Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Puppies 5/5

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aka The Puppy Who Mistook His Bark For A Hugo

Today’s roundup gathers together excerpts of Puppy-related thoughts from Mercy Pilkington, Paul St. John Mackintosh, Mike Glyer (who let him in here?), Deborah J. Ross, T.C. McCarthy, Kevin Standlee, Vox Day, Michael Kingswood, Tom Knighton, Lisa J. Goldstein, Jane Frank. Steve Davidson, Alexandra Erin and players to be named later. (Title credits go to File 770 contributing editors of the day Danny Sichel and DMS.)

Mercy Pilkington on Good E Reader

“The Sad Joke That Is the Hugo Awards” – May 5

Unfortunately, this year’s nominations have allegedly been shanghaied by a small collective of people under the name “Sad Puppies” and a rival group “Rabid Puppies” who are disheartened with the “touchy feely” decline of science fiction into a genre that allows gay couples and women who don’t have giant breasts to exist. The groups have garnered enough voting support to send their favorites to the top of the lists, then have seemingly been quite open about achieving their goals.

Paul St. John Mackintosh on TeleRead

“Locus Awards finalists show the power of open voting” – May 5

You’re either forced to assume that the liberal-left-loony conspiracy beloved of the Sad Puppies ringleaders extends across the entire internet – or that the SP promoters are just a bunch of histrionic opportunists who hijacked the voting process of a particular set of awards in the name of a particular ideological agenda. Which also makes you wonder what future history will make of the 2014 Sad Puppies Hugo list, if not a single one of them has made the cut in a more open ballot. Apologies to any fine writers besmirched by that comment, but in the circumstances, it’s understandable. And apologies too to the Locus Awards for casting their fantastic slate of contenders in the shade of the Hugos/Sad Puppies fiasco. All the same, people, compare and contrast.

Mike Glyer in Uncanny Magazine

“It’s The Big One”  – May 5

Does The Award Matter? The award was forged as a weapon in the original culture war—the battle to earn acceptance for science fiction itself.

Isaac Asimov gave readers a taste of the mockery early science fiction fans endured in his introduction to a collection of Hugo–winning short fiction:

“You can imagine the laughter to which we were subjected when sensible, hard–headed, practical, every–day people discovered we were reading crazy stories about atomic bombs, television, guided missiles, and rockets to the moon. All this was obvious crackpotism that could never come to pass, you see.”

….Openly campaigning for a Hugo has long been culturally discouraged in fandom, however, that old–school tradition has not survived a collision with some other significant forces. Individual authors have been forced to shoulder the publicity burdens once carried by their publishers and one aspect of gaining attention is through awards – an approach discussed by Nancy Fulda (“Five Things You Should Know About Award Nominations”) on the SFWA Blog in January 2015. Furthermore, people steeped in the social media culture of constant self–expression and self–celebration have been conditioned to feel reticence is unnatural: Why wouldn’t they recommend themselves for an award?

Deborah J. Ross on Deborah’s Journal

“In Which Deborah Learns A New Word” – May 5

Normally, this is a politics-lite zone. Growing up in the ’50s with the McCarthy nuts breathing down my family’s neck has not endeared me to rancorous public discourse. I have, however, been following PuppyGate because I know some of the folks who withdrew their stories from the Hugo ballot and/or Puppy slate. The online debate has at times been pretty vile.

One of the few delightful things to come out of this mess is a new word: Puppysplaining. Akin to mansplaining, it refers to “Explaining to you how you really have no idea how completely wrong you are about your own lived experiences.” It comes to me from Gamer Ghazi. If it follows you home, you have my permission to keep it.

Kevin Standlee on Fandom Is My Way of Life

“Scheduling WSFS Business” – May 5

Because of a comment on the File 770 web site, I find that I’d better write about the subject of when the Business Meeting in Spokane will or might consider specific items, because it would appear some folks are taking this spot as the journal of record on such things.

( Parliamentary Neepery about Business Meeting SchedulingCollapse )

So it’s possible for the meeting to put off consideration of proposals until Day 5, the morning after the Hugo Award Ceremony. How could it do this?

( Agenda-Setting MechanismsCollapse )

I hope this explanation makes sense. It gets into a number of the finer points of parliamentary detail, but given the complexity of the tasks we may fact this year, I think it important that people understand what tools they have at their disposal.

Vox Day on Vox Popoli

“Bi-discoursality” – May 5

The interesting thing about rhetoric is that it makes no sense to those who are limited to the dialectic. I didn’t fully grasp the way it worked until reading RHETORIC for the second time. It can be bewildering when people tell you that they have been convinced by something that you know can’t logically have persuaded them. In such cases, you know they have been persuaded by rhetoric, not facts, reason, or logic.

