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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CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS for the (Great Ghu willing) single-issue Canine Daze. Send poems, LoCs, lawn gnomes and miscellaneous fruits of fractal autopoiesis by putting them on the internet where we can see before June 30 so that the zine will reach your sweaty paws by the time pups amble down that carpet. Include a self-addressed stamped envelope.
Progressiveboink’s Top Liefeld articles are a must-read for anyone wondering just how awful the 90’s could be.
It’s glorious.
@snowcrash don’t knock pouches – they were the best part of the 90s
Will McLean: Yes, go for it – the trouble with my filks is I usually get stuck after the first verse 🙁
” 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.”
Really? Old Mans War was cutting edge the first time I read it, when it was called Starship Troopers. Redshirts was glorified fan fic, Yiddish Policeman union was a detective story in a halfway decently executed Alt History, Blackout/All clear in nowhere near as good as some of the stuff Willis wrote earlier in her career. People booed Goblet of Fire when it won (and not because it was so edgy.)
Which books from the past fifteen years are going to be read fifteen years from now, and remembered by most who read them as “Cutting Edge SF?”
Maybe Spin, because it set the bar so high none of its sequels were ever nominated? Or Rainbows End, because it reset its subgenre the way Neuromancer defined it?
I would say “Cutting Edge SF” has been nominated (Mievilles Weird SF, Banks, Stross perhaps), but it hasn’t been winning.
@Rebekah: “@snowcrash don’t knock pouches – they were the best part of the 90s”
Best may be overselling it… they were probably the most innocuous aspect of Liefeldian art. Mind you, there’s a major comic book artist out there right now who has the really *reeeeeaaaaaallllly* noticable habit of getting all his model references from porn films, so his action sequences look particularly, um, unusual
*flail* Aw, man, you guys! Now I feel all warm and fuzzy, and I didn’t anticipate that in a Puppy thread!
I couldn’t finish the Orc story originally because I didn’t have any place they could be together and be happy, but the second novella will hopefully solve that problem. (I couldn’t give Sings an unhappy ending. People who are kind to ugly animals should always get happy endings.) Then I’ll just have to deal with the bit where I’ve bitten off way more than I can chew, and that I have plenty of experience with.
*sniffle* Imma go drink wine and regain my jaded, surly exterior now.
How about … “We’re going to need a bigger Hugo”? Apologies if it’s been done.
“There is no Hugo, only Beale.”
Eric,
Which books from the past fifteen years are going to be read fifteen years from now, and remembered by most who read them as “Cutting Edge SF?”
It depends on who is reading SF fifteen years from now, and what choices we make between now and then.
Best may be overselling it… they were probably the most innocuous aspect of Liefeldian art.
Escher Girls is good for snarking about that kind of, um, art. (They’re on vacation this week, though.)
@RedWombat – wait, this is a puppy thread? I thought we were talking about the Hugo Awards. Admittedly there’s the title, and a lot of small canines appear to come up in conversation around this year’s Hugo Awards… Crap. Damn. A lot of other words I’m not going to type because I don’t want to bother reading acceptable behavior policies. Now I’m sad.
Seriously, somehow I was really confused that the whole “puppy” theme was a theme related to the stuff happening around the Hugo Awards this year but that the actual call-outs etc were not necessarily “puppy” related.
Actually now that I feel sour about the whole topic I’ll just go ahead and say: No wonder so many people had their dicks out, I just wandered into the men’s room.
Correia, Wrath of Dog
Top Gun Dog (a before-and-after category)
@Will I’ll play
Top Gun Dog Day Afternoon
@Iphinome Good one!
“Really? Old Mans War was cutting edge the first time I read it, when it was called Starship Troopers.”
You lost me right there, since SST bears only the very most superficial resemblance to OMW. Really. You must read only one out of every 50 pages or something, I don’t see how you could come up with that otherwise.
“You’re the slan now, Dog.” (In Sean Connery voice.)
I’m sure we’ve done Robert Howard, but just to get the obvious if not:
Canine the Destroyer
@snowcrash If that one hasn’t been done yet, you are correcting a grave injustice.
Rebekah: Well, its about the happenings with the hugos, and therefore about the puppies, but also about all manner of odd discussion which have spun off from the topic. We seem to have a nice little community going, albeit with occasional visits from TK or Brad or Vox. Or the occasional pupplings (pupae?) that get rounded up and pointed this direction.
Eric: Old Mans War was cutting edge the first time I read it, when it was called Starship Troopers.”
rochrist: You lost me right there, since SST bears only the very most superficial resemblance to OMW. Really. You must read only one out of every 50 pages or something, I don’t see how you could come up with that otherwise.
