aka Slate Expectations
Today’s lightness comes from Katherine Tomlinson, amalythia, David Gerrold, Brad R. Torgersen, Cat Valente, Voss Foster, Andrew Knighton, Nick Mamatas, William Reichard, P. Llewellyn James, Cheryl Morgan, Bonnie McDaniel, Lisa J. Goldstein, Eemeli Aro, Kate Paulk, Pat Patterson, Tom Knighton, Dan Ammon, John Scalzi and Alexandra Erin. A couple of these are older items that seem to have been missed by earlier roundups. (Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editors of the day Kary English and Daniel P. Dern.)
Katherine Tomlinson on Kattomic Energy
“Hullabaloo over the Hugos” – May 3
When I first heard about the gaming of the system, it was disappointing but I spent decades in L.A. where gaming the system at awards time is a fine art. (Remember how many people were shocked, SHOCKED that Pia Zadora got a Golden Globe Award?)
But I grew up reading science fiction and fantasy. I write it now. And the stories I write and the characters I create reflect the world I live in. Complicated. Diverse. And women do more than open hailing frequencies and get rescued from towers.
The idea that there are writers out there who are trying to hijack two entire genres of writing to advance their political agenda is just not tolerable. I’m not a member of the WSFS but even so, I have skin in the game. Because I love these genres. And it is a delight to discover writers whose work inspires me. And entertains me. Call me a “pissypants” if you like (see above Slate article) but what that cabal of writers did will NEVER be okay for me. And it wouldn’t be okay if they’d had a liberal, left-leaning agenda either.
Hugo awards are the work of those who claim to know the truth and painting highly editorialized views as "news."
— Markov Kern (@sealion_ebooks) May 7, 2015
amalythia on Medium
“I Do Not Wish to Offend – Short Story” – May 6
[amalythia has written a story in response to Kameron Hurley’s short story “It’s About Ethics in Revolution”.]
There is a large bell in the center of town that used to ring every morning. But then the Minister’s daughter complained that the noise triggered her, by waking her up from her sleep. It doesn’t ring anymore. Instead we’re awoken by a phone call from our manager. My roommate sleeps right through it. I heard her mumble something about not coming in. Again. Ever since our last manager seemed to disappear overnight, when she threatened to fire her for incompetence, no one dares question her. I wear my tag: 0678. I think I had a name at some point, perhaps the one inscribed on the pendant my mother left for me. They don’t allow names anymore, as certain names might offend some people. I wouldn’t want to offend them.
David Gerrold on Facebook – May 7
… Second, after we reaffirm our commitment to inclusiveness, we need to consider whether or not the Hugo nominating rules need to be adjusted. I believe that the administrators of the award should have the power to disqualify slate-ballots, but the mechanisms for this might be controversial. (It should be possible to do a computer analysis of the balloting. If 25 or more ballots come in with identical nominees in every category, and they match a publicized slate…that could be considered compelling evidence.) Other proposals have been offered as well, and I expect there to be some vigorous discussion…..
But the point I’m working toward is a difficult one — it’s a conversation that we tend to shy away from. But any functioning community, does have the right to protect itself from disruptive agencies. Groups can and do disinvite those who spoil the party.
The SFWA expelled Vox Day for his unprofessional behavior. Fandom as a community, and the Worldcon as an institution, should have the same power to invite someone to the egress. Other conventions have taken steps to protect themselves from toxic and disruptive individuals — and based on the back-and-forth conversations I’ve seen, and as unpleasant a discussion as this will be, maybe it’s time to have a discussion about the mechanisms for shutting down someone who has publicly declared his intention to destroy the awards.
That’s the point. We cannot talk about healing while the knife is still being twisted in the wound. I can’t speak for the sad puppies, I can’t tell them what to do — but I would hope that they would recognize that being perceived as standing next to a man who wants to destroy the system is not the best place to stand. Despite what’s being said in their own echo chambers, the larger narrative isn’t a good one for the puppies.
Brad R. Torgersen in a comment to David Gerrold – May 7
Thing is, no matter how much “daylight” Larry and I put between ourselves and Vox Day, there are people on “your” side, David, who insist that it’s all the same thing. That there is no difference at all.
For five weeks, Larry and myself have had to hear it (from “your” side) about how awful we are.
We invited everyone to the democracy, and we have been awfulized for it. The SP3 voters have been awfulized. Awfulization has been the fad sport of the season. By people who pat themselves on the back for being “inclusive.”
As long as Fandom (caps f) insists on doing “sniff tests” about voters and fans (small f) being the “wrong kind” of people, there won’t be healing. Definitely not. This is the wound Fandom (caps f) has inflicted on itself, after decades of quiet exclusivity. Of telling authors and artists and fans (small f) they’re not the expected, or correct, or sufficiently “fannish” kind of people that Fandom (caps f) deems worthy.
This is why so many fans and professionals *avoid* Worldcon. WSFS. The Hugos. Etc. Because the “sniff test” is very glaring, and if the engineers of “inclusive” exclusivity (they know who they are) succeed in making it so that the poll tax (membership fee) is exorbitant, or that only attending members get to vote on the Hugo, or that the democracy is scuttled altogether (judges “your” side picks, always make sure “your” side gets the answers it wants) then Worldcon gets that much smaller, that much more exclusive, that much less relevant.
Vox Day is a side show. A red herring. Don’t water that weed.
What is Worldcon doing to prove that it is, in fact, WORLDCON? Because any given Comic Con, Dragoncon, et al., beats the pants off Worldcon, in terms of audience youth, audience enthusiasm, and connection to the broader SF/F realm.
To paraphrase a line from one of my favorite films, this isn’t the field you built in your garage anymore.
You can’t arrest Vox Day. You can’t turn off his blog. You can’t touch him. So why fixate on him endlessly?
If Worldcon begins to boast memberships on the order of 30,000 to 55,000 then Vox Day and his influence cease to exist. There is no bloc that can hope to survive those numbers.
