Patrick Richardson’s post “Not a real fan” at the Otherwhere Gazette is getting a lot of eyeballs today because fans love the thrill of terror they feel whenever there’s a fresh reason to believe anyone thinks they don’t really belong in fandom. Richardson believes he has found two and, in a bitter riff on all the sf he’s read and watched, he punctuates every example from kindergarten thru today with the refrain, “So I’m not a real fan.”
The first reason for this self-contradicting rap is:
You see, according to the Anti crowd I can’t be a real fan because I don’t go to cons. I’ve only been to one you see, not out of lack of desire, but lack of funds.
So I’m not a Real Fan.
Is his failure to attend conventions enough to disqualify Patrick as a Real Fan? For an in-depth analysis I turned the question over to File 770’s consultants on fannish purity. Here is their response.
- Fanzine editor: All those examples and he never mentions the importance of reading fanzines? Not a fan.
- Club member: What club does he belong to? How can you be in fandom if you don’t join a club?
- Collector: What Star Wars action figures does he own? He doesn’t say. A real fan would say.
- Filker: Has he ever been in a Bardic Circle? His failure to mention filk strikes a false note to me.
- Costumer: He doesn’t say anything about cosplay. A lot of people think they’re fans who don’t do any more than put on clothes in the morning.
As you see, con attendance is not the only area the panel believes Patrick’s fannish credentials are sadly deficient.
Seriously, though, the fear of not really belonging afflicts fans everywhere on the culture war spectrum, not just the part Patrick complains about in his second reason for saying he’s not a Real Fan.
See, to be a Real Fan, you have to agree with the liberal orthodoxy. You have to believe that SF is all about teaching us lessons, not about having fun. You also, apparently, have to go to cons and beat your breast about “privilege” and “diversity” and apparently apologize for having testicles.
Completely ridiculous stuff, on the other hand, I guarantee at this very moment there’s a liberal taking Patrick’s criticism in a personal, literal way and letting it tap into their own fears of Not Being Allowed To Belong. It’s common for humans to fear being excluded.
And I can’t fix a fundamental human fear with the comments I’m about to make — if I could, I’d start by fixing it in myself. How embarrassing to admit I have written whiny posts of my own. But I’m going to say these things because it’s better to light a candle than curse the darkness.
- You are a fan in proportion to the effort you make to attach yourself to fandom.
A friend of mine, now deceased, used to attend every Worldcon business meeting, sit in a particular front row seat, and drive people nuts with his idiocyncratic contributions. When he passed he was missed primarily because people recognized he shared their extraordinary passion to be part of this community.
- You don’t need someone’s permission to be here.
Who are you looking to for permission anyway? There will always be somebody whose own brokenness requires that they try to be the gatekeeper, and the only way a gatekeeper can advertise their power is by excluding someone. If you’re on the wrong side of their gate, that says more about them than about you.
Naturally we want to be in a community with others who value us for who we really are, however, we’re never going to be a perfect fit with everyone. Don’t go out of your way to give someone else the power to deny your beliefs and aspirations. And if you’re trying to exercise that power, ask yourself why?
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If you think you are a fan, then you are. If you don’t think you are a fan, but somebody else does, then you are. If you don’t want to be a fan and write silly articles about it, then you are a fan.
(Where is my “like” button…?)
you really don’t get irony do you?
Patrick: You hate the Hugo Awards and Worldcon. We get it. Unless there are 125,000 people at the event and you have to queue up in January to attend the panel you want to see in August, it’s not “real.” We get it. So why do you waste so much effort with the hate on something you’re convinced is dead, dying, and irrelevant?
After all, last years’ Worldcon had around 10,000 members, but that’s nothing because 125,000 went to Comic-Con, and therefore a mere 10,000 people means nothing at all.
Furthermore, if the Hugo Awards are so meaningless, why not do something to set up The Real Awards by Real Fans (and you, of course know what a Real Fan is). Surely your argument is so self-evidently right that every person in the world will automatically know that you are right and will immediately bow down and worship you, right.
Oh, you don’t want to do the work? You want the people who have been doing the work to change what they’re doing and do what you tell them to do because you say so? Is that it?
What I want to know is why, if Worldcon and other conventions that don’t draw hundreds of thousands of people are utterly irrelevant, you spend so much effort asking us to hurry up and die already to validate you?
Let’s see…. so his own online mag doesn’t count as a ‘zine ? I’ve been going to cons, on and off, since 1975, and have seen exactly ONE zine. Two, if you include Filthy Pierre’s old con list.
