aka The Puppies Who Circumnavigated the Hugos in a Slate of Their Own Making
Today’s basket of puppies comes from Alexandra Erin, Lisa J. Goldstein, Chris Gerrib, T. C. McCarthy, Matthew Bowman, Erin Bellavi (Billiard), Brandon Kempner, William Reichard, John O’Neill, Laura Liddell Nolen, Spencer Shannon and L. Jagi Lamplighter. (Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editors of the day mickyFinn and DMS.)
Alexandra Erin on Blue Author Is About To Write
“Sad Puppies Review Books: MADELINE” – May 8
Reviewed by John Z. Upjohn, USMC (Aspired) …
In the interest of a fair review, I made myself flip through the rest anyway. What I picked up is that the character of Madeline is everything that Feminazis say they want in a “strong female character”, as we are told from the beginning that she’s not afraid of anything, including mice and a tiger in the zoo.
Are we supposed to impressed? Mice aren’t scary and the tiger is clearly in a cage. Does anyone think this precious little snowflake would have lasted five seconds against that tiger in a real fight? Hell no! She wouldn’t have. Not even five seconds and that’s the truth this book takes such pains to conceal from you.
SJWs want us to believe that women are just as strong as any man but then they stage this kind of ridiculous pantomime where we’re supposed to be impressed that they aren’t frightened of zoo animals. But it is the SJWs who are sexist against women by suggesting women should be afraid of caged animals and tiny rodents.
Anyway, it seems like Madeline isn’t such a “strong female character” when her appendix gets inflamed! She cries like a little girl, and guess what? That’s right, a MAN comes to her rescue.
Lisa J. Goldstein on theinferior4
“The Hugo Ballot, Part 5: Novelettes” – May 8
We’ve left short stories and are now in the land of the novelettes. And the first story here, “The Day the World Turned Upside Down” by Thomas Olde Heuvelt, is also the first story on the ballot not from the Sad or Rabid Puppy slate. As you probably noticed, I’ve been struggling with the puppy-related stories, so I was glad to see something different. And at first I thought my optimism would be rewarded — the writing is clear, with a light magic realist touch, and the situation — man dumped by his girlfriend — is interesting and relatable, at least in the beginning.
Chris Gerrib on Private Mars Rocket
“Really?” – May 8
The only freely-available Hugo novella I have been able to find is Arlan Andrews’ Flow. I just finished reading it, and am frankly underwhelmed.
Pamelibrarian
“Championship B’Tok” – May 7
So. The Hugos. Up until this year I was not aware that this was a vote-by-random-people-with-memberships award. As I’ve mentioned, I’m not really an awards person at all. I tend to disagree with all the award-winning choices and therefore don’t put much stock in them. It’s very political … which this year’s Hugo Debacle (I think it deserves capitalization after all of the drama generated) aptly demonstrates. Many other bloggers and authors have explained it much better than I can, but I was curious to read some of the short stories and novellas that were up for awards.
I’d read a book by Edward Lerner a long time ago: it was Fools’ Experiments. I remember that I didn’t really like it because it seemed silly, but I had hoped that Lerner would grow as an author and clean up the writing a bit.
I think things got better. They’re not fantastic or mind-blowing or OMGREADTHISNOW, but I rather enjoyed Championship B’Tok.
A problem with the #hugoawards is that it's the same group of people reading the same authors, every year. WorldCon needs new blood.
— T.C. McCarthy (@tcmccarthy_) May 8, 2015
Matthew Bowman on Novel Ninja
“Fake Geeks Go HomeL A Hugo Fisk” – May 4
This would be entertaining if it weren’t so sad. After all, as I keep saying, we’re not asking anyone to vote without reading. That would be a heck of a lot easier. And why would anyone pay forty bucks to vote if they didn’t actually care about the topic?
Remember, your own side is buying votes for other people. If suggesting to other geeks that a Worldcon supporting membership is worth them buying themselves is bad, how is it okay for the anti-Puppy crowd to actually buy votes?