I wouldn’t expect an individual who only speaks one form of discourse to be any more able to follow me into the other than if I abruptly switched to speaking Italian or French after beginning in English.

For example, this was written for dialecticals. Rhetoricals only see “blah blah blah, I’m so smart, blah blah blah, Aristotle” and scan through it seeking to find some point of attack they can use to minimize or disqualify me. And if they can’t, that’s when they strike a bored pose or return to the snarky ad hom.

Michael Kingswood on Magic, Swords, and Laser Beams

“Myke and Brad” – May 5

Look, I’ve had to set fellow officers straight before because they were messing up.  Mostly those junior to me, occasionally a peer, and once or twice more senior officers, up to and including my CO.  It’s part of the job, and expected: forceful backup is a primary tenet of submarine operations.  So I have no issue with one officer correcting another.

That said, there is a way to do that sort of correction, and I do take issue with the nature, style, and content of Myke’s open letter.

The entire letter is condescending, and lacking in professional courtesy or respect.  Does he honestly think that Brad doesn’t know that, as an officer, he has a duty to all of his men, regardless of their personal situation?  Or does he just think Brad knows but doesn’t care?  Brad’s been doing this for a long time now.  I think he gets it.  And who the hell is Myke to lecture anyway?  He doesn’t work with Brad, doesn’t serve with him.  They’re not in the same chain of command, and neither has authority over the other.  Has he ever observed Brad’s professional behavior?  If not, he’s just speculating not even based on hearsay, and has no standing to judge or cast dispersions.

Tom Knighton

“An Open Letter to Myke Cole” – May 5

Dear Myke,

As a veteran who is now firmly ensconced in civilian life, I’m writing you to discuss your open letter with CWO Brad Torgersen.  This is not to defend Brad’s comments, because there is nothing I feel like defending.  Brad was out of line, and I think he knows that.  One thing I agree with John Scalzi on is that being gay is not anything to be ashamed of, so there’s no reason it should be categorized as an insult.  Thus far, we are in agreement.

However, you chose to address this issue in an open letter.  In and of itself, this wouldn’t normally be an issue.  Open letters are quite common in this day and age.  However, you opted to do so as a commissioned officer who is addressing a warrant officer.  This is where I must take issue.

You are a commissioned officer, a lieutenant in the United States Coast Guard Reserves.  You are addressing a warrant officer in the United States Army Reserves.  In essence, you are addressing a junior officer in a different chain of command.  As you are an officer, one would assume that somewhere in your training, you were instructed in how to address junior personnel while counseling them in matters such as proper execution of their duties.

If you were, then I am quite sure that the Coast Guard instructed you similarly to the way the Navy instructed me in such matters.  Simply put, you handle stuff like this behind closed doors.  A private message, an email, something.  You address it directly and privately and, if that doesn’t resolve the matter, you address it with his chain of command.

However, that’s not what you did.  Instead, you opted to put your disagreement with Brad’s comments out in public.  Again, had you done this as one writer addressing another writer, then so be it.  You didn’t.  Like most other things on your website, you couched it all under the color of your own uniform and did so publicly.

Font Folly

“Visions and Ventures: why I love sf/f” – May 5

As an adult, I’ve been attending sci fi conventions for decades. I’ve even been a staff member at a few. I’ve had some of my own tales of the fantastic published, even though most of my published stories have been in fanzines and other small semi-pro publications. I’ve had the good fortune to be the editor of a fanzine with a not insignificant subscriber base. I count among my friends and friendly acquaintances people who have been published in more professional venues, people who have run those conventions, people who have won awards for their sf/f stories and art, even people who have designed some of the trophies. Not to mention many, many fans. I have even occasionally referred to that conglomeration of fans, writers, artists, editors, and so forth as my tribe.

All of that only begins to scratch the surface of why I find the entire Sad Puppies/Rabid Puppies mess so heart-wrenching. Yes, part of the reason the situation infuriates me is because the perpetrators are all so unabashedly anti-queer. For this queer kid, sf/f and its promise of better worlds and a better future was how I survived the bullying, bashing, hatred, and rejection of my childhood. To find out that there are fans and writers who so despise people like me that they have orchestrated a scheme whose ultimate goal is to erase us goes beyond infuriating.

Wikipedia  entry on “Science Fiction”

A controversy about voting slates in the 2015 Hugo Awards highlighted tensions in the science fiction community between a trend of increasingly diverse works and authors being honored by awards, and a backlash by groups of authors and fans who preferred what they considered more traditional science fiction

Sappho on Noli Irritare Leones

“The flames of the Tigers are lighting the road to Berlin” – May 5

This year’s Hugo Awards have proved more controversial than usual, with the sweep of several categories of Hugo Award nominations by two slates known as Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies.

