I’m definitely not opposed to it, however.
….19. Wasn’t this system just designed by Social Justice Warriors to block the Good Stuff? It is true that much of the discussion for this system occurred on Teresa and Patrick Nielsen Hayden’s “Making Light” discussion board, and it is also true that groups such as the Sad Puppies and the Rabid Puppies consider TNH and PNH to be The Enemy, and therefore completely biased and not to be trusted. Other than serving as occasional moderators, TNH and PNH had no real input in the discussions of the system, however. Those of us who worked on the system were very clear that our goal was not to keep the Sad/Rabid Puppies off of the Hugo ballot, and that any system which specifically targets any type of work is inherently wrong and unfair. One of the members of the group is a retired US Naval officer, a combat veteran, a certified Navy marksman, a Christian, and considers Robert Heinlein to be the greatest science fiction author who has ever lived. In short, he is exactly the Puppies’ demographic. But any slate, of any sort, be it a Sad Puppy or a Happy Kitten of Social Justice, breaks the Hugo Award because a small percentage of voters can effectively prevent any other work from appearing on the final ballot. This is a major flaw in the Hugo nomination system, and it is a flaw that must be fixed if the integrity of the award is to be maintained. Politics should play no role whatsoever in whether a work is Hugo-worthy or not.
Jameson Quinn in a comment on Making Light
Final update on the gofundme:
Fully funded, and beyond!
I’m truly in awe of the generosity this community has shown, both to me personally and to the cause of voting reform. Not only has the main campaign received $1440, beyond the goal of $1400; but I’ve also been offered a Sasquan attending membership, so in effect it’s actually $250 over the goal.
Ian Mond on The Hysterical Hamster
“Who Should Win The Hugo Award For Best Novel” – May 27
The Anderson in particular led me to question this whole notion purported by the Sad / Rabid Puppies that good SF has big ideas and entertains. Having read two examples of this sort of SF, both the KJA and Charles Gannon’s awful Nebula nominee, Trial by Fire (review forthcoming) I can only conclude that my idea of entertainment and big, high concept ideas lives in a very different Universe than what the Sad Puppies are aiming to promote. This isn’t snobbishness***** on my part, I just struggle to see the appeal of novels that are so poorly written.
But let’s get back to the point of this blog post:
Who Do I Want To See Win – I tossed and turned about this, but I’ve finally landed with The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison (Sarah Monette)
Who Do I Think Will Win – I might not have been so keen on the novel, but I believe that Ann Leckie will take home her second novel Hugo for Ancillary Sword.
Kat Jones on CiaraCat Sci-Fi Review
“Review: The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison” – May 26
It’s an interesting slice of life, and I found myself caring about some of the characters. But for me, it wasn’t a compelling STORY.
Lis Carey on Lis Carey’s Library
This is the first pure fun I’ve had reading Hugo nominees this year, barring The Goblin Emperor, which I read prior to the announcement of the ballot.
Joe Sherry on Adventures In Reading
“Thoughts on the Hugo Award Nominees: Professional Artist” – May 26
There is a lot of quality art being produced by the 2015 nominees. Julie Dillon, last year’s winner for Professional Artist, continued to produce excellent work. Based on their work included in the Hugo Voter’s Packet, Greenwood, Pollack, and DouPonce have also produced good work. As a point of personal preference, Greenwood is my top choice here, but it was very close between Dillon and Greenwood. While referencing the Voter’s Packet is a touch unfair because unless you’re also a voter, you can’t see that work. Unfortunately, except for Dillon, none of the other nominees have work posted at the Hugo Eligible Artists tumblr (a great reference for both fan and pro work, by the way), but you should be able to browse the various websites I’ve linked above to get a feel for their work.
