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.
Remember: for the #hugoawards there's an IMPORTANT ballot for site selection in 2017; THIS MUST BE MAILED IN. Select DC17 as #1. #sadpuppies
— T.C. McCarthy (@tcmccarthy_) May 5, 2015
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.
Where's my manly fun and why all the clerical aliens? More #hugoawards short story finalists. #hugogeddon http://t.co/8k10zNEU0O
— Spacefaring Kitten (@SpacefaringK) May 5, 2015
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
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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James – ‘My overall view of 2013 was that it was a weak year overall’
Meh, I really liked the books I read and I think their Amazon rating prove you otherwise 😛 You read the Gunpowder Mage books? If you dug City of Stairs you might like them. Glad City of Stairs is on the Locus list.
Brian Z – ‘The Hugo ballot no longer provides me with tips on novels I’d be interested in reading.’
Well 3BP and Goblin Emperor are sure worth reading.
I don’t know if Stephenson has lost the ability to write shorter books, or has become immune to editors. Or a bit of both.
@alexvdl: “Rev. Bob – I have to admit to confusion to us speaking with the same mouth.”
Yeah, I was a bit lost there as well. Maybe he thinks we’re on the same seekrit mailing list or something.
“Though I am a fan of your beard.”
I try to cultivate a mighty beard. I generally go to the barber for a trim shortly before a convention, with simple instructions: “Less Santa, more Satan.” They always know exactly what I mean…
Matt Y, I’ll give Goblin Emperor a chance. 3BP is a no-brainer. Sure, a good book can still get onto the ballot, but if folks can go back to look at the Hugo lists from the old days, then the ones from the last couple years, and report with a straight face that there is no problem, we may really have become illiterate.
BrianZ, your Puppish talking points are showing.
Brian Z: “if folks can go back to look at the Hugo lists from the old days, then the ones from the last couple years, and report with a straight face that there is no problem, we may really have become illiterate.”
Now you’re just pontificating out of your posterior. People can (and have) gone back through decades of Hugo finalists pointing out what are relative duds. I can definitely report that there is no problem; if anything, the quality of entries on the Hugo ballot has risen significantly in recent decades, and I am far from illiterate. I have read 60 percent of all the books which have been nominated for Hugos, plus thousands of other novels besides, and I strongly suspect that I’m far more well-read in SFF than you are.
You are (not surprisingly) suffering from Puppydisease: you are convinced that anything you don’t like is bad, and everything you like is good.
Wildcat, I just plugged Through The Valley of the Nest of Spiders as an enduring classic for the ages.
Brian Z – ‘but if folks can go back to look at the Hugo lists from the old days, then the ones from the last couple years, and report with a straight face that there is no problem, we may really have become illiterate’
I can’t reply because I’m not able to read these here letters you’ve grouped together
JJ, I didn’t mean you. I was responding to Matt Y.
Brian Z: “JJ, I didn’t mean you. I was responding to Matt Y.”
When you say, “if folks can go back to look at the Hugo lists from the old days, then the ones from the last couple years, and report with a straight face that there is no problem, we may really have become illiterate”, you most certainly do mean me. That claim of yours is pure Puppy rubbish.
Matt Y, “illiterate” in the sense that people who don’t see any problem probably haven’t read the classics of the genre that won Hugos in the past. Not that they are unable to read and enjoy a good book.
Wildcat, I just plugged Through The Valley of the Nest of Spiders as an enduring classic for the ages.
That’s cool. Doesn’t change the fact that your 6:52pm post sounds like a Sad Puppy wrote it, though. 😉
JJ, no, I wasn’t commenting on your assessment of the Hugo ballot of 2013. I skimmed past your comment since given how unswervingly critical you have been of everything I say, I tend not to give your comments a lot of my time. I’m surprised to discover, going back to it, that your comment on 2013 was actually a thoughtful response to something I said. Thank you for that, and if you can do it again in the future I will continue to read and respond to your comments.
Brian Z: whoosh completely misses my point
“your 6:52pm post sounds like a Sad Puppy wrote it”
Wildcat, think about what you are saying. I trashed the entire 2013 best novel ballot except one, then implied the puppy pick was probably of the same caliber of those things I thought were mediocre. I praised a highly literary author, M. John Harrison, who didn’t make the ballot because it lost to a bunch of pedestrian, paint-by-the-numbers space adventures and zombie thrillers. I then asserted that the book of 2013 people will remember a generation from now is the one about gay coprophiles who live on a commune. Yes, pure puppyspeak.
