"The real award is the warm regard and respect of our peers and fans"
August 20, 2016 3:12 PM   Subscribe

On Thursday, the 1941 Retro-Hugo Awards were presented at the 74th Worldcon. Relevant material online includes Slanology: An In-Depth Guide to A.E. van Vogt's Slan, "A Study of 'If This Goes On--'," 1950s radio adaptations of "The Roads Must Roll", comments/links on "Robbie", and Batman #1, as well as a review round-up of many finalists. The 2016 Hugo Awards ceremony set for 8pm CDT this evening will have both video and text coverage (see also #MAC2 on Twitter). The nominees have been broken down by slate at File 770, and Alexandra Erin offers timely remarks in anticipation of the outcome.
posted by Wobbuffet (164 comments total) 24 users marked this as a favorite
 
FANS ARE SLANS!

God, imagine the hyperbolic editorials Devin Faraci would get out of that whole embarrassing business.
posted by Artw at 3:41 PM on August 20, 2016


Oh, and if your wondering if there's already been some dumb "controversy" involving a childish idiot freaking out that science fiction has moved on since the 40s, you're in luck!
posted by Artw at 3:48 PM on August 20, 2016 [11 favorites]


I care only that they prove that love is real for all who kiss
posted by Countess Elena at 4:14 PM on August 20, 2016 [14 favorites]


Theres a tingle in the air.
posted by Artw at 4:28 PM on August 20, 2016 [10 favorites]


We are all slan.

Going back to classic SF must be challenging, I read the Forever War fairly recently and was somewhat underwhelmed, if I'd got to it when it came out I expect it'd have seemed revolutionary. I sortof want and don't want to try Stranger in a Strange Land again but dread the disappointment. But never doubt


The Grey Lensman Rules!


(well not rules rules, they were more like galactic police good guys but so cool)
posted by sammyo at 4:30 PM on August 20, 2016 [1 favorite]


The slan shack is a little old place where we can get together
Slan Shack, baby, Slan Shack
Slan Shack, baby, Slan Shack
Slan Shack, baby, Slan Shack (Tingle, baby, that's where it's at)
posted by Artw at 4:33 PM on August 20, 2016 [9 favorites]


I was actually quite surprised that both Fantasia and Pinicchio won 1941 Hugos, in separate categories, but a quick lookup showed that yes, they were both released in 1940 and Pinocchio's running time was just barely under 90 minutes, the cut-off point for "Dramatic Presentation, Short Form". Ah, Disney was thinking 75 years ahead...
posted by oneswellfoop at 4:39 PM on August 20, 2016 [2 favorites]


Something I find mildly interesting about Van Vogt is his supposedly rigid adherence to a formula he took from a writing guide: 800-word 5-step scenes (orientation, goal, attempt, outcome, and--for early scenes--complication), built out of what he called "fictional sentences" that each engage the reader's sympathy or imagination (e.g. sentences in which a character's emotions are only implied, through something like "Tears came to my eyes," and in particular "hang-up" sentences in which the reader has to imagine some key element like the unspecified creature in "The creature crept").

When I read Slan, I wasn't aware of that, so I don't know for sure how well it sticks to the plan, but I do remember it being a fairly propulsive read.
posted by Wobbuffet at 5:05 PM on August 20, 2016 [13 favorites]


" 1950s radio adaptations of "The Roads Must Roll"

Wow, neat. Never knew about these. Speaking of Heinlein, has anybody else seen a preview for "The Space Between Us" which is apparently just different enough from Stranger in a Strange Land that the estate isn't suing? It's clearly quite derivative.
posted by scalefree at 5:17 PM on August 20, 2016


BORGES WAS ROBBED

seriously, if you're going to give an award for new fiction to someone seventy five years after the fact, and you skip Borges, then what the hell are you even doing
posted by phooky at 5:22 PM on August 20, 2016 [19 favorites]


I mean, I guess that Asimov story has historical importance and gives a lot of fans the feels for being the first of the "Robot" series, but yeah, it's pretty much trite nonsense by comparison.
posted by Artw at 5:28 PM on August 20, 2016


Le Zombie was robbed! Otherwise, it's hard to argue with those picks. (I say that as someone who, while not actually born at the time, immersed himself in Classic SF at an early age and owns a run of Astoundings from the '40s. God bless the Retro-Hugo Awards!)
posted by languagehat at 5:48 PM on August 20, 2016 [1 favorite]


The nominees have taken their seats in the center, and there is activity at the podium. We may actually start exactly on time!
posted by metaquarry at 5:59 PM on August 20, 2016 [3 favorites]


Well, Pat Cadigan is starting things right with a Chuck Tingle joke, so... catch y'all on the flipside, probably.
posted by asperity at 6:11 PM on August 20, 2016 [5 favorites]


Yeah, Asimov over Borges is a crime.

Also, though to a lesser extent, Kane/Finger (Batman) over Eisner (Spirit). The early Batmans are way more interesting as nostalgia than as comics, while The Spirit is amazing.
posted by zompist at 6:12 PM on August 20, 2016 [3 favorites]


File 770 is great, but I was all ready to cheer for Lady Business! Just read this good Winter Soldier fanfic yesterday based on their recommendation.
posted by Wobbuffet at 6:28 PM on August 20, 2016 [1 favorite]


Best Fancast: No Award
posted by Artw at 6:31 PM on August 20, 2016


Looks like maybe in response to last time they've mixed up the order to avoid starting with one of those/clumping them up?
posted by Artw at 6:31 PM on August 20, 2016


It will be interesting to see if any of the good stuff that Vox Day pushed onto the ballot wins despite him. Also seriously curious if Chuck Tingle will win. I'm assuming they're going to spend the whole night saying No Award, tho.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 6:48 PM on August 20, 2016


oh god please please please let Chuck Tingle win oh god please
posted by palomar at 6:49 PM on August 20, 2016 [3 favorites]