So, go big.
Or stay small, and shutter the windows and doors.
One of those choices has a future. The other does not.
Cat Valente in a comment on File 770 – May 7
Tintinaus: Regardless of what Dave Freer thinks of me–a writer I barely know who misquotes me at every turn and who, when we met, replied monosyllabically to my friendly overtures while looking like he wanted nothing more than for me to leave, only to go online four years later and claim to know a whole lot about my thoughts and feelings–it makes me sad (AS SAD AS A PUPPY) to hear my SF work once again dismissed as “gussied up” fantasy.
Essentially nothing SFnal I write gets classified as SF. It can take place on other planets, concern itself with science and technology, even have ray guns, and it somehow always gets dismissed with a wave of the hand and an assurance that it’s “just” fantasy. I can think of a lot of science fiction authors with much less hard science than I’ve used in my stories who are never questioned as to which side of the genre they write on. I am genuinely curious whether it’s because I use that pretty language, that I’ve written more fantasy than SF–or maybe my science really is that bad. Or maybe it’s that “hard” SF gets written by men, and the whole conversation is incredibly gendered.
Thing is, I’ve never claimed to write hard SF. I didn’t want to write SF at all for a long time because I was convinced the science fiction community did not want me and would not accept me–funny how that’s still kind of true. I can write about programming and physics till I’m blue in the face but it’ll never be SF for some reason.
And what I said, what I have said over and over at conventions, is that you don’t need a background in math and science to write SF. That’s what research is for. I research like a bear and I would think anyone who’s read my books would laugh at the idea that I think everyone should be ignorant and uneducated–I mostly get called a pretentious, elitist asshole, not a champion of dumbing down. I was trying, as I always do, to assure young writers that they are allowed to write SF even if they don’t have a degree in physics, because I don’t know if people realize how intimidating it can be to even attempt science fiction with a lot of people yelling about getting off their lawn if you’ve never interned for NASA. Or are a dude.
I do not have a science background. I research and I research hard because it’s more difficult for me than folklore and myth, which I’ve studied all my life. But I maintain it’s absurd to say SF can only be written by scientists–absurd and elitist and exclusionary. And honestly, show me the diamond-hard science in the Puppy slate. Show me the PhD peeking out from behind the dust jacket. The kind of SF they advocate, with the buxom ray guns and the strapping spaceships, is NOT hard SF. It’s adventure fiction “gussied up” as science fiction. And that’s fine, but it has no more real science than my gussied up fantasy.
Voss Foster on Demon Hunting & Tenth Dimensional Physics
“I Will Walk With You” – May 6
Now, I’m not a shodan in Aikido (in 4th grade, I had a white belt in karate…), and I don’t have the same presence as Vonda McIntyre. I also hate wearing those badge ribbons. One or two is my max. But I’m 5’10”, and close to 300 pounds (and dropping, yay me!), and I generally look intimidating. But even if I didn’t, like she said, it’s a presence, it’s someone by your side. And I will do that, and happily so. If you feel like you need someone, whatever side of the issue you fall on, I will walk with you.
Andrew Knighton
“Change, Reaction and Pain – Coping With Cultural Backlash” – April 29
I love that the world is changing. I love the variety that brings and the novelty it creates within our culture, even as the dark fingers of uncertainty send tremors of fear through my body.
Unfortunately, fear of change is currently rearing its big, ugly head all over geek culture.
The most prominent and hideous example of this is the treatment of feminists in computer gaming. There are some great designers and critics out there critiquing the domination of gaming by white, straight, male gamers and characters, and the way this excludes others. This has triggered a huge backlash, in which people have been called the vilest names and even had their lives threatened for expressing their opinions on a medium they love.
Then there’s the fuss, for the second year in a row, around science fiction and fantasy’s Hugo awards. I think there are a lot of problems with the Hugos, but they’re certainly high profile within the core of sf+f. This year, a reactionary group have managed to dominate the nominations with a slate of conservative, white, male authors. It’s a shame, but it is at least getting people engaged with the awards, and may favour the pro-diversity arguments in the long run.
Nick Mamatas in a comment on Ask.fm – May 7
Screw real politics, what about the hugo’s? Torgersen write anymore slash or did Correia just cry for like the twentieth time about how life is unfair and everyone was so mean to him at worldcon?
Brad made a mildly homophobic remark regarding Scalzi, which half the planet had to blog about because it was just soooo awful and apparently now the US will fall to ISIS because how can Brad’s soldiers trust him now?
Anyway, under Sharia law, launching politicized slates for the Hugos is barred, so I guess the problem has solved itself!
William Reichard
“Cry ethics and let slip the puppies of war” – May 7
In which I am called a liar, though perhaps not in a way that’s literally, dialectically true but is actually more true because it lets me see the truth, which is that I am lying. Maybe. Or something.
William Reichard
“The day I got mentioned on Vox Day’s blog” – May 7
His Voxness mentions me in what may be some kind of compliment, though it may also translate as “you are fairly amusing…for a slave boy with inherently limited mental capacities and basic worth.” But hey, us Rhetoricals take what we can get, right? I know from long experience that my flame-retardant suit is far too flimsy to sustain me in any battle with the mighty forces arrayed off my port bow and preparing to decloak at any sign of hostile intent, so my only hope is to position myself as a jester, dancing merrily on the sidelines and dodging the occasional peach pit. So, hopefully, everyone’s still laughing. Ergo…where was I again?
P. Llewellyn James on The Refuge
“Hugo : ‘Skin Game’ the Best Novel?” – May 6
There are five books nominated for Best Novel for the 2105 Hugo awards. The winner will be chosen by a few thousand votes from among those who have registered as a member of WorldCon. But what does the wider audience of readers think of the books? Here are some Amazon statistics as of today May 6th. Voting closes on July 31st.
