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.
Discover more from File 770
Subscribe to get the latest posts to your email.
Steve Moss — “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.”
On the face of it, this sounds like a sure recipe for confirmation bias: they must be ‘Old Guard’ because they advocate voting Skin Game below No Award, whereas anyone who doesn’t, isn’t.
As far as I can tell, there’s a lot of disagreement about where to place Butcher’s book; I certainly can’t tell who’s ‘Old Guard’ and who isn’t just from their Skin Game voting preference.
Brian Z @ 8:27 pm- You are right to be concerned about potential problems with the fixes. Again, I’m not a math guy, but per Chaos Horizon’s May 4 entry “The Hugo is actually many different awards, each with slightly different statistical patterns. This makes “fixing” the Hugos by one change very unlikely: anything done to smooth the Best Novel category, for instance, is likely to destabilize the Best Short Story category, and vice versa.”
And you are right again, in that 10 books, short stories, etc. is probably a bit much to get through.
@Steve Moss: “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.”
My big problem with that is the assumption that an organized movement is the normal and expected way that works get nominated. To the contrary, I hold that such is the exception, not the rule. The normal path is the opposite, that any work which is able to pull sufficient numbers from such a disparate group as Hugo nominating ballots represent has therefore demonstrated its worthiness.
Or, if you prefer: If you need an organized movement to put you on the ballot, you don’t deserve to be there.
Steve Moss at 8:13 p.m. says: “…but I and tens of thousands of others now know the weight to give their opinions…”
Tens of thousands of others? Seriously now?
(Don’t mind me. I’ll be over here rolling my eyes.)
Soon: I’m yo-yoing between 4 and 5. And occasionally I’ll read another of the slate entries on the ballot, and get dropped back to 1 for a little while.
JJ: I usually only accept payment in cat gifs
Mike:
True, the customs barriers (NAFTA notwithstanding) between the USA and Canada can be a challenge to dealers and artists. But most convention attendees aren’t dealers and/or artists, so that shouldn’t account for 1000 members or more, which is what I estimate the 2003 and 2009 Worldcons lost by the handicap of being in Canada.
Of course, on the bright side, those people who are not allowed to enter the USA are able to attend those conventions, unless the US intervenes in their Canadian-bound flights (even if the flights don’t enter the USA), as they’ve insisted they have the right to do. *sigh*
Steve Moss,
“anything done to smooth the Best Novel category, for instance, is likely to destabilize the Best Short Story category, and vice versa.”
My question about the Chaos Horizons analysis is how one can base any kind of prediction on the past behavior of voters in this environment. If people don’t read individually, though, I suppose the other option is to crowdsource the actual reading part. The Slates of Winter are nigh upon us.
@JJ: “”
Well put. Very succinct, in fact; I find myself in complete agreement. 🙂
=^.^=
JJ on May 6, 2015 at 8:49 pm:
meh. tl;dr
Kevin Standlee: “Of course, on the bright side, those people who are not allowed to enter the USA are able to attend those conventions”
[cough Peter Watts cough]
Rev. Bob – ‘Or, if you prefer: If you need an organized movement to put you on the ballot, you don’t deserve to be there’
Without an organized ideological movement how could a little-known niche author like Butcher ever hope to win? After all he’s a competent writer and the Hugos should be about awarding competency.
JJ: ah, the cat ascii art! an elegant weapon, for a more civilized age. 😉
snowcrash @ 8:33 pm- You are correct. I think this was subconscious as I was trying to avoid thinking of the natural counter, which is to No Award anything which was NOT on a slate and/or not Jim Butcher in the novel category.
I’ve said before I got involved for 3 major reasons, one of which was Jim Butcher’s Hugo nomination. Despite that, I’m trying to be fair, read everything, reserve judgement and not go spouting off about No Award or burning it all down (which is neither productive nor civil). But if a significant number of fandom’s response it to automatically No Award the slate nominees (which includes Butcher), and they can’t be dissuaded from this (adopting the Judge Smails standard of slates are “badness!” recommended lists are “goodness!”) then the only way I can use my single vote to even slightly offset that mindset is to vote for Butcher, and then No Award everything else in the Best Novel category. Which is distasteful.
This is not a threat. It is something I have no desire to do, am looking for ways to make the math work out that it is not necessary, am trying to convince others that this automatic knee jerk reaction is not the way to go, etc. And even if I feel painted into that corner in an effort to give Jim Butcher a fair shake by offsetting some among fandom, my one vote (actually 4, as I have 2 siblings and a cousin who think the same way about Jim Butcher and have signed up) isn’t enough to really offset all that much.
The real question is how many sign up for Sasquan and why are they doing so. We’ll know in a few months. In the meantime, I can only make decisions based on my reading and the information I gain.
