2015 Hugo Nominees Announced
April 4, 2015 12:48 PM Subscribe

The 2015 Hugo Nominees have been announced. Notably, authors from Brad R. Torgensen's "Sad Puppies" slate have successfully secured all of the nominations for both the Novella and Novellette categories, a result which is bound to cause significant discussion.
posted by Another Fine Product From The Nonsense Factory (2457 comments total) 73 users marked this as a favorite

Noah Wards is going to become a very popular selection this year, methinks.
posted by kmz at 12:51 PM on April 4, 2015 [8 favorites]

(Who the hell nominates human scum like Vox Day or John C Wright for anything?! Outside of maybe Biggest Sadsack.)
posted by kmz at 12:53 PM on April 4, 2015 [12 favorites]

Ann Leckie and Katherine Addison are both deserving of best novel.

And G. Wilson Willow for Ms. Marvel!! HELL YEAH!?!! But Matt Fraction's Sex Criminals is also damn good as a graphic novel.

I'm pleased for the most part with these selections and still have a number of books, stories, media to find and consume.
posted by Fizz at 12:57 PM on April 4, 2015 [2 favorites]

I believe there's an option on the ballot for "no award".
posted by sammyo at 12:58 PM on April 4, 2015 [7 favorites]

My twitter feed has been lighting up about this, and I totally don't know the backstory. This is basically gamergate types deliberately stacking the nominations with works by suitably misogynistic authors? Or something like that?
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 1:02 PM on April 4, 2015 [7 favorites]

A total of 2122 valid nomination forms were received (2119 online and 3 paper).

This amuses me.
posted by rtha at 1:04 PM on April 4, 2015 [8 favorites]

More or less, yes. Torgersen lays out his thinking pretty clearly... SFF has gone too far from manly men rescuing dainty girls, is too PC, etc etc.
posted by kmz at 1:05 PM on April 4, 2015 [21 favorites]

a result which is bound to cause significant discussion

Is it? Why? What's going on?
posted by alasdair at 1:06 PM on April 4, 2015 [7 favorites]

I am really looking forward to seeing the actual statistics later. They pretty much hit majorities of the slates in every category they cared about.
posted by jeather at 1:07 PM on April 4, 2015

What's going on?

Have you ever seen Scanners?
posted by 445supermag at 1:07 PM on April 4, 2015 [6 favorites]

kmz, thanks for linking Torgersen's explanatory essay. It's utterly repugnant and yet entirely relatable. The cognitive dissonance I felt when I read it will be a good reminder of when I find myself about to do a stupid thing just because "that's the way it's always been done."
posted by infinitewindow at 1:11 PM on April 4, 2015 [14 favorites]

(Who the hell nominates human scum like Vox Day or John C Wright for anything?! Outside of maybe Biggest Sadsack.)

Evidence:

"I very much like women and wish them well, which is precisely why I consider women’s rights to be a disease that should be eradicated. For what is rather more difficult to dismiss are the simple and easily verifiable facts that indicate women have seldom been less able to pursue their dreams and less able to achieve their desires than today, the Golden Age of Feminism."

Also:

In June of 2013, Beale used the SFWAuthors Twitter feed to post a link to his blog, in which he referred to African-American author N. K. Jemisin as "an educated, but ignorant half-savage, with little more understanding of what it took to build a new literature" [33] and Teresa Nielsen Hayden as a "fat frog."
So yeah, fuck this guy.

posted by Fizz at 1:11 PM on April 4, 2015 [31 favorites]

This is basically gamergate types deliberately stacking the nominations with works by suitably misogynistic authors?

More or less, yeah. I took a stab at reading the nominees from last year's Sad Puppy slate, with the best open mind I could muster. I got through a few that didn't have openly misogynistic shit going down^*, but were just... not good writing. I was left wondering why they were nominated — like, surely even right-wing reactionaries can put together a story that's not repetitive, going in circles, repetitive, etc.

I'm mildly curious to see if this year's Sad Puppies are any better in terms of basic storytelling.

^* Just, you know, a glaring absence of women.
posted by Banknote of the year at 1:11 PM on April 4, 2015 [7 favorites]

I'd also appreciate a discussion of the slate and what it means. I've got my pitchfork in hand, but I need someone with a torch to lead the way.
posted by Nelson at 1:12 PM on April 4, 2015 [12 favorites]

I'm highly amused that Larry Correia, the originator of the Sad Puppies slate, didn't make the cut.
posted by Etrigan at 1:13 PM on April 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

kmz: "More or less, yes. Torgersen lays out his thinking pretty clearly... SFF has gone too far from manly men rescuing dainty girls, is too PC, etc etc."

Oh Jesus. That is pretty fucking sad. He's all hurt because a sci-fi book with spaceships and planets on the cover might acknowledge that women and/or minorities exist?
posted by octothorpe at 1:14 PM on April 4, 2015 [31 favorites]

It's broken.

They need to fix it in such a way that is more resistant to gaming, possibly with multiple nomination rounds, or they need to give up.

There's no "maybe enough people will vote No Award!", that was tried last time and didn't work.
posted by Artw at 1:17 PM on April 4, 2015 [8 favorites]

Larry Correira claims to have turned down the nomination, and I see no reason not to believe him.
posted by jeather at 1:18 PM on April 4, 2015 [4 favorites]

There have been suggestions that nominations should be limited to some number smaller than total slots -- 3/5 or 4/6. Though that could only be enacted for 2017, it seems to have reasonably high support.

I'm not sure if that really gets over the problem of diffuse-but-honest votes being overwhelmed by a small number of niche-interest voters voting in lockstep.
posted by Artw at 1:22 PM on April 4, 2015 [2 favorites]

Kevin J Anderson already did an interview for Torgersen's site... I hadn't really heard of him in conjunction with this crap before, but it amuses me because of just how bad his writing has always been. I guess after you fuck up Star Wars EU and desecrate Dune there's nowhere to go but Sad Puppies.
posted by kmz at 1:24 PM on April 4, 2015 [8 favorites]

It pretty much forces two places to be left out of lockstep ballots because it's a lot of work to organize yourselves so that all 5 people on your slate are nominated in equal numbers. But it certainly still allows them to continue to hold majorities, it just prevents sweeps.
posted by jeather at 1:26 PM on April 4, 2015

One comment deleted; let's not go for the actual Nazi comparisons, even though these guys are terrible.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 1:27 PM on April 4, 2015 [2 favorites]

Some basic stats (Sad/Rabid Puppy nominations on each list) are here.
posted by jeather at 1:28 PM on April 4, 2015 [3 favorites]

From what I can tell, Torgersen is claiming that the latent racism and sexism in Golden Age SF are part of the pantheon of IMPORTANT IDEAS that is the hallmark of The Best SF.

So, changing the subject, if I buy a $40 non-attending WorldCon membership now (no chance in hell of me going unless there's a WorldCon in LA on a weekend), would I be able to vote for Ann Leckie or No Awards as I see fit?

This isn't something I would normally do. I don't have much time to seek out new work on my own and really rely on the reputation of Nebulas, Hugos, and author recommendations from friends and industry celebs alike. I'm not an informed Hugo voter at all— but what Beale and his ilk are doing with Hugo-packing is the flipside of Torgersen's metaphor: trying to pass off stale, processed by-products as the freshest, healthiest meal.
posted by infinitewindow at 1:28 PM on April 4, 2015 [10 favorites]

Yeah the Sad Puppy slate is bad enough, but multiple nominations for VD?
posted by feckless at 1:29 PM on April 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

if I buy a $40 WorldCon membership now ... would I be able to vote for Ann Leckie or No Awards as I see fit?

Yes!
posted by Banknote of the year at 1:30 PM on April 4, 2015 [7 favorites]

[One comment deleted; let's not go for the actual Nazi comparisons, even though these guys are terrible.]

Vox Day is a an open white supremacist and does not deserve the benefit of your doubt.
posted by Pope Guilty at 1:30 PM on April 4, 2015 [76 favorites]

If you wanted to, you could buy a supporting membership and vote however you like. (FYI, Katherine Addison's The Goblin Emperor also made the list despite not being on the slates.)

Voting is using IRV, where you rank whichever of the nominees plus no award. Any you leave off and do not rank are tied for last. Also whoever wins in any given category is specifically counted against No Award and has to win in a runoff using all the ballots. I'm not great at explaining this.

(Vox Day claims to be Native, so I assume there will soon be complaints about everyone who dislikes him being racist. I believe he claims this based on a DNA test he took, but am not certain of this.)
posted by jeather at 1:33 PM on April 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

The only way I can think of to respond to this news is to post things from 2014 that reasonable people actually liked. This FPP and this Ask may be good starting points. Martin Wisse and I both read all the linked short fiction independently, and he blogged all of his reactions, recapping the results here. Here are some of the things I liked (and for the most part nominated) ...

Novels:
Annihilation, Jeff VanderMeer, FSG Originals
The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison, Tor
City of Stairs, Robert Jackson Bennett, Broadway Books
Ancillary Sword, Ann Leckie, Orbit
World of Trouble, Ben H. Winters, Quirk Books

Novellas:
We Are All Completely Fine, Daryl Gregory, Tachyon Publications
"Unlocked: An Oral History of Haden’s Syndrome," John Scalzi, Tor.com
"Where the Trains Turn," Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen, Tor.com

Novelettes:
"Ten Rules for Being an Intergalactic Smuggler (the Successful Kind)," Holly Black, Candlewick Press
"The Magician and Laplace's Demon," Tom Crosshill, Clarkesworld
"Heaven Thunders the Truth," K. J. Parker, Beneath Ceaseless Skies
"The Year of Silent Birds," Siobhan Carroll, Beneath Ceaseless Skies
"The Litany of Earth," Ruthanna Emrys, Tor.com

Short stories:
"The Earth and Everything Under," K. M. Ferebee, Shimmer
"Toad Words," Ursula Vernon, ursulavernon.tumblr.com
"Makeisha in Time," Rachael K. Jones, Crossed Genres
"The Contemporary Foxwife," Yoon Ha Lee, Clarkesworld
"The Eleven Holy Numbers of the Mechanical Soul," Natalia Theodoridou, Clarkesworld
"The Floating Girls: A Documentary," Damien Angelica Walters, Jamais Vu
"The Saint of the Sidewalks," Kat Howard, Clarkesworld
"The One They Took Before," Kelly Sandoval, Shimmer
"The Unfathomable Sisterhood of Ick," Charlie Jane Anders, Lightspeed
"The Manor of Lost Time," Richard Parks, Beneath Ceaseless Skies
"Five Stages of Grief After the Alien Invasion," Caroline M. Yoachim, Clarkesworld
"A City on its Tentacles," Rose Lemberg, Lackington's
"The Fisher Queen," Alyssa Wong, F&SF
"21 Steps to Enlightenment (Minus One)," LaShawn M. Wanak, Clarkesworld
"Passage of Earth," Michael Swanwick, Clarkesworld
"Cimmeria: From the Journal of Imaginary Anthropology," Theodora Goss, Lightspeed

Best Graphic Story
Subnormality #218, "watching," Winston Rowntree, VirusComix.com
The Leaning Girl, Schuiten/Peeters, Alaxis Press
posted by Monsieur Caution at 1:33 PM on April 4, 2015 [299 favorites]

Bravo Monsieur caution! Bravo!!
posted by Fizz at 1:34 PM on April 4, 2015 [6 favorites]

Is there a rule that the short form dramatic nominations need to be TV episodes? It would be nice to see standalone short films in that list.
posted by brundlefly at 1:35 PM on April 4, 2015

So, changing the subject, if I buy a $40 non-attending WorldCon membership now (no chance in hell of me going unless there's a WorldCon in LA on a weekend), would I be able to vote for Ann Leckie or No Awards as I see fit?

Yes, and let's face it these people are never going to make it out of the short list anyway, so there's that. But losing the short list to a repellent niche group is not an inconsiderable problem - and it now seems to be a cycle that we are locked into.
posted by Artw at 1:36 PM on April 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

ESR?!? OH FFS.
posted by charlie don't surf at 1:37 PM on April 4, 2015 [14 favorites]

Clarification: if someone's a Nazi, feel free to call them a Nazi. I'd ask people not to expand the term to just mean "assholes" in a generic way.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 1:38 PM on April 4, 2015 [23 favorites]

Is there a rule that the short form dramatic nominations need to be TV episodes? It would be nice to see standalone short films in that list.

Anything under 90 minutes. Short films just don't have the viewership, even in these heady days of YouTube opening access to them.
posted by Etrigan at 1:38 PM on April 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

Is there a rule that the short form dramatic nominations need to be TV episodes?

Anything under 90 minutes counts. Welcome to Night Vale is a podcast that's come close to getting on the Hugo ballot, but hasn't made it yet. And a few years ago, Fuck me Ray Bradbury, a YouTube video, got a nomination.
posted by Banknote of the year at 1:39 PM on April 4, 2015 [5 favorites]

Tor Books editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden's response:

(3) Merely running a campaign to get a slate of specific people and works onto the Hugo ballot doesn’t really rise to the level of “evil”, but it’s definitely “dubious” at the very least. Which is to say, it violates a lot of people’s sense of how one ought to behave, and if you do it you’ll incur widespread disapproval. Prepare to deal.

(4) However, running a campaign to get a slate of specific people and works onto the Hugo ballot and reaching out to #Gamergate for support in this…in effect, inviting a bunch of people who traffic in violent threats, intimidation, and “SWATting” to join our community…well, that rises all the way to “downright evil”.

posted by metaquarry at 1:41 PM on April 4, 2015 [70 favorites]

Gollum's acceptance speech at the MTV Movie Awards actually won Best Short Form one year, if I remember right.
posted by kmz at 1:43 PM on April 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

And the short form presentation field is relatively unproblematic, latterly because there is a large viewership for the shows involved.

Short fiction, on the other hand, is a total loss this year because the sad fact of the matter that it has a very low readership, and the few people who read it all read different things.

You know what short fiction has a slightly greater readership, and that I go out of my way to read every year? The ones with major SF award nominations.

And so we have a circular problem.
posted by Artw at 1:43 PM on April 4, 2015 [3 favorites]

David Gillon has a comment on Jason Sanford's blog post that really hit home as well.

Thanks to Artw and cstross who are both nailing it on Twitter.
posted by infinitewindow at 1:44 PM on April 4, 2015 [3 favorites]

So are they planning a special Lifetime Misogyny Hugo for John Norman this year too?
posted by Catblack at 1:49 PM on April 4, 2015 [12 favorites]

let's face it these people are never going to make it out of the short list anyway

What unsettles me this year is that there are categories where these people are the whole short list.
posted by moss at 1:49 PM on April 4, 2015 [3 favorites]

Ancillary Sword was damn fine, but didn't rock my world as much Ancillary Justice, or Vandermeer's Annihilation, which I think is sort of standing in for the series as a whole. Pretty strong year.
posted by chainlinkspiral at 1:50 PM on April 4, 2015 [2 favorites]

What unsettles me this year is that there are categories where these people are the whole short list.

Which is why No Awarding doesn't work.
posted by Artw at 1:52 PM on April 4, 2015

Gollum's acceptance speech at the MTV Movie Awards actually won Best Short Form one year, if I remember right.

2004. It was somewhat controversial since it beat out Firefly and Buffy episodes.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 1:52 PM on April 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

I'm kind of glad that I largely do not pay attention to these horrible commentaries and quotes and insults and such. And I absolutely get that its horrible to let these horrid individuals use sexist/racist, language to disparage another person's work. It shouldn't be ignored. It's just exhausting to read that kind of shit.

I let my wallet do my talking for me and support the authors I love by buying books and stories I want to read. I urge others to do the same.
posted by Fizz at 1:53 PM on April 4, 2015

I can't wait to see James Axler's acceptance speech next year.
posted by Etrigan at 1:55 PM on April 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

Would have been nice to see Korra in the noms somewhere... especially because of John C Wright.
posted by kmz at 1:58 PM on April 4, 2015 [8 favorites]

Torgersen's moronic analogy about how SF is no longer the SF he grew up with:

We’ve been burning our audience (more and more) since the late 1990s. Too many people kept getting box after box of Nutty Nuggets, and walking away disappointed. Because the Nutty Nuggets they grew to love in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, were not the same Nutty Nuggets being proffered in the 2000s, and beyond.

So I don't know what he was reading in those years but I'm in my fifties and I grew up in the '70s and '80s reading Varley, Moorecock, Delany, Le Guin, Russ, Disch, etc. You have to do some pretty serious rewriting of history to pretend that SF dealing feminist, gay and gender issues haven't been around at least half a century.
posted by octothorpe at 2:01 PM on April 4, 2015 [101 favorites]

A little background on this...

The Hugos are a slightly unusual award in that anyone who buys a supporting membership to WorldCon is allowed to vote in them. So... a cabal of shitty writers who, in their own words, are dedicated to fighting the "SJW glittery hoo ha crowd," figured out that they could game the award by getting friends, family members, random misogynists online, etc, to buy supporting memberships and stack the ballot in their favor. So they proceeded to do this.

It's stupid and ridiculous and mock-worthy but it kinda hurts too. I had work that was eligible this year, many many of my friends had work that was eligible, and instead of a celebration of the most popular and memorable work among fans it's just this political stunt that is painful to observe. And not only is the ballot filled with remarkably unremarkable work, it also happens to be the most uniformly male selection we've seen in quite some time. There's really no mistaking their message: Women aren't welcome in science fiction.
posted by the turtle's teeth at 2:05 PM on April 4, 2015 [95 favorites]

I can't believe they actually packed as much John C Wright as they could into the ballot. They're actually championing this ambulatory fungus because he loudly and publicly hates women.
posted by shmegegge at 2:06 PM on April 4, 2015 [12 favorites]

Wait, AND they used Gamergaters to stack the votes?!

Fuck these guys. As a regular SF reader I will never, ever, ever read their work. Ever.
posted by shmegegge at 2:08 PM on April 4, 2015 [10 favorites]

So, did Kevin J Anderson finally write a book worth reading? While his writing style is fine his grasp of science and storytelling always seemed limited.
posted by antiwiggle at 2:12 PM on April 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

I am consoling myself with the notion that, however long this lasts, it may in some ways be their last screaming fit before they slide into irrelevance, just as they fear.
posted by kyrademon at 2:13 PM on April 4, 2015 [10 favorites]

As horrible as all of this is I keep getting stuck on this part of Torgensen's cri du couer:

Return to the store. Buy another box. Bam. It’s not Nutty Nuggets.
This time, you add bananas, sugar, and berries. This only makes up for the deficit a little bit.

Dang. How aware is this guy that he's characterizing his love of sci-fi as a trash binge eating disorder and he's super resentful that he has to stop feeding himself garbage for breakfast? It's always so sad when the explicit self-loathing and self-destructive motives of this kind of regressive movement slip out, you know?
posted by moonlight on vermont at 2:13 PM on April 4, 2015 [27 favorites]

A little background on this...

Thanks for taking the time to explain what the hell this is.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 2:13 PM on April 4, 2015 [8 favorites]

Like... they LITERALLY nominated a work published by "Patriarchy Press."

Or to be more specific... what appears to be a work self-published on Amazon under the name "Patriarchy Press"...
posted by the turtle's teeth at 2:15 PM on April 4, 2015 [11 favorites]

I have some sympathy for the "Puppies" argument. As a white, straight, Western man, I can freely speak for my fellow SF readers: we got into this as teenagers because of the spaceships, explosions, and adventure. The SF bit is quite tangential.

Now, sure, there's lots of other stuff. But go and read some Atwood, Tiptree, Miéville: it's great, it addresses real questions about the human condition in the way that pulp "alien robot invasion" rubbish simply doesn't. However, it's fucking miserable and full of rape. I mean, have you read the Atwood MaddAddam series? It's brilliant, classic SF, exploring human societies at breaking point. It's also full of horrible sexual violence.

We don't want to read that. We want to have escapism and fun. We don't care about science: if we did, we wouldn't read "science" fiction that ignored biology, psychology, economics, and indeed physics (there are NO FTL DRIVES. There will NEVER BE FTL DRIVES. They are as scientific as sparkly vampires. Which are cool, by the way, I'm just contrasting with a genre that is "for girls", not "for boys" like SF.)

Really, you could just go through traditional adventures stories and give them SF window-dressing, and we'd love it. You could take the Napoleonic War HORNBLOWER series and replace all the wooden frigates with spaceships, for example, and we'd buy the shit out of it. Oh, wait, someone did, and Wikipedia tells me the series is up to 13 books and some spinoffs!

The science is there to appease our identities as grown-up, Western, post-Enlightenment gentlemen, not actually make us face the realities of what science tells us about how humans behave and the universe works: that's no fun. Robots! Pretty girls! The ability to get in a spaceship and fly away from all the bosses/school bullies/mean co-workers, to somewhere where you are special and important! That's what we want from SF. Not feminism, or science.

So why don't we just say so?

The problem, of course, is that - identity politics again - we're not women, we can't just like something, it has to be Important and Applauded And Recognised. Women can read romance novels quite happily, they don't get all outraged all the time that people don't take "their" escapist genre seriously (or they know it'd be futile, I suspect...). But being white men, our genre has to be accorded respect, even though we don't like lost of the actual good SF writers because they aren't any fun. We're in a corner because the actual good SF - fiction that explores science and the human condition - isn't what we want to read!

So we see white men mucking about with things like awards because we're stuck: our genre is inescapably sexist, heteronormative, Western and silly: when it isn't we don't want to read it, or admit it to the club, because it isn't any fun for us to read. But we won't admit that it's just "adventure stories with robots" because we like to make a claim to universalism (we think of ourselves as the universal norm, after all!) so we paint ourselves into a corner when universal stories - like, ones featuring the majority of humankind instead of us - come along.
posted by alasdair at 2:15 PM on April 4, 2015 [50 favorites]

"The book has a spaceship on the cover, but is it really going to be a story about space exploration and pioneering derring-do? Or is the story merely about racial prejudice and exploitation, with interplanetary or interstellar trappings?"

But the first set was about prejudice and exploitation too ... it just celebrated the winners. Or, you know, were just Christopher Columbus hero stories ... with interstellar trappings.

The "win" for these guys seems to be successfully destroying the Hugo's ability to recognize excellence in SFF, thus driving consumers and media to a competing award with better judgment, thereby successfully further marginalizing and reducing demand for their own He-Man space-boy pulp by undermining the market and highlighting the low quality of its products and the negative PR from being associated with it.

A strange game. No one can win.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 2:17 PM on April 4, 2015 [33 favorites]

More or less, yes. Torgersen lays out his thinking pretty clearly... SFF has gone too far from manly men rescuing dainty girls, is too PC, etc etc.

Did he really just defend writing formulaic predictable works? That entire essay is ridiculous.
posted by jaguar at 2:19 PM on April 4, 2015 [14 favorites]

> "How aware is this guy that he's characterizing his love of sci-fi as a trash binge eating disorder ..."

Also ... Nutty Nuggets.

Nutty. Nuggets.

Was he *trying* to make his imaginary breakfast cereal sound like it is poop flavored?

That's ... not just me, right?
posted by kyrademon at 2:22 PM on April 4, 2015 [26 favorites]

And someone just reminded me that though the Hugo folk have done basically nothing to fix this before it killed two awards categories they had all the time in the world to fix the utter non-problem of Johnathan Ross.
posted by Artw at 2:22 PM on April 4, 2015 [6 favorites]

Thank you for the explanation of the slate, the turtle's teeth. It makes me sad. In the middle of Powell's books sci-fi section is a big column, and on that column is a hand-painted list of all the Hugo award winning novels since the beginning of the awards. I remember wandering in there at age, oh, 17, and saying "wait, four of those books are really good; I should read the rest". And so ever since I've read a couple of Hugo winners a year. Not too fast, I don't want to use all the good sci-fi too quickly. It's a shame to see that legacy subverted by some folks with an unpleasant agenda.
posted by Nelson at 2:22 PM on April 4, 2015 [11 favorites]

I don't know how to read your comment, alasdair. I honestly can't tell if you're defending being insular and narrow minded, or trying to elicit sympathy for it, or being ironic or what.

This is likely a failing of my own, but I'm hoping for a little clarification. I know that's weird to ask for about a comment that's pretty long and descriptive, but yeah. It sounds like you're trying to point out how hard it is to be the dominant culture type and have to accept diversity, and I don't think that's a great point to make. So I'm wondering if that actually is what you're doing or if my reading comprehension has failed me.
posted by shmegegge at 2:25 PM on April 4, 2015 [14 favorites]

Can someone clarify the relationship between the "sad puppies" and "rabid puppies" slates? Is the explicit, use any tactic to win Vox Day group approved of by Torgensen's gang.
posted by Another Fine Product From The Nonsense Factory at 2:26 PM on April 4, 2015

So we see white men mucking about with things like awards because we're stuck: our genre is inescapably sexist, heteronormative, Western and silly: when it isn't we don't want to read it, or admit it to the club, because it isn't any fun for us to read.

Perhaps the problem is the conception of 'fun' as having to come at the expense of others.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 2:28 PM on April 4, 2015 [12 favorites]

As repellant as some of Wright's ideas are, he is actually a Hugo-caliber author. As difficult as that is to believe. Whether these particular work are Hugo caliber I am not sure (though I tend to doubt) as I have not read them.
posted by Justinian at 2:29 PM on April 4, 2015 [3 favorites]

I miss the days when Doctor Who dominance was the most upsetting thing about the nominees.

The 2014 James Tiptree, Jr. award and honor list are also out. They even shared their long list, as "[i]t was a particularly good year for gender-exploration in science fiction and fantasy." Well. (And there's really good stuff on the honor list! I really liked both Lagoon and Elysium.)
posted by mixedmetaphors at 2:30 PM on April 4, 2015 [21 favorites]

Soylent Green is nutty nuggets
posted by fallingbadgers at 2:32 PM on April 4, 2015 [2 favorites]

The Hugo Awards Were Always Political. But Now They're Only Political.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 2:33 PM on April 4, 2015 [6 favorites]

As repellant as some of Wright's ideas are, he is actually a Hugo-caliber author

I suppose that depends on how you define Hugo-caliber. There are a lot of dimensions to writing quality -- plot, characters, setting, writing style, politics -- and there's no rule that I have to consider plot and writing style enough to get past things that are not awards-worthy on other levels.

(That said, I haven't read his work, but I can't see why his horrifying ideas alone couldn't disqualify him from being awards-worthy.)
posted by jeather at 2:34 PM on April 4, 2015 [3 favorites]

This is going to end up biting them in the ass, hard. The gooplegompers just tried to SWAT Randi Harper last night, and the only reason nothing happened is because she made a herculean effort to let the police know what is going on. I don't know why these numbnuts--who are already going to go down in history as misogynist, homophobic, transphobic, racist dinosaurs--are willing to risk their reputations to be proud partners of a hate group that will likely be responsible for assault and/or murder-by-cop. May it be on their heads.
posted by zombieflanders at 2:34 PM on April 4, 2015 [11 favorites]

The Sad Puppies site may be pretending to be about "just enjoying the stories" and "not misogynist, just anti-SJW", but it is full of actual bigotry, misogyny, etc; I read some articles there and it was ususally 4 comments in that rapey threats and gamergate attacks began.
And Wright can write better than most, but is a repellent bigot with all the zealotry of the convert (in his case, to a version of the One True Church, circa 16th century).
posted by librosegretti at 2:39 PM on April 4, 2015 [2 favorites]

Also, the Sad/Rabid Puppies hated that Redshirts -- a book about almost entirely guys who are on a spaceship -- won. I know the problem is that it's by Metafilter's Own Gamma Rabbit, Scalzi, because whatever they say, it isn't about "books which sell a lot but aren't on the ballot (so much YA and urban fantasy)" or "books about spaceships", it's about "books which were written by authors who we approve of", the exact thing they complained about in the past.
posted by jeather at 2:40 PM on April 4, 2015 [44 favorites]

So we see white men mucking about with things like awards because we're stuck: our genre is inescapably sexist, heteronormative, Western and silly: when it isn't we don't want to read it, or admit it to the club, because it isn't any fun for us to read. But we won't admit that it's just "adventure stories with robots" because we like to make a claim to universalism (we think of ourselves as the universal norm, after all!)

I can only speak of me, but I become uncomfortable looking back on the things that I've previously loved once I've become aware of their problematic aspects. While I can enjoy some of them despite their problematic aspects, I can't say that I really want to be a party to the production of new works that continue to unthinkingly promulgate them. In other words, who's the "we" here? And what does it say if you acknowledge that the values espoused by something that you enjoy consuming are abhorrent but that you just don't care?
posted by Going To Maine at 2:41 PM on April 4, 2015 [22 favorites]

I don't know why these numbnuts--who are already going to go down in history as misogynist, homophobic, transphobic, racist dinosaurs--are willing to risk their reputations

That's the point though... they actually think they're right, they're fighting the good fight, etc. And if they convince enough people, they'll be on the winning side. Sure, I think it's unlikely that the more extreme bits of goobergomer are going to take over, but the insidious racist/sexist/homophobic stuff is everywhere--e.g. Indiana this week.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 2:43 PM on April 4, 2015 [2 favorites]

I don't know how to read your comment, alasdair. I honestly can't tell if you're defending being insular and narrow minded, or trying to elicit sympathy for it, or being ironic or what.

I don't intend it as a defence, but an explanation. We benefit from being the dominant culture: it comes at the expense of other cultures, to a greater or lesser extent. We do not wish to be reminded of this in our entertainments, but instead to be reassured that we are good people and that our culture is superior. When SF "fails" to do this we feel betrayed and hostile.

That our culture's genre fiction makes claims to be universalist - the "science" bit - puts us in a particularly cognitively-dissonant position: one way to do this is to assert that the fiction we don't like isn't "really" SF and to attempt to drive it out of our genre classification so it stops annoying us. I suspect this is what we are seeing here.
posted by alasdair at 2:44 PM on April 4, 2015 [14 favorites]

Jesus, guys- why don't you just go and start your own science fiction awards, with blackjack and hookers?
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 2:50 PM on April 4, 2015 [14 favorites]

Did he really just defend writing formulaic predictable works? That entire essay is ridiculous.

I'm kinda a fan of police procedurals like Bones or New Tricks. Comfort-watching. I wouldn't expect them to win any awards, though.

As far as I can see SF is a great big toolbox (spaceships! aliens! time travel!) with the massive advantage that the tools are infinitely duplicable. Having preferences, even campaigning for those preferences... fine. Complaining that other people are using the tools in ways you disapprove of is just... odd.
posted by Leon at 2:51 PM on April 4, 2015 [8 favorites]

After speaking to a friend more involved in fandom than I, I was surprised to find out how few voters there actually are for the Hugo's. This make it's easy, or at least not difficult, to game with only a few hundred people.
posted by beowulf573 at 2:54 PM on April 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

I'm kinda a fan of police procedurals like Bones or New Tricks. Comfort-watching. I wouldn't expect them to win any awards, though.

Watching Midsomer Murders as a proto-David Lynch camp study of British villages and their inept, fascist police officers is pure delight.
posted by Going To Maine at 2:55 PM on April 4, 2015 [6 favorites]

I'm kinda a fan of police procedurals like Bones or New Tricks. Comfort-watching. I wouldn't expect them to win any awards, though.

Me too, and exactly. I definitely read and watch formulaic predictable stuff, but I can't imagine trying to claim any of it is superior to deeply thought-out innovative works. I certainly can't imagine doing so as an author. "My work doesn't make you think!" is not -- or shouldn't be -- a selling point. The fact that he thinks it is a selling point seems a huge indicator of how skewed his thinking is.
posted by jaguar at 3:02 PM on April 4, 2015 [4 favorites]

But Leckie's made it. So at least potentially, the right result will emerge?

Only thanks to Correia getting an untimely flash of self-awareness, it seems. Or possibly (organized or not) anti-Puppy cohesion around Leckie in particular.

Or is the idea that if they could game the nominations, they'll be able to game the ultimate winner?

They've already essentially gamed the ultimate winner in several categories by picking all of the nominees, and if they can prevent an internal schism next year, there's a good chance they'll be able to do that in Best Novel next time around.
posted by Etrigan at 3:06 PM on April 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

ESR?!? OH FFS.

Weird. I'd have thought ESR being relevant would be more alt-history that SF.
posted by mhoye at 3:14 PM on April 4, 2015 [7 favorites]

How hard would it be for an extended "No award" campaign to be conducted for novella, novellette and short story? These assholes have prevented good works from winning, but I see no reason the Hugos need to be completely sullied.
posted by Hactar at 3:15 PM on April 4, 2015 [2 favorites]

People? Have you seen the actual Hugo Award trophy? That's one of the most phallic spaceships I've ever seen. Leave this entire thing to the Rabid Puppies and let's get to work establishing a REAL award for Science Fiction named for somebody other than a magazine editor.
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:17 PM on April 4, 2015

I can't believe they actually packed as much John C Wright as they could into the ballot. They're actually championing this ambulatory fungus because he loudly and publicly hates women.

With GooberGoo, I can 100% believe this.
posted by kafziel at 3:21 PM on April 4, 2015 [4 favorites]

Have you seen the actual Hugo Award trophy?

relevant

via the fast-moving Making Light thread linked above.
posted by hap_hazard at 3:22 PM on April 4, 2015 [4 favorites]

Have you seen the actual Hugo Award trophy?.

I like my syfy like I like my awards: hard, shiny and a minimum use of lines.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 3:25 PM on April 4, 2015 [3 favorites]

Can someone clarify the relationship between the "sad puppies" and "rabid puppies" slates? Is the explicit, use any tactic to win Vox Day group approved of by Torgensen's gang.

Torgersen seems fine with them:

Larry and Vox ruffle feathers. I get it. If you simply can’t get over the fact that Larry originated Sad Puppies, or that Vox is running a similar effort called Rabid Puppies, nor can you see that Sad Puppies 3 is its own thing . . . well, like I said, those who’d not be inclined to give us the benefit of the doubt, would probably find some other reason to bitch. Even if Larry and Vox were entirely absent from the equation this year.

posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 3:25 PM on April 4, 2015

Here's a suggestion: collapse the short fiction categories. That'd remove a lot of confusion from the ballot and concentrate nominations on a more manageable set.
posted by Artw at 3:27 PM on April 4, 2015

"Jesus, guys- why don't you just go and start your own science fiction awards, with blackjack and hookers?"

I am just a crotchety old man or does anyone else think this is much ado about nothing? And my "nothing" I mean the Hugo Awards themselves. I've been reading SFF since the '70s and I've never once bought a book because it was nominated for or won a Hugo. I just never could take any type of industry awards seriously because they always involve politicking, promotion and general handwashing/backscratching. Every time I think I might pay attention to some type of award I remember that Jethro Tull beat out Metallica for a Grammy for best Heavy Metal album and I come to my senses. Besides, if these guys created their own awards they would be hard pressed to create a more phallic trophy than the Hugo without chrome plating an actual dildo.
posted by MikeMc at 3:29 PM on April 4, 2015 [8 favorites]

Although I preferred the Leckie, a lot if people with good taste preferred Goblin Emperor and neither would be a bad win.

Also I think that a truly excellent comfort read -- which the Addison is for those people; I have heard it called competency porn -- is hard to write and just as worthwhile as innovation, and often more memorable.
posted by jeather at 3:33 PM on April 4, 2015 [6 favorites]

Also maybe the whole associate member thing needs a good hard look.
posted by Artw at 3:33 PM on April 4, 2015

In my view, the saddest part of this isn't that a slate of ideologically aligned works got nominated, but that this has essentially brought the concept of party politics into an arena where it was previously lacking, and actively frowned upon.

Going forward, I'm not sure how we'll manage to work out ways to prevent this form of politicization from spreading -- changing the voter pool is difficult, as it's linked to the cost of a Worldcon supporting membership, which in turn is effectively legislated to be about 1/4 the price of a full membership; $40 in recent years. Unlinking the voter pool from that would be a significant change for the Hugos, no matter how it's done.

And oh, in case you were wanting to help any such change come along, to do so you'll need to attend in person the World Science Fiction Society's business meeting at a Worldcon, which this year is in Spokane, Washington.

In other words, this is not a problem that'll be solved easily.
posted by eemeli at 3:35 PM on April 4, 2015 [4 favorites]

Reading over all the horrible racism/sexism/etc. The best way to fight back is to champion the writers we love and appreciate who do write more culturally diverse fiction. To support them, talk about them, share their stories, buy their books. It's not difficult to lift up people you care about. Make an example of the good so others know its out there and available.

Absolutely! Contemporary literary discourse is pathetically beholden to award culture. Great books don't need the validation of an award to be read - they just need passionate readers championing them. A healthy, diverse, democratic literary culture should more or less ignore the silliness of awards altogether. I just wish newspapers could learn to write about interesting progressive SF on its own merits, not just when an award makes it 'newsworthy'.
posted by RokkitNite at 3:37 PM on April 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

I've been reading SFF since the '70s and I've never once bought a book because it was nominated for or won a Hugo.

It's totally possible that you have never personally been influenced by awards, but they do kind of matter for marketing. For instance, libraries buy stuff that wins (or even is nominated for) awards, and bookstores often put award-winners on a table or display. Publishers will be more inclined to put money and other sorts of muscle behind award winners. Awards generate buzz, even if people aren't necessarily aware that's why the buzz is there.

I absolutely agree, though, that everyone should continue (and step up) their efforts to talk about books they love.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 3:41 PM on April 4, 2015 [18 favorites]

The sad things is that if they weren't such ass-butts I might be able to agree with (or at least debate) some of their points. I look back over Hugo awards of past years and I generally think to myself "Damn, those are some classics of SF" and perhaps the winners now aren't quite as good. Or maybe I'll be proven wrong in 20 years. Or, you can look at the Hugo awards and say that good writers are being overlooked, but it's not like that hasn't been the case in the past (Douglas Adams? Terry Pratchett? Iain Mother Fucking Banks?) and it's not clear that politics had anything to do with it (Adams, Pratchett, and MF-Banks).

But there are two problems. First, they are total dicks about it. Second, the sad puppies slate just wasn't that good. I thought that The Chaplain's Legacy from last year was okay. Vox Day's contribution, OTOH, was just shit writing. I wasn't truly blown away by any of the short story candidates, but his was terrible. The rest (of the ones I read) were better, but still weren't all that impressive.
posted by It's Never Lurgi at 3:43 PM on April 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

>Have you seen the actual Hugo Award trophy?

Now isn't it up to the con committee to actually design the awards given out?

I'm picturing a Flesh Gordon-esque dildo ship on a bed of brown nutty nuggets.
posted by Catblack at 3:46 PM on April 4, 2015 [2 favorites]

The Vox Day thing from last year was shocking suprised-this-got-published* garbage.

* I assume it did, self published is out, right?
posted by Artw at 3:49 PM on April 4, 2015

Now isn't it up to the con committee to actually design the awards given out?

Just the base; the Rocket is the same. I suppose they could present it plowing into the ground or something.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 3:49 PM on April 4, 2015 [2 favorites]

Speaking as someone who started as a teen reading SF mainly written by white men and full of "spaceships, explosions, and adventure," I would argue that the SF was not "tangential." I read it in large part for the sense of awesome wonder and discovery, the way plot and ideas were inextricable, twists and revelations one and the same. It was a straight shoot from Niven to Gibson to LeGuin, Delaney, Tiptree, Mieville. Each was doing exactly what I'd originally gotten into SF for: blowing your mind, upending the world as you knew it, and delivering discovery in a gripping plot full of strange new things and ideas. One naturally outgrew Niven after finishing his stuff and wanting more. The idea of going back in time, or settling into some deliberately self-stultified genre that replicates indefinitely what what white male writers in the 50s-70s were up to would be anathema to what I as a teen was after. The whole point of the "nutty nuggets" I loved as a teen was that you never knew what would be in each box, and in fact the best ones redefined what "nutty nuggets" even meant. Expecting the same exact experience decade after decade is not just immature, it's a bizarre repudiation of everything that SF is most fundamentally about, and I would argue, a repudiation of what a lot of the people who espouse it actually got into SF for in the first place.
posted by chortly at 3:53 PM on April 4, 2015 [75 favorites]

This is the first year that I didn't much like ANY of the Best Novel nominees that I've read. I liked Ancillary Justice but Ancillary Sword didn't really deliver for me. I think it's strange (and probably an artifact of the bloc nomination slate shenanigans) that Gibson's The Peripheral didn't make it. It was easily my favorite eligible novel (followed by cstross's Rhesus Chart).

I hate being goaded into participating in a process that is needlessly polluted by politics, but these assholes are trying to bring Gamergaters in to crash the party. If that isn't worth $40 for me to throw out a lot of NO AWARD votes in response, I'm not sure what is.
posted by chimaera at 3:57 PM on April 4, 2015 [9 favorites]

Absolutely! Contemporary literary discourse is pathetically beholden to award culture. Great books don't need the validation of an award to be read - they just need passionate readers championing them.

I absolutely agree, though, that everyone should continue (and step up) their efforts to talk about books they love.

Yes! Yes! Yes! I understand the Hugo being the SF marketing equivalent of "Winner of X Academy Awards!" but man, nothing sells me on a book, or movie, more than hearing great things about it from people whose opinion I value. If the award and the word of mouth agree then all the better. This whole "puppy" thing has taken the award from marketing to farce which does a disservice to authors and fans alike.
posted by MikeMc at 4:03 PM on April 4, 2015 [3 favorites]

John C Wright is a phenomenal writer. Others on this slate are not. There's no need to trash his work, much of which is definitely Hugo level, just because of the other shit you don't like about him. That's how this whole mess started in the first place.
posted by corb at 4:04 PM on April 4, 2015

Thank you, chortly, for writing exactly the comment I was coming down here to make. I'm not sure who the "we" in alasdair's comment is. But this particular woman who got into SF as a very young teenager was never in it for the adventure to the exclusion of the SF. Neither is more important than the other to me. I loved those white straight male writers and their spaceships, sure - but they were never all I loved and the way you describe it is not SF as I recognize it or have ever experienced it.

SF is not "for boys." SF is not exclusively for you. SF is for everyone. SF is mine. It has always been mine from the first SF novel I picked up. More importantly, it belongs to today's teenage girls, and will belong to today's little girls when they're a bit older, and part of SF belonging to me is a responsibility and a desire to keep it for them when they are ready to discover it. I might cede it for my own sake because I'm getting old and tired of fighting the same damn fights, but for their sake, I will never, ever cede SF to the sole care of boys.

But hey, the flip side of this? Fantasy isn't "for girls"! If you don't know that yet, then I am happy to tell you there is a world of amazing fantasy books out there. You can have them. The young men in your life can have them. Those worlds are for everyone too. Boy, are you in for a treat.
posted by Stacey at 4:11 PM on April 4, 2015 [48 favorites]

Entering the Lists -- which nominees were from both Puppies Lists, as well as ones on neither.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 4:12 PM on April 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

How is The Goblin Emperor? I guess I better read it because otherwise it looks like a big fat NO AWARD kind of year.
posted by Justinian at 4:13 PM on April 4, 2015

How is The Goblin Emperor?

LOVED IT. I read it twice in six months. It's lovely. Full of interesting world-building and beautiful character moments, and human warmth (although none of the characters are actually human).

What it does that's so original is hard for me to pin down, but it's really a wonderful little novel, and nothing like the author's other work (it's no secret she published a number of other well-respected novels as Sarah Monette).
posted by suelac at 4:23 PM on April 4, 2015 [8 favorites]

I want to point out that these puppy lists are just things that some misogynist toolbags like. Just because a work is on the list does not mean that it is necessarily bad, or that the work's author is a misogynist toolbag as well. Nor does it mean that the work would not have appeared on the Hugo short list without the help of Torgensen and company. For example, Skin Game by Jim Butcher is excellent, as are Guardians of the Galaxy and the Lego Movie (although what that last has to do with a science fiction award escapes me).
posted by JDHarper at 4:25 PM on April 4, 2015 [3 favorites]

We don't want to read that. We want to have escapism and fun. We don't care about science

With all due respect, what do you mean "we", kemosabe?

Science fiction, going back to its roots, is about scientific advances, challenging ideas, profound philosophical themes, provocative satire, boundary-pushing exploration, and diversity. It's past time for that heritage to be embraced again.

The so-called "Golden Age of Sci-Fi" of pulp magazine exploits and paperback adventures was only a phase in the genre. Sure, it was fun while it lasted, but it's not to everyone's taste by a long chalk. Today, though, the Sad Puppies are clinging to it like adolescents who refuse to grow up and instead act out in antisocial misbehaviour.

Meanwhile, this year's most-nominated Hugo author is the guy who completely lost his shit over the Legend of Korra, which ended with {gasp} two female characters holding hands.
posted by Doktor Zed at 4:28 PM on April 4, 2015 [22 favorites]

You know, the other thing I will say - these guys do it most obnoxious, but they're not doing it first. Before them came pushes to get more diverse Hugos. They have been political for years. It's just that recently it has evolved from a cold war to a shooting war.
posted by corb at 4:30 PM on April 4, 2015

John C Wright is a phenomenal writer. Others on this slate are not. There's no need to trash his work,

... no one here has trashed his work.
posted by shmegegge at 4:37 PM on April 4, 2015 [6 favorites]

I remember back when "this is why we can't have nice things" was something I was more prone to post as a joke.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 4:40 PM on April 4, 2015 [10 favorites]

these guys do it most obnoxious, but they're not doing it first

I haven't seen anything that suggests past efforts to manipulate the entire slate in the way we've just seen. I'd love to see a link about that though if you have one.
posted by gerryblog at 4:43 PM on April 4, 2015 [15 favorites]

First of all, my thanks to Monsieur Caution for an extraordinary list of fiction, only some of which I had heard of or read. More great fodder for the digital reading folder.

It's hard to believe that in this century we have this many spoiled little pencil-dicks that are afraid of ladies and POC. What the hell kinds of kids have people been raising in the last twenty years. The Hugos have an enormous mess to clean up and frankly I don't know how they will go about it. But this shit has to stop and stop now. We can't afford to let these He-Man-Woman-Hating little rascals do this again. Damn, I've got a lot of "no award" votes to give this year.

Another thing, if they get this riled up about getting vagina in their science fiction, what kind of vitriol and bile will these children be spewing next year when Clinton makes her run for the presidency? If the last two terms have brought all the racists in America to the boiling point, it's scary to contemplate what we're going to see with a woman in the White House.
posted by Ber at 4:45 PM on April 4, 2015 [11 favorites]

At least one author, Matthew David Surridge, turned down a nomination for Best Fan Writer because he was on the SP slate and wrote an essay about it.
posted by graymouser at 4:53 PM on April 4, 2015 [25 favorites]

Speaking as an old white guy, I liked SF as a kid because it was so different. I stumbled onto The Female Man by Russ and had my mind blown. Give me interesting stories about beings, human or otherwise, who think differently than I do and I'm a happy guy. Give me alien contact. Give me Ursula K. Le Guin. Give me Dune. Give me Ian Banks.

I've always hated awards for art. The Grameys, Oscars, all of them. Add Hugos to that list.

Just tell me about some good tales (without trolls elves or wizards) to read or find on Audible. No Hugo award required.
posted by cccorlew at 4:56 PM on April 4, 2015 [3 favorites]

Before them came pushes to get more diverse Hugos.

Which is rather different from a push to actively exclude non-boy's-own-adventure stories.
posted by Etrigan at 4:57 PM on April 4, 2015 [18 favorites]

From Vox (I know but I seek clarification):

"...Mieville isn't a pinkshirt, he's a bloody redshirt and I have repeatedly stated that he is one of the three best SF writers writing today. Charles Stross is a pinkshirt and I have repeatedly praised a number of his works."

WTF are pink and red shirts? I assume this to be Hugo related but searches only lead me to fine selection of Hugo Boss menswear.
posted by MikeMc at 5:00 PM on April 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

Just because a work is on the list does not mean that it is necessarily bad, or that the work's author is a misogynist toolbag as well.

At least for the Sad Puppies list, all the authors agreed to be on it (Torgensen neglected to check with three of them and two were subsequently removed.) So they at least agree with the concept of the list.

these guys do it most obnoxious, but they're not doing it first

They're stepping it up from politics to party politics.

WTF are pink and red shirts?

As in "Better Dead than Red." Liberals, in other words.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 5:02 PM on April 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

WTF are pink and red shirts?

Think Better Red than Dead; the post is claiming that Mieville is a communist and Stross a socialist.
posted by suelac at 5:02 PM on April 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

He's pretty astute, noticing that China Mieville is left-wing.
posted by dng at 5:07 PM on April 4, 2015 [55 favorites]

So I can't be the first person to see the irony in the idea that these sad puppy guys are creators and fans of science fiction, a genre about the future, but are hopelessly stuck in the past.
posted by octothorpe at 5:10 PM on April 4, 2015 [21 favorites]

"Think Better Red than Dead; the post is claiming that Mieville is a communist and Stross a socialist."

Oh for fuck's sake. I thought they might be some kind of "counter-puppy" ballots or something. Thanks for the clarification.
posted by MikeMc at 5:10 PM on April 4, 2015

Weirdly the comics category, usually a Hugon backwater, is largely untouched by this and actually kind of awesome.
posted by Artw at 5:10 PM on April 4, 2015

Isn't Mieville a proud communist? Previously on Metafilter: Fifty Sci-Fi and Fantasy Works Every Socialist Should Read (by China Mieville)
posted by 445supermag at 5:10 PM on April 4, 2015 [9 favorites]

Weirdly the comics category, usually a Hugon backwater, is largely untouched by this and actually kind of awesome.

It's full of nominations that are kind of obvious, but obvious specifically because they're so freaking awesome. And as an added bonus many (paging Ms. Marvel!) would give Vox Day's crowd an aneurysm.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 5:13 PM on April 4, 2015 [2 favorites]

Vox Day uses "pink" slightly differently than just "liberal" or "socialist":

Pink SF primarily concerns a) choosing between two lovers, b) being true to yourself, or c) enacting ex post facto revenge upon the badthinkers and meanies who made the author feel bad about herself at school. Pink SF is about feelings rather than ideas or actions.

Pink SF is an invasion. Pink SF is a cancer. Pink SF is a parasitical perversion. Pink SF is the little death that kills every literary subgenre. And Pink SF isn't limited to SF; there is a very good reason the Sports Guy's meme "Women Ruin Everything" applies so perfectly to most forms of literature.

"Red" is Deeper Pink.
posted by Etrigan at 5:13 PM on April 4, 2015 [11 favorites]

This is going to come out at some point, so I might as well say it here and now: I declined a Hugo nomination for this year’s Best Fan Writer award. I think it’s only fair to the people who voted for me to say why. Be warned, this is going to take a while.
posted by Artw at 5:15 PM on April 4, 2015 [7 favorites]

Well, I suppose Vox Day has been called a blackshirt enough, I guess some aspect of that stuck.
posted by Artw at 5:16 PM on April 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

China Miéville is in fact a revolutionary socialist, coming from the Tony Cliff wing of heterodox Trotskyism (he was in the British SWP up until recently and is now in the American ISO). For outsiders, that current supports Lenin and Trotsky but thinks the USSR after 1938 became a form of capitalism, and that none of the other "communist" states ever stopped being capitalist, just in a different form.
posted by graymouser at 5:19 PM on April 4, 2015 [8 favorites]

Yeah, that invasion, parasitical perversion, little death stuff is just... something else. I guess there's something to be said for putting your misogyny out there in the open, rather than hiding behind plausibly deniable dog-whistles. Or maybe the plausible deniability is that he's the Rabid Puppy slate, and the other Puppies can claim not to be on quite the same page as him.