Erin Bellavi (Billiard) on Toasted Cheese
TC: Of course, one drawback of the internet is the anonymous hate and trolling that sometimes goes along with having an online presence. Can you describe a time when you had to deal with hate and/or trolling?…
MRK: Yesterday. So, I decided that it would be a nice thing to offer to help people who couldn’t afford a supporting membership for the Hugo awards, by doing a drawing to give some away. This led to cries of “Vote buying!” even though I wasn’t up for an award. My feed became infested with people associated with GamerGate. So I did something I call “politeness trolling.” Which is that someone says something hateful to me, and I answer them with a request for clarification, often accompanied by an apology. More often than not, this actually leads to an interesting conversation.
And the ones that are just trolling me? Heh. I grew up in the South where we’re taught to say, “That’s nice,” instead of “Fuck you.” I can bless someone’s heart all day.
Brandon Kempner on Chaos Horizon
Hugo Award Nomination Ranges, 2006-2015, Part 2 – May 7
The Hugo is a strange award. One Hugo matters a great deal—the Best Novel. It sells copies of books, and defines for the casual SFF fan the “best” of the field. The Novella, Novelette, and Short Story also carry significant weight in the SFF field at large, helping to define rising stars and major works. Some of the other categories feel more like insider awards: Editor, Semiprozine. Others feel like fun ways to nod at the SFF fandom (Fanzine). All of them work slightly differently, and there’s a huge drop off between categories. That’s our point of scrutiny today, so let’s get to some charts.
William Reichard
“So if a Puppy wins a Hugo…will it be a real award then?” – May 8
Honest question. Will it be used on book covers?
“Winner of the top prize from the morally bankrupt and politically corrupt organization of strongarming fools and their sycophants that I spent two years excoriating in every venue I could think of!”?
John O’Neill on Black Gate
“The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in April” – May 8
Looking over our traffic stats for last month, I want to give a shout-out to M Harold Page, who managed to heroically crack the Top 10 without once mentioning the Hugo Awards or Rabid Puppies. Well done, Mr. Page!
He was the only one to accomplish that extraordinary feat, however. Every other article in the Top 10 for April (and more than a few in the Top 25) directly addressed the ongoing Hugo Awards controversy, which began on April 4th when Worldcon announced the nominees for the 2015 Hugo Awards — a group which usually represents the finest science fiction and fantasy of the year, but this year was largely dictated by a single individual, Vox Day (Theo Beale), and his Rabid Puppy supporters, who crammed the slate with 11 nominees from Theo’s tiny publishing house, Castalia House, and nominated Vox Day personally for two Hugo Awards.
Not coincidentally, Black Gate received the first Hugo nomination in our history, and one of our bloggers, Matthew David Surridge, was nominated for Best Fan Writer, both as a direct result of being included on the Rabid Puppy slate. We declined those nominations, for reasons that I think should be fairly obvious.
The Writers Life eMagazine
“{Virtual Book Tour} A Book Chat with Laura Liddell Nolen, author of ‘The Ark’” – May 6
Q: What’s your favorite place to hang out online?
I love visiting the sites of authors I respect, especially the ones who also do a great job of keeping their blogs up. There’s been no shortage of big names making public statements lately: Mary Robinette Kowal, George R.R. Martin, John Scalzi, and plenty of others have had lots to say about the Sad Puppies’ slate of Hugo-nominated works. Right now, GRRM has had the most activity on his site I’ve seen in a long time. It’s clear that he is still as invested in worldcon as he ever was. In other words, his mind-blowing success hasn’t changed his passion for the form. Given his tenure, his opinion is not to be taken lightly. Last week, he made something like three posts within 24 hours. I can’t look away.
Ugh. Should stop reading #hugoawards roundups, because Beale has become an evil mastermind in my dreams.