Reinder Dijkhuis on Obsession Du Jour
“Notes/first impressions: 3 Hugo-nominated graphic novels” – May 25
Above, I’ve dwelled on the flaws of the comics discussed a lot, and I would like to mention that I really did enjoy two of them and found things to enjoy in the third. They have flaws but they’re not disastrous ones. As the incompleteness problem is apparently par for the course for this category, I’ve decided to ignore this and give all works the benefit of the doubt on that score as far as award-worthiness is concerned. I have decided to vote all four above No Award for the Hugos, in, as it happens, the exact same order as I read and discussed them. My preliminary vote for the category, then, is
- Ms Marvel
- Sex Criminals
- Rat Queens
- Saga
- No Award.
Reinder Dijkhuis on Obsession Du Jour
“Notes/First Impressions: Zombie Nation by Carter Reid” – May 26
…. Everything about it looks copied from other comics. That includes the writing, which is based on just a small number of stale, sexist jokes and pop culture references that need to be retired. Who in their right minds nominated this?
https://twitter.com/RoguesClwydRhan/status/603300743957848064
Brian Niemeier on Superversive SF
“Transhuman and Subhuman Part VI: Swordplay in Space” – May 26
“Why is the preferred weapon of the Galactic Empire the sword?” John C. Wright tackles that question in the sixth part of his essay collection Transhuman and Subhuman.
Following the premise that a man’s attitude toward war and death reveals his outlook on life, Wright examines a selection of great science fiction books for the answer to why authors attempting to imagine the future so often employ archaic conventions.
Wright posits five basic views on war…
Rebekah Golden
“2015 Hugo Awards Best Movie: Reviewing Lego Movie” – May 26
I really liked the Lego Movie. I believe it has a lot more content to it than first glance would give it. It is interesting and has a good emotional punch as well as a significant number of fun moments.
Lou Antonelli on Facebook – May 26
On the way to Kansas City for ConQuest 46, I had to drive through Hugo, Oklahoma, so I stopped and took a selfie of me with the city sign, in celebration of my …two Hugo nominations.
Now, I know right now, some of you are thinking, “Hah! That’s as close to a Hugo as you will ever get, Antonelli!”
Lou Antonelli poses with sign outside Hugo, Oklahoma.
Vox Day on Vox Popoli
“You don’t like the medicine, Doctor?” – May 26
And because Public Enemy is always appropriate:
He book-reviewed, he S.J.W’d
Vile minions viewed his anti-Puppy feud
One-star the rating, listen to him double trouble
He signs in now he’s pushing for the lower level
Like crashing cars he’s out there stealing stars
From books he took without a single look.
Taking a toll ’cause his soul broke with the poll
From the revelation… of a Puppy Nation.
Now this is what I mean an anti-Puppy machine
If Hugo come out at all, he won’t come out clean
But look around here go the sound of the wrecking clown
Boom and pound when he put ’em down
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Chris Hensley–
I used the phrase both sides as a short-hand. I think the puppy side has a lot of loosely-tied people as well as those using it as an opportunity to create havoc. And the antis are lumped together by the puppies as well, even though there are differing opinions on how to react. With no “formal” head or leadership everyone can do what they want without repercussion and the other faction can point fingers and say ‘See!!! They’re horrible people”.
I read whatever I came across–if thinking that the editor shouldn’t have been hounded out of her job is false thinking–so be it.
And saying that I wouldn’t piss on them if their hair was on fire is an insult where I come from, just so you get it right.
If the anti-puppies are a “side” at all, it’s in the sense all hands helpng the volunteer fire department to put out a fire , even if they’re going to go back to arguing about the proper uses of the building once the fire is out. Right now, hand around the buckets of water; we can figure out what kind of show to put on, or whether we should turn the space into a library, once the fire is out and the roof has been repaired.
@Ultragoth: There is actually a proposal before the BM this year for a Best Saga category aimed at dealing with some of these issues.
Redwombat
I’m still distraught by the absence of a sequel to ‘Nine Goblins’, and I speak as one with a distinct penchant for MilSF, or, as in this case, MilFantasy; frankly, I do not regard the Hugo nomination for ‘The Goblin Emperor’ as an adequate substitute.
