aka The Puppies Who Fell Up
Another burst of substantive, idea-filled posts highlight today’s roundup. The roll call includes Jeb Kinnison, Jaye Em Edgecliff, Brandon Kempner, Jeff Duntemann, Steve Davidson, Anthony Vicino, William Shaw and Kate Paulk. (Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editors of the day Laura Resnick and Jack Lint.)
Jeb Kinnison on The Subtstrate Wars
“SFF, Hugos, Curating the Best” – May 2
“Curating” means selecting for quality and audience. WorldCon has been tending to curate for a small and eccentric audience, and favor-trading, log-rolling, and political prejudice has been apparent since.. forever. WorldCon has already recognized the outreach possibility of the Internet. There is no longer a reason for what purports to be *the* award of SFF fans, not Worldcon attendees, to be closed to the fans who can’t be there, or as GRRM remarked, aren’t fannish enough to regularly read fanzines. If the award is to be chosen by small groups with a certain Fannish mindset, then it’s not *the* award of SFF readers and not a useful guide to quality for those who don’t share the mindset. And it will tend to slight publishers and authors who haven’t sucked up to the attendees and “curated” their online presence to groom their own fans. Some decry the possibility that the Hugos might become a mere popularity contest, with “Twilight”-ish popular works swamping the less-accessible quality fiction; but that ignores that the status quo prior to Puppies was a popularity contest among a small and not necessarily representative group shot through with personal conflicts of interest and logrolling.
We can honor all the work of the elders who curated and nurtured the Hugos when there was no other way for fans to get together. We can also open up the nominating and voting to committed readers who haven’t been Fannish, and the effort involved is more software and thinking about systems than sitting at tables and handing out papers while chatting with passersby. There are problems with nominating voters being unaware of what qualifies, and problems with qualifications — suggestions about more classes for long works and allowing small pub and self pub books more time to be discovered are good.
As a new author, I’d like to preserve a large market for fiction because it is inevitable that larger media productions will be unable to pioneer new ideas or truly eccentric new virtual worlds — there are just too many people involved in these larger productions to take as many risks on unique visions, and until the tools for game storytelling, for example, are easily accessible and usable by singleton game authors, games won’t be the medium to create the experience of the great novel or story. Opening up the Hugos and doing more outreach to fans of other media would help a lot in renovating fandom and bringing in more new readers. And if the field doesn’t start gaining more readers, it will die, since it is already harder to make a living writing for SFF than it used to be. If the only writers left working are supported by academia or other jobs, the field will lose its finest future works.
Brandon Kempner on Chaos Horizon
“Hugo Best Novel Nominees: Amazon and Goodreads Numbers, May 2015” – May 1
Let me emphasize again that these scores have never been predictive for the Hugo or Nebula: getting ranked higher on Amazon or Goodreads has not equated to winning the Hugo. It’s interesting that the Puppy picks are the outliers: higher and lower when it comes to Goodreads, with Leckie/Addision/Liu all within .05 points of each other. Amazon tends to be more generous with scoring, although Butcher’s 4.8 is very high.
The 2015 Hugo year is going to be largely useless when it comes to data: the unusual circumstances that led to this ballot (the Sad and Rabid Puppy campaigns, then various authors declining Best Novel nominations, and now the massive surge in voting number) mean that this data is going to be inconsistent with previous years. I think it’s still interesting to look at, but take all of this with four or five teaspoons of salt. Still, I’ll be checking in on these numbers every month until the awards are given, and it’ll be interesting to see what changes happen.
Jeff Duntemann on Jeff Duntemann’s Contrapositive Diary
“Rant: Sad Puppies vs. Anti-Puppies, as the Kilostreisands Pile Up” – May 2
How in hell could a couple of mostly unknown authors turn the venerable Hugo Awards inside-out?
My answer: adverse attention. For a definition, let me quote from a textbook that I made up just now: Zoftnoggin & Wiggout’s Fundamentals of Sociometry.
Adverse attention is a rise in the attention profile of a previously obscure phenomenon caused by the actions of an entity that opposes that phenomenon. In the vast majority of cases, the triggering force is outrage, though it sometimes appears through the action of envy, pride, lust, asshattedness, butthurt, or other largely emotional psychopathologies.
This being sociometry, adverse attention may be quantified, and there is a standard unit for expressing it:
The fundamental unit of adverse attention is the streisand, defined as one previously uninterested person achieving a degree of interest in a phenomenon sufficient to compel them to email, share, or retweet information about that phenomenon to one other person in a social network. As the information propagates across a social network, the connectedness of the network influences the total amount of adverse attention that arises. For example, if each of ten previously uninterested persons receiving the information passes it on to only one previously uninterested person, eleven streisands of adverse attention have been created. If one of those previously uninterested persons has 200 followers on Twitter or 1000 Facebook friends, the number of streisands increases rapidly. In a sufficiently dense network, the rate of increase can become close to exponential until the number of previously uninterested persons asymptotically approaches zero.