— an internet nobody (@katster) May 8, 2015
Spencer Shannon on Dig Boston
“Alternate Universe: Queer/Trans Narratives Mix for Fun Effect in New Performance” – May 8
The event will bring together a menagerie of local speculative fiction writers in one room, and will allow attendees to connect directly with writers who share a desire for inclusive, radical creativity in the media they consume. Author and editor K. Tempest Bradford will serve as MC—she immediately said yes when Jarboe reached out to her about WF&S. “[Bradford is] a pretty vocal feminist and anti-racist who uses her platforms to question old guard and mainstream, and she’s so charismatic, too. I thought she’d be a good fit as a prominent personality who also immediately sets the tone that this event isn’t about the old guard or the mainstream,” Jarboe says. “In fact, you can truly love speculative fiction and comics and games and see the mess that is the Hugo Awards this year, and Gamergate, and all that nonsense, and be like, ‘Whatever, I’ll start my own thing.’”
L. Jagi Lamplighter on Welcome to Arhyalon
“Tempest-in-a-teardrop” – May 8
Amusing pro Sad Puppy comics by our dear friends Codex & Q.
I believe:
Larry Correia is the bear
Brad Torgersen is a carrot
Sarah A Hoyt is the mouse
John is the raven
The figure with horns is Vox Day
Codex & Q at Tempest In A Teardrop
Yes, we understand: you need to lay into Codex & Q with both barrels, but are stymied by the limitations of public decency. Here’s an insult generator for all your invective needs: have fun! And you’re welcome.
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Steven Shwartz: Or mocking castles down!
Thanks, JJ!
Tuoma:”In fact, I would argue that the perceived standards and preferances vary from one fan to another.”
No! Different people liking different things for different reasons? That’s un-possible!
So I guess that’s today’s Tuomas Statement of the Bloody Obvs as Revealed Truth, alongside gems like “not everything worthy gets nominated” and “whoever gets most votes wins”
Also:
“What the popular demand was, was to simply list 20 Hugo award winners that were left leaning. Something I criticised before I took the thankless task of trying explain why someone might not like something.”
Since it was a popular demand, I’m sure you can find one example of such a request easily, because what I have are either Nick Mamatas request:
name
“a. one work of fiction
>b. that won a Hugo Award
>c. while foregrounding a left message to the extent that the story was ruined or misshaped
>d. per set of winners since 1995.”
(as quoted by you in https://file770.com/?p=22363&cpage=4#comment-258259)
To which you provided further details here, from your curated one-star amazon list: https://file770.com/?p=22363&cpage=5#comment-258300
Which, among others, contains crtiques of The Yiddish Policemen’s Union for “not being SF” (it’s a goddamn alt-history book) and of Rainbows end as a “It just boring ad for new technology”
Dude. Many of us understand the concept of subjective preferences. What I at least object to is the notion that I (and by some extension, the rest of the Hugo Cabal (TiNC)) have been prioritising lefty message-fic over good stories. So show us winners or examples where the message over-rode any such writing qualities.
It’s asking for criticisms from a specific type/ nature. What you’ve given are general dislikes, which would be useful if anyone was arguing with you that Hugo winners are universally loved and lauded.
No one is.
@snowcrash Boom! Mic drop.
Peace, yeah, I wanted to start tracking what percentage of books I was reading that were male authored vs. female authored. SO I added that category. THis year I added a column for if I’ve dropped a review on Amazon/Goodreads in an effort to motivate me to do that with more books. Apparently it helps the authors out, and I’d like to support authors that I want to read more out of.
JJ, thanks for the link. I’ll definitely check that out. I’ve been using excel spreadsheets that I keep in my Dropbox.
Hadn’t noticed this before (I think the original comment went to moderation). Isn’t VVinge a libertarian? Don’t Puppies like his work?
It’s been a long time since I read this, but I liked it, and recall it well enough to suggest that the depiction of lots of different new technologies, and how people were interacting with those technologies with different levels of comfort and ability, and sometimes stumbling into the technologies’ failure modes, doesn’t strike me as being just an “ad”. It’s hard to even see “ad” as being an honest term, since much of the tech didn’t (and still doesn’t) exist yet to be advertised for.
I can see that someone could write something as dismissive and terse as that “review”, but it doesn’t do due diligence in explaining what their problem is.
snowcrash @ 6:52 am-
You ask Tuoma to point out Hugo novels that prioritized a lefty message over the last 20 years at the expense of story.