I’m using two measures – the overall sales rank, and my own invented ‘approval rating’, or calculation of positive to negative reviews ((5star + 4star)/(2star + 1star))….
Predictions
The overwhelming favorite on the basis of its approval rating is Skin Game, which is also the second-best seller in Kindle format.
The best-selling book in Kindle format is Lines of Departure, and it has the second-best approval rating.
Cheryl Morgan
“A Little Awards News” – May 7
Also yesterday the Arthur C. Clarke Award continued its journey away from science fiction and towards literary respectability. This year the award went to a beautifully written piece of sentimental twaddle aimed at the sort of pretentious hipsters who think that suffering an apocalypse means being unable to have iPhones, Sunday supplements and skinny flat lattes. It is a very long time since a book without a trans character made me as viscerally angry as Station 11 did. However, I don’t appear to have sent any death threats to the Clarke jury. Nor have I vowed to destroy the award, or even decided that it is “broken”. In fact I rather suspect that the Clarke will do better next year without any help from me. Clearly I am doing this social media thing all wrong.
Then again, I am confident that the winner of this year’s Hugos will be a far better science fiction novel than the winner of the Clarke.
Adult Onset Atheist
“SNARL: Flow” – May 6
This is a review of “Flow” by Arlan Andrews, Sr. (Analog, November 2014)
Overall this was an engaging novella. This is such a grand departure from the other four nominees that I will have awarded this story five whole stars (out of 10) by the time I have done reviewing it. I am sure it would have not scored as well if the competition was not so utterly dreadful.
Bonnie McDaniel on Red Headed Femme
“The Hugo project: ‘Totaled’” – April 30
The Hugo Project: “Totaled”
(Note: this is the newest in a series of posts wherein I review as many of the 2015 Hugo nominees as I can, and explain why I will or will not vote for them.) Hot damn. I finally stumbled upon a decent story. Actually, this story is pretty good, even if its premise is downright terrifying.
Lisa J. Goldstein on theinferior4
“The Hugo Ballot, Part 4: Short Stories” – May 6
“On a Spiritual Plain” by Lou Antonelli takes place on a planet where “the living and the spirits of the dead coexist side by side” for the sentient race there, the Ymilans. One day a human, Joe McDonald, dies on Ymilas, and then manifests in spirit form. The human chaplain learns from the Ymilan chief cleric that Joe’s soul has to make a pilgrimage to the north pole so it can “move on,” and so the three of them — the chaplain, the Ymilan, and Joe’s ghost — set off from the Terran base near the equator.
I would have liked more description of the Ymilans — all we’re told about them is that they’re “large.” I would have also liked more description of the trek across half the planet, but we see only electrical storms, and, towards the end, “diminishing hills.” I would have liked some sense of ceremony or ritual when the soul dissipates, but here Antonelli seems to have anticipated readers like me, because he has the Ymilan cleric say, “I’m sorry, I forget your people put a great deal of stock in theater and rituals, which is to be expected in such an immature race.” Okay, then.
Eemeli Aro in a comment on Charles Stross’ Antipope – April 5
[Comments about Worldcon site selection seemed tangential when I started doing these roundups, but after T.C. McCarthy’s tweet and the ensuing discussion here, I am going to link to this so I know where to find the quote in the future.]
Eemeli Aro: This is what I posted about Castalia House on a mailing list earlier today (for context, I’m chairing the Helsinki in 2017 Worldcon bid and somewhat involved in both Finnish and Worldcon fandoms):
I’d like to note that Castalia House has practically no connection with Finnish sf fandom, and they have never had a presence at any Finnish con. The only communication with the proprietor (Markku Koponen) that I’ve been a party to is a post by him to a Finnish sf mailing list last April, where he states (translating), “As must be clear to most, Castalia House is ideologically opposed to the majority of practically all fannish groups in this country.”
So in brief, no, the Finns that are members of Sasquan on account of having participated in the 2015 site selection vote or that have purchased a membership since then to participate in said process this year are unlikely to be aligned with the supporters of works published by Castalia House.
We do, on the other hand, have a thriving small press and short story scene, and a rather unique fanzine tradition, all of which is well integrated with Finnish fandom at large. Of course that’s mostly hidden from American eyes, as it tends to produce content in Finnish. If you’re interested in such, though, we do have a few things coming out this spring and summer that will be in English.
Kate Paulk on Mad Genius Club
“A Mad Genius Goes To RavenCon – Part the Final” – May 7
With a mere hour remaining ere her final panel of the day, Kate the Impaler did rest for a time, whereupon a member of that most secret guild of SMOF did approach her and divulge that the campaign to end the sorrow of young canines was indeed sending waves of shock through the grand halls of fandom, and how in response some sought to wrest that jewel of fandom, the Convention of World, from any locale where the friends of sorrowful young canines might gather, and take it to a far distant place that in isolation they might gather in force and thereby bring about changes to the Rules of Hugo, thus condemning the young canines to eternal sorrow. (For those not inclined to translate: read up on the contenders for the 2017 Worldcon, pay your $40 and vote. You’ll be a supporting member for 2017 before the price rise kicks in, and you get to choose where it is. Vote for the best candidate. Ignore that I like Washington, DC as a venue. I only like it because it’s the only one I could drive to).
The warrior maiden did assure the SMOF that voting would indeed be encouraged, and promised that no secrets would be divulged, for yea, as the house of fandom is divided, so too is the secret guild of SMOF.
Schlock Magazine
“Pop Culture Destruction – Forgive Me, For I Have Failed To Destroy Pop Culture” – May 7
If you’ve been following any goings on in the world of genre/science fiction literature you’ve surely heard of last month’s controversy surrounding the Hugo Awards, which got hijacked by literal fascists in the name of promoting what amounts to little more than right wing propaganda. And that’s before internet scum collective GamerGate got involved. In any case, writer Philip Sandifer has this excellent roundup of the sorry debacle on his blog, to which I can only add that, at this point, the Hugos can only fixed with the application of a bullet to the head.