I don’t mean this to be a post about Puppies. If you want to know more about puppies, you can check out the blog of, well, almost any science fiction author right now, or Google “Hugo Awards 2015? and look at all the Puppy posts and articles. But the debate about Puppies raised a meta-Puppies point that interests me: the relationship between politics and art.

You see, two things are true, at the same time. The first thing: Art has always been, and always will be, political, and in the sense in which “politics” is being discussed here, politics can’t be extracted from art. The second thing: What Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns, and Money likes to call aesthetic Stalinism – preachy message fiction where the message overwhelms the story, and preachy reviews that evaluate books, movies, music, or other art solely on their political implications – is really, really annoying.

Lisa J. Goldstein on theinferior4

“The Hugo Ballot Continued: Short Stories” – May 3

The next story up is “Totaled,” by Kary English.  English is the only woman to make it onto the ballot in the writing categories (short story, novelette, novella, novel) from the Sad Puppies’ slate, although another woman, Annie Bellet, made the ballot but withdrew her story from contention.  Elsewhere the Puppies tout the diversity of their nominees, but their record in this slate is pretty terrible, at least concerning women who write.

Lisa J. Goldstein on theinferior4

“The Hugo Ballot, Part 3: Short Stories” – May 5

The story after Diamond’s is John Wright’s “The Parliament of Beasts and Birds.”  Wright’s style here is deliberately archaic, in a stately, somewhat pompous, King James Bible vein, and for the most part this serves him fairly well.  Every so often, though, he will stray from purple into ultraviolet and become lost to human ken.  What, for example, is one to make of “All about the walls of the city were the fields and houses that were empty and still,” which seems to have one too many “were”s in it?  Or a description of leaves as “wallowing”?  Leaves may do a lot of things, but I’ve never seen one wallow.  And then sometimes Wright will leave this style altogether and use words King James would have a hard time recognizing, like “sangfroid.”  The effect for this reader at least is to be yanked, hard, out of the story.

[There should be a law that anyone who wants to write in this style has to read Ursula Le Guin’s essay “From Elfland to Poughkeepsie.”  Sorry, no exceptions.]

Jane Frank on Amazing Stories

“The Artful Collector: On the Topic of ‘Puppies’ from a Former ‘Loser’” – May 5

And It’s not that attempts to skew Hugo outcomes have been solely the province of that literary set.   Lobbying to get certain (overlooked) artists on the ballot has been attempted, as well. In years past I’ve been approached to participate in these efforts, to garner support (assuming I had such influence!) from other voters I knew, and get them to nominate one artist or another. I guess I was seen as the perfect lobbyist for such a cause, considering I was then selling original art for such well –known (but never nominated) artists as John Berkey, Paul Lehr, Darrell K. Sweet.  To name just three  . . that never enjoyed that honor during their lifetimes.

Not that such efforts would have been without merit, or weren’t well-intentioned. But even I – an outsider who actually never minded the objectification of women AND men on the covers of books and magazines (how else are you gonna get young men to READ, duh?) – knew enough to know that such lobbying was simply NOT DONE.   Voting has always been an individual thing – and I never had any interest in influencing the votes of others. Indeed, I have always been able to act as has been suggested by others. That when I wasn’t familiar with the work, if I hadn’t read the story, if I never heard of the artist, saw the TV episode or movie, I just didn’t vote for it.

Steve Davidson on Amazing Stories

“OMG! That SJW Fannish Cabal is WAY Bigger Than They Thought!” – May 5

So lets get this straight.  Locus Magazine publishes the final ballot for this year’s Locus Poll – a poll of the readers of science fiction and fantasy, one that costs nothing to participate in*, one that doesn’t require special membership in a special organization, a poll of the READERS rather than just a poll of those nasty liberal WSFS Trufans and Message Fictioneers, a poll presumably participated in by the folks who really count – consumers!, the ones untainted by the crushing weight of 75 years of special cabal-think (libprog, social justice creep), the Goodread and Amazon four-star-review-unless-we-don’t-like-you crowd, the great unwashed masses of REAL FANS(tm), the folks who supposedly believe that sales figures and best seller lists are the only markers one needs to confer awards, the readers who the Suicide Puppy Squad claim want nothing more than entertaining adventures  (weirdly homoerotic broad chested man adventures at that) is published with NOT ONE SINGLE WORK BY A Puppy of any breed!  (Thank goodness for super lungs!)

Aaron Kashtan on The Hooded Ultilitarian

“The End of Comic Geeks?”  – May 5

This piece originated as a paper presented at the 2015 University of Florida Comics Conference. A slightly different form of this paper was incorporated into my lecture “Change the Cover: Superhero Comics, the Internet, and Female Fans,” delivered at Miami University as part of the Comics Scholars Group lecture series. While I have made some slight changes to the version of the paper that I gave at UF, I have decided against editing the paper to make it read like a written essay rather than an oral presentation. The accompanying slide presentation is available here ….