People keep talking about all the challenges Maia faces, but omit the fact that he doesn’t have to solve the gruel problem, and no-one in his military forces ever rise to the heights of leadership achieved by Seargeant Nessilka in grappling with the ‘The Teddy Bear Problem’.
I note that ‘The Three-Body-Problem’, another Hugo nominee, is also in my view disgraceful. It’s only too obviously playing on fan devotion to the acronym TTBT as we look back at a woman, sorry, goblin, capable of solving ‘the Teddy Bear Problem’ without needing a cast of thousands and a lot of dictionaries.
All in all, Redwombat, this is not a pretty sight; I fear I was blindsided intially into thinking that it was all about the puppies when the real purpose was to deprive us of your epic goblin MilFantasy. I shall not rest until I have identified the perpetrators and condemned them to eat gruel for the rest of what pitiful life remains to them…
ULTRAGOTHA: I completely agree with you. Nominating WoT was basically a rules-lawyering stunt encouraged by Tor.com and allowed to happen despite the Hugo administrators knowing that the number-of-parts rule was to arbitrate the problem of magazine serials that began in one period and ended in another, not for the case here.
Of course, God will not be mocked, and I’m sure that’s why those same Hugo administrators were divinely punished by being forced to sit on the dais and read off all the 2014 Sad Puppy nominees with a perfectly straight face.
Chris Hensley –
Well, what do you know. Good for Eric Flint! And Warren Buff, Jared Dashoff, William Lawhorn, Michael Lee, Pablo Vasquez and Ben Yalow.
http://sasquan.org/business-meeting/agenda/
“May Tree: Just to satisfy my personal curiosity, do you equate your willingness to believe a thing happened with evidence that it did happen?”
To be fair, that’s an attitude that’s been going around on all sides of the argument for awhile now.
I like the Best Saga idea except that if one wins a Hugo, would that make the author think, “Ah, I’d better write a few more of these books!” and then ruin the whole thing?
Mike Glyer on May 27, 2015 at 4:28 pm said:
Wow. I would pay to not see that. I’d add the Administrators from LoneStarCon, too. That Lady Astronaut of Mars thing was bogus.
“Best Saga” — a category once fought over vigorously by Anon. and Trad., for the Volsungasaga and other great works.
Mike Glyer: Of course, God will not be mocked, and I’m sure that’s why those same Hugo administrators were divinely punished by being forced to sit on the dais and read off all the 2014 Sad Puppy nominees with a perfectly straight face.
I watched the video. Those people frickin’ deserve medals for their performance.
ULTRAGOTHA: I’d add the Administrators from LoneStarCon, too. That Lady Astronaut of Mars thing was bogus.
In what way?
“Of course, God will not be mocked, and I’m sure that’s why those same Hugo administrators were divinely punished by being forced to sit on the dais and read off all the 2014 Sad Puppy nominees with a perfectly straight face.”
Karma. Not just for Hindu’s, Buddhists, Taoists and Taoists these days….
@ Stevie – You gladden my withered little heart! Will it help at all if I mention that there’s a sequel in the works? (They take awhile. Fairy tale retellings are dismally easy compared to goblins.) It is intended as a three-part tale, with the final part being about Sings-to-Trees and his Orc warrior-poet lady-love, but they’ve got me writing children’s books these days, and it’s hard to switch between the two mindsets.
And Jianists…doubled down on the taoists, forgot the Jianists…
I don’t think the Hugos got much traction with GG. It’s sort of unmistakable when a horde of internet misogynists set their sights on something, what with the harassment and doxxing and stalking and so on. If GG were involved in significant numbers, we’d have a lot more stories like Aaron’s.
JJ: “I watched the video. Those people frickin’ deserve medals for their performance”
You are 100% right about that.
“Having the vapors because a couple of guys reminiscing used the phrase “lady editor” about a friend?”
“if thinking that the editor shouldn’t have been hounded out of her job is false thinking–so be it.”