I haven’t read all the Hugo winners over the last 20 years, so I can’t answer that.
But I have two questions.
1. Over the last 20 years, which Hugo novel winner has been politically conservative? Glancing at the list, I think you’d have to go back 25 years to 1990 for Dan Simmons (and he denies it).
2. Over the last 20 years, which Hugo winning novel has had a pro-conservative message within story line? I have not read them all, and those that I have the message may not have wrecked the story line, but any political messages within the last 20 years of Hugo novel winners, to the extent messages exist among the Hugo winners, have been progressive from what I’ve read.
I can’t answer Steve Moss’s question, but this request is moving the goalposts. The original Puppy complaint was not that stories with conservative messages were failing to win Hugos, but that Hugos were going to stories whose liberal message overpowered the storytelling.
@Steve Moss I can’t recall if it was this thread, or another, but thumbs up on Player of Games as most-lent book; I think it’s #3 for me, along with Chip Delany’s _Nova_ and whatever I can use to get “The Man Who Painted The Dragon Griaule” into people’s hands. 😉
As for your questions:
It depends on where you come from, I suspect. I have not read as many of the most recent Hugo winners to judge. I am also removing “Libertarian” from your definition of “Conservative”, since the number of joint-nominees for the best novel award there was very high in the 2000-2010 period.
A quick skim of the winners suggest several that might be seen as “conservative” by people in the middle of the U.S. mainstream — or people from the (generally more liberal) EU. However, to people like JCW, they probably don’t count — so I can’t say.
Heck — there are ways in which the Diamond Age is “conservative” in its own way — not all of it, but if you look at who’s held up as “good”…. Again, I’m sure a JCW wouldn’t find it so, but I could certainly make the case.
(As a side note: I am on my third copy of that book, the first two having been read to pieces.)
Steve Moss, OK, but don’t forget the libertarian messages in many Hugo winners. Which recalls the question of what to do with Heinlein. (Also the question of why some commenters approaching from the left are being attacked as filthy conservatives.)
‘ Over the last 20 years, which Hugo winning novel has had a pro-conservative message within story line? ‘
Aside from the fact that no one has made that claim and you could find some heavy handed versions of that this year, sure let’s play.
Anti-big government? Ancillary Justice.
Savior chosen to fight against a villain whose name is shockingly close to Satan? Wheel of Time.
Military Sci-fi where people are given new bodies in order to fight wars for resources? Old Man’s War 😉
Really to find overwhelming political themes either way you’d have to stretch back further. No one called Simmons Hyperion conservative fiction (they called Flashback that and I do feel that’s an over reaction). Go back far enough and it’s a bit less subtle from either direction. Oddly despite what Sad Puppies have said it seems like recent history has been more about telling various stories than heavy handed politics.
Old Man’s War didn’t win.
The Puppy complaint wasn’t that libertarian sf, as distinct from conservative sf, was or wasn’t winning Hugos.
It was that Hugos were going to works in which leftist message dominated to the severe detriment of story.
We keep asking for examples–any examples, in any category, anytime in the last twenty years. And Puppy supporters keep dodging the question.
You can’t prove your point with libertarian sf that won. You can’t prove your point with works you haven’t read and can only discuss by cherry picking low Amazon or Goodreads ratings and dismissive reviews that don’t really discuss the story.
And you certainly can’t prove your point with works that you think are too “leftist” and/or have poor storytelling, but which were not even Hugo nominees.
Do you have anything meaningful to offer?
You’re right, neither did Wheel of Time. Conservative message fiction being silenced!
Brian Z, yeah, Old Man’s War didn’t win the Hugo, but it was a nominee, it’s exactly the kind of thing the Puppies claim they like, and the Puppies were complaining that the stuff they like couldn’t get nominated without slates to counter the evil SJW conspiracy.
It’s a bit awkward, of course, that the Puppies have decided that Scalzi is the personification and ringleader of the dread SJW cabal.