MickyFinn,
I was manically whipsawing between the stages for a while, but I appear to have calmed down some.
Brad Torgersen announced Sad Puppies with:
So far, I’ve read the English, the Antonelli, the Rineheart & the Wright. I haven’t found much in the way of “explosions” or “kick-ass laser battles”, it’s all very talky. “Fun” is a personal thing & I’m not finding much of it either but YMMV.
Should I be talking to the FTC about false advertising?
As long as we are complaining about the ballot, what’s up with Interstellar? Earthlings are dying because mysterious crop blights destroy all their food. A guy reaches across space and time to leave a message in Morse code about how to lift their underground silos into space and whisk them to a water world in another galaxy. That helps how, exactly?
It helps them by *BOOM CRASH THUNDEROUS MUSIC*
I thought it was pretty criminal that Interstellar got nominated but Predestination didn’t.
It’s that whole Michael Bay factor kicking in.
To be clear, I don’t much Urban Fantasy – so strike 1, it was slated, strike 2. Goblin Emperor is straight Fantasy, well, mostly straight, which isn’t my favourite but it’s been a reasonably good read – it also wasn’t slated, and is in my #2 slot.
Steve, you also thought Turncoat was good, which I honestly think was a fetid pile of dingo dung – seriously, how can anybody write sentient ships that badly? Try some Neal Asher – the Jack of Hearts is how you write a sentient spaceship.
And then you also liked Light to Guide them, which basically was horrific for a native English person to read.
I’m curious to see where Predestination is on the nominations – because it should have been there. Interstellar? I got nothing. I hated it.
Soon: you’ve read all of the Wright? I made it through his short story and One Bright Star to Guide Them before my brain demanded a break. But yeah, what I’ve read so far has a lot of talky, and a lot of Christianity. (one bright star seems like an attempt at a CS Lewis pastiche for people who liked LWW, but thought that there wasn’t enough jesus in it.)
We seem to be in agreement about “Interstellar”!!!
I thought it was a dumb eye-candy movie; they went to a lot of effort modelling singularities then decided to ignore a bunch of physics for *DRAMA* reasons. “Predestination” would have been a far superior finalist.
If you watch it in IMAX, Interstellar does feature a laser battle with your eyeballs.
I was, for a while, considering being fair, however, now I’ve realized it’s basically Mr Beale’s slate, which was 100% categorically a slate, no ifs ands or buts, and that Mr Beale is a complete tosser who knows how to play people – I can’t support a single person on Vapid Slate. So, nothing gets nominated that was on his slate.
That’s pretty much it now.
To quote UHF – “You’ve impressed me, normally this would be waived, but now I’m going to yank your license…”
It’s entirely my opinion, but the quality of the slated work has made it easier not to feel bad about having to do it.
Rev. Bob @ 8:35 pm- I agree slates should be the exception, not the rule. And for the record, I purchased my Sasquan membership after the finalists were announced and did not participate in the slated works getting on the ballot. I became aware after the fact. I’m neither SP nor RP, though I’m very sympathetic to SP and becoming more so as time goes on.
As to popular writers getting onto the ballot the traditional way, I doubt many of Jim Butcher’s fans knew it was even an option. Jiim Butcher never lobbied his fans to nominate him for one, unlike Scalzi and many others. The Hugos was some prize given out by the intelligentsia for some arcane and unfathomable reason. I’ve since learned otherwise.
But what is clear is despite almost 15 years of writing excellent novels, he and many other great SF/F writers weren’t getting looked at by fandom. So maybe a shake up was due, especially for the Hugos. It only takes 200 or so nominating votes to get on the ballot. If Butcher, etc. so much as sent out one post asking for their fans support, they would have been easily nominated. They didn’t and fandom didn’t. And now there are people like me gearing up to do our bit.
delurking @ 8:37 pm- The 30,000+ Goodread readers who rated Jim Butcher’s Skin Game 4.5+ stars out of 5. I don’t speak for them (obviously) but my views are not isolated by any means.
Brian Z @ 8:51 pm- Chaos Horizons agrees with you. On May 4, it stated “That huge increase causes an incredible amount of statistical instability, to the point that this year’s data is “garbage” data (i.e. confusing) when compared to other years.”
Soon Lee @ 9:05 pm- Agreed, sort of, per my reviews I’ve left on here. Which is why I ranked Turncoat no. 1 so far (I still need to read A Single Samurai but have been unable to find it short of buying Baen’s Big Book of Monsters).
I thought my wife was physically going to hurt me for taking her to see Interstellar…
I managed to avoid seeing interstellar. something about the way reviewers were describing it, even in the positive reviews, tripped the NOT FOR ME switch in my brain.