Pat Patterson on Papa Pat Rambles
“Laura Mixon Gets It Right” – May 4
Again: if you have not read Laura’s report, do so. I do not know whether she will win the Hugo in the “Best Fan Writer” or not; she is competing against four other respected fan writers, three of whom I consider to be personal friends. I plan to vote for Nunaya Bidness, but if I were on the slate against her, I would consider that to be an honor-by-association.
Tom Knighton
“Woman wants to ban men at literary readings, a fisking” – May 6
I’m sorry, but you can’t claim on one hand that women are self-censoring from raising their hands, and then say it’s not their fault that they’re not raising their hands. Women aren’t punished for asking questions as adults.
She claims that the moderators don’t notice them, but you know who moderators are far more likely to notice? People raising their damn hands, for one! Yes, I know they skipped over Livingston, and while she wasn’t their target, they really couldn’t know that, but how prevalent is the situation? Honestly, maybe it’s just personal. If these are the same folks, maybe they just don’t like her for some reason?
Dan Ammon on The Shield
”Why and How The Hugo Awards Should Be” – April 18
But that doesn’t matter. What matters here are the fact that sci-fi books aren’t being judged on their merit, but their politics. So here’s how I propose to fix that:
A) THE NEUTRAL BENIGN COMMITTEE
What I propose is an apolitical committee that votes on which books, comics, scripts, short stories, etc, should receive nominations to the awards, based on their merit. How would this come into existence? Simply by finding the most apathetic people alive, have the Hugo voters, lefty and righty alike, deliberate and nominate them, then subject these nominees to a lie detector test to make sure they are actually apolitical, and not being paid off by either side.
I LIKE MY COFFEE LIKE I LIKE MY MEN — wait, I don't like men.
(throws out coffee)
— John Scalzi (@scalzi) May 6, 2015
Alexandra Erin on Blue Author Is About To Write
“Sad Puppies Review Books: GREEN EGGS AND HAM” – May 7
Sadly much like 1984 this book ends with the protagonist giving in before the onslaught. He does love Big Brother. He does like green eggs and ham. He will eat them with the fox. In a perverse mockery of holy communion, he will eat them with the goat (like Pan or Baphomet, or other guises worn by Satan). This is preparing our children to have not just their food supplies controlled but also their minds and very souls.
A child indoctrinated by this book is not only trained to give in to the illegitimate application of government authority but is also primed to use these techniques to convince others. Unless your children are strong-willed and well-trained to recognize these tricks and traps I recommend keeping this book the hell away from them.
If you have raised your children right as I have done with mine then your best bet is to take a hands-on approach. I read this book to my children, taking care to explain the subtle SJW traps that were on every page. I am pleased to report that they showed no interest in it afterwards.
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Mike, Thanks for linking to Eemeli Aro’s message again.
When the Hugos nominations were announced and I finally realized what Castalia House is (and where it is) and what exactly had happened, my first reaction was to see if someone from the committee from Helsinki is involved – it sounded as too much of a coincidence. When I see them in Spokane, I will personally apologize for the thought even crossing my mind (and if any of them is around, sorry everyone).
After that I idly wondered a few times if the publishing house was not deliberately started in Finland (EU is a big place and if you are not going to use the fandom in Finland, why set it there) because of the Worldcon bid… (and it does not need to have any real logical explanation or reason as most arguments had shown – any reason will do)…
Wait: John Scalzi is an androphobe? Who knew?
If this is what Kate Paulk considers good writing, this should not raise anyone’s expectations about any merit in the SP4 slate.
Morris, I expect it was written in the faux Olde English for effect*. Perhaps a more accurate sample of her writing is this excerpt from her book “Impaler”:
http://www.nakedreader.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=22:impaler&catid=11:previews&Itemid=14
*I personally found it hard going as a reader & not funny, if that was the intended effect.
Scalzi’s tweet was funny, at least. Maybe not all of mainstream fandom has lost a sense of humor, not to mention perspective.
Whoever led Kate Paulk to write blog posts in that style did her no favors. It’s like a contest was held for Renaissance faire spoken-word essays by non-English speakers and they fed the worst one into Google translator.
Brad Torgersen is hilarious.
“Vox Day is a side show. A red herring. Don’t water that weed.”
Nice. Would’ve been nicer if you and Larry hadn’t planted the damn thing here.
So did anyone else think amalythia’s story was just as bad as Kameron Hurley’s? Both of them, IMO, were stupid, ham-fisted stereotypes of the opposing side.
To me, the moral of the two stories is that trying to vilify people doesn’t produce good fiction.
Whym: I agree that both stories were pretty weak.
The parodies by Alexandra Erin and Adam-Troy Castro, I think, strike closer to their marks.
Alexandria Erin is a treasure.
“Alexandria Erin is a treasure.”
The treasurest. Her takes on all of this have made me a big fan. If you haven’t seen them yet, her Storify tweet collections are entertaining reading as well:
https://storify.com/alexandraerin
“Vox Day” is not a weed, but kudzu.
“Vox Day” is Trelane.
The RP slate is probably why the SP/RP were so successful at grabbing so many nominations, given the admonition on the slate “to nominate them precisely as they are.”, which likely would indicate that it’s the SP slate which became the “red herring”, so to speak.
We’ve got Blue Periwinkle, which is either a pretty ground cover plant, or a shit of a weed, depending on if you’re planning on using the yard to do anything except grow blue Periwinkle. It’ll take about 5 years of vigilance to eradicate it completely.
Anyone planting noxious, vigorous weeds in a common garden deserves all the abuse they receive for it. And the SPs, at the very least, planted that weed last year, and vigorously watered it this year.
Also, is increased membership and attendance today’s rationale for Sad Puppies? Sigh. Lengthy post ahead. Apologies, but I need something cathartic.