Lis, Steve Moss asked specifically about Hugo winners, but Matt Y apparently misread it in answering, that’s all. Not a big deal.
I think what Steve Moss might be driving at (he can correct me if I’m wrong) is: if Hugo winners were voted on in a manner that was completely “blind” to any political ideas that might be underpinning the work, one might ask: why, then, don’t any of the winners have a particularly conservative message, but many have an overtly liberal one?
I think that may be what he’s driving at (could be wrong) but I suspect the picture is considerably muddier than that, since the “left-right” divide as defined in today’s American politics does not transfer very well to the field of science fiction.
(It won’t even be description of American politics if we wind up with a pro-gun Democratic Socialist running against a Republican who wants to close all our military bases, but that’s a whole ‘nother topic).
Lis, Steve Moss asked specifically about Hugo winners, but Matt Y apparently misread it in answering, that’s all. Not a big deal.
I think what Steve Moss might be driving at (he can correct me if I’m wrong) is: if Hugo winners were voted on in a manner that was completely “blind” to any political ideas that might be underpinning the work, one might ask: why, then, don’t any of the winners have a particularly conservative message, but many have an overtly liberal one?
I think that may be what he’s driving at (could be wrong) but I suspect the picture is considerably muddier than that, since the “left-right” divide as defined in today’s American politics does not transfer very well to the field of science fiction.
(It won’t even be description of American politics if we wind up with a pro-NRA Socialist running against a Republican who wants to close all our military bases, but that’s a whole ‘nother topic).
Starting from the back and ignoring Author’s actual politics*: 1996 – Stephenson – The Diamond Age
Been a while since I’ve read this, but I remember it being fairly strongly against moral relativism. Didn’t it also have Stephenson’s usual individual heroism and ingenuity being the motor of history POV? Both of these seem like messages that work quite well with both UK and US conservative politics.
*In this case, and I don’t think he’s alone, NS does not map well onto the standard US political spectrum.
I just tried to post a reply to Lis twice (internet is spotty here) and realized belatedly that if you even MENTION the US culture wars you get thrown into the moderation cue. I feel for WordPress. And Mike.
tl;dr (literally) one of the most exiting things to happen in American in recent years is the re-emergence and evolution of libertarian ideas on the right AND left. And the field of science fiction is way, way ahead of the rest of the country. Let’s stop fighting old battles, and start looking forward.
Brian Z – ‘but many have an overtly liberal one?’
Which ones?
Matt Y, I guess that is a serious question so: Ancillary Justice wants to escape gender binary (a valuable thing SF can do), I didn’t read the Connie Willis; Redshirts is not overtly political but its author is a well known liberal bogovator who has attacked conservatives in public (and I often tend agree with many of his political positions); The Windup Girl is a preachy environmental parable (which I thought was spot-on in many respects, though not in the problematic treatment of the titular character); China Mievelle’s Marxist politics informs every aspect of the way he walks and breathes, not to mention the way he writes; and that is just the last couple novels, which I thought were all great, without even getting into short fiction.
*blogovator (is that a word?)
Steve Moss
Firstly, I didn’t ask Tuomas that, I just pointed out that what he was being asked and what he was answering were different. Since he’s so keen on it, I’d like him to actually address it, and not answer B to question A.
Secondly I’m not particularly interested in your goalpost shifting. If you want to subject past Hugo winners to some sort of political litmus test (aren’t you puppies against that?), do your own reading and do it, don’t expect someone else to do your legwork for you.
Secondly,
Crap, y’all just ignore that last secondly, I’ll sell it off shortly to one of the local black market wordsmiths
BTW – voters from around planet Earth vote and nominate in the Hugo Awards. What people in the US see as ‘conservative’ is different to what other peoples do. You’re confusing your terms. Again.
@Brian Z: “Ancillary Justice wants to escape gender binary (a valuable thing SF can do),”
Really? I’m not seeing that so far, but I can understand how skimming commentary about the book might lead to that conclusion. Do go on…
“Redshirts is not overtly political”
So that doesn’t count…
“The Windup Girl is a preachy environmental parable”
Okay, I’ll take your word for that. You’re up to one…
“China Mievelle’s Marxist politics informs every aspect of the way he walks and breathes,”
Still doesn’t show that his book was message-fic. At one possible hit out of five, your evidence is less than impressive.