(Is it bad that I keep wanting to call them the Sick Puppies?)

Are the Hugos presented in person? Because I don't think I would want to be in the same room as a guy who talked like that.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 5:21 PM on April 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

I'm making a SF comic literally titled "Puppy Space Pirates" and it's probably going to be ruined by this Sad/Rabid/Whatever Puppy stuff.
posted by hellojed at 5:23 PM on April 4, 2015 [2 favorites]

I think you should reclaim puppies for the forces of good. Don't let these jerks ruin puppies! Look, puppies!
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 5:25 PM on April 4, 2015 [17 favorites]

Imagine looking at the literature of the world in all its forms throughout all of history and thinking "women have ruined this".
posted by dng at 5:26 PM on April 4, 2015 [29 favorites]

With these shitlords, it's more like looking at the entire history of everything and thinking "women (and gays and people of colour) have ruined this."
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 5:27 PM on April 4, 2015 [2 favorites]

Yeah, that invasion, parasitical perversion, little death stuff...

And here I always thought "little death" or "La petite mort" was a good thing...
posted by MikeMc at 5:27 PM on April 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

Etrigan, I don't think it's that. I think it's more, hmmm...how to explain this...

So it's not that science fiction about different races or genders or sexualities haven't been part of the genre since the Before Times. It has - look at Heinlein, or Asimov, or a host of others. Hell, Heinlein even had essentially a trans character. But when these stories came up, it was obvious the authors were just playing with ideas. These things didn't matter deeply or personally, and honestly because of that, they didn't permeate very deep. The character was solo and their world was...very normative. It didn't disturb the world consensus. Same with diverse authors - they generally wrote roughly similar stuff as the others, and were welcomed in the boy's club. And everyone was congenial and friendly and went to the same parties and didn't rock the boat. And the old boys never said "We don't want those guys here." They were the beloved elders and could expect to progress along a track to eccentricity.

And then came new people who were pissed off at the patronizing boy's club, and who didn't care for them as mentors and didn't want to go to their parties or pander to their fans. And they didn't just want a token PoC - they wanted a world that was a big old Fuck You to the old lions.Often because of those very old lions. And so they wrote explicitly political Fuck Yous, and called the banners, and said, "The world is ours now, fuck your gatekeepers. "

And there's a lot that's admirable there. But what's explicitly called for is the extinction of the world of the old lions. And it is not really surprising that they're fighting back.

But it's not about keeping everyone different out. It's a fight, more than anything, about who's going to be in charge and who will get to shape fandom.
posted by corb at 5:33 PM on April 4, 2015 [5 favorites]

That people think they could or should be in charge of fandom is terrifying in itself.
posted by dng at 5:39 PM on April 4, 2015 [7 favorites]

But it's not about keeping everyone different out. It's a fight, more than anything, about who's going to be in charge and who will get to shape fandom.

The fight over who's going to be in charge is explicitly about keeping everyone different out unless you're straight, white, cis, male.

And there's a lot that's admirable there. But what's explicitly called for is the extinction of the world of the old lions

Yes, because that world is sexist, racist, and homophobic. Good bloody riddance.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 5:40 PM on April 4, 2015 [42 favorites]

I cannot imagine Vox Day without picturing him responding like Donald Sutherland at the end of Body Snatchers every time an unapologetic woman approaches.
posted by delfin at 5:40 PM on April 4, 2015 [13 favorites]

So these People Who Have Fans believe they have every right to dictate Fandom, i.e. Who and What Their Fans Are. Or is this because they don't have any Fans who aren't sycophants or groupies?
posted by oneswellfoop at 5:42 PM on April 4, 2015

corb: "And so they wrote explicitly political Fuck Yous, and called the banners, and said, "The world is ours now, fuck your gatekeepers. " And there's a lot that's admirable there. But what's explicitly called for is the extinction of the world of the old lions. "

So what you're saying is, if the oppressed and marginalized had JUST BEEN MORE POLITE about how they disliked being oppressed and marginalized, we wouldn't be having this problem?

These writers are mostly Baby Boomers or younger. (I have found one born in 1940; the rest are younger by my unscientific quick googling). The oldest Baby Boomers were in college when Martin Luther King, Jr., was shot. They're not some "old lions" who grew up in the 30s and fought in WWII and went to segregated schools and have never quite adjusted to how the world has changed. Brown v. Board was 1954. The majority of these authors had not yet been born. These are people who grew up in a world where racism and sexism were already fallen apart -- or already HAD fallen apart. They have NEVER lived in a world where women don't go to college, or where "separate but equal" was okay. They are not people who are confused because the present they live in is too different from the world they grew up in; they are people explicitly demanding an oppressive, unequal past come back. "Vox Day" was born in 1968. 1968! He has literally no excuse! This is a guy who watched footage of Bull Connor in history class and apparently said, "Fuck this equality shit! I'm on Bull Connor's side!"

The world of the old lions was already extinct. Apparently what they want to do is buy up all the land the lions lived on prior to 1968 and turn it into a nature preserve with reintroduced bigots, to protect the species from extinction.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 6:00 PM on April 4, 2015 [117 favorites]

And then came new people who were pissed off at the patronizing boy's club

Let's rephrase that as "people who were tired of being literally ignored as writer, readers, and characters in the field; of being manhandled at conventions by the Old Lions; of being used as plot-tokens and pieces of exotic color in fiction; and of being verbally abused, talked over, and ignored in person and online."

The "patronizing boys' club" did far worse than patronize. And don't mistake it: there is significant philosophical overlap between the Sad Puppies and the Gamergaters--and in fact, actual overlap, since Torgerson reached out to them to punish women and people of color for daring to win Hugos in the last five years.

Anyway, after reading this kind of bullshit, I'm about ready to burn the whole thing down, myself. No women are mentioned: not even Rowling gets a name-check. Fuck that shit. (Which is why #womenwritefantasy is trending on Twitter.
posted by suelac at 6:01 PM on April 4, 2015 [28 favorites]

I look back over Hugo awards of past years and I generally think to myself "Damn, those are some classics of SF" and perhaps the winners now aren't quite as good. Or maybe I'll be proven wrong in 20 years.

Eh, I look at the same thing and see a lot of Heinlein that's kind of embarrassing and a couple of mercy-wins to Asimov because they couldn't give him one for Foundation, and some like Fountains of Paradise that are Clarke at his most dullest, and others like Startide Rising that just don't hold up.

And they didn't just want a token PoC - they wanted a world that was a big old Fuck You to the old lions.Often because of those very old lions. And so they wrote explicitly political Fuck Yous, and called the banners, and said, "The world is ours now, fuck your gatekeepers. "

I dare you to state which of the Hugo novels from the past 20 years have been explicitly political fuck-yous to the old lions. I double-dog-dare you.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 6:06 PM on April 4, 2015 [25 favorites]

For all these people moan on about Heinlein not a one of them is worth one of his toenails, and there is no doubt that he would despise them.
posted by Artw at 6:13 PM on April 4, 2015 [19 favorites]

My novella nomination would be William Preston's "Each in His Prison, Thinking of the Key" (Asimov's April/May 2014). It's part of his extraordinary revision of the Doc Savage narrative that (imperfectly) redresses the egregious racism & sexism of the 30s pulps.
posted by audi alteram partem at 6:15 PM on April 4, 2015 [4 favorites]

Oh, fuck these total idiots. Usually I refrain from commenting when I don't have anything more constructive to say but how completely vapid and dumb they are.
posted by stoneandstar at 6:21 PM on April 4, 2015 [2 favorites]

The thing that really gets up my nose about Torgensen's little screed is this bit:

Which is not to say you can’t make a good SF/F book about racism, or sexism, or gender issues, or sex, or whatever other close-to-home topic you want. But for Pete’s sake, why did we think it was a good idea to put these things so much on permanent display, that the stuff which originally made the field attractive in the first place — To Boldly Go Where No One Has Gone Before! — is pushed to the side? Or even absent altogether?

This is a man who is seemingly unaware that Star Trek (embraced and defended by fucking Martin Luther King) had an open pro-integrationist/anti-racist/liberal utopian worldview. How the fuck did he miss the glaring "this is a blindingly obvious metaphor" episodes of TOS? It was only, like MOST OF THEM.

Grrrrr.
posted by Myca at 6:29 PM on April 4, 2015 [64 favorites]

I'm curious what the Puppies' next move is. If they don't narrow their focus further, especially in categories where they have every entry, they risk diffusing their vote. Particularly since those opposed have a No Award option to coalesce around.

OTOH, this doesn't bode well for categories like Best Graphic Story, where they have only one.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 6:34 PM on April 4, 2015

I'm highly amused that Larry Correia, the originator of the Sad Puppies slate, didn't make the cut.

He did make the cut. They advised him of his nomination before the announcement and he declined it. His nom went to the next person on the list.

I'm buying in, in order to vote "No Award" in most categories.
posted by ten pounds of inedita at 6:34 PM on April 4, 2015

How the fuck did he miss the glaring "this is a blindingly obvious metaphor" episodes of TOS? It was only, like MOST OF THEM.

I suspect Torgensen is smart enough to know that Roddenberry's Trek espoused humanist values. But this whole enterprise is about taking the (surface-level) language of the excluded and turning them to serve those who are already included. "We just want a seat at the table," et cetera. Casting Trek as a conservative icon that the scary boogeywomen are gonna take away is just another tactic to serve that strategy.
posted by Banknote of the year at 6:39 PM on April 4, 2015 [6 favorites]

Pink SF is an invasion. Pink SF is a cancer. Pink SF is a parasitical perversion. Pink SF is the little death that kills every literary subgenre. And Pink SF isn't limited to SF

Jesus.

Um.

Yup, that'll sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.

For all these people moan on about Heinlein not a one of them is worth one of his toenails, and there is no doubt that he would despise them.

Too right, Artw. Heinlein had his faults, but he was humane.
posted by Leon at 6:42 PM on April 4, 2015 [11 favorites]

NK Jemisin's Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, which seemed very much a "fuck you and the things you love" book.

And so? I didn't get that from the book, although I didn't love it as much as many of my friends did. I don't think there's anything wrong in saying, "This field doesn't appear to respect or value me or the things I love, and I'm going to write something that includes me and the things I love." What's wrong with that, exactly?

It's not like she then ran a coordinated campaign to make sure that ONLY books she approved of got nominated for awards. Choosing to prioritize stories with characters of color isn't the same as shitting on half of the readership.
posted by suelac at 6:50 PM on April 4, 2015 [24 favorites]

suelac: That article is amazing. I realize it's just clickbait masquerading as real cultural criticism. Given the next season coming up, I assume it was thrown together quickly. But it's so obviously just the list of fantasy authors the writer happens to have read that aren't the subject (GRRM) and are famous enough to be recognized. Rowling, course, doesn't get mentioned by name because her work is "just" children's fiction (as if a lot of Gaiman's work isn't also). It's pretty telling, though, that C.S. Lewis IS mentioned (despite also being a children's author) but then he's more acceptable to the old guard. Sigh.
posted by R343L at 6:50 PM on April 4, 2015 [3 favorites]

I loved Jemisin's' Hundred Thousand Kingdoms and don't see it as so harsh as "f you and all that you love", though. Like a lot of Robert Charles Wilson's books, the world building is just amazing and (also like RCW), Jemisin doesn't bother to make it all "make sense" together. The world isn't tidy and there are contradictions (including an unreliable narrator!) It's pretty refreshing when so much of fantasy & scifi is pretty straightforward (at least in terms of knowing what is going on and who is a bad guy and who's good.)
posted by R343L at 6:53 PM on April 4, 2015 [6 favorites]

I remember being deeply disappointed by NK Jemisin's Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

Not a Hugo winner, though I should have been clear that was what I meant by "Hugo novel." I would think anyone familiar with the Hugos would have to stop being bothered that something just got nominated relatively early in their reading "career."
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 6:54 PM on April 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

[Correia] did make the cut. They advised him of his nomination before the announcement and he declined it. His nom went to the next person on the list.

Do you know why? I tried looking it up myself, but then I ended up reading his blog and gave up after too many persecution complex posts.
posted by Banknote of the year at 6:58 PM on April 4, 2015 [3 favorites]

He said it was because he didn't want to expose the Puppies to criticism that the whole thing was just his own self-aggrandizement.
posted by Etrigan at 7:04 PM on April 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

At least one author, Matthew David Surridge, turned down a nomination for Best Fan Writer because he was on the SP slate and wrote an essay about it.

OK, Matthew David Surridge says he has only written a couple of stories, but one of them is "The Word of Azrael," collected in one of Rich Horton's anthologies. And it's one of my favorite stories of the past decade--condensing pretty much every sword & sorcery plot into a weird novella in a classic style (let's say somewhere in the same quadrant as Dunsany/HPL/Vance/et al.). A brief excerpt gives a fair idea what I mean, but it's better at full length. So I was delighted to hear he would turn this down, and his response is pretty epic. Thank you for linking it.
posted by Monsieur Caution at 7:04 PM on April 4, 2015 [13 favorites]

I can only hope that these pathetic and disgusting dudes are hammering the nails into the coffins of their writing careers.

Now might be a good time to drop some links to the "Women Destroy Science Fiction" anthology, the soon-to-be-release "Queers Destroy Science Fiction" anthology, and a social justice science fiction anthology called "Octavia's Brood" that just came out last month!

Women Destroy SF

Queers Destroy SF

Octavia's Brood: Social Justice SF
posted by feralscientist at 7:09 PM on April 4, 2015 [41 favorites]

You could take the Napoleonic War HORNBLOWER series and replace all the wooden frigates with spaceships, for example, and we'd buy the shit out of it. Oh, wait, someone did, and Wikipedia tells me the series is up to 13 books and some spinoffs!

I assume this is a reference to David Weber's Honor Harrington series (unless there are two Hornblower-in-space series? That is certainly not impossible...), and while it is certainly, and I think self-consciously, somewhat lowbrow, space-doesn't-actually-work-this-way SF—I mean at one point in the series the spacefaring civilization that is a transparent stand-in for France has a revolution, and the demagogue's name is, and I am not making this up, Rob S. Pierre—it's not a total Gamergate Special, either. The main character is female, for starters, which ought to bar it from their consideration right there.

I've not read any of the Sad Puppy candidate books, but if I were to imagine what I suspect Gamergater types want in their SF, I'd think that it's more along the lines of John Ringo than David Weber.
posted by Kadin2048 at 7:17 PM on April 4, 2015 [7 favorites]

Because the Nutty Nuggets they grew to love in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, were not the same Nutty Nuggets being proffered in the 2000s, and beyond.

It's been the 2000s for 15 years now. So the standard Young Reader who discovered SciFi at 13 is now 28. The Reader that started in 1990 is now 38. This is Kids Off My Lawn shit.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 7:17 PM on April 4, 2015 [13 favorites]

As Surridge points out the most embarrassingly dumb thing about these slates is that they're not even trying to say that, in Social Justicey SF, the writing is bad and that they don't deserve to win this prestigious literary award. They specifically reject literary quality as the number 1 criteria. It's like "We only want lame hack retro garbage! No weirdos." So if you're on the list you're either insulted or you're comfortable with being well known for your lack of depth. Congrats!
posted by Potomac Avenue at 7:19 PM on April 4, 2015 [17 favorites]

At least Robert Sawyer didn't get nominated again. So we have that going for us, which is nice.
posted by Justinian at 7:19 PM on April 4, 2015 [2 favorites]

This is Kids Off My Lawn shit

no, it's more like this. On multiple levels, come to think of it.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 7:21 PM on April 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

it's not a total Gamergate Special, either

No it isn't, it's just excruciatingly tedious at this point.

Though Weber does apparently still think it's clever to keep naming bad guys after the Clintons. Dude, it's been 25 years. moveon.org
posted by Justinian at 7:21 PM on April 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

I just want to speak up here to contest the idea that SF written by/featuring women, POC, transpeople, etc., can't be fun. What? Yes, some of it (Octavia Butler for ex) can be extremly grim stuff. But Ursula LeGuin has written many funny stories. Connie Willis' stories are almost always funny. Suzie McKee Charnas' story "Boobs" deals with sexism but is also blackly humorous about the ways a girl who turns into a werewolf might take her revenge on her tormenters. I know there are others out there I'm just not thinking of. But if you're afraid to read women in SF because you think it's just all too depressing, you are making the wrong assumption.
posted by emjaybee at 7:22 PM on April 4, 2015 [31 favorites]

I mean it's crazy crazy crazy to me that we somehow feel we have to defend non-white guy Science Fiction as if it's some newcomer to the scene. As a reader it's always seemed like SF was the place where alternative perspectives were preferred, where every kind of person was welcome and encouraged to contribute, that was the whole point. Maybe there was a brief period of manly alien thumping but even Heinlein got freaky by the 70s. The world of imagination is endless--true fans of that freedom have always been welcoming to new voices exploring new spaces. Whatever pure tradition these assholes think they're defending I don't believe that it actually exists. At least not in books, which is the only medium worth caring about anyway because The Avengers doesn't give a fuck about winning a Hugo.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 7:34 PM on April 4, 2015 [24 favorites]

Delany's Babel-17, which is like shooting up beat poetry while downing shots of Flash Gordon with a bisexual starship captain of Chinese ancestry and a black military commander is older than Vox Day.

I think that "Pink SF" would likely exclude many of the classics of the field, especially the entire field of dystopian science fiction where resistance to the state comes from a need to be true to one's self.

But I've never gotten the defensive idea that these stories are about "f-you and all you love." Not with Karen Lord explicitly namedropping Bradbury.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 7:38 PM on April 4, 2015 [13 favorites]

unless there are two Hornblower-in-space series? That is certainly not impossible...

I think the reference is to the Nick Seafort books, which FWIU are pretty much Hornblower in Space.

The Honor books seem to be playing with Hornblower (gender-bending, etc.)
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 7:40 PM on April 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

Yeah, I don't think this is about the "old lions" at all. For one thing, the old lions themselves still seem to be pretty well regarded; Isaac Asimov died with his reputation intact (at least at the time) and with one of the few remaining SF magazines named after him, despite this; Harlan Ellison still has fans, despite this. As Eyebrows McGee says above, it's really not a generational thing; in terms of anecdata, one of the most reactionary (not just merely conservative) SF fans I know is nearly a decade younger than me.
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:44 PM on April 4, 2015 [6 favorites]

It's like "We only want lame hack retro garbage! No weirdos." So if you're on the list you're either insulted or you're comfortable with being well known for your lack of depth.

The way I'm reading it (I've been reading some blogs to try and keep from chewing my nails over the Badger game) is: "If we don't do something the Hugo will be awarded solely based on the author's SJW credentials regardless of quality." Apparently the Red Guards led by Teresa Nielsen Hayden are hell bent on destroying the Four Olds of SFF (Whiteness, Maleness, Heterosexuality and Religious Belief).
posted by MikeMc at 7:47 PM on April 4, 2015 [2 favorites]

Behold a Pale Horse, indeed.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 7:49 PM on April 4, 2015 [5 favorites]

I've been reading some blogs to try and keep from chewing my nails over the Badger game

The what now?
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 7:49 PM on April 4, 2015

In was reasonable sense is TNH not one of the old guards these days? Seems like she and PNH have been around forever.
posted by Justinian at 7:50 PM on April 4, 2015 [3 favorites]

The what now?

Tall guys throwing a ball at a hoop. The Wisconsin Badgers versus some guys from Tennessee or Kentucky or somewhere down homey like that.
posted by MikeMc at 8:00 PM on April 4, 2015 [3 favorites]

As a white, straight, Western man, I can freely speak for my fellow SF readers: we got into this as teenagers because of the spaceships, explosions, and adventure. The SF bit is quite tangential.

As another white, straight, Western man: you do not speak for me, nor do you speak for the teenage me back in the 1970s.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 8:12 PM on April 4, 2015 [50 favorites]

Speaking of SF that is important and justicey and beautifually written and hella fun, Kelly Link's book this year is astonishing.
posted by PinkMoose at 8:33 PM on April 4, 2015 [5 favorites]

The idea that SF has never been and should never be political should be insulting to anyone at any place in the political spectrum.

The beautiful thing about the genre is that it's so wide open we can that have it all. Righty, lefty, straight Christians, gay space raptors, apolitical shoot 'em up space opera, whatever. The sky isn't even the limit it's just where the story begins. The battle seems to be for the awards ballots and the hearts and minds of the "fandom", I'm thinking you win that battle by writing good stuff, quality should win out in the end. If even if it doesn't as long as you've done good work and readers respond you're still way ahead of the game.
posted by MikeMc at 8:35 PM on April 4, 2015 [2 favorites]

The idea that SF has never been and should never be political should be insulting to anyone at any place in the political spectrum. You're telling me Heinlein didn't wear his politics on his sleeve? That imagining the future has nothing to do with where human society is going? Get the fuck out of here.

It seems like a lot of the backlash is from people thinking that if they agree with an author's politics, then that doesn't count as politics. Ditto race, gender, etc.
posted by jaguar at 8:37 PM on April 4, 2015 [13 favorites]

As a white, straight, Western man, I can freely speak for my fellow SF readers

Careful with this alasdair, I'm also those things and you certainly don't speak for me.

SFF opened my mind as a teen in the 70's, and an open mind allows for positive change. If you want all of that old school stuff you can reread to your heart's content, but the big world has spun a few times since those days and thankfully there are voices in literature that strive to speak for all of the wide variety of humanity, not just the privileged.
posted by OHenryPacey at 8:46 PM on April 4, 2015 [9 favorites]

Yeah, the idea seems to be that implicitly (or explicitly) right-wing, militaristic stories starring straight white manly men are inherently apolitical, which is hilarisad both because it's blatantly dumb and because it speaks to an incredibly limited view of old-school science fiction. Heinlein's the obvious example for overtly political "classic" hard SF, but you've also got to ignore (just looking at Hugo nominees) the Robot novels, Lord of Light, A Canticle For Leibowitz, Slaughterhouse-Five, the fucking Forever War....
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 8:48 PM on April 4, 2015 [23 favorites]

I am trying to think what I would have nominated. Ancillary Sword and City of Stairs, absolutely. I'd be tempted by The Girls at the Kingfisher Club but I don't know if it's quite genre enough. The Seventh Bride if it's novel eligible. Probably Our Lady of the Streets, an all but unknown (excellent) YA series. (Cixin Liu's book is on my to-read list. The Goblin Emperor didn't quite do it for me.) If I had room, Station Eleven.
posted by jeather at 8:51 PM on April 4, 2015 [6 favorites]

I just want to speak up here to contest the idea that SF written by/featuring women, POC, transpeople, etc., can't be fun. What?

Agreed! To add to your list, Ursula Vernon, who won a Hugo a few years ago for her comic Digger and was on the nominee ballot this year for Toad Words (T Kingfisher is her pseud), writes stuff that is frequently funny and light--hell, she makes most of her living as a freaking children's book author.

Regarding why people get into sci-fi--look, insofar as I have any interest in sci-fi it's because I like to alter shit about the world and see what happens next to the culture, and I like to ground that in actual science. I don't necessarily give a shit about physics but I've read basically every sci-fi novel I've ever sought out because I wanted to know what authors thought might happen if, e.g., you shifted human reproductive biology to be partially parthenogenetic, or if maybe you ran into a culture which borrowed DNA from other species as a matter of course. I want to know about what authors think about the ethics of cloning and of bioengineering humans, and I want to know about how interspecies differences in signaling systems impact communication, and I want to know how human population structure might change if all of humanity wound up on lifeships. I want to know how contraints on colony living change cultural structure and taboos in the people who live in those colonies, and I want to know that in the context of what we know about human behavior now.

And because I am a biologist, because I am interested in the whole human species, I want to know what happens to people like me in those brave new worlds, too. I don't want a white future; I want to know what all of humanity is doing. I don't want a straight future, either, or a male one; I want to know how these tweaks would impact all kinds of people, and how it might change the way they think. I want to start from the counterintuitive realities of biology, of behavior, of people--the chaotic strangeness of life--and let those grow into a story.

Then again, I'm not exactly the demographic these guys are coming from, either. Should I say "Ah, well, sci-fi ain't for me because I care too much about the science?" Or "ah, sci-fi isn't meant for me, I care way too much about the real world and the bits of it that aren't necessarily obvious to straight white men--or obvious to me?" Because from my perspective, the Golden Age stuff I've read is frequently narrow-minded or misses things that I find obvious, because my perspective is different. It would be a shame to miss out on stuff that jolts my worldview in interesting ways because I'm not paying attention to large swathes of people whose perspective is different from mine again.
posted by sciatrix at 8:57 PM on April 4, 2015 [23 favorites]

The idea that SF has never been and should never be political should be insulting to anyone at any place in the political spectrum. You're telling me Heinlein didn't wear his politics on his sleeve? That imagining the future has nothing to do with where human society is going? Get the fuck out of here.

I'm absolutely telling you that! All this namby-pamby SJW shit about women being able to be characters is totally political, but Starship Troopers? That's just good sense. I'm a white man, and thus inherently sensible, so I should know.
posted by kafziel at 9:05 PM on April 4, 2015 [7 favorites]

I have a fond fantasy that Adams, Ballard, Banks, Clarke, Pratchett et al have now got together and found a way back from the Afterlife and the skies above Worldcon will boil as the very fabric of spacetime is rent asunder by the mighty Corrective Fleet come to administer some whoop-arse.

Perhaps not Clarke. But he meant well.
posted by Devonian at 9:20 PM on April 4, 2015 [12 favorites]

@Alasdair - Your arguments reminded me of the Dragon Age II kerfuffle, and I remembered liking the writer's response.

Just because not every sf book is one you enjoy, does not mean the majority are still not being written for you, the straight, white, male reader. They are. But we've taken a small share of the market and you're acting like its the end of all you hold dear.

I, a bi, female, white reader, grew up on Heinlein, Bester, and Bradbury. I saw myself represented exactly nowhere in the books, despite the fact that I loved the concepts and plots and the grandeur of space. How dare you say that because I'm not a straight male, I'm relegated to an "other" that doesn't deserve what you've had your whole life? (Stories about people you can easily identify with.) And because you're finally getting a small taste of what the rest of us "others" have had to deal with our whole lives, you're complaining? Forgive me for not having any sympathy for you.

The fact that you think sf is for boys and fantasy and romance is for girls is telling. They are not. If they ever were, they are no longer. Not for a while.
posted by greermahoney at 9:28 PM on April 4, 2015 [26 favorites]

I have a simple rule for nominating and voting for good words of fiction. They have to be good. A number of things on this ballot are not good and they are not there because they are good but because people who are not being very good are deliberately trying to put works on there which would not be there if it was being judged on what was good, which is not good.

So, overall, it's not good. But I will still be voting for these things which are, however they came to be on the ballot because I know what guilt by association looks like and I don't want to hand any bloc the ability to take something out of contention merely be mentioning it.

That's definitely not good.

But, yeah, those statues look like giant wangs so maybe they've been acting as beacons for certain groups? In short, buy my book "Space Wangs of Middle New Earth, Volume 1: The Wangening."
posted by nfalkner at 9:42 PM on April 4, 2015 [11 favorites]

It seems like a lot of the backlash is from people thinking that if they agree with an author's politics, then that doesn't count as politics. Ditto race, gender, etc.

Yes, exactly. TotalBiscuit was spouting the other day that you shouldn't "inject" politics into fiction, as if any videogame past maybe Pong is apolitical.
posted by kmz at 9:48 PM on April 4, 2015 [6 favorites]

I Was Wanged in my Wang by my own Wang - C. Tingle
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:49 PM on April 4, 2015 [9 favorites]

as if any videogame past maybe Pong is apolitical.

Tumblr informs me the pong protagonists are straight and white.
posted by nom de poop at 9:53 PM on April 4, 2015 [61 favorites]

It's a fight, more than anything, about who's going to be in charge and who will get to shape fandom.

Nobody gets to be in charge of fandom. Nobody gets to shape it.

No one is in control of dictating our tastes, and how they might evolve or change (or might not) for any fan.

Nobody gets to tell me what to like, what not to like, and what's ok. That's the high school shithead bullying mentality that I, in part, turned to science fiction and fantasy to get away from - to be able to explore worlds and universes that didn't conform to the usual; where big ideas got explored; where the best stories dared me to see what change would be like, to imagine what it was like to be different, to see the world differently. Yes, part of it was about escape - but it was escape from a world where I felt stifled to ones where I felt free to explore possibilities. A host of possibilities.

This is supposed to be the literature of the BIG IDEA; of being open and seeing strange horizons and dangerous visions. To boldly go where no one has gone before. To step out on the road, lose your footing, with no way of knowing where you might be swept off to. You can't put fences around it; you can't say this belongs and that doesn't. You can't say who belongs and who doesn't. There are writers in SF&F whose politics and personal views I detest; some of their books sit upon my shelves because I love how they write or the ideas they chose to explore. And some of my collection is there because they are comfortable, safe, wonderful places for me to return to, again and again, when I need the feelings they evoke in me.

No one gets to try to tell me which worlds to explore and which to exclude.

When it comes to SF&F: All these worlds are ours, no exceptions. Attempt all landings.
posted by nubs at 10:05 PM on April 4, 2015 [22 favorites]

Reading back a bit, I don't get the idea that SF is "our" genre fiction or that SF in general was any worse than other genres, who had their own struggles with issues of diversity. Romance may have been a primarily female audience, but it had its own pulp publishers and gatekeepers analogous to Campbell.

Other people have pointed out that romance is only romance if it involves a female author or perspective. For John Carter, James Bond, or Conan to get the girl doesn't seem to count.

If things are coming to a head again, I suspect it's because between digital publishing of shorter works and blogging we don't have the same mass-market gatekeepers. That, and globalization is bringing together new science fiction communities together. The 2013 Tiptree winner, Rupetta, was authored by an Australian, given an initial print run of a few thousand by an London specialty press, and more widely available by ebook before the awards were announced. (It is also an amazing novel.)

as if any videogame past maybe Pong is apolitical.

And sometimes science fiction can be weirdly politicized. The 1983 V miniseries was banned in South Africa by "The Crocodile" because he thought the reptilian aliens were a reference to him.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 10:06 PM on April 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

I just want to speak up here to contest the idea that SF written by/featuring women, POC, transpeople, etc., can't be fun.

I just wanted to add Lois Bujold, Elizabeth Moon, Anne McCaffrey, Andre Norton, James Tiptree, and Sarah Zettel to the list of women who write SF what is fun or even brain candy.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 10:23 PM on April 4, 2015 [12 favorites]

This whole thing just makes me feel so tired and sad.

I've been nominating and voting for the Hugos for years, and it's been obvious to me for a while how vulnerable the nomination process is to someone who wants to game the system. Last year, it took all of 43 votes to get a short story onto the ballot. I'm not sure what can be done to reduce the effectiveness of a slate campaign while still letting fans choose the nominees/winners. I mean, there's no way to enforce people voting on the quality of the work rather than some political agenda.

I'd been talking to my brother about possibly attending Worldcon this year, since it's only a four-hour car trip from where I live. It would be the first Worldcon for me, but I really am not interested in hanging out for what will be a party for some of the folks on the SP slate.
posted by creepygirl at 10:59 PM on April 4, 2015 [4 favorites]

There will be lots of other people at Worldcon and many of them will be trying very hard to make sure that it doesn't get taken over by SP, or any other group for that matter, myself included. Worldcon is supposed to be inclusive and a safe space for everyone and it will remain so for as long as we can make it so.
posted by nfalkner at 12:28 AM on April 5, 2015 [2 favorites]

Why do all these racist misogynists even care?
Because they need to be reassured that the reason they dominate the culture is because they're RIGHT, not because their ancestors were more warlike, brutal and cruel and therefore WINNERS. I have been frankly ashamed of being a white, straight, Western man for more than half of my adult life, and even before I figured it out, I was into SF, not for the outer-space-stuff, but for the FUTURE-stuff, the utopian and dystopian projections of the world far beyond my lifetime and ability to participate in it. If you got into Star Trek for the spaceships, I'm sorry, but you are a fool and an ass.
posted by oneswellfoop at 12:50 AM on April 5, 2015 [13 favorites]

I just don't get this. How does someone writing a book you are not interested in reading detract from the ones that you do want to read, even if they are in the same genre? Why do all these racist misogynists even care?

Telling themselves they're victimized, being treated unfairly and so on, justifies their defensive aggression and lets them roll around in a warm fuzzy feeling of being righteous, persecuted but important, etc.
posted by sebastienbailard at 1:48 AM on April 5, 2015 [5 favorites]

kmz: you shouldn't "inject" politics into fiction

That's one of those received ideas that drive me up the wall. The long history of literature is filled with great political works (Tolstoy, Dickens, George Eliot, Victor Hugo, just to stick to Europe in the 19th Century) but suddenly in the 1980s it became a truism that politics was somehow foreign to literature. Lately there's been a discussion about whether the Iowa Writers' Workshop is to blame. But that aside, I think this casting out of politics is part of the reactionary conservatism that shook Western culture in the last two decades of the 20th Century. I'm not surprised it's now the respectable rallying cry of those who wish to prop up the power structures of wider, contemporary society.
posted by Kattullus at 2:05 AM on April 5, 2015 [9 favorites]

I am, hilariously, at a con right now, so I can't give you a comprehensive list, ROU_Xenophobe, but I remember being deeply disappointed by NK Jemisin's Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, which seemed very much a "fuck you and the things you love" book.

uh what

the first one is fun fantasy novel that is more about politics, romance, intrigues and occasional assassinations than war and combat

unless "you and the things you love" is "boring books about and by white people"
posted by NoraReed at 2:07 AM on April 5, 2015 [13 favorites]

kmz: you shouldn't "inject" politics into fiction

That's one of those received ideas that drive me up the wall.

Yes; it is idiocy. Write whatever the hell you want for whatever purpose.
posted by Wolof at 2:10 AM on April 5, 2015 [2 favorites]

kmz: you shouldn't "inject" politics into fiction

I'm pretty sure Iain M. Banks didn't get this memo.
posted by sebastienbailard at 2:37 AM on April 5, 2015 [8 favorites]

> "The way I'm reading it (I've been reading some blogs to try and keep from chewing my nails over the Badger game) is: 'If we don't do something the Hugo will be awarded solely based on the author's SJW credentials regardless of quality.'"

Thing is ... the only thing I've read that was on the "Puppy" lists is Skin Game. Now, there's nothing *wrong* with Skin Game. It's fine. I liked it. But it doesn't merit a major award. It doesn't merit being on the short list for a major award. If Skin Game is the kind of thing that's on their list, then it's hard for me to buy that the argument they're making is "these brilliant works of great quality will be ignored unless we do something about it!"

It's kind of telling that this year the only overlap between the Hugo nominations and Nebula nominations for written works are the two Hugo-nominated novels that *weren't* on the Puppy lists.
posted by kyrademon at 2:45 AM on April 5, 2015 [6 favorites]

As a SFF fan, this is the year that the Hugo Award pretty much loses all meaning to me.

The SP and RP slate of nominees is gaming the system, and that is all it is. Whether or not any of the works on those slates could have made the Hugo shortlist on their own merits is moot. The supporters of SP and RP claim that past nominees and winners were beneficiaries of the same gaming, but this hasn't and can't be proved. This year, however, the gaming is obvious and provable. I feel any Hugos given out to SP or RP slate authors should have a little asterisk next to their name so that folks know that this was a year that some cheaters won.

Curious to see if the Hugo Award can recover.
posted by snwod at 3:23 AM on April 5, 2015 [11 favorites]

To be totally fair, though, Torgensen himself has essentially said that one of his arguments is not that brilliance is being ignored, but that stuff that makes him think is boring:

"In the last decade we’ve seen Hugo voting skew more and more toward literary (as opposed to entertainment) works ... ultimately lacking ... the kind of child-like enjoyment that comes easily and naturally when you don’t have to crawl so far into your brain ..."

It's true that his other argument is that he doesn't like awards going to books written by or about women and minorities and queers and suchlike:

"Worldcon and fandom alike have tended to use the Hugos as an affirmative action award: giving Hugos because a writer or artist is (insert underrepresented minority or victim group here) or because a given work features (insert underrepresented minority or victim group here) characters."

But his line of thinking is not that awards should go instead to brilliant books by and about straight white men. It is that the awards should go to relatively brainless action novels by and about straight white men.
posted by kyrademon at 3:24 AM on April 5, 2015 [14 favorites]

> "Also, the Sad/Rabid Puppies hated that Redshirts -- a book about almost entirely guys who are on a spaceship -- won ... it's about 'books which were written by authors who we approve of', the exact thing they complained about in the past."

It's almost bizarre how little relationship their supposed complaints bear to reality. They yearn for the adventure stories of classic science fiction? Let's look at the winners of the past few years. (Warning - spoilers follow.)

Ancillary Justice -- Classic space opera plot. An AI hunts across space for an alien superweapon to use to take revenge against the galactic Emperor.

Redshirts -- Direct riff on one of the most beloved classic sci-fi serials of all time. A spaceship crew fighting impossible odds to survive.

Among Others -- A book which is a love letter to classic science fiction. Details the experience of growing up with these books, reading them, reacting to them, being a fan of them.

So in recent years, the winners have been a book with a classic science fiction plot, a book which is a take on a classic science fiction serial, and a book which is about classic science fiction books. Yes, truly the Hugos have lost sight of their past. (Apparently because these books were written by two women and a liberal, and in one it's hard to tell which characters are the manly male men.)
posted by kyrademon at 4:29 AM on April 5, 2015 [26 favorites]

It's almost bizarre how little relationship their supposed complaints bear to reality.

They appear to be under the impression that people who say they like the kind of work that has been winning Hugos lately are simply lying about their preferences, that people vote for things because they are SJW-approved and no other reason. (Which is odd, because I remember a lot of complaints about how Redshirts decided to take the All Men Plus One Woman Whose Major Personality Characteristic Was Femaleness (like Smurfette) rather too seriously. I don't think Among Others is particularly political, and going further back neither is Blackout/All Clear unless you believe that the Nazis were good. Of course 3 were written by women, 1 by a man they hate.)

And also that people who would like True SF read the other work because it won awards and are therefore turned off the genre and so the genre is losing market share at a fast rate, so soon there will be no more science fiction of any sort published.
posted by jeather at 5:20 AM on April 5, 2015 [3 favorites]

Kyrademon I basically agree with you - actually the winners of the last 3 years Best Novel have all been unusually excellent books by Hugo standards. Still from an ideological turing test perspective I think it is pretty easy to see why you might hate them if you are a conservative or redpill style internet troll or neoreactionary. They all have elements which are fairly explicitly affirmations of progressive politics, and in two cases, (Ancilliary Justice, which i loved, and Redshirts which I loved until the additional endings) I can see how they would seem tacked on if you did not have the ability to understand the authors emotional perspective.
posted by Another Fine Product From The Nonsense Factory at 5:23 AM on April 5, 2015 [1 favorite]

I hate that the Sad Puppies strategy is to talk about adventure SFF as if it hasn't been explicitly political for a long, long time. I mean, how much of the "classic" SF from the 60s and 70s contains the authors' libertarian blathering? How could you not notice it in Heinlein or Niven or Pournelle? The problem is that it's people who don't share their own politics getting recognition.

I haven't read the follow-ups, but I enjoyed Ancillary Justice tremendously. As a fan of adventure SFF, I was glad it won the awards it did. It's a shame that people claiming to love adventure writing have put together such an awful campaign based, not on the merit of "their side" and it's work, but a disdain for others' politics.
posted by graymouser at 5:31 AM on April 5, 2015 [2 favorites]

Yes, so the answer to this:

I just don't get this. How does someone writing a book you are not interested in reading detract from the ones that you do want to read, even if they are in the same genre? Why do all these racist misogynists even care?

is this:

Because they need to be reassured that the reason they dominate the culture is because they're RIGHT, not because their ancestors were more warlike, brutal and cruel and therefore WINNERS.

It's about identity. We none of us want to be The Bad Guys. So things that make us The Bad Guys are going to be resisted, whether threads on racism on Metafilter or SF with a feminist slant. Whether we are the bad guys or not. We don't want to think we are the bad guys, and we don't want to read stuff that makes us the bad guys.

So what's the problem? We all just read the sub-genre that flatters us, right? That works perfectly until you get to... awards, which are supposed to define the genre. And here we are.

A related tangent: the Culture books are great, a panhuman non-sexist society. Of course, none of the popular adventure stories are actually based in this society, which would be boring and be like a girly soap opera (which are great too, but not consumed by/intended for boys). They're about the straight white men (disguised or not) who have to deal with the natives, usually with lots of violence and derring do. Also, lefty right-on dudes get to be really violent towards nasty right-wing people. I mean, I love them, but let's not pretend they aren't a combination of wish fulfilment and adventure story. This is SF.
posted by alasdair at 5:38 AM on April 5, 2015 [3 favorites]

Of course, none of the popular adventure stories are actually based in this society

I liked Excession and Look to Windward a lot.
posted by sukeban at 5:49 AM on April 5, 2015 [3 favorites]

Reading through comments at Scalzi's blog, there's someone absolutely insisting that Rachel Swirsky's "If you were a dinosaur, my love" could absolutely not have gotten onto the ballot through merit but only in order to advance a political agenda. (This short story in particular gets a great deal of hatred. I loved it, though a friend whose tastes I share quite closely was indifferent.)
posted by jeather at 5:51 AM on April 5, 2015 [2 favorites]

Science Fiction has been political since before it even existed as an acknowledged genre. H. G. Wells invented half of the tropes that SF writers are still using and his very first novel was a socialist parable disguised as a time travel story.
posted by octothorpe at 5:52 AM on April 5, 2015 [7 favorites]

Ancillary Justice -- Classic space opera plot. An AI hunts across space for an alien superweapon to use to take revenge against the galactic Emperor.

Not only that, it has the gender-benders be from an oppressive interstellar empire with some socialist traits and weirdo body issues AND it has people doing homosexual things because they were brought up that way. You'd think troglodytes would love it.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 5:58 AM on April 5, 2015 [3 favorites]

Yeah, but the default pronoun is "she".
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 6:16 AM on April 5, 2015 [4 favorites]

I liked Excession and Look to Windward a lot.

[SPOILERS]

EXCESSION: Race to get the alien artefact! (Also, the Culture Minds turn out to be just like normal macho military men (the scene where they throw out the Minds who aren't part of some unelected inner sanctum makes it particularly obvious, but also the breathless hard on for the huge ship that's become a vast battleship, oh and the oh-so-feminist Culture is fine with a pregnant woman getting stabbed for infidelity).

LOOK TO WINDWARD: Will the tiger-man alien manage to blow up the Culture space station in revenge for the Culture fridging his wife? (So not only "providing character motivation by fridging a wife/girlfriend" but also "it's okay to torture your enemies to death because they're bad people" - the "Culture terror weapon").

Adventure stories. Good ones! Happy endings. Not ORYX AND CRAKE...
posted by alasdair at 6:23 AM on April 5, 2015

Also, the Culture Minds turn out to be just like normal macho military men (the scene where they throw out the Minds who aren't part of some unelected inner sanctum makes it particularly obvious, but also the breathless hard on for the huge ship that's become a vast battleship, oh and the oh-so-feminist Culture is fine with a pregnant woman getting stabbed for infidelity

That's not how I remember the plot. I remember the macho idiot male protagonist going in his own merry way with the macho idiot aliens, tho.

the tiger-man alien

I remember a six-armed badger alien and the book ending on a rather bromantic suicide pact between said alien badger and an AI, and not even one main character being human.

Have you considered the idea that you're projecting a lot?
posted by sukeban at 6:28 AM on April 5, 2015 [8 favorites]

One last thing: in presenting the white male take on this I mean only to explain, not justify. I make in fact a criticism of the attitude, not a defence of it - who wants to admit they read escapist fiction and get uncomfortable with other viewpoints?

To be crystal clear: if you are not white, not a man, not straight, not Western, and you love reading (or writing!) SF, then I think that's great, and I look forward to buying your books or discussing SF with you, and hearing your viewpoints.

Not that you should even give a fuck what I think, of course!
posted by alasdair at 6:32 AM on April 5, 2015 [7 favorites]

That's not how I remember the plot.

I think I'm trying to say that making a white straight character into a computer or an alien or indeed a woman doesn't make the character not a white straight character, if that's how you otherwise write the character: there are many threads about white male authors writing women and people of color that could explain what I'm alleging better. Anyway, really going now, with just this: there are two SF series based on HORNBLOWER? Awesome!
posted by alasdair at 6:39 AM on April 5, 2015 [1 favorite]

You were asking about stories set in the Culture, not white straight characters. Or some strange Feminist Approved Plot thing that I can't even understand.
posted by sukeban at 6:40 AM on April 5, 2015 [1 favorite]

(And seriously, the Minds are masculine? Since when? Aww and I thought the ones that carry hundreds of thousands of people are so maternal)
posted by sukeban at 6:42 AM on April 5, 2015 [5 favorites]

anotherpanacea: Unrelated: It looks like Karen Lord's Best of All Possible Worlds was published in Febuary of 2014, so I just don't know how these lists can be taken seriously.

It was published in 2013. Thanks for mentioning and recommending it. I need to put this on my mental to-read list. I'm assuming from the title that it draws on Voltaire's Candide, which seems like a splendid idea for a science fiction novel.
posted by Kattullus at 6:52 AM on April 5, 2015

I did have the same reaction to Alisdair about the Culture novels. "Here's an interesting utopia we'll explore entirely from the perspective of dissatisfied Heinlein protagonists!" I actually thought it was kind of a funny shtick but whatever.
posted by selfnoise at 7:05 AM on April 5, 2015 [2 favorites]

I really had no idea. Admittedly, I am not really a big consumer of modern fiction of any sort, mostly on account of being cheap, but wow.

Over on the above linked Torgensen article, Baen Books and the Baen Free Library (Helping me read books on my phone since I discovered it online in 2002) are mentioned more than a few times as the last place to get "good" scifi, archetypal adventure style or whatever. But as mentioned above, the Hornblower style Honor Harrington series is there (read the first two books free, maybe you'll buy the rest!), and the lead is a strong female, who wins with her brain, not looks, and has insecurities about herself and sometimes has to deal with misogyny and dare I say it, there are even subplots dealing with the horribleness and terror of rape; yet there is swashbuckling space adventure galore, and a story that holds you and keeps you turning the page.

Even John Ringo, mentioned above, in A Hymn Before Battle and Gust Front, military scifi novels heavy on the military, has very strong female characters, and in amongst the alien slaying does some introspection on military families where both spouses serve, and how both wrestle with the sacrifices required therein, for the greater good, how sometimes the best way to keep your family safe is to leave them and go fight. Not everyone's cup of tea, sure, but not exactly He-Man Woman Haters Club stuff either.

The one thing I find most positive about all this mess is the somewhat surprisingly (to me) large amount of emotional investment in the scifi/fantasy fiction world! As long as there is a fandom of interested and engaged readers and writers willing to try new stuff, I think we'll be okay.
posted by HycoSpeed at 8:26 AM on April 5, 2015

The fight over who's going to be in charge is explicitly about keeping everyone different out unless you're straight, white, cis, male.

Not even that. It´s about keeping everyone out unless you're straight, white, cis, male and believe you should keep everyone different out who´s not straight, white, cis, male. Maybe the Hugos need a Flag as Noise option.
posted by ersatz at 8:32 AM on April 5, 2015 [4 favorites]

Deleted FPP from cstross: "The Biggest Little SF Publisher you never heard of declares war."
posted by gerryblog at 8:35 AM on April 5, 2015 [30 favorites]

I have been frankly ashamed of being a white, straight, Western man for more than half of my adult life,

Vatican II repudiated the notion of Jewish guilt for the death of Jesus because it recognized that collective guilt is pernicious nonsense. Something to think about.

But this! Given the ongoing decline of SFF sales, mostly the whole kerfuffle brings Sayre's Law to mind.

So - read any good books lately?

(On preview, I did look up the Honor Harrington suggested. I can't get past the bad writing. But what do I know? I can't read Agatha Christie, and she outsells just about everyone except God. Carry on reading!)
posted by IndigoJones at 8:46 AM on April 5, 2015 [1 favorite]

But I will still be voting for these things which are, however they came to be on the ballot because I know what guilt by association looks like and I don't want to hand any bloc the ability to take something out of contention merely be mentioning it.

All the authors agreed to be on the Sad Puppies list. Torgersen overlooked contacting three authors initially, and two asked to be removed (which they were.) One fan writer who was late to the kerfuffle declined his nomination (long, but thoughtful) once he realized he didn't agree with the project. So, they're all "guilty by association" the same way a political party is, and they should be prepared to be punished at the polls the same way a political party is.

They've already made it about something other than quality by making it about party. If you want the party-politification to end the only way forward is to make running on a slate a defacto defeat. Use your No Award vote where appropriate.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 8:51 AM on April 5, 2015 [8 favorites]

I just wanted to add Lois Bujold, Elizabeth Moon

Yep. If the Honor Harrington series strikes you as too "tedious" as was mentioned up-thread, Moon's Vatta's War series ticks a lot of the same military SF boxes while being more finite in scope.
posted by audi alteram partem at 8:51 AM on April 5, 2015 [2 favorites]

Dang. Vox Day just gets more impressively douchey and awful every week, doesn't he?
posted by NoraReed at 8:56 AM on April 5, 2015 [8 favorites]

All the authors agreed to be on the Sad Puppies list.

I think it's been well established that this is not true; indeed, you yourself cite a counterexample. (The fan writer was never contacted, and never agreed.)
posted by Shmuel510 at 8:59 AM on April 5, 2015

For all its conservativeness, there's certainly a stripe of mil-SF that's actively anti-sexist (Moon's stuff or the Harrington books probably count but aren't quibble-proof) or anti-racist (going back to Starship Troopers or even Lensmen if you want to count that as milSF).
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 9:04 AM on April 5, 2015 [3 favorites]

All the authors agreed to be on the Sad Puppies list.

Even for those who were contacted and agreed, you have to wonder what the framing was like.

"Hi, we'd like to recommend you for a Hugo nomination, is that okay?" is a lot different from "Hi, we think your work is some of the least progressive prose published in the last year and we'd like to use it as ammunition in the culture war. Is that okay?"
posted by figurant at 9:05 AM on April 5, 2015 [16 favorites]

And seriously, the Minds are masculine?

"I'm a fucking razor-arsed starship, you maniac! I'm not male, female or anything else except stupendously smart..."

- Banks, The Hydrogen Sonata, p 432
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:08 AM on April 5, 2015 [9 favorites]

or anti-racist (going back to Starship Troopers

Starship Troopers, when I reread it in my twenties (first read as a teenager; loved it then) seems to be entirely about racism. I'd have to squint pretty hard to see it as an anti-racist metacommentary.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:10 AM on April 5, 2015 [1 favorite]

Speaking of recommendations, there's also We See a Different Frontier:
A Postcolonial Speculative Fiction Anthology. I got to read a few stories and liked them all. I would have read more, but apparently you're is expected to mail your Quonsee their present in a timely manner — even if you're still reading it!