Filk ? I’ve been in Bardic circles on three continents. Hell, I was even on ConCom at several Filk cons. I’ve had the Fish, Doctor Jane, and Heather Alexander stay at my place, before she transitioned to Alexander. I’ve even sat in a Bardic with Larry and Fuzzy Pink.
No Star Wars Action Figures, I collect vehicles. Including both versions of all 5 Thunderbirds.
I still agree with Patrick. So I guess I’m not a Real Fan either…
Nope don’t hate world on or the hugos. I hate what they’ve become. I want to see them be inclusive. I want to see them thrive and grow. If the definition of insanity is doing the same things over and over and expecting a different result, then y’all have been insane for decades.
Btw that post was written in direct response to someone trying to exclude Larry Correia from fandom. I have bad news for you all, it’s not us trying to exclude you, you are the ones trying to exclude us.
And you’re right, I do know what makes a Real Fan — someone who loves SFF… That’s it, that’s all it takes. So tell me, which of us is exclusionary?
Patrick: “I want to see them be inclusive.”
Okay, I just make you the King-Emperor of the World Science Fiction Society. You have unlimited power to make any rule changes by decree. What do you do?
Kevin, only one rules change needed — remove Australian rules voting. Beyond that it’s not a rules problem but a cultural one. Which is what sad puppies 3 is all about.
And I don’t consider myself someone who is trying to be exclusionary, unless you consider “Join the club by paying the same membership dues as the rest of us did and do the work, and you’re a member” to be “exclusionary.”
The Hugo Awards are not “Awards for the works that sold more copies than anything else.” They are the awards that the self-selected members of the World Science Fiction Society decide to bestow because the members like them collectively. The only barrier to participating in the awards process is to pay the (currently) $40 membership dues. Is that really a hugely exclusionary barrier?
Now I admit that the barrier to changing the rules is higher: Not only do you have to pay the attending membership cost, but you do have to attend, and you have to do it twice in a row, and you have to convince around 50 to 100 other members of the club to do the same thing and vote the way you do. That perhaps is exclusionary, but I also don’t think it’s as awful as some think it is. Furthermore, I personally have authored legislation up for ratification this year that would give the entire membership (including the ones not attending) the final say in any changes to the rules. (It’s similar to how legislative constitutional amendments work in California; the legislature proposes, and the people vote.)
“remove Australian rules voting”
Why? Why should something that up to just short of 80% of the members hated be consider the “best” of the field? IRV means that whatever work wins is not hated by a majority of the electorate.
(BTW, that 80% is a generalization. If there was, say, a seven-way race, you could win a first-past-the-post election with less than 15% of the voters thinking you were the best. Is that really the sort of outcome you want?)
The Sad Puppies have the same right as every other person to participate in the process, and I would never say otherwise. They’re welcome to try and change the process to “Give Awards to Whoever Patrick Richardson want to give awards to.” But I wouldn’t expect it to be easy. Then again, few important things are easy.
Because in initial voting Toni weiskopf had more votes than the eventual winner. Which tells me that Aussie rules is bullshit.
What none of you get is that an award voted on by a tiny, self-selected minority is all but worthless. Larrys fan base is many times most of the recent winners yet he is dismissed as “not a real writer” because his politics don’t agree with the tiny minority who care about the hugos.
We’re not the ones trying to destroy people, that’s your side.
Yes, and that means that while Toni might have been the first preference of a large number of people, if you had put her up against the actual winner in a head-to-head election, Toni would have lost.
If it had been a two-person election, and Toni had had fewer votes than the other candidate, would you still be saying it was unfair?
Look, you talk about “exclusionary.” What you seem to really want is a system where everyone does what you tell them to do and you don’t actually have to do any work at all because you personally know better.
What’s stopping you from setting up the Patrick Awards? You could make the Right Rules to give awards to the Right People.
‘Larrys fan base is many times most of the recent winners yet he is dismissed as “not a real writer”’
Not by me. Not by Mike. And apparently you think the Hugo Awards should simply be presented to “Whoever sells more books than anyone else.” Is that a correct statement?
There are _lots_ of writer whose works I don’t like and don’t read. That doesn’t make them real professional writers, even ones that can actually make a living doing it. Who cares? I don’t. What annoys me is people who haven’t done any work in building up a community with roots going back to the 1930s coming in and saying, “I know better than anyone, so you should all do what I say but of course I won’t do any work to make it happen other than complain because I’m Too Important and you’re too stupid to recognize that I Am A Genius.”