Annie Y:
But not enough to make it a foregone conclusion. Yokohama beat a US city to host Worldcon in 2007. No one even dared to try running against the London bid because it looked unstoppable. The bid for Helsinki in 2015 handicapped itself by entering the race very late; IMHO, if it had been for 2016 instead, it could have won handily.
Brian Z: “if folks can go back to look at the Hugo lists from the old days, then the ones from the last couple years, and report with a straight face that there is no problem, we may really have become illiterate”
You are quoting something Brad Torgersen has repeatedly said, almost word-for-word there. It is pure Puppyspeak. With the added bonus of being Totally Untrue, for various values of x, where x = “not knowing wherof one speaks”.
JJ if you would like to have a conversation comparing past and recent Hugo ballots, in which I will demonstrate that I am able to type words which are different than words Brad Torgersen has typed, I’m willing to have it with you, but not if you repeat over and over and over that I am suffering from Puppydisease and my words are pure puppy rubbish. I am tired of listening to it and I think it is a counterproductive way to engage in this discussion. As I have said in the past, I’m not going to stop you from speaking your mind, but to my mind the parameters of “having a conversation about something” do not include putting up with that, which is my own personal opinion.
Brian,
First you talked about Hugo nominations over a “couple of years”. Now admittedly most Puppies tell us the rot started 10 years ago, but I presume you have read enough books from every Hugo year to state as a fact there has not been a worse two years.
Second, this is your opinion only(which is fine, but doesn’t make it true). Don’t make me quote The Big Lebowski at you.
Thirdly, when people quote timestamps, please check them so you know which wrong statement you made they are referring to. I think you and WildCat are talking about different comments.
Brian Z.,
Have you looked at Jo Walton’s “Revisiting the Hugos” series which I highly recommend?
http://www.tor.com/features/series/revisiting-the-hugos
The consensus was that the Hugos do a decent job but not always. Walton stops with the 2000 Hugos so we don’t get her opinion on how the more recent Hugos are performing. One of her reasons for stopping is that she doesn’t think enough time has passed for an impartial review of the more recent Hugos.
Me, I don’t think recent Hugos are significantly worse than before; worthy works will always miss out and some don’t get the recognition they deserve until some time later. The Hugos are a necessarily imperfect snapshot of SFF. I’m sure we can improve on how we select our Hugos. I’m also certain that the SP/RP approach is the wrong approach to fixing whatever problems we might have with the Hugos. But if in a couple of years we end up with a Hugo nomination system that is resistant to bloc-voting, and more WSFS members make an effort to nominate, well that’s a silver lining I can hope for as an outcome.
Brian Z: “you repeat over and over and over that I am suffering from Puppydisease and my words are pure puppy rubbish”
I am far from the only one who has pointed this out to you, both in this thread, and in several other File770 threads.
It’s quite simple, really. If you don’t like being accused of being a Puppy, then stop spouting the same nonsense the Puppies are spouting.
Matt Y – you lost me if you’re trying to use Amazon ratings as a valid display of anything.
Soon Lee, I have read Jo Walton’s series and I find her to be a very perceptive reviewer-in-hindsight. I enjoyed them very much.
I don’t think agree that a rot set in 10 years ago or that the problems with the ballots of recent years are permanent or inescapable. That’s one reason I cautioned against making any changes – I like the system the way it is and I hope it can right itself.
Soon Lee, to add to that, I guess I would say that “fixing” the system by making it more (at least marginally) more resistant to bloc-voting seems shortsighted to me since I am not convinced that bloc voting is the greatest peril. Based on our conversations here, I’m becoming convinced that lack of motivation to read widely outside one’s comfort zone, plus what I (OK, thoughtlessly, sorry) called “illiteracy” in the classics of the genre, are the greatest perils.
Brian: I will admit, I was a bit iffy on the relative quality of Warbound and The Wheel Of Time last year (ducks and covers from the incoming hail of rotten fruit from WoT fans 😉 )
But going through the backlists of nominees and winners, there are a lot of times when I disagree with the choice of some of the nominees, and sometimes with the winners.