I’ve seen evidence for this in the comment sections of many blogs that have criticized or condemned the Sad Puppies. A common comment goes something like this: “Wow! I never knew that you could vote for the Hugos without going to Worldcon! And I just downloaded the free preview of Monster Hunter International. This is way cool!” Zing! The world gets another Puppy.
The emotional tenor of the criticism matters too. I’ve seen a few comments that go something like this: “I’d never heard of the Sad Puppies before. I’ve been trying to figure out which side is right, but the sheer nastiness of the Sad Puppies’ critics makes me think they’re just sore losers. I’m more or less with the Puppies now.” ….
And those streisands just keep piling up.
It’s something like a sociological law: Commotion attracts attention. Attention is unpredictable, because it reaches friend and foe alike. It can go your way, or it can go the other way. There’s no way to control the polarity of adverse attention. The only way to limit adverse attention is to stop the commotion.
In other words, just shut up.
I know, this is difficult. For some psychologies, hate is delicious to the point of being psychological crack, so it’s hard to just lecture them on the fact that hate has consequences, including but hardly limited to adverse attention.
My conclusion is this: The opponents of Sad Puppies 3 put them on the map, and probably took them from a fluke to a viable long-term institution. I don’t think this is what the APs intended. In the wake of the April 4 announcement of the final Hugo ballot, I’d guess the opposition has generated several hundred kilostreisands of adverse attention, and the numbers will continue to increase. Sad Puppies 4 has been announced. Larry Correia and Brad Torgersen have lots of new fans who’d never heard of them before. (I just bought the whole Monster Hunter International series and will review it in a future entry.)
To adapt a quote from…well, you know damned well whose quote I’m adapting: “Attack me, and I will become more popular than you could possibly imagine.”
Steve Davidson on Amazing Stories
“No Award is Not the Nuclear Option” – May 1
One final note. Some are arguing that rejecting all slated items punishes those who were not willing participants/had no knowledge they were being included. The solution there is simple. If you have an eligible work in any given year, clearly state somewhere that you do not participate in campaigning for the awards, reject any involuntary inclusion in such and do not give permission for your name and works to be included. Most everyone who would be in such a position in years to come have already pretty much taken a position: they’re either happy to take advantage of whatever benefit may be derived from being included on a slate, or they do not want to have anything to do with it. I’m pretty sure that the vast majority of voters will take you at your word – whether you are ultimately included on a slate or not.
Steve Davidson on Amazing Stories
“Thoughts on the Hugo Voters Packet” – May 2
Participation by authors and publishers was always presented as being voluntary on their part. Largely unspoken was the implied strong-arming: if you didn’t provide copies of a nominated work, you were likely insuring that the work in question would not win.
Last year, commentary regarding the publishers that chose not to participate in the packet pretty much follow those lines – not to mention edging over into public castigation of the publishing house itself. (Bad, bad publisher for not giving us free stuff.)
What follows on those coattails is pretty obvious: a growing sense of entitlement on the part of voters – a trap I myself fell into this year. I’d fully intended to read Cixin Lius’ The Three Body Problem (having been assured by no one less than its translator that it was worth the read) but the buzz made it so obvious that the novel would be on the final ballot that I chose to wait to get my free copy. And then of course the puppies shit the bed, and the first uncensored thought that popped into my head was “dammit, now I’m going to have to buy that novel!”.
Of course things have shifted again and Three Body is back on the ballot, so I will be getting a free copy (presumably), but in order to punish myself for those uncensored thoughts, I’m going to be buying a copy today. (I sure hope I like it….spending good money on a flyer like that….when I coulda gotten it for free….)
I find it odd that I do not have the same sense of entitlement regarding review copies that are or are not supplied to me for free by publishers looking to get a marketing push. Sometimes stuff just arrives in the mail (hey! yay! Free Book!) and sometimes I write to the author or editor or publicist or publisher and request a copy. Sometimes I get one (hey! yay! Free Book!) and sometimes I don’t even get a courtesy brush off, but I don’t even think about booing.
Maybe I feel entitled to the Hugo Packet because I spent forty or fifty bucks on a Supporting Membership (or more for an attending membership)? But there ought to be a disconnect there because a Supporting Membership is not a discount book program. It’s supporting the convention, of which the Hugo Awards are but one part. It’s for supporting the people who have been working on the convention for probably the past three or four YEARS. It’s supposed to be my way of saying: I can’t be there in person this year, but I believe in what you folks are doing and want to see it continue, so here’s some money.
I am positive beyond any shred of doubt that I am not the only Hugo Voter who has had this creeping sense of entitlement grow upon them over the past several years.
Jaye Em Edgecliff
“Puppies…” – May 2
Do not, instead, decide that it’s about bringing back the good ol’ adventure yarn in places of “message fic” (also do not knock “message fic” while it is possible to witness your orgasmic pleasure you derive by merely typing the name Robert A Heinlen, it REALLY spoils your point), but then start bitching that things don’t qualify when numerous items are pointed out, but those items just happen to have females who play a role other than damsel in distress (Uh, one word for you, buddies, little thing you probably never heard of from the early 20th century Triplanetary … she wasn’t a damsel in distress), characters who incidentally are gay or trans or black or fuchsia or vegetarian or ¼ amphibian … If you’re trying to claim you aren’t over-privileged, white-supremacist, homophobic, transphobic, etc it’d help if you didn’t call things that are exactly the old-fashioned classic adventure yarn you claim to want “message fic about gay issues [for example]” just because a character is gay. Trust me, there’s a difference between a character being gay and a story dealing with gay issues. My stories touch on gay issues, they aren’t strictly about them, and in SF/F there frequently is the conceit that the society has no gay issues in the first place….