Now in other fan communities, the opening up of previously male-only spaces has triggered a backlash from the straight white men who used to dominate. The obvious example of this is Gamergate, where the inclusion of women in video gaming has led to an organized campaign of misogyny which has even crossed the line into domestic terrorism. SLIDE 6 A less well-known example is what’s been happening in science fiction fandom. In recent years, novels by liberal writers like John Scalzi and female and minority writers like Nnedi Okorafor and Sofia Samatar have dominated the major science fiction awards. SLIDE 7 When this started happening, certain mostly white male writers became extremely indignant that science fiction was becoming poiliticized, or rather that it was being politicized in a way they didn’t like. So they started an organized campaign known as Sad Puppies SLIDE 8 whose object was to get works by right-wing white male authors included on the ballot for the Hugo award, which is the only major science fiction and fantasy award where nominations are determined by fan voting. And this led in turn to the Rabid Puppies campaign, which was organized by notorious neo-Nazi Vox Day and which is explicitly racist, sexist and homophobic. SLIDE 9 And these campaigns succeeded partly thanks to assistance from Gamergate. On the 2015 Hugo ballot, the nominees in the short fiction categories consist entirely of works nominated by Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies, and this has led to an enormous public outcry.

Alexandra Erin on Blue Author Is About To Write

“Sad Puppies Review Books: THE MONSTER AT THE END OF THIS BOOK” – May 5

monster-256x300

The cover of this book promises a monster, which implies there’s going to be a battle. But there’s no battle. There is barely even a monster! Just some blue gamma male wimp who begs and pleads with you to stop reading the book on every page.

Looking at the obviously inflated Amazon reviews I can only conclude that a number of weak-willed liberal readers gave in to this blue cuck’s loathsome SJW bullying tactics and stopped reading before the disappointing reveal. Of course this doesn’t stop them from lavishing it with glowing reviews. These people care only about politics and demographics, not merit or value.

Well, I read it all the way to the end. The last thing you want to do is tell this red-blooded American he mustn’t do something or shouldn’t read something because I believe in the first amendment and I will read whatever the hell I want.

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474 thoughts on “Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Puppies 5/5”

  1. Matt Y, I agree with you. I think this quote from Chip Delany is particularly apt to describe the backlashs taking place right now.

    ” Since I began to publish in 1962, I have often been asked, by people of all colors, what my experience of racial prejudice in the science fiction field has been. Has it been nonexistent? By no means: It was definitely there. A child of the political protests of the ’50s and ’60s, I’ve frequently said to people who asked that question: As long as there are only one, two, or a handful of us, however, I presume in a field such as science fiction, where many of its writers come out of the liberal-Jewish tradition, prejudice will most likely remain a slight force—until, say, black writers start to number thirteen, fifteen, twenty percent of the total. At that point, where the competition might be perceived as having some economic heft, chances are we will have as much racism and prejudice here as in any other field.

    We are still a long way away from such statistics.

    But we are certainly moving closer. ”

    http://www.nyrsf.com/racism-and-science-fiction-.html

  2. “If RP nominates a sci-fi leaning romance author next year, then watch out.”

    I have long been a big fan of Diane Garbalfarbaldon or whatever her name is….

    “What I gathered from reading all the comments on that piece: when I lie, it’s lying, but when an Aristotelian lies, it’s rhetoric. When I ask a question, I’m stubbornly refusing to accept the truth, but when an Aristotelian asks a question, it’s dialectic. And conveniently, only Aristotelians can tell the difference. I’m sure I’m proving their point here.”

    Translation: Me rhetorical, me no understand, me tell lies make feelbetter.

    Dialectic is based on the construction of syllogisms, so it’s very obvious when one is lying. Rhetoric is “the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion.”

    It’s not even strictly true to say one CAN lie rhetorically, since an enthymeme is not a true logical syllogism, all that matters is that the persuasion is achieved by proof or apparent proof.”

    It might be easier to think in terms of “logically sound” and “not logically” sound than true and false. The point is that I can construct a logical syllogism that proves or a pseudo-logical enthymeme that apparently proves, but in either case, they point towards the relevant truth of the matter.

    For example, if I say “SJWs occasionally lie” in response to your false statement, this is good dialectic but poor rhetoric that is likely to fail to persuade a rhetorical of the actual truth, namely, that you are lying in the present circumstance. The better rhetorical statement is “SJWs always lie”, which is not dialectically true, but persuades the rhetorical to believe the truth, which is that you are lying.

    Hence the importance of knowing your audience. When you speak in rhetoric to a dialectical, it sounds very dishonest even when it is good rhetoric in line with the truth. But you can’t speak dialectic to a rhetorical for the obvious reason that they cannot be persuaded by it. They simply don’t have the capacity.