Yay for Uncanny Magazine!
posted by mixedmetaphors at 6:51 PM on August 20, 2016 [1 favorite]


IIRC File770 was one of the ironic puppy picks.
posted by Artw at 6:52 PM on August 20, 2016


Campbell Award goes to: Andy Weir

I guess that's deserved, was hoping for someone else though.
posted by Artw at 6:56 PM on August 20, 2016




When only listening to the Hugos, Pat Cadigan sounds like the reincarnation of Bea Arthur. And that's a good thing.
posted by oneswellfoop at 7:03 PM on August 20, 2016 [2 favorites]


That Samdman thing may end up being the only puppy "win" I'm crabby about, and it's not like the Comic's category isn't usually a bit wobbly anyway.
posted by Artw at 7:08 PM on August 20, 2016


For her work on Uncanny Magazine, Michi Trota becomes the first Filipina Hugo winner! Her old guest post on Jim C. Hines's blog says more about her perspective.
posted by Wobbuffet at 7:10 PM on August 20, 2016 [5 favorites]


Jessica Jones wins the award for Best Doctor Who, Short Form.
posted by Artw at 7:15 PM on August 20, 2016 [7 favorites]


Wow, the comics category was a mess. No offense to anyone nominated, but how was that the list of nominees? There are tons of sf comics at the moment.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 7:19 PM on August 20, 2016


No offense to anyone nominated, but how was that the list of nominees?

Did you somehow miss the whole Rabid Puppies thing?
posted by Shmuel510 at 7:31 PM on August 20, 2016 [2 favorites]


Cat Pictures Please wins
posted by Artw at 7:34 PM on August 20, 2016 [1 favorite]


I didn't pay much attention after a while.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 7:35 PM on August 20, 2016


yay for naomi kritzer but i'm weirdly emotionally invested in chuck tingle's whole journey here and he's been getting revved today for the ceremony so now i'm sad for him

yeah, i hear myself, i don't care
posted by palomar at 7:36 PM on August 20, 2016 [3 favorites]


congratulations to @NaomiKritzer for winning best short story she is a true buckaroo. sad but relieved i wont be revealing true identity
posted by Artw at 7:42 PM on August 20, 2016 [8 favorites]


Zoe Quinn: Don't be sad about Chuck. Believe in Chuck. I'm sure he will win a Hugo on his own terms, instead of being forced by devilmen.
posted by Artw at 7:45 PM on August 20, 2016 [15 favorites]


Read Folding Beijing
posted by Artw at 7:46 PM on August 20, 2016 [1 favorite]


Aw. Just finished Naomi Kritzer's winning story and it was definitely award worthy. I'm glad she got it.
posted by palomar at 7:51 PM on August 20, 2016 [1 favorite]


Fifth Season takes novel.

A pleasing set of results, given the problems with nominations, and probably annoying to some idiots as a side benefit.
posted by Artw at 7:53 PM on August 20, 2016 [6 favorites]


The Grey Lensman Rules!
“Qadgop the Mercotan slithered flatly around the after-bulge of the tranship. One claw dug into the meters-thick armor of pure neutronium, then another. Its terrible xmexlike snout locked on. Its zymolosely polydactile tongue crunched out, crashed down, rasped across. Slurp! Slurp! At each abrasive stroke the groove in the tranship’s plating deepened and Qadgop leered more fiercely. Fools! Did they think that the airlessness of absolute space, the heatlessness of absolute zero, the yieldlessness of absolute neutronium, could stop QADGOP THE MERCOTAN? And the stowaway, that human wench Cynthia, cowering in helpless terror just beyond this thin and fragile wall…”
posted by Autumn Leaf at 7:55 PM on August 20, 2016 [8 favorites]


Good ceremony. Time to party!
posted by asperity at 8:02 PM on August 20, 2016 [3 favorites]


Zoe Quinn: Don't be sad about Chuck. Believe in Chuck. I'm sure he will win a Hugo on his own terms, instead of being forced by devilmen.

When the Hugos are this fucked, I think it's important for us to remember that Zoe Quinn and Chuck Tingle win by just being Zoe Quinn and Chuck Tingle all the time.
posted by Navelgazer at 8:08 PM on August 20, 2016 [22 favorites]


For a fucked Hugos, they did pretty good.
posted by Artw at 8:10 PM on August 20, 2016 [1 favorite]


(Which isn't to say that Chuck Tingle is even Chuck Tingle all of the time. What the hell do I know? Let him or her do what he or she damn well pleases.)
posted by Navelgazer at 8:12 PM on August 20, 2016


Of possible interest: Over on the romance side of the genre aisle, the Smart Bitches Trashy Books podcast did an hour-long interview with Dr. Chuck Tingle. (I listened to the whole thing, but there's also a transcript provided.)
posted by Shmuel510 at 8:18 PM on August 20, 2016 [4 favorites]


The Hugo statistics, including voting results and the nomination long lists have been released. [PDF]

On initial glance: there's rather a lot that deserved to be on the short list but got pushed down by the Puppies. Also, 437 nominations of Vox Day for long-form editor? Yikes. It doesn't look like that there were quite so many people nominating in the Rabid Puppy bloc overall, fortunately.
posted by metaquarry at 8:35 PM on August 20, 2016 [7 favorites]


A couple other impressions from the ceremony: I think Pat Cadigan hit the right tone as toastmaster — light-hearted with a core of steel. It was particularly striking watching Ellen Datlow, Cadigan, and Jan Siegel as they presented the short story, novelette, and novella awards: three women together, owning the space without apology.