So Harold’s ‘so what’ about two *men* being sexist morphs into concern about a *woman* losing her job, and thus he proves “no, *you’re* the real sexist, nyah nyah” without ever addressing the actual fact or events under discussion.
Nice try, though.
“I wouldn’t piss on them if their hair was on fire is an insult where I come from, just so you get it right”
Yes, you’re right, Harold. I misread your comment and I apologise to you and your urinary tract on that score.
JJ:
Lady Astronaut of Mars was published as both an audiobook and on Kowal’s blog. It had enough nominations to appear on the ballot in Novelette, but the administrators moved it to Best Dramatic Presentation, where it did not have enough nominations to appear on the final ballot. (More people nominate in BDP than in Novelette.)
A change to the WSFS constitution was passed at LonCon3 and is up for ratification at Sasquan to address this. (Short title: A Story by Any Other Name)
That’s not true. I make a distinction between the Sad Puppies and the Rabid Puppies, though some here would probably accuse me of splitting the hair too fine. Both sides of Puppies clearly have leader and organizers, and have worked together in a cooperative fashion. The RP especially, work as an organized a group and appear to share their leaders’ message and actively spread their shared ideology. I would even go so far as to call RP a hate group. In fact I have, and I do. Not because they engage in ‘wrong think’, but because of their actions. While calling the Puppies a “side” is debated, calling them a couple of well organized factions is undeniably true. The anti-Puppy “side” really is an anarchic association of people with a shared goal, rather then a shared ideology. There is one other important difference between the Puppy supporters and their opponents. The Puppies openly support the negative actions of those who support their cause. The vast majority of Puppy opponents have rejected harassment, threats of violence and called out those on their alleged side who have engaged in those tactics. Because, and I can’t stress this enough, it is about actions not ideology.
“I wouldn’t piss on them if their hair was on fire” is an insult where I come from too.is where I come from too. Of course where I come from being a dick to somebody, especially to someone whom they oversee in a professional capacity, isn’t acceptable behavior either.
Tales of Pup the Pilot
Yay for a sequel to Nine Goblins; loved it and so did my nephews.
marsultor13 on May 27, 2015 at 7:34 am said:
I find these attempts to change the rules utterly hysterical. The reason the puppies were able to dominate the nominations is because worldcon is a tiny event, and even most of that tiny group doesn’t bother nominating.
But the numbers don’t lie. The puppies have brought in thousands of new voters. Does worldcon really want to prove to them that it doesn’t want them around?
Can someone explain to me how ostensibly GIVING the Puppies what they want (the ability to block to so-called SJW cabal from dominating the Hugos and block them from nominating Manly Space SF) blocks them out? I’m clearly confused.
Redwombat
Ok, the sequel improves things, but I’ve got a task, a quest if you like. I shall find the people responsible for this tragedy and, in deference to your wishes, only force them to eat gruel once a day.
Which, when I come to think about it, is positively a nice thing to do…
I’m clearly confused.
marsultor is using Puppy logic, or as it is sometimes called “rhetoric”. The rest of the world knows it by its more common name “nonsense”.
Aaron said the r-word, everybody drink!
At last we bared our fangs to bay
HOW I WISH I WAS IN SASQUAN NOW
Our noisy yapping made an awful din
But with one quick snark John Scalzi stove us in
God damn them all!
I was told we’d cruise the con and have rockets to hold
Be envied-by our peers
But I’m house-broken now with no Hugos to cheer
The last of Puppy Privateers
Chris
Nah, I think it’s good to be aware that there’s no monolithic “them” even amongst the puppies.
I think another distinction between the Sads and the Rabids is (I’m sure there’s a better term for this) the strength of their adherence to the slate. For the Rabids, I think slate-adherence was quite strong, as they seem to be far more used to marching to the beat of a single drummer. For the Sads, you’ll keep hearing the phrase “you can’t herd cats” from them, and it’s a key element that they’re all rugged individualists (exaggerating. Slightly).