    “See, the reason that pointing out someone is acting in bad faith is insufficient to make them stop is they are acting in bad faith.”

    Irrelevant. In your rush to correct me, you missed Mr. Standlee’s point. He implied that would be the disincentive upon which they were relying. I pointed out that it would not suffice. Did you fail to note the if/then construction of his statement?

    “The mistake you’re making, Mr. Day, is assuming that anyone cares how you feel. The mistake you’re making is assuming that the whole world is capable of opening its mouth only to address you, that if someone lays out a case then they are perforce laying it out to you and if they fail to persuade you then they have failed.”

    SJWs always lie. First, you all do care how I feel. That’s why you constantly twist and pervert and attack at every opportunity. Inflicting feels, good and bad, is the only weapon you have to persuade anyone of anything. The infliction of badfeels is how you would try to persuade me to stop, but you know that’s probably not going to work, you just can’t help yourselves.

    Second, and the main reason you constantly hurl false accusations, even long after they have been conclusively proven false, is that you are attempting to discredit and disqualify me in the eyes of others. It won’t work. People have been trying and failing since 2001 and my popularity has only grown.

    Because I’m a lot smarter than you are.

  3. It is possible to be a fan of Jim Butcher’s work, even an enthusiastic one, and still think this particular book is not up to Hugo standards.

    I enjoy a lot of stories I wouldn’t nominate for awards. I don’t like the idea that I should vote for something mediocre just because I enjoy it personally or like its author. It’s not fair to the author and it’s not respectful to the work.

  4. “When I read a book lauded as the top of the what SF has to offer, and notice that every male character is portrayed as a failed, stupid, pathetic, and every female character as perfect, going up to having three pages of text which have two female characters gloating about sticking it to the boys,”

    What books are you reading that are like that? I haven’t noticed them, and I’m an avid fan of Scalzi, Stross, Elizabeth Bear, etc.

  5. I think it’s a bit of an exaggeration, but David Weber does fall into that trap now and again. When not rattling off a thrilling “one million, three hundred thousand and seventy eight missiles formed part of the initial volley. Of these at least 25% were ECM drones…”

  6. Because I’m a lot smarter than you are.

    That’s the funniest thing I have seen anyone post on the internet in a while.

  7. “That’s the funniest thing I have seen anyone post on the internet in a while.”

    Well, if we can’t rustle up more than a thousand people who have read a bunch of short stories and can give an assessment of what they read, maybe he’s got us.

  8. “It is possible to be a fan of Jim Butcher’s work, even an enthusiastic one, and still think this particular book is not up to Hugo standards.”

    Plenty of people have said the same about Scalzi and Redshirts, Willis and Blackout/All Clear, and others in the past. Peoples tastes vary. I liked Skin Game, I don’t think it’s the best work in the series (that would be Ghost Story IMO), but not having yet read Three Body Problem or Ancillary Sword, its holding my top spot.

  9. For example, if I say “SJWs occasionally lie” in response to your false statement, this is good dialectic but poor rhetoric that is likely to fail to persuade a rhetorical of the actual truth, namely, that you are lying in the present circumstance. The better rhetorical statement is “SJWs always lie”, which is not dialectically true, but persuades the rhetorical to believe the truth, which is that you are lying.

    And yet, I remain unpersuaded. Either I am not “a rhetorical” or VD is not very competent at using rhetoric.

    (That was a dialectical statement.)

    SJWs always lie. First, you all do care how I feel. That’s why you constantly twist and pervert and attack at every opportunity.

    Because, of course, it has to be all about VD, the man more popular than John Scalzi, the man whose approval we all seek more than anything else in the world.

    (That was a rhetorical statement.)

  10. “Translation: Me rhetorical, me no understand, me tell lies make feelbetter.”

    I’m just a simple caveman, your honor. I don’t have access to “reason.” I can’t use words with “syllables,” let alone syllo-syllo–syllo–things. But I knows a crook when I sees one.

    But I have to agree, “Because I’m a lot smarter than you are”–that really was a good one. Even I, a petty slave to rhetoric, had to chuckle there.

  11. Andrew – ‘I don’t think it’s the best work in the series (that would be Ghost Story IMO), but not having yet read Three Body Problem or Ancillary Sword, its holding my top spot’.

    Dead Beat was my favorite, hard to top a zombie T-Rex. Personally I liked the earlier focus of solving things in Chicago than the constant world saving. It’s why I’m glad he wrote Side Jobs. But Skin Game over The Goblin Emperor? I supposed it’s a matter of tastes considering they’re two very different books, but I just finished it and it made court politics not only personal, but interesting.

  12. “And yet, I remain unpersuaded. Either I am not “a rhetorical” or VD is not very competent at using rhetoric. (That was a dialectical statement.)”