Anthony Vicino on One Lazy Robot
“Why Ratings and Reviews Don’t Matter Anymore (sort of)” – May 2
[A lot of interesting statistical analysis in here. Can’t even begin to scratch the surface with an excerpt.]
In particular, the books with the most lopsided ratings tend to be from self-published authors. What do I mean by this? Well, self-published authors, whether they be fairly popular, or not, tend to have significantly higher ratings than their traditionally published brethren.
Before we get into the why and the how, I want to substantiate this claim with some examples. I spent a little bit of time this morning compiling some datas that I now want to throw in your face. Incoming!
First, I googled top 100 science fiction books of all time. What pops up reads as a who’s who of sci-fi literary mastery. So I just went down the list, took the top 12 titles and searched their Amazon rating to get a baseline. Here we go:
William Shaw in Oxford Student
“Censorship and the Hugo awards” – May 2
You see, Beale and his supporters mounted this campaign because they believed that the awards were being dominated by broadly left-wing fiction because of the censorship of a shadowy group of left-wing authors, rather than because the books they wanted to see nominated just weren’t any good. And so they decided to stuff the ballot. They reacted to an unfounded conspiracy of censorship by actively engaging in censorship themselves. What happens to the Hugos as a result of this still ongoing controversy remains to be seen, but we can learn a crucial lesson from it. Which is that the would-be censor can all too easily turn anti-censorship rhetoric to their advantage. We must be mindful of that, and remain vigilant if we want to see truly free and open artistic expression.
http://t.co/5d3Tc4WOiD SLATES ARE BAD! hey can someone give me a slate of books nominate so I don't have to read them? #SadPuppies
— Nate (@bloggerblaster) May 2, 2015
Kate Paulk on Mad Genius Club
“A Mad Genius Goes to RavenCon (Part the Second)” – May 2
Much joyous conversation was had upon the nature of weaponry, the importance of ending the Sadness of the Canines of Youth, and the prospect of selling buttons with the arcane cantrip “Barfly Central is my Safe Space”. And lo! The Convention of Raven has not descended to the madness of the Safe Space, for among the Secret Masters of Fandom in the shining city of Richmond there are those who know the never-to-be-spoken truth: that the Safe Space so celebrated by the Glittery Warriors of Social Justice is merely the demon of Apartheid masquerading under a pretty name and suit of demonic glitter….
Upon completion of the panel, the warrior maiden did retreat to her “safe space” (Barfly Central) wherein she did converse with many of the Flies of Bar and did meet in person the redoubtable warriors John C Wright and L Jagi Lamplighter (for as with many in these modern times the warrior maiden had conversed with both through the Internet of Tubes). ‘Twas here that Kate the Impaler did learn of the attempt of the GOH of Wrongness to have a person ejected from the Convention of Raven and that the GOH of Wrongness did have no copanelists. Speculation there was that the GOH of Wrongness was of such wrongness that no other wished to join for any panel.
I should note that I have an actual conflict of interest there.
— Ted "Theodore" Logan (@calvinsdad) May 2, 2015
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‘To adapt a quote from…well, you know damned well whose quote I’m adapting: “Attack me, and I will become more popular than you could possibly imagine.”’
After Obi-Wan said that, he gets killed and disappears from the story.
The One Lazy Robot article is very good. Thanks for the link!
“Nuclear Option”
There is another reason to avoid advocating No Award. Insisting that authors who fail to disavow the slate must face the music puts them in a double bind, since by rejecting the slate, the author would become a leading cause of sadness among book-buying puppies everywhere. Isn’t it better to just let a few more mediocre books than usual be shortlisted for awards and move on, than to damage the careers of those caught in the crossfire?
I am glad Kate Paulk had a good time at RavenCon. I wish it wasn’t so hard to read her prose and learn she had a good time at RavenCon.
I cannot get over the sense of entitlement radiating from Jeb Kinnison’s piece. He may personally not feel that way, but it is a common thread in some of the Puppy whines: the WSFS should just stop giving out awards according to their rules and award them based on what a third party tells them to do.
It is up to the WSFS to decide who gets to vote for a Hugo, noone else. If that devalues the award in your eyes, do the right thing: start your own.
Tintinaus, in all of that tortured prose she seems to have missed that the person who was asked to leave Wu’s panel was the one who has been posting her address and pictures of her home, among other such savory things.I’m sure that wasn’t intentional.
How is asking a disruptive internet stalker to leave a panel he is attending for the sole, pre-announced reason of stalking his victim “Apartheid”?