I’m starting to lose track. First there was the secret SJW cabal that was shutting out deserving candidates. A cabal that was at the same time so wide ranging and co-ordinated that they controlled the Hugo’s for at least a decade, while being so incredibly subtle that they have not left a single useful evidence (of co-ordination, of a voting slate), and yet so incompetent that they were utterly steamrolled by the Puppies this year.
Some cabal. And the solution for this shutting out of deserving candidates? A pair of complementary voting slates that shut out almost everything else. The Sad slate was touted as being “open and democratic”, may be neither, cosidering that some of the nominees that appeared weren’t proposed by anyone in the call for candidates, and some that received the higher number of nominations never showed up on the slate. The Rabid slate was naked publicity bid by it’s creator to drum up business for his own self and publishing house.
Then there was the whole “the books being nominated now are terrible/ didactic SJW messaging/ result of affirmative action / not SF” rationale. The closest anyone comes to specific examples are Redshirts and If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love – both of which had excellent reviews across the board, good sales in terms of Redshirts, and were shortlisted or won in various other awards. As to being/ not being SF, the only determination is whether enough members of Worldcon think it is, and given that the buyers at Apex, and the Nebula jury agreed….
The Puppy solution for this? Nominating the eighth book in a seven book series, written by a man whose claim to fame was desecrating the body of Frank Herbert’s works, and mediocre tie-in fiction. Nominating the *fifteenth* book in an ongoing series, which suffers greatly as a standalone, and isn’t the best of it’s series to boot. John C Wright, who writes like someone who looked at CS Lewis and decided, “Hmmmm, the dogma’s a bit subtle, isn’t it?”. Bloody hell, something called “Wisdom from My Internet”, excerpts of which look like a copypaste of a bunch of chain-emails (Note: Yes I realise much of this is subjective. Thats kind of the point. Also, I’m not particularly fond of KJA’s work. Also also, Best Dresden? Dead Beat. Best Butcher? Codex Alera by a country mile.)
And now increased membership and attendance. Great! This is something I can get behind! Except… in what way does throwing up a voting slate help? Yes, you have people signing up to vote, but how does that help the Con itself? It just turns it to another front in the great American culture war
Like I said, I’ve lost track – What others have there been that I’ve missed out on?
Here’s my review of “Flow”, a novella written by Arlen Andrews.
SPOILERS
SPOILERS
Flow is a sequel to Thaw. I have not read Thaw, but after a few pages adjusting to terminology, there is no need to read the first novella as this one is very self contained.
From what I understand, the author intends to publish a trilogy of novellas.
Flow is outstanding. The world building is the best I’ve read, in such a short work. The environment, cultures, people, are all incredibly interesting.
The protagonist is Rist, one of the “birdmen”. Apparently human, though small and brown, the upper end of birdmen society rides the two legged birds which give them their name.
Birdmen live far to the north, in the land of icebergs and glaciers. They interact occasionally with Warmlanders, who are paler, taller and stronger than the birdmen. Warmlanders and birdmen interact in two ways, warring against each other (which the Birdmen seem to consistently win, despite their physical disadvantages) and selling icebergs which the birdmen float down the river to God’s Port.
I couldn’t help but pick up a Conan vibe, with Rist taking the place of Conan. But in this take, Conan/Rist is very small (only a head above a large dog), thin, quick witted, brave. Unlike Conan, his desire is the acquisition of knowledge, not gold. The story is set, I think, in a post apocalyptic future where some have devolved into a Scandinavian/aboriginal culture (birdmen) and others to a medieval culture (Warmlanders). There is reference to “Cold People”, who are alleged to be even smaller than birdmen and degenerate. It appears to be an ice age, but with the ice beginning to melt.
Rist, who is at the upper end to the birdmen society (the result of his family’s historic war service against invading Warmlanders, his father being a “Reader”, and his twin brother’s untrained, intuitive use of geometry to determine the dimensions of icebergs and glaciers) on a whim asks and is given permission to work with an iceberg crew toward God’s Port. The journey transforms Rist’s thinking of his world. Unlike the bergmen (lower caste members of birdmen), he immediately spots the technological advantages of the Warmlanders and the differences in their societies. He records his acquired knowledge and steals “biter-web (which I believe is simply wire) that the priests of the Shining One (the Sun) mine and pass off as a gift of their God. The theft is discovered and Rist is forced to flee.
He can’t go back north (the Birdmen have been invaded frequently by the Warmlanders) and the Tharn (their leader) is paranoid about the path returning birdmen take (he doesn’t want the Warmlanders following it). Rist is not familiar with the route home and would have to pass through hostile territory. So instead he turns further south and discovers just how vast the world is, setting up (I presume) the next in the trilogy.
This is very much an adventure story. There is no hack and slash going on, but the nimble, clear thinking and bold Rist is more than up for the challenge. I highly recommend it.
Here’s a link for those interested in reading it:
https://www.analogsf.com/pdfs/Stories/Flow_ArlanAndrew-HUGO.pdf
So far, here’s my rating of the novella nominees:
TBD Pale Realms of Shade
TBD The Plural of Helen of Troy
1. Flow
2. Big Boys Don’t Cry
3. One Bright Star to Guide Them
@snowcrash…
First Paragraph:
– No one is perfect, nor are we tied to mistakes of yesterday beyond our own egos.
Second paragraph:
– Low percentage of votes altogether
– Same names popping year after year in the nominations
– Same people posting their annual recommendations and musings on who is good this year
– Some criticisms on earlier winners:
>2013: A play script that was not properly rewritten into a novel.
>2012: Didn’t match the back blurb, and was used to give line reviews for some classics of SFF.
>2011: Time travelling history students who knew nothing of WWII.
>2010: Interesting settings not used to their fullest, and better earlier works.
>2009: He has written so much better stuff.
>2008: I am not sure how this is SFF.
>2007: Dull tech ad.