Yes, Steve, but just lobbying your supporters isn’t a guarantee of making the ballot nor winning. Ask Scalzi about Fuzzy Sapiens.
Raising Steam didn’t get on the ballot, not even as a sympathy ballot.
JJ: I may be taking you up on that offer. Do you accept PayPal? 😉
Don’t do it, man. I can offer you cheap supplies of /bolds, as well as surplus periods, a wide selection of workmanlike monosyllabic words, and copious amounts of second-person and third-person singular pronouns. I swipe them from John C. Wright’s personal stock – he never misses them…
“One Bright Star to Guide Them” was the only Wright on the SP list; I was underwhelmed. I’ve also read “The Parliament of Beasts and Birds” which is on the RP list not the SP & was equally underwhelmed but it has the advantage of being shorter than “One Bright Star to Guide Them”.
To me they were more the sort of “talk-talk” “MFA” story that SPs say feature too heavily in recent Hugos, so I don’t think the SPs have succeeded in their stated goal to rid the Hugos of tedious stories.
The Annie Bellet has been my favourite story so far from the SP/RP lists.
Cpaca: “Don’t do it, man. I can offer you cheap supplies of /bolds, as well as surplus periods, a wide selection of workmanlike monosyllabic words, and copious amounts of second-person and third-person singular pronouns. I swipe them from John C. Wright’s personal stock – he never misses them…
Okay, what with you, Mr. Finn, and the good Reverend, I’m clearly going to need either to obtain a transparent keyboard protector, or to stop drinking at the computer…
Nah. I’m going with the keyboard protector.
Since when is Jim Butcher ‘a little-known niche author…’?! He’s one of the most well known urban fiction authors.
And, ‘the Hugos should be about awarding competency.’
Mere ‘competency’? With choices from all the SF and fantasy published in a year, I would prefer that we reach for excellence. Yes, I am a fan of Butcher’s and don’t want to no-award him, but there are books that were more interesting and original this year.
Steve Moss:
What are you voting for? I mean, what are the reasons for you to vote?
Is it for the best novel? Then read and rank them apporpriately.
Is it tactically so that Skin Game wins? Then do what you’re doing (SG, then NA)
Is it both for the best work and to note your disapproval of slates? Then rank all slate candidates below NA, and non-slate candidates fall where they may (above or below NA as appropriate)
We all have different rationales. Just be straighforward with yours.
I agree on the Annie Bellett story being the best of the shorter fiction I’ve read so far. Shame that she withdrew. I cannot fathom how people considered ‘Turncoat’ worthy of a nomination. I’m a bit surprised that it was published without a rewrite to turn the antagonist AI into something more than a mustache-twirling for-the-evils cardboard cutout.
Does anyone agree with me that the best books were The Peripheral and Echopraxia? I wonder how far down they were.
I will agree with the Puppies on the award going to the wrong book recently- For example, American Gods won in the year that Bujold’s Curse of Chalion came out.
That was WRONG. Before anyone disagrees, allow me to take a leaf from another poster in this thread and advise you that my opinion on this is OBJECTIVELY CORRECT and no arguments to the contrary are possible.
Sorry, Maximillian, we already played that game over River of Gods :p
maximillian: I can only comment on that by pointing out that I’m kinda happy I wasn’t voting in that year, because I would have a devil of a time choosing between those two.
Matt Y @ 8:57 pm
“After all he’s a competent writer and the Hugos should be about awarding competency”
And here I was thinking and competency gets you published and read; it takes a bit more to get an award.
I personally think that The First Fifteen Lives of Harry North was a spectacular 2014 standout — even more so because it was written by a 26-year-old showing the same sort of precocity as Delany did with Babel-17. It was my Number One choice. I’m looking forward to her new novel, Touch.
I’ve got Station Eleven (just announced as the Clarke winner) queued up next, because after the comments of a couple of friends who read The Dark Between The Stars, I’m really having a tough time forcing myself to dive into it.
Daveon @ 9:29
“it’s basically Mr Beale’s slate”
Even for The Big One? I suspect that’s everybody’s fault collectively: Correia and Butcher fans and anyone who ever set a precedent by voting for a 37th book in a series or a humdrum thriller or anybody who doesn’t share my choice to defend my literary pretensions.
I wouldn’t want to no award Butcher just because he was cynically placed on the RP slate. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t no award him.
@Steve Moss: “As to popular writers getting onto the ballot the traditional way, I doubt many of Jim Butcher’s fans knew it was even an option.”
I believe you’re asking the wrong question, and thereby reaching an improper conclusion.