“I wish it wasn’t so hard to read her prose and learn she had a good time at RavenCon.”
No kidding. What did the English language ever do to her to be treated so horribly?
I look forward to seeing her choices for what constitutes excellent writing all over the Hugo ballot next year.
Whoever that Nate is, he’s completely misrepresenting that “I Am A Bad Reader” post. The OP is looking for some kind of wiki about good books that they might like, not asking for a slate.
Of course, the Puppies also call Swirsky’s story “dino-porn” so reading comprehension is not their strong point, but still. And they’re now pushing this slate=recommendation list nonsense that was conspicuously absent before the finalists were announced. But even so, that strikes me as a local minimum in reading comprehension.
@rcade:
That is genuinely unfair. Plenty of people who could not write their way out of a wet paper bag can still recognize great writing.
To shift arts, I daresay plenty of people who cannot draw worth a darn can still recognize Leonardo da Vinci’s genius.
There are many good arguments to be made, but that isn’t one of them.
Mart:
Oh, exactly, and very much this. I keep telling anyone who says variations of “The Hugo Awards should be for everyone! You Worldcon people should let anyone vote! You should spend your money and your time and effort doing things the way I tell you to do them!” this:
Nothing and nobody is stopping you from setting up The Perfect Sci-Fi (sic) Award, to be voted upon by every consumer of sci-fi and fantasy popular culture entertainment anywhere in the world whatsoever. If you’re so utterly convinced that you’re right, you do it. Set up the award, promote it, administer it, and surely if you’re so right, millions of people will flock to it and it everyone will be so impressed that the Hugo Award (and all of the others) will be reduced to the irrelevance you personally are convinced they deserve.
What these people want is for other people to spend their money and their resources on doing things for them. They don’t want to do anything themselves. As someone who has spent the majority of his life now as a volunteer for Worldcons, this sense of entitlement infuriates me.
After last year’s Worldcon, I actually saw people who started to work up how to create the Real SF Award for Real Fans that wouldn’t be so nasty and exclusive like those mean old Hugo Awards. That I could respect. Mind you, they got bogged down in all of the same real-world issues that we’ve spent 60 years working through with the Hugo Awards and the whole thing came to nothing, but at least they realized that the Hugos belong to WSFS, and that WSFS can do what its members want with it, and short of actually taking over WSFS (a monument task that cannot easily be done just sitting at your computer), the only recourse was to set up a New Award done the Right Way.
I challenge any of these people who insist that the Hugos should be done their way to go do it the “right way.” I really doubt you can do it.
The Gemmell awards aren’t the answer the Puppies are looking for?
I mean, yeah it doesn’t have the prestige, but part of that is the years, and year, of history and work put into making the Hugo’s prestigious.
Isn’t it better to just let a few more mediocre books than usual be shortlisted for awards and move on…?
If you think an award should celebrate mediocrity, then I think we’re at a serious impasse.
I’ve been thinking about the Puppies’ fascination with Amazon and Goodreads ratings, and reflecting on my own experiences chatting with World of Warcraft guildmates and other acquaintances about ratings, and can articulate more of why I think they aren’t good guides: the relative experience of the raters.
Take Extinction Point and its sequels, by Paul Anthony Jones. It’s a good apocalyptic trilogy (and the ending does something genuinely interesting, when it comes to the motive force behind the alien invaders). I enjoyed reading it and don’t regret the purchase. But I wouldn’t rate it as highly as some because of my baseline of related work. I’ve also read John Joseph Adams’ end-times triptych (which included Annie Bellet’s withdrawn story), and pretty much all the work in it was better. I’ve also read John Christopher, John Wyndham, Greg Bear’s “Blood Music” in both its incarnations, and like that.
And it goes like that. When I read any tale of resistance to a galactic tyranny, I measure it by a yardstick that’s lengthened because I read “Remembering Siri” and the Hyperion Cantos. When I read of distant future Earths struggling with the weight of their legacy, the yardstick I bring out had to get long enough to do some justice to the Book of the New Sun and “Nightwings”.
What I notice, when chatting with folks whose experience of the field is shallower and narrower than me, is how little they know of the experience of respecting a work, of taking up something that requires you to grow in order to appreciate it better. They know entertainment, and I think entertainment is important. (Writing really good fluff is hard work, which I respect very much; I think light-feeling results are crucial to healthy mental life.) They know other basically surface reactions, like shock. But they tend not to know the one-time or repeated engaging with a work that knows more than you do, that has something fresh to teach you about yourself and the world, whose language challenges you and whose ideas require time to ponder. They’re in the position of someone restaurant reviews based solely on salad and dessert courses who doesn’t even really suspect the existence of main courses, let alone have any experience with them.
And they rate accordingly.
I don’t give many 5-star ratings because, well, in any given year, I don’t encounter many works that are as good as the best of their sort gathered over the last century. It happens occasionally, but not often, nor should I expect to. Basically, I know too much to use Amazon and Goodreads ratings the way readers with less or narrower experience do. It’s been gnawing at me, in a mild way, for some time that this means that work I love ends up ill-served in terms of those ratings ecosystems. But the fact is, I read a lot of stuff that’s competent and satisfying and no more, and I do wish to express that, when I rate.