Decent, but not outstanding works from favorite authors do pretty well for themselves (CVA from Bujold in 2013 is good, but I’d say its success was based on her previous cred. Likewise OSC’s appearances in the late 80s to early 90s with the Alvin Maker stuff. Its decent, but would have made the ballot without Enders Game and Speaker for the Dead to pave the way?)
From the recommendations you’ve been making, and the books you were sad about losing from the ballot, your tastes trend more literary than the Hugos tend to go, especially in the novels.
The part where you sound like a sad puppy is when you protest “this was my favorite book that year, and it didn’t get a look in. The books that did aren’t to my taste, and are therefore bad. The process is broken. It was better in the good old days.”
FWIW, I think Blackout was a bit weak, but not a paint by numbers zombie story (I find the setting strong, but the story nothing exceptional). I would have, given the choice, dropped it off the ballot in favor of The Hydrogen Sonata. But I’m not seeing a paint by the numbers space adventure in there at all.
Brian “I like the system the way it is and I hope it can right itself.”
Are you going to advocate to all that people stop should stop using slates then? Don’t forget that any anti-slate measure would work just as well on the “secret TOR slates” just as well as the Puppy ones. Shouldn’t we be looking at ways to make the nominating process fairer and more robust no matter what people try to do subvert it?
And in your second comment to Soon Lee, I find the idea that Hugo voters being unwilling to read outside their comfort zone to be highly arrogant and presumptuous. I think everyone in this conversation has shown an openness to read and judge all books that come their way.
“I’m not seeing a paint by the numbers space adventure”
Well at least you saw “resting on their laurels”: “CVA from Bujold in 2013 is good, but I’d say its success was based on her previous cred.”
Redshirts was clever, funny and engaging, but it was still, you know, sort of like a Tim Allen movie. Not knocking it, but KSR was the only one who broke real ground.
The part where you sound like a sad puppy is when you protest “this was my favorite book that year, and it didn’t get a look in. The books that did aren’t to my taste, and are therefore bad. The process is broken. It was better in the good old days.”
This is an argument over an award for the best works of the year. Don’t we all sound like that? Isn’t that what people who hate the 2015 ballot are saying too?
One aside: “bloc voting” vs. “lockstep voting”. I’d rather talk about the problem of lockstep voting, since in my book “bloc voting” might include a bunch of people talking amongst themselves and deciding they really like something, which is OK in my book. We should be as precise as possible about what the problems are.
“Shouldn’t we be looking at ways to make the nominating process fairer and more robust”
Tintinaus, if we can be sure it will be fairer and more robust, I’m all for it. But first can we be sure it won’t be fairer and less robust? (or still-not-very-robust, as the case may be?)
TC McCarthy: (Having now noticed the Twitter mini-kerfuffle that seems to have prompted all this): Further to what I said earlier, contrary to what some other pseudonymous handle (‘mundaneBRAAAINS’) claimed and you agreed with, I am not some sort of ideologue praising bringing in membership if it ‘supports diversity’ and deploring it if not on grounds of ‘silencing the minority’ — nor for any other reason. I am not a ‘supports diversity’ handwringer, and I have no truck with passive-aggressive bullshit claims about ‘being silenced’ (typically posted by people who cannot and will not shut up, on behalf of people who aren’t silenced in the least).
In short, what you glibly posted agreement to is nothing whatsoever like anything I’ve ever said, anywhere. It’s a little surprising that you didn’t manage to get that right. You’re a writer, correct? That means you work with words for a living, yes?
To review, my cynical speculation was that a mass push for ‘IMPORTANT ballot for site selection in 2017; THIS MUST BE MAILED IN. Select DC17 as #1.#sadpuppies’ (your tweet) was probably founded in a belief that mobbing the 2017 business meeting and doing ballot-stuffing would be cheaper if in DC than any of the three non-USA bids.
I apologise for the phrase,’ballot-stuffing’. I didn’t intend to assert of impropriety, but can see how you’d read it that way. However, for the record, I honestly am fine with you or anyone else drumming up memberships (and, as a working capitalist, I don’t make a cent more or less, either way).