And The 100 is also a fun adventure and centres lots of women. Yes, that post-apocalyptic teen show on the CW. Really. It turned into something good.

There's talk of rewatching season 1 on FanFare this summer. You should join us.
posted by Banknote of the year at 9:21 AM on April 5, 2015 [3 favorites]

Starship Troopers, when I reread it in my twenties (first read as a teenager; loved it then) seems to be entirely about racism. I'd have to squint pretty hard to see it as an anti-racist metacommentary.

I see your point, but I was just thinking about Rico being Filipino at a time when Filipinos were seen as militarily fit only to wait on whites.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 9:29 AM on April 5, 2015 [4 favorites]

Ah, okay.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:31 AM on April 5, 2015

I think it's been well established that this is not true; indeed, you yourself cite a counterexample. (The fan writer was never contacted, and never agreed.)

Surridge (the fan writer) was aware of his inclusion, but says he didn't think it would amount to anything at the time, so his approval was de facto. It's possible others thought as he did, but I've yet to see anything similar. I'd be very surprised if anyone was on that list and not aware of it (at least for the literary categories.)
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 9:36 AM on April 5, 2015

Those early greats of science fiction were, for example, calling themselves things like "The Futurians", and sixty, seventy years later we're supposed to want to keep reading more of exactly the same thing? I can still enjoy Kornbluth because I have faith that if he'd lived long enough to see it, he would have been amazed and excited by the way the world changed in the 60s and 70s, to say nothing of today. Frederik Pohl, by then in his nineties, was doing environmental activism on his blog in 2013 shortly before he died. Like a guy who thought the future mattered. They weren't just products of their time; they were trying to be better than that, even if they didn't always succeed.

I think most of the greats would have found most of these writers completely appalling, if nothing else than being so stuck on the idea that change is bad and scary and traditions must be upheld at all costs. The science isn't just in the gadgetry and the spaceships; the genre's always been about examining the world you live in today and theorizing about the world people will live in tomorrow. If stuff written 50+ years ago didn't seem socially and politically regressive in places, then it would mean we hadn't actually made any progress. I absolutely enjoy the classics, but anybody who's trying to use the sci-fi of decades ago as a model for writing today missed the point by a few light years.
posted by Sequence at 10:40 AM on April 5, 2015 [25 favorites]

"Here's an interesting utopia we'll explore entirely from the perspective of dissatisfied Heinlein protagonists!"

The problem with positing a functional post-scarcity socialist utopia run by benevolent AIs is that the daily lives of most well-adjusted people living in it are probably pretty boring to anyone except themselves. There's only so many pages you want to read about a bunch of people at the very top of Maslow's hierarchy inventing new hobbies and sexual positions.

(Although on second thought if someone does want to write that, it could be a fair number of pages.)
posted by Kadin2048 at 10:41 AM on April 5, 2015 [5 favorites]

Over on MeFi's own Scalzi's blog, one of the commenters pointed out that The Law Of Unintended Consequences applies to any action from any side.

It turned out that I had $40 in my pocket that absolutely agreed with that statement. (I'd missed the nomination period and for some reason thought supporting memberships were not available after the nominations closed. I was, happily, wrong.)

I'll be doing a variant of last year: I attempted to read everything, was not gripped by any of the SP nominations (go figure) but ranked them in a few categories. This year, I will do some homework to see for which authors on the slate there may be a question of knowing what they were agreeing to, and treat their works the same; the rest I won't attempt to read because I'm sorry, you gave up your right to be fairly considered when you didn't get on the ballot with fair consideration in the first place, and the slate organizers' stated aims are in fact antithetical to my very existence.

And they invited in gumbogoobers to a space I'm not often in, but like to visit occasionally. Nope.

So the lowest slot in those categories will go to my friend Noah Ward, indeed. Sometimes the lowest slot may also be the first slot.

(And question or not, I will not even look at anything by Wright, whose work I bounced off hard once, even before I learned about his blazing misogyny, and by "Day", because seriously now, there isn't enough NaClO. Hugos are supposed to be a popularity contest? They aren't popular enough with me.)

Tangentially, nom_de_poop: Heh. I see what you did there, but not necessarily. That was a collaboration between me and a friend to develop a functional Pong variant in 48 hours. Once we decided that the paddles were going to be bots with operators inside, we had inserted human characters in the mix. And not all of them are white, or male, or possibly straight (I wasn't considering orientation during character design, for obvious reasons). Unfortunately you have to install the game to see all character models.
posted by seyirci at 10:46 AM on April 5, 2015 [3 favorites]

There's only so many pages you want to read about a bunch of people at the very top of Maslow's hierarchy inventing new hobbies and sexual positions.

FWIW that book is called Steel Beach.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 10:47 AM on April 5, 2015 [5 favorites]

I honestly think that being read by a wide audience is the worst that could happen to John C. Wright and the rest of the Sad/ Rabid Puppies slate. I'm waiting for the reviews so eagerly.
posted by sukeban at 10:56 AM on April 5, 2015 [3 favorites]

sukeban: "being read by a wide audience is the worst that could happen to John C. Wright"

Yeah, revanchist Catholics who somehow gain notice outside their small circles never do real well. They labor under the delusion that they are the only logical people in the world and if everyone else just read Aquinas! ... so it comes as a bit of a shock when other smart people who have read Aquinas still take them apart and think they're ridiculous.

(I have not read any John C. Wright but just from brief third-party biographical descriptions and a short summary of an argument he was involved in about modernity, I will BET YOU MONEY that when he talks about his rightness/other people's wrongness, he references Aquinas and rationality. I know from revanchist Catholics. They are very predictable.)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 11:21 AM on April 5, 2015 [15 favorites]

Oh, it's not that. If this Kevin J. Anderson first page is any measure (and at least it doesn't come from a vanity press) I don't expect much from the puppies when it comes from plot or writing.

It does manage to cram Only Sane Man and Castrating Harpy Ex-wife into a few paragraphs with a fine "space gypsies" thrown in for funsies at the end.
posted by sukeban at 11:33 AM on April 5, 2015 [3 favorites]

That Anderson page reads like a parody. I mean, "lava miners?"
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 11:45 AM on April 5, 2015 [1 favorite]

It's so much manlier than mining for minerals!
posted by sukeban at 11:46 AM on April 5, 2015 [2 favorites]

For the data-inclined, Niall Harrison posted a Flickr photo of the nomination stats for each category, and makes an analysis/comparison with previous years that's a strong case for this year's nominations being heavily gamed by SP/RP supporters.
posted by soundguy99 at 11:48 AM on April 5, 2015 [3 favorites]

My predictions for next year, posting here for pre-commitment value. 1. Someone will run a social justice slate that crushes the nominations in the major categories and relegates the sad puppies back to the cheap seats. 2. There will be a concerted effort to change the rules in some way but I don't think it will succeed because many people would prefer to make the whole award political and the Hugo's are already struggling v the Nebulae. 3.Scott Lynch will be nominated for his next Locke Lamora book regardless of all the crap (this is purely my hope because I really want it to be super good!) 4. The social justice slate will be able to find a much more plausible "best novel" nominee and even most SF fans don't read much short fiction and will be accepted because of this. 5. Publishers won't be able to use "Hugo award nominated" to give a few promising short fiction writers a book deal with some bank, which will deprive the world of at least 1 future book I would have loved to read . (5 is difficult to test and more of a moan but 1-4 are a decent calibration I should come back to next year).
posted by Another Fine Product From The Nonsense Factory at 12:24 PM on April 5, 2015

Yeah, revanchist Catholics who somehow gain notice outside their small circles never do real well.

Gene Wolfe?
posted by Justinian at 12:34 PM on April 5, 2015 [2 favorites]

cstross' deleted FPP was repurposed as a post on his own blog (and rightfully so), which I must LOUDLY recommend reading in either form, but let me excerpt his quote from Rabid Puppies organizer Vox Day:

It's time for the church leaders and the heads of Christian families to start learning from #GamerGate, to start learning from Sad Puppies, and start leading. Start banding together and stop accommodating the secular world in any way. Don't hire those who hate you. Don't buy from those who wish to destroy you. Don't work with those who denigrate your faith, your traditions, your morals, and your God. Don't tolerate or respect what passes for their morals and values.

This is a man who goes beyond bigot, whose longterm planning looks more and more like creating a Christian version of ISIS. I don't care about Godwin's Law, he has written his own Mein Kampf. Forget the "War Against Terrorism"; Vox Day's Culture War is the greatest threat to us all.
posted by oneswellfoop at 12:38 PM on April 5, 2015 [25 favorites]

Keep some perspective; Vox Day is a threat to no one except maybe some sci-fi fans.
posted by Nelson at 12:43 PM on April 5, 2015 [3 favorites]

History recalls when Hitler was disregarded as having "delusions of grandeur"... maybe he won't be the one leading the Christian Soldiers into an all-out war, but in our current environment, it becomes more likely that SOMEBODY will.
posted by oneswellfoop at 12:48 PM on April 5, 2015

So, if I am understanding correctly, all it takes to vote in the Hugos is to cough up $40 to register as a "supporting member" of Sasquan before the closing date of the ballot sometime in July.

... I think the Hugos just got themselves a new voter.
posted by kyrademon at 12:54 PM on April 5, 2015 [4 favorites]

It's been a while since we had an honest-to-goodness Godwin-ing around here. I despise Day but have not seen any indications that he's got a lot of actual power to go along with his mouth-frothing.

Crooked Timber had a piece up, but its main value is in its recommendations for sci-fi to read. In fact, these sorts of events always seem to lead to fruitful discussions of the snubbed-by-bigots-but-good authors we should be reading.

Is that the Streisand effect or does it need a new name? When bigotry leads to good publicity for the targets?
posted by emjaybee at 12:57 PM on April 5, 2015 [4 favorites]

Forget the well-financed terrorists who have murdered thousands, the insane dictatorships and the calculating foreign repressive governments playing the great game - the greatest threat to freedomTM is a lone (racist) blogger who writes badly written self-published novels! Gosh I can't see why that kind of opinion might fuel resentment and lead to internet drama.

Ok that is enough fighting - here are my 2 Favourite SF novels published in 2014, neither of which have been mentioned so far and both of which are great.

The Book of Strange New Things - Micheal Faber A bit slow but brilliant in many ways, and a great commentary on christianity without being judgmental.
Cibola Burn by James S.A Corey Book 4 of a series, but the first that went above "entertaining" to genuinely interesting, A survival SF novel that works wonderfully in its context and has a lot of "peeling back the onion" satisfaction to reading.
posted by Another Fine Product From The Nonsense Factory at 1:13 PM on April 5, 2015 [3 favorites]

Someone is clearly going to profit from this, and it's whomever gets the $40 from all the people who register just to vote in this thing. Who is that? Is it at least, I hope, some organization that is worth supporting?

I read crime fiction, rather than sci-fi. I had no idea that my particular genre corner was so comparatively boring!
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 1:18 PM on April 5, 2015

I read crime fiction, rather than sci-fi. I had no idea that my particular genre corner was so comparatively boring!

Cozies vs. cops is the next great library schism.
posted by Etrigan at 1:22 PM on April 5, 2015 [4 favorites]

Sasquan, AAC. Though I am pretty sure they would trade it for a Hugos ceremony that wasn't either very short or very embarrassing.
posted by tavella at 1:37 PM on April 5, 2015 [1 favorite]

I believe there actually was a similar brouhaha among British crime writers in the mid-90s. I'm not remembering the specifics, but there was some thing where PD James was on some middle-of-the-night BBC chat program and said that crime fiction had to be about middle-class-and-above people, because working-class people lacked the appropriate interior life to commit interesting crimes. Working-class crime was just people bashing other people over the head to take their money. The new guard of left crime writers howled, the old guard howled back about a lefty takeover of the genre, and there was much howling until everyone calmed down, realized that PD James was about 102 and a product of a different era, and continued writing whatever they wanted to write. I think that crime fiction people are pretty happy to coexist peacefully: I don't much want to read books about serial killers or cats solving murders in knitting shops, but I don't mind if that stuff exists. On the other hand, crime fiction readers are much, much less emotionally invested in their identity as crime fiction readers, I think, so it's probably not a very good comparison.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 1:46 PM on April 5, 2015 [3 favorites]

books about serial killers or cats solving murders in knitting shops

I am all for a series of books about serial killers solving murders in knitting shops.

(What kind of mysteries do you like, AaC?)
posted by jeather at 1:50 PM on April 5, 2015 [3 favorites]

They must be serial-killing cats solving mysteries in knitting shops.

I usually like social-realism-y crime novels that are interested in power relationships and have a sense of place. I like attention to character development. People like Laura Lippmann or Denise Mina or Tana French. (Tana French may be the odd writer out there, but I've really enjoyed her stuff.) But honestly, I'll read anything that isn't too twee and doesn't have serial killers and/or a lot of gratuitous sexual violence.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 1:56 PM on April 5, 2015 [2 favorites]

I don't much want to read books about ... cats solving murders in knitting shops

"Mr. Snugglepuss examined the yarn. Old Food Lady would never have wrapped it this loosely. Someone else had been here…"
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 1:59 PM on April 5, 2015 [27 favorites]

Inspector Pancakes.
posted by Artw at 2:02 PM on April 5, 2015 [4 favorites]

I didn't realize cats solving mysteries had become a whole genre. I thought it was just that one series. Yikes.

Pre-emptive "eponysterical." I know, I know.
posted by jaguar at 2:16 PM on April 5, 2015 [4 favorites]

People like Orson Scott Card and John C Wright, who are being treated like they have the plague because in their personal life, they don't like gay people.

That's a bit of an understatement.
posted by sukeban at 2:24 PM on April 5, 2015 [33 favorites]

Wait, what Moon thing? Do you have a link corb?

There's been a lot written about Card in various threads, so I'm not going over that again. It was all moot to me since the Ender books never appealed before I knew his politics.
posted by emjaybee at 2:29 PM on April 5, 2015

I assume the reference to Elizabeth Moon is because se went a leeetle bit islamophobic.
posted by sukeban at 2:34 PM on April 5, 2015 [6 favorites]

Behave in a shitty way, and you might catch shit. *gasp* *shock*
posted by kmz at 2:34 PM on April 5, 2015 [11 favorites]

> who are being treated like they have the plague because in their personal life, they don't like gay people.

Treated by whom? They still get their books published and movies made from them; their work still sells. I don't know about Wright but I know Card is still referenced as a writer in the genre that other writers should at least be familiar with, and serious readers also. Saying that I am uninterested in giving either of them my money or attention because of [whatever reason] is not exactly treating them like they have the plague. Criminey.
posted by rtha at 2:36 PM on April 5, 2015 [22 favorites]

Heading home from con now, emjaybee, I'll check the links and post from there - only on my phone now.

I think I'm also just upset by this because I ran into a Hugo nominee about three hours ago who was crying in a bathroom because they had gotten on the Sad Puppies slate and were worried everyone would vote No Award without even looking at their stuff. And I'm like, this is not how you're supposed to be feeling as a nominee and I hate these bloody, bloody fandom wars.
posted by corb at 2:45 PM on April 5, 2015

People like Orson Scott Card and John C Wright, who are being treated like they have the plague because in their personal life, they don't like gay people.

That's because they are a plague. They are willing hosts for some really nasty diseases that have infected western culture in general and SF literature in particular. Moreover, they insist on exposing other people, like some sort of literary Typhoid Mary.
posted by happyroach at 2:46 PM on April 5, 2015 [17 favorites]

I am, hilariously, at a con right now, so I can't give you a comprehensive list, ROU_Xenophobe, but I remember being deeply disappointed by NK Jemisin's Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, which seemed very much a "fuck you and the things you love" book.

Seconding the "What?" on this. I absolutely loved The Inheritance Trilogy. I've been starved for fantasy novels with more diverse people and cultures and storylines and it really delivered in all three books.

Oree and Shiny slowly developing a relationship in the second book was one of the most bitterly sweet heartwarming things I have ever read. And the third book with Sieh and the two siblings...perfection.
posted by Drinky Die at 2:47 PM on April 5, 2015 [2 favorites]

It is fairly reasonable to believe that John C. Wright's presence on the "Puppy" Slates -- especially his VERY heavy representation on Vox Day's "Rabid Puppy" slate -- are because of his politics and not because of his writing.

If he is there because of his politics, it is fair game to talk about his politics. And his politics are odious.

Almost everyone who has read John C. Wright on this thread who has commented on his work has in fact been fairly complimentary of his writing.

But he did not get nominated because of his writing. He did not get nominated on his merits. He was, ironically, nominated in exactly the kind of political statement the people who nominated him claim they are against. In fact, I feel confident stating my belief that the majority of nomination votes he got this year were from people who had not even read the works he is on the ballot for.

When he gets nominated for his writing, then I'll comment on his writing.

(As for Orson Scott Card, I don't want to bring that whole mess up again, but it's totally reasonable for me to think both that he is a terrible human being who wants to return to the days when I would be a criminal just for loving someone, and also that his ~4 Hugo awards were reasonably well-deserved.)
posted by kyrademon at 2:48 PM on April 5, 2015 [17 favorites]

I ran into a Hugo nominee about three hours ago who was crying in a bathroom because they had gotten on the Sad Puppies slate

Did they just now find out they were on the slate?
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 2:53 PM on April 5, 2015 [2 favorites]

Wright says that the 'instinctive reaction' of men to gay men is 'beating them to death with axhandles and tire-irons' and that 'Men abhor homosexuals on a visceral level'.

But you know, that's just his personal life, we should look past it.
posted by xiw at 3:00 PM on April 5, 2015 [26 favorites]

Crying in the bathroom? Wasn't the slate all about promoting manly men and their manly novels for boys who are aspiring to be manly men?
posted by Nelson at 3:01 PM on April 5, 2015

I ran into a Hugo nominee about three hours ago who was crying in a bathroom because they had gotten on the Sad Puppies slate and were worried everyone would vote No Award without even looking at their stuff

And that happens and it's really unfortunate, especially if this nominee was one of the people who was not actually contacted by Torgersen or Day before appearing on the slate. But it's not a particularly unexpected response and I cannot believe anyone who was contacted honestly thought, well, of course people will judge the slate fairly once it does well.
posted by jeather at 3:02 PM on April 5, 2015 [5 favorites]

corb: "People like Orson Scott Card and John C Wright, who are being treated like they have the plague because in their personal life, they don't like gay people."

I suppose it's not quite the OLDEST story in the world, but whether bad people can create good art is a question with a long and storied history. (<<Он же гений, Как ты да я. А гений и злодейство — Две вещи несовместные. Не правда ль?>>)

I fail to understand, however, what is so unique about OSC or JCW that I should consume their work (and pay them for it, presumably) despite finding their views appalling (and, hey, I've read Card, guess what, it does come out in his work, and it's icky, and I don't like it!). What, exactly, is WRONG with me not reading their books because I don't like their politics? Like, they are so vastly superior to all the other literature I can consume in my lifetime that I should put aside my dislike of their politics? Or the work is so profoundly important that I MUST read it?

Most people aren't saying "They aren't good writers" but "I don't want to read their books." Why should I have to read their books? Why should I have to enjoy things that are gross to me? I sincerely doubt Orson Scott Card is running around saying, "Guys, you have GOT to go read Siken's Crush, he turns the English language into a heartrendingly beautiful account of anxiety, fear, and obsession." If I'm obligated to recognize how "good" a work is regardless of its politics, and I ought not dislike a particular work because its author is a bad person, aren't the "puppy slate" people similarly obligated to force themselves to recognize the quality of the works by people like N.K. Jesimin and Jo Walton and others? By creating a slate of only authors they agree with politically, aren't they equally as deserving of your censure?

But you're only complaining about how "lefty" SFF fans are being unfair -- I wonder why that is?
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 3:03 PM on April 5, 2015 [28 favorites]

From what they were saying, they had been asked what they were eligible for, but hadn't connected the question to the slate. And it was a lady, so please don't be a jerk.
posted by corb at 3:04 PM on April 5, 2015 [1 favorite]

Note that I've seen "I'll no award everyone on the puppy slates", "I'll no award everyone but tv/movie on the slates" and "I'll no award everyone who hasn't responded saying they were never contacted and they don't approve" (or something along those lines); it's possible to get some people to read your work even if it was on the slate depending on how you respond to things.

Abigail Nussbaum has commented and shared some links.
posted by jeather at 3:05 PM on April 5, 2015 [6 favorites]

While it might be a hard choice for your friend, they could go the earlier mentioned route of Matthew David Surridge. Resisting being made into a football is a difficult choice, but it's not a ad one.
posted by Going To Maine at 3:10 PM on April 5, 2015 [5 favorites]

There's also an honorable path in acknowledging the slate is icky and regretting being voted in on it, while still staying in the running for the Hugo.
posted by Nelson at 3:15 PM on April 5, 2015

I can't believe Elisabeth Moon was referenced here in opposition, given the anti-Moon fiasco a few years ago /where she was removed as GoH because she supported assimilation. And that's what people are seeing - quality writers catching shit, regardless of ethnicity or gender, on their SJW credentials.

That Elizabeth Moon is being referenced in this post and still recommended, that this was this thread's first mention of that controversy, and that her books haven't been erased in fandom's conversations just because people held her accountable for her opinions or because Wiscon disinvited her as a GoH? It suggests to me that the social justice boogey(wo)man the Puppies feel oppressed by, that is promoting work because of political acceptability and not out of actual quality or enjoyment appeal, does not exist as some fandomwide dictating monolith.
posted by mixedmetaphors at 3:18 PM on April 5, 2015 [19 favorites]

I have seen, for instance, comments along the lines of "when I was contacted, I thought it would get me exposure". Well, it did, and it is hardly other fans' fault that you didn't think it through and they aren't obliged to read your work even if you think they would like it.
posted by jeather at 3:26 PM on April 5, 2015 [1 favorite]

Also, Moon was listed as part of a "list of women who write SF what is fun or even brain candy," not of writers who haven't voiced troubling views. I also cited one Moon work as a possible alternative/companion to Weber's Honor Harrington series with regard to female protagonists. People can read/support/nominate her or not as they will.
posted by audi alteram partem at 3:27 PM on April 5, 2015 [3 favorites]

Gene Wolfe is a great example of a conservative writer who is a writer first, and a thoughtful, caring human being second, and a Catholic as a distant 3rd.

Here's an interview with him from a few years back:

"Were you born a Catholic, or was Rosemary?

No, I was a convert.

Like Chesterton.

It’s a bad thing in that born Catholics tend to look down on you. But being looked down upon has its advantages.

Like what?

You don’t put yourself forward as an expert. You understand other people who are in similar situations, and not only in religious matters."

He's also a complicated literary mega-genius whom the sad puppy dongheels would probably find too wordy to be "true boner-rocket material".
posted by Potomac Avenue at 3:29 PM on April 5, 2015 [11 favorites]

Oh no, the introduction to that interview is heartbreaking.

I met Gene Wolfe at home in Peoria, where he returned in 2013 after many years in Barrington, Illinois. Although he had recently published a new novel, The Land Across, and was working on another, it was a melancholy visit. He had moved because his wife, suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, wanted to go home. But not long after their return, she entered an assisted-living facility, and she died on December 14. Wolfe had been ill himself, his eyesight and heart troubled, and for a time he had also been confined to a facility. The day before I arrived, workers had found his dog, who had been missing for weeks: the animal had been hit by a car, and had crawled behind a garden bush to die. The house was nearly empty
posted by dng at 3:50 PM on April 5, 2015

Apparently I go to church with Gene Wolfe, I had no idea he was that Gene Wolfe, I shall now engage in self-flogging for my Peoria-claim-to-fame-fail. I shall say Hail Marys to repent!
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 4:01 PM on April 5, 2015 [11 favorites]

jeather: I have seen, for instance, comments along the lines of "when I was contacted, I thought it would get me exposure". Well, it did, and it is hardly other fans' fault that you didn't think it through and they aren't obliged to read your work even if you think they would like it.

Speaking as a writer, I would never countenance being nominated for an award under circumstances as shady as these. For me, the only honorable action would be to withdraw the nomination. The writers nominated for this year's Hugo Awards would be in good company. Previous writers who've withdrawn their nominations for a Hugo Award are Terry Pratchett, Robert Silverberg, Ted Chiang and James Tiptree Jr.
posted by Kattullus at 4:02 PM on April 5, 2015 [14 favorites]

You'd be a fool not to, or actually convinced of the rightness of Vox Day et al.

So yeah, very few tears for these guys.
posted by Artw at 4:05 PM on April 5, 2015 [1 favorite]

But haven't you heard about the evil SJW conspiracy to keep pTerry out of the Hugos?
posted by kmz at 4:08 PM on April 5, 2015 [3 favorites]

I have plenty of sympathy for Ms. Bathroom Crier, assuming that she didn't understand what she was being asked to participate in.

First of all, it feels awesome to be nominated for an award, and it would feel shitty to be all excited about being nominated and then realize that you were not, in fact, being recognized for your amazing writing, but were instead a pawn in some stupid game. Second of all, now she's in the middle of a shitstorm, and it's a shitstorm involving guys who get off on harassing and terrorizing women. If you stay in the competition, you're endorsing assholes, and if you don't stay in the competition, then you're making yourself a target of the gamergate mob. I would be crying in the bathroom too, honestly.

But I'm not sure why this is the fault of the people who are not trying to game the Hugos and are not in league with the 'gaters. The Sick Puppies are the ones who put her in that position.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 4:17 PM on April 5, 2015 [29 favorites]

P.S. If you're considering registering for a supporting membership to this year's Worldcon, may I selfishly suggest that you vote for the Helsinki bid for the 2017 Worldcon, thereby allowing me the opportunity to fulfill the childhood dream of attending a Worldcon.
posted by Kattullus at 4:18 PM on April 5, 2015 [9 favorites]

Re John c. Wright, I've got to say that I read probably 2.5 of his books and stopped. Not because of his politics, but because I didn't think they were very good. The first one was so-so, the second one was less than that, and the third, well I stopped halfway through. So, not everyone agrees that he's a great writer. Of course, not everyone agrees that my favorite authors are great either. But I can say that so far as I know, neither Bill Gibson nor Martha Wells nor Ellen Kushner nor Iain Banks are (or in the case of the late lamented Mr. Banks, were) reactionary homophobic shits.

OK, that last bit was ad hominem, but justified. Today's Easter, and I attended church this morning as I do every week, and I at least think that Messr. Wright's expressed opinions would make Jesus throw up.
posted by my dog is named clem at 4:19 PM on April 5, 2015 [4 favorites]

Someone on Scalzi's forum pointed out another casualty of this nonsense - The Three-Body Problem, by Liu Cixin, generally acknowledged as one of the best works of Chinese SF in ages, and one that Vox Day has said he would have put on his slate if he'd seen it in time, but he didn't, so the Puppies crowded it out even though it's the kind of thing they'd enjoy because it wasn't on the master list they followed. Because they were voting for a slate regardless of what the nominators actually thought were the best books of the year.

Slate voting sucks.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 4:31 PM on April 5, 2015 [20 favorites]

clem: I don't know which books you've read but I'm mostly going on the first two Golden Age novels. They were quite interesting until zombie Ayn Rand (figuratively) arrived and vomited objectivism all over everything.
posted by Justinian at 4:41 PM on April 5, 2015 [2 favorites]

Justinian -

Honestly, I don't even remember. I go to the library. I take out a book. If I like it, or find it amusing, or even tolerable, I read another by the same author. And so on. But after a couple of books that I don't like by any one person, I bag it. I recognize that probably shorts me on later better books by some people who've improved over their earlier works, but so be it. And I can honestly say that my rule seems to apply to just about everyone, regardless of politics. Jim Hines, who I agree with politically, just hasn't grabbed me enough to keep reading. And Dave Freer, who seems to be part of the Sad Puppy crowd, is someone whose work I like and keep reading. But Wright, meh. I don't find his stuff enjoyable or interesting, and I don't like his politics. So I don't bother.
posted by my dog is named clem at 5:25 PM on April 5, 2015

Someone on Making Light just posted this artistic response to the Sad Puppies slate. Very amusing.
posted by suelac at 5:28 PM on April 5, 2015 [4 favorites]

Well, based on reading the comments in this thread, I can safely predict that the Rabid Puppies will sweep the Hugos this year, and every year hence, until and unless somebody can get the voting rules changed. Remember that the Streisand Effect works both ways, which is how Memories Pizza has gotten $840,000 in gofundme contributions in 4 days. The backlash against the Puppies cannot outvote the backlash to the backlash - especially after Vox Day's inevitable appearance on FoxNews. That'll open the floodgates for votes that'll let the Vox give acceptance speeches in both his categories, and Wright at least three. They might as well get Glenn Beck to host the awards show... he did write that Speculative Fiction Classic "The Overton Window". I did commit $40 of my meager 'entertainment' budget just to vote against writers and their writings I have no intent of ever reading, which I do not in the least regret, since I know for every one of me there will be 2-3 on the other side who will be voting FOR things they have never read, just to deny some other books they'd prefer to have burned.

BTW, I had never read any of Mr. Wright's works before today, so I went to Amazon to "look inside" a few of his books... I didn't have to get to any of his 'non'-fiction to realize I was totally wasting my time... if his works of the 2010s had been published in the 1970s, I'd think some of his crap was being directly parodied by Douglas Adams... and then, he'd at least have an excuse for being so creatively stale and moldy.
posted by oneswellfoop at 5:39 PM on April 5, 2015

I bought a membership because of this.

If you are voting, please read the voting guidelines. I see people saying they don't want any slate candidates to win, and that they will rank those candidates below "No Award." This can--counterintuitively--help those candidates to win. (See comments 926 & 927, starting here, alternate explanation here, etc.)
posted by johnofjack at 5:54 PM on April 5, 2015 [4 favorites]

The key bit seems to be:

...leaving something off your ballot entirely is ranking it below everything that's on your ballot, even the items that are ranked below No Award.

So, assuming a ballot with one Kitten and four Puppies, if you didn't want Puppies to win at all, you'd vote:

Kitten
No Award

And leave it at that.

But if you thought, "If a Puppy is going to win, I'd want it to be Crying Puppy rather than one of the other Puppies." You'd vote:

Kitten
No Award
Crying Puppy

This last part is what might throw people.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 6:19 PM on April 5, 2015 [5 favorites]

I can safely predict that the Rabid Puppies will sweep the Hugos this year, and every year hence, until and unless somebody can get the voting rules changed

I'm no expert, but "WSFS rules require that changes to the Constitution be passed twice, at two consecutive Worldcons," and the Hugos are written into the WSFS constitution. So I don't think there will be any rules changes to prevent this happening in 2016. Assuming "No Award" actually sweeps, I'd guess a significant percentage of the Hugos are basically on hiatus until 2017.
posted by Monsieur Caution at 6:47 PM on April 5, 2015

It's time for the church leaders and the heads of Christian families to start learning from #GamerGate, to start learning from Sad Puppies, and start leading.

This is where things get frankly delusional. I may not like what they did with their careers, but people like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson have had a lasting and enormous impact on the fact of American media and politics, and through them, the world. GamerGate has accomplished precisely nothing of lasting impact. This has produced nothing of lasting impact thus far. Except that this crowd has heard of Vox Day, and the conservative evangelical movement has largely not, and apparently he only considers a movement a success when he's prominent in it. If anybody thought that Hugo awards were going to be the key to the hearts and minds of the Western world, Left Behind could have easily mustered enough people to get it a Hugo.
posted by Sequence at 6:52 PM on April 5, 2015 [6 favorites]

Almost everyone who has read John C. Wright on this thread who has commented on his work has in fact been fairly complimentary of his writing.

I read _Orphans_of_Chaos_ because it was free on the Kindle and I was stuck somewhere and needed something to read. I enjoyed it enough to pay for the other two books in the series. I thought they were reasonably well-written and definitely well-plotted -- and while they were somewhat derivative, his characterization was interesting enough to make it more than a retread of the somewhat tired "Jane Protagonist recovers her identity as an Important Person" trope. That said, I remember thinking that the ending was weak. And most of all, the way the female characters were written towards the end made me increasingly uncomfortable, to the point where I decided I didn't want to read anything else by the same author. Oddly, I can't say any more what specifically I didn't like (and I'm not interested in rereading to find out, either).
posted by Slothrup at 6:58 PM on April 5, 2015 [2 favorites]

Maybe it was the creepy schoolgirl spanking fetish thing going on?
posted by Justinian at 7:01 PM on April 5, 2015 [3 favorites]

People like Orson Scott Card and John C Wright, who are being treated like they have the plague because in their personal life, they don't like gay people.

Cry me a fucking river over poor Orson Scott Card and his "personal life". I was a huge fan of his work and got increasingly alienated and creeped out by the outright misogyny in so much of it, the shit where he stands on a pedestal and preaches from the mouth of his characters, and his managing to creepily conflate gayness with pedophilia every fucking time he creates a gay character. Maybe there are homophobic, misogynistic whackjobs who are able to create works that are separate from that, but Orson Scott Card has been inserting his shitty opinions into his work for decades and just happened to go enough off of the deep end to get people to actually start noticing what a goddamn shitbag he is in the past ~15 years. I really wish people would stop trying to apply the "but his BOOKS" argument shit when the only thing of his anyone's read is Ender's Game, because I read (the creepily conflating pedophilia and bisexuality) Songbird, (the weirdly menstruation-focused) Wyrm, and those Books of Mormon Rewritten As Sci-Fi books in which being gay is a ~choice~ and you can just ~imagine someone of the same sex while impregnating your BFF~ and everything will be okay.

The amount of influence that Card (and the BYU creative writing department) has on sci-fi and fantasy makes me feel like shit on a regular basis because it's just another sign on the wall to say that this place isn't really for me. Card also puts a lot of other signs on the wall about other people who aren't welcome with the Islamaphobia and racism and shit. But the popularity of his fucking magazine and the fact that he keeps getting published in places like Lightspeed that I generally like-- it just makes me feel like there are a lot higher priorities that everyone has than diversity in SFF, and since the thing I want most from the genre right now is stories that I actually find interesting and one of the best ways to do that is to not be about the same boring heterosexual cisgender white people and actually, I dunno, bother to fucking explore social dynamics instead of just assuming that boring monogamous heterosexuality and love triangles and mean girls and gender roles were handed down to us by God at some point. If this is speculative fucking fiction, it wouldn't fucking kill anyone to actually speculate about sociolological constructs, and that's why I've been reading Ursula LeGuin, Rachel Hartman, NK Jemisin, Daniel Abraham/James SA Corey and Seanan McGuire/Mira Grant.
posted by NoraReed at 7:07 PM on April 5, 2015 [48 favorites]

Wow, there's yet another James SA Corey novel out in less than two months. He's like the anti-Martin. Dude is on fire.

I'm sure it helps that there are two people doing the writing but still.
posted by Justinian at 7:16 PM on April 5, 2015 [4 favorites]

Half the writing team is Daniel Abraham, though, and I think he's been coming out with another Dagger and the Coin book every year too. Plus, judging from their twitter feed, they seem pretty involved in the Expanse show. I think they're just really good at writing a lot and having it still be fun to read.
posted by NoraReed at 7:22 PM on April 5, 2015 [3 favorites]

Maybe it was the creepy schoolgirl spanking fetish thing

Well that was more than I wanted to remember, but yes, now that you mention it... :/
posted by Slothrup at 7:26 PM on April 5, 2015

People like Orson Scott Card and John C Wright, who are being treated like they have the plague because in their personal life, they don't like gay people.

Card served on the board of the National Organization for Marriage, who sponsored boycotts and was a major anti-gay advocacy group in the 2010 and 2012 elections. Wright, just this year, compared writers of same-sex relationships to termites and called for extermination. So it seems a bit ridiculous to say that these writers can call for boycotts and discrimination of me, but we must read them anyway because free speech and all that.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 7:26 PM on April 5, 2015 [39 favorites]

Glad I could be of assistance in this matter.
posted by Justinian at 7:26 PM on April 5, 2015 [1 favorite]

Can anyone who knows the politics and rules of these things comment on the plausibility of this speculation in the deleted cstross thread?

Castalia House was (per wikipedia) founded by Theodore Beale (aka Vox Day) in early 2014 in Kouvola, Finland. As their website explains:
Castalia House is a Finland-based publisher that has a great appreciation for the golden age of science fiction and fantasy literature. The books that we publish honor the traditions and intellectual authenticity exemplified by writers such as J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Robert E. Howard, G.K. Chesterton, and Hermann Hesse. We are consciously providing an alternative to readers who increasingly feel alienated from the nihilistic, dogmatic science fiction and fantasy being published today. We seek nothing less than a Campbellian revolution in genre literature.

...

My guess: the Hugo awards are not remotely as diverse and interesting as the SFWAs Nebula Awards—an organization from which Vox Day became only the second person ever to be expelled. He clearly bears SFWA no love, and the qualification for SFWA membership (which confers Nebula voting rights) is to have professionally published three short stories or a novel. Castalia House is a publishing entity with a short story anthology series. Is the real game plan "Hugos today: Nebulas tomorrow?"
posted by une_heure_pleine at 7:58 PM on April 5, 2015

Repurposed here, at his own blog.

The comments are interesting.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 8:01 PM on April 5, 2015 [4 favorites]

I kind of feel like (hope that?) the mantel of the Mormon SF community is passing from Card to Sanderson, who makes a much greater effort towards inclusion; from what I can tell.
posted by Navelgazer at 8:55 PM on April 5, 2015 [2 favorites]

Do non genre-fiction Mormon authors tend towards holding these kinds of views as well or did SF just get lucky and attract the bad ones?
posted by Justinian at 9:41 PM on April 5, 2015

Stephanie Meyer has managed to avoid making any public statements on gay marriage and gay rights, despite being extremely Mormon.

Oh, wait, she's a girl, she probably doesn't count to the Vox Day types.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 10:27 PM on April 5, 2015 [5 favorites]

I suspect that most socially progressive Mormon sff writers just haven't made it super obvious to the reading public that they are LDS, because they don't feel the need to constantly hold forth on it.

(Socially progressive Mormons do exist. I'm an ex-Mormon, but/so I run into them fairly frequently.)
posted by wintersweet at 10:38 PM on April 5, 2015 [2 favorites]

There are a handful of decent Mormon writers in YA, I believe, though it's possible their problematic stuff just hasn't come out yet. Ally Condie and Shannon Hale come to mind. I haven't read Hale's books, though she has done some good stuff talking about ridiculously gendered books, but I've read Condie's stuff and while it isn't exactly a paragon of diversity and it does do the weird thing where they avoid sex as even a possibility (which is better than the awkward awful sex scenes in Card's work, and at least involved no passionate, incestuous nose-kisses), it's a fun little popcorn dystopian romance trilogy that doesn't try to convert you or anything. It pretty much erases queer people entirely, but at least it doesn't make us all into pedophiles.
posted by NoraReed at 12:32 AM on April 6, 2015 [3 favorites]

Well, I just signed up for a Worldcon membership, at least, and I'll be voting. Don't know if it'll do much good, but I'll be damned if I'll just stand by and do nothing.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 4:02 AM on April 6, 2015 [3 favorites]

Slothrup, that's exactly how I felt about the Chaos series. It was interesting, Amelia is a fun narrator, so I kept going. There was some really amusing bit where Colin was making some bad guy or other say that Amelia was the prettiest girl ever--"prettier than your girl" and finished up with "Good man! You get to live!" and chucking him overboard.

Though yeah, the end was kind of a non-ending, and the creepy old guy/spanking shit was GACK. I haven't gotten rid of the books, but I don't particularly want to read anything else of them either. Oh yeah, and then I heard what the author is actually like. Sigh.

This whole thing is disgusting, but in all honesty, I still can't say I'm interested in paying $40 to read fiction I wouldn't want to read/have the ability to vote against shitheads when I could spend that money on books I'd actually want to read instead. I admire y'all who do have those principles, I guess I'm just not that good of a person though. And I think it's kind of sad that a few works cited by the Evil League of Evil actually, y'know, might be good. I was pretty happy with the TV episode selections and while I don't think Skin Game was quite Hugo quality compared to the mind-blowing three books before it, that is not a bad book even if creeps approve because Jim Butcher is white and male.

Either way, I think they won and trashed the award forever, though. Not sure how you'd come back from slate voting, which is something I've always hated in politics but especially comes off noxious here. At this point it's ruined the ability to vote for work you think is good if we're going to have the Rabid Puppies vs. the Non-Bigoted Kittens slate in 2016 just to fight back against it. It can't be about anyone's work now, and it sucks.
posted by jenfullmoon at 6:35 AM on April 6, 2015 [4 favorites]

I'll also note that in spite of calls to boycott Card surrounding Ender's Game, he still had two novels on the NYT Best Seller lists while Ender's Game was in theaters and his novels are highly ranked on Amazon, (along with Correa). So the notion of a Social Justice Warrior cabal fixing the market strikes me as hyperbole.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 6:56 AM on April 6, 2015 [2 favorites]

As no one else has mentioned it, I'm both surprised and saddened that they've appropriated Hesse as a spiritual forebear and a naming inspiration for this new Finland-based publisher. I recall that the society portrayed in The Glass Bead Game is clearly a "boys only" kind of place, but is there any real reason to think that Hesse would have approved of these jagoffs?
posted by Slothrup at 7:01 AM on April 6, 2015 [2 favorites]

I've come across Vox Day (assuming its the same one) before in other muddy trenches of the culture wars, most notably the more splenetic fronts of the Intelligent Design/Evolution entertainment, and constructive dialogue didn't seem to be high on his agenda then either.

In the same way that I'd be more impressed with ID if it did its own science instead of being dependent on gainsaying the mainstream, I'd like to see the puppy farm build their own fandom based on strong writing and consistent effort in fiction. If they think that their morals and principles are incompatible with those of the Hugos, then of course they can run their own awards and they'd be free of any taint of intellectual cowardice and low-IQ cultural vandalism. After all, what do they want with baubles they clearly consider tainted already? Empires built on ravaging the neighbours are proven unsustainable by history.

IF they can prove what they claim, they can have what they want. Gaming the system just makes them look ridiculous.
posted by Devonian at 7:10 AM on April 6, 2015 [3 favorites]

So it seems a bit ridiculous to say that these writers can call for boycotts and discrimination of me, but we must read them anyway because free speech and all that.

To clarify a little (from an actual computer) - I in no way think anyone is obligated to read any science fiction, for any reason under the sun. If you don't want to read it because you think the author is a jerk, or if you don't want to read it because numerologically speaking, the numbers in his names add up to something terrible, I really don't care. No one is obligated to read anything.

However, they're pretty much correct that the Hugo has become political, that they were not the ones who made it that way, and that they are reacting to that. Mind you, they are being assholes. But while you are forced to read no science fiction, if you vote against people for Hugos based on their politics, you are making the Hugos political. Even if you are doing so in a backlash. Every time you make a vote for the Hugos based on anything besides the specific works, comparatively to other works, you are making the Hugos political. That is why they give you all the works free - so that you can read and vote in a fair environment. When you vote for the Hugos, the expectation has been that you will be voting for works of quality in a vacuum, so that SF fans the world over will be able to, in a vacuum, know which works are pretty damn good to read.

And yes, that means that if you are voting for someone purely because you want a more diverse Hugo-winning slate, you are being political at the Hugos. And this ship has sailed at least five to ten years ago, back when authors started making slates of their own and their friends/right-thinking-peers on Livejournal and asking everyone to vote for everything they were eligible for and also what those friends were eligible for.

Now again, I am in no way suggesting that Vox Day's slate is apolitical. There are some damn good reads there, but there's also Tom Kratman, who is the NK Jemisin of the right. If what you have hungered for all your life to read is someone finally writing a Mary Sue special forces character that excels at sticking it to those damn peaceniks who don't realize they are bringing about an Islamic Empire where Christian women will be slaves in the streets, only to read diaries of their peacenik ancestors and weep at their blind ignorance...well then you have Tom Kratman, and maybe he is good if you have been hungering for those things all your life (but really it sucks). Similarly, if what you have hungered for all your life is to read someone finally writing a Mary Sue POC character that is unconventionally attractive and anti-feminine yet so special even gods fall in love with her and have magical bed-breaking sex who fights racism and is a Liberator and things that are supposed to kill her can't because she's so damn special, with incoherent plot and purple metaphor..then go ahead and read NK Jemisin and her Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. (But seriously, don't.)

In each case, these writings are not in any way Hugo-worthy, but they are nominated by people who want to celebrate the people they like and stick it to people they don't like. And this makes for worse Hugos. It makes for worse Hugos when you have people putting up diversity slates and it makes for worse Hugos when people put together anti-diversity slates. It makes for worse Hugos when people are trying to use the Hugos to Say! Important! Things! And it really, really makes for worse Hugos when people are voting against even authors they admit are good just because they don't like that they were included in the Sad Puppies slate.
posted by corb at 7:40 AM on April 6, 2015 [5 favorites]

And it also taints the Hugos when people who weren't going to buy memberships buy them just to fight the hordes they feel are battering the gates, particularly if they are not even science fiction fans and are just there for a social/political fight.
posted by corb at 7:42 AM on April 6, 2015 [2 favorites]

I've come across Vox Day (assuming its the same one) before in other muddy trenches of the culture wars, most notably the more splenetic fronts of the Intelligent Design/Evolution entertainment

It's the same one, yes. Before he went full hate-on on jscalzi, he had also a fixation on PZ Myers from the Pharyngula blog.
posted by sukeban at 7:44 AM on April 6, 2015 [2 favorites]

There are some damn good reads there, but there's also Tom Kratman, who is the NK Jemisin of the right.

You're comparing NK Jemisin to a Waffen SS fanboy, seriously?
posted by sukeban at 7:50 AM on April 6, 2015 [22 favorites]

However, they're pretty much correct that the Hugo has become political, that they were not the ones who made it that way, and that they are reacting to that.

No, they're not.
posted by zombieflanders at 7:51 AM on April 6, 2015 [19 favorites]

This whole false equivalency shtick is fucking tiresome. On one side you have people who are willing to expand their horizons to see different viewpoints who have the courage to stand up their convictions. On the other you have people excusing those who actively work against justice (if not actually doing so themselves), who are collaborating with hate groups that are edging towards terrorism. Blaming the former for the latter being racist/homophobic/etc shitheels that make deals with the devil just to make a point is ridiculous and awful.
posted by zombieflanders at 8:00 AM on April 6, 2015 [26 favorites]

they're pretty much correct that the Hugo has become political, that they were not the ones who made it that way, and that they are reacting to that

When do you think it became political? Because I think that they were always political. In the past 5 or so years there was a push to notice that, actually, people who weren't white guys or Lois McMaster Bujold wrote good speculative fiction and maybe they should be read too. But I don't think that, as a whole, crappy books were voted for just because they were written by the right people.

I don't particularly object to the once a year "here's what I wrote" posts; they're useful, especially for categories that aren't best novel. I know a lot of people do object to them. But they weren't particularly political, and mostly authors stuck to their own work, with sometimes a roundup of lists other people gave. Reviewers more often gave their own specific slates, but usually with a few runners up. I mean, I see that it's a problem because popular authors have bigger reach, but they're also often better writers with more fans -- that's why they're popular.

Every time you make a vote for the Hugos based on anything besides the specific works, comparatively to other works, you are making the Hugos political.

Sure, "I won't vote for any slate" is political, but it's more about the politics of following custom than anything else (most people have noted that there are things they would have voted for had they not been on the slate). And nominating a strict slate is in any case significantly more political.

And yes, that means that if you are voting for someone purely because you want a more diverse Hugo-winning slate, you are being political at the Hugos.

But I don't see any real evidence that this has been done.

It makes for worse Hugos when you have people putting up diversity slates and it makes for worse Hugos when people put together anti-diversity slates.

People haven't put up diversity slates.

And it really, really makes for worse Hugos when people are voting against even authors they admit are good just because they don't like that they were included in the Sad Puppies slate.

It makes for worse ones this year (maybe -- people seem to agree that Butcher is good [I dropped his series 6 or 8 books in] but probably not Hugo-worthy for any one book), but the Hugos are a long-running thing, and if this means that slates in general will fail, it probably will make for a better Hugo.

(Now, this can easily turn into Sarcastic Puppies, where VD decides to put up a slate of "SJW SF" to prove that people won't vote against slates that are on their political side; I don't know what might happen then.)
posted by jeather at 8:00 AM on April 6, 2015 [19 favorites]

So just to illustrate kind of some chains of how these things can happen - here are some people talking about the inexplicable popularity and prolific aggressive nominating-pimping of Seanan McGuire at the Hugos.

... it’s also important to continue to examine ourselves and ensure that we don’t fall prey to the same insular behaviour that has caused the issues that we’re fighting against in the first place. As suggested by Landon’s research, block voting is very much alive and well in the newer Hugo voters, and writers like Mark Oshiro, and bloggers like Elitist Book Reviews likely have Seanan McQuire and Larry Correira as much to thank for their nominations as they do their persistence, talent and body of work, which might be Hugo-worthy in-and-of-itself. It’s always who you know, isn’t it?

And Seanan McGuire is not only an aggressive nominator, she's also friends and coworkers with other aggressive nominators, and she's pretty prolific all over LJ - which as is noted, is a pretty incestuous SF/fantasy town very committed to dethroning the old and emplacing the new. If you're going to talk about dethroning bloc voting, then we also need to stop having these authors publicly pimping for themselves and their friends, which even Mefi's own Scalzi admits has been happening for a long time.

it’s also not entirely honest to say that it’s not been done before, either. Lots of people suggest or at least remind people of their own works for consideration (I do the latter); lots of people suggest or at least remind people of the works of others for consideration. Just this year I suggested Abagail Nussbaum for Fan Writer; there she is on the ballot. Was my recommendation causative? Maybe, maybe not (I suspect not — she’s built a reputation over a number of years), but the point is I made the recommendation.

posted by corb at 8:01 AM on April 6, 2015 [1 favorite]

Note that if I'm happy that the Sad/Rabid Puppies are going to be dragged on to mainstream audiences because of the slate, it's because their books are so horrifyingly bad (talking about Kratman, natch -- the work reviewed on the link is nominated for Best Novella) that I expect them to be laughed out of fandom before the Hugos are served.
posted by sukeban at 8:15 AM on April 6, 2015 [3 favorites]

Similarly, if what you have hungered for all your life is to read someone finally writing a Mary Sue POC character that is unconventionally attractive and anti-feminine yet so special even gods fall in love with her and have magical bed-breaking sex who fights racism and is a Liberator and things that are supposed to kill her can't because she's so damn special, with incoherent plot and purple metaphor..then go ahead and read NK Jemisin and her Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. (But seriously, don't.)