What I am sure is that the differences between Amazon/Goodreads ratings and Hugo nominees and winners do not reflect a vast conspiracy of fannish grognards, and also that the solution to the gap is not to just start all acting like inexperienced and/or narrowly focused kids.
“If you think an award should celebrate mediocrity, then I think we’re at a serious impasse.”
Threatening authors that they must alienate some of their biggest fans or be punished is not a cause for celebration either.
I said accept that a few mediocre works have been shortlisted, not accept giving awards to mediocrity. If everything in a category truly sucks, go ahead and no-award it.
It is just a fact that the Hugo process doesn’t ALWAYS pick the best of the year (see: 2014) but OFTEN picks great stuff. Someone pointed out in a previous thread that VD doesn’t have that many more John C. Wright stories up his sleeve for next year. The whole slate thing could wind down on its own. The system may not actually be broken.
In case my last comment seems harsher than I intended: I don’t really dislike or have a bone to pick with any specific work on the ballot recently. I just think the general quality over the last couple years was kind of mixed.
“Threatening authors that they must alienate some of their biggest fans or be punished is not a cause for celebration either.”
That isn’t the way most people have been presenting the argument for No Award. It’s a reaction to the voting practice and not an attempt to punish the authors on the slate. I can like an author and still dislike that the Hugos were gamed. It’s true it takes them out of contention but that’s simply part of the damage the Puppy slate does. They bumped off deserving authors and filled up a bunch of spots with friends of the movement so they robbed lots of people of the chance to compete.
They bumped off deserving authors and filled up a bunch of spots with friends of the movement so they robbed lots of people of the chance to compete.
Right. You don’t reward Tonya Harding when her husband tries to knock Nancy Kerrigan out of competition.
And continuing the metaphor, Harding still has to do a good job and be judged for it.
Bruce’s comment about depth of experience is something that applies in a lot of areas (which makes me agree is particularly apropos with respect to reviews and ratings of books). A while back, I was on a hiring committee that reviewed a candidate who’s rating from a number of interviews was mixed; half weren’t impressed, half were very impressed.
I realized that 1) the candidate was a Ph.D. 2) the interviewers who were impressed were all both only holders of a bachelor’s and had only been out of school for a year or less 3) the interviewers who weren’t impressed either had a Ph.D. and/or had been working for more than 5 years. We decided that, deliberately or not, the candidate’s greater experience had managed to snow the relative, but still very sharp, newbies, and went with the opinion of the candidate’s peers and rejected them. And we sent a note to HR urging that the majority of interviewers for future candidates should have at least a similar level of experience or more.
“that’s simply part of the damage the Puppy slate does”
You are totally right that people are not proposing No Award with the intention of hurting the slated authors. I should have said that and underlined that twice.
Still we should probably resist the temptation to blame the other side for all the damage without giving consideration to possible negative effects of our own actions.
@Jeb,
Overall good post but,
“and until the tools for game storytelling, for example, are easily accessible and usable by singleton game authors, games won’t be the medium to create the experience of the great novel or story”
That has happened now. The indy market in the PC world has exploded with many solo and small house ventures.
@Jeff,
“My conclusion is this: The opponents of Sad Puppies 3 put them on the map, and probably took them from a fluke to a viable long-term institution. I don’t think this is what the APs intended. In the wake of the April 4 announcement of the final Hugo ballot, I’d guess the opposition has generated several hundred kilostreisands of adverse attention, and the numbers will continue to increase. Sad Puppies 4 has been announced. Larry Correia and Brad Torgersen have lots of new fans who’d never heard of them before. (I just bought the whole Monster Hunter International series and will review it in a future entry.)”
One can’t but lol. While he’s exaggerating for effect the advise is sound. The harder the push back the more likely SP Part N will happen.
@Steve Davidson,
“clearly state somewhere that you do not participate in campaigning for the awards, reject any involuntary inclusion in such and do not give permission for your name and works to be included”
State for the record if you ever have or ever intend to be a member of the Communist Party.
@Anthony
“But here’s the thing: all those five star reviews don’t make me anymore likely to pick up a book. Especially if they are not balanced by a healthy amount of low stars. Shit, look at that All Time SFF list again. Peruse the reviews and you’ll see a substantial portion of readers absolutely hated said books. Does that make them bad? Not at all.”
It is an interesting article but I don’t think this makes sense in light of the title. I don’t know about others but I often _read_ the review. I also chose some negative and positive reviews. Stars in themselves are generally useful (crowd sourcing) and I’ll note that he doesn’t really examine the contra case (low star average).
In fact if anything he proves that high star ratings are useful in finding overall generally good quality. Nor does he examine that fact that his Greatest Hits list is _old_ compared to the newer series. That is, it reflects readings from people that are likely reading in order to have read the greats and are being very critical in their rating.
It also overlooks “the universe was created yesterday”. That is, some books fall out of favor even though they are good because the author or the material is no longer seen in a favorable light. See: Orson Scott Card, Lovecraft, Howard.