Mind you, I guess those people who I annoyed thirty years ago when I gave my version of he OMG Fandom Is Dying And You Should All Change We’re Doomed speech are laughing (the Spirit of Bruce Pelz must be particularly amused at my annoyance, considering how much trouble I caused him for years as a Young Turk). Assuming you last that long, expect a bunch of people to start telling you to hurry up and die already because you’re an old fogey and won’t do what they tell you do to because they know better.
Nope want a fair system, where works are considered on merit not on political correctness.
Or I would say that except the hugos are largely irrelevant. I don’t remember the last time I bought a book based on having won a Hugo. Rather the reverse in fact.
“Larrys fan base is many times most of the recent winners”
Citation needed. How do you define “fan base”? How do you measure Larry’s vs. any other author’s?
“yet he is dismissed as “not a real writer” because his politics don’t agree with the tiny minority who care about the hugos.”
Dismissed by whom? Name two.
(and, btw, based on recent occurrences, this “tiny minority” who care about the Hugos would seem to include Larry Correia and much of his fan base.
“Nope want a fair system, where works are considered on merit not on political correctness.”
Which as far as I can tell is defined as “Only things I personally like win, and things that I personally dislike do not win.”
Answer my question: If Toni had lost a two-person election, running straight up against one other person — any person — would you still have considered it unfair?
Not at all, no I wouldn’t.
Although I would appreciate you not putting words in my mouth, I have not once said “Only things I like should win.”
Now would I only vote for things I like? Certainly. That utter drivel “If you were a tyranosaur my butt” or whatever the hell it was being nominated for a Hugo and winning a Nebula (yay only writers of vaginatude won a Nebula yay!) rather proves our point that writing doesn’t’ matter anymore, only agenda.
You also have yet to explain to me why the voting of a tiny, self-selected minority has any bearing at ALL on the merits of a work.
As Brad Torgerson has repeatedly pointed out, WorldCon attendees are such a small minority of the millions of SF consumers out there that their little clique matters really not at all.
> Not at all, no I wouldn’t.
Then why is it so wrong when, using instant runoff voting, she loses to all four other candidates? You do know that the “Australian” ballot (Instant Runoff Voting) simulates what would happen if you started with five candidates, then if nobody got a majority, eliminated the lowest-placed candidate and voted again, and then repeated the process until someone gets a majority, right?
What that particular election said was that in any given head-to-head match-up, Toni would have lost to that candidate. Just being liked by a plurality doesn’t mean that you’re liked by a majority. This year’s Worldcon will be in Spokane instead of Helsinki even though more voters two years ago voted for Helsinki than any other candidate — it’s just that less than a majority preferred Helsinki.
“WorldCon attendees are such a small minority of the millions of SF consumers out there”
Hugo voters read text sf, unlike the vast majority of those “SF consumers” who are following genre movies, videos and TV. So there’s that.
I don’t think Mr. Torgersen (and you could at least learn how to spell his name) really believes that if he surveyed 50,000 random people who saw the last Star Trek movie that more than a few could name any sf writer who’s had short fiction published in the past year. So his argument about Hugo voters being an irrelevant minority of the vast consumership is ultimately disingenuous.
> Now would I only vote for things I like? Certainly. That utter
> drivel… rather proves our point that writing doesn’t matter
> anymore, only agenda.
Because your own personal preferences are obviously more important than those of any other person? What makes anything objectively better? What makes your personal judgement better than those of the other members of the World Science Fiction Society?
You know that other people call the things you like “utter drivel” too. Why should your opinions be privileged over theirs? (Or vice versa?)
> You also have yet to explain to me why the voting of a tiny,
> self-selected minority has any bearing at ALL on the merits of a work.
You have yet to explain to me why your vote should count more than any other members.
If you think the Hugo Awards are so irrelevant, why are you still criticizing them? Go set up Real Awards for Real Good Stuff and see if anyone pays attention to you. Coming in and demanding that other people change what they’ve been doing is like me coming in to your home, saying, “I hate the way you’ve decorated it. Redecorate it to suit me. Oh, and while you’re at it, give me the keys and the deed because you’re stupid and I should own it even though you built it and invested your life’s work into it.”
Mike, you’re asking the WRONG QUESTION.
WHY have most of the “consumers” NOT read any short SF? Occam’s Razor suggests two possibilities:
1. They don’t know it’s there. Hell, **I** let my subscription to ANALOG lapse in the late 90’s, simply because the stuff I read in it mostly failed to keep my interest.