So how do the Sads reconcile this within their internal worldview? One that I’ve seen is by the constant reinforcement that SP3 was a set of recommendations, and not a party ticket. So I think that for a number (possibly most) of Sads, they probably did march to their own drummer for major categories like Best Novel or the BDPs, but for the downticket items there was probably a greater reliance on the SP3 slate (i.e., well I’ve voted for my favourite novel and movie, and I don’t know what short stories/ novellas are or who the editors/ fan writers in the field are, so I’ll go with the slate on that).
I guess this is a traditional party based voting system where you only go against the party-line voting recommendation for those that you have a preference, and for everything else (instead of perhaps leaving it blank, or just writing in 1 or 2 nominees) you go with the slate itself.
Another thing that I’m unclear on is if even after nomination information is released, if there will be any way to determine the full impact of the 2 slates, given that we’re talking about potentially wildly different levels of adherence between and within them. I’m guessing that will be for the more mathematically-inclined amongst the fandom,
Snowcrash-
As a Sad Puppy voter, I can tell you that I participated in Larry’s Book Bombs where I and many others bought the works in question – particularly the short fiction – read them and discussed. I nominated the stories by Annie Bellet and Kary English after being impressed with them. I also nominated Tom Kratman’s Big Boys Don’t Cry because I liked it.
There were other works on Brad’s list that I didn’t like and didn’t nominate and other works that were not on Brad’s list that I did nominate (both for the Novel and other categories).
I suspect others did something similar.
For what it’s worth…
-Cheers
Chris H.–i do agree actually, the Puppy side is more organized and uses the ‘loose threads’ aligned with them. And I especially like the volunteer fire-brigade metaphor someone used earlier.
As I said–I just go by what I read as I bounce from here to there. The problem may be that I do specifically avoid certain sites like Vox, et al because there are other things I’d rather do.
Not sure what the editor reference is–i was referring to the editor of the SFWA Bulletin. I wasn’t aware of her being unprofessional to anyone beneath her.
And if I was going to call someone a bigger sexist I’d do it in so many words–not in misdirection.
Thanks Ultragotha, I’m aware of the events you describe. I’m still unable to parse your comment below in terms of what you were trying to say.
ULTRAGOTHA: I’d add the Administrators from LoneStarCon, too. That Lady Astronaut of Mars thing was bogus.
I disagreed with their decision and would put them up on stage reading puppy nominees as a punishment.
snowcrash:
You might be interested in the Venn diagrams I made, which show that, for the text-based categories in which Vox Day has a personal interest (Novel, Novella, Novelette, Short Story, Related Work, Editor Long Form, Editor Short Form, and Campbell Award), the Sad slate succeeded if and only if it overlapped with the Rabid slate.
Basically, Vox Day pwned the Sad Puppies, they work for him.
Will McLean: nice, I did the first two verses of Barrett’s Privateers some time back 🙂
ULTRAGOTHA: I disagreed with their decision [to disallow MRK’s Lady Astronaut in the Novelette category] and would put them up on stage reading puppy nominees as a punishment.
Ah, gotcha. I’m 100% with you on that, and was glad to see that it got fixed, on both counts.
I certainly intend to vote to ratify A Story by Any Other Name this year. The medium matters not!
I disagreed with their decision and would put them up on stage reading puppy nominees as a punishment.
So I just skimmed through Wisdom from my Internets.
Have you no heart Ultragotha? no one deserves that.
ULTRAGOTHA: I disagreed with their decision and would put them up on stage reading puppy nominees as a punishment.
snowcrash: So I just skimmed through Wisdom from my Internets. Have you no heart Ultragotha? no one deserves that.
Oh, they didn’t actually have to read the fiction entries. (thankfully! that would have been even worse!) They just had to read the titles and names of the nominees.
Watching the announcement is just incredibly painful. The Hugo admins’ composure is absolutely heroic.
“i was referring to the editor of the SFWA Bulletin. I wasn’t aware of her being unprofessional to anyone beneath her.”