A large part of the POINT of “no award” being an option is to disincentivise people gaming the nomination process for personal gain – you game the nomination process, you have to then make it past Nora Ward to actually win anything.
No one foresaw someone being so dim, and venal in their dimness, to game the nomination process inspite of that because they either didn’t understand that that has always been a thing, or believe that they can undo a taboo built up over 50~ years purely through lies and repetition.
“Still we should probably resist the temptation to blame the other side for all the damage without giving consideration to possible negative effects of our own actions.”
That is very true and a good point. I simply don’t think not giving someone a Hugo award as being malicious or a punishment to them.
@Bruce:
I tend to give a lot of 4-star ratings, a relative handful of threes, and a few fives. I attribute that in large part to selection bias. By that, I mean that I tend to rate books I’ve selected as interesting, and about forty years of experience in doing so has given me a pretty good handle on the process. I give a book three stars if it basically lived up to expectations but had some noteworthy flaws holding it back, four if it hit the mark well and competently, and five if it really blew me away. In the rare cases I rate lower, a two indicates that I found it seriously subpar, as with a self-pub book that’s otherwise an okay read but really needs another edit pass to clean it up. That gives me room for the dreaded single star to denote really dreadful stuff: overused cliches, incredibad grammar and/or punctuation, names that shift for no reason, and other problems. (No one of those is sufficient on its own.)
I frequently skip giving actual reviews, though. It’s not because I bear the book any malice, nothing like that – I’m just busy and have other things to do, like getting a start on the next book.
@Brian Z:
How is not considering mediocre books for awards a threat? So far, that’s what the Puppies have tended to slate: bad-to-average prose and blockbuster movies. Looking at Kate Paulk’s Ravencon reports, I don’t expect SP4 to break the streak. (Anyone who talks about “glittery hoo-has” automatically joins GamerGaters and other nitwits on my list of People Whose Words Are Not Worthy Of Serious Consideration. The free market of ideas has shown me that the wares peddled by that Ilk are generally shoddy and fall apart under rigorous examination, let alone actual use.)
If Author X believes the only way his work can get on the Hugo ballot is by partnering with a mediocrity-celebrating slate, I take that as an admission that X produces sub-par work. I already have a huge backlist of movies to watch and books to read; I have no need to add low-end books to it. Anything that helps me weed those out is a Good Thing. So, to that end – go on, Puppies. Keep showing me what I can easily skip. Every little bit helps.
Fred Davis: you are absolutely right that everyone is free to torch this year’s award and walk away, this was intentionally built into the system, and there is nothing wrong with it.
Whether “slates” were also intentionally built into the system is debatable.
In my comment, I was concerned with the use of No Award to target authors who decline to sign up for what is essentially a no-puppy pledge. (I know, “all slates are bad,” so that could potentially become a no-something else pledge too if circumstances change in future.)
@ Fred Davis- If you think noting No Award will “disincentivise” SP/RP, you haven’t been paying attention.
Rev. Bob,
“How is not considering mediocre books for awards a threat?”
Nobody can make us so much as crack the spine of something we don’t wish to read, or hold our nose and vote for something we hated. It makes sense to no-award everything mediocre whether there is a slate or not.
“generally shoddy and fall apart under rigorous examination”
Paulk probably has the choice of innovating, throwing in the towel, or watching as the whole thing falls apart.
@Brian Z: “Paulk probably has the choice of innovating, throwing in the towel, or watching as the whole thing falls apart.”
If her Ravencon notes are any indication, it seems she intends to keep doing what SP2 and SP3 did. She certainly is waving their flag with vigor, which implies neither innovation nor surrender. Whether you see “keep on keepin’ on” as a form of “watch it fall apart” or a fourth option is up to you, but I think it’s safe to eliminate your first two possibilities.
@Kevin,
“Oh, exactly, and very much this. I keep telling anyone who says variations of “The Hugo Awards should be for everyone! You Worldcon people should let anyone vote! You should spend your money and your time and effort doing things the way I tell you to do them!” this”
Oh come off it. If that is true than shut down the voting process entirely. It will make your life easier. Either that or follow the rules and let us vote. You are knowledgable and have done a good job in answering direct questions well. But either WorldCon is an open invite or it isn’t. The puppies are not in mass trying to destroy World Con. They are however accepting the open invitation.
“A large part of the POINT of “no award” being an option is to disincentivise people gaming the nomination process for personal gain – you game the nomination process, you have to then make it past Nora Ward to actually win anything.
No one foresaw someone being so dim, and venal in their dimness, to game the nomination process inspite of that because they either didn’t understand that that has always been a thing, or believe that they can undo a taboo built up over 50~ years purely through lies and repetition.”
Or, you know, there is always the possibility of not being incentivized by personal gain. Unless you truly think I am so dim and venal as to be shocked by this unexpected disincentive nine months after finishing below No Award last year.
“eliminate your first two possibilities”
Why wouldn’t she review the goals of her campaign next year and think about the best way to achieve them? She may or may not be a clunky writer (all I’ve read is that tremendously silly con report) but it seems highly unlikely that she’s stupid.