At long last, they've figured out how to summon Robert Silverberg to hand out the rocket for best novel without him taking a half hour to torture the finalists with an interminable speech. The entire ceremony took less than two hours.
posted by metaquarry at 8:50 PM on August 20, 2016 [5 favorites]


I know this is basic but, I've read a few threads on the puppies thing but haven't found a simple summery: what is it about the Hugo awards that allow them to be hijacked by angry white straight guys? Is there talk of structural changes to the awards to make that impossible?
posted by latkes at 8:51 PM on August 20, 2016


There are 437 people (99% white males) with too much money who love Vox Day. Which he will someday wish had used more of that money paying him directly. (Or maybe 400 of them were Peter Thiel using his lawyers' and employees' name, then not having the time to vote for anything "down-ticket")
posted by oneswellfoop at 8:52 PM on August 20, 2016 [1 favorite]


The short version:

Fewer people vote to nominate than vote on the eventual winner. Also, as there is a very wide pool of potential works to nominate, non-slate nominations tend to be widely scattered, whereas slate nominations can be tightly focused.

To prevent shenanigans, changes to any of the rules for the Hugos need to be ratified in two consecutive Worldcons. A couple of proposals aiming to fix this did pass last year, and will be voted on again tomorrow.
posted by Shmuel510 at 8:55 PM on August 20, 2016 [10 favorites]


The big issue, I think, is that the number of people who nominate for the Hugos is TINY relative to the prestige that it has -- there were less than 4000 nominating ballots cast for Best Novel, less than 2000 for Best Novelette. And, especially in the short fiction categories, the nominating ballots are spread out over a very large number of stories, because there's a lot of good stuff and no one can read all of the magazines. So a small group of fans who coordinate on what to nominate can very easily swamp the group of uncoordinated nominators who are just nominating what they like.

(The flip side of this is that it seems like stories that are online and short and have sort of a viral quality to them have an easier time getting on the ballot because they can bypass that "no one can read all the magazines" thing -- which I think is part of why "Cat Pictures Please" and "If You Were A Dinosaur My Love" got on the ballot. Not that they aren't good stories! But they're good stories that had a bit of a leg up.)

I do hope that they manage to pass E Pluribus Hugo and some of the other proposals that would make it harder for Puppies to dominate the ballot - but I can't see how to get out of the basic problem that almost nobody reads very much short fiction.
posted by Jeanne at 9:16 PM on August 20, 2016 [4 favorites]


Who gets to vote?
posted by latkes at 9:20 PM on August 20, 2016


In practice, anyone who shells out 40 bucks.
posted by Artw at 9:29 PM on August 20, 2016 [6 favorites]


What Artw said, but more specifically, purchasing an attending or supporting membership gives you the right to vote on the current year's awards, while having membership in the previous, current, or next year's Worldcon gives you nominating rights.

The $40 (which is about the current fee for a supporting membership) can work out to a pretty good deal, as in recent years Hugo voters have gotten access to many of the nominated works, in whole or in part, via the Hugo voters' packet.
posted by metaquarry at 9:32 PM on August 20, 2016 [2 favorites]


You have to buy a membership to the convention to vote -- about $50 for a supporting membership (which lets you vote and nominate, but not attend the convention) and significantly more for an attending membership. In the last few years members have gotten a packet of most of the nominated work, so it's not a bad deal.

There's been a lot of debate about whether there should be a lower barrier for nominating and voting; but the people who nominate for Best Novelette, for example, are only a minority of people who buy a convention membership, so I'm inclined to think that lowered membership costs wouldn't necessarily get around the problem of not enough people reading enough short fiction.

(The Best Novel nominees were pretty reasonable this year, in part because there's more fan consensus about what the best ones are, in part because more people actually nominate.)
posted by Jeanne at 9:34 PM on August 20, 2016 [1 favorite]


Attending membership also gets you what may be the ultimate fannish mixed blessing: the privilege of participating in the WSFS business meetings, where one gets to try to convince other fans to change the Hugo Award rules by the power of mind-control rays Robert's Rules of Order.
posted by metaquarry at 9:36 PM on August 20, 2016 [1 favorite]


HOLY FUCKING SHIT I WON A HUGO
posted by Artw at 9:37 PM on August 20, 2016 [41 favorites]


^^ And that's why the pain of sitting in WSFS business meetings can sometimes be worth it, to hopefully help keep winning the Hugo Award worthy of such a reaction.
posted by metaquarry at 9:40 PM on August 20, 2016 [3 favorites]


the Fifth Season is, BTW, is really, really good in addition to being award winning, and should absolutely be in your to-read list if you've not read it already. I mean, if you're in this thread you probably know that already, but it's worth mentioning.
posted by Artw at 9:42 PM on August 20, 2016 [8 favorites]




CHRIST it is hard to edit a novel's page on WIkipedia so as to indicate it won an award. There's all sorts of automatic filters and shit.
posted by infinitewindow at 9:48 PM on August 20, 2016 [1 favorite]


sad but relieved i wont be revealing true identity

Chuck Tingle = B. H. Obama.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 9:52 PM on August 20, 2016


There shouldn't be, unless that page has been aggressively messed with.
posted by Artw at 9:53 PM on August 20, 2016


Qadgop the Mercotan slithered flatly around the after-bulge of the tranship...