    You are unpersuaded, but your inability to be persuaded by a particular enthymeme does not mean you can be persuaded by a logicaly syllogism. The first horn of the dilemma is false.

    You are unpersuaded, but your inability to be persuaded merely means that a single enthymeme failed to persuade a single person. Since even rhetorical masters fail to universally persuade everyone at all times, this single failure of rhetoric on my part is insufficient to support the claim of rhetorical incompetence. The second horn of the dilemma is false.

    You constructed a false syllogism, proposed a twice-false non-dilemma, and your assertion of incompetence was meant to resonate on the emotional level. Ergo pseudo-dialectical rhetoric.

  13. I do feel a bit cheated that you didn’t grace me with any education about the matter of Aristotle believing in slavery. It’s generally customary to refute every challenge to Saint Logic in excruciating detail, isn’t it?

  14. @Whym on May 6, 2015 at 9:43 am said:
    —What books are you reading that are like that? I haven’t noticed them, and I’m an avid fan of Scalzi, Stross, Elizabeth Bear, etc.—

    As I read the paragraph you cited, a book that came to my mind is Karen Memory, as long as you change “every male character” for “every male, white and straight character”.

  15. Rhetorical seeks other Rhetoricals for fun and freewheeling discussion. Your syllogisms don’t have to line up. Does your dilemma have three or more horns? Give me a ring.

  19. Come on down to Rhetoricalville: We have no idea what we’re talking about it, but somehow, we’re happy and free of rabies.

  20. Lack the capacity to think? Know you don’t deserve to be free? Don’t have any idea what those hoity-toity Dialecticals are blabbering about? Pretty sure you’re just a figure of speech? Join Club Rhetorical. A judgment-free zone.

  21. “Come on down to Rhetoricalville: We have no idea what we’re talking about it, but somehow, we’re happy and free of rabies.”

    Okay, now that was funny.

  23. I doubt that many of the rabid puppies are going to leave the US to visit Worldcons; the shock would be pretty overwhelming. They have enough difficulty in dealing with their fellow Americans; the discovery that there are whole countries totally uninterested in US culture wars might prove fatal.

    Eric Flint has pointed out that if the Hugos really should be governed by who sells most then none of the people pushed by the pups would get anywhere near the rostrum; Jim Butcher writes enjoyable urban fantasy but in sales terms he’s dead in the water by comparison with the female authors who dominate the genre. I suspect that they and their fans would be unimpressed by stuff produced by a guy who thinks the Taliban have the right idea, which takes VD and his pets out of contention.

    That doesn’t leave much space for gun porn, unless it’s written by Laurel K Hamilton, so pathetic pups saddened by their inability to acquire phallic symbols of their very own without ballot stuffing don’t have much to look forward to…

  26. Back to the rule change challenge: If valid nominations are not received from at least one fifth of the eligible voters in any category, no award shall be given in that category.

    At least that wouldn’t be running in circles.

  27. @Peace Is My Middle Name – Out of fairness to WORLD science fiction fandom, I think Helsinki in 2017 is a much better choice.

    I wasn’t going to vote Helsinki, but I am now. One of the things I particularly resent about all this is that I blew the family’s holiday budget to go to Sasquan on the basis that it would be fun. Now, I’m not so sure it will be. A couple of thousand USD to get caught up in America’s culture wars (not counting the Transatlantic flight we had to take anyway)? Thanks puppies! For the same reason, I was sure I was going to Kansas City next year, but now I’m not. It’s not even a political point, it’s an economic decision about, you know, disposable income..

  28. Well, again, looking at the numbers, the unique nominations for Best Novel seems to be a steady 2 per voter over the last decade suggesting people read roughly the same number of Novels.

    I’ll be honest, I don’t read much short fiction these days, frankly, I read 4 SF novels last year…. the rest was work related or non-fiction. I’m running a startup and any non-work free time I have is spent remember what my wife and dogs look like.

  30. “The better rhetorical statement is “SJWs always lie”, which is not dialectically true, but persuades the rhetorical to believe the truth, which is that you are lying.”

    Man goes on to prove that black is white and gets knocked over and killed on a zebra crossing…

    Good old Douglas Adams, he had it nailed.

  31. Peace Is My Middle Name: There is nothing in the WSFS Constitution, Standing Rules, or Resolutions of Continuing Effect requiring alternation in sites selection, except (important!) that a Worldcon site must be outside five hundred (500) miles or eight hundred (800) kilometres of the site at which selection occurs (WSFS Constitution, Section 4.7). So, this year, voters can in choose from any of four validly filed bids — those proposing Helsinki, DC, Japan, or Montreal. Once a bid has won, it can in theory hold its Worldcon anywhere, provided it’s at least 500 miles from Spokane where site selection is occurring for 2017.