I feel like I read a completely different book than you did. Oh well, taste varies.
posted by Drinky Die at 8:26 AM on April 6, 2015 [7 favorites]

Here's a better (also by Athene!) review of Kratman that has illustrated representation of his Mary Sue town.
posted by corb at 8:27 AM on April 6, 2015 [3 favorites]

(MeFi's own) John Scalzi also wrote a post about this year's slate nominations which is less sanguine than last year's post that corb linked to above

I also think it’s okay to penalize graceless award grasping by people who clearly despise the Hugo and what they believe it represents, and yet so very desperately crave the legitimacy they believe the award will confer to them. Therapy is the answer there, not a literary award.

posted by hydropsyche at 8:32 AM on April 6, 2015 [9 favorites]

If you're going to talk about dethroning bloc voting, then we also need to stop having these authors publicly pimping for themselves and their friends...

I see a distinct difference between "Vote for me!" (or even "vote for this person!") and "Vote for enough things to completely displace other people from the short list!" The latter is the explicit mission of the Puppies slates -- exclusion of themes they dislike.
posted by Etrigan at 8:32 AM on April 6, 2015 [26 favorites]

Unless I'm missing something, corb, all Seanan McGuire is doing is reminding her readers which of her works are available and recommending some friends in a post on her personal LiveJournal. That is categorically not the same thing as running a slate of authors in the same kind of way you organize a political party. No one except for the Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies has done so. This is not a discussion about the relative merits of two sides for the simple reason is that there is only one side. Or rather, there is one side, the Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies, and there is an entirely imaginary side that only exists in their heads. To be fair to the Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies, those imaginary enemies of theirs are equally gigantic in their shitbaggery and really should be stopped.
posted by Kattullus at 8:33 AM on April 6, 2015 [33 favorites]

I really don't see how importing a bunch of cyberbullies is any different than lobbying people who are going to be voting anyway.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 8:43 AM on April 6, 2015 [1 favorite]

people who weren't going to buy memberships buy them just to fight the hordes they feel are battering the gates, particularly if they are not even science fiction fans

We better invent a purity test then, to determine who the true fans are.
posted by nubs at 8:47 AM on April 6, 2015 [8 favorites]

I really don't see how importing a bunch of cyberbullies is any different than lobbying people who are going to be voting anyway.

Make no mistake - importing GamerGate folk is fucking vile and I am not arguing otherwise. But the thing is - most people don't actually vote for the Hugos. Hell, I'm aware and interested and don't always bother to get a membership to vote for the Hugos. I would actually wager that most casual fans were not even really aware of the Hugos until authors and people who move in those worlds started making posts about them on the internet and encouraging people to get supporting memberships and vote for the things they liked. So in a lot of these cases, we're talking about importing folk. There is absolutely a difference between importing assholes and just importing votes, but both are not really great.
posted by corb at 8:51 AM on April 6, 2015

Spreading awareness about "hey here is a great thing! come participate in this great thing! if you do, maybe consider voting for me" is a completely different animal from "Hey, total assholes, come support other total assholes because we can't let women have characters or everything falls apart."

False equivalency is utter horseshit.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 8:55 AM on April 6, 2015 [26 favorites]

corb: I would actually wager that most casual fans were not even really aware of the Hugos until authors and people who move in those worlds started making posts about them on the internet

I think you would lose the bet if you wagered whether people who read the blogs of science fiction and fantasy authors are aware of the Hugos or not. People who read blogs by authors are more than casual fans.
posted by Kattullus at 8:56 AM on April 6, 2015 [5 favorites]

corb --

First, I am getting a membership this year, when I have not before, specifically because I AM a science fiction fan. I suspect that will be true for a lot of people.

Second, as others have pointed out, authors promoting their own works and recommending a few others, mostly to extant fans, is entirely different from promoting a massive slate based entirely on political views and gaming the system by explicitly seeking out and encouraging political sympathizers to vote.

Third, I wouldn't vote for a "Social Justice" slate either, and neither would most people who are upset by this, because part of the point is that a political slate demeans and sullies what is supposed to be a merit-based writing award.

Fourth, you haven't really presented evidence for the existence of a "Social Justice" slate coming first, either, except that a book you particularly dislike was nominated four years ago. And didn't win.
posted by kyrademon at 9:11 AM on April 6, 2015 [29 favorites]

NK Jemisin, since she came up, isn't my jam, but I believe that the people who nominate and vote for her do so because they honestly like her writing not because she marks some kind of diversity bingo card.
posted by jeather at 9:13 AM on April 6, 2015 [17 favorites]

corb: "And I'm like, this is not how you're supposed to be feeling as a nominee and I hate these bloody, bloody fandom wars."

I think the current mess may be an order of magnitude nastier than past battles, but bloody fandom wars are an intrinsic part of fandom. Hell, there was a huge to do at the very first Worldcon.

There's a reason "all fandom was plunged into war" is a stock joke.
posted by Chrysostom at 9:18 AM on April 6, 2015 [5 favorites]

Hell, there was a huge to do at the very first Worldcon.

I had no idea the left vs right battles went as far back as that! Jesus. Well, if nothing else, this is maybe comforting that no lasting damage will be done.
posted by corb at 9:20 AM on April 6, 2015

I'm not sure how writers self-promoting on their blogs and sharing recs is anywhere near analogous to creating a publishing company and then using it to attempt to make a party-based system in award nominations
posted by NoraReed at 9:24 AM on April 6, 2015 [13 favorites]

But while you are forced to read no science fiction, if you vote against people for Hugos based on their politics, you are making the Hugos political.

Now, you're just dragging the goalposts around the field from "who are being treated like they have the plague because in their personal life, they don't like gay people" which is what I responded to, and changing the subject back to the Hugos. I'll point out there that Card hasn't received a best novel nomination since 1992.

Now personally, I don't vote for the Hugos. If I were to vote, it would probably reflect my bias for works similar to Le Guin, Vonnegut, Dick, Butler, Wolfe, and Delany. Not because I entirely agree with their politics, but because they deliver brilliant writing that stretches the genre, books I find myself re-reading and writing about months or years after my first encounter with them.

I don't know what you're on about since Jemisin was only nominated once and didn't win. I don't think Kingdoms is much more of a Mary Sue story than Cyroburn on the same ballot (I love Miles to death but he's a total Gary Stu.) So the notion that we're stacking ballots with Jemisins doesn't seem to match the evidence. If we were, there would be a lot of names that have yet to appear on the Hugo list.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 9:27 AM on April 6, 2015 [10 favorites]

The problem with bloc voting, regardless of who is doing it, is that it seems to lead to an end-state where books end up getting awards that would not have necessarily won awards simply on their own merits, and in the long run that hurts the value of the award. It means that someone looking at a book with "Hugo Award Winner" on the cover, a few decades down the road, is going to have to consider what exactly the hell was going on with the Hugos that year. Not the end of the world or anything, but unfortunate.

Granted, I am actually not so sure that awards like the Hugos are really as important today as they were, oh, 20 or 30 years ago; Amazon has a creepily good idea of what I'm going to enjoy and will happily feed me recommendations until my Kindle screen finally succeeds in melting my eyeballs with its fluorescent glow or I run out of money, whichever comes first. And I think that's increasingly how people are finding books (not necessarily just via Amazon, although I think the Bezos Machine is pretty significant, but also via Goodreads and other similar recommendation engines).

As a sidebar, that does underscore the crazypants nature of the Sad Puppies slate/bloc/brigade/whatever. There has probably never been a better time to be writing B-grade lowbrow literature aimed at a niche audience. Seriously; not even in the golden age of pulp could you reach as broad a base of readers as you can today, at such a low cost, and with so little impulse-buy friction. You don't even have to thread the needle of making a cover lurid enough to attract readers while also not stepping wholly over the bounds of what a respectable person can read on the bus. We're in a new golden age of porn today. And porn doesn't just have to mean sex: porn can be, well, whatever does it for you. And a lot of the Sad Puppies authors are really writing porn—and I don't mean that in a bad way, per se, I'm all for porn—albeit porn that I find somewhat personally appalling, including as it does a lot of unnecessary violence and misogyny. (But I find a lot of people's porn appalling, and I'm sure the feeling is mutual, so that's neither here nor there.)

Which brings us back to the Sad Puppies and the Hugos. It seems apparent that as both readers and writers (at least for the writers who have actually thrown in with the "movement", such as it is), they don't want to admit that they're basically writing porn aimed at emasculated middle-class white dudes who want to Mary Sue themselves into the conquering badass hero who gets all the girls, for a few hours. Despite the fact that you can make a hell of a living doing that, and you can read whatever you want on the bus with nobody but God and your e-reader being the wiser, it's not good enough.

No, for whatever reason they need to not only write those sort of books—which is fine, in itself; consenting adults, freedom of the press and all that—but they need to legitimize it as, if not capital-L Literature (lol Vox Day thinks they're following in the tradition of Hermann Hesse?!), at least as Science Fiction in the grand tradition of the authors they read as teenagers or something. And co-opting the Hugos is apparently how they've decided to do it. And that sucks.

If the Sad Puppies crowd was correct in saying that the Hugos were being used as some sort of affirmative action program for minority-viewpoint novels that weren't also good works taken independently of that, then IMO that would also suck, but frankly I've never really seen much evidence of that. It seems awfully close to the Gamergate plank of how somehow PC games are being 'ruined' somehow, which I've also never seen any evidence of. So I'm pretty skeptical, to put it lightly.
posted by Kadin2048 at 9:46 AM on April 6, 2015 [19 favorites]

corb: I had no idea the left vs right battles went as far back as that!

In case anyone gets the idea that the Great Exclusion Act was a back and forth struggle, it was a decision by the three people running the first Worldcon in 1939 to exclude a number of left-wing science fiction authors because they were going to distribute Michelist pamphlets opposing Nazis. Which, you know, in the light of history and all, doesn't seem like the kind of thing you exclude someone for.
posted by Kattullus at 9:59 AM on April 6, 2015 [22 favorites]

Granted, I am actually not so sure that awards like the Hugos are really as important today as they were, oh, 20 or 30 years ago; Amazon has a creepily good idea of what I'm going to enjoy and will happily feed me recommendations until my Kindle screen finally succeeds in melting my eyeballs with its fluorescent glow or I run out of money, whichever comes first.

The trouble with Amazon and so on is that they follow the old Civil Service rule that 'nothing shalt be done for the first time': it will not recommend something that's nobody's read yet. Fandom plays the essential role of the early adopter, the experimentally-minded seekers after the new who love their field so much they're prepared to risk time and money exploring in areas where they expect to come up dry more times than not. I've worked on awards in IT before now, and the idea there was not to reward success, it was to reward invention. They were proudly and obviously pump-priming (and I spent months of my life sieving though dross...).

If the Hugos (or whatever) are to be relevant into the future where the Bezotron Knows All, Sees All (Except The New), this really has to be the major part of their existence. How much it has bben or is now, is a matter for pleasurable and endless discussion, but there's no way that Operation Puppy is anything other than poisonously antithetical to that. One could even argue that in seeking out new life and new innovations, the Hugos are indeed politically opposed to conservatism and in that, the immature dog squad are exactly correct - but that this is precisely what the Hugos have to be if they're to do their job, and if VD et al want to go and celebrate pre-Enlightenment values they should do that for themselves.

But there's no role for logic here. This is a publicity stunt by impotent narcissists with rocket envy.
posted by Devonian at 10:12 AM on April 6, 2015 [5 favorites]

Kattullus, I didn't mean to imply that Pohl and the Futurians were on the side of wrong. I was merely pointing out that battles for the soul of fandom go all the way back. Sometimes, it's just clash of egos. Sometimes - as in both 1939 and right now - there's a pretty clear right and wrong.
posted by Chrysostom at 10:15 AM on April 6, 2015 [1 favorite]

I would actually wager that most casual fans were not even really aware of the Hugos until authors and people who move in those worlds started making posts about them on the internet and encouraging people to get supporting memberships and vote for the things they liked. (emphasis added)

So the last they in that phrase is ambiguous. I suspect you meant it to refer to the people posting recommendation lists — that the movers and shakers were bringing in new recruits to vote for the specific works that the movers and shakers recommended. But the other reading of the sentence is the one that reflects my experiences: That the movers and shakers encouraged people to start voting for works that the people liked.

As someone who's still relatively new to voting and nominating in the Hugos, for a long time I felt like I wasn't good enough, wasn't knowledgeable enough, to participate in the rarified awards. Then I started participating, thanks to encouragement from bloggers (particularly Scalzi and Nussbaum). And I never once got the impression that I was being told who to vote for. Instead, the message I got was that I really was "fan enough" to participate in the Hugos, and that my tastes and opinions were valid enough that I should make them known.

Before Sad/Rabid Puppy, I never saw a suggestion that I should vote for a work that I hadn't read, or that I didn't legitimately enjoy. But I find it incredibly difficult to believe that the voters for the puppy slates really did read everything they nominated.

For example, Letters from Gardner is nominated for Best Related Work. Thanks to Niall Harrison's statistics, we know that, at a minimum, 206 people nominated that book. Yet there are 0 reviews of it on Amazon.com. None. Nor are there reviews on Amazons .ca, .in, or .co.uk^*. So which of these scenarios should I believe?

That Letters from Gardner is a Hugo-worthy book that was of high enough quality to be recommended by both Torgersen and Day (it's both a Sad and Rabid Puppy). And, thanks to those men's influence, over 200 people read the book and also felt it Hugo-worthy. Yet throughout most of the English-speaking world, nobody bothered to voice their praise for it on the world's dominant bookseller.
That a bunch of people nominated the book without reading it, because they were told to.

Unfortunately, I find scenario 2 more plausible. And that's a key difference between the puppy slates and the recommendations of prior years.

^*The book is not listed on Amazon in Australia or China. I didn't check countries beyond those.
posted by Banknote of the year at 10:23 AM on April 6, 2015 [30 favorites]

He already did the "well maybe I'll come around on thinking you deserve rights if you just would be nicer to me" tone argument bullshit, and he's young enough that he's got quite a while to do the standard old white dude bigot-spiral. He's better than Card in the way that it's better to have only your toilet overflowing and not your toilet AND bathtub, but he still seems to be on the same team, and there are a shitload of people who are reading him anyway, which kind of bums me out, because there's just so much great writing out there that you'll never get to all of it in a lifetime, so it makes me sad to see people reading stuff by folks who use their podiums to say I'm subhuman.

As has been said here, nobody needs to read any single thing they don't want to, and I actually don't read Sanderson myself, because epic fantasy just isn't usually my jam. I mostly know him form the Writing Excuses podcast, which I love, and I which I think has had a good effect on his worldview, with Kowal, Wells and Taylor pulling his leftward pretty consistently. My point being, I guess, that while he definitely still has room for the bigot-spiral, and his past statements haven't always been good, his progression on these issues has been pretty purely towards the side of good, inclusion, rights, etc.

Anyway, maybe you're right and it's just the difference between the sink and the sink+bathtub. I'm not in a great position to say. It just seems like such an improvement over a double-down bigot like Card that maybe my perception is warped.
posted by Navelgazer at 11:03 AM on April 6, 2015

I am actually not so sure that awards like the Hugos are really as important today as they were, oh, 20 or 30 years ago

Or two days ago.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 11:04 AM on April 6, 2015 [13 favorites]

The thought that an actual human being could actually read that Vox Day thing from last year and go ahead and nominate it on merit is a scary one, but let's face it pretty unlikely.
posted by Artw at 11:04 AM on April 6, 2015 [2 favorites]

I've been reading SFF since I was a teenager and I'm in my mid-40s now. I've never involved myself in literary fandom at the convention level, but I've relied on the Hugos (and the nominations) as a point of direction in my own reading. I'm planning to buy a supporting membership this year and read the packet and vote.

Maybe I'm not a trufan in some people's eyes because I didn't bother until now. But the goobergaters are trying to storm the castle and it's time for coattail riders like me to woman the barricades. I think of this as giving back to a community whose works I've enjoyed for the last 30+ years.

(Also, I loved N.K. Jemisin's Inheritance Trilogy. It was new and interesting at a time when I was completely burned out on Eurocentric fantasy. She's one of the people who kept me in the fold because she was doing something different and exciting.)
posted by immlass at 11:05 AM on April 6, 2015 [21 favorites]

Peter Watts: And they call it… Puppy Love…

And yet, like I say: relief. It’s one thing to know that you washed out because you flubbed the jump— but that ache of inadequacy vanishes like morning mist when even the superstars miss the same bar. The Sad Puppies have neutered the Hugos, turned them into the genre version of CBC’s Bookies: awards, sort of, but hardly meritorious. I beat out Emily St. John Mandel for one of those; Caitlin beat Margaret Atwood. Does anyone think that actually means anything?

posted by the man of twists and turns at 11:08 AM on April 6, 2015 [1 favorite]

From that Peter Watts article:

Have the sad puppies really done anything that hordes of authors don’t do as a matter of routine, albeit on a smaller scale? Are we talking a change of kind, or merely of degree?

Yes.

It's hard for me to believe that Watts doesn't understand the difference between campaigning for the inclusion of a single work (which, while far from ideal, still leaves space for other works to emerge and also results in that work competing with other works for the actual award) and campaigning for a slate that encompasses the entire category, thus preventing any other works from being included and ensuring that one of them will win the award. Or, of course, No Award will win, as I very much hope is the case.

I don't know, this is probably overly cynical of me, but maybe the silver lining of this whole debacle is that I'm learning whose opinion in various Internet realms I can safely discount as being either a) uninformed, b) someone who's swallowed the puppy delusions about terrible leftists being mean to conservatives because they have ~~controversial views~~ literally endorsed violence against people like me and/or fought to restrict our rights or c) doesn't understand the dynamics of privilege and oppression.
posted by overglow at 11:20 AM on April 6, 2015 [9 favorites]

The single best summation of the situation in under 140 characters: Basically the Hugos have always been protected by security through obscurity, and that doesn't work anymore.
posted by Artw at 11:41 AM on April 6, 2015 [6 favorites]

Hugo Awards Become A Joke After Ballot Stuffing Affects Nominations
posted by Artw at 11:48 AM on April 6, 2015

Chrysostom: Kattullus, I didn't mean to imply that Pohl and the Futurians were on the side of wrong. I was merely pointing out that battles for the soul of fandom go all the way back. Sometimes, it's just clash of egos. Sometimes - as in both 1939 and right now - there's a pretty clear right and wrong.

I wasn't responding to your framing, it was indeed a "huge to do". Though, it's fair to point out that Pohl, in later years, downplayed the whole thing and chalked it up to him and the other Futurians getting on the nerves of the Worldcon organizers. On the one hand, the Futurians weren't always the best-behaved (Wollheim, for instance, would denounce the Triumvirs as "fakefans") but the Triumvirs didn't exactly take it all in their stride. Of course, all these things have receded into history now, but the Triumvirs lost what little Fannish support they'd had after the Great Exclusion Act after they physically manhandled a bunch of Futurians at some minor convention.

Note: I realize that writing anything about the history of science fiction fandom is impossible without sounding like some kind of Borges parody.
posted by Kattullus at 11:48 AM on April 6, 2015 [15 favorites]

How have we not had a post on the Futurians?
posted by languagehat at 12:01 PM on April 6, 2015 [5 favorites]

I'd say Watts is right in that promotion has always been to a certain degree accepted, with the cover if a sort of gentleman's agreement not go too far with it, and that leaves a gaping hole for the system to be exploited like this, and really it doesn't matter who is doing the exploit, the for real Puppies or the SJW counter slate that to date only exists in their delusions, that shit needs to be fixed if you expect anything to run in any kind of workable way in future.
posted by Artw at 12:01 PM on April 6, 2015 [1 favorite]

How have we not had a post on the Futurians?

Surely we must have done a Fans are Slans post?
posted by Artw at 12:02 PM on April 6, 2015

An interesting response from Sarah Hoyt, talking about her fear as a libertarian author trying to publish SF and what she sees in the response to Sad Puppies:

That is because ten years ago, I lived in a state of fear. And the fact that my fear was real and serious is justified by that accusation to Brad, “You bad bad man, when you decided these people deserved awards, you didn’t TELL THEM you were putting them on a recommend list.”

I lived in fear because of the implied end of that sentence “And you knew that because you associated them with you, a known conservative, we would make their lives miserable and do our best to end their careers.”

posted by corb at 12:02 PM on April 6, 2015

If No Award wins at the Hugos, I hope the audience remains silent.

If one of the Old Yellers* wins, I hope the audience stands up en masse and turns their backs to the podium.

I also hope the bar is big enough, because I plan on being there instead of in said audience. No matter who is nominated, I find the bar a lot more exciting than the actual ceremony.

*A sad movie about a rabid dog; yellow is the color of cowards. Both slates deserve to be conflated, even if they didn't co-ordinate.
posted by RakDaddy at 12:05 PM on April 6, 2015

I believe anyone who insists that the negative response is due to simply being "conservative" is either fooling themselves or being deliberately disingenuous. There is quite a bright line between simply being "conservative" and being openly, emphatically, actively hateful toward others.

(I have no comment on Hoyt. I am not familiar with her or her work.)
posted by wintersweet at 12:06 PM on April 6, 2015 [26 favorites]

(And I think the complete non-reality of the "career-ending" fear has been amply demonstrated in previous comments above, so that's just as disingenuous/self-fooling/deceptive.)
posted by wintersweet at 12:08 PM on April 6, 2015 [9 favorites]

I lived in fear because of the implied end of that sentence “And you knew that because you associated them with you, a known conservative, we would make their lives miserable and do our best to end their careers.”

Never mind that this fear has never borne fruit, but the assertion that this is about conservatives or libertarians is completely unsupported, and it would be nice if you stopped coming up with a baseless accusations that the backlash against the Sad/Rabid Puppies is about that. Now, if conservative/libertarian SFF thinks that the most valued voices on their side are the most virulently nasty, that's their choice. If they want to be associated with thugs and hate speech and violence, that's their choice. If they freak out at the mere suggestion of something that doesn't adhere to their decades-old idea of SFF (as Correia and friends do on regular basis) and think that a genre based on looking forward should never do so, that's their choice. The only people that bear responsibility for horrifying, divisive, abusive shit-spewing being associated with conservatives and libertarians in SFF are the people that decided to engage in said shit-spewing.
posted by zombieflanders at 12:16 PM on April 6, 2015 [25 favorites]

It would be more shocking if one of these libertarians *wasn't* complaining about completely imaginary persecution - whining, entitlement and blaming their failings on others makes up almost the entirety of their worldview.
posted by Artw at 12:19 PM on April 6, 2015 [17 favorites]

From the Hoyt piece: I imagine it was similar to living in one of the more unsavory periods of the Soviet Union. You saw these purges happen. Whisper-purges.

OH COME THE FUCK ON.
posted by rtha at 12:22 PM on April 6, 2015 [31 favorites]

The reason people think the authors should be notified isn't because they might be outed as conservative but because after last year the thinking behind of the "puppy" slates was pretty evident -- i.e. it's not a "for your consideration" sort of recommendation, but "everybody nominate these specific titles, even if you don't really think they're the best, because then we can be sure to get people from Our Team on the shortlist." And that sort of politically motivated system-gaming is something that writers of any ideological stripe might not want to be associated with.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 12:23 PM on April 6, 2015 [8 favorites]

the assertion that this is about conservatives or libertarians is completely unsupported, and it would be nice if you stopped coming up with a baseless accusations that the backlash against the Sad/Rabid Puppies is about that.

What...do you think it's about? It seems pretty obvious to me at least that Sad Puppies is a conservative backlash to SJW stuff. If you don't think they're conservative, politically, what in the world do you think the unifying principle is?
posted by corb at 12:24 PM on April 6, 2015

Corb, but the objection to the Sad Puppies is not that they are conservative, but that the organized a massive campaign recruiting outsiders to nominate things for the Hugo based on the ideological leaning of the authors, not because of the merit, in such a way that they nominated almost all of the titles up for a Hugo this year.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 12:26 PM on April 6, 2015 [20 favorites]

Taking delight in destroying things other people care about.
posted by RakDaddy at 12:27 PM on April 6, 2015 [8 favorites]

Privileged people with conservative opinions fear that (political correctness/affirmative action/SJWs) will threaten them and whine endlessly about it, news at 11
posted by NoraReed at 12:27 PM on April 6, 2015 [6 favorites]

> what in the world do you think the unifying principle is?

Personally, it sounds to me like the unifying principle is the organizers are assholes who have more to say about what they don't like than what they do. They don't like "SJW"s and the nominees they regard as falling into that camp, so they put together a slate that is, I guess, not-SJW.
posted by rtha at 12:29 PM on April 6, 2015 [11 favorites]

Artw: Surely we must have done a Fans are Slans post?

I made a post with that title years and years ago about Claude Degler. It remains one of my favorite post I've made.
posted by Kattullus at 12:33 PM on April 6, 2015 [2 favorites]

languagehat: "How have we not had a post on the Futurians?"

Knight's The Futurians and Pohl's The Way The Future Was are recommended.

Asimov's various memoirs can be fun, too, but his behavior towards women is pretty distasteful.
posted by Chrysostom at 12:34 PM on April 6, 2015

What...do you think it's about? It seems pretty obvious to me at least that Sad Puppies is a conservative backlash to SJW stuff. If you don't think they're conservative, politically, what in the world do you think the unifying principle is?

That's just putting the cart in front of the horse, now. Again, the issue isn't that conservative SFF itself is the problem, it's that (a) they decided en masse to make it all about "SJWs" rather than the other way around, and (b) they embrace the fact that the Venn diagram between them and people that support horrible things is pretty close to a circle (which is rich, coming from the kind of people that will regularly accuse anyone to the left of Ted Cruz of "palling around with terrorists"). The combination of the two is, as rtha points out, responding to a slate of "what we like is diverse" with "diversity is stupid and therefore I will campaign against it." And again, the fact that they decided to choose the worst people in the world to further their misguided reactionary bullshit is their problem.
posted by zombieflanders at 12:37 PM on April 6, 2015 [11 favorites]

it's that (a) they decided en masse to make it all about "SJWs" rather than the other way around,

Serious question - were you around at all in fandom for RaceFail or Mammothfail 09?
posted by corb at 12:43 PM on April 6, 2015

It seems pretty obvious to me at least that Sad Puppies is a conservative backlash to SJW stuff.

A conservative backlash to a relatively small group of authors, bloggers, and slacktivists? Ok, then.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 12:47 PM on April 6, 2015 [2 favorites]

I'm not sure what questioning my fandom credentials on events that are at best tangential to the thread is supposed to achieve, but FWIW I've been part of SFF fandom since the 80s. Conventions, discussions, obsessions...everything across multiple media forms.
posted by zombieflanders at 12:49 PM on April 6, 2015 [5 favorites]

A conservative backlash to a relatively small group of authors, bloggers, and slacktivists? Ok, then.

...that involves breaking the Hugos, affecting many people not in that group.
posted by Artw at 12:50 PM on April 6, 2015 [2 favorites]

Serious question - were you around at all in fandom for RaceFail or Mammothfail 09?

I kind of was because it was difficult to be in LJ and not notice it. But it had nothing to do with the Puppies, MilSF or conservative SF, and moreover, people like the Nielsen Haydens were receiving the heavy criticisms from the social justice front.

The closest this has to do with this year's Hugos is the nomination of the Mixon Report, which hasn't been possible because of the Puppies, certainly.
posted by sukeban at 12:54 PM on April 6, 2015 [9 favorites]

Some recaps: RaceFail | MammothFail
posted by sukeban at 1:00 PM on April 6, 2015 [1 favorite]

I don't know Hoyt. I know that, as Abigail Nussbaum pointed out, it wasn't the Sad Puppy Slate that got through, but the Rabid Puppies (though obviously there was some overlap). I know that of the thousand noxious things about Vox Day, "conservative" doesn't make the top five. I know that taking the calling-out of a baldly bad-faith tactic that has tainted the awards this year, and spinning it as about her own politics, is just flat-out opportunism, but that's fine. And I don't know, but I seriously doubt she was ever "living in fear" that people might discover she's a libertarian writing in SF. I mean come on.
posted by Navelgazer at 1:02 PM on April 6, 2015 [19 favorites]

(Looking at the recaps of RaceFail, it's worth to mention that it certainly hasn't hurt the standing of the Nielsen Haydens, Elizabeth Bear, John Scalzi, or Sarah Monette, who is the author of the Hugo-nominated novel The Goblin Emperor under the pen name of Katherine Addison)
posted by sukeban at 1:08 PM on April 6, 2015 [6 favorites]

I really doubt that getting voted below No Award is going to destroy these people's careers. In one of the zine categories, I found the response ("We're from Australia, we didn't know about it until Friday, this sucks and even if you don't vote for us for a Hugo please don't write us off") well enough written that I am considering subscribing (Andromeda Spaceways).

I am somewhat less sympathetic to "I thought being on the slate would get my work noticed and I can't believe you all are going to take that into account". Interestingly, this is someone whose work interests me, but has been leaving comments that annoy me -- essentially not wanting any consequences for having agreed to be on the slate (twitter comments suggest that she had).

I am entirely unsympathetic to "You guys there really is unfair bias in voting and it can't just be that people don't like my work very much".
posted by jeather at 1:12 PM on April 6, 2015 [8 favorites]

"I thought being on the slate would get my work noticed and I can't believe you all are going to take that into account"

Who is this?
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 1:22 PM on April 6, 2015

(Looking at the recaps of RaceFail, it's worth to mention that it certainly hasn't hurt the standing of the Nielsen Haydens, Elizabeth Bear, or Sarah Monette, who is the author of the Hugo-nominated novel The Goblin Emperor under the pen name of Katherine Addison)

Nor was RaceFail a calculated attempt to devalue one of the industry's most prestigious awards.

Above it was mentioned that the Hugo is just an award and not that important in the grand scheme of things. I disagree. When readers want to dip their toes into the sci-fi genre for the first time, what books do they turn to? How do they figure out where to start? If you haven't browsed sci-fi books on Amazon before, it's not going to begin recommending any. New readers are going to find books by browsing bookstore end-caps and reading awards lists.

Genre authors often have trouble getting their work considered as "literary" by the establishment. Does it help if we don't even have a set of books with a minimum standard of quality to point to? If the big name awards are filled with rubbish? And not like "ugh that doesn't deserve an Oscar" level of rubbish. You might not agree with a specific Oscar winner, but it will at least be watchable. Some of the works nominated for the Hugo this year are barely readable. Is that what authors like Hoyt want to have put forward as the best their genre can accomplish?

Devaluing the Hugo by making it something anyone can buy hurts all sci-fi authors, no matter their politics.
posted by tofu_crouton at 1:25 PM on April 6, 2015 [7 favorites]

Jason Sanford compares sales estimates from BookScan. Butcher is a best-seller with more copies out there than the rest of the field combined. Correia and Leckie are roughly parallel (6,000 and 8,000). The weaker puppies and Goblin Emperor seem to clock in at around 2,000.

Likely the losers in this exchange are VanderMeer and Liu, both of whom made the Nebula list with 33,000 and 8,000 copies. Not that sales should determine who gets on the list, but the Puppies seem to be making two contradictory claims regarding the SF&F market. They are simultaneously being shoved out by Pink SF, and Pink SF isn't what fans want. Neither of these are supported by the sales estimates.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 1:33 PM on April 6, 2015 [7 favorites]

tofu_crouton: "You might not agree with a specific Oscar winner, but it will at least be watchable."

I agree with your general point, but I will dispute to the death that Titanic, Gladiator, Braveheart, Dances with Wolves, et. al. are 'watchable'.
posted by signal at 1:33 PM on April 6, 2015 [1 favorite]

Looking at the recaps of RaceFail, it's worth to mention that it certainly hasn't hurt the standing of the Nielsen Haydens, Elizabeth Bear, John Scalzi, or Sarah Monette, who is the author of the Hugo-nominated novel The Goblin Emperor under the pen name of Katherine Addison

Indeed. Also, RaceFail wasn't about progressives vs. reactionaries (or Democrats vs Republicans, to put it into baldly American political terms). It was about Outsiders & Insiders; transformative fandom vs. affirmative fandom; people who were primarily fans/readers, including people of color, pushing back against established writers & publishers for condoning a variety of sins, including cultural appropriation, racist stereotyping, and flat ignorance regarding the cultures portrayed in their work and evidenced in their readership.

And the folks who took the most heat in RaceFail were Elizabeth Bear and the Nielsen Haydens, both of whom are considered by VD and his like to be on the side of the demons now. (Scalzi stepped into the crap once or twice but managed to recover his footing; Bear & the NHs have just gone on without ever confronting their own behavior. It doesn't seem to have hurt any of their careers.)

All that said, what RaceFail and MammothFail did was put it on notice that SF/F includes not just the old white guys, but also thousands and thousands of women and people of color (and women of color) and international fans (including, btw, Abigail Nussbaum), and they (we) are tired of all the stories being about manly het white American men. And tired of so many of the awards going to white het American men. (Yes, Bujold & Willis won a lot, and so did Samuel Delany. But the numbers are still fairly damning.)

[An anecdote: when Lois McMaster Bujold made an ill-considered comment in public about how she didn't realize she had many readers of color, because she never saw them at cons -- in response, 35,000 fans of color posted to one LJ entry, in order to show that they existed and were fans of SF/F. That's just folks who had LJ accounts, back in 2005 or so, and who heard about the call to raise their hands and be counted. I imagine that if you were a racist shit like VD, comfortable in your white enclave of SF/F, that showing might be unsettling.]

Anyway, the uproars were apparently enough to scare VD and his ilk, because they can feel the demographic hill eroding beneath them, and what will they be if they're not able to say they're better/more important than all those Other (brown) people?

I don't have the historical chops to make this compelling, but I'm seeing a real strong association with the Jim Crow laws here -- Those People must be kept in their place, or we'll lose ours. And it's all done with appeals to historical & biblical authority; not to the Bible here, but to the sainted John Campbell & Heinlein, Lovecraft and Howard.

It's all pretty gross and traumatic. But -- pardon the analogy -- blaming this on calls for diversity and equality of race, sex, orientation, and gender presentation is like blaming the violence at the Edward Pettus Bridge on the black marchers. The correct response to calls for equality isn't blowing up the place, no matter how rude you think the equality-seekers might be.
posted by suelac at 1:35 PM on April 6, 2015 [31 favorites]

I bought an associate membership, and will now do so every year at least until these knucklefucks piss off back to the Prometheus award where they can feel superior without fucking up everybody else's good time.
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 1:52 PM on April 6, 2015 [3 favorites]

I should follow up to that ridiculously mammoth post to note that all of the group-identity politics is also complicated by interpersonal politics. To wit: Vox Day/Ted Beale loathes MeFi's own John Scalzi, for reasons best left to him & his therapist, and N. K. Jemisin, for (I presume) the sins of being female, black, gorgeous, and a far better & more successful writer than he is. (Even if you don't love her work, she's certainly a more competent writer of fiction than VD.)

So a lot of what underlies the whole Sad/Rabid Puppies thing is driven by interpersonal dynamics -- much the same as the kickoff to Gamergate was actually Wassname's desire to tarnish his ex's reputation all across the internet.

In which case, Scalzi is actually the Rabid Puppies' Zoe Quinn. Congratulations!
posted by suelac at 2:07 PM on April 6, 2015 [21 favorites]

I should follow up to that ridiculously mammoth post to note that all of the group-identity politics is also complicated by interpersonal politics. To wit: Vox Day/Ted Beale loathes MeFi's own John Scalzi, for reasons best left to him & his therapist, and N. K. Jemisin, for (I presume) the sins of being female, black, gorgeous, and a far better writer than he is. (Even if you don't love her work, she's certainly a more competent writer of fiction than VD.)

I suspect that the reason why Jemisin keeps getting namedropped in this discussion in spite of going 0-1 on the Hugos is because she's a prolific blogger and critic of Beale and Wright. I think most of the "Pink SF" authors have kept a higher ground in the big debate by not mentioning it, so the vitriol strikes me as one-sided.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 2:15 PM on April 6, 2015 [1 favorite]

Here's The Guardian's take on all this. Excerpt:

What the Hugo awards are vulnerable to isn’t the bitter argument between liberals and conservatives, but the clever manipulation of such differences by self-promoters. Most writers, even in relatively commercially genres like sci-fi and fantasy, sell remarkably low numbers of books. It’s not surprising, then, that some writers ramp up political arguments as a way of gaining the attention they crave, and pulling publicity stunts like block-voting campaigns. Some involved with the block vote no doubt believe they are on a righteous crusade against liberals in sci-fi. But that only makes them more easily exploited by those who are only interested in gaining status and selling books.

posted by Kattullus at 2:16 PM on April 6, 2015 [2 favorites]

Are the Hugos the only sci-fi/fantasy award around worth mentioning? No, They are not.

The Hugos are broken, because those of a particular ideological bent can purchase and control the nomination process and stack the deck against authors whose views on politics and gender they consider dubious.

What's amusing is that it doesn't really matter how you interpret that. Is that the mainstream's complaint about the Puppies or the Puppies' complaint about the mainstream? Doesn't matter in and of itself because the mere fact that it's possible -- and demonstrably possible in that it is the Puppies' STRATEGY as well as their complaint -- deep-sixes the award's credibility until it is fixed.

The fact that people like Day and Wright have influence in the industry should make the Hugo staff want to smash their own heads on the edge of the sink, but it's a separate concern.
posted by delfin at 2:16 PM on April 6, 2015 [3 favorites]

she's certainly a more competent writer of fiction than VD

Well. I mean. That's hardly a bar to clear. It's like being less deep than the Mariana Trench. But yes, she's not at all a bad writer -- I wasn't engaged by the book, but I wasn't actively put off and would possibly pick up another if I heard the right buzz around it -- and I am not suggesting that she didn't deserve her nomination or that had she won it would would have been a miscarriage of justice. (Actually, though I enjoyed the Willis, I don't think it deserved the win that year.)

Jemisin is hardly the point, though -- she's just an example (along with Swirsky, often, and of course Scalzi) -- of authors who people seem to claim got their nominations through Nefarious Means rather than people just liking their work.
posted by jeather at 2:22 PM on April 6, 2015 [4 favorites]

The big losers on this are not liberal SF&F authors. It's anyone not a puppy. Or in the novella category, anyone who's not John C. Wright.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 2:23 PM on April 6, 2015 [3 favorites]

CBrachyhynchos: I'm pretty comfortable calling John C. Wright a loser, myself.
posted by Navelgazer at 2:24 PM on April 6, 2015 [4 favorites]

I wasn't engaged by the book, but I wasn't actively put off and would possibly pick up another if I heard the right buzz around it

I only kinda liked The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (I tend to bounce off stories where the magical element is all bound up in sex -- my New England upbringing coming to the fore again, no doubt), but I really enjoyed The Killing Moon and The Shadowed Sun, which are creative and plotty, with less to-do about sexually-attractive gods and more about on-the-ground politics and empire (and magic).

I'm looking forward to her next novel, The Fifth Season.

Obligatory bias check: I met her at Wiscon one year, before her first novel came out. She's great.
posted by suelac at 2:29 PM on April 6, 2015 [1 favorite]

Oh man, went over to Pharyngula's blog and found this wonderful link about John C. Wright losing his shit over the girl+girl romantic ending of Korra.
posted by emjaybee at 2:32 PM on April 6, 2015 [5 favorites]

Yeah, it was The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms I wasn't so keen on. I'll put the duology back on my list. (And this made me look Karen Lord up, and she has a third book out that I hadn't known about. Hurray.)
posted by jeather at 2:38 PM on April 6, 2015

> Oh man, went over to Pharyngula's blog and found this wonderful link about John C. Wright losing his shit over the girl+girl romantic ending of Korra.

Wow. What a cruel, ignorant, horrible person Wright seems to be.
posted by rtha at 2:46 PM on April 6, 2015 [3 favorites]

And this made me look Karen Lord up, and she has a third book out that I hadn't known about.

I keep hearing about Lord and forgetting to pick her up, but yesterday I asked the library to order her latest. The one good thing about this whole kerfuffle is that people keep mentioning books that should have been nominated that I didn't know about. So I've also got The Three-Body Problem wishlisted, and a few others.
posted by suelac at 2:47 PM on April 6, 2015 [1 favorite]

If you want vintage John C. Wright wank, I think the first time I heard from him was when he pontificated about strong female characters and how SF *had* to be ridden of them. So he's been at it for a while, and I don't know what he was doing watching Korra at all.

(edit to replace links with donotlink)
posted by sukeban at 2:50 PM on April 6, 2015 [3 favorites]

girl+girl romantic ending of Korra

omg, the fan reaction vid compilation linked in that post so adorable. i love watching reaction vids of shows i don't watch. (what looks like) grown ass people losing their shit over 2 animated characters holding hands. <3

and fuck this wright person.
posted by twist my arm at 2:51 PM on April 6, 2015 [6 favorites]

Joe Hill just posted this on Twitter. That is about all that needs to be said about these guys. Sad puppies? Sad writers that no one will read in ten years.
posted by zzazazz at 2:51 PM on April 6, 2015

Wow. What a cruel, ignorant, horrible person Wright seems to be.

True, but because of him I got pointed to this reaction video to the series finale of the Legend of Korra which put a huge smile on my face even though I never watched the show, so at least he's tangentially good for something.
posted by Kattullus at 2:52 PM on April 6, 2015 [1 favorite]

Yes, I was delighted by that reaction video! And Wright.... man, his reaction goes leetle bit beyond "doesn't like gay people."
posted by rtha at 3:00 PM on April 6, 2015 [1 favorite]

Wright was originally a crazy Objectivist. He traded that brand of crazy in for a new one based on conservative Catholicism. Still crazy, different brand.
posted by Justinian at 3:03 PM on April 6, 2015 [1 favorite]

Wright: "Hence, a strong masculine character in a story is one who can pilot a jetplane in a thunderstorm while wrestling a Soviet-trained python in the cockpit. He can appease a mob, lead a rebellion, give orders, follow orders, seduce a countess, fight with a longsword, build a campfire, repair a car engine, write a constitution, comfort the grieving (usually with a brisk slap in the face and a curt command to snap out of it), receive confession, sway a jury, suture a wound, and escape from a sinking submarine with a knife clutched in his teeth."

He must be a lot of fun at funerals!

(Also I was entirely correct, someone needs to take away his Aquinas and Aristotle, this is philosophy abuse!)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 3:31 PM on April 6, 2015 [11 favorites]

Oh man, went over to Pharyngula's blog and found this wonderful link about John C. Wright losing his shit over the girl+girl romantic ending of Korra.

I think it's interesting that Wright believes that Korra's creators "sold [their] integrity out to the liberal establishment." In other words, that their choice for the characters was a subversion of the artists' true desires in favor of the marketplace and pablum. It's always a ballsy move to claim that you own someone else's art.
posted by Going To Maine at 3:32 PM on April 6, 2015 [10 favorites]

There is a tremendous amount of literary and philosophical pretension from the Sad and Rabid Puppies crowd that totally belies the fact that they wouldn't cut muster as "men" in their fetishized versions of the world. To me, the title of Vox Day's "Opera Vita Aeterna" sums it up: the fucking Latin is wrong. (It should be Opera Vitae Aeternae, as anyone in their first semester of Latin could have told you.) it is a perfect symbol.
posted by graymouser at 3:36 PM on April 6, 2015 [9 favorites]

Just had a fit of madness and checked the comments on this on Slasdot. Hoo boy.
posted by Artw at 3:42 PM on April 6, 2015 [1 favorite]

He must be a lot of fun at funerals

I love how much of that list is like the patriarchy shopping list. "Men can sure patriarch the shit out of some shit when they have status in a social framework that is predisposed towards obeying them!"
posted by nom de poop at 3:43 PM on April 6, 2015 [7 favorites]

There is a tremendous amount of literary and philosophical pretension from the Sad and Rabid Puppies crowd that totally belies the fact that they wouldn't cut muster as "men" in their fetishized versions of the world.

Like fuck could Wright suture wounds on sinking submarines or any of that shit.
posted by Artw at 4:01 PM on April 6, 2015 [8 favorites]

Hence, a strong masculine character in a story is one who can pilot a jetplane in a...

Something in the cadence of that quote makes me think that it's borrowed from another author -- Heinlein, maybe?
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:38 PM on April 6, 2015 [1 favorite]

I... the picture of Wright on Wikipedia looks like he's wearing a fedora. I don't have words.
posted by Justinian at 4:39 PM on April 6, 2015

Something in the cadence of that quote makes me think that it's borrowed from another author -- Heinlein, maybe?

it's pretty much lifted from heinlein wholesale lol

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

"Intermission: Excerpts from the Notebooks of Lazarus Long" (p. 248)

posted by Rustic Etruscan at 4:43 PM on April 6, 2015 [9 favorites]

Ha! That is the one!
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:50 PM on April 6, 2015

Going To Maine: "I think it's interesting that Wright believes that Korra's creators "sold [their] integrity out to the liberal establishment.""

I wonder what he thought of the big reveal of Garnet's kink in Steven Universe? Now that's quality selling out to the liberal-fusio-sexual-establishment.
posted by signal at 4:50 PM on April 6, 2015

it's pretty much lifted from heinlein wholesale lol

And boy howdy does Wright not benefit from the comparison of them side by side.
posted by murphy slaw at 4:55 PM on April 6, 2015 [9 favorites]

The contrast between the Heinlein quote and the Wright one is sorta fascinating, actually.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 4:55 PM on April 6, 2015 [2 favorites]

Weirdly he seems to have left out the diaper changing amongst all the constitution drafting and such.
posted by Artw at 4:56 PM on April 6, 2015 [23 favorites]

it's pretty much lifted from heinlein wholesale lol

And boy howdy does Wright not benefit from the comparison of them side by side.

Which is weird because you'd think anyone who's reading the classics, as Wright advocates, would pick up on the reference. So why not just go with the original?

(Incidentally I like Stross's response to the Heinlein quote, in Saturn's Children - described well in TVTropes under heading Take That).
posted by Pink Frost at 5:05 PM on April 6, 2015

I feel compelled to point out that Wright quote is just an amped-up version of the old Heinlein quote about the competent man (wikipedia it... it's easy to find). Although I think it's telling that he deletes the items that many would call more nurturing than destructive, like changing a diaper or cooking a tasty meal. I just can't figure out if he was joking or if he REALLY MEANS IT. That's the part that scares me. EDIT: Someone else beat me to the post. But still. I find the dropped cooking reference of interest as well. And I still can't tell if he was joking or not.
posted by my dog is named clem at 5:05 PM on April 6, 2015 [2 favorites]

I... the picture of Wright on Wikipedia looks like he's wearing a fedora. I don't have words.

Out of respect for the late Terry Pratchett, I have resolved to stop making fun of people who wear fedoras for six months.

Don't make this harder than it has to be.
posted by It's Never Lurgi at 5:07 PM on April 6, 2015 [10 favorites]

Which is weird because you'd think anyone who's reading the classics, as Wright advocates, would pick up on the reference. So why not just go with the original?

Because the Heinlein quote is about a competent human being, who can do things associated with both men and women, and the Wright one is about a competent man, who is a pathetic Walter-Mitty-esque fantasy of masculinity.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 5:08 PM on April 6, 2015 [24 favorites]

Also, it's a lot more feasible to measure up to Heinlein's romantic everyman if you're functionally immortal, a la Lazarus Long.

Also, note that Heinlein/Lazarus is praising a far more sensible view of a Renaissance-Human, one who seeks to improve at all things and know the basics of everything. Wright is praising putting functional dude's into clichéd set-pieces. Damn straight they don't fit side-by-side.

Put another way, Heinlein is describing character, Wright empty spectacle.
posted by Navelgazer at 5:17 PM on April 6, 2015 [6 favorites]

Specialization is for insects

Is probably the most relevant part of the Heinlein quote that they sadly overlooked.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 5:19 PM on April 6, 2015 [3 favorites]

Specialization is for gender roles! Grar!

Yeah, I stand by what I said before about them not being worth a spec of Heinlein's dandruff, I'd also point out that 40s Heinlein's wasn't 60s Heinlein wasn't 70s Heinlein, for better or worse. So if they wanted some static unchanging reference point for SF-as-it-should-be-done he's actually a pretty bad choice for it.
posted by Artw at 5:34 PM on April 6, 2015 [4 favorites]

It's almost like they have no conception of history
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 5:40 PM on April 6, 2015 [4 favorites]

Norman Spinrad predicted this decades ago with The Iron Dream, where he wrote a formulaic piece of sci-fi/fantasy as Adolf Hitler. It's almost indistinguishable from other such books, and the afterward even talks about the fake book's fans. Fascism in sci-fi has been a problem for a long, long time. See also: Michael Moorcock's 'Starship Stormtroopers' essay.
posted by Charlemagne In Sweatpants at 5:43 PM on April 6, 2015 [4 favorites]

O.K., the last rant from me for the night: Sarah Hoyt? I mean, really? Scared because she's been outed as a (whisper) libertarian? This in a nation where the Pauls have been generating tons of press and loving attention from dullards all across the country? I live in a liberal-ish college town in the middle of a rural county, and about once a month there's at least one if not more nimrods standing on a street corner protesting the secretive and evil Federal Reserve, which, apparently is the lovechild of Lenin and Satan (on second thought, maybe not, since that's a little too man-on-man). I always have to fight off the desire to point out to them that Alan Greenspan was one of Ayn Rand's biggest groupies.

Anyway, have you ever read any of Hoyt's stuff? The word 'turgid' springs to mind. As does the phrase 'all-too-put-downable.' Yikes. She's even worse than Wright. I have yet to finish a book by her that I've picked up.

But like Wright she seems convinced that there's some Sekret Conspiracy out to punish provocative right-leaning authors, and to deny them vital access to the public's imagination. Except of course that they're both published by not-small presses. One might almost think that people are ignoring them because their work ISN'T VERY GOOD. Imagine that.
posted by my dog is named clem at 6:10 PM on April 6, 2015 [5 favorites]

Out of respect for the late Terry Pratchett, I have resolved to stop making fun of people who wear fedoras for six months.

I think we need to start a Reclaim The Fedora For pTerry campaign.
posted by jenfullmoon at 7:54 PM on April 6, 2015 [4 favorites]

John C. Wright is also the guy who called Terry Pratchett Hitler and fantasized about beating him up.

http://www.donotlink.com/eghm

He's a sick motherfucker, and anyone who allies with him and Vox has lost all my respect. No matter if they think they really *deserve* that nomination.
posted by tavella at 7:57 PM on April 6, 2015 [8 favorites]

I find it hilarious that as far as I can tell most of the recruiting of GG into this conflict was accomplished by the Progressive SF side's pre-emptive "OH NO Gamergate subhuman scum in my Hugo Awards" clamor, the January tweets from some random linked at Making Light not having really taken. Before too long I imagine they would have heard and come onboard anyway but like, nice own goal.
posted by save alive nothing that breatheth at 8:10 PM on April 6, 2015

tavella:

I thought you were joking.

I hoped you were joking.

I didn't read all the way through because my eyes glazed over in pure self-defense (blood pressure zooming up can't be good for eyeballs), so I don't know if he makes the direct comparison anywhere in the middle or is satisfied with the allusion in the start. But from the glimpses I unavoidably caught while skimming and from the end of the piece in particular, I'm inclined to think that he didn't make the direct comparison. Hitler is small fries, after all, when the insuniation he really wants to make is something along the lines of a smiling, two-faced accomplice of the literal Christian-defined Satan.

About a man who was one of the truly most full-of-grace-and-mercy human beings I've ever crossed paths with. Because he wanted to die with dignity and believed others should have the right also.