>2006: Etc…
Third Paragraph:
– Selfpublishing has made it so that we have tens and tens of thousands of new Hugo eligble works out every year. Sure, majority of it is shit. But the fact is that each year deserving works do not get nominated. What is just five nomination slots in the long run?
– As for how the Slates were put together, it does not really matter as no one is forced to vote based on them. If you’ve read the works, liked them too, it acts as reminder what to vote.
– I mean, how to force people pay $40 and vote for stuff they do not like?
Fourth Paragraph:
– No one likes to trash works.
– Preferances are largely subjective.
– Which in turn leads to silly flame wars with no point.
– You cannot please everyone.
– And there are other books that sold and got their reviews.
Fifth Paragraph:
– Who am I to judge what others like?
– Who are you to judge what others like?
– And the Hugo Award format limits nominations to works published during the previous years. (So in case of series, you might be awarded for an earlier work.)
Sixth Paragraph:
– Because it is good to remind people of all the good that came out last year.
– (For example the Lego Movie, everything is awesome….)
Seventh Paragraph:
– Who knows… I am growing fed up with it all…
The Yiddish Policemen’s Union is alternate history. Alternate history is not sure exactly A Thing Never Seen Before in science fiction. Like the book or not; its standing as science fiction shouldn’t be ambiguous if you’re even vaguely acquainted with the history of the US.
Tuomas: Whose post are you responding to? Doesn’t seem to line up at all with what I wrote. Also, try to maintain some level of consistency – don’t, in the same post, trash previous winners/ nominees and then say “– No one likes to trash works./ – Preferances are largely subjective.”
I know that. I said as much in my previous post – you, know, the one you are allegedly replying to?
BtW, thanks for reminding me of this one:
Voting slates are the same as recommendation lists! argument – No. Just no A voting slate presents a list and says, hey, vote for these things because $REASONS. A recommendation list goes, hey these are stuff I liked because $REASONS. The former is intrinsincally tied to a specific vote or ballot/ the latter not necessarily so. Note that there is also the impact – the Puppy slates led to a total shut-out in several categories, and a majority in almost all others – a level of impact that *no* recommendation list has ever had. . A voting slate never has more items than positions, while a recommendation list’s number is not dependant on that at all.
Snowcrash, you omitted a whole rash of “people were mean to me [in 2011; in 2005; whenever]” rationales for the slates.
You also forgot the original Correia “I want a Hugo!” rationale in 2013, followed by the Correia, “No, I REALLY want a Hugo!” rationale in 2014 for the SP effort.
And then there are Sarah Hoyt’s hysteria-laced screeds in which she seems to see a Marxist conspiracy behind every rock and bush in sf/f, and apparently THAT is why fandom needs Sad and Rabid Puppies pissing on the Hugos.
@snowcrash, yours.
And as for problems of lining up, just go by the paragraphs of your last post.
And I would like to inform you that I’ve spend quite many hours reading and writing, listening to continous demands to out the terrible works that did not deserve their awards. Thus as much as I loath to trash things based on subjective opinions, I listed some criticisms that are readibly available in Amazon reviews. (One star reviews.)
And really… ?
“The former is intrinsincally tied to a specific vote or ballot/ the latter not necessarily so.”
Works published in 2015 are intrinsically tied to the vote of 2016’s Hugos. After all it is the only chance for a work to be nominated. To win a Hugo.
As for the success of Puppy slate, the five nomination limit makes sure that each year some works do not get nominated, as other gathered more nominations.
As for yet another attempt for some arbitary self made slate definitions. Fine. Lets go with them. Go check the Sad Puppies 3 slate, it was not filled to the brim.
Now go here:
http://whatever.scalzi.com/2015/02/12/the-2015-sff-fans-award-recommendation-thread/
Check the first comment:
It is the Scalzi slate for best Novel:
– The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison;
– The Girl in the Road, Monica Byrne;
– A Darkling Sea, James L. Cambias;
– The Mirror Empire, Kameron Hurley;
– California Bones, Greg van Eekhout.
Reading the Kate Paulk excerpt, I see that the fail mode of “clever” isn’t always “asshole.” Sometimes it’s just “tedious.”
@Tuomas
So wait, you didn’t actually READ those books, you just went on Amazon and harvested a few crappy reviews?
Also, way to not pay attention to snowcrash’s last post on what constitutes a slate or not. Recommendation lists and personal ballots are not the same thing. For an ACTUAL example of a Scalzi slate, I suggest you check out his announcement of running for SFWA office in 2010: http://whatever.scalzi.com/2010/01/25/dear-the-internets-i-am-running-for-president-of-sfwa/
Dela, that particular rationale is ironclad against criticism, so I guess they win (a free waaambulance ride).
Tuomas – I did try lining them up – still fairly incoherent. Like I meantioned earlier, the fact that it’s not even internally consistent doesnt help either. Also:
“As for the success of Puppy slate, the five nomination limit makes sure that each year some works do not get nominated, as other gathered more nominations. ”
What? Could you please explain, I don’t understand this.
Also, your inability to distinguish between a voting slate and a recommended reading list (much less a thread where others are being invited to share their views) is somewhat tragic. But thanks for the example. This is the SP3 slate post:
https://bradrtorgersen.wordpress.com/2015/02/01/sad-puppies-3-the-2015-hugo-slate
I’ll just leave it there for others to do their own comparison. I suspect they may see the distinction more clearly than you do.
@Tuomas Vainio, re “the Scalzi slate for best Novel”
So, that’s a slate from one of the alleged Grand High Ringleaders Of The SJW Cabal, eh?
Tell me, Tuomas, why exactly does a slate by this allegedly highly influential cabalist, who by your lights should have been able to push his recommendations to victory, only feature one of the actual Hugo finalists?
Flow? I assumed it was a badly written up D&D campaign myself.
We really do have significantly different ideas of what constitutes good.