Harold, Chris is referring to Sean Fodera in relation to Mary Kowal. He’s confused because you referred to someone being hounded out of their job (which Fodera *wasn’t* although he did apologise for his extraordinarily nasty comments.) The confusion arises because *no one* was hounded out of a job.
The sequence of events was (i’m using this for details :
in #199 of the SFWA’s Bulletin, Barry Malzberg and Mike Resnick’s Dialogs, according to E Catherine Tobler “seemed more focused on how these “lady editors” and “lady writers” looked in bathing suits, and that they were “beauty pageant beautiful” or a “knock out.””
#200’s cover featured a ‘tribute’ to Red Sonja, with a woman in chain mail armour
#201’s issue carried a paen to Barbie’s ability to ““maintain our quiet dignity as a woman should.””
All these things made a number of paying members of SFWA – not all of them women – a bit (a lot) annoyed, and they made their annoyance at the fact that their dues were paying for a hell of a lot of disrespect towards women in the genre, very clear.
So in #202, Malzberg and Resnick posted a rebuttal to their critics whose intemperate and insulting tone was deemed the last damn straw. (Note – they were paid for this and their other contributions.) Then president of SFWA, John Scalzi, apologised for dropping the ball. Jean Rabe, editor of the Bulletin, accepted that she had also failed in her duties as editor on this matter for allowing the article to go forward, and resigned.
No one was hounded out. A professional editor accepted responsibility for an egregious error of judgement and did the honourable thing. The tantrums which then ensued by Resnick, Malzberg, and the entire nonsense of Petitiongate that followed do not change the fact that Rabe cocked up, Scalzi cocked up, and Resnick and Malzberg abused their privilege.
Actions have consequences, whether you’re a man or a woman. I’m sure you wouldn’t argue with that, Harold.
“And if I was going to call someone a bigger sexist I’d do it in so many words–not in misdirection.”
Yeah, but no. You actually did do this by misdirection. [I also note that you don’t respond to me by name, Harold, although you have repeatedly done so to Chris. You might want to examine why you made that decision.]
Jamoche:
I remember your filk of Barrett’s Privateers far upthread. Since you only did the first two verses, I thought the later ones were fair game.
#200’s cover featured a ‘tribute’ to Red Sonja, with a criminally badly drawn woman in chain mail armour.
Her left lower leg is almost twice as long as her left thigh.
Yes I was, that was my mistake. I’m sure I’ll make a similar one in the near future.
Snowcrash,
The LoneStarCon Hugo Administrators’ error in judgement was egregious, but not *that* egregious. Title and author announcements would be sufficient. I would insist on live worldwide broadcast, though.
May Tree: Just to satisfy my personal curiosity, do you equate your willingness to believe a thing happened with evidence that it did happen?
This isn’t something there will ever be a solid answer to, Mike, unless you have some better way of determining who “is a Gator” and who “isn’t a Gator” than I or anyone else has. All each of us can do is look at the circumstances, look at the evidence, look at what happened, and draw our own conclusions. I see far more reason to believe that GG is heavily entwined with the Puppies than to believe that they aren’t. On the one hand you have the obvious “Hey GG come help us screw this up!” recruitment messages, and on the other hand you have Mr. Rhetorical himself going “No no, GG had almost nothing to do with this!” — why would you choose to accept Mr. Rhetorical’s version against the evidence of your own eyes?
This is especially true given that I sincerely and deeply doubt that Mr. Rhetorical has comprehensive records of who exactly went out and bought those supporting memberships in order to vote his slate and who didn’t. One thing that GG is very good at is going “Hey, we think people ought to do this thing!” (as in, send emails to advertisers or Tweet death threats to women they don’t like) and then watching as some number of the mob just go and do it without having to receive actual marching orders or sign up on a roster or anything else. I think that’s quite likely what happened here. If you go hang out in GG-land on 8chan (which I do not recommend!) you’ll see a lot of these “Ops” proposed and pushed just in the hope that one will catch on with the mob, but I would be astonished if anyone was actually keeping track of who did what and what group affiliation they claimed.