    So, for example, the bid to hold the 60th Worldcon (year 2002) in San Francisco won the site selection vote at Chicon 2000, the 58th Worldcon in Chicago, proposing hotels near Moscow Convention Center, but then the hotels were unreasonable and unwilling to work with the committee, so the committee arrived at a much better deal with San José, California, 50 miles / 70 km south, resulting in the San Francisco victory becoming a San Jose convention, ConJosé.

    Prior to 2000, instead of the 500 mile rule, there was an elaborate set of required rotation among geographic zones that applied to (only) bids for Worldcons in North America (Canada, USA, Mexicon, probably nearby islands, can’t remember for sure) — those zones being Western, Central, and Eastern.

    This zone-rotation system was scrapped by votes of the Business Meetings at Bucconeer (Baltimore, 1998) and AussieCon 3 (Melbourne, 1999), and replaced by the 500 mile rule. Both the zone-rotation and 500 mile rules are intended to prevent ‘capture’ of the Worldcon by, say, a gaggle of voters in Boston determined to keep it in Boston permanently who are able to outnumber the turnout from elsewhere. (No slight intended to Bostonians.)

    If DC17 wins, they could thus elect, say, to hold another Baltimore Worldcon if something goes horribly wrong with relations with the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel, but that seems unlikely as they have what’s said to be a good hotel contract. This would be the rare case of a Worldcon housed in a single large facility, i.e., no need to have a convention centre in addition to hotels. It’s about 7 km northwest of the US Capitol building, next to the Smithsonian National Zoo. Puppies will find it conveniently a short walk from The Islamic Center. ;->

    (I’m assuming they’re pushing DC17 because it’s cheaper to try to stuff the ballots and mob the Business Meeting there for a bunch of good ol’ boys than it would be in Montreal, Helsinki, or Japan.)

    Rick Moen
    [email protected]

  32. Anfenwick, there is so much more to a WorldCon than the Hugo Awards. That’s a Major Event, but there are others, believe me, and lots of cool stuff that isn’t Major, just normal sff con activities doubled down. I haven’t been to all that many WorldCons, but the ones I’ve been to have had almost TOO much to do or see (or buy, or watch, or listen to), and that doesn’t count getting to explore the city where the con is located as an ordinary tourist. One year I completely forgot it was Saturday Night and the Hugos were being announced . . . so don’t give up hope of having fun.

  33. @Rick Moen:

    Thank you. That is useful to know.

    Your comment about “stuff the ballots and mob the Business Meeting ” reminded me how important even voting for site selection can be.

    I have already painfully learned how important voting on Hugo nominations is.

  34. AG: “As I read the paragraph you cited, a book that came to my mind is Karen Memory, as long as you change ‘every male character’ for ‘every male, white and straight character.'”

    Ah. I haven’t read that one yet, but I didn’t see anything like that in the books of Bear’s I have read (The Jenny Casey trilogy, the Edda of Burdens series, and the Eternal Sky trilogy).

  35. I’m going for Finland, in some weird respects, it’s a better flight to Finland from here than, say, DC. Plus, Finland.

    Have I mentioned Finland? They have good Vodka and a few years ago the sponsorship from Finlandia was amazing.

  36. Alexvdl @ 9:17 am- Thank you for telling me what I “know.” Are you by chance my wife posting under an alias?

    Matt Y @ 9:24 am- Hello, fellow Jim Butcher fan.

    What would you think of Jim Butcher being voted below No Award? Do you really think RedShirts is better than Skin Game? I don’t.

    Until I read Three Body Problem, Ancillary Sword (and its predecessor, Justice), and The Dark Between the Stars, it is currently in my top spot. I couldn’t find Ancillary Justice or Sword in my local library system (I won’t buy them), so I’ll have to wait for the packet to read them (and what I’ll do about Justice, I don’t know).

    As an aside, my favorite Dresden is Dead Beat.

    Mike Glyer @ 9:24 am- I wondered about the family and friends vote. I’m not an author, but if I were I’m certain I could round up 40-50 votes from family members and close friends alone.

    Matt Y @ 10:09 am- I enjoyed Goblin Emperor. It was an easy read. But the protagonist was far too passive for my tastes. I kept fantasizing that he would wake up, order people dragged out of his audience chamber and executed upon the spot, without the internal weeping and moaning. It became aggravating. He’s running an Empire. And I recognize that he’s a really nice guy. But I kept wishing he’d act like an Emperor from time to time. And historically speaking, really nice guys don’t last when they wear the crown. I understand that in story terms, he was able to inspire others, was almost saint like, but I don’t think the works out in the long run. I kept thinking Henry VI- this doesn’t bode well for the long term health of the realm- though his reforms would doubtless engender a lot of lower class support (and long term economic benefits) and the noble villains needed killing (I just wish it were sooner rather than later).