Daveon,
“What people in the US see as ‘conservative’ is different to what other peoples do. You’re confusing your terms. Again.”
First, we all know that more WorldCon members are American than from any other country, the “World” comes from the NYC World’s Fair, etc. etc.
Second, you are saying exactly what I said – the left-right divide in American politics cannot be translated exactly into the field of science fiction. My exact words, no?
Question: why is it confusing that many works of fantasy and forward looking speculative fiction are not conservative in their messages?
Shall we turn, as we know the puppies are fond of doing, to a dictionary to consider what that word means?
Rev. Bob, stop splitting hairs. We have gotten off the subject of whether the liberal message overpowers the story. I was asked to name Hugo winners in which a liberal message can be found. Don’t you think that an author’s politics informs his or her writing? And that can be a force for good in the world as well as evil? Or does that only happen when the bad guys write?
Brian, honestly I don’t much care, I’m not American, I know many other people who aren’t, the whole point is it doesn’t matter and you guys don’t get to dictate to me or others what is and isn’t acceptable on these points.
Whether or not there are more of you should be utterly irrelevant except this year it has been made less so.
Last year a significant proportion of the WFSF were, in fact, not American.
Daveon: aha, now that is a very interesting point. I’d be interested to hear what any conservatives might think about that, if they are listening.
My last comment in reference to “Question: why is it confusing that many works of fantasy and forward looking speculative fiction are not conservative in their messages?”
But Brian, what some Americans think of as a liberal message over powering a story another reader might utterly ignore.
I know people who struggle with Vinge because of his politics permeating his work and yet here I’m told he’s not conservative. Go figure…
Let us consider A Deepness Upon the Sky… A set of free market capitalists beat a group of essentially communist bad guys with aliens. Did I miss anything there?
“I don’t much care, I’m not American”
I’m American and I barely can bring myself to care, so I sympathize.
I am starting from Mike Glyer’s observation of a few days ago that it took an appeal to the US Culture Wars to motivate a group of fans to engage in bloc voting. There are international aspects of it as well, which are equally interesting, but it is hard to argue that the US political context is irrelevant to our discussion of the “puppy movements,” no?
Daveon,
“Deepness on the Sky”
Yes. My entire point is that the discussion in science fiction can and should light years beyond any kind of liberal vs. conservative US culture war, and the most obvious sign of that is the libertarian strain running through science fiction that is now showing up in popular culture. If you thought I was arguing from some other political position than that, please go back to my earlier comments with this added clarification.
Brian Z: “Ancillary Justice wants to escape gender binary”
Ancillary Justice is in no way about that at all — and since you’re saying that it is, it’s clear that 1) you haven’t actually read the book, and 2) you’re just repeating something you heard/read from someone else.
@alexvdl: Peace, yeah, I wanted to start tracking what percentage of books I was reading that were male authored vs. female authored.
So how do you know how many James Tiptrees there are out there? Or, given the rise of Hawt Vampyre fiction, males writing as females?
@Brian Z – ” I was asked to name Hugo winners in which a liberal message can be found.”
No, the goalpost was, and still is, for you to show some winner that was selected solely because of the “lefty message” and did not have story quality to back it up.
@Brian Z: “Rev. Bob, stop splitting hairs. We have gotten off the subject of whether the liberal message overpowers the story. I was asked to name Hugo winners in which a liberal message can be found.”
Ah, I get it. Pointing out, as JJ and Craig R. also did, that your examples don’t hold up is “splitting hairs,” and you expect us not to notice when you shift the goalposts in the very next sentence from “overpowers the story” to “can be found.”
Sorry, old chum, but it just won’t wash.
The New York World’s Fair was more than 75 years ago.
The meaning of the “World” in WorldCon has changed, just like everything has changed from the era of Amelia Earhart and Neville Chamberlain.