2. What they do see, doesn’t do anything for them. I returned to Fandom after gafiating for over a decade, and the vast number of entries in the Hugo Packet, frankly, BORED me. The stuff I found worth reading, was not seen in the Hugo process.
And if that makes me Not a Fan……then it’s a Proud and Lonely Thing to be Not-A-Fan…..
In other words us kids need to get off your lawn.
Gotcha, as long as we’re clear.
Keith: Since I didn’t ask any question, it must have taken great discernment for you to recognize it as the wrong question.
If 1990s Analog and the stuff in the Hugo Voter Packet didn’t hold your interest, why are you projecting that as somebody’s fault and not simply a fact about your own reading tastes?
No Patrick, I’m not saying, “Get off my lawn.” I’m saying that my opinions are neither better nor worse than yours, and there is nothing that makes your opinions privileged. There’s no such thing as an objectively good piece of fiction. There’s only things that some people like more than others. Just because you hate things doesn’t mean that the other people who liked it are part of some Grand Conspiracy.
But you still haven’t told me why you think everyone should validate your opinions by rejecting their own. I don’t like cherry ice cream, but that doesn’t mean that anyone who likes cherry is Evil and that the Wild Cherry Ice Cream Parlor must be burned to the ground.
Once again you’re putting words in my mouth, and proving my point. I’ve never suggested my opinions should count more than someone elses’ merely that they should COUNT.
Patrick, if you vote, they do count, just like mine do when I vote. What’s so wrong with this?
Or are you saying that someone is preventing you from voting? Or that you think it’s unfair that you have to join a club and pay its membership dues to vote in the club’s elections?
You do know that sometimes when you vote, your side doesn’t win, don’t you? Or are you saying that when you vote, you must always win?
You may be unaware of this, but I’ve _administered_ the Hugo Awards multiple times, and even when I was part of the team counting the votes, the things I liked didn’t always win. You win some, you lose some. Just because the things you like don’t win doesn’t mean the system is corrupt.
Aaah condescension, I wondered when that would rear it’s ugly head. Kevin, I’m a journalist, I probably understand elections better than you do, you all miss the point about as badly as you can. That’s OK, you stay in your little bubble, the rest of fandom will be out here, enjoying great work and ignoring the Hugos.
Or, you could wake up, smell the roses, and try to become relevant again. Or do you really mean to tell me that you don’t look around and realize that the average Hugo voter and WorldCon attendee is middle aged?
Ah, “never trust everyone over 30.” I wondered when that would rear its ugly head.
Patrick, I asked you what you would change, and all you said was that installing First Past the Post so that Hugos go to people that most of the voters dislike would help. I’m asking again: I put you in complete charge of the World Science Fiction Convention. You get to make all of the rules. Tell me how you make it “relevant.”
Patrick, the reason I’m “putting words in your mouth” is that all you do is spout platitudes about “relevance” and you have no firm actual plans. You leave it to us to try and guess what you want? So Worldcon has too many Old People (presumably you mean “older that you”). What shall we do? Prohibit anyone older than you from attending?
What are YOU doing to change things other than complain that things you personally like don’t win? Are we going to see you at the next Business Meeting with concrete, specific proposals to Make Worldcon Relevant again?
“I probably understand elections better than you do.”
Okay, how about you educate me, since you know them so well. You tell me how elections work. I’ve only administered three Hugo Award elections, a Site Selection or two, and helped write a good chunk of the organization’s rules. Obviously I know nothing. Educate me.
And i’ve said repeatedly, I have no problem with the rules other than the Aussie voting thing, and that the problem is cultural. I never said that you shouldn’t trust anyone over 30, _I’m_ in my 40s, I said your fan base is greying noticeably and unless you get new blood, which you’re unwilling to do, you will die.
That’s my actual words. Not what you THINK I said.
Sad Puppies IS doing something, we’re putting new faces on the slate, and asking people to vote their conscience. You have a problem with that?
Nor, by the way have I ONCE complained that things I don’t like won. Again, things I actually said, not what you THINK I said.
Patrick, what exactly is your point, other than the scurrilous assertion that people who are voting for things that you don’t like are voting based on some political agenda that you’re imagining, instead of honestly voting for things that they like, and that awards going to works you don’t like somehow make those awards “irrelevant”?