The funny thing is you don't have nearly enough exclamation points and derring-do and just overall *E*N*T*H*U*S*I*A*S*M*!!!!!!! to approach Doc Smith's tone.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 9:55 PM on August 20, 2016 [3 favorites]


What was up with the Supernatural episode?
posted by jeather at 9:57 PM on August 20, 2016


_The Fifth Season_ was both excellent and by far the most challenging of the Best Novel nominees, so I was really glad to see it win.
posted by tavella at 10:01 PM on August 20, 2016 [2 favorites]


Wow, you guys just liveblogged the Hugos!
Living in the future is so strange.
posted by thatwhichfalls at 10:03 PM on August 20, 2016 [4 favorites]


I have no idea if Slan was the best scifi novel written in 1941, but it was a treasure of my childhood so squeee! I wish more people had learned what I felt like was a central theme of even the most culturally mainstream speculative fiction of that era... that embracing new ideas and new culture and rejecting xenophobia was a good thing. Instead we've got the sad & rabid crowd. I feel betrayed by those who should be living up to the ideals of my childhood every time I think about them.
posted by BrotherCaine at 10:05 PM on August 20, 2016 [5 favorites]


Neil Gaiman speech
posted by Artw at 10:07 PM on August 20, 2016 [3 favorites]


@wordfey is tweeting this year's Alfie results--awards to the top nominee that didn't make the ballot thanks to the puppies, plus awards to Black Gate for withdrawing and to Locus for continued excellence. Then there was this:
GRRM to Silverberg: "What would Alfie make of the Alfie?"
Silverberg: "He'd have loved it. Alfie loved Alfie."
posted by Wobbuffet at 10:43 PM on August 20, 2016


Incidentally, the Alfie for Best Related Work went to Letters to Tiptree, selections from which are available online: Nicola Griffith's "The Women You Didn't See: A Letter to Alice Sheldon," Gwyneth Jones's "Dear Dr Sheldon," and Brit Mandelo's "Dear Tiptree."
posted by Wobbuffet at 10:44 PM on August 20, 2016 [5 favorites]


the Fifth Season is, BTW, is really, really good in addition to being award winning, and should absolutely be in your to-read list if you've not read it already. I mean, if you're in this thread you probably know that already, but it's worth mentioning.

So I literally just got done reading The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. Should I just keep on blasting through all of Jemisin's work in order, or would you recommend skipping anything?
posted by Pink Frost at 11:25 PM on August 20, 2016 [2 favorites]


BORGES WAS ROBBED

I mean, I guess that Asimov story has historical importance and gives a lot of fans the feels for being the first of the "Robot" series, but yeah, it's pretty much trite nonsense by comparison.


The nominated Borges story was Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius.

"Tlon" is the name of the corporation through which Curtis Yarvin, a.k.a. Mencius Moldbug, perhaps the central figure of neoreaction, works on his Urbit project.

Be happy. You guys won this one!
posted by save alive nothing that breatheth at 12:06 AM on August 21, 2016


The funny thing is you don't have nearly enough exclamation points and derring-do and just overall *E*N*T*H*U*S*I*A*S*M*!!!!!!! to approach Doc Smith's tone.

B-b-but that passage was written by Kimball Kinnison, the Grey Lensman, himself!

I guess it explains why the Lensman series was written by Doc Smith and not by Sybly Whyte Kim Kinnison.
posted by Autumn Leaf at 1:33 AM on August 21, 2016


It is more fun to speculate whether or not the passage is authentic than it it to spoil the riddle by looking it up.
posted by sebastienbailard at 2:06 AM on August 21, 2016 [1 favorite]




On the subject of That Quote from Grey Lensman, it helps to look at the context: here is a pulp space opera writer from the golden age (Doc Smith was publishing from the late 19-teens through to his death in the 1960s) writing a scene in which his two-fisted hero in a space opera goes undercover disguised as a pulp writer and writes That Stuff.

Irony and detached meta-commentary ain't a modern invention. And I still can't figure out whether Smith's conceit that the chain-smoking Lensman heroes are incorruptible and immune to all narcotics was just total plodding incomprehension about tobacco or the archest form of social commentary he could get away with in a 1930s pulp serial published during prohibition.
posted by cstross at 4:47 AM on August 21, 2016 [6 favorites]


So I literally just got done reading The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. Should I just keep on blasting through all of Jemisin's work in order, or would you recommend skipping anything?

They are all good and worth reading but the Fifth Season is by far my favorite of her novels. Truly a great book. So I think it depends on whether you like to start or finish with the best.
posted by nolnacs at 5:17 AM on August 21, 2016 [3 favorites]


I'm pretty sure that Doc Smith could have quit smoking and drinking any time he chose, and therefore so could his Lensmen. Just ask Heinlein! I believe, having been raised by parents of his generation, that he was simply blind to the irony.

I am more impressed that in 1947 he got away with publishing a novel featuring not one, not two, but at least five kick-ass women major characters - not counting the Lyranians. Clarissa MacDougall herself is sometimes a bit flakey, but her daughters are all strong, smart and independent. That is unlikely to be accidental.

Apropos of which (bringing this derail back on topic) - congratulations to this year's winners in the fiction categories!!!1!!
posted by Autumn Leaf at 5:19 AM on August 21, 2016 [1 favorite]


The fifth season on fanfare.

I'm doing a reread now to refresh myself before I start the sequel, and I appreciate it even more the second time around.
posted by dinty_moore at 5:29 AM on August 21, 2016 [1 favorite]


And I mean, the first time around it was my favorite book in 2015.
posted by dinty_moore at 5:30 AM on August 21, 2016 [1 favorite]


I am regretting having sent my copy of the Fifth Season back home, because I think it merited a re-read before starting with The Obelisk Gate... Which, btw, is pretty good so far (I'm struggling trying not to take the whole day reading it... I have other stuff to do!)

N.K. Jemisin deserves every award.
posted by fmoralesc at 5:39 AM on August 21, 2016 [1 favorite]


"Tlon" is the name of the corporation through which Curtis Yarvin, a.k.a. Mencius Moldbug, perhaps the central figure of neoreaction, works on his Urbit project.

Meh. Being swayed by that is giving it far too much attention.
posted by Artw at 5:59 AM on August 21, 2016 [2 favorites]




B-b-but that passage was written by Kimball Kinnison, the Grey Lensman, himself!

I cannot speak the depth of my embarrassment.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 6:44 AM on August 21, 2016 [1 favorite]



I'm doing a reread now to refresh myself before I start the sequel, and I appreciate it even more the second time around.