I...excuse me while I go devolve into choking sputters.

(Welp, at least I know for sure I don't even need to attempt the Wright bits of the ballot now either? Silver linings? And no, really, don't say anything about judging works by merits in this case, I don't think I could see any merit in anything he writes any more unless five people whose tastes I trust absolutely swear that Wright has written, somehow, something as gracious as Hogfather. I won't be holding my breath.)
posted by seyirci at 8:30 PM on April 6, 2015 [4 favorites]

I think that there are two fundamental reasons I do not want to read the SF/F written by these assholes. The first is that I don't want to support people who are terrible. The second is that I'm largely into speculative fiction because I'm interested in worldbuilding, and people who are so blinded by their privilege that they utterly fail to understand a lot of relevant social issues seem unlikely to be good at that. I mean, they're failing at getting the worldbuilding of reality, right? Why would I want to read the worldbuilding they make up? And when I look back at stuff I read when I was younger and look at the serious failings, they often come from ignoring social justice issues. Unrealistically behaving women, Planet Of People From [Country], invisible servants who never seem to effect the plot in any way and have no characterization, stuff like that-- it's bad writing, bad worldbuilding, and I find that shit really distracting. I'm no longer willing to suspend my disbelief about stuff like "there are people who are not white" and "queer people are okay", let alone stretch it around really out-of-control Islamaphobia, slavery apologia, etc. And you're pretty much always gonna get shit like that from reading people who are fundamentally wrong about how the world works, and bigots are, indeed, fundamentally wrong. And assholes. But it's the "wrong" part that makes me feel like I'm really not missing anything by avoiding their works.
posted by NoraReed at 9:12 PM on April 6, 2015 [16 favorites]

Adam Roberts: Delenda Est Hugo.
posted by Chrysostom at 10:26 PM on April 6, 2015 [2 favorites]

I agree completely with Roberts. Particularly the part where what happened this year is the natural evolution of certain trends that have been gaining steam over the last decade, culminating in a couple wins that I think were not deserved and primarily the result of non-writing factors. But those winners were good folks so nobody particularly cared. These winners are not, so we care, but the trend is the same.
posted by Justinian at 2:14 AM on April 7, 2015 [2 favorites]

I see Nick Mamatas said the same thing here.

2. Castigate all campaigning, not just the campaigning you don't like Pandora's Box isn't necessarily open forever. However, you can't close half a lid.

posted by Justinian at 4:16 AM on April 7, 2015

Except there's no actual comparison between "hey I wrote a cool thing vote for me! and maybe check out these other cool things people have written and vote for them" and "make sure you vote for these people because they're Real Manly Men who write Real Manly Man Manbooks."
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 4:24 AM on April 7, 2015 [11 favorites]

That's a statement of opinion rather than fact. One which I (and clearly Adam Roberts and Nick Mamatas, both of whom are pretty keyed into the SF world) disagree with.
posted by Justinian at 4:27 AM on April 7, 2015

You really don't see a difference between urging votes based on good writing and urging votes based on ideology? The former are speaking to the already-likely-to-be-voters, the second imported globblegrimmers--nonvoters--to stack the deck on ideological lines.

You can't possibly pretend there's no difference here.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 4:31 AM on April 7, 2015 [9 favorites]

I mean, at base what you're saying is that it's okay to lobby for one type of book but not for another type of book. But a lot of the people lobbying for the type of book you deride as "Real Manly Man Manbooks" actually think those are cool books and want to see more of them.

I happen to, like you, think those people are clownish dumbnozzles and often racist and/or misogynistic buttheads but that doesn't mean they aren't allowed to prefer that type of book and campaign for them, if campaigning for a different type of book isn't discouraged.
posted by Justinian at 4:31 AM on April 7, 2015 [2 favorites]

Did you read the link to Adam Roberts and Nick Mamatas or what? They say it better than I could. The links are like four comments ago or something.
posted by Justinian at 4:31 AM on April 7, 2015

No, I didn't. Because what they're engaging in is ballot-box stuffing, which is an entirely different animal. You can draw a false equivalency as much as you like; doesn't make it true.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 4:33 AM on April 7, 2015 [2 favorites]

Ah, yes, the "neen neen neen I can't hear you and you can't make me" school of discourse.

If you can't be arsed to even read the links I'm not sure it's worth arguing about.
posted by Justinian at 4:35 AM on April 7, 2015 [1 favorite]

Fine, I read it. And nothing about it has changed the facts on the ground: these stridently unhinged douchefountains (thank you poffin boffin) have explicitly found a whole bunch of misogynist clowns to vote in lockstep along party lines. Which is entirely and completely different from asking someone to vote for you on the strength of your writing.

Let's play spot the differences in a political election, shall we:

"Vote for me because I am in this party"
"Vote for me because I believe X, Y, Z."

Do you honestly see no difference between these two positions? Because there is one, and it's stark.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 4:40 AM on April 7, 2015 [3 favorites]

I'm not exactly following this back and forth here so don't take this as taking either side, but being on a party ticket should mean that you believe in some X,Y,Z...right? I think the distinction here should be focused on voting for something for artistic merit rather than political merit, not on if it's a belief in some political ideas XYZ or a party's political ideas XYZ.
posted by Drinky Die at 4:54 AM on April 7, 2015

What counts as campaigning? I mean, clearly telling your mother you're up for an award doesn't count. Sending e-mails to your friends probably doesn't count either. I suppose the question is whether telling your twitter followers you're up for an award counts as campaigning. The form of the award clearly matters. A juried award doesn't present this problem, but an open vote award like the Hugos does. And god knows that the Hugo voters have opted for some questionable choices throughout its history, some of which I'm sure is explainable through the personal popularity of the authors. I'm generally okay with that, it's the nature of the Hugo Awards. But yes, at a certain point, once you're being too insistent in getting people to vote for you, it slips into campaigning and becomes distasteful. On the other hand, if you're mid-level author, you're going to have a hard time beating someone who's universally beloved.

But I'm not entirely sure what the Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies have done counts as campaigning. I mean, they're not persuading people to give their works a chance, they're asking people to vote for a bunch of nominations, sight unseen. For instance, there's almost no way that most of the people who voted on a slate basis could tell you how the nominees in the short-form and long-form editing categories compare to other editors out there. That's not persuasion, which seems to me to be a fundamental feature of campaigning. This is something else, and something worse.
posted by Kattullus at 4:56 AM on April 7, 2015 [18 favorites]

> 2. Castigate all campaigning, not just the campaigning you don't like Pandora's Box isn't necessarily open forever. However, you can't close half a lid.

But there is a difference - it's acknowledged here, even, because if "Hey, vote for this slate for this category" were the same kind of "campaigning" as "Hey, my book is eligible, nominate me!" then no one would have noticed and Mamatas wouldn't have bothered to say that counter-slates are going to become a thing now and he's agin' 'em.
posted by rtha at 5:48 AM on April 7, 2015 [5 favorites]

Indeed, kattullus, and I think your comment calls out how sad puppies and hugoes both suffer from multiple problems. In this respect I agree with Justinian and fffm at the same time. There are problems with the puppies that are bigger than them, that are and have been part of the hugoes for some time, and also that the puppies represent either a deeper low in these areas, or an entirely new one altogether.

I think discussing all the myriad problems is useful, because it shapes what the better solutions might look like.

Personally speaking I haven't accorded the hugoes any respect for years. I feel they are both grossly unrepresentative, accorded far, far more weight than their tiny voting pools, riven with personal relationships etc merit, and routinely skate over worthy contributions.

I can see three ways of dealing with it a soupcon of success:
1. Move to a jury. Bias for sure but at least bias with a modicum of taste and understanding of the field.
2.expand the voting pool such that the mewling minority approach a representative weight, whatever that may be. (and let's not be so confident that shit won't float: the biggest selling sf/f is by no means the best. Such are popularity contests)
3. Either kill the hugoes, or place that respect elsewhere. Give them the status that they deserve as both a popularity contest, and a popularity contest amongst a very very small group of readers that wouldn't add up to a hundredth of those reading the books.

If it isn't obvious, I would personally go for three :I think they're crap; they've been crap for years and years.
posted by smoke at 5:57 AM on April 7, 2015

hey're asking people to vote for a bunch of nominations, sight unseen

To be entirely fair, I would be shocked if more than one in ten voters has read, or even tried to read, everything in the categories they vote in, even with short stories. I don't know the sad puppies are so unique in this regard, a little more blatant, certainly. A lot more thorough, no doubt. But it seems a matter of degree to me. A large one I grant.
posted by smoke at 6:01 AM on April 7, 2015 [1 favorite]

I think, in previous years at least, most people read the works they nominated.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 6:16 AM on April 7, 2015 [9 favorites]

I believe the process has been so compromised that voting "No Award" is the decent thing to do, sight unseen: this is no longer a vote about artistic merit, it's a vote on whether the Puppies' machinations ought to be respected. Honestly, the only thing that gives me pause is the prospect of paying $40 to get a packet full of Puppy messes.
posted by Joe in Australia at 6:22 AM on April 7, 2015 [4 favorites]

this is no longer a vote about artistic merit, it's a vote on whether the Puppies' machinations ought to be respected.

See, this is the kind of stuff that makes it pretty obvious that a lot of the people objecting to the Puppies aren't really sticking firm to ideals, but are just, themselves, voting along party lines. You think the Puppies aren't slating for artistic merit, so...you're going to say 'fuck you' to artistic merit in order to show them? How does that even make sense?

And justinian is entirely right about this. The Sad Puppies slate isn't just made up of people marching in lockstep, or you wouldn't have people being nominated while having no idea who don't even share the political views. The Sad Puppies slate seems a combination of merit and 'in your eye, SJW!' - less, 'ha ha, we are going to deliberately nominate people who suck' and more 'We're going to nominate people who we think are good but who are being unfairly deprived of nominations through the workings of the SJW machine." Which, functionally, no, I don't think is very different at all from 'Here are the things I and my friends are eligible for' or 'Here are the things I'm eligible for and the things I think are good."

Sadly the computer ate a long post I was writing about how precisely RaceFail ties into this, but in short, SJW people were suggesting a lot of noms after RaceFail that were based more on ideology than on good writing - which is why NK Jemisin comes up in these types of conversations, as she was one of the loud voices on LJ in that, only to be nominated a year later for her debut novel which, even if her other work has gotten better since then, is nowhere near Hugo quality. Seanan McGuire is another whose work is not particularly high in quality, but who is Loud On Twitter About Things and thus is flagging as One Of The Good Guys. And I think that after RaceFail, a lot more people in the SJW part of the SF community were interested in throwing their votes to people they perceived as the Good Guys - which definitely horrified people who were suggesting that authors should be judged on merit and not on their SJW credentials.
posted by corb at 7:11 AM on April 7, 2015

A small part of me wants to write a sci-fi novel deliberately aimed at this audience, full of Westboro Baptist Wookies and Triffids who respect the patriarchy and invading space fleets falling out of the sky because heroic Earthmen upload Scripture to their computers.

If people like this insist on having money, far be it from me not to relieve them of it.
posted by delfin at 7:21 AM on April 7, 2015 [8 favorites]

You can get individual works nominated by lobbying, but I don't think you can exclude all other contenders unless you play it tactically: you get 300 people to nominate each of the works on your slate, knowing that most nominees get far less. At that point the nominations no longer have anything to do with excellence: the nominators have relinquished their own opinion in favor of ensuring that other voices are silenced. The contest isn't meaningful any more, all I can do is register a protest.
posted by Joe in Australia at 7:25 AM on April 7, 2015 [7 favorites]

***A Baen Books contract magically appears!***
posted by Artw at 7:25 AM on April 7, 2015 [2 favorites]

I don't think you can exclude all other contenders unless you play it tactically:

The thing is, 'excluding all other contenders' looks a lot like 'making sure everyone possible gets a seat' through a glass darkly. Because if you have 5 slots, and you want to make sure good people who are otherwise unshowcased get in, it makes perfect logical sense to nominate 5 people. It doesn't have to be a deliberate attempt to make sure none of the Wrong Stuff gets in. It's about getting the Right Stuff in. Intentions matter, even if they're hard to discern.

If you want the contest to be meaningful, read the material and honestly rank it - then if you genuinely think nothing you've read deserves to win a Hugo, that it would be a monstrosity for any of that work to win, then vote 'no Award.' But don't do so based on 'anyone who associates with those shmucks deserves to win nothing.'
posted by corb at 7:35 AM on April 7, 2015

If associating with shmucks is good enough to get you a nomination it's good enough to get you a NO AWARD.

The only question is whether we nuke the whole thing from orbit as well - puppies, kittens and all. I'm leaning yes.
posted by Artw at 7:46 AM on April 7, 2015 [8 favorites]

If you want the contest to be meaningfuL [...]

It cannot be meaningful, because these are not meaningful nominations. They're spite nominations, hate nominations, deliberately made to prevent a genuine contest.
posted by Joe in Australia at 7:52 AM on April 7, 2015 [13 favorites]

> Adam Roberts: Delenda Est Hugo.

OK, so Hugo is a feminine noun. But is the genitive Hugonis (as in ratio, rationis) or Huginis (as in Carthago, Carthaginis)? That's the important issue here!
posted by languagehat at 7:59 AM on April 7, 2015 [8 favorites]

Intentions matter, even if they're hard to discern.

If intentions matter--and these intentions are incredibly easy to discern, because they have been flat-out stated--why are you so invested in handwaving away the intentions of the misogynist reactionary assbags in making these nominations to begin with?
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 8:01 AM on April 7, 2015 [13 favorites]

corb: The Sad Puppies slate seems a combination of merit and 'in your eye, SJW!' - less, 'ha ha, we are going to deliberately nominate people who suck' and more 'We're going to nominate people who we think are good but who are being unfairly deprived of nominations through the workings of the SJW machine." Which, functionally, no, I don't think is very different at all from 'Here are the things I and my friends are eligible for' or 'Here are the things I'm eligible for and the things I think are good."

The difference between the two is that the former is trying to push writers out of the field on the basis of a falsehood, while the latter is expanding the field for underappreciated works. There is no SJW machine. (And when did 4chan become an authority in this matter?) There is a healthy level of debate and discussion, in which, the leading Puppy novel has sold more than the rest of the field combined. As you say, intentions matter, and the agenda of people who want Pink SF/insect army/termites out of "their" genre has been explicitly stated.

Of course Jemisin didn't win a Hugo. Her novel made multiple voted and juried lists that year, so a fair number of people disagree with your perception of its quality. Cryoburn wasn't Hugo-worthy either, but it got nominated.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 8:09 AM on April 7, 2015 [14 favorites]

OK, so Hugo is a feminine noun. But is the genitive Hugonis (as in ratio, rationis) or Huginis (as in Carthago, Carthaginis)? That's the important issue here!

Ha, and I was quietly grousing because he got the syntax wrong. (ALL THE NOUNS BEFORE THE VERB, GUYS. LATIN IS A SOV LANGUAGE.)

I'm pretty sure it would be the latter, since the -o -onis family is more properly described as io, ionis. If you don't have the i before o, you're usually going to replace that nominative o with an i in the long-form root.
posted by sciatrix at 8:09 AM on April 7, 2015 [3 favorites]

When talking about Vox Day bullshit cod Latin is entirely appropriate.
posted by Artw at 8:15 AM on April 7, 2015 [6 favorites]

The thing is, 'excluding all other contenders' looks a lot like 'making sure everyone possible gets a seat' through a glass darkly. Because if you have 5 slots, and you want to make sure good people who are otherwise unshowcased get in, it makes perfect logical sense to nominate 5 people.

Explain how this results in John C. Wright taking up 3 spaces on the ballot for one category, then.

I also would argue that your "campaigning for a SJW ballot" looks to me an awful lot like the kind of marketing that publishers require their authors to do. Seanan McGuire/Mira Grant gets a lot of nominations because she writes a lot and she blogs a lot; so people recognize her name, and some of them buy her books, and report well of them, which encourages other people to buy them. If her books were bad, no matter how popular a blogger she is, she wouldn't sell as well -- witness John C. Wright, who apparently has a committed fanbase, but doesn't sell nearly as well. Or Jim C. Hines -- really nice guy, definitely an SJW-blogger, but hardly a best-seller, in part because IMO his work is fairly pedestrian. Great ideas, mediocre implementation.

Scalzi is really good at getting his name out there, and while his books aren't really my beautiful cake, they certainly are for plenty of other people, and that's why he gets nominations.

N. K. Jemisin is good at her job; she writes essays and novels and does the business of marketing herself. That's what she's required to do as part of her job.

I don't think it's fair to claim that the kind of self-promotion necessary to survive as a fiction writer should be considered disqualifying when award season rolls around.

And as noted repeatedly through this whole argument, there's a difference between saying, "I really liked this book and this book and this book, for these reasons, and I plan to nominate them for the Hugos," and "If we all vote exactly this way, those assholes on the other side of the river won't win anything."

Vote for love of a thing, not for spite. The Puppies voted out of spite, and I would bet $100 that at least half of them didn't read any of the works they nominated. It was all for politics.
posted by suelac at 8:26 AM on April 7, 2015 [24 favorites]

even if her other work has gotten better since then, is nowhere near Hugo quality

"At least in the ballpark of Hugo winners like The Gods Themselves or Startide Rising" is just not a terribly high bar to clear, especially for writing quality. Hugo-nomination-quality is an even lower bar to clear, since then you're saying "At least in the ballpark of Friday or All the Weyrs of Pern."
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 8:29 AM on April 7, 2015 [5 favorites]

For a good few years I read almost nothing but science fiction and fantasy, heavy on the science fiction. I read a good number of terrible books which were nominated for a Hugo at one point or another. It would baffle me how they'd been nominated. The answer is simple, a non-trivial number of other people thought they deserved a nomination. "Hugo-worthy" isn't really an objective concept and any kind of logic based on wondering how a book you consider terrible was nominated isn't going to be very sturdy. That old parable of the house built on sand applies here.

However, in the case of the Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies, we do have a different answer. A number of people organized a campaign to flood the award with votes for a full slate, drowning out other voices. The reason this particular case caused so much outrage is that we know why these works were nominated, and it doesn't fit with most people's conception of fairness. No, it's not technically in breach of the rules, but it's not ethical. The Hugos have been a fan-run award from the beginning, based on the idea that the fandom community rewards the works that most appeals to fans. If you mess with something like that, you should expect anger and outrage. And notoriety.
posted by Kattullus at 8:30 AM on April 7, 2015 [10 favorites]

> Intentions matter, even if they're hard to discern.

..So, SAD PUPPIES has tended to push back. Against the Worldcon fandom zeitgeist.

What is that zeitgeist? It is, in their own words (and scare quotes):

running effort to get stories, books, and people onto the Hugo ballot, who are entirely deserving, but who don’t usually get on the ballot. Largely because of the nomination and voting tendencies of World Science Fiction Convention, with its “fandom” community.

What are those tendencies?

In the last decade we’ve seen Hugo voting skew more and more toward literary (as opposed to entertainment) works. Some of these literary pieces barely have any science fictional or fantastic content in them. Likewise, we’ve seen the Hugo voting skew ideological, as Worldcon and fandom alike have tended to use the Hugos as an affirmative action award: giving Hugos because a writer or artist is (insert underrepresented minority or victim group here) or because a given work features (insert underrepresented minority or victim group here) characters.

Their intentions are quite clear, it seems.
posted by rtha at 8:33 AM on April 7, 2015 [10 favorites]

I read a good number of terrible books which were nominated for a Hugo at one point or another. It would baffle me how they'd been nominated.

Jo Walton did a really interesting Hugo review series on Tor.com - there were usually several neglected books each year that clearly should have at least been nominated.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:36 AM on April 7, 2015 [7 favorites]

As a reader, it's often not easy to be sure what category a work is in for everything between short short stories and novels (and the latter isn't even a gimme -- occasionally standalone single-work books are long novellas.) Some of the magazines label things by category, but most publications don't.

So the hugo-elgible-consideration posts provides a valuable service by telling people the categories.

All these assertions that people are just upset because the wrong people have used the same tactics... can anyone scrape up any examples of anyone anywhere castigating any of the Sad Puppy crowd for making a hugo-eligible-consideration post in the past? Anyone?

Or did the complaints start when they started doing something very different?
posted by Zed at 8:45 AM on April 7, 2015 [3 favorites]

For next year: what if you restricted voting rights to
1: Con attendees
2: People who have paid the non-attending membership dues at least four times?

That effectively resets the voting pool to 2012, a comparatively sane year, and it would ward off all but the most dedicated trolls in the future. To vote in the proceedings of the World Science Fiction Society, you would have to be a member of the World Science Fiction Society.

As a democratic counterbalance, you could create two new awards using the old voting requirements: the Popular Hugos for the novel and the short story. As we've discussed, those are the two categories most resistant to electioneering. To make them still more resistant, you could replace the short list of nominees with an unlimited long list, open to any work that can muster five votes.
posted by Iridic at 9:04 AM on April 7, 2015 [1 favorite]

Justin Landon, a Hugo nominee himself last year, has written a really interesting analysis of the problems with the Hugo system.
posted by Andrhia at 9:20 AM on April 7, 2015 [1 favorite]

Niall Harrison, EIC of semi-prozine Strange Horizons, reports from Eastercon on some discussions regarding the prospect of increased slate voting.

The Hugos are imperfect and frustrating, but the respect I have for them comes from the way in which they transform thousands of personal engagements into one snapshot. In contrast the puppy slates are anything but personal, and while puppy voters may be part of the Worldcon community, they are attempting to direct that community, not respond to it.
posted by suelac at 9:23 AM on April 7, 2015 [3 favorites]

which is why NK Jemisin comes up in these types of conversations, as she was one of the loud voices on LJ in that, only to be nominated a year later for her debut novel which, even if her other work has gotten better since then, is nowhere near Hugo quality. Seanan McGuire is another whose work is not particularly high in quality, but who is Loud On Twitter About Things and thus is flagging as One Of The Good Guys. And I think that after RaceFail, a lot more people in the SJW part of the SF community were interested in throwing their votes to people they perceived as the Good Guys - which definitely horrified people who were suggesting that authors should be judged on merit and not on their SJW credentials.

It's really interesting that you've decided that N.K. Jemisin or Seanan McGuire's nominations were purely based on ideology and not because a lot of people liked their writing, while also insisting that the Sad/Rabid Puppies voters must be voting because of a genuine belief in the quality of the slate, despite a well-documented effort to promote that slate based on ideology.
posted by kagredon at 9:25 AM on April 7, 2015 [26 favorites]

Their intentions are quite clear, it seems.

I'm just really unsure how both of us can be looking at the same text, but seeing really different things. To me, that seems pretty clear - they think that the Hugos are starting to get overrun with affirmative action, which is a thing to be despised, and they want works that people other than ivory-tower academics will enjoy, because they feel SF/Fantasy were never really about the ivory tower academics in the first place and their arrival is recent.

I fail to see how that's any different from people saying, "I'm tired of seeing these straight white guys overrunning the ballot, a thing to be despised, let's nominate people who are not white men so we can see works which are more important to niche communities within fandom other than the white men which tbh do dominate fandom and cons and have for the last fifty years, because fandom is never about the white guy's voice and always had a higher ideal."

They are two halves of the same coin.

It's incredibly rare that people voluntarily put on black hats and twirl their moustaches just to be jerks. And if you look at the Sad Puppies slate, the self-professed reasoning is pretty much exactly as I lay it out:

Not an absolute. Gathered here is the best list (we think!) of entirely deserving works, writers, and editors — all of whom would not otherwise find themselves on the Hugo ballot without some extra oomph received from beyond the rarefied, insular halls of 21st century Worldcon “fandom.”

This is functionally identical, from a different perspective, to "Here is the best list of authors of color, who would not find themselves being read/ on the Hugo Ballot without some signal boost, because the insular halls of SF/Fantasy are overwhelmingly white." And if you look at things like the 50 Books POC challenge, where people are explicitly trying to read, review, (and often, nom) books by authors of color, these are all things that have been said before.
posted by corb at 9:28 AM on April 7, 2015 [1 favorite]

And you're handwaving away "oh yeah and we're going to get grappleglompers to vote straight tickets for our slate."

Which is not what people pushing diversity are suggesting at all; they want more diverse names on the ballots so people read them.

I thought you said intentions matter? So why do you keep ignoring the intentions and actions of the puppyshitters?
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:30 AM on April 7, 2015 [10 favorites]

It's really interesting that you've decided that N.K. Jemisin or Seanan McGuire's nominations were purely based on ideology and not because a lot of people liked their writing, while also insisting that the Sad/Rabid Puppies voters must be voting because of a genuine belief in the quality of the slate

Actually it's a combination of A + B. I think, first and most importantly, that it's quite possible a lot of people like their writing because they're willing to accept lower standards for things that ping their buttons, whether they be diversity or otherwise - just like, as I noted, Sad Puppies likely did with Tom Kratman and his Islamic Dystopia fiction. Hell, I do it myself with Regency Romance and Hermione/Snape fanfiction, my own trashy loves. It is a thing that happens to people. It is possible for people to have a genuine true belief in something without it being a justified true belief, and it's possible for people not even to be totally aware of how their beliefs are impacting their choices/voting.

I don't think that the voting was purely based on ideology, but I think that when people haven't read works, they tend to vote - on both sides! for recognizable names. And again, I'm not pointing fingers there - this is something that when I get lazy, I'd be likely to do myself. I probably won't do it this year because this is such a Big Thing, but in other years looking at this slate, I could totally see myself saying, "Oh man, I haven't gotten a chance to read that John C Wright thing, but he is pretty damn good at other stuff, so you know what, I'll tick his box." And that can also apply to, "I haven't really read much Jemisin/McGuire, but I saw her swinging for our side, and I don't really know the other guys, so I'll throw a vote her way."

Does that make more sense?
posted by corb at 9:34 AM on April 7, 2015

I don't think that the voting was purely based on ideology

Despite all the evidence saying otherwise? The gimpygarper voters were explicitly recruited to vote ideologically.

they tend to vote - on both sides! for recognizable names

Sure. And that would be relevant if that were something that were happening here. What's actually happening is a bunch of people voting in lockstep for ideological reasons to stick it to the alleged SJWs.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:38 AM on April 7, 2015 [4 favorites]

Well, to be honest, it would've been more compelling if you hadn't used your example to once again reinforce the false dichotomy that the reason why someone would vote for John C Wright sight-unseen is previous quality and the reason why someone would vote for Jemisin/McGuire sight-unseen is politics. But also, you keep insisting that Jemisin/McGuire aren't very good and that the only reason someone would like their books and vote for them is that their perceptions are colored by ideology. It's fine that you didn't care for their work, but that doesn't make it objective fact that their works are lesser.
posted by kagredon at 9:43 AM on April 7, 2015 [21 favorites]

(I mean c'mon Feed sold by the truckload*, and both by numbers and my own experience talking to folks was read and talked up by many, many people who had zero idea about Seanan McGuire's politics.)

* c wut i did thar
posted by kagredon at 9:47 AM on April 7, 2015 [5 favorites]

I'm just really unsure how both of us can be looking at the same text, but seeing really different things. To me, that seems pretty clear - they think that the Hugos are starting to get overrun with affirmative action, which is a thing to be despised, and they want works that people other than ivory-tower academics will enjoy, because they feel SF/Fantasy were never really about the ivory tower academics in the first place and their arrival is recent.

Ancillary Sword outsold everything except for Skin Game according to estimated sales figures. Goblin Emperor's sales are on par with three of the Puppy novels. So which ones are the ivory-tower academic nominations? Neither strike me as particularly literary or ivory-tower-ish. I don't know how space opera and political fantasy are "niche." Seriously, the Hugos are not the Tiptrees, and the nominations of the last few years are not Atwood, Tepper, Sulway, or Delany.

And if you look at things like the 50 Books POC challenge, where people are explicitly trying to read, review, (and often, nom) books by authors of color, these are all things that have been said before.

You do realize that the 50 Books challenge is not the Hugo nomination process?
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 9:49 AM on April 7, 2015 [11 favorites]

Seanan McGuire is another whose work is not particularly high in quality

Hm. Her Velveteen stories really are something special to me: warm, moving, thoughtful, inventive, funny, and very, very attuned to superhero comics as a genre. I haven't had the same experience of one of her novel series yet, but I reserve judgment until I see more than the first volume of each, because they've mostly felt like "pilot" episodes and I know for sure that she's capable of amazing things.

I also think it's pretty ungenerous to paint her many Hugo nominations as the product of "aggressive" self-promotion. She goes to Worldcons. She sings funny songs and entertains people. Her panel comments are witty and insightful. She writes things a lot of people like. I feel pretty sure Worldcon attendees remember her well enough, regardless of what she writes on LJ.

If you want to pick on someone for being well-liked by Hugo voters, maybe pick on Robert Silverberg--much-liked as a character at Worldcon and nominated for Best Novel nine times ... but he never took the prize in that category. It's maybe a reminder that the Hugo Awards are inextricably bound to a social event. Here's Silverberg reflecting on the first Worldcon in London, and he mentions having attended fifty Worldcons. His schtick at the Hugo Awards ceremony is pretty funny--very dry. He also writes things a lot of people like. Is it really a surprise that Worldcon attendees rewarded him with nominations?

If you want there to be an award that eliminates social effects on literary judgments, you should go create one and figure out how to administer it, because the Hugos have always been an honor bestowed by the attendees of Worldcon. They're literary awards but also the focus of the biggest event at the convention, and I suspect people in attendance mostly just want to be happy and cheer for one or two favorites that made it through the process. They're also fairly administered and open to anyone who'd like to join in the fun. But for the next two years, at least, these sociopaths have made it impossible for anyone in attendance to cheer for anything but their favorites. And I'll be quite surprised if they even go to the show.
posted by Monsieur Caution at 9:49 AM on April 7, 2015 [15 favorites]

Not an absolute. Gathered here is the best list (we think!) of entirely deserving works, writers, and editors — all of whom would not otherwise find themselves on the Hugo ballot without some extra oomph received from beyond the rarefied, insular halls of 21st century Worldcon “fandom.”

Here's the thing, corb: that list was compiled from dozens of nominations submitted to VD and BT, with no single work being nominated more than 3 times. VD/BT decided which works from each category would be chosen for the slate.

The slate wasn't compiled using run-off voting, so that the relevant community members would have a chance to compare one work to another. Dozens of nominated works, but only five made the slate, and I doubt VD or BT read everything that their fans submitted. They cherry-picked a slate and had all of their Puppies nominate ONLY what was on the slate. All actual decision-making was done ONLY by VD and BT, not by the individual Puppy nominators.

The result is that works that even VD/BT like, like The Three-Body Problem or the Heinlein biography, didn't make the Hugo nominations, because the slate forced them off.

They deprived other Hugo nominators of the opportunity to nominate works they themselves would have voted for but forgot to include.

The worst thing is the slate deprived their own community of like-minded folks the opportunity to vote their own preferences.

The problem with slate voting isn't the politics of the party engaging in it. Isn't the spiteful purpose behind this instance. It's that slate voting removes the voter's individual choice from the process, and delegates it to someone else. That the voter apparently agrees to it doesn't make it any more democratic.
posted by suelac at 9:52 AM on April 7, 2015 [13 favorites]

The reason the Hugo nominations are so easy to game this way is that they are decided by:

1) An extremely small number of voters,
2) With a very low entry barrier for participation,
3) Making choices out of an extremely large pool,
4) With few restrictions on number of works an individual can nominate.

Combined, they mean that whipping up a crowd to dominate the nomination process is pretty easy. But it's not an unfixable problem, if the people in charge decide they want to fix it. Votes for the actual award, as opposed to the nomination, are harder to game (although it's still possible), simply because only one of these factors has changed (number of choices being voted on.)

Vastly increasing the number of voters is perhaps the ideal solution but hard to pull off. Raising the entry barrier for participation (such as the "four-year Wordcom member if nonattending" suggestion made by Iridic above) would make gaming the system harder, but will probably not sit well with the people who have been trying to expand the number of voters for many years.

So, one solution might be to use the same method that makes it harder to game the awards themselves -- reduce the candidate pool for nominations. Set up a system of several stages, so that (at least) first a long list gets nominated, then a short list is selected from the long list.

People could still campaign for a slate, but it would be harder to dominate because non-slate votes would get more and more concentrated at each step. In theory, unless your slate voters are literally the majority of voters period, in which case you're winning no matter what, it's harder to take control.

Another, not mutually exclusive with the first and much easier to implement, would be to limit the number of nominations an individual can make in a given category. If an individual can only vote for one book as a best novel nomination, then a slate can gather behind a single book, but it's much harder to dominate a single category.

Honestly, though, I don't expect we'll see changes anytime soon, if ever. Institutional momentum is hard to overcome.
posted by kyrademon at 9:52 AM on April 7, 2015 [3 favorites]

If you want to pick on someone for being well-liked by Hugo voters, maybe pick on Robert Silverberg

Or Scalzi. I absolutely believe Redshirts won the Hugo because Scalzi is hugely popular; I found the book to be both slight and forgettable. But it worked for a lot of people, and in general Scalzi gets nominations both because people know him, and because they find his work reliably good.

The Hugos are absolutely a popularity contest, but they don't tend to reward works that are actually bad. And if they're a popularity contest, then why bitch about how the awards are becoming more literary/less popular? Because the Puppies don't like the people who are getting nominated, more than they don't like the content.
posted by suelac at 9:59 AM on April 7, 2015 [6 favorites]

> I'm just really unsure how both of us can be looking at the same text, but seeing really different things. To me, that seems pretty clear

I was responding specifically to your assertion that their intentions might be difficult to discern. They are not, as you seem to acknowledge here.
posted by rtha at 10:01 AM on April 7, 2015 [4 favorites]

The Hugos are absolutely a popularity contest, but they don't tend to reward works that are actually bad.

But this is kind of what I mean - if the Hugos are and have always been a popularity contest, and people are voting for Scalzi and McGuire and Silverberg because they like them and they are fun at con parties or draw CareBears for other people or what have you, then it really shouldn't matter that a slate of conservatives are voting for a bunch of other guys as the prettiest girl at the prom. There would be no reason to get upset about it if it was never for literary merit anyway other than a simple 'not bad' criteria, just because some other people are demonstrating more temporary popularity by running a campaign, unless it's being viewed, like that piece by Justin Landon, as some sort of battle for the soul of science fiction.
posted by corb at 10:12 AM on April 7, 2015

Or on the nominated-by-popularity front, Bujold for Cryoburn and Captain Vortapill's Alliance, which were interesting and funny but not best-of-show. (Disclaimer, I'm a loyal fan.)

It's also interesting to me that the two claimed examples of affirmative action did not win.

There would be no reason to get upset about it if it was never for literary merit anyway other than a simple 'not bad' criteria, just because some other people are demonstrating more temporary popularity by running a campaign, unless it's being viewed, like that piece by Justin Landon, as some sort of battle for the soul of science fiction.

Well, Wright, Vox Day, and others have discussed at length that the soul of science fiction has been corrupted. As opposed to the Pink/termites/insect army who mostly blog about promoting themselves and their peers.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 10:16 AM on April 7, 2015 [3 favorites]

To me, that seems pretty clear - they think that the Hugos are starting to get overrun with affirmative action, which is a thing to be despised, and they want works that people other than ivory-tower academics will enjoy

Which is best achieved by nominating en masse a load of old bilge most of them haven't even read.
posted by dng at 10:16 AM on April 7, 2015 [8 favorites]

if the Hugos are and have always been a popularity contest, and people are voting for Scalzi and McGuire and Silverberg because they like them and they are fun at con parties or draw CareBears for other people or what have you, then it really shouldn't matter that a slate of conservatives are voting for a bunch of other guys as the prettiest girl at the prom.

I don't want to be rude, here, but do you not get how slate voting works?

The only way the slate won is that every single Puppy nominated ONLY the works that VD/BT told them to list. Not the works the individual Puppy liked best, or even the works that the individual Puppy offered for the Puppy slate.

The Puppies did not vote their own individual choices. They voted the way they were told to.

People voting for Scalzi are doing so for their own reasons, and maybe some of those reasons have less to do with literary quality than we would like: but each individual got to make their own decision about that. And, hopefully, most of them read the works they were voting for.
posted by suelac at 10:16 AM on April 7, 2015 [4 favorites]

corb: And if you look at the Sad Puppies slate

But the Sad Puppies slate is secondary here to Vox Day's Rabid Puppies. In cases where Sad disagrees with Rabid, it was the latter that won. If you want to defend the intentions behind the slate voting, you have to defend Vox Day's intentions.
posted by Kattullus at 10:20 AM on April 7, 2015 [16 favorites]

corb, you also don't seem to be acknowledging that there are those of us who feel that the Hugos *should* be a merit-based award rather than a popularity contest, and might be pissed off because slate voting hauls it even further away from that ideal than it already was.
posted by kyrademon at 10:20 AM on April 7, 2015 [12 favorites]

This isn't a popularity contest. This is about sticking it to people, and making sure that certain people are selected. Voted for in lockstep. By people who ordinarily wouldn't have any clue about voting for the Hugos at all.

This isn't the usual tussle of fandoms. This is, again, ballot-box-stuffing and has nothing to do with how things were done before.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 10:21 AM on April 7, 2015 [2 favorites]

corb, you also don't seem to be acknowledging that there are those of us who feel that the Hugos *should* be a merit-based award rather than a popularity contest, and might be pissed off because slate voting hauls it even further away from that ideal than it already was.

Oh no, I agree with you! But I'm a grumpy old lady in a rocking chair saying I want those 'Obligatory Eligibility Posts' off my damn lawn.
posted by corb at 10:23 AM on April 7, 2015

you also don't seem to be acknowledging that there are those of us who feel that the Hugos *should* be a merit-based award rather than a popularity contest, and might be pissed off because slate voting hauls it even further away from that ideal than it already was

Yes, this. I got tired of seeing the same old names on the ballot every year, because it seemed like people were just nominating out of familiarity rather than actual quality. Last year was a nice change, because I saw books & names that were new, and seemed to show an interest in fresh blood--an interest in quality & originality over familiarity.
posted by suelac at 10:25 AM on April 7, 2015 [2 favorites]

People voting for Scalzi are doing so for their own reasons, and maybe some of those reasons have less to do with literary quality than we would like: but each individual got to make their own decision about that.

Doesn't the same also apply to Sad Puppies voters though? Some of them probably did vote in lockstep, but if so, no one held a gun to their head. They decided for their own reasons that they wanted to vote in the slate, and many of those reasons may have less to do with literary quality than we would like, but every individual did get to make their own decision about whether or not to participate - or whether or not to mostly participate with some small variance.
posted by corb at 10:32 AM on April 7, 2015

On a complete sidenote, though - is anyone planning on attending the Worldcon Business Meeting?
posted by corb at 10:37 AM on April 7, 2015

then it really shouldn't matter that a slate of conservatives are voting for a bunch of other guys as the prettiest girl at the prom

At the risk of repeating myself, it's not about conservatives per se. After all, they tried it last year and failed. What sane, compassionate, and (most importantly) non-racist/sexist/etc fans would have done is maybe tried to fix the nomination process or something. Instead, they chose a group of people that they figured would piss of the sane, etc. fans as nominees, invited a massive group of violent thugs for whom gatekeeping fandoms is a full-time job to rig the system, and then chortled with glee when their tactic worked (even though it occasionally worked against them).

And for the umpteenth time: the fact that conservatives did this as a bloc isn't the fault of liberals or "SJWs." It's the fault of conservatives operating as a bloc instead of individuals.
posted by zombieflanders at 10:37 AM on April 7, 2015 [14 favorites]

Doesn't the same also apply to Sad Puppies voters though?

No, it doesn't. We keep explaining exactly why this is a different situation. I'm asking this as an honest question: what part of the facts about the intentions and actions of the puppyjerks is unclear? We know that the slates were designed to reflect misogynist/racist/homophobic writing. We know that a whole lot of people were recruited to vote precisely because they would vote in lockstep. We know that this has all actually happened and is actually documented. What, honestly, do you not understand about these documented and verified facts?
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 10:41 AM on April 7, 2015 [2 favorites]

then it really shouldn't matter that a slate of conservatives are voting for a bunch of other guys as the prettiest girl at the prom.

The parallel would work if Madison (with some eager assistance from Candace, who was kicked off the school newspaper for one too many white supremacist editorials) took advantage of a loophole in prom court nominations to ensure that the final ballot consists only of

1: Madison
2: Candace
3: Madison's bestie Janelle, who believes Christ was murdered by the Jews
4: "Lexy? You know, Lexy. From Future Leaders? I know she's questionable queen material at best, let's be honest, but at least she's not one of those bitches from Service Club or Prism."
5. Janelle again

Even if Prom is a bullshit popularity contest any year, can you see why this would upset people?
posted by Iridic at 10:42 AM on April 7, 2015 [11 favorites]

I'm asking this as an honest question: what part of the facts about the intentions and actions of the puppyjerks is unclear? We know that the slates were designed to refelct misogynist/racist/homophobic writing.

This, to me, is not a demonstrated and verified fact - not only that, I don't think it's true at all. I don't think most of the writing on the Sad Puppies slate is misogynist or racist or homophobic, and would challenge you to demonstrate otherwise - not to demonstrate that some of the authors held some such views, but that the writing itself is that way as a requirement for inclusion on the slate. And I don't think that's possible to do. I mean,Guardians of the Galaxy? The Lego Movie? Adventure Time?
posted by corb at 10:45 AM on April 7, 2015

Okay, perhaps that was editorializing. Designed to reflect some nonexistent Golden Age of sci-fi where Men Were Real Manly Men and those other people knew their place.

So. Again. What do you not understand about the facts? Especially the very simple fact of recruiting people to vote in lockstep, solely to bring about the renaissance of this mythical Golden Age?
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 10:47 AM on April 7, 2015 [1 favorite]

Corb, did you read Torgersen's blog post linked in the first dozen comments of this thread?

That’s what’s happened to Science Fiction & Fantasy literature. A few decades ago, if you saw a lovely spaceship on a book cover, with a gorgeous planet in the background, you could be pretty sure you were going to get a rousing space adventure featuring starships and distant, amazing worlds. If you saw a barbarian swinging an axe? You were going to get a rousing fantasy epic with broad-chested heroes who slay monsters, and run off with beautiful women. Battle-armored interstellar jump troops shooting up alien invaders? Yup. A gritty military SF war story, where the humans defeat the odds and save the Earth. And so on, and so forth.

These days, you can’t be sure.

The book has a spaceship on the cover, but is it really going to be a story about space exploration and pioneering derring-do? Or is the story merely about racial prejudice and exploitation, with interplanetary or interstellar trappings?

There’s a sword-swinger on the cover, but is it really about knights battling dragons? Or are the dragons suddenly the good guys, and the sword-swingers are the oppressive colonizers of Dragon Land?

A planet, framed by a galactic backdrop. Could it be an actual bona fide space opera? Heroes and princesses and laser blasters? No, wait. It’s about sexism and the oppression of women.

Finally, a book with a painting of a person wearing a mechanized suit of armor! Holding a rifle! War story ahoy! Nope, wait. It’s actually about gay and transgender issues.

Or it could be about the evils of capitalism and the despotism of the wealthy.

Do you see what I am trying to say here?

The slate is explicitly built on the premise that all that nasty social justice crap is not "real" science-fiction.
posted by kagredon at 10:49 AM on April 7, 2015 [17 favorites]

corb, the votes of the Rabid Sad Puppies were acknowledged to have nothing to do with literary quality, or personal preference. That is the way a slate works.

Individually, the Puppies would not have voted for the works they nominated as part of a slate. They gave up their individual preferences in order to vote the slate.

I think this is undemocratic, especially when the voting involves works of art. All we really have, in the end, is subjective preference when looking at art, and the Puppies threw that overboard to make a political point.

I don't think most of the writing on the Sad Puppies slate is misogynist or racist or homophobic

That's not why they voted for them. They voted for those works--including at least one story by a woman who claims to be a socialist--because that way they got to keep Scalzi, Jemisin, and other perceived social-justice types off the ballot.

Their intentions were political, but the means were not necessarily racist or homophobic.
posted by suelac at 10:50 AM on April 7, 2015 [8 favorites]

if the Hugos are and have always been a popularity contest, and people are voting for Scalzi and McGuire and Silverberg because they like them and they are fun at con parties or draw CareBears for other people or what have you...

That elides over the crucial step of reading the darn book. The process is not (1) author does cool stuff then (2) author gets votes. It's (1) author does cool stuff, (2) author gets readers, then (3) author gets votes.

A lot of us, myself included, keep bringing up nominators not reading the works they nominated. So let's look at a timeline:

January 7: Torgersen begins taking suggestions for the slate. As suelac pointed out, a consensus did not emerge in the comments.
February 1: Torgersen first announces the SP3 slate; it starts out incomplete
March 2: Torgersen finalizes the SP3 slate.
March 10: Last day to nominate works

There are 38 days between February 1 and March 10. For the SP nominators to make informed choices, they'd need to read five novels, three novellas, five novelettes, five short stories, three books and two essays in the related work category, and one webcomic collection. Not to mention watching five movies and five TV shows, and listening to various episodes of three podcasts. And forming an opinion on the abilities of eight editors, the quality of several zines, and so forth.

And all of that in under forty days.

That's hugely different than using fandom popularity to build readership, which then earns you votes.
posted by Banknote of the year at 10:51 AM on April 7, 2015 [13 favorites]

In the last decade we’ve seen Hugo voting skew more and more toward literary (as opposed to entertainment) works.

The award is still decided by a popularity contest so this is marlarkey.
posted by tofu_crouton at 10:51 AM on April 7, 2015

It's may not be meant to reflect misogyny or racism or homophobic writing itself, but it's obvious that that happens to be a bonus for them. And it certainly is about fighting back against feminists and PoC and LGBT. Here's Torgersen in his own words:

A few decades ago, if you saw a lovely spaceship on a book cover, with a gorgeous planet in the background, you could be pretty sure you were going to get a rousing space adventure featuring starships and distant, amazing worlds. If you saw a barbarian swinging an axe? You were going to get a rousing fantasy epic with broad-chested heroes who slay monsters, and run off with beautiful women. Battle-armored interstellar jump troops shooting up alien invaders? Yup. A gritty military SF war story, where the humans defeat the odds and save the Earth. And so on, and so forth.

These days, you can’t be sure.

The book has a spaceship on the cover, but is it really going to be a story about space exploration and pioneering derring-do? Or is the story merely about racial prejudice and exploitation, with interplanetary or interstellar trappings?

There’s a sword-swinger on the cover, but is it really about knights battling dragons? Or are the dragons suddenly the good guys, and the sword-swingers are the oppressive colonizers of Dragon Land?

A planet, framed by a galactic backdrop. Could it be an actual bona fide space opera? Heroes and princesses and laser blasters? No, wait. It’s about sexism and the oppression of women.

Finally, a book with a painting of a person wearing a mechanized suit of armor! Holding a rifle! War story ahoy! Nope, wait. It’s actually about gay and transgender issues.

Or it could be about the evils of capitalism and the despotism of the wealthy.

Do you see what I am trying to say here?

Our once reliable packaging has too often defrauded our readership.

Of course, the moment they asked people invested in misogyny and racism and homophobia to crash the party, there was no explaining away that that's not what they support.

On preview: Jinx, kagredon!
posted by zombieflanders at 10:54 AM on April 7, 2015 [3 favorites]

kyrademon: "Honestly, though, I don't expect we'll see changes anytime soon, if ever. Institutional momentum is hard to overcome."

Indeed, my understanding of the rule making process for the Hugos/WSFS is that changes are deliberately made difficult to make.
posted by Chrysostom at 10:59 AM on April 7, 2015

The parallel would work if Madison (with some eager assistance from Candace, who was kicked off the school newspaper for one too many white supremacist editorials) took advantage of a loophole in prom court nominations

also the loophole is that anyone who buys a corsage can fill out a prom court ballot so Madison and Candace go to the local skinhead gang and convince them to buy up a shitload of corsages
posted by kagredon at 11:01 AM on April 7, 2015 [18 favorites]

There would be no reason to get upset about it [...] unless it's being viewed, like that piece by Justin Landon, as some sort of battle for the soul of science fiction

Worldcons have always relied on poor sampling, both to reflect the interests of the folks who come to the big show to cheer for their favorites and to reflect what's going on in the field of SF/F. That's neither a reason to place limits on simple reminders of how many works of SF/F have been published in a year nor a reason to make the selection bias on the ballot much, much worse.

However, what's going on at this point does not strike me as a battle. If it were, the puppies would lose badly. I think Sasquan has tons of options to be seriously aggressive here. They could do things like cancel the reading packet to avoid giving the puppies a platform, immediately stop allowing supporting memberships, shorten the voting period, cancel the Hugo ceremony and just announce the results with no fanfare, set up an alternative award (not a Hugo) and use the full voting period to let people vote on a slate that coincidentally includes all the nominees that would have made it without any puppies on the ballot, or just set up an alternative award to be given equally to the top five candidates (minus puppy candidates) from every category. Etc., etc. They could invite a diverse and obviously left-wing panel of judges to give a new jury prize (though not a Hugo), and change the Hugo statue's base design to include a giant, crudely-rendered middle finger. They do have to run a vote based on the puppies' nominees and give out Hugos based on the results, but I'm not aware that they have to play nice about it.

But there's no battle, and I'm pretty sure that what you're going to see instead is that the awards will be routine and conducted with simple impartiality, because Worldcon is one of the most socially staid and non-radical shows going. When I went two years ago, what I saw was Elizabeth Moon and Elizabeth Bear (both past targets in kerfuffles you've mentioned) pleasantly talking to a huge crowd about writing combat scenes. I saw industry diversity cabalist Patrick Nielsen Hayden cheerfully accepting the Prometheus Award for Libertarian SF on behalf of an author he edits. The generation gap at Worldcon is fairly notorious, and I saw that too. It's not even slightly radical--it's just a bunch of people trying to enjoy their hobby and/or collegial relationships for a weekend. But everyone there voting "No Award" for a bunch of stuff foisted on them primarily by non-attending $40 members is a reasonably kind outcome, because even very gentle people can be ugly when they become a disappointed crowd in a big room together, listening to "honors" being given that they had essentially nothing to do with.
posted by Monsieur Caution at 11:02 AM on April 7, 2015 [5 favorites]

Indeed, my understanding of the rule making process for the Hugos/WSFS is that changes are deliberately made difficult to make.

Speaking of rules, if you're voting you should read that Eastercon link suelac provided.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 11:05 AM on April 7, 2015

I should make it clear, I suppose: I don't think any of this was illegal or unethical.

I just think it's unfair, and contrary to the spirit of the community. It's no better than voting only for people you like whose latest novel you didn't get around to reading but you figure it's probably good because the last one was -- and frankly it's worse, because it's not about the quality of the individual works at all.

I want to be able to say that the Hugos at least reflect the lowest-common-denominator agreement on the best the field has to offer in the last year. And this ballot fails entirely to do that.