The correct questions are (1) is Worldcon’s membership a fair cross-section of the SF community, (2) does Worldcon’s membership include Butcher fans, and, most importantly, (3) did the portion of Worldcon’s membership that likes Butcher’s work consider it not just Hugo-worthy, but in their estimation one of the top five Hugo-worthy books of the year?
If (1) is true, I daresay (2) is also true. That leaves (3) as the critical question, and speaking as a Butcher fan, I just didn’t think it merited a Hugo. I had nothing against it, but I wouldn’t nominate it for a Hugo for the same reasons I wouldn’t nominate a Michael Bay movie for an Oscar. They’re entertaining, but that’s not enough to justify an award. (See also the Locus Awards, which were unaffected by Puppies and open to everyone.)
@JJ:
(opens jacket) Man, don’t listen to CPaca. I deal in only the finest non-binary gender pronouns, and because I like the cut o’yer job, I’ll even toss in some of these fine ellipses. I get ’em in bulk, y’see; I know Shatner’s supplier. I’ve even got a couple of nice little callbacks and in-jokes I can let you have at a discount. Finally, don’t spread it around, but I’ve got this hand-crafted artisanal timepiece featuring Optimus Prime in a red swimsuit. That’s right, it’s a Michael Baywatch. Just for you. Much better than CPaca’s stuff, I guarantee; you don’t even know where zie gets it…
@Cpaca: Don’t do it, man. I can offer you cheap supplies of /bolds, as well as surplus periods, a wide selection of workmanlike monosyllabic words, and copious amounts of second-person and third-person singular pronouns.
If it’ll help, I picked up from a remainder outlet all of the Oxford commas Lynne Truss left on the factory floor.
@Daveon & @MickeyFinn: My guess about Interstellar is that Christopher Nolan got so tired of reading that he made only labyrinthine films with no human connection about morally grey characters in an uncaring world, that he decided to fix that by exactly such a film, but gussied up with overwrought emotional scenes underlined by loudly operatic music. Ow, my ears.
It does seem like Hugo voters tend to look for that extra “something” when voting in the fiction categories… something different or new or unexpected, a spark that attracted their attention in particular over the other works read in a given year. “Satisfying but expected” usually doesn’t win the rocket.
@JJ:
You might even say I get my wares in jib lots. 🙂
[Hey, I hadda do something to redeem that “cut o’yer job” typo!]
I suspect that Matt Y at 8:57pm has run afoul of Poe’s Law….
Note to self “proofread!”
And here I was thinking and competency
up at 10:05 pm should have been
And here I was thinking that competency
Wildcat,
Absolutely agree.
“….it’s a Michael Baywatch”
Ok. That’s it. Time to pluck the tar and heat up the chickens.
Steve:
>> 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.>>
I don’t think “decent enough” or even “decent” should be descriptions one would apply to Hugo-caliber work.
You seem to think that ranking something under No Award, means that the voter is saying it’s bad. That it’s not competent, not “decent enough.”
That’s not what No Award means, at least not to my mind. What it means it, “not so excellent as to be ranked among the top few works of the year.” Awards should go, ideally, to excellent work, not merely to competent work, or event work. No being Hugo-worthy isn’t an insult any more than a movie not being Oscar-worthy means it’s no good. There’s a whole range of quality in between “best of the year” and “no good.”
I’ve read all the Dresden Files books, and I wouldn’t vote any of them for a Hugo. I liked most of ’em just fine, which is why I’ve read so many, but to win a Hugo I would hope to like something more than “just fine.” The Dresden books are amiably-written urban fantasy with a lot of action and snark and a real nice sense of building momentum throughout the book, usually. They’re well-crafted rollercoasters. But they’re not — at least, to my eye — award-level stuff. They’re solid Bs. But I think awards should go to As. A-plusses, if possible.
An award isn’t just for being competent or “decent enough.” It’s not the dividing line between functional and crap. It’s about stuff that’s better than competent, better than functional, better than “decent enough.” It’s about excellence, or should at least aspire to be.
For whatever difference it makes: I don’t think I count as Old Guard — I’ve been reading SF since the 1960s, and have been to three Worldcons, but not as a member, just as a company rep (once) and as a dragged-in-because-I-was-in-town (twice). This year is the first year I’m attending as a member, and the first year I’ll be voting in the Hugos.
And I won’t be voting for SKIN GAME. It’s a solid, well-constructed piece of commercial genre fiction that doesn’t really seem to aspire to more than that. That’s not meant to knock it — it’s perfectly respectable at what it’s trying to be.
But the stuff I want to vote for is the stuff that aspires to more than that, and reaches it. I think the reason “best” is in the phrase “Best Novel” is because we’re supposed to be celebrating the best, not merely the competent or the “decent enough.”
Those strike me as awfully low bars for giving something an award.