For n’th time – ‘I think people should look at these’ and ‘I think people should vote for these’ do not mean the same thing.
Good grief we need a better class of troll.
At the very least, a classhole.
https://xkcd.com/72/
Wildcat: “@Tuomas: So wait, you didn’t actually READ those books, you just went on Amazon and harvested a few crappy reviews?”
Yes, Tuomas does seem to be incredibly enamored of Amazon, that source of no-reliable-data-but-what-it-will-cost-you-to-obtain-a-book.
Though it’s easy to understand his views when you consider that, according to him, his to-be-read pile seems to be full of self-published e-books you can get for $2.99 or less from Amazon Digital Services.
@Wildcat… People here at file770 have been demanding for days to hear which works are trash. So yes, in my sleep deprived state, I went to Amazon to look at the crappy reviews and abbreviated them. Why? Because people seemed unable to do it themselves just to discover what issues others might have had with the books they liked.
As for the topic of slates. I wonder what makes it so difficult to grasp the idea that as far as the Hugo awards are considered, the seperation between slates and recommendations is arteficial at best. I mean, regardless of what you find on the internet, you are not forced to follow it. You can make your choices. Thus it really is the greatest form of intellectual deceit to assume that people are incapable to make their own decisions based on their own preferences.
As for you ”JJ,” you carry no words beyond your own notions of pedigree and prestige. Both weightless and frail. An online troll of saddest kind.
Anyhow. Goodnight.
in response some sought to wrest that jewel of fandom, the Convention of World, from any locale where the friends of sorrowful young canines might gather, and take it to a far distant place that in isolation they might gather in force and thereby bring about changes to the Rules of Hugo, thus condemning the young canines to eternal sorrow.
Kate Paulk seems here to have taken TC McCarthy’s ball and run with it a hell of a lot further, suggesting that the Helsinki 2017 bid has anti-Puppy motivations. I think this is a ludicrous accusation. I suspect though it’s due to misunderstanding what someone else said. I don’t know if that someone else was TC McCarthy but I know he has explained here in comments, without attributing sinister motives to other bids and bid supporters, why he would like DC in 17 and why he thinks it would suit Puppies.
Can we have a FAQ for these threads? It’s getting really tedious to keep reading Puppy fellow travellers getting confused between (what we’re calling) slates and what are recommendations as if it doesn’t get covered in nearly every Puppy thread. Is it a Puppy tag team thing, or is it actually difficult to understand? At least we could point to answer #1 or whatever on the FAQ whenever it turns up.
Tuomas: “People here at file770 have been demanding for days to hear which works are trash. So yes, in my sleep deprived state, I went to Amazon to look at the crappy reviews and abbreviated them.”
So, in other words, you are not able to provide your own opinions on these works. Have you not read them? If you haven’t read them, then why are you offering an uninformed opinion to people who have actually read them???
Tuomos Vainio — “People here at file770 have been demanding for days to hear which works are trash.”
Eh, being critiqued doesn’t mean that a work is trash. For a novelised movie script, IMO, Redshirts is a pretty good one, even if it wasn’t my choice for that year. If you think it’s trash, you should give us your opinion, not just skim an unfavourable quote off Amazon by an unpaid amateur critic. If that was any kind of standard, I could skim some unfavourable remarks of the Puppy nominations just off the Puppy threads on this site. It really doesn’t prove the Puppy thesis that an SJW cabal has been controlling the Hugos by voting in poor quality work that fits a political agenda — you remember, the whole rationale for the Puppy slates in the first place.
@Tuomas Vainio @ 11:58 “People here at file770 have been demanding for days to hear which works are trash. So yes, in my sleep deprived state, I went to Amazon to look at the crappy reviews and abbreviated them. Why? Because people seemed unable to do it themselves just to discover what issues others might have had with the books they liked.”
Oh dear. First – get some sleep 🙂
After that – what people are asking is not what books Amazon, goodreads, the Pope or the Halley’s Comet find to be trash but what books the people that claim that awards and nominations went to trash think are trash. After they had read or at least attempted to read said trash. We had read what people had said about the books – I suspect that a lot of people had also had arguments about some of the books.
But the same way you show the negative reviews, I can show the positive ones. Which will prove what exactly? That people are different and have different tastes. Which – well. If you are saying that because of what internet is saying, you think that some books are trash and because of that the whole “awards were influenced” is true, I am not sure that any conversation can lead anywhere…. I hope that you actually had read some of those books and have a personal opinion as well – even if it is negative…
Is it a Puppy tag team thing, or is it actually difficult to understand?
I vote Puppy tag team. Bog standard rightwing troll behaviour, to restate the same debunked blatantly false claim over and over again and waste everybody else’s time refuting it again and again and again.
Therefore, don’t bother engaging, just keep pointing out that they’re lying.
Tuomos Vainio — “– Same names popping year after year in the nominations
– Same people posting their annual recommendations and musings on who is good this year”
Writers and bloggers have persistence; they have lifespans comparable to real people, imagine that. Someone who is liked by fans will tend to linger around for a good few years, and be recommended and nominated again and again as long as they’re meeting their publisher’s demand that they publish at least one novel a year. And the more they write, the likelier it is that their writing will continue to improve, until senility or disease sets in.
Bloggers posting their recommendations every year is a problem how, exactly? “I read and liked these books; I think you could do worse than read them yourself”, how is it bad if they do it at all, and how is it bad if they do it regularly? That can be one of the reasons to read a particular blogger, after all.
It really doesn’t prove the Puppy thesis that an SJW cabal has been controlling the Hugos by voting in poor quality work that fits a political agenda
And oh irony of ironies, Redshirts won the Hugo at a texas based Worldcon; not the first place to think off as SJW headquarters.
Therefore, don’t bother engaging, just keep pointing out that they’re lying.
Oh, I don’t know about that idea. Then we might have to start a drinking game on ourselves, à la Theodore “SJWs always lie” Beale.