    But that’s a personal failing of mine. I pointed it out in relation to Totaled (but as that was a short story I could stick with it easier).

    Regardless, it was well written and the story was good, despite my issues. It’s currently 2nd on my list, though three still needing reading.

  37. Rick, I think you meant the Moscone Center, not the Moscow Center; that would be a major instance of moving a convention after winning the bid.

  38. Whym: Karen Memory is the first book by Bear that I have read, but I have read very good reviews of the Eternal Sky series, and I intend to read that one of these days.

  39. I just like that spell correct changed Moscone Convention Center into Moscow Convention Center.

    No doubt conservatives would agree.

  40. rcade: I guess you didn’t know Day wrote on his blog in 2013 that Breivik might one day be “regarded as a national hero in Norway.”

    I believe Mr Beale’s theory is that Anders Behring Breivik bravely attempted to protect Norway against traitorous Labour Party politicians trying to permit the country’s takeover by a Middle-Eastern death cult. Too late, sir. King Olaf Haraldsson already successfully carried out such a takeover around 1100 AD.

    (How’s the election madness going?)

  42. @Daveon: That should’ve been in Glasgow 2005. They got 15 litres of Finlandia vodka as sponsorship, yes, for their Sunday party. (They did have to serve it diluted, but after we had donated our excess lingonberry concentrate from the Swedish party to them, they elected to serve it as vargtass instead of with tonic water or similar stuff.)

    That was also the year of the near-permanent Scandinavian party: Norwegian on the Friday, Swedish on the Saturday, and Finnish on the Sunday. I’m still in awe of my fellow Swedes who laboured in the kitchen bringing out sandwiches for the entire evening.

  43. Steve Moss -‘What would you think of Jim Butcher being voted below No Award? Do you really think RedShirts is better than Skin Game? I don’t.’

    In my opinion? Hell yeah. It’s a version of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead using SF tropes and inside jokes while also exploring the relationship between creation and creator from the perspective of a writer. It’s pretty much a love letter to the craft of writing science fiction, which the Codas double down on.

    Skin Game was another Dresden book. There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s why I read them, but for me Redshirts had more impact and I enjoyed much more than Skin Game (or Dead Beat for that matter).

    As for Goblin Emperor one of the things I liked was the contrast and timidity of the character at the beginning but as it advances he begins to discover what kind of ruler, and through that what type of person, he is and the man at the end is different from the boy at the beginning.

  44. @Daveon: My wife Deirdre and I have been big fans of both Helsinki bids. Deirdre posted analyses showing (1, 2) that the perception apparently common in 2013 that ‘Helsinki is too expensive / difficult to reach for US fans’ when the Helsinki in 2015 bid to Spokane. Helsinki is not only gorgeous (and, unlike DC, an actually pleasant place to be in August) but also the city is fully behind the bid, the Finns pretty much all speak English, and they already hold every year the tremendously successful Finncon, with around 15,000 attending memberships routinely.

  45. @Karl-Johan Norén: Bless you for the lingonberry concentrate (even if you folks don’t know how to pronounce tyttebær). I was in bliss, though my liver took a while to recover. And the sandwiches were mighty fine.

  46. With Icelandic Air now flying out of Seattle, getting to Helsinki isn’t significantly more onerous than getting to the East Coast, albeit, a little longer.

  47. Oh gah, I hadn’t even thought of DC in August.

    What does it matter how close attractions are if one has to venture through a swampy DC summer to get to them?

    So what’s Helsinki’s summer climate like again?

  48. One of the things I particularly resent about all this is that I blew the family’s holiday budget to go to Sasquan on the basis that it would be fun. Now, I’m not so sure it will be.

    WorldCon itself is likely to be mostly Puppy free. Several prominent Puppies have made it very clear that they won’t attend at least in part due to their contempt for the event. Even if some do come, there will be several thousand non-Puppy attendees, so avoiding them if they are annoying shouldn’t be much trouble.

  49. @Peace Is My Middle Name: Peak temperature in Helsinki is typically July when it’s about 17-18 degrees C, which is 63-64 degrees C. So, I’ll guesstimate 16C, or 61F. Sunny, bright, dry. This is when the days are very long, about 17 hours of daylight. Autumn’s cool evenings don’t start until late September.

    I’ve been in DC in August, and even walked through the middle of the day from a downtown hotel northwest to the Adams Morgan district just south of the DC17 bid’s venue, to have lunch at a really good Ethiopean restaurant. Air so hot and humid that you basically swim through it didn’t bother me too much, but mostly because I grew up in Hong Kong where it’s like that all summer long. The weather is definitely not pleasant, by any stretch of the imagination.

  50. The WorldCon will be fun irrespective of whatever happens with the Hugos. There will be panels and events and parties and sitting in the fan lounge chatting to people and so on and so forth.

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