(Except possibly for the media nominees, mostly because those films were such blockbusters even the Puppies couldn't bring themselves to hate them. And because the creators are outside the SF/F community and thus not perceived as a threat to the Puppies' understanding of the world.)
posted by suelac at 11:06 AM on April 7, 2015 [3 favorites]

From my perspective, the SP/RP slates were put together to achieve three things:

Provide a platform for conservative works, particularly those that are hostile towards so-called SJWs
Deny SJWs the opportunity to nominate their own works. Or, put another way, ensure that the slots that don't go to conservative works don't go towards liberal works either.
Provide plausible deniability that promoting conservatism is the primary goal.

Items 2 and 3 are how you end up with things like the Lego Movie, Guardians of the Galaxy, and the zombie comic.

It's not that being conservative is an absolute requirement for entry onto the slate. As corb rightly points out, that's not the case. But ideology is absolutely the motivating factor, and even the non-ideological (and occasional leftist) works are there to further the conservative motivations for the slate.
posted by Banknote of the year at 11:07 AM on April 7, 2015 [6 favorites]

Could someone remind Torgersen that Star Trek, Left Hand of Darkness, Babel-17, and Dragonriders of Pern are all older than he is?
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 11:12 AM on April 7, 2015 [8 favorites]

Banknote of the year -- I would add to that "Get a Hugo for ME", specifically John C. Wright and Vox Day, as a way of spitting in the face of everyone who calls them toxic assholes.

But this whole thing reminds me of fanfiction plagiarism disputes, where people try to get popular by stealing other people's work. I've never understood the reasoning for that.

If you have to cheat to win the game, of what value is the win? It's not like getting a nomination for John C. Wright is actually a validation of his writing ability, because the only way he got the nomination is by having some like-minded people who haven't read his work buy it for him.

How is that rewarding?
posted by suelac at 11:12 AM on April 7, 2015 [9 favorites]

Here's Torgersen in his own words...Our once reliable packaging has too often defrauded our readership.

This is a really great example of how two people can read the same thing and get different answers. Because to me, it doesn't seem like Torgensen is saying, "Man, I hate stories about POC/LGBT individuals." It seems, to me, like he's saying, 'Let science fiction be what it says on the damn box.'

And that's a view I have a lot of sympathy for, because - though I don't think it's the fault of the authors - he is 100% right about how the publishers are advertising these stories. It's something even the authors of those stories have been complaining about - that, say, the character will be a person of color, but the cover picture is blond and blue eyed. Publishing houses are in no way advertising, "A ripping tale of exploitation and racism." To take the aforementioned Hundred Thousand Kingdoms - whether you think it is a good book or a bad book - the cover shows no character at all, and the writeup in no way mentions racism, slavery, or class issues. The blurb reads as though it were a traditional coming of age inheritance story. Hell, you would not even get the idea from the blurb or the cover that the main character was a POC at all.

And beyond that - things generally are shelved with the books that are the preponderance of their material. For example: many if not most fantasy stories contain a romance. But they're not shelved with romance, because the romance is simply a part of the expected story, rather than the focal point of the story. If your romance is the focal point of the story and the fantasy trappings are window dressing, your story belongs in the romance category. Similarly, if the purpose of your writing is to talk about race-related issues, with dragons as window dressing, then your writing should be shelved with other fiction dealing with race-related issues. When your writing is shelved with fantasy, people have a right to expect that the world will be mainly fantasy related.
posted by corb at 11:13 AM on April 7, 2015

And I'd like to stress - I don't think this is intentional from the authors, I think the authors would in fact prefer (at least on the covers and blurbing, if not the shelving) more clear labels. I don't think it's generally an SJW conspiracy that these things aren't being advertised as what they actually are. But if you're not aware of how those things actually happen, it looks like a conspiracy - like authors are deliberately trying to masquerade their work as something that it's not.
posted by corb at 11:17 AM on April 7, 2015

"The blurb reads as though it were a traditional coming of age inheritance story. Hell, you would not even get the idea from the blurb or the cover that the main character was a POC at all."

Does it ruin an otherwise acceptable story if the main character is of a different race?
posted by tofu_crouton at 11:17 AM on April 7, 2015 [20 favorites]

Why can't SF/F deal with race? (or gender or sexual orientation)

Delany comes to mind. So does leGuin. Brave New World had seriously political things to say. Heinlein was explicitly political. Those... shouldn't be shelved with SF/F? What about Dune

The blurb reads as though it were a traditional coming of age inheritance story. Hell, you would not even get the idea from the blurb or the cover that the main character was a POC at all.

Oh, there's the answer. Because 'traditional' means 'white.' Because for some reason readers have to be told just in case--gasp, let me clutch my pearls for a moment--there's a POC character in the book. Because you have completely missed that Torgenson's steaming pile about book covers is purely window dressing for whining and complaining that someone dared to get peanut butter in his chocolate.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 11:18 AM on April 7, 2015 [28 favorites]

Because to me, it doesn't seem like Torgensen is saying, "Man, I hate stories about POC/LGBT individuals."

What it seems to me he is saying is, "It's not SF if it's about POC/LGBT people." Because according to him, even if it IS a space opera with FTL drives and galaxy-spanning empires, it doesn't count if the main character doesn't know or care what gender anyone else is, and so calls everyone "she" by default.

Any interest in social issues, to Torgensen, is enough to make it NOT SF.

Which is bullshit gate-keeping. He may not like it, but it's still legitimately part of the genre.

And I'm not clear why you think Jemisin's books are required to have POC on the cover (as compared to not having any individuals at all). I suspect this is a marketing decision, to keep people from doing what Torgensen would do -- not pick it up because they don't want to read books about brown people.

Really, corb, your concern about Jemisin is beginning to look kind of creepy. We get you didn't like the Inheritance Trilogy. But it's far from the worst example of, frankly, anything.
posted by suelac at 11:20 AM on April 7, 2015 [30 favorites]

Spaceships are opposed to anything other than staid old American christian standards of morality.
posted by dng at 11:22 AM on April 7, 2015 [2 favorites]

Saying that something is not SF/F because it contains challenging concepts is one of the most obviously incorrect statements ever expressed in a human language.
posted by selfnoise at 11:23 AM on April 7, 2015 [32 favorites]

Similarly, if the purpose of your writing is to talk about race-related issues, with dragons as window dressing, then your writing should be shelved with other fiction dealing with race-related issues. When your writing is shelved with fantasy, people have a right to expect that the world will be mainly fantasy related.

Seriously?

Who gets to decide this? And why should fantasy novels NOT get to talk about issues of race, class, and gender? They always have before, you know.

The Time Machine by H G Wells was about race and class. A thinly-veiled allegory, in fact! And yet it's always shelved in the SF section (when it's not found in Classics).

Removing all discussion of social relevance from genre writing is what keeps genre writing in the ghetto, because it gives you stories with no depth or complexity or relevance to a reader's life.
posted by suelac at 11:24 AM on April 7, 2015 [29 favorites]

> the cover shows no character at all, and the writeup in no way mentions racism, slavery, or class issues. The blurb reads as though it were a traditional coming of age inheritance story.

Wait, is there a rule saying a coming-of-age story can't include those issues and still be "traditional"? What is the definition of "traditional" are you working from? Can only young white men be the subject of these kinds of stories, or else the stories should be not be shelved, marketed, or published by/as SFF??
posted by rtha at 11:27 AM on April 7, 2015 [12 favorites]

But if you're not aware of how those things actually happen, it looks like a conspiracy - like authors are deliberately trying to masquerade their work as something that it's not.

So Correia, Torgersen et al are just completely misinformed about the industry and chose to direct their ire at the fans and other authors? I mean, I'm not going to get in the way of someone demonstrating that they're earth-shakingly moronic in addition to being racist/homophobic/etc douchenozzles, so if that's what we're going with I'm OK with that.
posted by zombieflanders at 11:27 AM on April 7, 2015 [2 favorites]

inversely, it's also completely ridiculous to pretend that there's nothing political about stories with "broad-chested heroes who slay monsters, and run off with beautiful women" or "battle-armored interstellar jump troops shooting up alien invaders"
posted by kagredon at 11:30 AM on April 7, 2015 [12 favorites]

corb: " like authors are deliberately trying to masquerade their work as something that it's not."

Exactly, like that bitch Ursula something Guin with her sneaky, underhanded 'Left Hand of Darkness', which should obviously be shelved in the wymenist-studies section or something, and not pollute our pure, "traditional" SF.
posted by signal at 11:31 AM on April 7, 2015 [15 favorites]

Heck Star Trek was deliberately designed by Roddenberry as a platform to explore social and political issues within a science fiction context. As was The Twilight Zone. Social commentary has been baked into the fabric of SF and Fantasy for a long time.
posted by octothorpe at 11:31 AM on April 7, 2015 [15 favorites]

Oh no! Fans might actually have to read reviews.

Or actually read the cover you linked to on Hundred Thousand Kingdoms? The tagline, "Gods and mortals, power and love, death and revenge. She will inherit them all."

Or how about the library review blurb which is second on the back cover, "Debut author Jemisin creates a mesmerizing exotic world were fallen gods serve as slaves to the ruling class and murder and ambition go hand in hand." (Jemisin has commented that fans frequently misread the protagonist's ethnicity.)

While we're namedropping people older than Torgersen, let's go back to the roots: Lovecraft, Stoker, and Wells all had different issues regarding race in their works. For that matter, the godfather of swashbuckling adventure, Alexandre Dumas, pere was certainly dancing around ideas (within the limits of publication) about what it meant to be French given the his family history.

Sulu mocks your categories.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 11:32 AM on April 7, 2015 [8 favorites]

I mean, SFF has become a larger part of my reading time over the last seven or eight years in large part because of the askmes and FPPs and discussion of this genre that happens on this site. So I am not someone who grew up reading stuff like Ender's Game (I read some Cooper and some Le Guin when I were a lass), but even before I came to it as someone who reads increasing amounts of it, I was always told that it was a genre about Boldly Going Where No One Has Gone Before. How can this be true if the genre cannot contain issues explicitly about race and class because doing so somehow makes it not-in-the-genre?
posted by rtha at 11:33 AM on April 7, 2015 [9 favorites]

I would also like to be informed exactly what kind of cover would have properly indicated the content in Ancillary Justice.

As it is, it does have a spaceship on the cover!
posted by suelac at 11:35 AM on April 7, 2015 [8 favorites]

Similarly, if the purpose of your writing is to talk about race-related issues, with dragons as window dressing, then your writing should be shelved with other fiction dealing with race-related issues.

And where in the bookstore is that, exactly?

Surely if somebody would have a race-related issues in fiction section, it would be Powell's. So let's have a look. There's African-American studies, which is non-fiction. Sociology? Non-fiction, too. (So are the feminist studies and gay and lesbian sections.)

But all the fiction is divvied up by genre: science fiction, westerns, true crime, literature, etc. Which is as it should be.

Like everyone else, I want to be represented in the fiction I read. And I want my friends and loved ones represented, too. Which means discussing race, class, queer and trans issues, disabilities, and so forth. Those issues are going to take centre stage in fiction that represents us, because they take centre stage in our lives. And none of us lead single-issue lives, and our stories can't be shelved in a single-issue section of a bookstore.
posted by Banknote of the year at 11:37 AM on April 7, 2015 [16 favorites]

corb, your comments in this thread display much more sympathy and willingness to give the benefit of the doubt to conservatives like Torgersen and Wright who, just to reiterate, publicly argued that men "abhor homosexuals on a visceral level" which leads men to attack gay men and "bea[t] them to death with axhandles and tire-irons," than sympathy and willingness to consider the perspectives of the queer people who those conservatives attack and marginalize.
posted by overglow at 11:41 AM on April 7, 2015 [22 favorites]

While we're namedropping people older than Torgersen, let's go back to the roots: Lovecraft, Stoker, and Wells all had different issues regarding race in their works.

Let's not forget Heinlein, one of Torgersen's heroes, who deliberately played with readers' conception of race of their characters in several works. If Torgersen was being honest, not only would it have disqualified the biography from his slate, but he'd have railed against him. But of course Torgersen isn't being honest and never meant to be, although at this point, rank dishonesty and hypocrisy isn't even the largest problem with him or the puppy slates.
posted by zombieflanders at 11:41 AM on April 7, 2015 [10 favorites]

> Which means discussing race, class, queer and trans issues, disabilities, and so forth.

I guess we/our lives/our issues are supposed to remain metaphorical? Those things being explicitly named and made real apparently violates some unspoken rule, and so books that do so aren't "real" SFF.
posted by rtha at 11:43 AM on April 7, 2015 [9 favorites]

As it is, it does have a spaceship on the cover!

And the narrator was a ship and is a cyborg space marine, which raise more identity issues in the narrative than the use of the default feminine pronoun.

Tolkien has a fair bit to say about class virtue, albeit from a largely conservative frame.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 11:45 AM on April 7, 2015 [2 favorites]

even before I came to it as someone who reads increasing amounts of it, I was always told that it was a genre about Boldly Going Where No One Has Gone Before. How can this be true if the genre cannot contain issues explicitly about race and class because doing so somehow makes it not-in-the-genre?

It's interesting that that has come out as a tagline, but I think it really exemplifies the different sorts of SF fan divergences that you're having. I mean, the stereotypical thing is 'Oh everyone loves Star Trek' but you know, not everyone loves some of the more liberal themes of Star Trek (noninterference, etc), and I would not categorize Star Trek as Golden Age SF at all. I mean, I'm sure they can't say that because it would provoke a fight, but the themes of Golden Age SF tended to be more about colonization than about peacefully wandering the galaxy without having humans triumph.

And yes, you can say that that is political as well because it was all created in a climate where colonization could be seen as unproblematic, and that is a real and valid critique - but I do think there's a difference between politics that are kind of baked in by culture and politics that are explicitly trying to change the culture. I mean, that's the point of a lot of the critiques, right? That the status quo is inherently X-ist because of its acculturization?

And what Correia at least says he wants is a time where people could just write what they wanted without having to worry about whether or not their writing was politically correct (I mean, pro tip of course, it was not)

In the long term I want writers to be free to write whatever they want without fear of social justice witch hunts, I want creators to not have to worry about silencing themselves to appease the perpetually outraged, and I want fans to enjoy themselves without having some entitled snob lecture them about how they are having fun wrong. I want our shrinking genre to grow. I think if we can get back to where “award nominated” isn’t a synonym for “preachy crap” to the most fans, we’ll do it.

And you know, again, I think a lot of the stuff I read is stuff that some of these guys would turn their nose up and/or be horrified by (I'm looking at you, Sirius/Remus fic), but I understand on a visceral level what he means, because it's a thing that's been affecting other genres as well. I'm frustrated and tired with my fantasy kingdom novels suddenly being more concerned about the welfare of the servants than with the knights and kings. I'm frustrated and tired with my Regency Romance novels suddenly starting to include diatribes about how Gunters Ices are made with slave sugar, or how seamstresses are going blind on embroidery for the pretty dresses. I'm frustrated and tired with people insisting that lady-written slashfiction on AO3 is somehow anti-gay because it is written by women not men. I am, to be completely frank, tired of preachy crap. I will read books about POC and LGBT and disabled characters with glee, but I don't want to read books filled with preachy crap. If I wanted to read preachy crap I would go to my nonfiction shelf.
posted by corb at 11:48 AM on April 7, 2015

And the narrator was a ship and is a cyborg space marine, which raise more identity issues in the narrative than the use of the default feminine pronoun

Right, but how do you show that on a paperback cover? Because that's the most important thing, according to Torgensen. Gotta warn him about the default feminine pronoun!

This reminds me of the fannish argument for content warnings, because it's impossible to properly warn for everything that someone might possibly object to in a story. Similarly, it's impossible to signal everything about a novel that someone might possibly want to know in advance, not without spoiling the reading experience completely.
posted by suelac at 11:49 AM on April 7, 2015

I will read books about POC and LGBT and disabled characters with glee, but I don't want to read books filled with preachy crap

Here's the thing: preachy crap is bad writing. If your novel is filled with diatribes about slavery or whatever, the problem isn't that it's about slavery, it's that it's filled with diatribes.
posted by suelac at 11:52 AM on April 7, 2015 [23 favorites]

In the long term I want writers to be free to write whatever they want without fear of social justice witch hunts, I want creators to not have to worry about silencing themselves to appease the perpetually outraged, and I want fans to enjoy themselves without having some entitled snob lecture them about how they are having fun wrong.

Says the man promoting himself as a gatekeeper willing to take advantage of violent witch hunts to silence said "snobs."
posted by zombieflanders at 11:55 AM on April 7, 2015 [14 favorites]

That people don't like Star Trek because it is too liberal is pretty mindblowing.
posted by dng at 11:56 AM on April 7, 2015 [12 favorites]

This thread is turning into the "everybody argue against corb's view" thing again, and I'm going to suggest that corb, maybe take a break from the thread for a while, and that other people, take a break from responding to corb's comments specifically, so the thread can breathe. Thanks.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 11:57 AM on April 7, 2015 [20 favorites]

Butcher and Correia are in no way hurting for sales. Card and Heinlein are still best-sellers in their genre. This is very much a "someone is wrong on the internet" issue.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 12:02 PM on April 7, 2015

> In the long term I want writers to be free to write whatever they want without fear of social justice witch hunts,

You mean, like the one where writers who are explicit in their work about including race/class/etc. issues aren't accused of ruining the genre by racists and homophobes? Whose work is excluded from award nominations because of their perceived political agenda?
posted by rtha at 12:08 PM on April 7, 2015 [32 favorites]

This sarcastic blog is some good comic relief about all this. A sample from the post Sad Puppies Is More than Vox Day:

So the latest meme from the Traditional Hugo Voting Bloc seems to be that the Sad Puppies movement is all about Vox Day, and Vox Day is evil, therefore Sad Puppies is evil. This is an absolutely spurious line of reasoning with no basis in logic and fact. Yes, Vox Day is affiliated with our movement, but that doesn't mean we agree with everything he says. Unlike our opponents, the Sad Puppies do not march in lockstep, we do not respond to the commands of the Secret Masters of Fandom, and we tolerate dissent within our ranks.

posted by overglow at 12:23 PM on April 7, 2015 [3 favorites]

Also from that blog, "What Weapons are Permitted at Worldcon?":

However, nothing says everything you do in Spokane has to be tied with the convention. We could organize a little gun fun with all the other Puppies who'll be in attendance. We could get together, go out to the woods for an afternoon and play with each others' guns, shoot off a load or two.

Oh my.
posted by grouse at 12:30 PM on April 7, 2015 [13 favorites]

From the Strange Horizons blog: "Some promise magnanimity: they will read and consider the works nominated as they would any other Hugo nominee would be, and rank them in the final vote accordingly."

This is such an odd response to me, given that essentially the nomination process has been entirely hijacked by Vox Day. The categories for novellas, novelettes, short stories, related work, editor short-form and editor long-form are all entirely made up of Vox Day's personal picks. So in effect, people who will vote in these categories are taking part in Hugo Award categories where Vox Day controlled the nominations. I can't for the life of me see how anyone would think that's okay.
posted by Kattullus at 12:35 PM on April 7, 2015 [6 favorites]

So upthread, I was questioning just how many people actually read Letters from Gardner. Well, it turns out that one person who did was Ken Burnside, another nominee for Best Related Work. (He wrote the thermodynamics essay.) Here's what he said about the category, on Scalzi's blog:

...there’s a piece that’s clearly head-and-shoulders better than anyone else’s, mine, and three pieces that are all expressions of “let’s make sure that the people we dislike know we like making them uncomfortable.”

The piece that's clearly better? It's Letters from Gardner. I'll take Burnside's word that it's excellent — after all, he's read it and I haven't. And what's frustrating to me is that it seems like exactly the kind of worthy-but-underappreciated work that the "hey, check this out" Hugo blog posts shine their lights on. But now it's tainted by association with the three other pieces motivated purely by animosity, and by association with all the other nastiness in the slate. Maybe it will get evaluated on its merits and win, maybe it won't^*. Speaking for myself, I don't see anything odious about that book on the surface but, honestly, it's gonna be hard to push the thought that "Vox Day saw something great in this" completely out of my mind when I read it.

It makes me imagine an alternate-universe puppy recommendation list where Torgersen and Day didn't use scorched earth tactics. Maybe that would have resulted in more people actually approaching under-appreciated works with an open mind. Which was allegedly the point.

^* And by this I mean that I could see the award going to No Award or to a work that's more ideologically inflammatory.
posted by Banknote of the year at 12:49 PM on April 7, 2015 [1 favorite]

Both lists include some "beards" to allow them to point at non-fellows. Best Semi-Prozine has two, for example. So, I can see people not wanting to "punish" them, but the fact remains we have no idea whether they would have gotten the nomination absent the puppies.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 12:54 PM on April 7, 2015

The whole argument about 'what's on the cover' is really weird for me in the SF arena - I mean, I have a huge stash of 60s-70s SF, and the one thing they have in common is that the cover art generally doesn't have a damn thing to do with the contents.

I mean check these out.
posted by xiw at 12:59 PM on April 7, 2015 [15 favorites]

I had to look at that blog twice to make sure that it was satirical. That's how far gone this whole thing is.

If Fred Phelps pulls a reverse L. Ron -- going from questionable religion to questionable sci-fi -- and unexpectedly pens and publishes a marvelous sci-fi/fantasy novel, should it be entered into consideration next year? Does an author's character -- or inarguable lack thereof -- enter the debate, or is it strictly based on the written work itself?

Three other space opera novellas emerge with similar levels of acclaim. One is particularly sensitive to issues of race, sexual politics and gender. One makes the Eye of Argon ([Crow T. Robot] A slut? Where?) seem enlightened on those themes. The third is somewhat agnostic on those themes and wholly revolves around galactic conquest and laser battles et al. Should #1 get bonus points for sensitivity and #2 penalties for adhering to cliched preconceptions of sci-fi? Or, as the Puppies would argue, should that put #2 ABOVE #1 in and of itself? Or is #3 the better work for dodging that firefight altogether?

It's hard enough to judge a subjective contest like writing quality under good and clearly defined circumstances, and the Hugo award maintainers will have to think long and hard as to what they'll have to do to define all of the above more clearly. It's going to take a lot of reformation of the process for the Hugos to be viewed as anything but a hot mess for years to come.
posted by delfin at 1:00 PM on April 7, 2015

If Fred Phelps pulls a reverse L. Ron -- going from questionable religion to questionable sci-fi -- and unexpectedly pens and publishes a marvelous sci-fi/fantasy novel, should it be entered into consideration next year? Does an author's character -- or inarguable lack thereof -- enter the debate, or is it strictly based on the written work itself?

I think that, ideally, the quality of the work should be all that matters for awards. Now, when it comes to whether or not I choose to read the book, I may or may not let the author's politics enter into it. I might read stuff from authors with politics I don't like if I like their stuff or I might say "Eh, life is short and there are more books that I want to read out there. It won't hurt me to skip this one by Bigname Homophobe". I reserve the right to be completely inconsistent about this, too.

This does mean that a great work might not be nominated/chosen because people decide that they aren't going to read it because the author is a racist, homophobe, pinko-commie, or just has poor hygiene. So it goes. That's the way it is with popularity contests.

So, if John Wright's stuff really is great then it should be nominated. I may decide not to read it, because he's a bigot. I may decide to read it, despite his being a bigot. This may mean that a book/short story that I would normally agree is one of the best of the year doesn't get a vote from me because I've decided the author is an ass. One way around that is to stop being an ass. Or just be a little quieter about it.

I guess this was easier back in the pre-internet days when you knew nothing about your author beyond where they were born and that they wrote books. It was a little safer to be disagreeable because no one knew. Now you have a blog and if you don't like kids, cats, guns, gays, women, or the French, everyone knows.
posted by It's Never Lurgi at 1:15 PM on April 7, 2015 [1 favorite]

well, I was in a pretty thought-provoking discussion a few months ago with some friends over dinner, about Ender's Game, and specifically whether the ending (in which, spoilers for a 40 year old Hugo winner, a supposed simulated war game in which the protagonist succeeds in wiping out an entire alien race turns out to have been real) read more to us as (a) a cheap way to absolve an Ubermensch hero of responsibility (or at least complicity) in genocide or (b) a sharply-pointed damnation of the military-industrial complex and its exploitation of the people it nominally protects. The discussion itself only lightly touched on what OSC's own politics are.

Likewise, pretty much everyone acknowledges that the giants of the genre--Asimov, Heinlein, etc.--wrote down some astoundingly sexist/racist/homophobic/otherwise kyriarchical stuff, while also being extremely enlightened on certain points, often in the same works. So it's not all about character, and I don't think anyone proposed it should be, or that the goal is works that are entirely unproblematic. But I also think it shows a lack of imagination and laziness to fall back on the same sexist/racist/etc. tropes that are prevalent not just in old science fiction, but throughout culture in general.
posted by kagredon at 1:24 PM on April 7, 2015 [8 favorites]

In the last decade we’ve seen Hugo voting skew more and more toward literary (as opposed to entertainment) works.

As exemplified by that masterpiece of modern literature, Redshirts.
posted by Justinian at 1:49 PM on April 7, 2015 [9 favorites]

Ah, SF/F book covers from the 60s/70s. Those were the times.
posted by sukeban at 1:49 PM on April 7, 2015 [2 favorites]

MetaFilter: so spectacularly stupid and contrary to fact that I'm going to bask in its glow for a while
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 1:53 PM on April 7, 2015 [2 favorites]

Battle-armored space marines: Forever War again. Also Armor.

And Starship Troopers! Agree or disagree with Heinlein's paean to militarism, you'd have to be dumber than an actual sack of doorknobs to claim that it's a rousing tale of adventure with no political subtext.

(I mean no offense to the doorknobs of the world.)
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 1:58 PM on April 7, 2015 [11 favorites]

The Hugo's always been a strange beast. My wife once asked me how it was determined and I told her it the nominations were voted on by the attending and supporting members of the previous and upcoming Worldcons, with the winners voted on by the attending and supporting members of the upcoming Worldcon. And she gave me the "quit with the obvious nonsense and give me a straight answer" look that I sometimes deserve and I had to insist that this wasn't one of those times.

"So it's just whoever felt like going to Worldcon that year?"

"Yup."

So there have always been selection biases of the voting body based on money and geography. And hardly anyone nominates, especially for short fiction, with a handful of votes separating the nominees from the runners-up for nomination. And there's a profound effect for the rich to get richer in terms of nominees in that the recent work the most people are most likely to be familiar with is by people they already like enough that they promptly read their new works.

The Australian ballot system for determining the winner produces a winner that's the least disliked among the nominees, with the nominee that received the most votes for number one sometimes losing. (I'm not saying that's a terrible thing -- I basically like the Australian ballot -- I'm just noting it as one more detail as to how the results can be odd.)

I think it's pretty obvious that some works won as sorts of lifetime achievement awards for popular writers despite the winning work itself being weaker than its co-nominees. It's pretty inevitable, after all, that the winners of popular votes go to popular writers.

And it's been obvious that essentially buying a nomination (especially for the short fiction categories) wouldn't be that hard a trick, with buying the award also being possible. I suppose it was just a matter of time before the process was so thoroughly gamed.

I'm not seeing any way back. Maybe it's just sadness in the moment and maybe I'll change my mind about this with some more time to reflect, but right now I'm feeling like maybe it's time for the Hugos to die. The field's pretty cluttered with awards anyway.
posted by Zed at 1:58 PM on April 7, 2015 [6 favorites]

I'm a fan of queer and queer-published SF&F, so I throw money at kickstarters just to get anthologies, special issues, and web-published material in print. The idea that people like me have some sort of hegemonic control over what gets published strikes me as ridiculous.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 2:15 PM on April 7, 2015 [7 favorites]

@suelac: Clearly, an honest cover for Ancillary Justice would have a spaceship and a cup of tea, but I suppose Leckie was more interested scamming away the hard-earned dollars of honest s.f. fans.

@ROU_Xenophobe: That's not an axe he's swinging.

As noted way upthread of the upshots of this little adventure is that neither of The Three-Body Problem and The Peripheral made the shortlist; both could plausibly have won and both are a better match for the old-fashioned he-man s.f. that Correia is advocating for than either of the non-slate nominees that are left as the two likeliest contenders. That said, I'm sure there were better Nobel Peace Prize nominees in 1973 -- sometimes people give awards that don't stand the test of time; maybe the 2065 Retrohugo will clear up matters.
posted by snarkout at 2:26 PM on April 7, 2015 [2 favorites]

the character will be a person of color, but the cover picture is blond and blue eyed.

Apropos of mistaking the color of a character, I probably read LeGuin's Earthsea books half a dozen times without realizing that the main character wasn't white. O.o When someone mentioned that during a discussion of the SyFy channel series, I was dumbfounded. I went back and read it again and damn, it's right there. I just missed it, multiple times.

Of course, learning this fact made not even a tiny bit of difference in my enjoyment of the books. I just had to edit my mental images. That took a little work, but I was up to it.

I'm an old cis het white woman, been reading SF/F for 50 years. I'm enjoying the new viewpoints of PoC characters, non-cis/het characters. They have viewpoints that I DON'T KNOW from my own experience. Gives me a different kind of sensawunda.

And the SP/RP bloc-voting slate is just contemptible.
posted by Archer25 at 3:09 PM on April 7, 2015 [18 favorites]

> "I'm a fan of queer and queer-published SF&F ... The idea that people like me have some sort of hegemonic control over what gets published strikes me as ridiculous."

Oh dear god yes. Looking for queer SF&F is like diving into the ocean in the hopes that you'll happen across one particular fish.

Not species of fish. One single, specific fish.
posted by kyrademon at 3:21 PM on April 7, 2015 [8 favorites]

In your defense, Archer25, and to bring the discussion full-circle, there are hella Earthsea covers where Ged is inexplicably depicted as white (although not the gorgeous 1st-edition cover, which doesn't even have any dragons or wizard shit and which presumably Brad Torgersen has never read.)
posted by kagredon at 3:29 PM on April 7, 2015 [3 favorites]

A few decades ago, if you saw a lovely spaceship on a book cover, with a gorgeous planet in the background, you could be pretty sure you were going to get a rousing space adventure featuring starships and distant, amazing worlds. If you saw a barbarian swinging an axe? You were going to get a rousing fantasy epic with broad-chested heroes who slay monsters, and run off with beautiful women. Battle-armored interstellar jump troops shooting up alien invaders? Yup. A gritty military SF war story, where the humans defeat the odds and save the Earth. And so on, and so forth.

As a long-time sci-fi fan, this makes no sense to me. I started with Arthur C Clarke and Heinlien, sure. But a spaceship could also mean Bradbury, who's space stories were more poetic and nostalgic than 'adventurous'. Or it could mean the subversive space opera of M. John Harrison or Samuel Delaney. Once you're into sci-fi, it's pretty easy to spot and avoid the purely jingoistic MilScifi stuff. It's also weird that they say 'a few decades ago', since my preferred flavor of sci-fi, New Wave, dates from the 60s and was an explicit rejection of everything these dinosaurs stand for.

Phil Sandifer did a podcast and a blog on the topic.

That's where I first heard of this, but he paints it in starker terms:

Theodore Beale opposes women's suffrage, saying, "the women of America would do well to consider whether their much-cherished gains of the right to vote, work, murder and freely fornicate are worth destroying marriage, children, civilized Western society and little girls." He believes that black people are less human than white people, saying of a black woman that "genetic science presently suggests that we are not equally homo sapiens sapiens."

I admit that these two quotes leave me slightly uncertain as to what to say. They are, obviously, preposterously vile things to say. But they are so vile that they defy the usual rhetoric with which we respond to loathsome views. They are not positions or claims that polite society is really equipped to engage with. They are so far outside the bounds of what is socially acceptable in 2015 that it is difficult to imagine many forums in which they would even be permitted to be aired. I'd go with something glib like "even Fox News would sack someone who publicly expressed those views," but even that seems insufficient. Truth be told, I have trouble thinking of any mainstream groups or organizations where someone who publicly espoused those views would not be ostracized.

Except, apparently, orthodox sci-fi/fantasy fandom, in which Theodore Beale has sufficient clout within orthodox sci-fi/fantasy fandom to select 68% of the Hugo Award nominees.

The question of how this happened is simple enough - the Hugo nomination process is fairly easy to game if you've got a bit of organization and followers willing to splash out a bit of cash. It only took about 250 people to stuff the ballot box to this effect - about 12.5% of the overall people who sent in nominations, though closer to 25% in some of the smaller categories.

More significant is the question of what this means.

To be frank, it means that traditional sci-fi/fantasy fandom does not have any legitimacy right now. Period. A community that can be this effectively controlled by someone who thinks black people are subhuman and who has called for acid attacks on feminists is not one whose awards have any sort of cultural validity. That sort of thing doesn't happen to functional communities. And the fact that it has just happened to the oldest and most venerable award in the sci-fi/fantasy community makes it unambiguously clear that traditional sci-fi/fantasy fandom is not fit for purpose.
posted by Charlemagne In Sweatpants at 5:28 PM on April 7, 2015 [24 favorites]

clearly hegemonic control should be ACTUALLY given over to all of us evil social justice warios for like, a year, so as to illustrate how TERRIBLE the genre will become with BOOKS ABOUT GAY PEOPLE and BOOKS ABOUT BLACK PEOPLE and BOOKS ABOUT GAY BLACK PEOPLE

I just want it so bad. I want gay sci-fi/fantasy so bad. I am so lonely. give me your space gays
posted by NoraReed at 6:10 PM on April 7, 2015 [14 favorites]

Great quote Charlemagne.
posted by smoke at 6:18 PM on April 7, 2015

Space gays.
posted by signal at 6:18 PM on April 7, 2015 [1 favorite]

The talk about spaceship covers reminds of the time decades ago I was pawing through the giveaway box at my high school library. It was mostly boring stuff, but there was one book with a spaceship on it by an author I'd never heard of named Jack Vance. So I picked it up!

Page ten: This is so weird! What the hell is going on with the writing?

Page fifty: The main character just had a long and insanely convoluted argument with an innkeeper about wine quality. What the fuck is this and where are the goddamn spaceships?

Page Two Hundred: OH MY DEAR LORD I NEED ALL OF THIS.

Thus began the greatest used book store quest of my life.

Thank God for vague cover art and surprising discoveries.
posted by selfnoise at 6:22 PM on April 7, 2015 [18 favorites]

I wonder what the Sad Puppies think about Stanislaw Lem, who is about as philosophical and political as they come and is a great example of how science fiction can have aliens and spaceships and yet has none of the characteristics they associate with books that have aliens and spaceships?
posted by It's Never Lurgi at 6:22 PM on April 7, 2015 [2 favorites]

CBrachyrhynchos , you know about Beyond, right?
posted by Artw at 6:24 PM on April 7, 2015 [1 favorite]

SPACE OPERA ABOUT DISABLED GAY BLACK PEOPLE. Seriously. This book made me chuckle because it poked the "black lesbian in a wheelchair" thing right in the EYE (certain people use that to mock PC/SJW ideas, as though black lesbians in wheelchairs don't exist--which is SO DUMB IT MAKES ME WANT TO EXPLODE. Of course, those people don't know any, but uh ... yeah). Anyway, this is a super fun book with great ideas, and I'm sad it didn't manage to take over the world. Guess the Diversity Mafia was snoozin' that day! But what do I know; I also happen to think that N. K. Jemisin has written some of the most imaginative and fun fantasy that I've read in years. :D

p.s. please wait on my novels, ok
posted by wintersweet at 6:25 PM on April 7, 2015 [7 favorites]

NoraReed, have you read any Samuel R Delaney? Try Driftglass, one of his more 'mainstream' collections of short stories, before starting on The Einstein Intersection.
posted by Charlemagne In Sweatpants at 6:26 PM on April 7, 2015 [1 favorite]

I just want it so bad. I want gay sci-fi/fantasy so bad. I am so lonely. give me your space gays

I suspect your point is that it would be nice to see fiction with LGBTQ themes recognized more frequently in venues that are supposedly for everyone, but command-F suggests no one has mentioned the Lambda Awards in this thread, and their nomination of 5-10 works of LGBTQ-themed SF/F/H fiction every year seems worth a shout-out.
posted by Monsieur Caution at 6:28 PM on April 7, 2015 [7 favorites]

hooray space gays!!!! finally, a reason to take a break from dragon age: inquisition and its dragon gays
posted by NoraReed at 6:30 PM on April 7, 2015 [3 favorites]

...and of course, for a while now a big spaceship and something exploding has meant "This book was published by Baen."

It might be anything from creepy political diatribes to straightforward milsf to pretty much full-on romance. But by God, Jim Baen was going to put exploding shit and rockets on that cover. There's even a cover for A Civil Campaign that might have something exploding in the background. Also the best blurb ever -- "Boy, can she write -- Anne McCaffrey" That's good blurbin', Anne.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 6:32 PM on April 7, 2015 [14 favorites]

As a bonus, Delany is also one of the past centuries finest writers in English and I envy those just discovering them.

I really like the Neveryon stories but it's maybe not the place to start. And Dhalgren... fucking Dhalgren.
posted by selfnoise at 6:37 PM on April 7, 2015 [2 favorites]

a reason to take a break from dragon age: inquisition and its dragon gays

Pern has space dragon gays, or at least space dragon boy-boy action in the background. CHECKMATE.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 6:37 PM on April 7, 2015 [1 favorite]

look if all i wanted was background dragon gays i would reread temeraire. regency dragon gays beat out space dragon gays any day of the week
posted by NoraReed at 6:39 PM on April 7, 2015 [5 favorites]

I want gay sci-fi/fantasy so bad. I am so lonely. give me your space gays

The Steel Remains by Richard K. Morgan (first book of a trilogy that finished late last year.)

Grimdark-ish (in a good way) sword & sorcery, not particularly "epic" (as far as I've read, anyway, haven't gotten to the third book.) 1 gay male protagonist (who is the main main character, if you see what I mean), 1 gay female PoC protagonist (admittedly PoC because she's half-"elf", the "elves" being very much not white in this world), and 1 straight white male protagonist.
posted by soundguy99 at 6:52 PM on April 7, 2015 [2 favorites]

Came in here to recommend Richard K. Morgan for gay fantasy. Though I prefer his Takeshi Kovacs novels (cyber-noir with a Japanese/Eastern European protagonist).
posted by Pink Frost at 7:05 PM on April 7, 2015 [2 favorites]

Brad Torgersen tries to prove he's not racist by marrying a black woman.
posted by 445supermag at 7:18 PM on April 7, 2015

Brad Torgersen tries to prove he's not racist by marrying a black woman.

Yeah, I tried that too. Doesn't work as well as you'd think.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 7:23 PM on April 7, 2015

...and of course, for a while now a big spaceship and something exploding has meant "This book was published by Baen."...

posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 9:32 PM on April 7

That's ... that's from somewhere beyond merely "eponysterical".

(Who knows more about "exploding spaceships" than a Culture AI?)
posted by AsYouKnow Bob at 7:27 PM on April 7, 2015 [1 favorite]

I want gay sci-fi/fantasy so bad.

I liked AfterParty by Daryl Gregory. The main characters are a lesbian scientist and her paranoid ex-NSA (or maybe something even more shadowy) agent girlfriend. It turned out to be a bit more in the thriller genre than I wanted, but it was fun and had some interesting thoughts about how the brain works, especially under the influence of pharmaceuticals.
posted by creepygirl at 7:35 PM on April 7, 2015 [3 favorites]

Also the best blurb ever -- "Boy, can she write -- Anne McCaffrey" That's good blurbin', Anne.

Imma let you finish, but the best blurb of all time was the new 1996 edition of the catechism when it was officially updated and the English edition bragged "International best seller!" on the cover, along with the best blurb of all time: "'A sure norm for teaching the faith!' John Paul II"

Lest you think I kid I found the cover on library thing.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 7:42 PM on April 7, 2015 [10 favorites]

Eyebrows McGee: I can beat that. I saw it shelved under "New Age".
posted by Joe in Australia at 7:47 PM on April 7, 2015 [5 favorites]

Tamora Pierce's YA fantasy includes a variety of sexualities and gender expressions (including, in the Beka Cooper books, a trans woman, which I definitely hadn't seen in YA fantasy before), in a calm and age-appropriate fashion.

The Living Circle books feature more LGBT characters (and main characters) than Tortall (especially early Tortall when publishers were more strict about YA and sex), but she presents a really healthy attitude towards sexuality overall - basically that sex is good, coercion is bad, you should be careful with other people's feelings but you dont have to get married about it, and healthy relationships are mutually supportive but can look a lot of different ways. Her straight adolescent characters often look to gay adult couples they admire for relationship models. It's just so, so healthy and she so, so calm about it ... no freaking out, no beating you over the head with a moral lesson. Levelheaded adults explain thoughtfully when adolescents have sexuality questions.

I mean, you can give it to your 12-year-old with the confidence that he or she will come away with healthy attitudes towards sex without having read anything graphic or titillating or age inappropriate. And that they will see a diversity of races and sexualities represented.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 7:59 PM on April 7, 2015 [6 favorites]

Man. From that Torgersen post: Because a blog “journalist” named Isabella Biedenharn — working beneath the banner of Entertainment Weekly — penned a short, error-laden article titled, “Hugo award nominations fall victim to misogynistic, racist voting.

In short: “She's writing for Entertainment Weekly but that doesn't make her some sort of reporter, I swear!”
posted by Going To Maine at 8:15 PM on April 7, 2015 [2 favorites]

ACTUALLY IT'S ABOUT ETHICS IN ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY
posted by kagredon at 8:18 PM on April 7, 2015 [9 favorites]

Words like “racist” and “misogynist” are presently code for “not part of the human equation” thus any man or woman who can be successfully labeled these things, is cut off from polite circles, perhaps even driven out of the workplace, or worse. These words tend to be used as general-purpose ideological grenades, when the thrower of said grenades lacks sufficiently real evidence of wrong-doing — but wants to see the target squirm and suffer anyway.

Gag. Sure, there's no misogyny, sexism, or racism anywhere in any workplace anymore! Glad we solved that one! Now we're just bored and sadistic!
posted by jaguar at 8:19 PM on April 7, 2015 [6 favorites]

And people being called racist are the ones dying from racism! Sure!
posted by jaguar at 8:20 PM on April 7, 2015 [2 favorites]

A Baen cover dominated by an exploding spaceship would beat some of the alternatives.
posted by Zed at 8:25 PM on April 7, 2015

My nominee for most shameful Baen cover.
posted by Justinian at 9:00 PM on April 7, 2015

I'll start with the L ...

Lesbian Science Fiction novels, my top picks:
Santa Olivia by Jacqueline Carey
Slow River by Nicola Griffith
The Child Garden by Geoff Ryman

Lesbian Science Fiction novels, my honorable mentions:
The Fortunate Fall by Raphael Carter
Solitaire by Kelly Eskridge
The Celaeno Series by Jane Fletcher
The Carhullan Army by Sarah Hall
The Annunciate by Severna Park
Machine by Jennifer Pelland
The Fever Crumb series by Philip Reeve (but note: no lesbian content until Scrivener's Moon)
The Stone Gods by Jeanette Winterson
The Year Seven by Molly Zanger

Lesbian fantasy novels, my top picks:
Broken Wings by L-J Baker
The Elemental Logic series by Laurie J. Marks

Lesbian fantasy novels, my honorable mentions:
Lady Knight by L-J Baker
Promises Promises by L-J Baker
Cage the Darlings by Elora Bishop
The Dark Wife by Sarah Diemer
Twixt by Sarah Diemer
The Lyremouth Chronicles by Jane Fletcher
Nightshade by Shea Godfrey
Salt Fish Girl by Larissa Lai
Ash by Malinda Lo
Huntress by Malindo Lo
Godmother Night by Rachel Pollack
Roses and Thorns by Chris Anne Wolfe
posted by kyrademon at 1:32 AM on April 8, 2015 [29 favorites]

kyrademon, that list includes some of my favorite novels ever. Specifically, The Child Garden, The Fortunate Fall, and Solitaire. I want to run around screaming about how great they are but instead I am calmly sitting and typing this comment.

Also Black Wine by Candas Jane Dorsey is along those lines and really great.
posted by overglow at 1:41 AM on April 8, 2015 [1 favorite]

Black Wine is great! (And I first heard about it on Metafilter. Passing on the love!)

Additional Lesbian Fantasy (hearsay):
I've only read the first book of Tom Pollock's Skyscraper Throne trilogy, but I've heard tell it gets pretty L in book two.

And moving on to some of the other letters, here are some recommendations for ...

Bisexual Science Fiction:
God's War by Kameron Hurley (and sequels)

Bisexual SF/F:
My Real Children by Jo Walton (... although I have ... angry feelings about the ending.)

Bisexual & Poly Science Fiction:
Inheritance by Melinda Lo (and the sequel Adaptation) -- it's also YA
Vigilant by James Alan Gardner

Indeterminate Gender and Orientation Science Fiction
Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie (and the sequel Ancillary Sword) (... of course)

Gay Fantasy:
Vellum by Hal Duncan (and the sequel Ink)

Gay and Lesbian Fantasy:
A Land Fit for Heroes trilogy by Richard Morgan

Bisexual Fantasy:
Palimpsest by Catherynne Valente

Bisexual and Poly Fantasy:
Bold as Love series by Gwyneth Jones (takes a couple books to get there, though, as I recall)

Trans Fantasy:
Full Fathom Five by Max Gladstone (third in a series)
The Bone Palace by Amanda Downum (second in a series)

Intersex & Bisexual Fantasy
Pantomime by Laura Lam (and the sequel Shadowplay)
posted by kyrademon at 2:24 AM on April 8, 2015 [12 favorites]

The language for relationships in English is bad for this, but while Santa Olivia is a female/female relationship but I think the best term for their orientations is bisexual. Or bisexual and that kind of asexual that really is only into one single person ever, but like, SUPER into that person, and everyone else is kind of meh. Also it is SO FUN and totally worth reading, and its sequel is like 10x trashier but in the best way possible, like a SHELTERED QUEER TEENS TAKE ON THE WORLD, BEFRIEND ROCKSTARS, SAVE PEOPLE kind of thing.

Also pretty much all the protagonists are people of color, I think.
posted by NoraReed at 2:26 AM on April 8, 2015 [2 favorites]

Fair point, NoraReed. I really should have categorized the Fever Crumb series in bisexual SF as well, since she's clearly into a guy in book two.
posted by kyrademon at 2:43 AM on April 8, 2015

The Bone Palace by Amanda Downum (second in a series)

Looks like a neat series, just grabbed the first book on Kindle. Thanks for the recommendations.
posted by Drinky Die at 2:45 AM on April 8, 2015 [1 favorite]

My experience of that one was -- I read the first book (The Drowning City), liked it, picked up the sequel, and was very pleasantly surprised by what the author chose to do in it.
posted by kyrademon at 2:59 AM on April 8, 2015

Yes I thought the first book showed a lot of promise. Was a little choppy to start with but felt she had it nailed down nicely by the end - it's quite original, so I immediately bought the sequel (which I'm yet to read...) when I heard that it was as good as the first sans the kinks. There is a third one out now.
posted by smoke at 3:19 AM on April 8, 2015

Oh and this is background character stuff, but I'm on #3 of Claudia Gray's Spellcaster trilogy, which is fine trashy YA urban fantasy, if that's your cup of tea, and though the protags are all hetero, one of them is being raised by gay dads (well, uncles), and one of the books tells some of their backstory, and it's quite sweet seeing that be normal. I really like gay parents/family members just being, you know, around, especially since so many stories default to doing representation by giving everyone The One Gay Friend (and the person they get together with at the last second). I mostly picked up this trilogy because it's on Scribd and the audiobooks are narrated by Kristine Hvam, and I like her voice well enough to read some just-okay-kinda-boring books that she happens to narrate, and I definitely wouldn't tell people who aren't usually into romance-heavy YA fantasy stuff to read them, but Verlaine and her dads are pretty wonderful.
posted by NoraReed at 3:56 AM on April 8, 2015

Prolific Canadian author Ed Willett has a thoughtful analysis of this issue. Full disclosure: I know Ed on a professional level.
posted by Amy NM at 6:12 AM on April 8, 2015

> Looks like a neat series, just grabbed the first book on Kindle. Thanks for the recommendations.

Me too ditto, yes (although I grabbed the sample, because at the moment I am trying to be better about not buying more books when I already have forty gazillion unread books on my kindle).

What grabbed me about this book was less about the potentially queer content and more that the PW review used the words "police procedure." Mysteries are still my One True Genre, I guess!
posted by rtha at 6:23 AM on April 8, 2015 [1 favorite]

Canadian author Ed Willett has a thoughtful analysis of this issue.

The second camp comprises those convinced that the reason for the Sad Puppies campaign is entirely reactionary: that the Puppies are upset that more people of varying skin tones and sexual identities and left-wing political views have been winning awards than did in the past, because the Sad Puppies are largely white straight conservative men and they believe only white straight conservative men should be winning awards. The fact that the current Sad Puppy slate is not, in fact, entirely made up of white straight conservative men, does not seem to alter their stated perception. The fact that the Sad Puppies flat-out state that’s not what the campaign is about doesn’t alter this perception either: they’re accused of lying about their true motives.

I, for one, do not believe the Puppies are lying about their true motives... I have found their words on the subject to be straightforward and forthcoming.
posted by Zed at 7:10 AM on April 8, 2015 [10 favorites]

I, for one, do not believe the Puppies are lying about their true motives... I have found their words on the subject to be straightforward and forthcoming.

And the fact that the available evidence and their actions do not seem to match their words leaves you untroubled?
posted by Myca at 8:23 AM on April 8, 2015

They (or at least Torgensen) have flat-out stated that they think SF shouldn't be about women or people of color or non-straight people or disabled people or otherwise marginalized people. That tends to restrict the field a bit; "I don't care who you are as an author as long as you write about straight white men" is still a racist/sexist/everything-ist. "I'll accept you as long as you act just like me" is not actual acceptance.
posted by jaguar at 8:28 AM on April 8, 2015 [18 favorites]

The Hugos have always been fairly unrepresentative, but this is a problem with awards of this kind in general. They are in many ways a byproduct of the largely unquestioned consensus of the 20th century that a given work is "best" having been approved by a selection of tastemakers.

(Haven't been posting because I was at the Eastercon and then traveling back. Suffice to say there was much reaction there. Seeing cstross's reaction in realtime and person, forex.)

Well, the Hugos have tried to be open, which is exactly why the SPs were able to basically take the entire slate. Nominations are actually not that hard. Fundamentally, nominations are fifth-past-the-post, but unless you were willing to join the Worldcon, you had no voice in the Hugos.

This was by design. The Hugos are *not* the award of all SF. They are the awards of WSFS, and the members of WSFS are the members, both supporting and attending, of the Worldcons. That's it. About half the "fix the Hugo" proposals miss this point -- it's a WSFS award, and anything that involves non-members of WSFS means the proposal is a non-starter and has to be. If you want to create the award that attempts to represent all fandom, I wish you all the best, but the Hugo Award is *not* that award.

Indeed, there are a lot of things forgotten.

1) This is not a problem with the Hugo Voting process. The last time Vox Day got onto the ballot, he came in dead last in the actual voting. This is a problem in the Hugo Nomination process, which has always been vulnerable to a slate nomination, and depended on social mores against slate nominations to prevent it. When a group who didn't care about that came along, the ease of a slate to overwhelm made the results very clear.