Bloggers posting their recommendations every year is a problem how, exactly?
Well, that’s another rightwing troll tactic: present normal, everyday behaviour as if part of a conspiracy. It’s Culture Wars 101. The goal is to recast everything in a partisan political context and because you’re the ones most organised, your enemies aren’t actually the organised conspiracy you portray them as, you’ll “win”, even if it destroys anything useful in the process.
brightglance: “Kate Paulk seems here to have taken TC McCarthy’s ball and run with it a hell of a lot further, suggesting that the Helsinki 2017 bid has anti-Puppy motivations.”
Kate Paulk is RIGHT! We all anticipated, back in June of 2012, that the Puppies were going to try to pull some kindergartnerbullscheiße with the Hugo nominations in 2015, and that’s when we hatched our dastardly plan to hold a Worldcon in Helsinki, to outfox them!
The whole “2015 Helsinki Worldcon getting outvoted in favor of a Spokane Worldcon” was all just part of our nefarious scheming to foil the Puppies! We planned it, exactly this way.
Oh, FFS. These Puppies really are Conspiracies All The Way Down.
How does Brad R. Torgersen define “everyone?” He insists that he invited “everyone to the democracy.” But I have read his Breakfast Cereal post. I, for one, do not feel invited. The truth is that Puppies have one of the most EXCLUSIVE and narrow definitions of what “counts” as good SFF anywhere.
Rating groups on the class level of their trolls that show up on other sites can be useful.
You can also go to the ringleader sites and sample the comments of their supporters
Their is a clear interesting intellectual conversation on Making Light, a drunken or caffeinated bar scene on the three Puppies leaders and OMG, what church crypt/fascist underground bunker did Vox Day supporters crawl out from?
Related to the “I Will Walk With You” post, here’s what Tessa Kum, who started #illridewithyou (and who has published some wonderful short fiction; track it down!), had to say on that: http://silence-without.blogspot.de/2015/04/ill-walk-with-you.html
You know, the list of people who endlessly talk past the other side without paying attention to what they say isn’t limited to one side.
Thanks Craig (2) for showing up to defend the trolls with a Tu Quoque argument. Lord knows that what we really need is someone sticking up for people who obviously are fully capable of talking for themselves.
I think the thing I’ve gotten out of this kerfluffle is that I now keep a file in my Dropbox that lists my ideas for next years nominations.
So far I’ve got
Best Fancast:
Ditch Diggers by Matt Wallace and Mur Lafferty
Best Related Work:
File 770 by Mike Glyer
Best Fan Writer:
Alexandra Erin
Best Professional Artist:
Larry Rostant
I’ve been playing D&D and other games for decades.
I read novelizations and books based on games and campaigns. Many are enjoyably trashy. Most are routine.
My favorites transcend their origins; a couple of the best I’ve run across are “Jhereg” by Steven Brust and “And Peace Shall Sleep” by Sonya Orin Lyris.
But a story that simply sounds like notes for a D&D campaign, however enjoyable, isn’t something I would feel right voting for a Hugo. I look at D&D books and I look at “The Left Hand of Darkness” and they really are in entirely different spaces.
alexdvl:
The Last Voyage Of The Starship Lily by Adam-Troy Castro
JJ, are you putting that under Fan Writer or related work?
Good morning, I have been following the discussions mostly silently, but I felt that someone needed to state the obvious concerning those amazon/goodreads rating craze the Puppies seem to have. Please excuse my english, I am not a native speaker.
So, vastly different books have vastly different populations of readers in terms of size, sociology, and tastes. Anyone expecting vastly dfferent populations to vote in a comparable manner is fooling himself. I don’t think the concept is so far fetched it requires additional explanations involving “SJWs”, or “unwashed masses”.
For example, one amusing artefact is that sequels almost always attract better grades then the original book. Even when everyone seems to think the original book is better. My latest example : “Neuromancer” and its sequel, “Count Zero”. Who thinks “Count Zero” is a better book then “Neuromancer” ? Not so many people. However, “Count Zero” grades are 0.12 on average above “Neuromancer” on Goodreads.
It is easy to explain of course: “Count Zero” reading population is mostly a subset of people who liked “Neuromancer” enough to pick up the sequel. And if you go in the rating details, the profile on “Count Zero”, it is very typical. Less “5 stars”, as a lot of people have been less impressed by the sequel then by the original. But also far less “1 or 2 stars”: cyberpunk haters are gone, by then.
Someone reminds me the ranking in their series of the Butcher’s and the Correia’s, by the way ?
Now there are some exceptions of course. I developed a Stockholm syndrom in the course of reading the “Wheel of Time”, and continued to read well beyond the point I think the serie losts itself in 2 stars territory. Yeah, yeah, I know. I am feeling better now, if you ask.
It doesn’t mean I don’t look at the grades on Goodreads, though. They tell you a story, especially if you start considering the rating details or the total number of readerd beyond the simple average. Actually, I noticed that my two latest “5 stars” books (“Neuromancer” and “Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell”) both had the same profile: high number of five stars, high number of 1 and 2 stars, for a disappointing final average.
Both those books have something special, that make them stick out of the crowd. They got noticed for it, and won a fair number of enthusiasts in the process, like myself, well after the party ended. They also disappointed a substantial minority, as the “special thing” might not be everybody’s taste, and as they are getting read by people that wouldn’t read this kind of thing usually. And in this case, shouldn’t have, as far as their entertainment is concerned.
Both are superb Hugo Award winners.
I see that Correia’s book is getting a 4.32 average, the Butcher’s a ridiculous 4.56. What does that tell me ? They are delivering mostly to a conquered audience, and they don’t disappoint. Good for them, as an engineer mingling with quality issues, I am impressed.
Feists “Magician” was based on an AD&D campaign, if I remember correctly, and it was great fun. Could well have been worth a nomination.