Yep, and
Eric: Redshirts was glorified fan fic
He has clearly not read Redshirts, either.
JJ: Eric doesn’t really read the comments he responds to, why should he read the books he’s talking about?
@Rebekah
As I understand it, the daily roundups are Hugo related, and unfortunately it’s hard to have any in depth discussion of the Hugo’s this year without the Puppy topic coming up, and subsequent to that a lot of annoyed and annoying rheto^H^H^H comments from various people.
Other key features of the threads include puns and filks, and a high degree of topic drift.
The threads go to straaaange places sometimes.
roschrist,
You lost me right there, since SST bears only the very most superficial resemblance to OMW.
Eric placed OMW in his “derivative” box and SST, Neuromancer, Spin and Rainbow’s End in his “cutting edge” box. What groundbreaking ideas about science, technology or society, or innovative storytelling, did OMW bring to the table that might convince him to pack it in his other box?
Will: Did we have The Dogfather?
Twelve Angry Pups?
Battleship Puppykin?
Let the Right Pup In
Packs Aeternum
@MickyFinn, the spouse pointed out too that we’re all puppies just some of us are happy not sad.
And I did know that the Hugo Awards were a big pile of MRA topics this year.
All good.
Beopuppy
Nueropupper
ULTRAGOTHA, brilliant!
And Rebekah!
@brian The Dogfather is really good. “I’d like to make you a nomination you can’t refuse.”
@ultragotha Beopuppy should be a thing.
Eric – Really? Old Mans War was cutting edge the first time I read it, when it was called Starship Troopers.
I agree with you that there wasn’t anything really edgy about Old Man’s War, but Starship Troopers? There’s a stretch.
Redshirts was glorified fan fic,
In the way Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is just Hamlet fan fic, sure. Otherwise you only dipped your toes into the shallow end of that pool.
Yiddish Policeman union was a detective story in a halfway decently executed Alt History,
This is some absurd reductionist one-man play at this point, right?
Blackout/All clear in nowhere near as good as some of the stuff Willis wrote earlier in her career.
But was it more cutting edge or not, geez, you didn’t even stay on point for more than a couple of books.
People booed Goblet of Fire when it won (and not because it was so edgy.)
Because it was so safe?
Which books from the past fifteen years are going to be read fifteen years from now, and remembered by most who read them as “Cutting Edge SF?”
That sounds like the plot of a Sci-Fi book, about a psychic who could predict how fiction is received 15 years in the future. Or the least exciting X-Men power.
Star Wars one of the biggest franchises in the future? No way, it’s about some whiny space farmboy. Dune? Yeah riding sandworms is so cutting edge. Starship Troopers? Killing bugs is just oh so edgy.
That’s a fun game.
Please tell me that whoever did the puppy version of Starship Troopers went with Starship Poopers.
@Will, @Brian
“The Dogfather is really good. “I’d like to make you a nomination you can’t refuse.””
Oh damn, that covers title and sub-header. Niiiiice.
Redshirts was glorified fan fic,
This is the VD party line. Perhaps Eric is just parroting what his master said.
@Matt Y speaking of killing bugs have you listened to AISFP 248 – Andrew Smith, GRASSHOPPER JUNGLE from 2014? It sounds amazing.
http://www.adventuresinscifipublishing.com/2014/02/aisfp-248-andrew-smith-grasshopper-jungle/
@rebekah Everyone else now wishes they did!
ULTRAGOTHA on May 27, 2015 at 4:55 pm said:
But things worked out in the end, as the print version was nominated the following year (and won). The 2014 administrators did not compound the original error by declaring that the audiobook the previous year was the only version that counted and that therefore the print version wasn’t eligible. As you note, the pending constitutional amendment will clarify the situation. Like many other areas, WSFS can change the rules when it dislikes how an administrator interprets them.
I was trying to think of a Tim Powers related title and realized you wouldn’t even have to change The Anubis Gates really. Three Dogs To Never? The Stress of Her Retriever? The Drawing of the Bark?
Will, come here. What’s the matter with you? I think your brain is going soft from all those blacklists you are making with those young rabbits. Never tell anyone outside the Kennel what you are thinking again.
@brian z LOL.
Rebekah – Haven’t yet but I’ll check it out. I read but never really engaged with the fandom portion of any genre before recently, not out of any desire not to just hadn’t thought about it, so I’m not really familiar with some of the websites/podcasts that exist.
RedWombat:the final part being about Sings-to-Trees and his Orc warrior-poet lady-love
Me too!! I love that book. I just want to read the rest of it! Please, please, please!!
“well, technically you can refuse it, but then brad will turn up and explain carefully and repeatedly to you that you’re actually turning it down because non-puppies are bullies”