… who is stopping you from voting, GK? What persecution complex do you have that makes you think anyone is STOPPING you from voting?
@GKChesterton
“It is an interesting article but I don’t think this makes sense in light of the title.”
You have some good points, GK. I agree the title doesn’t really make sense in light of some of the material, but I did preface the title with (sort of) so I’m gonna use that as my trapdoor escape route. Also, I openly admit in the post to wiffle-waffling on my stance and need smarter people to help me draw conclusions.
“In fact if anything he proves that high star ratings are useful in finding overall generally good quality.”
I tried avoiding making value judgments as to quality because that’s an entirely other can of worms I didn’t want to get into. There are plenty of books out there with relatively high ratings in relation to their objective ‘quality’, but I didn’t want to get on my box and start slinging value judgments. I just wanted to draw attention to a trend.
“Nor does he examine that fact that his Greatest Hits list is _old_ compared to the newer series.”
It’s true the Greatest Hits are old and it makes sense that we would assume them to have been judged more critically by people wanting to over-analyze a classic. To account for this, I did pull the last six years worth of Hugo winners to get see how the “modern classics” faired. By and large they were rating significantly lower than the Modern Classics AND the sample of self-publishers I pooled. There are conclusions to be drawn from these observations.
What are those conclusions? *shrug* I’m just the guy pointing to the elephant in the room.
“That is, some books fall out of favor even though they are good because the author or the material is no longer seen in a favorable light. See: Orson Scott Card, Lovecraft, Howard.”
You would think that some polarizing authors would have fallen out of favor since original publication (notable example here being Orson Scott Card), but it doesn’t really reflect in the rating. He’s still pulling in a solid 4.5 for Ender’s Game which is a full half star (and then some) above Scalzi’s Redshirts. You could make the argument that Scalzi is polarizing, but no more so than Card. Take from that what you will.
Thanks for voicing your thoughts, GK!
“Unless you truly think I am so dim and venal as to be shocked by this unexpected disincentive nine months after finishing below No Award last year.”
Well, reading the comment on this blog, there are a few people who think you are that dim and venal.
You are totally right that people are not proposing No Award with the intention of hurting the slated authors. I should have said that and underlined that twice.
Speak for yourself. I want to make sure that anybody on a Puppy slate who didn’t withdraw (and is therefore assumed to be okay with slate voting) not only doesn’t win a Hugo thanks to this, but will never win a Hugo as long as I’m voting in them. I’ll never nominate them, will never vote for them if they are nominated, will always vote No Award over them. Nor will I buy their books or read their stories or fanzines.
They’ve shown they disrespect my fandom, care for the social norms of my fandom, think they deserve something they haven’t earned. Therefore they lost all consideration of being treated fairly by in turn. You cannot cheat and then demand everybody else shows you the consideration you didn’t show others.
“The indy market in the PC world has exploded with many solo and small house ventures.”
Most of which will never go anywhere, because, like most self-publishing authors, they’re not very good.
Martin: I hereby amend my comment to read some people.
Or, you know, there is always the possibility of not being incentivized by personal gain.
Well, yeah, everybody who paid attention knew already that you can always depend on daddy’s stolen from the US taxpayers money to bail you out when your latest hobby crashes and burns around you: mediocre industrial musician, mediocre game “designer”, mediocre writer, even mediocre rightwing pundit for WorldnutDaily, the talents you have for fucking up are unlimited.
“They’ve shown they disrespect my fandom, care for the social norms of my fandom, think they deserve something they haven’t earned. Therefore they lost all consideration of being treated fairly by in turn. You cannot cheat and then demand everybody else shows you the consideration you didn’t show others.”
Nobody cheated. You’re lying, surprise, surprise. And you’re also selling us short, as “disrespect” is far too mild a term. I would suggest “total contempt for you, for everything you believe, and for pretty much everything you hold dear” would be more accurate.
We don’t expect you to treat us fairly. Why on Earth would you start now? We expect absolutely nothing from you but all-out cultural war. It’s almost bizarre that you seriously think threats of not winning an award are a disincentive to a large group of individuals who aren’t even remotely dissuaded by SWATtings and bomb threats.
@Brian Z: “Why wouldn’t she review the goals of her campaign next year and think about the best way to achieve them?”
You’ve read her con report. She is quite blatant with her in-group signaling (“glittery hoo-has,” Baen Barflies, etc.), which tells me she fully agrees with the existing SP campaign and shares the same quality filters as the previous Saddest Puppies. I would love to be wrong, but my best guess from the existing evidence is that SP4 will carry on the tradition rather than branching off into new territory or methodology.
Martin,
Out of curiosity, are you a fan of industrial music? That’s not the set up for anything, I just don’t run into a lot of people who are fans. I, on the other hand, am very excited for the May 15th release of VNV Nation’s orchestral album.
“Well, yeah, everybody who paid attention knew already that you can always depend on daddy’s stolen from the US taxpayers money”
This is my favorite part. When the SJW finally cracks and drop the “we are having so much fun,” facade to reveal the incoherent anger he conceals.