I'm doing the same (with The Fifth Season) and agree. Knowing what we come to know by the end changes the whole tenor of the book.
posted by tavegyl at 7:39 AM on August 21, 2016




Interestingly though the ballots are slightly improved many of the shittier puppy entries remain - the GamerGate art guy, the utter shitshow in best related, etc.
posted by Artw at 8:49 AM on August 21, 2016


Graphic Story looks like a whole new category, though.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 8:52 AM on August 21, 2016


One of the Hugo proposals, three-stage voting (3SV) just passed at the business meeting. If ratified next year, it would add a step where the Hugo voters could reject (by supermajority vote) works from the ballot before the vote itself takes place. While I hope that EPH gets ratified, I like 3SV because it adds an opportunity to immediately improve the ballot in the categories that are more easily gamed by Puppy action.
posted by metaquarry at 8:57 AM on August 21, 2016 [2 favorites]


EPH was never designed to totally eliminate puppy noms (or any other group), it's just meant to counter the outsized influence of slate voting, the ability to totally block out the majority of nominators. It was specifically said in the initial discussion that if some group had 20 percent of the nominators they'd still be able to place a nom or two, and that was in fact a good thing.
posted by tavella at 8:58 AM on August 21, 2016 [1 favorite]


I maybe would have expected the ones left to not be the biggest outliers in terms of suitability/quality, but I guess it shows where the puppies hearts truly lie.

Fingers crossed this is the last year of having to pay them much attention.
posted by Artw at 9:07 AM on August 21, 2016


EPH was ratified.
posted by metaquarry at 10:11 AM on August 21, 2016 [6 favorites]


Fingers crossed that's the end of no award wipeouts and the beginning of the end for slates.
posted by Artw at 10:18 AM on August 21, 2016 [1 favorite]


Apparently it will change dramatic presentation most, but I don't think they've shown examples of how.
posted by jeather at 10:29 AM on August 21, 2016


Not the Who awards!
posted by Artw at 10:29 AM on August 21, 2016 [3 favorites]


Though, in all seriousness, is slate like behaviour from Who-fans who nominate 5 Who episodes year after A) still a thing and B) desirable anyway?
posted by Artw at 10:36 AM on August 21, 2016


5/6 passed.
posted by Artw at 10:43 AM on August 21, 2016


Wow, you guys just liveblogged the Hugos!

That's nothing, now we're liveblogging a WorldCon business meeting!
posted by Artw at 10:44 AM on August 21, 2016 [9 favorites]


And EPH+ passed, and the meeting is adjourned.
posted by metaquarry at 10:50 AM on August 21, 2016 [2 favorites]


Good work, slow-ass SF grognards. You'll get back to something workable in the end.
posted by Artw at 10:57 AM on August 21, 2016 [2 favorites]


I assume it will make a much bigger change to long form. Doctor Who has finally lost the Best Doctor Who Episode category.
posted by jeather at 11:02 AM on August 21, 2016 [3 favorites]


5/6, BTW was previously 4/6 - not sure what drove the change but it weakens it significantly. Still, it all helps make puppy dominated skates unlikely in 2017.
posted by Artw at 11:04 AM on August 21, 2016


So in response to those in the previous threads who said the Hugos were doomed, they're not doomed. They survived the slates this year, and celebrated some excellent work. And in years to come the measures encased will severely diminish the impact of slates.

TLDR, I'm seriously looking forward to voting in future Hugo contests.
posted by happyroach at 11:41 AM on August 21, 2016 [1 favorite]


I'm not going to say they're out of the woods until they produce a ballot sheet that isn't horribly distorted by slates, but things are looking rosier than they were.
posted by Artw at 12:04 PM on August 21, 2016 [1 favorite]


Chuck Tingle: Pounded In The Butt By My Hugo Award Loss.
posted by Wobbuffet at 1:10 PM on August 21, 2016 [11 favorites]


Jesus, the WSFS business meeting is ... a thing. My partner is a regular attendee (conrunner, Hugo winner, now an Alfie winner, and very, very opinionated) and even SHE looked bored.

On the upside, our "Bureaucrasexual" badge ribbons were a huge hit. So there's that. Also, 3SV passed. Yay!
posted by ChrisR at 1:33 PM on August 21, 2016 [8 favorites]


The "kindness in SF" panel is a good endcap. Gonna go help with the move-out in a bit.

I will be making a point of reading 2016-published works for the rest of the year. Can't wait to find some great stuff to nominate!
posted by asperity at 1:48 PM on August 21, 2016 [3 favorites]


I think the bit where someone had to get up to remind the chair that technically he wasn't the chair right now was the part where I lost it completely. It's a weird system, but I think we got a decent outcome in the end, and fingers crossed EPH is effective next year and doesn't do anything too weird in the dramatic presentation categories (which they didn't attempt to rerun in last year's data due to time constraints.).
posted by penguinliz at 2:55 PM on August 21, 2016


TBH non-prose categories are all kind of secondary and given to weird results anyway.
posted by Artw at 3:27 PM on August 21, 2016


I know it wouldn't have changed the outcome of the Podcast category much, but Coode Street was listed twice, and together would have been much higher up in the long list. That seems like an easy fix - it's not like the two entries would have been confused for some other podcast. I wonder why they weren't combined?
posted by jferngler at 4:44 PM on August 21, 2016


If I had to guess, I'd say it's because the Hugo admins have to canonicalize these more or less by hand from a very, very messy dataset, and they're human and make mistakes.

I'm glad to see this one doesn't rise to the level of causing a work to fail to make the ballot due to a canonicalization error - an event that I'm sure causes the admins to wake in a cold sweat at least once during the process, if not more - but it still sucks.
posted by ChrisR at 5:50 PM on August 21, 2016 [1 favorite]


Yay to N.K. Jemisin's victory! I've been meaning to read Fifth Season since I finished the Inheritance Trilogy but haven't gotten to it yet, her writing is amazing and she deserves an award.