It does sound like someone wanting to bring in good ol’ boys for budget rates, on the other hand. Which phrase you have drastically over-interpreted on no evidence, but, again, for the record: I don’t consider people having membership and casting their allotted votes improper in any way. A good ol’ boy who pays his membership and voting fee gets the exact same one vote as anyone else. Don’t take my word for that; check everything I’ve said on this subject. (Your culture war is entirely outside my areas of interest.) I’m regret my cynical speculation, though that certainly wasn’t aimed personally at you, as you ballyhooed in public.
You also seem to have had more than your share of overhasty statements on Twitter, entirely on your own initiative. E.g., where people had to correct several times your claim there’s no site selection voting fee, before you stopped trying to argue with them. Then again when you kept insisting Worldcons are required to be outside the USA one year out of every four.
My actual concern was not really with you at all, but rather with the apparent erroneous perception that USA-based conventions are automatically less expensive to attend. I found the error interesting, not the fact that it involved good ol’ boys, or who said it. Which error I’ve posted about separately quite a bit, and my wife Deirdre has posted more. Which please see.
Rick Moen
[email protected]
Brian Z.,
I disagree.
The Hugo nominations have been susceptible to bloc-voting for many years; it’s a known vulnerability. It’s just that no-one has ever exploited this vulnerability (quite this well) until this year. Now that it’s happened, we would be foolish to think that it won’t happen again in future*. A rule change to mitigate any effects of bloc-voting is the only sensible course.
We have until the business meeting in August, so that is ample time for any change to be discussed at length. And any change that passes at the meeting will need to be ratified in another year’s time.
[Yoda]A knee-jerk response, this will not be.[/Yoda]
*An analogy or sorts: I keep my spare key under my doormat; have done so safely for years. But last week a burglar used it to get in & steal my stuff. Do I still keep my spare key under the doormat hoping the burglar won’t come back?
Hell, if we want to talk about reading outside your comfort zone, I read through John C Wright’s One Bright Star to Guide Them last night. All the flaws of CS Lewis’s authorial style, added to all the flaws of John C Wright.
@MickyFinn: “But going through the backlists of nominees and winners, there are a lot of times when I disagree with the choice of some of the nominees, and sometimes with the winners.”
This is absolutely true. I thought The Man in the High Castle was a boring plotless mess. Clearly Philip K. Dick was an SJW clique-ist. In 1963.
IT’S THE ONLY EXPLANATION.
Pointing to Skin Game‘s ratings on Amazon and Goodreads proves nothing at all, to my mind, for one simple reason: the people rating it are the people who like the Harry Dresden series well enough to stick with it for fifteen volumes. Of course it’s going to rate highly with them.
Alex – ‘you lost me if you’re trying to use Amazon ratings as a valid display of anything.’
Was meant to be in jest Moss for doing so previously.
Wildcat @ 5:02 pm- Your allegation that I’m falling into the “puppy trap” of “how could anybody possibly like different books than I do?”, is incorrect. What prompted my disbelief is that multiple voices from what I consider the Old Guard have opined that Skin Game ranks below No Award, all within a short period of time. There was not one dissenting view from that group.
That tells me one of two options is correct:
1. They are telling me their honest opinion. In which case, at least as to thise posters, we have no common ground. For example, (my interpretation) is that Daveon is voting it below No Award because: a) he dislikes urban fantasy; and, b) it was on a slate. If that is the standard, than Goblin Emperor goes below No Award, as the story got on my nerves. It isn’t because at least it was well written. Which is what I hope some would apply to Skin Game, at the very least.
2. It is not their honest opinion, then they are trolling, in which case why have a conversation.
These are multiple data points, all in rapid succession. Their opinions are their opinions, which is fine, but I and tens of thousands of others now know the weight to give their opinions. Not much.
As to the Puppies pissing you off about putting Skin Game on the slate, exactly how strong was the movement to get Jim Butcher a Hugo nod for Dead Beat, or Changes, or any of his other work? I think the ONLY way he was ever to receive a Hugo nod was if the average fans pushed the issue as “fandom” had made precious few moves in that direction.
Brian Z @ 5:31 pm- I haven’t read Blackout, but Skin Game is better than the other two. In my opinion.
Brian Z @ 5:49 am- I don’t recall posting ratings before, but if I did, mea culpa.