Am I no longer adorable? You make me sad.
*laugh* Even after gaters soundly denounced Beale and his ideologies after that Pakman interview, he still clings to them.
“*laugh* Even after gaters soundly denounced Beale and his ideologies after that Pakman interview, he still clings to them.”
Any “gater” who denounces any GGer for ideology isn’t significant and doesn’t get it. GG has no ideology. And I just did a GG interview today with a pro-GG podcast, as it happens.
@Rev. Bob:
Good heavens, does Ms. Paulk know what a “glittery hoo-ha” actually refers to?
‘Am I no longer adorable? You make me sad’
Don’t be sad, I still find you adorable.
“Any “gater” who denounces any GGer for ideology isn’t significant and doesn’t get it.”
And here we have Beale demonstrating the “no true Scotsman” fallacy.
The first half of the comment you are replying to mentions that it was INTENDED to do that. This time, I implore you, please read the next paragraph before replying rather than giving up reading the comment *mid comment* so you can reply to it about something that is addressed in the comment you are replying to.
The second half of the comment you are replying to then goes on to call Brad, Larry and Theodora too stupid and self-absorbed to be affected by any polite attempt to disuade them from fucking with the nomination process via the mere existence of the no award mechanism. So I was already saying that No award isn’t going to disincentivise the puppies from doing this shit, as you might expect given that the thing they are supposed to have not done is something they have already done, which to any mind, or whatever you are using instead of one, that might wish to ponder upon the ideas hereforth explained that obviously the mechanism meant to avoid this shit clearly isn’t working becuase shit has not actually been avoided. Mojo jojo.
I don’t think you understand that the hugo final ballot operates using an instant run off voting process, and thus I would repeat that the no award system doesn’t work the way you think it does.
There are countless explanations for how the balloting process works and they are all easy to access and, hopefully, read via a simple google for “hugo ballot voting process explanation”.
I mention this because the overall sentence you wrote will make no sense to anyone looking at the hugo voting ballot. The hugos does not use a First Past The Post voting system, and the No Award option does not work in the way you think it does.
Stop stop stop, what in the actual fuck are you even trying to say? You do realise that “no award” has been a thing for decades now, right? And that I was talking about its creation and it’s *INTENDED PURPOSE*. That is, the purpose its creators had for it back *MANY YEARS AGO* when it was created. Which is to say that my *ENTIRE FUCKING POINT* was that no award clearly isn’t disencentivising a halfwitted minority from gaming the nomination process *AS PROVEN BY THE SAD PUPPY CAMPAIGNS*. Who, furthermore, I was explaining weren’t disincentivised precisely because y’all are too dim and venal to be disincentivised by such a subtle attempt to use basic game theory to dissuade rational actors from gaming the system.
You ask if I think you are “so dim and venal”, and then you absolutely and completely fail to grasp clearly written english.
How have I, in calling you dim and venal, somehow managed to vastly underestimated how dim and venal you were?
You’re so stupid that you got your fingers stuck in a website.
You’re so stupid you proposed a slate of “the best” fiction of this year – and are gonna vote for things not on your slate because your slate is so bad.
You’re so stupid you got fired from a blow job.
You’re so stupid you put M&M’s in your ears and thought you were listening to Eminem.
You’re so stupid you think the menopause is a button on your remote.
You’re so stupid you phone people up to ask for their phone number.
You’re so stupid the first time you used a vibrator you broke your front teeth.
You’re so stupid you spray axe bodyspray on trees you want to cut down.
You’re so stupid you thought a quarterback was a tax refund.
You are so stupid that calling you dim and venal appears to have been rendered an inadvertent compliment by your own stupidity.
That’s how dim and venal I think you are now. You are precisely dimmer and more venal than I previously thought you were. You are literally dumber than sputnik 1, whose regular pattern of beeps were at least conherent and well spoken compared to the utter mish mash of drivel that erupts from your mouth like a volcano of bad faith arguments.
You’re so stupid that you were presenting as a “Gotcha!” a rephrasing of what I had already said. Thus proving my point.
You’re so stupid “no award” doesn’t disincentivise you from trying to gaming the hugo awards for your own personal benefit.
For two years in a row.
That’s how stupid you are.
VD — “It’s almost bizarre that you seriously think threats of not winning an award are a disincentive to a large group of individuals who aren’t even remotely dissuaded by SWATtings and bomb threats.”
Wait, who on the Puppy side of things has been SWATted or had bomb threats? Or anyone at all in this mess? Are you conflating the 2015 Hugos with Gamergate, the same way you deliberately conflate anyone who disagrees with you about anything with so-called ‘SJWs’?
‘I would suggest “total contempt for you, for everything you believe, and for pretty much everything you hold dear”’
Which is fine. I guess the problem was they didn’t think about you very much at all, and you in such dire need of a culture war. The other problem is that now people still don’t take you very seriously. Not as a thinker or a pundit or an SF maven. As a vandal and internet troll, sure, but no-one wants to fight a culture war with you, because they value culture too highly, be it high culture or low, to weaponise it.