Mind you,as I’ve said before, I think that the core of the group doing this garbage all over NerdSpace recently doesn’t actually have a solid label. They aren’t at heart “Gamergaters” any more than they are “Sad/Rabid Puppies” or “ElevatorGaters” — they’re mostly MRAs with a variable cloud of single-issue hangers-on that move from forum to forum pushing the “anti-SJW” line. Their interest in the video game, SFF, and atheism communities is secondary to their interest in raging about how women and minorities and gay people are all unfairly profiting at the expense of more deserving straight white men. They target vulnerable spaces for disruption, act out destructively, laugh at the outrage, and go look for another vulnerable space to push into and disrupt. The current structure of the Internet allows this to be done quite efficiently by a quite small number of unpleasant people scattered widely around the globe.
What this amounts to is that no one can in any way prove anything about GG’s involvement here. What we know is that involvement was publicly requested, and that since that time, the spokespeople for the Puppies have been engaging in exactly the same tactics with regard to the Hugos. I don’t think there’s any way to tell if the folks doing it are “experienced Gators” or if they were just “inspired by Gators” but I’m not clear it makes any practical difference either way.
JJ : “#200’s cover featured a ‘tribute’ to Red Sonja, with a criminally badly drawn woman in chain mail armour.
Her left lower leg is almost twice as long as her left thigh.”
Dude, speaking as someone who lived through the 90’s Image era of Liefield et al…that’s not criminally bad. At least she’s got feet…
But yeah, putting that in the cover of a trade publication in the 2000’s….quite a few people didn’t think that through.
snowcrash: Dude, speaking as someone who lived through the 90’s Image era of Liefield et al…that’s not criminally bad. At least she’s got feet…
I had to Google “Liefield”. Now I’m sorry I did.
I will be sending you an invoice for the brain bleach (please feel free to combine this payment with the payment for the keyboard you already owe me; my PayPal address is [email protected] ).
Lou, the problem is not what you believe. If you think that science fiction has becoming too liberal, you’re welcome to that position. There are even a couple good examples of the problem (cough) “Dinosaur” (cough) you could point at to support your position.
The problem is how you behave. You (along with the other sads and rabids) have decided that your ideological correctness gives you the right to be a jerk. And that’s why I’m going to place your work below No Award when I fill in my ballot. Not because of what you believe. Not because of what you wrote. Not because of your politics, but because your “my correct ideology gives me the right to be a jerk” ideation should never, under any circumstances, be rewarded. (And yes, I’d do the same thing if a group of Liberals were acting this way.)
In other words, it’s not what you do, it’s how you do it. If you want to promote a more balanced political approach to science-fiction, there are lots of ways to do it without being a putz.
One of the things that drew me towards SF in the first place is that it’s a lot like one of my other obsessions, progressive rock – kind of niche, but when it’s ambitious, it’s much more ambitious than the mainstream. When I first read dhalgren, I realized that books didn’t always have to play familiar chord progressions in 4/4 time, so to speak.
This is one of the reasons why Brad Torgersen’s much-ridiculed post about judging books by their covers is so inexcusably stupid. If you just want to read the same old thing with minor variations, then cutting-edge SF, the kind that wins Hugos, is probably not for you.
Two puppies, actually. Vox Day has stalked, doxxed, threatened, and even tried to swat people. Also, he mentions harvesting social security numbers.
Three! Tom Kratman has included doxxing among the many threats he’s thrown around at anyone who says anything negative about him and his work.
“I had to Google “Liefield”. Now I’m sorry I did.”
Hahahahaha. Oh man, that’s the state of most mass-market superhero comics in the early 90’s for you….constipated looking men with weapons larger then they were, women with breasts larger than their heads and waistlines thinner than their heads, complete lack of feet, and POUCHES. Pouches EVERYWHERE….
Those were dark days indeed….
RedWombat:the final part being about Sings-to-Trees and his Orc warrior-poet lady-love
I’m still holding out for a continuation of that story. 🙂