Matt Y @ 6 pm- You are incorrect. I was not looking for opinions that “mirror my own”. I was hoping that the 4-5 data points from “fandom”, the only ones who expressed an opinion at the time, would at least acknowledge that Skin Game was decent enough to rank above No Award. That was not the case. So they’re either taking the piss or they really believe it. Either way, it firms up my belief that there is very little overlap in views on competent writing, at least as between me and the 4 or so posters who took no time whatsoever to opine that is placed below No Award, that there is little common ground to support further conversation as to other works.
” A rule change to mitigate any effects of bloc-voting is the only sensible course.”
Soon Lee, I do see the argument for doing it. Maybe you are right. My main concern is that we don’t understand well the mechanism by which the voting rules often picked great winners in the past, and focusing on making the system “fairer,” particularly if defined as “the maximum number of members feel happy they got at least one favorite thing on the ballot” instead of “what the greatest number have singled out as among the five best works of the year,” might be standing still or even taking a step in the wrong direction. The most important question is, can WorldCon members read more and vote more? As I said before, if a mere fifth of the membership nominated in most categories, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
“A knee-jerk response, this will not be.”
I hope so – but there has been a lot of jerking of knees so far, so I’m worried.
Petréa Mitchell,
You won’t find me arguing on that point. The fact that the Worldcon does make it out of North America proves it. But I still think that in a lot of cases people vote for a US one even if they would otherwise go for an outside one simply because of wrong assumptions about the foreign country (or any country). I am not sure that Helsinki would have won 2016 but we will never know anyway. It does seem to be the frontrunner for 2017 now so let’s see what happens this summer. I suspect that DC will collect more votes than anyone expects – hopefully not enough to win though(I’d rather see this one going to Helsinki or Japan) 🙂
Brian Z @ 8:13 pm- A poster named Jon has opined that simply doubling the number of potential finalists would eviscerate slates. I have no idea if this is accurate (I’m not a math guy) but if it is, then it has the benefit of simplicity.
Brian Z: “My main concern is that we don’t understand well the mechanism by which the voting rules often picked great winners in the past”
You are hugely presumptuous for claiming that you can speak for what other people know or understand.
You remind me of the new guy who came into a community to which I belong and immediately began speaking as if he was far more experienced and knowledgeable than the rest of us there — when, in fact, the exact opposite was true, and the guy didn’t have clues to rub together, and this was blindingly obvious to everyone else there, but not to him.
Speak for yourself only. I’m quite sure that I, and many others here, know a hell of a lot more than you are giving us credit for.
Gah. Sorry all, the bold closing tag got lost.
Hi again JJ, my offer to have a conversation with you remains open.
Hi Brian Z, happy to take you up on that, if and when you are ready to stop spouting Puppy Talking Points and presuming to speak for everyone else.
Having 10 finalists in each category is a bit unwieldy imo.
But actually having a conversation about options and ramifications is a good thing. From here, anyone saying “we shouldn’t do anything, we don’t understand enough” sounds like a Coal Baron’s shill talking about why we should do nothing in relation to Global Warming.
Steve Moss,
“simply doubling the number of potential finalists would eviscerate slates”
I guess it would eviscerate one slate or two very similar slates.
That’s an awful lot of summer reading though.
Moss – It’s cool man it was my mistake for thinking you were looking to have an honest discussion.
jj: I’ve got a pile of lightly used “/bold”s that I can sell you for a reasonable price.
Stages of Hugo Award controversy:
1. Shock & anger
2. Pile-on/Knee-jerk reaction
3. Acceptance
4. Considered response
5. Make jokes
Some of us are further along the process…
MickyFinn: “jj: I’ve got a pile of lightly used “/bold”s that I can sell you for a reasonable price.”
*snort*
I may be taking you up on that offer. Do you accept PayPal? 😉
Steve Moss:
I can’t speak to Daveons post, but your number 1 seems to miss a point in your comparison between Goblin Emperor and Skin Game – which is that GE was not on any slate. So naturally, if someone was oppossed to a slate, Skin Game would be ranked below No Award, or left of entirely.
“anyone saying we shouldn’t do anything, we don’t understand enough sounds like a Coal Baron’s shill”
But with the Hugos, the stakes are higher?
I said go ahead and take action but the worst problem is not lockstep voting, it is that fans don’t read. And hey, I did propose an amendment to give no award in categories for which less than a fifth of members nominate.