Also, yay to Chuck Tingle, he's made the best of being jerked around by the *Puppies and seems to have taken the whole thing in good stride. I'm almost sorry they didn't just give him the award, but I can see trying to keep the Hugos serious even though it would have been a hilarious repudiation of the *Puppies.

Yay to EPH being ratified so that next year the *Puppies won't even try.

Also, to anyone who was there for the event itself, what's up with the dude being kicked out of WorldCon? He's doing this whole "ZOMG the evil SJW's witchhunted me" which makes me think he's lying about what happened. But no one has said what actually happened and I'm curious if anyone who was there has something they're willing to share.
posted by sotonohito at 6:27 PM on August 21, 2016 [1 favorite]






So it turns out (having just talked to the Hugo admin) that the double entry in the Fancast category is in fact a copy/paste error and should be another name. They'll be fixing it and publicly correcting it soon.
posted by ChrisR at 7:14 PM on August 21, 2016 [1 favorite]


So has VD declared victory?

Let me re-phrase - Exactly how has VD declared victory this time?

[I refuse to enter the puppy corners of the net to find out for myself.]
posted by zakur at 7:49 PM on August 21, 2016 [1 favorite]


The expulsion of Dave Truesdale.

The next Chuck Tingle story, no doubt.
posted by Etrigan at 7:50 PM on August 21, 2016 [4 favorites]


Apparently enough things won that were on his list that it is a victory and he has SJWs exactly where he wants them. It sounds very tedious, and not really in line with actual results and stats.
posted by Artw at 7:57 PM on August 21, 2016 [1 favorite]


This is according to F770 - I'd look or link myself but then I'd have to burn my computer down and drown the remains in a bucket of bleach. TBH it sounds like everything is actually pretty subdued on that side of the fence.
posted by Artw at 7:58 PM on August 21, 2016


VD declared victory because people voted in reaction to the slates (impossible not to, surely), because No Award won in a few categories, because the only non-slated works won in other categories, because The Martian and Andy Weir won, because he didn't see enough people happy that so many women won this year, because some of the slated entries came immediately after No Award and because NK Jemisin, who he continues to insult in vile and horrifying ways, won.

None of this makes any sense, of course -- possibly Mad Max was edged out by The Martian, since it lost by 250 votes which is less than the number of votes some slated works got on the first ballot, and probably Andy Weir beat out Alyssa Wong from puppy votes because they were neck and neck, but it isn't like the movie and the author lacked general popularity.
posted by jeather at 8:18 PM on August 21, 2016 [2 favorites]


Previous Puppy achievements include keeping Andy Weor from getting a Campbell, IIRC.

Basically Puppy Victory = "we had some impact on the results, even a largely random one"
posted by Artw at 8:25 PM on August 21, 2016 [1 favorite]


Re: The Martian, both it and Weir were the runaway top nominees in their respective categories, to the point where if you cut out all the puppy votes Weir would still be at the head of the Campbell list. So even if they swung those two in the final voting, it's a fair win. Puppies who pay for a voting membership are voters just like anybody else.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 8:25 PM on August 21, 2016


(Consequently I would advise not getting too hung up on whether they declare victory or not)
posted by Artw at 8:26 PM on August 21, 2016


Right, Martian and Weir were generally popular works that deserved their nominations and wins, and it's impossible to say what would have happened sans slate. But it's reasonable to say that slate votes pushed one, maybe both, to a win. (I liked the book a lot; I'm not unhappy Weir won.)

Any results at all would have been considered a win, so the arguments made are meaningless.
posted by jeather at 8:40 PM on August 21, 2016 [2 favorites]


They've successfully boosted Weir's career by 0.0000001%
posted by Artw at 9:54 PM on August 21, 2016


VD and his Pupsqueaks are trying to shrink the market for Science Fiction enough so that they can be considered a significant part of it. (Or they may be trying to do what Republicans tried to do with Government; make it small enough to drown in a bathtub)
posted by oneswellfoop at 10:08 PM on August 21, 2016 [1 favorite]


Ok, here is the thing I don't get: for all of the money and effort puppies sunk into this, couldn't they have instead put together their own paying short fiction market? And thus proven (or disproven) the theory that manly, retro, two-fisted SF adventure was being underrepresented? Something like UNCANNY, but for Doc Savage fans?

How is bashing the awards (and pissing off everybody else) getting them any closer to the goal of having their kind of tough-guy, snowflake-free writing acknowledged and appreciated?
posted by newdaddy at 4:17 AM on August 22, 2016


The point is not that they want their fiction appreciated, but that they want the fiction they hate driven from the field.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 4:42 AM on August 22, 2016 [5 favorites]


Also, it turns the attention on to them Vox Day, regardless of whether they "win" anything else.
posted by Etrigan at 6:33 AM on August 22, 2016


newdaddy, in theory that's what Beale was doing when he purchased Castalia House.

Problem is that they aren't actually so much interested in promoting good, if cheesy, Doc Savage style SF, they're mostly just interested in being anti-SJW and general assholes so they don't attract much in the way of real writing talent, as evidenced by the best of the stuff they nominated which was frankly crap.

So Castila House is basically trying to get along as one of the Wingnut Welfare programs, churn out shitty alt-right SF and you too can get some of that sweet bigot money, but the number of alt-right choads willing to actually buy the crap from Castila House is pretty low.

Plus, most good writers are repelled by the fanbase that Beale has attracted so even if they wanted to write old school SF they wouldn't want to do it for him.
posted by sotonohito at 7:49 AM on August 22, 2016 [1 favorite]


Jim Baen made money for years off right-wing-canted SF. But the difference was that a) he was perfectly happy to publish any political stripe as long as it fit into the milfic action-adventure market he was focusing on and b) he had a pretty good idea of what made a enjoyable trash read.
posted by tavella at 8:58 AM on August 22, 2016 [1 favorite]


the milfic action-adventure market

I read that very differently from how you intended it.
posted by Etrigan at 9:14 AM on August 22, 2016 [6 favorites]


b) he had a pretty good idea of what made a enjoyable trash read.