2) The Hugos are a product of WSFS and WSFS alone. There are other awards, all claiming things like Best Novel and Best Dramatic Presentation, awards in different ways by different groups. The most congruent is probably SFWA's Nebulas, but they don't have the Fan Awards (SWFA is a professional writing association and thus explicitly only awards works sold professionally.) Others are the BSFA (but limited to British works) and the Clarke.

There's no One True Award. The Hugos and Nebulas are clearly Two of the Three Big Ones, just as the Academy Awards and the Golden Globes are two of the Three Big Ones in the Movie field, but everyone debates what #3 is, and it depends.

3) There will be several dozen bad ideas to change the nominations. Thankfully, the business meeting regulars, by and large, will shoot them down quickly. There will be several ideas on changing the vote. All of them should be shot down, the vote itself isn't the problem. The best idea I've seen is Mike Scott's idea that expands the slate should certain thresholds be reached, which means that in the case of a slate nomination, while the slate does get nominated, the works that would have been pushed off the ballot remain on the ballot, so we see a 10-12 vote line, rather than 6. A number of smart people are running numbers on previous elections, where we know all the totals, to see if the threshold's that Mike has proposed are good ones, and his proposal has the advantage of *expanding* nominations.

4) So far, this all appears to be legal. You know $5 SAIT, of course, but it's $40 SAIT for the Worldcon. If you pay your supporting membership, you get to nominate, as long as they properly joined either Loncon, Sasquon, or MidAmericon II (Before January 31st) they were eligible to nominate however they chose to do so. Regardless of motivation, if they paid their own $40, they had the right. If you could prove that someone else paid that $40 and/or filled out that actual ballot, that would be different, but if you, a person, paid the money and filled out the ballot, it's a valid ballot. There are not *rules* against the SP slate. Someone put it correctly. The penalty for breaking the rules is disqualification, the penalty for breaking social norms isn't, it should be punishment via the vote process.

5) And you have that power. It costs $40, SAIT. If, and only if, you are a member, Supporting or Attending, of Sasquaon, this year's Worldcon, you may vote on which, if any, of these nominees is valid. And one of those votes is No Award. If No Award wins, it means just that. If No Award wins Best Novel, then No Award for Best Novel would be made this year.

6) This may not happen. They may win all the awards. The end results would be the diminishment of the Hugo Awards. I have no idea what would replace them, but something would. There's always a top award, and if the Hugos became obviously slate-ridden trolling, then something else would replace them.

7) If you want to change the Hugo *process*, the supporting membership isn't going to be enough. You need to attend the business meeting, which needs you are going to need to be there, and if you don't follow the conventions of that body, you will have little success. There are people out there to help you. In particular, I would start with Mr. Kevin Standee (@KevinStandlee on twitter, kevin_standlee on LiveJournal) who is very familiar with the process, the history behind why the Constitution/Standing Rules are the way they are, how they got there, and is more than willing to help those new to the WSFS business meeting find their way. He can also introduce you to other regulars who are known to help craft amended to be both more likely to pass and more likely to not have really bad side effects when integrated with the existing constitutions. He's also probably about to see a change he's been pushing for a while (going from "ratify constitutional changes at next Worldcon to ratify at next two Worldcons) get blown out of the water as everyone screams OMG WE HAVE TO FIX THIS CAN'T BE SLOWER NO! which is a shame, because I think he's probably right about it.

Apparently, they did fix the usual "See new business, kill it with OTC" problem by *finally* bringing back Postpone Indefinitely as a valid motion, which lets you actually bring it back later if you want to. Objection to Consideration kills a motion completely and utterly without debate (but requires a supermajority to do so.) The idea behind OTC is right -- if you can't get 25% of the meeting onboard at the start, it's probably dead, but it gets interpreted as a hostile move. Postpone Indefinitely, with at least a chance of resurrection, is a softer way of shunting business that's not going to succeed to the side while getting on with stuff that will.

8) If you don't think that old fans aren't as angry-hurt by this as you are, you're probably wrong. Indeed, they're probably more angry-hurt than you are, because they've invested a lot more in the Hugo process over the decades than you have. They are *very* angry and *very* hurt, just like you. Don't dismiss them because they're old pharts. The old pharts (admittedly, I'm probably now one of them) are very much on your side in this.
posted by eriko at 8:33 AM on April 8, 2015 [23 favorites]

And I'd like to stress - I don't think this is intentional from the authors, I think the authors would in fact prefer (at least on the covers and blurbing, if not the shelving) more clear labels.

In general, this is how much control authors have over the covers.

><

Did you see it?

Yep. That's it. Sometimes, better selling ones can get some changes of things they dislike, and if you're truly offended, a good publisher will work with you, but author's opinions on covers are generally ignored.

As they should be, because, well, Authors are the folks who write stories and Publishers are the people who sell books, and we've seen what happens when we let one of them try to do the other ones job. We've seen what happens when Authors try to make covers, in most cases, they range from really bad to OMG bad to WTF?

So, I never blame the author for the cover in traditional publishing, because they almost never get a say in it other than the exact spelling of their name -- and sometimes, the publishers will strongly encourage them to change that!
posted by eriko at 8:43 AM on April 8, 2015 [4 favorites]

I sent a cc^* of my last big comment to Kevin. He asked me to note here that he's is also chairing the business meeting thing year, and he has a guide to this year's business meeting online here on the conventions' website. So, if you want more details on the exact process, there you go.

But yes, you have to be there, which means you have to have an attending membership. This is the one vote (well, stack of votes) that you can't do with a supporting membership. The price of entry to the WSFS business meeting is you have to be there in person to vote there, and that means an attending membership.

Oh, disclaimer. I've known Kevin for (mumble) and consider him a fannish friend, even though I don't see him much anymore given that I'm mostly out of the circuit.

* Remember what cc stands for? Courtesy copy. That's why I sent him a link.
posted by eriko at 8:52 AM on April 8, 2015 [3 favorites]

carbon copy
posted by jaguar at 8:54 AM on April 8, 2015 [10 favorites]

Following on from eriko's excellent comment, I would add also that the Puppies don't care about the Hugos or fandom other than as a cheap practise ground for their kulturwars. This was a political move done by radicals as part of a much wider war they are attempting to wage to change American culture and politics to something that I certainly have no problems calling fascist. Their aim is twofold: to put their (perceived) enemies on the defense and hurt and frighten them with their power to blatantly manipulate the Hugos and to use the Hugos as a propaganda tool for their broader war. They don't really care if the Hugos or fandom is destroyed in the process because the ringleaders don't really care about this.

Anything done to fight this needs to keep this reality in minds, needs to take into account both the fanaticism and organisation behind the Puppies: that's their strength.

Our own strengths are perhaps less apparant because, as eriko said, anybody with $40 can nominate and if you have an organisation with several hundred members willing to stump up that $40 it's now been proven you can vote in a slate.

Counter slating won't work because we don't have this sort of lockstep organisation and because it goes directly against the spirit of the Hugos, but what's more, it's fighting the Puppies on their own terms and accepts that their view of the Hugos, as nothing more than a political propaganda tool, is right.

Limiting the voting pool won't work because as any look at a broader political context shows, it's always those the Puppies hate and fear the most: people of colour, women, other vulnerable groups, who lose out when voting is restricted, while rightwing parties always benefit from restricted turnouts as their cadres are usually more disciplined.

The better option therefore is to expand the voting pool, but not in a way that makes it useless. Having an unrestricted vote is worthless as that makes the Hugos even more vulnerable to slate flooding cf. the various 4chan manipulated opionion polls we've seen. The more people we have invested in fandom, in the Hugos, the less easy it is to push through a slate, the more costly it becomes.

I also like Mike Scott's idea of expanding nomination lists when slate voting is present, as the greatest damage done is the pushing out of deserving candidates by the slate during the nomination press, not so much the final voting.

Whatever we do we should be aware that any changes take time: don't forget it cost the Puppies several years of organised campaigning and manipulation to get to this point and our counter measures won't be in place in a year either, even without taking into account the deliberate slow pace of rule changing eriko wrote about.

In the meantime, the best thing you can do is to become a supporting member of this year's Worldcon if you're not already: you then get to vote in this year's Hugos and next year nominations.

If you do so, vote and consider the non-slate candidates in the usual matter, on merit, then no award the Puppies.

So frex, in the novel category, rate Ancillary Sword and The Goblin Queen according to your preference, then follow by No Award, then OMIT all Puppy candidates. Note: this is a point people always get confused about, but the only way to make sure a candidate can't use your vote to win is by leaving them off. Ranking below no award still leaves them with a chance, as no award is treated like any other choice and can be eliminated, after which your next choic is considered. For a full explenation, see Kevin Standlee's one here, who as said, has decades of WSFS/Hugo experience.
posted by MartinWisse at 8:56 AM on April 8, 2015 [10 favorites]

carbon copy

It is *trivial* to prove that "cc:" existed before carbon paper did. And that you had to type cc: on the original to put it on the carbon copy. And that fc: also existed (put a copy of this in the file, though many just used cc:file for that). And, of course, cc:s could be created by carbonless methods.

In other words. No. The cc: list was "please give a copy of this memo/letter to the following people who should be aware but aren't actually adressed on the memo."

Now, we explicitly address them (in the cc:) or implicitly address them (bcc:)
posted by eriko at 9:07 AM on April 8, 2015

kulturwars

Fyi, if you are going to do the German thing, the Nazi term is kulturkampf.
posted by Pope Guilty at 9:08 AM on April 8, 2015 [2 favorites]

If you do so, vote and consider the non-slate candidates in the usual matter, on merit, then no award the Puppies.

Part of me disagrees.

I feel that this year's awards are fundamentally compromised, and that maybe a better solution is this.

Vote No Award on *everything*.

Why? Because if we honestly No Award every award, then, well, no awards are given in 2015. We now have a mechanism in place to fix them -- the Retro Hugos. Normally, we have to wait some large number of years (50, IIRC) to do that, but the other critera is that we only do Retro Hugo's when there were no Hugo's awarded.

So, if we No-Award this year, and change the constitution a bit, we could run the 2015 Retro Hugos in 2017.

It's not a perfect answer -- but it could be a better answer than most. It'll be an award for 2015. It'll let everyone have a fair shot again. It won't affect the next years award like an all-kill and extend eligibility would.

There's no good answer, but maybe that's the least bad. But I'm personally not willing to vote for the few non S/RP nominees, because they're not running against the works they should be running against. They're basically getting a free ride if I do that. It's not fair to them or to the works that were shoved off by the slate.

So, kill them all, with no awards given at all, then we get a redo option via the Retro-Hugo mechanism, which is already in place. The only thing we can't fix is the Campbell, everyone on this year's slate loses a year of eligibility.

(Note: Part of me thinks this is a good idea. I'm not sure it is.)
posted by eriko at 9:14 AM on April 8, 2015 [7 favorites]

cc in the OED, as abbreviation for "carbon copy" since 1936 (no mention of "courtesy copy")

Carbon Copy in the OED, dating back to 1876.

No entry for courtesy copy.
posted by jaguar at 9:18 AM on April 8, 2015 [5 favorites]

> It is *trivial* to prove that "cc:" existed before carbon paper did.

Then please do so. Otherwise, I'm going with the documented evidence (and the OED).
posted by languagehat at 9:24 AM on April 8, 2015 [5 favorites]

Following up on the previous discussion (thanks Artw!), I suspect the best way to spite Vox Day, Torgensen, and Wright is to go out and fund kickstarters, buy the Women and Queers Destroy special issues, and start buying works on the Tiptree lists.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 9:27 AM on April 8, 2015 [1 favorite]

I will dig it out...and make another post, actually, right or wrong, because folks, we are seriously digressing, and there's a FPP there.
posted by eriko at 9:28 AM on April 8, 2015

Oh eriko, you ought to know this art history stuff, carbon copy dates back to the 16th century at least.
posted by charlie don't surf at 9:33 AM on April 8, 2015

But I'm personally not willing to vote for the few non S/RP nominees, because they're not running against the works they should be running against.

A good point actually. The counter argument would be that if fandom collectively no awards the puppies but rewards non-puppies, the incentive to allow yourself on the puppy slate is that much less.

Because that's what needs doing as well, making it very clear to those on the puppy slate that their tacit approval of being on the slate has consequences. The John C. Wrights won't care, but their peons will.

(Yes, I know there are currently some people on the slate who allegedly had not been informed of this before the nominations closed. Their duty is to withdraw themselves from consideration.)
posted by MartinWisse at 9:34 AM on April 8, 2015 [2 favorites]

I would add also that the Puppies don't care about the Hugos or fandom

I think this is the kind of reactionary shit that people say when they're angry, but it has no basis in reality. Look, really look, at Torgensens' blog, or Correia's, or a ton of other people who are supporting Sad Puppies. They are full of long, long words about how much SF and the fandom community matters to them. They talk about why they are fans - the things they loved that made them fans, the first SF books they read that changed their lives. Torgensen's much-mocked Nutty Nuggets analogy is specifically to address what he sees as the upcoming stagnant semi-death of SF.

And honestly, you don't get into this kind of war unless it's something you care about. Torgensen is a Chief Warrant Officer in the US Army who just got off deployment orders and handled much of the Sad Puppies slate from his no doubt copious free time on active duty.

They do care. They care a lot. You may feel their hearts are in the wrong place, and that's a totally valid thing to feel, but it's pretty obvious that this matters to them. Because if they wanted to just fight culture wars, there are lots of other places to do that. A lot of the Baen crowd is former military - we would happily take them with open arms on the veteran side of the house. Conservatives are hurting for good bloggers who know how to write. They could do very well other places. They are in this fight because it matters to them, because for better or worse, they are fans, and fandom is their home.
posted by corb at 9:37 AM on April 8, 2015 [2 favorites]

(Yes, I know there are currently some people on the slate who allegedly had not been informed of this before the nominations closed. Their duty is to withdraw themselves from consideration.)

This is the "Human Shield" argument, I think. And I'm....not sure if I fully buy into it, but I do get why some make the argument. I believe that a withdrawal at this stage would not result in a work advancing (we'd drop to 4+No Award on the final ballot) and I could also see the idea of "I had no idea this would happen, it did, I'm withdrawing now" being a good way to earn a lot of reputation in fandom, but I also have a pretty good idea of the giddy feeling those people had when they got the call asking if they accepted the nomination.

I'm also really torn about "punishing" BDP-L and BDP-S, which I suspect weren't much affected. Interstellar and Guardians of the Galaxy were almost certainly going to be on the ballot.

The reason I'm favoring a global kill No Award is that it might (stress that might) give us a do- over chance. That's really the only point in its favor. If it's clear that that do-over wouldn't occur, then we're probably adding a little more harm ontop of the rest of the harm.
posted by eriko at 9:41 AM on April 8, 2015

I 100% do not care about the ~trufan~ credentials of these assholes. As soon as you reach out to noted hate movements to do your ballot stuffing for you, you're going beyond just trying to change the culture of fandom and are basically just trying to ruin a party by inviting a bunch of assholes to it. I also 100% do not give a shit about whether they're in the military, either.
posted by NoraReed at 9:46 AM on April 8, 2015 [22 favorites]

Torgensen's much-mocked Nutty Nuggets analogy is specifically to address what he sees as the upcoming stagnant semi-death of SF

No, it's a screed complaining and whining that a Golden Age of Manly Man SF that never existed doesn't exist anymore and that real SF doesn't deal with race or gender or homophobia or any other social issues. We've already explained this to you; repeating yet again that it's really about something else isn't going to make it true.

There is no coming 'stagnant semi-death' of SF. There is an opening up of the genre to more diverse voices that discuss more diverse things and visions of (alternate) futures, which is precisely what SF has always been.

Because if they wanted to just fight culture wars, there are lots of other places to do that

Fighting a culture war is exactly what they are doing; they are sad in their man-parts because people are writing about people who don't have man-parts or their man-parts are a different colour. These people are no different in any way from the people freaking out about Kirk and Uhura kissing.

You may feel their hearts are in the wrong place, and that's a totally valid thing to feel, but it's pretty obvious that this matters to them.

That's because their hearts are in the wrong place. Using 'it really matters to them' is a staggeringly useless and stupid metric to use--it really matters to a lot of people that I not be allowed to get married or adopt children; it really matters to a lot of people that women not be allowed to control their own bodies; it really matters to a lot of people to shoot all the Christians; it really matters to a lot of people that nobody with money should ever be held to account or pay their fair share; I could go on.

Who gives any fucks how much it matters to them? They are wrong and they are advocating for the silencing of voices that have spent most of history being silenced, and are only now finding free expression. They are saying that people like me don't get to see people like me in books, because that's somehow antithetical to the genre. What they care about is wrong, no matter how much they care about it.

And whether they are part of an imperialistic military dedicated to shooting as many brown people as they can or not is so entirely irrelevant you can't even see it with a telescope.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:48 AM on April 8, 2015 [24 favorites]

Bruce Schneier of all people has a post up on Making Light about effects of possible vote changes to the Hugos. The TL:DR is "beware of unintended consequences".

Of course, one way to fight a political party is with a rival political party. Many people expect rival slates to appear next year, and for the Hugos to forever be a battle of slates, which means that the Hugos will be a battle of ideologies rather than a referendum on the quality of fiction.

This is not a simple problem to fix. Strategic voting — modifying your vote based on what you know or believe about the votes of others — is a powerful strategy, and probably a dominant one. But there are voting systems that minimize the effects of slate voting.

But remember, no election system is perfect, and choosing one is an exercise in trading off among various problems. It’s may be easy to reconfigure an election system to reduce the effects of a current set of abuses, but it’s much harder to design an election system that is immune from future abuses. Any changes should be examined carefully before being implemented.

I agree with the unintended consequences part, but I think that Schneier's pessimism about using government (or organization in this case) to fix things encourages passivity. One the same problems I had with his book Liars and Outliars actually.
posted by zabuni at 9:51 AM on April 8, 2015

They are full of long, long words about how much SF and the fandom community matters to them.

In the case of Torgensen or Correia, if they really cared about the fannish community, they would not have broken one of the strongest mores in the community, which is ONE DOES NOT BLOCK VOTE A SLATE ONTO THE HUGO BALLOT. The community has known for years that it would be easy to block-vote a slate on to the ballot, and we avoided that problem by saying "If you truly love fandom and want to be a part of it, you won't do that."

That's why everyone is so angry here, corb. They took the "do not piss on the grass" sign and invited hundred to do so, and now everybody is very angry at the giant puddle of piss that has resulted.

I give credit to Correia pulling his nomination -- he didn't want to do this as a self-promotion effort, and his accepting the nomination would be seen as his doing so -- but that's all I'm willing to give him credit for. They wanted a slate.

But the real harm was VD's Rabid Puppies slate, which is, in fact, the slate that was largely elected. And they have about as much regard for fandom as a nuclear bomb.
posted by eriko at 9:52 AM on April 8, 2015 [21 favorites]

Bruce Schneier of all people

The reason you typed that is you don't know Bruce Schneier, who has been (amongst many other things) an SF fan for decades. Let's just say that I was completely *unsurprised* that he did that, and hey, it was probably easier than answering all of us who emailed him and said "Hey, B, what do you think?"
posted by eriko at 9:55 AM on April 8, 2015

That's why everyone is so angry here, corb. They took the "do not piss on the grass" sign and invited hundred to do so, and now everybody is very angry at the giant puddle of piss that has resulted.

The SP response would be that people have been pissing on the grass for a long time, and ignoring it, and they just made it public, in a way that could not be ignored.

Now, this is too much of "we needed to burn the village in order to save it" for my tastes. Granted, doing the right thing and coming up with their own awards ceremony would have been unceremoniously ignored, which is why they took they tantrum route.
posted by zabuni at 9:56 AM on April 8, 2015

You know, actually, it's not as soon as you start reaching out to noted hate movements. I don't care about the trufan credentials of anyone who is attempting to put a "NO GIRLS ALLOWED"/"WHITES ONLY"/"NO QUEERS" sign on the clubhouse that they see as sci-fi and then attempts to say that this is a defense of any kind of science fiction. Defining anything that has anything to deal with marginalized groups as not "entertainment" sci-fi means that "entertainment" should be about cishet white dudes exclusively and no one else deserves to see themselves in their amusement, and they find it less amusing to read books that force them to learn to fucking empathize with people who aren't cishet white dudes. Those people shouldn't be in sci-fi fandom because they are assholes who should be driven out, because they are racist, homophobic, transphobic, misogynistic assholes and because they're attempting to actively make the genre worse, and they're willing to, as eriko said upthread, ignore all of the social mores of fandom, just to stick their shit-covered bigot fingers in another goddamn cultural pie.
posted by NoraReed at 9:56 AM on April 8, 2015 [26 favorites]

It doesn't matter how many words they typed, their actions are the only thing that matters. And all of their actions thus far have been to be hateful, creepy gatekeepers who are OK with using violence to further their hateful and creepy goals.
posted by zombieflanders at 9:57 AM on April 8, 2015 [7 favorites]

Fyi, if you are going to do the German thing, the Nazi term is kulturkampf.

But then you wouldn't have gotten to do that pedant thing you do so well and I wouldn't want to deprive you of that pleasure.
posted by MartinWisse at 10:08 AM on April 8, 2015 [8 favorites]

The SP response would be that people have been pissing on the grass for a long time, and ignoring it, and they just made it public, in a way that could not be ignored.

And yet every example of piss they can point to is actually rainwater that they insist must have been the work of evil SJWs, because it's not supposed to rain on them.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 10:10 AM on April 8, 2015 [10 favorites]

The SP response would be that people have been pissing on the grass for a long time, and ignoring it, and they just made it public, in a way that could not be ignored.

Yes, and they would be lying. This is the same thing as the socalled "voter fraud" the rightwing is so terrified off it just had to bring back Jim Crow: non-existent but a convenient excuse for those too stupid to see through it.
posted by MartinWisse at 10:12 AM on April 8, 2015 [13 favorites]

I agree that the Sad and Rabid Puppies like their limited definition of the genre. I don't think this is the ONLY reason they picked this particular slate or did what they did.
posted by jeather at 10:34 AM on April 8, 2015 [1 favorite]

Corb: Correira and Torgensen at this stage are at best usefull idiots, allowing themselves to be used in an attempt to destroy the Hugos out of spite because they're thoroughly mediocre, not nearly as commercially succesful as they think they are writers who burn red hot at the thought of John Scalzi both outselling them and winning Hugos, not understanding why this is.

If they were real fans, they wouldn't have pulled this stunt. And Correira doesn't get a pass just for withdrawing. That only shows he's marginally brighter than Torgensen and can spot a shitstorm coming his way.

Torgensen's much-mocked Nutty Nuggets analogy is specifically to address what he sees as the upcoming stagnant semi-death of SF

Torgensen is almost exactly my age, forty years old, which means he's at least ten years younger than the New Wave is: the sort of science fiction he supposedly wants to see hasn't been published in his lifetime, if ever. Looked at objectively, you could argue that even the sort of SF John Campbell published is too leftwing for him, too much concerned with politics and social justice. He isn't harkening to a golden age, he's a radical who wants to alter what science fiction is retroactively by imposing his limited taste on the entire genre.

It's not about being a conservative or rightwinger, it's about having this massive entitlement complex that Torgensen suffers from that makes him think the genre should revolve around him and his view of science fiction.

Meanwhile as a counter example there's Gene Wolfe, arch-conservative Catholic with a shelf full of Hugo and Nebula awards won on merit and David Weber, whose Honor Harrington series for all its early liberal baiting and occassional loony rightwing tropes still managed to be a NYT bestselling series and much loved by some of the same people who Torgensen is convinced are keeping good rightwingers down, including yours truly. Torgensen and Correira and their followers could and should've followed their example and let their work be judged on its own merits, but instead they choose victim mode and wanted everything handed on a platter to them.

Fuck em.
posted by MartinWisse at 10:35 AM on April 8, 2015 [20 favorites]

Torgensen and Correira and their followers could and should've followed their example and let their work be judged on its own merits

They did. They didn't like the answer they got, so we get puppy ballots.

(Vox Day has said a lot of times that he has Secret Proof of a history of bloc voting, but he refuses to make it public. Schneier said that it isn't hard to see it in votes, and it would be interesting if a historical analysis of ballots were done, but I don't know if there's any way that can be done.)
posted by jeather at 10:39 AM on April 8, 2015 [1 favorite]

eriko, I am curious as to whether you think my preferences for preventing slate voting in the nominations (limit the number of nominations a single person can make in a given category, possibly even to one, and/or introduce a multi-stage nomination process with at least one long list before the short list is selected) are decent ideas, or ones that would do more harm than good.

That can limit the effect -- a slate can only take as many slots as they can nominate. I know there's the 4-6 proposal, limiting nominations to 4 and increasing the slots to 6, that's currently in flight.

But a slate can still steal slots from others who aren't running on an actively campaigned slate. So, while it mitigates the damage, it doesn't eliminate it. Personally, I think a 1-5 or 2-6 is a better number there -- a combination of limiting the percentage of the final ballot you can nominate plus increasing the number of nominators would work to reduce the effectiveness of slates.

I really like Mike Scott's proposal, which has no fixed number on the final ballot, but instead takes the total number of nominations for a category, subtracts the number of nominations from the #1 nominee in that category, and then any contender who has 10% of the remaining total also appears on the ballot. This has the effect of expanding the ballot, which removes the primary harm here -- the slate is nominated, but the works that would have been pushed off are nominated as well. From what we can currently tell, the percentage he's selected is correct, but we really need to see the full nomination numbers for this year, and we won't until after the final awards are made, and even then, we're working on one datapoint.

But I'd rather error in favor of too many than too few.
posted by eriko at 10:41 AM on April 8, 2015 [3 favorites]

I don't care about the trufan credentials of anyone who is attempting to put a "NO GIRLS ALLOWED"/"WHITES ONLY"/"NO QUEERS" sign on the clubhouse that they see as sci-f

This really isn't the case, though. If you look at the Sad Puppy nominations, they have writers of color and women and queer authors. This is really a much more diverse and honestly liberal slate than I think people are giving it credit for.

Annie Bellet writes about how despite being on the Sad Puppies slate she is a female, queer, socialist author with a female POC protagonist.

Rajnar Vajra is a writer of color, up for the Hugo for "The Triple Sun: A Golden Age Tale."

Kary English writes about both disavowing Vox Day (and racism and sexism and homophobia) and also being comfortable with being on the Sad Puppies slate.

I said yes to Sad Puppies this year because I saw the seeds of change. I saw an organizer who wanted to broaden the slate. Sad Puppies includes greater political variety, more women, more people of color and more non-het writers than it ever has before, and I wanted to support that growth.

Megan Grey's fine (and free!) short story Tuesdays with Molokesh the Destroyer puts as its main character a teenage girl.

While I don't know Marko Kloos' sexuality, he's pretty open about defending LGBT rights.and uses a defense of a gay man against a 'carload of drunk guys with baseball bats' as an argument for gun rights.

And at this point I got lazy and stopped going through them, but I will go back to it if needed
posted by corb at 10:42 AM on April 8, 2015 [2 favorites]

This really isn't the case, though. If you look at the Sad Puppy nominations, they have writers of color and women and queer authors. This is really a much more diverse and honestly liberal slate than I think people are giving it credit for.

Did you not say that, quote, "intentions matter"?

We've been over the intentions of Torgerson and Day. They have stated their intentions both im- and explicitly; 'returning' SF to the nonexistent glory days where they didn't have to deal with actually thinking about anyone who isn't white, cis, het. So... they matter or they don't. Which is it?
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 10:49 AM on April 8, 2015 [4 favorites]

Multistage nominations can also limit slates, as long as you limit the number of nominations (so you're nominating say 3 of 10.) Slates can easily take over if you allow the number of nominations you make to equal the number of slots on the final ballot. In the case of the multistage (say the first is a 15/15, then the second is a 5 of those 15), you just pack the 15, then pick the 5 you really want.

But if there's 15 and you can only pick 3, then there's 12 slots you don't control. Pack the three slots you do, and everyone hates them, and they can move 5 of the other 12 to the final ballot.

Another factor of multistage is cost -- you need to do an open nomination phase, validate entries, and confirm that everyone who reaches the next 15 is willing to continue. Then, you have to run that ballot, select the top five, and then only run the final ballot. This costs a bit of actual money and a fair amount of people time, and Worldcons are usually really not wealthy in either of those and downright poor in the latter.

Most people would just say "run the 15 as a STV vote and call it done," and I'd be sympathetic to that. Heck, if you proposed 5 nomination leading to a 15 slot ballot, I'd be good -- the chief objection would be "I can't read that many in time!"
posted by eriko at 10:51 AM on April 8, 2015 [1 favorite]

Actually, the thing that really got me over the last 12 hours was Wright's line in his assault on T. Pratchett: "Civilization is Christianity. Christianity is civilization." I hadn't seen that one before.

Honestly, I'm wordless. With folks like him and VD as a couple of the SP standard-bearers, I find it difficult to figure out how anyone could take them seriously.
posted by my dog is named clem at 10:53 AM on April 8, 2015 [9 favorites]

Schneier said that it isn't hard to see it in votes, and it would be interesting if a historical analysis of ballots were done, but I don't know if there's any way that can be done

The data is out there. I yield to someone with a real statistics background regarding what conclusions could be drawn.
posted by Zed at 10:57 AM on April 8, 2015

My impression is that you need all the ballots, not just a snapshot of how many nominations any given work received. (Obviously these ballots would need to be stripped of identifying detail.)
posted by jeather at 10:59 AM on April 8, 2015 [2 favorites]

My experience as a fan (First Worldcon: Confederation in 1986) is this. The only time before this that I know of direct campaigning for a Hugo was when the Scientologists were campaigning for L. Ron Hubbard's 10 volume whatever thing. Didn't work. Indeed, the fact that they tried was very much remarked on as a thing that Was Not Done.

No author has *ever* said to me directly "Please nominate/vote for me." A number of them will make an annual post in various fora (depending on the year) of "These are the works I created last year" and I think *one* post of that sort is perfectly legitimate and helps solve the problem of "Well, you threw away that nominating vote, because that work came out a year before you thought it did and it's not eligible." And, yes, this has been a problem, esp. for works published late in a year, when many people then pick up late in the next year. ^*

I have seen various people, including authors, in the course of a review, claim that they feel work X was "Hugo Worthy." Well, it's a review, that's an opinion, they are welcome to make that claim. I would *hope* nobody is nominating and voting based solely on a review, but if they are, that's the closest to a slate I've ever seen before this year, but be clear, I think calling something Hugo Worthy in the context of review is fine.

So, that's my position.

* And that's enough of a problem that the WSFS Business Meeting can actually extend eligibility of works that it feels were harmed in eligibly by being published very late in the year by a small press, so that they didn't get much exposure until after the nomination process was complete. Generally, this isn't a controversial motion, either. I'm unaware of any work that's later gone to make a ballot after an extension, but hey I can be wrong. In general, the ur-rule of nominations is "we want everyone to have one fair shot at the ballot" and if timing means you missed a fair shot at your year, WSFS will generally give you a shot at it the next year.
posted by eriko at 11:05 AM on April 8, 2015 [3 favorites]

Annie Bellet writes about how despite being on the Sad Puppies slate she is a female, queer, socialist author with a female POC protagonist.

The Bellet post is interesting, but doesn't address why she stayed on the sad puppies slate. I wish she'd done so.

This really isn't the case, though. If you look at the Sad Puppy nominations, they have writers of color and women and queer authors. This is really a much more diverse and honestly liberal slate than I think people are giving it credit for.

Did you not say that, quote, "intentions matter"?

In fairness, I think that Kary English's intentions also matter and should be dealt with as well. She's trying to subvert something bad so that it evolves into something better. I'm not sure that that's ideal, but it's not necessarily deplorable.
posted by Going To Maine at 11:12 AM on April 8, 2015 [2 favorites]

Actually, the thing that really got me over the last 12 hours was Wright's line in his assault on T. Pratchett: "Civilization is Christianity. Christianity is civilization." I hadn't seen that one before.

Man, someone really should tell China to get with the fucking program. I mean, their history as a continuous civilization only antedates Christianity by however many centuries you get before it's all semi-legendary.
posted by graymouser at 11:16 AM on April 8, 2015 [3 favorites]

Yes, the L. Ron Hubbard shenanigans at Conspiracy '87 were very much frowned upon.
posted by Chrysostom at 11:18 AM on April 8, 2015

I was speaking of the nominators' intentions, not the authors who have been nominated.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 11:18 AM on April 8, 2015 [1 favorite]

It doesn't really matter what Kary English thinks, or even whether she means it,: at best she's still an useful idiot providing cover for people who'd quite literally want to see her dead or back in the kitchen.
posted by MartinWisse at 11:18 AM on April 8, 2015 [7 favorites]

(The comments on the English post are also worth reading, since it's a mix of her fans and people who fit the more conventional sad-puppies-trolling demographic. I'd be interested to know why she was picked, assuming that Torgersen was aware of her attitudes.)
posted by Going To Maine at 11:18 AM on April 8, 2015

Ugh, I was going to suggest you just ask her, but looking further down the Annie Bellet thing it looks like some people have actually been sending her nasty emails about her nomination, which may explain why she isn't up to getting into the nitty gritty of Puppygate any more right now. Maybe give it a week?
posted by corb at 11:19 AM on April 8, 2015

The nasty email writers were of course right to say that her acceptance of being slate voted meant somebody deserving got left off the ballot: if that makes her cry, good.
posted by MartinWisse at 11:21 AM on April 8, 2015 [4 favorites]

My impression is that you need all the ballots, not just a snapshot of how many nominations any given work received.

Nope -- blocks will show up quite dramatically as a cluster of five (in this case) works with almost identical counts, and in the smaller categories, they'll also have many more votes. Looking at the number-to-nominate this year, it's quite clear that's something's up. These are minimum numbers to nominate for this year and last -- that is, the last person on the ballot had that many nominations. The last number is the maximum nominations last year -- basically, the #1 slot in that category, last year.

Cat.   '15 '14min '14max
Novel  256  98    368
Nvlla  145  86    143
Nvtte  165  69    118
Short  151  43/38 79
BRW    206  52    89

BRW is Best Related Work. The dual number in Short Story -- 38 was the 5th place total, but it didn't qualify because it didn't get 5% of the total nominations, so last year, there were only 4 on the ballot, and #4 had 43.

Look at the difference. Literally an order of magnitude higher minimum this year. Actual nominations were up as well, by about 200-300, depending, and this is after one of the largest Worldcons we've ever had, where you would expect nominations to be unusually high, so going higher than that is pretty stunning as well. But the really damning number is that, except in Novel, the *minimum* to get a nomination in a category this year is higher than *anybody* got in that category last year.

In short, just from the numbers we have now, it's very clear that about 200-250 people joined the nomination population and nominated almost identically. If they hadn't block voted, the minimum to nominate wouldn't have jumped up by as many as it had.
posted by eriko at 11:25 AM on April 8, 2015 [12 favorites]

I agree that there are obvious clues about bloc nominating this year, but VD has claimed that this is just the first year people have been overt about it. My understanding is that checking the nomination ballots from earlier years -- not just the raw numbers -- would help dis/prove his claim.
posted by jeather at 11:31 AM on April 8, 2015 [2 favorites]

Kary English writes about both disavowing Vox Day (and racism and sexism and homophobia) and also being comfortable with being on the Sad Puppies slate.

Actually, and very noticeably, her post never explicitly names Vox Day/Theodore Beale. There are a few references to his noxious beliefs -- most obviously "half-savages" -- but they're interspersed amongst a bunch of "why Sad Puppies isn't horrible" chaff.

(Also noticeably: she was on both the Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies slates, but her post speaks only of the Sad Puppies.)
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 11:35 AM on April 8, 2015 [10 favorites]

Also for the people who got on the ballot via the slate -- well, 1, we don't know if you really merited it, the slate writers have said there are 2 books they would have put on instead (Three-Body Problem, Heinlein bio), so maybe they just didn't see better stories than yours and 2, voting for anyone on the slate can just help cement the idea that slates are what get you won.
posted by jeather at 11:36 AM on April 8, 2015 [2 favorites]

> "My understanding is that checking the nomination ballots from earlier years -- not just the raw numbers -- would help dis/prove his claim."

Yes, by doing a full analysis on the ballots from previous years, you could see if an unlikely number of ballots were nominating the same "group" of works.

But honestly, just from the raw numbers (and I checked with a few from earlier years, they're similar), it seems very doubtful indeed. If there was some kind of cabal secretly bloc voting, it would have had to be a pretty tiny number of people. There just aren't enough raw *votes* in the nomination for there to be a big bloc.
posted by kyrademon at 11:49 AM on April 8, 2015 [2 favorites]

Yeah, it's interesting... most of the people defending the puppies on some level or advocating for a measured, let's consider the works on their merit approach seem to ignore or minimize VD's role in all this...

1. Are we talking about Metafilter here, or about the science fiction community in general? I'd be interested to see some posts by folks trying to defend the slate.

2. John Scalzi is also backing a merit based approach with aggressive "no award"ing, which doesn't seem unreasonable. If you want to bring additional content into it, it doesn't seem unreasonable to call on the slated authors to account for why they wanted to be on the slate. (As has been noted multiple times, Torgersen's rationale for assembling it in the first place is clear, so I suppose folks could also no award everyone as a slap in his face.)
posted by Going To Maine at 11:49 AM on April 8, 2015 [2 favorites]

It's obvious from the last few years that if anybody was running a block, they've been doing a really bad job. If there's a block, you're going to see those works jumping onto the ballot and a big numerical break between them and the rest, or the block is so small that it really doesn't have an effect. Yes, you got your parents to nominate, but those three votes, while a block, did not get you onto the ballot.

There's a real reason Sasquan ran this slide during the announcement. "Hey, look at this unusual numbers." I was at the Eastercon, which is a UK convention, which means it has a bar, and this one had a rather nice real ale bar, so I'm not going to say that everyone involved was perfectly awake or sober, but a quick back of the random sheet of A4 calculation put the chances of these numbers as being so close to zero that we had to be careful not to drop zeros when expressing it.

If anyone want to present statistically significant proof that previously elections had significant blocks that clearly changed the nomination results, they are welcome to do so. So far, no person has, so, well, I'm ignoring them. Many can claim so without presenting evidence. I claim they are wrong by the exact same standard of evidence. When they provide a better proof, I will provide a better refutation -- but not before. I don't waste time on crybabies.
posted by eriko at 11:50 AM on April 8, 2015 [6 favorites]

I'm pretty sure the reason Day and Torgersen are so insistent that there was some kind of SJW voting bloc conspiracy is that, like the Gators they formed common cause with, on some level they can't or won't believe that women, people of color, and LGBT people are genuine fans of their beloved genre. It can't be that other fans genuinely think that this novel concerning "social justice" is also a fine entry into the science fiction canon--it must be some plot to take something away from them.

I'm not sure, chicken-and-egg like, if their very narrow idea of what constitutes "acceptable" science fiction (as laid out in Torgersen's much-quoted blog post) stems from looking for non-threatening pablum or if it's the love of non-threatening pablum that feeds this fear of the other, but they certainly seem to go hand in hand. One of Mefi's own wrote an excellent blog post about how what Gators seem to be striving for is a kind of stagnation, not for gaming to grow and evolve and comment upon itself the way art has always done. I'd argue something similar is happening here.
posted by kagredon at 12:15 PM on April 8, 2015 [19 favorites]

But then you wouldn't have gotten to do that pedant thing you do so well and I wouldn't want to deprive you of that pleasure.

Congratulations on finding a way for your error to make you have been right all along.
posted by Pope Guilty at 12:16 PM on April 8, 2015

boys, boys, you're both pretty
posted by kagredon at 12:17 PM on April 8, 2015 [22 favorites]

John Scalzi is also backing a merit based approach with aggressive "no award"ing, which doesn't seem unreasonable.

Scalzi is probably too nice sometimes, but than that's what drives the Vox Days and Torgensons to hate him so.

In this case though he's wrong: noble, but wrong. This is a political act that needs a political response, you can't go around still pretending that nothing has happened. You need to send a strong, clear message to the Kary Englishes and other fellow travellers that being part of a Puppy slate may get you nominated, but won't win you awards, that being part of this attempt to destroy the Hugos and fandom will only boomerang back on you.

So only vote for the non-puppies, then no award the feckers.
posted by MartinWisse at 12:54 PM on April 8, 2015 [6 favorites]

no-awarding everyone sends a much clearer message that slate voting is stupid and antithetical to the whole point of the awards, though.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 1:02 PM on April 8, 2015

I agree, MartinWisse.

No one who is part of a slate is getting my vote.

First and foremost, I am voting *against* the very idea of a Hugo nomination slate.

After that, I will vote *for* whoever is left.

I consider anyone who got in on a slate, whatever their reasoning, motivation, or writing quality, not to have gotten in based on the merits of their writing. I do not believe that the majority of people who nominated them read the works in question.

They weren't "cheating"? Don't care. It's not cheating for me to leave them off the award ballot. Maybe their writing is awesome? Don't care. I'll take that into account when they get in because of the awesomeness of their writing and not because they were on a slate.

Anyone who wasn't on a slate I will read (or familiarize myself with, in the case of editors, zines, artists, etc.) and judge on their merits.
posted by kyrademon at 1:11 PM on April 8, 2015 [7 favorites]

Oh, I don't believe there actually was any significant bloc nominating in the past, but if it is the case that this is very obvious from nomination ballots, then releasing them (anonymized) for statistics fun could prove that.
posted by jeather at 1:17 PM on April 8, 2015

This is from a blogpost by Matthew M. Foster, film critic, director of Dragon*Con, and the widower of SF writer Eugie Foster, who passed away from cancer last year:

The Hugo Award nominations were revealed yesterday and they brought some sadness with them as Eugie wasn’t nominated. Not all that much sadness, as I’m pretty much sad all the time, so this was a very minor prick. And not that disappointing as her chances weren’t great (she’d only been nominated once before). But this was her best chance (since her previous nomination). Her story, When It Ends, He Catches Her, was nominated for a Nebula Award, and awards can affect awards—sort of like the Golden Globes affecting the Oscars. Though the metaphor ends there as The Nebulas are more like the Oscars; The Hugos would be The People’s Choice Awards.

It’s just a bit more depressing because any chance she did have was taken away by The Sad Puppies.

Good job, puppies.
posted by Kattullus at 1:32 PM on April 8, 2015 [8 favorites]

Incidentally, I've read Eugie Foster's work and it was great. The Escape Podcast of Trixie and the Pandas of Dread was fantastic.
posted by jeather at 1:45 PM on April 8, 2015 [1 favorite]

SPACE OPERA ABOUT DISABLED GAY BLACK PEOPLE.

I knew it was Ascenscion from just that sentence. Perhaps the best novel I read last year, criminally neglected and underrated.
posted by MartinWisse at 1:46 PM on April 8, 2015 [2 favorites]

Cat Valente has a great post: Holding the Hugos–and the English Language–Hostage for Fun and Profit

I’ve repeatedly seen Brad Torgerson and Ken Burnside (a nominee but not an organizer) refer to the ballot as a “more inclusive” and “more diverse” ballot than recent years have offered. That…is not what inclusive means. It’s definitely not what diverse means. This ballot features one man in three out of five novella slots and six in total, one publisher in nine slots, and an overwhelming majority of white straight men. Even if you think all this is appropriate and excellent, you cannot call it inclusive or diverse without assaulting the English language. Let’s go to the dictionary! Inclusive: including a great deal, or including everything concerned; comprehensive! Diverse: of varying kinds, multiform, including representatives from more than one social, cultural, or economic group, especially members of ethnic or religious minority groups!

I suppose you could say “this list is more inclusive of myself and my friends, and more diverse in that myself and my friends are on it when we were not before” but that’s not what any of it actually means. It’s grotesque to defend oneself by claiming inclusivity and diversity when that is exactly what the unaltered ballots of recent years, the ones they hate so much, have given us.

[...]

I suspect it’s because they know inclusivity and diversity are considered positive attributes by most people. Exclusivity and uniformity don’t sell. Despite their conviction that they are the persecuted majority, they know that no one wants to hear: we made a club so that we could be sure only people we approved politically and personally would be nominated. No one wants to hear: isn’t it nice how we’ve scrubbed the ballot of all those undesirables? Now it’s just us! What they did is unpalatable, and they know it. But now that they’ve gotten what they want, they need people to be happy about it in order for the award to have any meaning, and so they’ve grabbed the language of the enemy to praise themselves. Only it doesn’t work, because words have meanings. It’s a pretty classic conservative technique (see the fact that Social Justice Warrior now means a bad person), but it’s depressing–or perhaps hilarious–to see it used by individuals because they can’t face the consequences of what they’ve done. You guys spent ages telling us diversity was bullshit and inclusivity was a creeping evil. Why are you now telling us, with a sneer and a smirk, that you are their champions? What is wrong with you? It’s all so unfathomably dishonest and intellectually bankrupt I have a hard time believing any of these people put together a coherent novel at any point.

posted by sukeban at 1:56 PM on April 8, 2015 [17 favorites]

if that makes her cry, good

To be fair, apparently some of the individuals on the Puppies slate have been getting death threats. Unless this is the #GG folks running a false flag operation (which I don't put past them, but it seems unlikely), this is Bad Behavior.

I suspect that some people agreed to be on the Sad Puppies slate, and then were horrified to realize that meant they'd be on the Rabid Puppies slate, and thus tarnished by associated with Beale. Who is, one must note, much worse than Torgersen.

When it comes to the purposes for which the slate was assembled, it's a waste of time claiming it's all misogynist or all racist, or all for spite, or because of fear that the field is no longer representative of them (although it never really was). It's everything, and it was assembled in a slap-dash way by people who didn't go out and read everything, but collected from a random list of recommendations. Many of those people making recommendations likely had no idea of the political affiliations or ethnic background of the writers (and perhaps they did know and didn't care).

I'm less sure of BT's desires, but VD and the #GG crowd are certainly in this to "strike back at SJWs", which means a subset of people, as they see it. They don't care if some women and some POC and some LGBT folks publish or show up as characters in SF, so long as those people don't outshine the white/male writers and characters who are naturally most important. They want to punish the women & POC who they see as trouble-makers, shit-stirrers, people who complain about the field and make other people uncomfortable about their default white-male view of the future (or the past).

It's okay to be a female gamer: but don't be Anita Sarkeesian. It's okay to be a black female writer: but don't be Tempest Bradford or N. K. Jemisin. Keep your head down, play the game, don't demand anything, don't challenge anyone. We'll let you have some moderate success, so long as you don't threaten our natural, god-given dominance.

In addition, of course, VD wants to punish the people who pushed him out of SFWA and mocked his terrible story on last year's Hugo ballot.
posted by suelac at 1:59 PM on April 8, 2015 [19 favorites]

oh and here I thought death threats were just "a fact of life on the internet", according to Larry Correia
posted by kagredon at 2:30 PM on April 8, 2015 [3 favorites]

Well, Larry Correia may be an asshole, but that doesn't mean that the people who realize he's an asshole also need to be.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 2:36 PM on April 8, 2015 [4 favorites]

Nor does it mean that the (alleged) bad behavior of a few assholes should be used to derail legitimate criticism.
posted by kagredon at 2:37 PM on April 8, 2015 [1 favorite]

but I was more trying to point out that Larry Correia had no problem with Anita Sarkeesian being afraid for her life after being the target of documented month-long stalkings, doxxings, and harassment. not sure why you'd interpret that as justifying his being harassed, if that is indeed happening.
posted by kagredon at 2:42 PM on April 8, 2015 [2 favorites]

I'm less sure of BT's desires

Well, Correia described Sad Puppies 2 as being about getting "some right wingers" on the ballot in order to cause a perceived clique of left-wingers to flip out. In contrast, Correia's description of Sad Puppies 3, post-Hugo voting, seems watered-down beyond all recognition. It's ostensibly about "get[ting] talented, worthy, deserving authors who would normally never have a chance nominated for the supposedly prestigious Hugo awards", but is laced with us/them rhetoric without laying out an "us" or "them". ("Them" is the left, but the authors on the list are touted as crossing the political spectrum, so "us" is hard to construe as just the political right.

I could be wrong, but I'm not certain that anyone linked Torgersen's explanation, so here it is: Why SAD PUPPIES 3 Is Going To Destroy Science Fiction. His description isn't particularly political, it's just incoherent. The big complaint is that the Hugo awards voters are a marginal fraction of the new and expanding demographic of science fiction fans, and should be more reflective of mass market tastes. At the same time the one pull quote that I've seen over & over again from this article is "SAD PUPPIES simply holds its collective hand out — standing athwart 'fandom' history — and yells, 'Stop!'"

These are contradictory ends, to say the least. Not having any insight exactly as to how they decided what novels went on the slate and what didn't, it mostly seems like Brad Torgersen wanted more nominees that Brad Torgersen liked, and that he might have benefited from the puppies generally being about trolling the left.

After all this, I think the puppies are nothing. Torgersen hitched his star to something a lot more distasteful, and benefited from reactionaries on the right.
posted by Going To Maine at 2:56 PM on April 8, 2015 [4 favorites]

(Granted, Torgesen's on the right himself. The post linked by suelac nails it.)
posted by Going To Maine at 3:16 PM on April 8, 2015

Supporting membership ordered.
posted by Zed at 3:27 PM on April 8, 2015 [2 favorites]

Wright has been removing comments on his blog for the egregious stuff like the 'Men abhor homosexuals on a visceral level' and the beating them to death with axe handles one, fassscinating.
posted by xiw at 4:00 PM on April 8, 2015

Do you mean he's been removing himself saying these things or removing replies?
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 4:06 PM on April 8, 2015

Even if you think all this is appropriate and excellent, you cannot call it inclusive or diverse without assaulting the English language. Let’s go to the dictionary! Inclusive: including a great deal, or including everything concerned; comprehensive! Diverse: of varying kinds, multiform, including representatives from more than one social, cultural, or economic group,

Cat Valente is a good and often great writer, but she should really stick to fiction rather than making claims about the English language.

Diverse has a dictionary definition that does not always align with its social-justice definition. That's fine, and it's totally okay to complain about that, without accusing people of abusing the English language simply because they don't adopt your definition.

Even if the Sad Puppies slate were all-white-men (which it is, as noted above, very far from being) you could still have a diverse all-white-men slate, if they were, say, of different economic backgrounds, or different cultural identities, or different religions, and still meet that dictionary definition. It might not be as diverse as someone might like, or diverse in the 'right direction', but it would still be diverse.

But this is a way a writer can make a nasty insult. They're not just wrong, they're ignorant! A potent insult indeed in our intelligence and geek focused nerd SF culture. And really, that says you're scraping the bottom if those are the insults you need to levy. If you're calling for straight talk, try giving some - say 'I don't like these people and I think they're jerks' all you want, but don't accuse them of not being literate.
posted by corb at 4:06 PM on April 8, 2015 [1 favorite]

And, according to Obsidian Wings, he's been quietly editing posts to dump some of his more egregious bullshit down the memory hole.