If the Puppylike argument is that the fandom of WorldCon, who created and nurtured the Hugos and whose careful stewardship of them is what has made them into the prize the Puppies salivate after, is too small and cliquish and insular and must be opened up to new voices, then why bring up a three-generations-old incident to justify brushing off all fandom outside of the United States?
Surely international fandom deserves at least as much of a voice and a vote as the Puppies do.
The City & The City seems the strongest candidate for message fiction. Its central premise and driving plot device is the idea that law and culture shape our perception of the world in ways that are indistinguishable from magic.
Craig R., you might have just missed the question. I was replying directly to Matt Y on May 9, 2015 at 10:35 pm who said:
“Brian Z – ‘but many have an overtly liberal one?’
Which ones?”
Craig R., a month or two ago, Brad Torgersen in one of his populist screeds made a rhetorically inflated claim that WorldCon insiders always vote for lefty message over telling a good story (a rough paraphrase). Nick Mamatas demolished that idea ages ago. I have no clue why anyone is still arguing about it since it has been shown to be obviously untrue. It might have happened in a couple individual (and debatable) cases, but it has not been a general pattern. OK?
If anyone wants to have a broader and hopefully more interesting conversation about how politics interacts with science fiction and the Hugo Awards, just let me know.
influxus: “The City & The City seems the strongest candidate for message fiction. Its central premise and driving plot device is the idea that law and culture shape our perception of the world in ways that are indistinguishable from magic.”
And, possibly, that people can be forced to do stupid things which oppose their own best interests by a repressive government which overlegislates their free will.
Whoops! That almost sounds like a Conservative message there, doesn’t it?
Peace,
“meaning of the “World” in WorldCon has changed”
Sure, absolutely, and don’t forget the “puppy” movements have a fascinating international dimension as well. Yet, even though American politics usually bores me to tears, I still think it is relevant to understanding the current conflicts.
“Sure, absolutely, and don’t forget the “puppy” movements have a fascinating international dimension as well.”
What fascinating international dimension is that? For me, as a european, it looks like your standard american cultural war, based on a dysfunctional american political system. Nothing international there.
Hampus, for example: http://www.amazon.com/History-Strategy-Sun-William-Lind-ebook/dp/B00V94520E/
Expanding on that.
Early on in this mess the “World” in WorldCon was used as a rationalization for the Puppies’ crusade. I can dig out quotes if need be, but basically one or both of the two Sad Puppy leaders complained about how a “World” award should include everybody, not just a small group of self-selected literary fans. It was a complaint about the small, insular nature of the Hugos, one of the talking points that popped up about the Sad Puppies’ slate.
The repeated use of the 1939 NY World’s Fair allusion (is it a talking point in Puppyland?) seems to be trying to say “But ‘World’ does not mean that the larger world of SFF fans who care about the Hugos but not about US partisan politics should get involved. ‘World’ is just a historical artifact.”
This goes exactly against the Puppies’ earlier claims about getting more SFF fans involved in the Hugos.
The Puppies appear to be trying to have it both ways, invoking the “World” in WorldCon to excuse their actions as a justified attempt to wrest control from a perceived small group of elite conspirators and turning right around and using the origin of the name as justification for trying to ignore the voices of genuine world fandom, to whom they themselves appear as a small group of elite conspirators.
Peace Is My Middle Name — “The Puppies appear to be trying to have it both ways,”
Which is something we continually see. For every statement they make about the point of all this, there seems to be another that exactly contradicts it.
I guess this means that Puppies always piss both ways.
“So how do you know how many James Tiptrees there are out there? Or, given the rise of Hawt Vampyre fiction, males writing as females?”
I don’t. Nor do I really care. I use the information presented to me in the author bio, or how the author presents to the audience at large. If, in situations like Mazarkis Williams, the author doesn’t present, I just leave it blank. In the case of anthologies, I mark it is both. I’m just trying to get rough numbers so I can see what kind of stuff I’m reading, and maybe try to strike out in new and different directions on occasion.