Yyyyeah, mostly, but towards the end there he was publishing John Ringo's stuff shipping the SS and Kratman's vile nonsense. Dunno whether that was a change in him or the market-as-he-saw-it.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 9:31 AM on August 22, 2016 [2 favorites]


See, Asimov's is not a democracy. F&SF is not a democracy. They're businesses. They in effect create the bandwidth that they consume. They have the right to print whatever they want, and whatever they think will sell. I don't know why that's not the end of the argument.
posted by newdaddy at 9:49 AM on August 22, 2016


Part of it is the Puppies regard awards as primarily marketing tools. "Hugo Award Winner" as something to be put on a book cover or Amazon listing. They also have a very different notion of what "quality" means, in fact they terms to disregard literary quality completely.

In short, they're mostly out if step with the newer terms in SF&F. Instead of changing, they're trying to bring the system down.
posted by happyroach at 10:04 AM on August 22, 2016 [1 favorite]


Yyyyeah, mostly, but towards the end there he was publishing John Ringo's stuff shipping the SS and Kratman's vile nonsense. Dunno whether that was a change in him or the market-as-he-saw-it.

True, but that was only a couple of books, it wasn't until the Weisskopf era that the company itself became heavily ideological.
posted by tavella at 10:41 AM on August 22, 2016


Which is a shame, because Baen had one of the better approaches to epublishing around. You could buy a totally DRM free ebook, in any format you wanted, bam. Done, no mucking about with proprieary readers or anything.

Damn shame pretty much all they have to sell is far right leaning milfic and that they've become a hotbed of alt-right douchery.
posted by sotonohito at 1:51 PM on August 22, 2016


And I even occasionally like milfic to the point that I'll put up with the right leaning part. I read most of the Honor Harrington series despite Webber's need to spend huge segments of each book detailing just how modern American movement conservatism is the best thing ever and liberalism is utterly vile and evil in all ways.

Hell, even the earlier books in Ringo's Legacy of Aldenata wasn't that bad. Bad, but not howlingly awful.
posted by sotonohito at 1:53 PM on August 22, 2016 [1 favorite]


I hope there is serious discussion about nominating Chuck Tingle's Hugo Nominee Journey for the Best Related Work or such. Seriously. This was internet performance art turned unforgettable SFF cultural commentary, by way of Tingle's increasingly pointed metafiction titles, his off-kilter videos, and his Twitter-feed saga split between trolling evil Voxman's devilmen and keeping at bay his frozen wife who calls from the void. H. P. Lovecraft wishes he could multitask weirdness like this. (He can't, since Lovecraft is a dead racist devilman and Love Is Real.)
posted by nicebookrack at 2:21 PM on August 22, 2016 [14 favorites]


Baen still publishes Bujold. Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater here...
posted by Shmuel510 at 5:32 PM on August 22, 2016 [3 favorites]


Dear Metafilter:

I let you down. Despite my previous protestations, I did not attend the WSFS Business Meeting after all. This happened for three reasons:

1) I was sooooooooooooooo exhausted.
2) I was trying to sell out my publisher's remaining stock of my books.
3) I had just eaten a big plate of burnt ends from Jack Stack, so, thanks to (1) and (2), I was in a digesting coma on the floor of my publisher's booth.

I hang my head in shame.

-RakDaddy
posted by RakDaddy at 3:24 PM on August 23, 2016 [7 favorites]


Should you wish to experience all the fun and excitement of the WSFS Business Meetings, you can see them here!

(I have no interest in that myself, but maybe you differ!)
posted by Shmuel510 at 4:32 PM on August 23, 2016


I read most of the Honor Harrington series despite Webber's need to spend huge segments of each book detailing just how modern American movement conservatism is the best thing ever and liberalism is utterly vile and evil in all ways.

Not all ways! Montaigne gets a lot of love, and they're sympathetic to some Peeps! But yes other than that you are mostly correct.
posted by corb at 4:38 PM on August 23, 2016




Montaigne was invented by Eric Flint and even by him written with nothing but contempt for her supposedly fellow Liberals and held up as an exception who would be a proper Centrist (read: American Movement Conservative) except reasons.

I think Webber keeps her around mostly so he can say "see, I don't hate all liberals!" Same as he named the far right aristocratic party the Conservatives so he could say "my heroes aren't all conservatives they're not even part of the conservative party, they're Centrists and totally pragmatic and right about everything because of their centrism and pragmatism", but that's just linguistic slight of hand, they're all full bore modern American Republicans who are magically always right about everything because Space Capitalism must defeat Space Communism.

How, exactly, 4,000 years in the future with the sort of massive automation Webber describes capitalism is even possible he never explains. Despite huge automation, the Kingdom/Empire manages full employment and welfare is nothing but handouts to lazy scum, large social welfare programs are an evil that destroys nations and economies (hi Peeps), and so forth.

like most milfic it isn't really SF in the sense of speculating about how advances in science will change things, it's just today with photon torpedoes and warp drives bolted on the side. Other than some gee wiz magic technology has apparently not merely stagnated but frozen and maybe even gone backwards in many ways over the past 4,000 years even in the officially advanced polities rather than designated places that tech really did slide backwards due to catastrophe.

The idea that we'll still have human soldiers doing the bulk of soldiering seems absurd even on a time horizon of 50 to 100 years. Not to mention automation making any Communist/Capitalist bickering seem as quaint and absurd as the debates that surrounded Feudal economies or Mercantilism.

But they're fun light reads and filled with exploding space ships, so I look past that. For some reason pages filled with descriptions of how many missiles were launched, how many failed to lock on, how many were taken out by point defense, and how many hit the target are entertaining to me every now and then, and Webber scratches that itch.
posted by sotonohito at 4:19 AM on August 24, 2016 [1 favorite]


it's just today with photon torpedoes and warp drives bolted on the side.