And, to repeat a question I asked earlier, who exactly is it that you imagine is dismissing anyone as “not a real writer” based on politics? Can you cite any evidence substantiating that, or is that just part of your delusions about people whose taste in books is different from yours?
“asking people to vote their conscience. You have a problem with that?”
I DO have a problem with that, if it comes with the implication that people aren’t already “voting their consciences”.
“…and asking people to vote their conscience.”
Oh, I thought when I voted in the Hugo Awards, I was voting for something that I thought was the *best* in that category. I wasn’t aware that my first responsibility was to vote my conscience, regardless of anything else.
Thanks for clearing that up.
I thought some of Patrick’s points were worth considering, but we’ve already seen what the “vast majority” of fans can do: The first volume of Bill Patterson’s biography of Robert Heinlein, the personal story of one of the most influential individuals of the field, lost the Best Related Work Hugo to — Chicks Dig Time Lords.
Am I a Fan? I don’t have a blog, don’t issue Twitter feeds, and my Facebook is more about my family than about . .. .well I would say “SF”. So, Patrick Richardson, am I a Fan?
It’s perfectly valid for Correa to decry the low state of works that get nominated, and to try to get other works nominated. Fine. But I got only a few pages into his Hugo-nominated novel and found it uninteresting.
Some of the people I know here — I guess they are Fans, they go to Dragon*Con — praise it as a more fannish experience. Perhaps. But from what I see it is a vast commercial enterprise for people who are consumers of SF, not participants.
The LonCon3 site seems to be down, but the LSC3 site has a pdf with the voting results. So here goes.
Best Novel
Australian: Redshirts
FPTP: Redshirts
Best Novella
Australian: “The Emperor’s Soul”
FPTP: “The Emperor’s Soul”
Best Novelette:
Australian: “The Girl-Thing Who Went Out for Sushi”
FPTP: “The Girl-Thing Who Went Out for Sushi”
Best Short Story
Australian: “Mono no Aware”
FPTP: “Mono no Aware”
Best Related Work
Australian: Writing Excuses, Season 7
FPTP: Writing Excuses, Season 7
Best Graphic Story
Australian: Saga, Volume 1
FPTP: Saga, Volume 1
Best Dramatic Presentation Long Form
Australian: The Avengers
FPTP: The Avengers
Best Dramatic Presentation Short Form
Australian: Game of Thrones: “Blackwater”
FPTP: Game of Thrones: “Blackwater”
Best Editor Long Form
Australian: Patrick Nielsen Hayden
FPTP: Patrick Nielsen Hayden
Best Editor Short Form
Australian: Stanley Schmidt
FPTP: Stanley Schmidt
Best Professional Artist
Australian: John Picacio
FPTP: John Picacio
Best Semiprozine
Australian: Clarkesworld
FPTP: Clarkesworld
Best Fansine
Australian: SF Signal
FPTP: SF Signal
Best Fancast
Australian: SF Squeecast
FPTP: SF Squeecast
Best Fan Writer
Australian: Tansy Rayner Roberts
FPTP: Tansy Rayner Roberts
Best Fan Artist
Australian: Galen Dara
FPTP: Galen Dara
John W. Campbell Award
Australian: Mur Lafferty
FPTP: Mur Lafferty
Now one might argue with some of these (there were two “Chicks Dig” books on the Best Related list, for example, and that may have split the vote in a FPTP setup, and I don’t really classify Tansy Rayner Roberts or most of the other more recent “Best Fan Writer” winners as actual fan writers, but that’s just me) but what the Australian system seems to have done in this case is to increase the majority that the winners got.
Then there was what happened in 1989 . . .
“To vote you’re conscious”–I think that’s what it means. I like a book, and I will vote on it. But wait, there’s a book I didn’t like with a deeper, better meaning than the work I am to vote on…what to do? Just vote for the one I liked.
To vote one’s conscience works about the same way. One irritation here is to say I don’t know what’s good, and need to have outside guidance. If I don’t read a certain book, how can I apply it to what I’ve read? No, no, don’t tell me its your novel. Don’t give me your vanity.
Don’t have any star wars toys, but have a few Pinky and the Brain toys, so I guess I am a fan.
Graham Charnock is close to saying that bring a fan is like Zen. You just know it, and it is without an explanation.
“Larrys fan base is many times most of the recent winners”
So I looked up a popular book cataloging site – LibraryThing.
The members had 1802 books by Larry Correia with 82 of his Hugo nominated work.
All the past 10 winners in the last nine years (1 tie) except Ann Leckie had at least twice as many books cataloged as Larry, and every winning book had over a thousand listings.