Or, now that I think about it, more likely not even today. It's the society of the author's childhood with warp drives and photon torpedoes bolted on.
posted by sotonohito at 5:43 AM on August 24, 2016 [2 favorites]


New excerpt from Andy Weir and a bit of an interview - apparently he's releasing everything by app now, so, er... Good luck to him on that.
posted by Artw at 6:23 AM on August 24, 2016


Apparently he's debuting one story collection via app, for which he's getting paid, and I don't see anything saying that it won't eventually show up elsewhere. Sure, it's an app instead of a magazine, but that's just packaging; nothing else about the arrangement seems unusual.
posted by Shmuel510 at 7:36 AM on August 24, 2016


Or, now that I think about it, more likely not even today. It's the society of the author's childhood with warp drives and photon torpedoes bolted on.

I thought they were Horatio Hornblower in Space. Like, explicitly.
posted by asperity at 8:39 AM on August 24, 2016


I also did not attend the business meeting sessions. Too much other stuff to do, and it seemed like a really boring way to spend my first paid vacation in over a decade.

I am now trying to figure out how I can make it to Finland next year. Or at least Puerto Rico.
posted by asperity at 8:44 AM on August 24, 2016




asperity They are. Or were originally, he's moved past Hornblower in the later books. But yes, originally he was very self consciously copying Hornblower. Not only the initials of the heroes, but also details of the fictional technology. His starships use gravity sails when moving through hyperspace, in normal space they have a "wedge" of gravity that moves them and takes time to establish but can be turned off nearly instantly thus making "striking the wedge" a sure sign of surrender just like striking sail in Hornblower. His ships come equipped with missile launchers and lasers which require portholes opened in their protective force fields so they can be "run out" before firing. And they have a wall of battle (because space is 3d) and ships of the wall vs a line of battle and ships of the line.

So yes, Hornblower in space is a huge part of what he pitched and wrote with the Honor Harrington series.

But...

It's also very much, from a background and politics standpoint, the idealized version of right wing American politics of today and Webber's childhood sort of blurred together with lasers and hyperspace bolted to the side.

He's erased the evils he acknowledges from American conservatism (which in his case means open racism and sexism) while keeping the essential view that the completely right and proper viewpoint for any situation can be found by consulting Ronald Reagan or William F. Buckley.

That also means that the primary villains for almost the entire series were Space Commies.

It's very much Space Capitalists vs. Space Commies, with backstabbing Evil Liberals keeping the Good Space Capitalists from winning. He's got a lot of the resentful "we coulda won Vietnam if it hadn't been for those liberals betraying us at home" attitude suffusing the entirety of his work. The media is always evil and maliciously works to undermine the noble self sacrificing heroes of the military, the Liberal party is composed either of literal murderous traitors [1] or (at best) unwitting dupes too dumb to realize that Space Capitalism is always the best political/economic system and that their bleeding heart sympathy for the poor perpetuates a vicious cycle of dependence on government handouts. Basically he hates hippies and commies.

After he sort of opened up his universe Eric Flint added in somewhat less blatantly evil Liberals, but still made them the noble exception to the general mess of evil and stupidity in the Liberal party and they always have to preface everything they say or do with an extended condemnation of the Liberal Party and praise for the Centrist (ie: Republican) Party.

But Webber is still very much doing modern/contemporary American politics In Space, with worship at the shrine of St. Reagan front and center.

[1] Like, literally. The Evil head of the Evil Liberal party had the noble Centrist Prime Minister assassinated in large part so they could, gasp horror shudder, impose a progressive income tax on the Star Kingdom of Manticore. Yes, really.
posted by sotonohito at 1:30 PM on August 24, 2016 [4 favorites]


Oh, dear. I think I'll go back to Patrick O'Brian with dragons.
posted by asperity at 2:11 PM on August 24, 2016 [2 favorites]


For the record, it's David Weber (one 'b'), not Webber.

And speaking of his conservative vs. liberal metaphors, the big baddy in his Safehold series is Grand Inquisitor Clyntahn (Clinton). [real]
posted by zakur at 2:17 PM on August 24, 2016 [1 favorite]


sotonohito: "Montaigne was invented by Eric Flint"

I'm pretty sure Montaigne was invented by Pierre Eyquem and Antoinette López de Villanueva.
posted by Chrysostom at 5:08 PM on August 24, 2016 [1 favorite]




Some comments re:EPH and Best Dramatic Presentation here.

Conclusion: probably not a big deal.
posted by Artw at 6:58 AM on August 26, 2016 [1 favorite]




It's not all sad news for puppies, checkout the Dragon Awards.
posted by Artw at 4:08 PM on September 4, 2016 [1 favorite]


Did I miss something? Is DragonCon now full puppyland?
posted by corb at 4:44 PM on September 4, 2016


Natural result of open internet vote, I suspect.
posted by Artw at 7:21 PM on September 4, 2016 [1 favorite]


Also of the awards being new and thus not having a dedicated base of existing voters.

Meanwhile in comics, it seems the Harvey Award voters also didn't take kindly to having their nominations gamed. Compare that list of winners with the nominees and see if you can spot the implied middle finger to a particular publisher!
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 6:31 AM on September 5, 2016 [1 favorite]


Well, also Saga is pretty hard to beat.
posted by Artw at 6:58 AM on September 5, 2016


Yeah, but Saga wasn't up for, say, the Special Award for Excellence in Presentation.

(To the nominators' credit, even with some categories going to the sole non-Valiant contender, this year produced a damn fine list of winners. I'm especially stoked for The Less-Than-Epic Adventures of TJ & Amal getting a trophy, that book rules.)
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 7:35 AM on September 5, 2016


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