Patrick:
“Nor, by the way have I ONCE complained that things I don’t like won.”
and
“That utter drivel “If you were a tyranosaur my butt” or whatever the hell it was being nominated for a Hugo…”
…is, I suppose, technically correct, because you talked about it making the shortlist, but certainly sounds like you complaining about the members as a whole having different tastes than yours, with to me a strong implication that it means the entire system is broken. But perhaps it’s only about ethics in Hugo reporting.
> And i’ve said repeatedly, I have no problem with the
> rules other than the Aussie voting thing,
Which means you want something to win that potentially 80% of the voters dislike. Is that a correct statement?
> and that the problem is cultural.
What does this mean? It sounds very much to me like, “Because there aren’t more people who think JUST LIKE ME!”
> I said your fan base is greying noticeably and unless you get new blood,
What’s actually happening — and that you seem to not notice — is that in this particular fandom that you hate so much because it doesn’t give awards to things you personally like, fewer people quit after a couple of years. These “new blood” fandoms that you seem to think are much better are pop-culture thing where there happen to be a lot of people coming in who hang around for a while, and then they go away after a few years.
> which you’re unwilling to do, you will die.
By “which you’re unwilling to do,” what do you mean? Do you mean, “Stop doing anything that the people who have been paying for it want, in favor of things that you personally want done, even though you personally aren’t going to do one thing to change it other than complain on the internet,” perhaps.
You may not be aware of this, but you are making the same argument that’s been being made for years. Many years. Since before I was born (1965). Over and over again. Almost the same words, even. And yet, Worldcon is still here.
You seem to have a problem with Worldcon not being a quarter-million people or something like that. There is a structural reason for that, and it mostly has to do with the fact that it’s held in a different place and run by a different group of people every year, and that it has no permanent central structure and no full-time staff like ComicCon or Dragon*Con. But I get the impression that only events with hundreds of thousands of people queuing for months are Real. To that extent, you’re just as exclusionary as the people you decry.
> Sad Puppies IS doing something, we’re putting new faces
> on the slate, and asking people to vote their conscience.
> You have a problem with that?
Not really. I also don’t have a problem with you trying to actually change the rules to suit you by participating in the democratic process. What I intensely dislike is the implication that the people who oppose you are doing so for some Nefarious Purpose because of course they couldn’t possibly like the things they like.
By all means, join WSFS and try to Change the World. But don’t be surprised when you don’t get your way, and don’t be surprised when people who typically don’t agree with each other that often join ranks against proposals for radical change.
And you still haven’t told me why your vote didn’t count. And if it’s because 60% of the people voted for something other than what you voted for, don’t expect to be taken seriously.
Joseph T Major: Detailed Hugo voting stats are on The Hugo Awards history page for Worldcons back to 2005 and for scattered years before that.
Joseph T Major: The Loncon 3 site is up and running at http://www.loncon3.org and the 2014 Hugo stats document is linked to from the front page. (Direct URL is
http://www.loncon3.org/hugos/2014 Hugo awards full details.pdf )
The Hugo Awards site at http://www.thehugoawards.org/ also has a copy of most of the previous Hugo stats lists.
Whew!
John Scalzi had a great essay on Who’s A Real Geek that I think applies just as well to “who’s a real fan.” Now I have seen someone saying (of Correia) that a pro is no longer a fan, but meh, that person doesn’t speak for me–sure a pro can be a fan, and a fan can be a jerk that chooses his favorites on a purely political basis, but he’s still a fan, just a tiresome one that people who don’t share his politics (and I bet some who do) will avoid when possible.
You know, someone once told Lois McMaster Bujold that she “wasn’t a real writer.” I only happen to know it because I seek out her interviews and she mentioned it once. Once. Her reaction was basically to shrug and say “some people feel very strongly about science fiction” and move on.
I guess someone once told Larry Correia the same thing. I’ve never seen anyone say it, but hey, it’s a big world out there and some people feel very strongly about science fiction. His reaction was to mention it, over and over, bitterly or sarcastically, in every interview and frequently on his website.
Insecurity; it’s a thing. He still wants a Hugo and the Sad Puppies are still his fans trying to get him one. If he ever gets one, I think he will find that just as money didn’t assuage his insecurity, Hugo awards won’t either.
And in the meantime, perhaps the Sad Puppies can be cheered by the thought that even the Gamma Rabbit and Leader of the Insect Army thinks they’re real fans.