I dunno. When I went to look just now it was still there, but Dr. Science @ ObWings has a screenshot of it missing.
posted by Myca at 4:08 PM on April 8, 2015 [2 favorites]

you could still have a diverse all-white-men slate, if they were, say, of different economic backgrounds, or different cultural identities, or different religions, and still meet that dictionary definition. It might not be as diverse as someone might like, or diverse in the 'right direction', but it would still be diverse.

Not in any kind of current usage, not even if you squint. And you know this. Do us all a favour and just stop defending the indefensible, please.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 4:09 PM on April 8, 2015 [12 favorites]

Cached, then, Myca. Might want to grab a screenshot of it before it clears.
posted by tavella at 4:10 PM on April 8, 2015

Removing his own comments. I quoted the ax-handle bit earlier in this thread on the 5th, and I saw his comment with my own eyes then.
posted by xiw at 4:11 PM on April 8, 2015

But this is a way a writer can make a nasty insult. They're not just wrong, they're ignorant! A potent insult indeed in our intelligence and geek focused nerd SF culture. And really, that says you're scraping the bottom if those are the insults you need to levy. If you're calling for straight talk, try giving some - say 'I don't like these people and I think they're jerks' all you want, but don't accuse them of not being literate.

ooh, so that's why you kept implying that people with different interpretations of what constitutes good science fiction were ignorant. noted.
posted by kagredon at 4:17 PM on April 8, 2015 [9 favorites]

corb, I note you skipped the part of Cat Valente's quote immediately before, where she notes, among other things, that the slate contains a single author who has been nominated six times, and a single tiny publishing house (owned and operated by one of the organizers of the slate) with nine nominations.
posted by kyrademon at 4:17 PM on April 8, 2015 [10 favorites]

How are we to judge writers, if not by the way they wield their words, with precision and integrity or... not so much?

Let's take for example, Brad Torgersen, who wrote: As always, you have the option to set aside your rancor at Vox Day (who was not involved with SP3) and GamerGate, and read your packet.

The word rancor is an interesting one, wouldn't you say? Particularly considering the already well-discussed views of VD. Rancor implies that one is irrationally angry, that one has some axe to grind, that one is holding on to a grudge. Is this how people who object to VD would understand themselves?

Ostensibly, here, Torgersen is trying to talk with such people, to convince them to set aside their views and feelings about VD and to consider this year's Hugo ballet without taking the role of VD into account. Generally, when you are trying to persuade someone it's beneficial to display that you understand their perspective. So, why didn't Torgersen use a word such as objections rather than rancor?

Might Torgersen have a difficulty time understanding why people are upset about VD? Might he struggle to empathize with, to see from the perspective of those folks? Or might he just be needling people by using the word rancor?

And we haven't even tried to talk about the complexities of to what extent his claim that VD was not involved with SP3 is an honest and accurate one. At a minimum, I think it's certain that Torgersen knew about the existence of VD's Rapid Puppies and choose not to publicly distance himself from VD and his complementary efforts.
posted by overglow at 4:25 PM on April 8, 2015 [8 favorites]

she notes, among other things, that the slate contains a single author who has been nominated six times

Yes, but that is only one more than her friend and fellow podcaster Seanan McGuire received in one single Hugo year- only a few years ago, the previous recordholder, until this year, when it is Wright. So if these kind of novel multiple nominations were some kind of egregious sin, you'd think they'd equally be a sin for McGuire as they supposedly are for Wright.

And to be honest, I bet that's one of the points of the Sad Puppies putting Wright up so many times - because when McGuire got five Hugo noms, you didn't see a lot of complaining from the SJW side about how terrible it was that she was taking up so much space on the ballot. So they've done something similar, and lo, let the complaining begin, as Valente notes sarcastically "That John C. Wright is, essentially, the greatest science fiction writer of all time." Did she think that the five Hugo noms made McGuire similarly eligible for mockery as 'the greatest science fiction writer of all time'? No, that would be silly, McGuire is a friend.
posted by corb at 4:28 PM on April 8, 2015

Yes, but that is only one more than her friend and fellow podcaster Seanan McGuire received in one single Hugo year- only a few years ago, the previous recordholder, until this year, when it is Wright. So if these kind of novel multiple nominations were some kind of egregious sin, you'd think they'd equally be a sin for McGuire as they supposedly are for Wright.

Did McGuire get nominated as the result of a spoiled racist misogynist manbaby decreeing a slate of candidates to be nominated? No.

Did Wright? Yes.

Did she think that the five Hugo noms made McGuire similarly eligible for mockery as 'the greatest science fiction writer of all time'? No, that would be silly, McGuire is a friend.

Oh for crying out loud.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 4:30 PM on April 8, 2015 [15 favorites]

You realize that "SJW" is a pejorative term used by right-wingers, right? And that while a lot of those of us who are called that have been reclaiming it because it sounds kind of awesome, actually using it as a broad brush to categorize a group of people who happen to have things in common like "thinking racism is bad" and "caring about women" makes you look like an asshole, and generally points to the "you can dismiss everything this person says, because they literally are going to say nothing valuable or even anything you haven't heard before, probably from 10,000 bigot manbabies who are yelling at you on Twitter?
posted by NoraReed at 4:32 PM on April 8, 2015 [24 favorites]

I did some number crunching on the "more inclusive" and "more diverse" puppy-dominated ballot. In 2013, the Hugo nominees were about 63% male. In 2014 they were 60% male. In 2015 they are 75% male, and the Sad and Rabid Puppy nominees are 82% male. At least on that easy-to-measure axis, it's not looking like a step forward for diversity.

And here's Seanan McGuire in 2013 responding to critics who felt her number of nominations were excessive and due to self-promotion, in case you think the "SJWs" are still picking on John C. Wright.
posted by penguinliz at 4:42 PM on April 8, 2015 [11 favorites]

Fyi, if you are going to do the German thing, the Nazi term is kulturkampf.

Seems like a Nazi grammar grammar Nazi would remember the capitalization.
posted by Celsius1414 at 4:43 PM on April 8, 2015 [6 favorites]

McGuire, as we've already discussed in this thread, is hella productive across a lot of media--those 5 nominations were across 4 categories (novel, novella, twice in novellette, and fancast.) Can you see how maybe that is slightly different from one author having fully 3 out of 5 total nominations in novella and one publisher representing a majority of the written noms?
posted by kagredon at 4:44 PM on April 8, 2015 [15 favorites]

Corb, stop digging on this one I think. I've tried to read your arguments as fairly as I can and they all seem pretty thin and by this point well rebutted.
posted by Drinky Die at 4:52 PM on April 8, 2015 [8 favorites]

corb ... They are claiming that nominating the same guy six times is part of their attempt to make the Hugos MORE DIVERSE. You are moving around the argument to "other people have been nominated multiple times before", which is not really this issue.

Do you believe that John C. Wright on the ballot six times makes the Hugos more diverse? Because that is the claim being discussed.
posted by kyrademon at 4:52 PM on April 8, 2015 [10 favorites]

it's more inclusive of people who are John C. Wright, I'll give them that
posted by kagredon at 4:53 PM on April 8, 2015 [21 favorites]

These stunts actively drive people away from sci-fi fandom. I joined some Space Opera group on Facebook 'cause, hey, I like space opera! And yet between posts about Ian M Banks there were links to Vox Day's blog! It turned me right off.
Or imagine you're somebody - stereotypically a young woman, but it could be anyone - who's a big fan of new Doctor Who and Game of Thrones. You want to read the books that form the basis for those shows, so you start poking around and discover this hive of howling assholes. Are you really going to join sci-fi fandom?
posted by Charlemagne In Sweatpants at 4:58 PM on April 8, 2015 [11 favorites]

I'm out for a while, if anyone actually wants to discuss stuff you can MeMail me and I'll be happy to clarify or respond to anything related to this thread.
posted by corb at 4:59 PM on April 8, 2015 [1 favorite]

Anyone else suspect that a few non-male, non-white people were added to the slates as shields?
posted by LindsayIrene at 5:03 PM on April 8, 2015 [2 favorites]

The Judgment of Solomon
posted by kagredon at 5:20 PM on April 8, 2015

GRRM wrote about this on his LJ today.
posted by Corinth at 5:32 PM on April 8, 2015 [4 favorites]

The Judgment of Solomon

Note that this advice on how to NO AWARD is incorrect - do not list anything you do not wish to vote for even after NO AWARD as the runoff system may result in that vote being counted towards it.
posted by Artw at 5:36 PM on April 8, 2015 [4 favorites]

Just about to post that link.

tl;dr: "I think the Sad Puppies have broken the Hugo Awards, and I am not sure they can ever be repaired."

GRRM is about as hardcore and lifelong a fan as it gets. I wonder if they will call him a SJW apologist and not a real writer of SF.
posted by Justinian at 5:37 PM on April 8, 2015 [3 favorites]

Also: Boo fucking hoo.
posted by Artw at 5:38 PM on April 8, 2015 [1 favorite]

I'm sure its clear in context, but I'm referring to GRRM's post and Artw is referring to Brad "assclown" Torgersen's link.
posted by Justinian at 5:40 PM on April 8, 2015 [2 favorites]

A post by Matthew Foster is mentioned up thread, but all of his posts on the affair are good reads for context:

I expect that there'll be more of these as time passes.
posted by Going To Maine at 5:43 PM on April 8, 2015 [7 favorites]

I haven't read Eugie Foster but intend to now.

I think Matthew Foster is right on target with this observation: "I suppose it [the belief in hidden leftist groups running fandom] must come from not being able to believe that a black or Asian could win awards, or a woman, without there being a conspiracy."

I have run into this attitude many times in my life; it's quite pervasive among some people. It really says it all.
posted by wintersweet at 5:48 PM on April 8, 2015 [15 favorites]

Anyone else suspect that a few non-male, non-white people were added to the slates as shields?

Almost certainly. The semiprozine nominees are Orson Scott Card's and a couple that appear to have been randomly picked from the top of an alphabetical list.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 5:55 PM on April 8, 2015 [1 favorite]

I think Matthew Foster is right on target with this observation

I think Matthew Foster burned out my fucking retinas. Whatever he's for I'm against it between the sun and the dust*. Switching from his page back here blinded me, I still can't see right. Please stop using black backgrounds for text heavy pages! * Apologies to the Cavalera brothers.
posted by MikeMc at 6:19 PM on April 8, 2015 [1 favorite]

GRRM wrote about this on his LJ today.

That was like 7 paragraphs about how he was going to write about a thing and then one paragraph of actual thoughts and then the promise of more to come.

Where did the part with the lavishly described feast go?
posted by kagredon at 6:31 PM on April 8, 2015 [10 favorites]

Where did the part with the lavishly described feast go?

Pushed back to the next installment. You'll get used to it.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 6:35 PM on April 8, 2015 [16 favorites]

Don't worry, Martin will post the next bit about this topic sometime in 2019.
posted by Justinian at 6:43 PM on April 8, 2015 [8 favorites]

I hope nobody dies.
posted by Artw at 6:50 PM on April 8, 2015 [2 favorites]

It's just a feast, not a wedding.

Here's his next entry, which is largely history. But he's building to something, I can feel it.
posted by nubs at 6:57 PM on April 8, 2015 [2 favorites]

NO, I WILL NOT TRY TO KICK THAT FOOTBALL AGAIN LUCY.
posted by Justinian at 7:03 PM on April 8, 2015 [10 favorites]

Oh, come on, nuncle. It is only words. And words are wind.
posted by nubs at 7:10 PM on April 8, 2015 [4 favorites]

Comments are flowing on that second GRRM entry; his reply to Lou Antonelli is blistering.
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 7:19 PM on April 8, 2015 [1 favorite]

Okay, I will cease my snark at present because Martin's latest entry is heartfelt and powerful and doesn't deserve snark.
posted by Justinian at 7:25 PM on April 8, 2015 [5 favorites]

Note that this advice on how to NO AWARD is incorrect

gee i wonder if that was on purpose
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 7:33 PM on April 8, 2015 [3 favorites]

Strange. I read a few chapters of the first Game of Thrones book but it didn't hook me, and I watched the first season of the TV series without getting addicted enough to watch the rest. But those LJ entries really make me like GRRM, and I might check out his stuff.

Or at least try one of the Game of Thrones themed gelatos from the place down the street.
posted by Charlemagne In Sweatpants at 7:56 PM on April 8, 2015 [3 favorites]

Martin's collection Sandkings kicks all kinds of butt.
posted by Zed at 7:57 PM on April 8, 2015 [2 favorites]

I advise everyone visiting GRRM's blog not to login and wind up looking through their ten-to-fifteen-year-old LJ posts.
posted by Corinth at 8:03 PM on April 8, 2015 [16 favorites]

I like how much effort GRRM put into asking for a respectful discussion from both sides. And I know, asking for a polite tone from people who are being attacked has all kinds of issues and isn't always the right thing. But in this case where he was making a serious effort as a very well respected by all sides voice in this community to honestly convince people that the entire worth of this award is at stake because of the misguided campaign being waged by the conservative groups here, it may be the way to go. Dialing down the vitriol to really examine the history of the award and what it really means is valuable. He might even be able to get through to some people, I hope.

He's also a good example of someone who has been criticized at times for the content of ASOIAF or the HBO show not exactly being the type of thing a modern fan of social justice wants to see, but he doesn't let the criticism of his work interfere with how he feels about social justice in general. I think he's doing a really great job here.

Now stop it and get back to finishing Winds of Winter.
posted by Drinky Die at 11:31 PM on April 8, 2015 [4 favorites]

{blasphemy} I think I'm fine with him taking time off Winds of Winter for this. {/blasphemy}

He's thorough, and if he makes just two people stop and think, it'll be a plus. Although from one of his responses to the comments, I deduce he may think the No Awards option is too harsh, which, nope, sorry Mr Martin. (He says he'll write about that in another installment, so I may be wrong anyway.)
posted by seyirci at 4:36 AM on April 9, 2015

GRRM: Blogging for Rockets
posted by nubs at 8:06 AM on April 9, 2015 [2 favorites]

Another story from The Guardian about all this, extensively quoting George R. R. Martin. Excerpt:

George RR Martin has waded into the “nasty, nasty fight” surrounding this year’s Hugo awards, laying out why he believes that a group of right-wing science fiction writers have “broken” the prestigious prize beyond repair.

The shortlists for the long-running American genre awards, won in the past by names from Kurt Vonnegut to Ursula K Le Guin and voted for by fans, were announced this weekend to uproar in the science fiction community, after it emerged that the line-up corresponded closely with the slates of titles backed by certain conservative writers. The self-styled “Sad Puppies” campaigners had set out to combat what orchestrator and writer Brad Torgersen had criticised as the Hugos’ tendency to reward “literary” and “ideological” works.

posted by Kattullus at 8:12 AM on April 9, 2015

Arthur Chu weighed in on this a couple days ago:

Freeping with clicks in order to troll the liberals is one thing–freeping to give money to a horrible person to troll even harder, another. But giving money en masse to an organization you dislike so you can subvert and take over that organization? Who’d go that far?

That’s actually the oldest tradition in freeping of all. It predates even the Internet.
posted by rtha at 8:33 AM on April 9, 2015 [3 favorites]

I disagree with him on the "tone argument" thing. Largely because:

1. It's often applied to intra-community discussions where outsiders are not the primary audience.

2. Stereotype bias exists, and perfectly polite discussions and texts frequently get reframed as anti-something. I suspect some of this is going on when inclusive or minority-centric texts get interpreted as "fuck you" pieces. I don't think Jemisin rises to the level of Early Tepper or current Sulway on the "fuck you" front. Lord, Addison, Beukes, and Leckie are not even close.

3. The internet is a megaphone for cranks, and the media has an obvious conflict bias. Politeness is ignored in the former, and gets you a column inch on the community page in the latter. (Worse is that "someone said something dumb on twitter" is apparently news these days.) We really shouldn't assume that fighty posts are the norm for discussion.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 9:02 AM on April 9, 2015 [2 favorites]

Meanwhile, the shortlist for the Arthur C. Clarke award, via Locus:

The Girl With All The Gifts, M.R. Carey (Orbit)
The Book Of Strange New Things, Michel Faber (Canongate)
Europe In Autumn, Dave Hutchinson (Solaris)
Memory Of Water, Emmi Itäranta (HarperVoyager)
The First Fifteen Lives Of Harry August, Claire North (Orbit)
Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel (Picador)
posted by nubs at 9:31 AM on April 9, 2015 [7 favorites]

Yeah, the point of the tone argument is not that civility is unimportant, but that there seem to be a lot of folks who only care about civility when they're being challenged, and that minority viewpoints are often labeled as uncivil even when they're quite politely stated. Of course, just as civility (a good thing) is abused by some as tone policing, there are cases where people are abusing warning against the tone argument--but that doesn't mean it's not a real thing.
posted by kagredon at 9:32 AM on April 9, 2015 [8 favorites]

I probably should add that I don't see anything wrong with "fuck-you" science fiction, which comes from all parts of the political spectrum and includes Le Guin, Vonnegut, Wells, Bradbury, and Heinlein. Rupetta as an example is beautiful in its polemic, and arguably a much needed takedown of certain presumptions of rationality, albeit from a different perspective compared to Watts. One neat twist is that the religious conflict that consumes the world is between two nontheistic humanisms. But that might be a mild spoiler.

But let's not go overboard and say that novels from different perspectives are doing the equivalent of throwing Bee Gees records on a bonfire, or mocking pop in performance ala Zappa and PiL.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 9:49 AM on April 9, 2015 [2 favorites]

I probably should add that I don't see anything wrong with "fuck-you" science fiction, which comes from all parts of the political spectrum and includes Le Guin, Vonnegut, Wells, Bradbury, and Heinlein.

I'm also forced to note that this whole concern about "fuck-you" types of SF seem much more worried and strident when the issue is racism than when the issue is sexism. People didn't lose their shit about James Tiptree, Joanna Russ, or Sherri Tepper* the way they're losing their shit about N. K. Jemisin and calls for increased diversity.

Basically, sexism is bad & the response to pointing it out is bad enough; but the response to pointing out racism -- especially when combined with sexism -- is just a nightmare. All the toxic sludge comes pouring to the surface, flooding everything.

* And seriously, have you read Tepper? It's all "FUCK YOU PATRIARCHY FUCK YOU AND THE HORSE YOU RODE IN ON. AND DID I MENTION FUCK YOU WOMEN DON'T HAVE TO BE MOTHERS AND CONSERVATIVE CHRISTIANITY IS DEATH FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCKING FUCKS!"
posted by suelac at 10:46 AM on April 9, 2015 [14 favorites]

To be fair, apparently some of the individuals on the Puppies slate have been getting death threats.

Unless I see evidence -- and I note your link doesn't offer any -- this remains projection on the part of the Puppies.
posted by MartinWisse at 10:48 AM on April 9, 2015

Unless I see evidence -- and I note your link doesn't offer any -- this remains projection on the part of the Puppies.

Eh, I believe it. People suck, and this is a pretty big bandwagon with a lot of anger directed mostly in one direction (it's not like ANY big voice is speaking out on behalf of Beale or Torgersen). So I tend to believe it's happening, because people suck, even sometimes people who believe some of the same things I do.
posted by suelac at 10:57 AM on April 9, 2015 [5 favorites]

Unless I see evidence -- and I note your link doesn't offer any -- this remains projection on the part of the Puppies.

TBF, Mary Robinette Kowal is definitely not a Puppy apologist and she may have heard about or seen stuff that hasn't gotten out into the wider world. Although yeah, it is kind of funny watching Vox Day frothingly demand an apology because he found one Twitter rando who said some unflattering things about him.
posted by kagredon at 10:58 AM on April 9, 2015 [3 favorites]

I'm also forced to note that this whole concern about "fuck-you" types of SF seem much more worried and strident when the issue is racism than when the issue is sexism. People didn't lose their shit about James Tiptree, Joanna Russ, or Sherri Tepper* the way they're losing their shit about N. K. Jemisin and calls for increased diversity.

That is a really interesting disconnect. I wonder how much of it is a perceived tipping point. It's one thing for there to be a feminist book niche that's typically well-enough marked as such to be easily avoided; it's another thing altogether to being able to see the slippery slope to where straight white men aren't centered, the thing the SJWs consider a feature and the puppies consider the end of the world.

(I don't mean to dispute that you're onto something about how disproportionate the response is -- I think you clearly are.)

And there's an interesting contrast to what's going on in videogames and comics, where the shit-losing remains predominantly about sexism. I suppose that's because they're visual media that have had a lot more women depicted.
posted by Zed at 11:28 AM on April 9, 2015

I love Tepper, although she abuses the deus ex machina and apocalypse a bit too much.

I'm very much of the opinion that this is a "someone is wrong on the internet" phenomenon. While Jemisin's blogs and speeches have been explicitly critical, I don't see her fiction as all that radical.

Then there's my first encounter with Delany, who pulled a different kind of "fuck-you" by stuffing everything that Campbell thought audiences wouldn't like into a swashbuckling spies in space novel. It even has proto-furries which may very well have been predictive offensiveness.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 11:33 AM on April 9, 2015 [2 favorites]

> Although yeah, it is kind of funny watching Vox Day frothingly demand an apology

Can someone please pass me the brain bleach because I accidentally read more of that thread than I meant to and help please help
posted by rtha at 11:50 AM on April 9, 2015 [7 favorites]

And there's an interesting contrast to what's going on in videogames and comics, where the shit-losing remains predominantly about sexism.

Oh, trust me, there's plenty of shit-losing about anything you could imagine.
posted by Artw at 12:19 PM on April 9, 2015 [1 favorite]

Martin is tearing it up. Who would have thought that all it would take to light this kind of fire would be the possible destruction of the most important and beloved award in science fiction fandom, and the fracturing of fandom itself. Now I'm depressing myself.

His latest piece, Blogging for Rockets, addresses the kind of thing Roberts and Mamatas referred to in the links earlier in the thread. The "I'm not actually campaigning (but vote for me)" campaigning. Anybody with an interest in SF, SF authors who blog, or Fandom itself likely know at least some of the people he and they are referring to.
posted by Justinian at 12:38 PM on April 9, 2015 [3 favorites]

There are a number of people I deeply respect -- GRRM and Uber-SMOF Ben Yalow leap to mind -- that really dislike the "These are the things I created last year" posts. I disagree with them, because historically, we've had a real problem with people wasting nominations on works that were not eligible. Even better, we might even be able to bring back the category we had to kill as unworkable.

The Hugos, as a class, are awards for works. There are three exceptions. Best Fan Writer, Best Fan Artist, and Best Pro Artist. The former two are body-of-work awards because fan writing and fan art tends to be in the very small and frequent scale, rather than the very large artworks that the Pro artists, or complete stories that the pro writers did. Note that this elides fanfic and slash, because there are legal complications with those. Note this is changing. Note I'm talking about the past.

The original pro art award was Best Artwork. The problem? It was impossible to know when the art was created. Basically, nominating was impossible, and verification was a nightmare. So, wanting to recognize art, we went to Best Pro Artist, but then it turned into a lifetime body-of-work award, and it tends to go to one person until that person gets tired and declines.

With the Internet, we might be able to redo this back to Best Artwork, because the artists can put up "These are my eligible works this year" posts, and that's what we want to recognize. But for that to work, we have to accept that they can put up a 'These are my eligible works for this year." post.

I don't mind those. When you repeat them, when you start sending multiple emails, then it's canvassing and it's crossing a line, but one post, on your website, saying "These, and only these, are my eligible works this year" and if you're not interested "I will be declining nominations this year, please do not nominate me" are *perfectly* reasonable.

And the definition is clear. One time. One website. "These are my eligible works." Ben and GRRM think that this crosses onto the slippery slope. I think this is the solid edge we can hold before the "For your consideration" nightmare. We (at least Ben and I) agree to disagree on this one. We both agree, however, that the SP3/RP slates are *way* beyond the pale, no matter if you agree with me or not on the "This is my eligible works" post being kosher or not.
posted by eriko at 12:50 PM on April 9, 2015 [12 favorites]

The Hugos, as a class, are awards for works. There are three exceptions. Best Fan Writer, Best Fan Artist, and Best Pro Artist.

Best Editor, Short Form and Best Editor, Long Form?
posted by Justinian at 12:55 PM on April 9, 2015

We both agree, however, that the SP3/RP slates are *way* beyond the pale, no matter if you agree with me or not on the "This is my eligible works" post being kosher or not.

Yeah, the gulf between "Here's which of my recent works are Hugo-eligible", or even "Here's what I'm going to be voting for, I encourage you to check them out," and "Here is the slate that we will be pushing to get onto the ballot" is so huge that you couldn't get from one to the other in a human lifetime without some kind of FTL craft.
posted by kagredon at 12:59 PM on April 9, 2015 [9 favorites]

Best Editor, Short Form and Best Editor, Long Form?

Dammit, forgot those. They're new. Then again, I'm against all those new-fangled Hugos, except, Best Editor, Long was *always* there as Best Editor and I just flat out failed like a very faily thing. Behold, my fail, for it is a mighty fail.

(I do all this because I consider PNH & TNH friends, they are editors, and PNH is a big reason why we have two editor categories.)

I hope my point, overall, is made.
posted by eriko at 12:59 PM on April 9, 2015 [3 favorites]

is so huge that you couldn't get from one to the other in a human lifetime without some kind of FTL craft.

You could only do it in a craft that could go from 0 to complete asswipe in less than three nanoseconds.
posted by eriko at 1:03 PM on April 9, 2015 [10 favorites]

Best I can do is a ship that can make the Asshole Run in less than twelve parsecs.
posted by zombieflanders at 1:06 PM on April 9, 2015 [11 favorites]

I call it the Notallmenium Falcon.
posted by zombieflanders at 1:08 PM on April 9, 2015 [38 favorites]

"R2, don't you dare make the jump to hyperdick...."

It's the USS Menterprise.
posted by eriko at 1:10 PM on April 9, 2015 [12 favorites]

DAMN YOU, zombieflanders!

Undead bastard trumped my ace.
posted by eriko at 1:11 PM on April 9, 2015 [2 favorites]

GOU High Colonic.
posted by Zed at 1:13 PM on April 9, 2015 [1 favorite]

I want to nominate this comment on GRRM's not-a-blog for a Hugo:

"You don't get to devise a slate with a strong political point of view, frontload it with highly controversial political rhetoric, promote it (in Correia's own words) in terms of fighting "the culture war" and define it oppositionally to what you perceive as a pernicious ideological movement, and then complain that someone else is judging it on political terms.

Like it's very rare that I'm going to judge a man on the basis of topography of his penis, and were I to do so in most circumstances I could rightly be called out. But if he's going to walk up to me and start slapping me in the face with his wangledangle, he doesn't get to bitch about what a penis bigot I'm being when I refuse to support his ambitions (penis-related or otherwise)."
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 1:13 PM on April 9, 2015 [15 favorites]

Martin is tearing it up.

Yeah, I'm really enjoying the thoughtful way he is approaching this. Not sure I'm 100% on board with everything yet (as eriko notes, above, I am often at sea when it comes to knowing what works are eligible - I've sat down with Hugo or Aurora ballots and thought "Oh, I should nominate that - wait, what year did that come out?" an awful lot, so the eligible works lists are actually handy - it would be great to have that centralized somewhere/somehow so that individual creators and publishing houses didn't have to run the risk of campaigning or the appearance thereof, but then whoever compiles it runs a risk of inadvertently leaving something out and getting attacked).

What makes it very interesting to me is that Martin:

-is a huge name;
-is a straight white male;
-has a large body of work, that covers the spectrum of SF&F;
-has never won a Hugo for best novel;
-has been criticized - and not unjustly - for how his fantasy epic has approached women and violence towards them as well as the use of racial stereotyping/tropes;

So he appears to me to be exactly the kind of author the SP folks would be rallying behind in some ways, but he's going to stand against them. And not for reasons that might be dismissed as "SJW" (though he is fairly liberal in his politics), but because he thinks it is bad for the industry as a whole. I'm interested to see the reaction he will get, because his opinion will carry weight in part because of his name, but also because of how he is approaching this.

And I think the approach is very important - SF&F fandom is interesting to me, because at the cons and other places, the creators are right alongside the fans. I've moderated panels with authors at cons, and then sat next to them as part of the audience at the next panel. There's an equality there, an expectation that fan and creator are part of the same thing, and Martin is dealing with that quite well IMHO.
posted by nubs at 1:19 PM on April 9, 2015 [13 favorites]

I want to nominate this comment on GRRM's not-a-blog for a Hugo:

Right now, that would qualify under Best ~~Catchall~~ Related Work, but there are a number of people that believe BRW should be book works *about* SF that it's tough to win unless you are just that. I have see a convention restaurant guide be nominated under BRW, and to be honest it was an *epic* work. You might recognize one of the names.
posted by eriko at 1:20 PM on April 9, 2015 [6 favorites]

Firefly class vessel "Sir Mennity".
posted by Artw at 1:23 PM on April 9, 2015 [1 favorite]

GRRM's blogging stuff could arguably fall under the "Best Fan Writer" category. He is both a pro and a fan. That's tough for people outside fandom to grok but it does have precedent.
posted by Justinian at 1:25 PM on April 9, 2015 [5 favorites]

Right now, that would qualify under Best Catchall Related Work, but there are a number of people that believe BRW should be book works *about* SF that it's tough to win unless you are just that.

It's not my fault there's no Hugo specifically for best use of the word "wangledangle."
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 1:27 PM on April 9, 2015 [9 favorites]

Actually the Sir Mennity, like the NotAllStromo, can only travel at sublight speeds.
posted by Artw at 1:32 PM on April 9, 2015

And the definition is clear. One time. One website. "These are my eligible works."

Abigail Nussbaum had a great suggestion on her blog recently: if authors kept an updated bibliography page on their websites (or blogs), that listed their work by year, no "these are my eligible work of 2014" entries would be required.

It's both a sensible professional thing to do, and it avoids any implication of campaigning.
posted by suelac at 1:52 PM on April 9, 2015 [6 favorites]

I've definitely seen people attack GRRM as being too SJW-y/liberal, it will be nothing new for many of the SP true believers. The place where he's going to be doing the most good is for people who are fans (or at least follow ASOIAF), but aren't versed on the inside-baseball aspects of the Hugos.
posted by kagredon at 1:58 PM on April 9, 2015

Abigail Nussbaum had a great suggestion on her blog recently: if authors kept an updated bibliography page on their websites (or blogs), that listed their work by year, no "these are my eligible work of 2014" entries would be required.

That seems to be sort of the same thing, just more work for the readers.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 2:10 PM on April 9, 2015 [2 favorites]

if authors kept an updated bibliography page on their websites (or blogs), that listed their work by year, no "these are my eligible work of 2014" entries would be required.

But the details get hairy. For serialized work, the eligibility date is determined by the final entry. Printed publication date, if it exists (or copyright date otherwise) determines year of eligibility, trumping actual availability date. The work is eligible in its original year of publication, but if was published in a language other than English, it's eligible again for its year of publication it translation into English; likewise, if it was published outside the US, it's eligible again for the year of its first US publication.

Unless you are SERIOUSLY Hugo-award inside-baseball (I didn't know most of the above until I just looked it up -- I just remembered that there were some complicated bits) it can be opaque whether a given work is eligible in a given year.
posted by Zed at 2:12 PM on April 9, 2015 [6 favorites]

...and of course, for a while now a big spaceship and something exploding has meant "This book was published by Baen."...

posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 9:32 PM on April 7

That's ... that's from somewhere beyond merely "eponysterical".

(Who knows more about "exploding spaceships" than a Culture AI?)
posted by AsYouKnow Bob at 7:27 PM on April 7

exponysterical? multiponysterical?
posted by tigrrrlily at 2:18 PM on April 9, 2015 [1 favorite]

Foz Meadows was on fire on Twitter earlier. Storified here: THE DRAGONS MIGHT BE THE GOOD GUYS OMG.
posted by Lexica at 2:36 PM on April 9, 2015 [15 favorites]

@fozmeadows: When that's your moral yardstick against which to measure the evils of progress, you might as well start buying into phrenology.

I've had a lot of success with phrenotherapy.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 3:00 PM on April 9, 2015 [2 favorites]

I call it corrective phrenology. Hand me the #4 Davis hammer.
posted by eriko at 3:08 PM on April 9, 2015 [4 favorites]

People didn't lose their shit about James Tiptree, Joanna Russ, or Sherri Tepper* the way they're losing their shit about N. K. Jemisin and calls for increased diversity.

Oh you better believe people lost their shit about Joanna Russ. Russ was a sublime provocateur (in the best way) and pulled no punches in criticizing the genre despite potential cost to her own career, for which she will always be one of my heroes.
posted by feckless at 3:32 PM on April 9, 2015 [13 favorites]

Yup. As I said here: "I well remember how viciously [The Female Man] was attacked at the time, and how condescending even most of the favorable reviews were. The world wasn't ready for it, and it helped create the climate in which it can be forgotten how high a hill she had to climb."
posted by languagehat at 3:52 PM on April 9, 2015 [8 favorites]

Martin has another post up:

There were no Sad Puppies when Larry Correia was nominated for the Campbell, when Brad Torgersen was nominated for the Campbell, when Torgersen was nominated for his first Hugo. (Subsequent noms, yes, may have resulted from Puppy campaigns). That was the traditional Hugo electorate putting you on the ballot... you, and a lot of other conservative writers, religious writers, white male writers, and purveyors of space opera, military SF, and Good Old Stuff.

There was never any need for Sad Puppies to "take back" the Hugos. The feminists, minorities, literary cliques, and Social Justice Warriors never took them in the first place. That's a myth, as the actual facts I have cited here prove conclusively.

posted by overglow at 3:53 PM on April 9, 2015 [14 favorites]

I retroactively feel bad about some of the stuff I've said about the last couple of ASoIaF books. I mean, I am right about them, but this is reminding me how much I've admired Martin's stuff in the past. The man is a great writer and storyteller when he buckles down and has control of what he wants to say.
posted by Justinian at 5:03 PM on April 9, 2015 [5 favorites]

Also he seems like a plain ol' decent human being which may be more important.
posted by Justinian at 5:05 PM on April 9, 2015 [9 favorites]

I've met him a couple of times, and he is a decent human being. Warm, generous, thoughtful. The last couple of novels may have gotten away from him, but I still have hopes for ASoIaF coming in for a great landing.

Overseen on (link contains ASoIaF spoilers) Twitter.
posted by nubs at 5:42 PM on April 9, 2015

Oh you better believe people lost their shit about Joanna Russ.

Point taken.

But looking at now, I'd say that while many of these people dislike women, it's people of color that really make them angry--especially black women.

As for GRRM, there are a couple of fascinatingly baroque comments to his latest LJ post. One of them blames feminists of the 1800s for taking away his great-grandmother's right to vote, because she was a polygamist.

... say what?

(Also, seriously, dude? You're honestly blaming feminists of the 1800s?!)
posted by suelac at 5:50 PM on April 9, 2015 [6 favorites]

When GRRM kills your argument, it stays dead. Like a Stark at a wedding.

Um. Probably didn't think that quip all the way through.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 6:11 PM on April 9, 2015 [13 favorites]

Eh, the Stark stayed dead. The Tully, not so much...

(Assuming that he didn't actually think the quip through and was being sarcastic?)
posted by Pink Frost at 6:34 PM on April 9, 2015 [2 favorites]

Perhaps he meant that the puppies are just mindless revenge zombies at this point?
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 6:48 PM on April 9, 2015 [2 favorites]

L correia has posted a very long response to GRRM's first posting, which explains (or is supposed to explain) the SPs backstory. I'll let you google it. But I think it's basically a lot like Sarah Hoyt's one referenced somewhere upthread. I'm sure I'll take heat for unfairly precising it, but it seemed to me to be along the lines of "My first nomination and first few cons, people treated me like shit because I was a libertarian gunshop owner. And even if me and Brad T. are big enough to withstand personal attacks on our political/personal/religious beliefs (unfair ones at that), there's a lot of less well-known writers who are scared because of the general left-leaning BS at cons. I was like the fat kid at the high school dance. We're all scared. Well, we're fighting back."

First, I've got to make clear that I find it appalling that anyone would threaten the health or safety of any writer or their family because of the fucking Hugos, much less for any other reason. So, I'm on board to that extent. But the rest of the Hoyt/Correia narrative doesn't actually jibe with the rhetoric floating around. OK, you're fighting back against those evil SJW prom queens and kings who mocked your ugly tux at the dance. And those mean lefty editors and writers made you scared that you wouldn't get work. Got it.

But exactly how does that square with "Vote for John Wright's 3 different novellas, because he's just that damn good." And "it's not about the politics/prom trauma, it's about quality of work! And misleading cover illos with exploding spaceships that aren't really books about exploding spaceships!" It's like bad teen drama. The emotional tug of abused sensitive souls (or sensitive souls who feel they've been abused) gets conflated with the perils of trying to make a living as a genre writer, and feeling as though your work is devalued because of who you are (as though that hadn't happened for years to writers who aren't straight white men, but I digress).

And I can say honestly in my case that it doesn't really matter to me (except in the broadest 'oh, that must have been a bummer' sense) how you were treated in high school, and I really don't care much about what your politics are, but if I don't like your writing, I'm not interested in reading your books. OK, maybe there's a little bit of me that is more inclined than not to ignore yet another book demonstrating the innate superiority and heroism of white guys with big guns or bigger swords, but I think I can write that off as personal taste by this point in my life. And if someone seems to be a big enough shit and a shit writer to boot, why should I bother wasting my time?
posted by my dog is named clem at 6:56 PM on April 9, 2015 [9 favorites]

Tiny babies.
posted by Artw at 7:23 PM on April 9, 2015

It's amazing how one moment they can be building mountain fortresses, sewing their own limbs back on after wrestling bears and teaching local savages Kung-fu and the secrets of a tax-free society, the next they are totally blubbing because they fell over and scraped their knee/went to a social gathering where nobody was interested in listening to their dumb rants.
posted by Artw at 7:39 PM on April 9, 2015 [29 favorites]

Correia's response to GRRM (as mdinc quoted above).
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 8:31 PM on April 9, 2015

Someone REALLY needs to sit down and watch the My Little Pony episode Best Night Ever and reflect upon how sometimes the big party you've hyped yourself up for just isn't going to meet your expectations.
posted by Artw at 8:44 PM on April 9, 2015 [1 favorite]

Wow. Larry Correia is carrying a lot of baggage. So are we all, I suppose. There's some ill treatment fire at the base of all that smoke, and if the world were a kinder place everyone would have ground it out sooner. (I do agree with Correia that Starship Troopers wouldn't win a Hugo if it came out today, but I suspect I'm a lot more okay with that than he is.)
posted by Going To Maine at 9:10 PM on April 9, 2015 [1 favorite]

I'm not even sure what that means. Like, literally the book from 1959, somehow detached from history and released in competition with all it's many imitators? No, I don't think it would do that well at all. Or does he mean Heinlein, who let us not forget Correia is not fit to lick the boots of, returning to life at the height of his powers and cranking out a fully contemporary novel? I suspect it would do quite well, though in doing so it wouldn't be the antiquated museum piece that Correia wants - probably. It would be exactly the kind of thing he hates.
posted by Artw at 9:33 PM on April 9, 2015 [9 favorites]

GRRM: Stay On Topic!
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 9:54 PM on April 9, 2015

Hrrm. George is a counter-slate proponent.
posted by Artw at 10:28 PM on April 9, 2015

I respect GRRM, I just don't think it's worth engaging these people on their own terms. As much as he wants to ignore gamergate/the manosphere/etc., I can't.
posted by Corinth at 10:41 PM on April 9, 2015 [1 favorite]

Artw is right. I doubt Starship Troopers would win the Hugo if it came out unchanged today but that doesn't mean that it should not have won in 1959 nor that if it came out today it would be the same book. If Heinlein were alive today (and as full of vim and vigor as he was in 1959) he may well have won a Hugo. Because he wouldn't be writing the same books. Hell, the Heinlein of the 70s wasn't even writing the same books as the Heinlein of the 50s.
posted by Justinian at 10:54 PM on April 9, 2015 [4 favorites]

Larry Correia seems to be very angry that he was labeled a right wing nutter and in response he is engaging in a bunch of right wing nuttery. That doesn't make sense. That. Does. Not. Make. Sense.
posted by Justinian at 11:04 PM on April 9, 2015 [9 favorites]

Regardless of tone argument issues, I got a full-body wave of relief reading that GRRM post. Specifically, seeing such an old-guard bearded white SFF nerd guy, at this point maybe even the king of white old-guard nerd guys, flat out say, "SJW is an offensive, made-up term." Extensively disproving the conservative-imaginary-past delusions the Puppies have about the sff community is good, but that was great, maybe even Great. Wow. A weight that's been dragging since before the beginnings of GamerGate has been lifted. George. Thanks. Thank you so much.
posted by moonlight on vermont at 11:28 PM on April 9, 2015 [7 favorites]

So I tracked down a bit of Wright's nominated works.

It's worse than I imagined. I don't know what happened to the man. Maybe some sort of mental breakdown? This is not the same author from a decade ago. I need a shower.
posted by Justinian at 11:41 PM on April 9, 2015 [4 favorites]

To pat myself on the back for a minute, I refer to a usenet post I made in 2009 entitled Internet rendering Best Novel Hugo pointless? I wasn't right in every particular but I stand by the general gist of what I said, and point to Redshirts victory as the pinnacle of the trend. I sure didn't see the Sad Puppies thing coming, though, but it is as Roberts and others point out the natural evolution of the trend. I think I got into an argument with jscalzi on this blog after this but it was a while back and I've tried to block out usenet-induced-ragefights in my meory.
posted by Justinian at 12:07 AM on April 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

I wouldn't usually link to Reddit but this comment is too good to pass up (thought I might just say that because I think this conversation needs a bit more Moorcock):

That's what bugs me about this whole bit. I've been reading SF since the goddamn 80s. I enjoy liberal/leftist writers (Mieville, Lynch, GRRM) and I enjoy right-wing writers (Wolfe, and Wolfe again, because it's Gene Fucking Wolfe). I even enjoy bad right-wing stories written well (like Wolfe's "Devil in a Forest"). I don't enjoy books by left-wing writers I felt didn't live up to my expectations as a reader (Scalzi's "Lock In," for example. Love you, Scalz, but that one was predictable and by-the-numbers).
What I've been loving about sf of late is that more and more writers, with more and more interesting voices, are finally putting out stuff that is about more than Biff McLargeHuge and his Space-o-blaster taking down Space Lord, Motherfucker on the Forbidden Planet X. There was a time that campy shit was OK, but that time was the 1950s. C'mon, we live in a world post-Moorcock! Ursula LeGuin has already written revolutionary literary sf. Gene Wolfe's entire literary career stretches behind him pointing out that good sf and good literature aren't two different things.
Harold Bloom's bulbous head is thrown back in cackling laughter as regressive idiots within the Puppies' groups will gleefully squander any sort of respectability sf has clawed from literary critics' upturned noses. Hell, we have lit darlings like Chabon openly acknowledging Moorcock. Even Margaret Atwood has grudgingly admitted that, "ok, yes, speculative fiction, fine!" when describing her own stories after being famously anti-sf her entire career.
And why not? Look who wants to be the public face of speculative fiction? A bunch of nerds who are upset that books can be about things other than mighty-thewed barbarians slaying monsters and running off with lusty women. News flash -- Robert E. Howard has already lived and died, Conan is a thing, you cannot so S&S better than he has, so stop trying. Also, we've already properly deconstructed that trope. It was called the Elric saga, and it was fucking magical, and Michael Goddamn Moorcock should bludgeon every Puppy he sees. He is our goddamn Grandmaster on the Mountain and they will show him the proper respect.
All of these regressive assholes longing for the "good old days" when character development was nil, plot was an excuse to engage in world-building, and a theme or wider message was something of a dirty word to people who wanted puerile escapist adventure stories... your lost golden age never existed. Yes, there were times when those characteristics defined the majority of "genre" writing, and they still do today. I'm a member of several online crit groups, and the amount of, "lulz I turned my D&D game into a story you have to read it" and "The Space Knight glanced down from his Space Ship at the Space Planet and thought space things about the space women he would meet in Space City," crop up far too often. Your pulp adventure longings are an attempt to seize something that never was. SF has always been literary, the titans of the genre have always been here, and there's a reason we've recognized them at the Hugos -- their work is better and more meaningful than anything Torgeson or Correia or their ilk have ever, or will ever put out.
Not because of politics. See above: Gene Wolfe is so Republican he would shit on these young pups who dare pretend to claim his side of the political spectrum. But he's also probably one of the most subtle and intelligent writers I know, genre or lit. He's up there with Melville and Nabokov. He writes intelligent, witty, meaningful, art. Correia writes shit. That's as simple as a comparison as needs be said.
posted by Charlemagne In Sweatpants at 12:14 AM on April 10, 2015 [18 favorites]

Hrrm. George is a counter-slate proponent.

I think he's right, I particularly like this bit:

I hate what the Puppies did. It was based on false premises, and though it was not illegal, it was mean-spirited and unsportsmanlike. So how about we do NOT prove them right by rigging the rules against Sad Puppies 4? How about we try to be better than that? There is nothing wrong with the Hugo rules. If we want to defeat the Puppies, all we need to do is outvote them. Get in our own nominations. This year, the Puppies emptied the kennels and got out their vote, and we didn't. Fandom danced the usual, "oh, too busy to nominate, I will just vote on the final ballot," and for that complacency, we got blindsided. We lost. They kicked our fannish asses, and now we have the ballot they gave us. If we don't want that to happen again, we need to get out our OWN vote.
posted by Pendragon at 1:14 AM on April 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

I'm not even sure what that means. Like, literally the book from 1959, somehow detached from history and released in competition with all it's many imitators? No, I don't think it would do that well at all.

To be clear: my impression was that Correia was talking about the 1959 book, as is.
posted by Going To Maine at 5:03 AM on April 10, 2015

To pat myself on the back for a minute, I refer to a usenet post I made in 2009 entitled Internet rendering Best Novel Hugo pointless? I wasn't right in every particular but I stand by the general gist of what I said, and point to Redshirts victory as the pinnacle of the trend.

But the tendency to give nominations for Most Recent Book By Someone We Like is pre-internet. I'd argue its peak was Foundation's Edge or Friday or Job, none of which were very good. Likewise, I expect being active in fandom helped many an author get nominated.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 5:20 AM on April 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

I do agree with Correia that Starship Troopers wouldn't win a Hugo if it came out today

If Troopers came out today, it would be too boringly derivative to merit an award.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 5:25 AM on April 10, 2015 [6 favorites]

Zing!
posted by Going To Maine at 5:30 AM on April 10, 2015

I think that Correia hasn't yet accepted that many subjective things are popularity contests to greater or lesser degrees, and that while that can be unpleasant to the out group, it isn't "bad" in any kind of absolute sense. It just is.
posted by Going To Maine at 5:36 AM on April 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

I know I'm a broken record on this, but Correia's nomination has estimated sales fairly close to Ancillary Sword and Three-Body Problem.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 6:18 AM on April 10, 2015 [2 favorites]

Isn't he saying that people need to vote in greater numbers, not as part of a slate, but just for whatever it is you really like. And that this will defeat/minimise slate voting attempts to game the system by the simple virtue of increasing the amount of votes necessary for anyone to do that.

Goodwill and muddling through and hoping more votes would fix it was the response last year - it blatantly didn't help and never will. And any kind of overt campaigning strong enough to have a puppy-like effect breaks things anyway, just in a different way. Really the test of any rule change would be that it would defeat the slate and counter-slate equally.

Maybe the whole thing is just broken and should be abandoned.
posted by Artw at 6:49 AM on April 10, 2015

This is not the same author from a decade ago. I need a shower.

Justinian, have specifics? I've been kind of avoiding buying things to pick up stuff on the ballot since I'm just going to get it all in a packet anyway, but as a fan of John C Wright - at least his earlier stuff, I haven't read anything of his lately - I'd be interested to know the difference.
posted by corb at 7:19 AM on April 10, 2015

Maybe the whole thing is just broken and should be abandoned.

Possibly, but not certainly.

The issue with the current system is the nomination process. The vote itself is fine. Well, this year's vote will suck, because the nominations are full of the suck, but the vote process itself will be fine.

We could...

(Note. I advocate none of these here. I'm just listing options.)

1) Limit the number of nominations a given person could make, and increase the number of finalists on the ballot. This would limit the effect of the slates. The fact that you could nominate five and there are five finalists meant a slate of five could sweep the ballot. 2 out 6 cannot. This is, by far, the simplest thing to do. It's not perfect -- you can still get two names on the ballot easily.

2) Have a jury select, say, 30 works, have the members nominate 5, then vote 1. The weakness then moves to the jury, and I'm sure we'd want to have a rolling jury comprised of the previous couple Worldcons, the current one, and the next seated Worldcon. Yes, you could try to steal a Worldcon, but then you have to run one. That's self-correcting. Ever worked one of them? They're big fussy hard to deal with things.

3) Ignore it and hope they get bored and go away. If they keep stealing the awards for crap, they'll either get No Awarded *or* the value of the Hugo drops to nothing.

4) Use a system where once one of your nominations makes the ballot, your remaining nominations are removed. Thus, instead of getting 5 nominations, you are getting 5 chances at making one nomination on the final ballot. This makes slates larger than one impossible, but does require you to rank your nominations. It also means we'd need to write the software to handle the nomination count, because it would be complex.

5) Increase the supporting membership costs, or even eliminate the supporting membership entirely. $40 is one thing, $200 is another, and it makes assembling a wild pack of nominators who would not otherwise attend much more expensive. It would not, of course, affect assembling such a pack of those who were attending anyway, they've already paid the piper.

6) Make it so that the current Worldcon *only* elects, the previous *only* nominates, thus doubling the cost of slate voting -- you have to join two cons to see it through. The reason for the current system (previous, current, and next if you join before Jan 31st of the current year) is to increase the nomination pool, this would explicitly decrease it.

7) More members of WSFS, who have already paid, actually nominating and voting would really help. If everyone did, 150 member slates might not be enough to reach the final ballot in the face of 35,000 nominations (7K members, 5 noms per member.) The reason 150 could do it is they wielded 450 nominations out of 2000 or less.

8) A rule that increased the final ballot size in the face of a slate means that the primary harm of the slate -- knocking off nominees who would have made it without the slate vote -- doesn't happen. This has issues, of course, there are real costs to nominees, the biggest two being the pre-Hugo reception (aka, get them in one room and get some food into them) and the Hugo Loser's party (aka, get the losers into one room and let them relax before facing the world. The winners usually can't wait to get on the party floor holding the new shiny.)

9) This list is by no mean conclusive.

The old way? It is almost certainly done. But the goal of the Hugo -- the awards granted by WSFS by WSFS members -- can still be accomplished. Again, we (that being, those of us who've spent time working the con and going to the business meetings) always knew that if a dedicated slate tried, they could dominate a ballot. I doubt we can reëstablish the old social rule of "don't slate vote" so we do have to do something in the long term if we want to save the Hugos.

But they aren't dead yet.
posted by eriko at 7:23 AM on April 10, 2015 [8 favorites]

I suspect muddling through is going to win out of any of those in the short term, which means the nominations will be a toilet for years . If it doesn't get scrapped them it may be time to just start ignoring it.
posted by Artw at 7:28 AM on April 10, 2015

(deliberate comment break, because deliberate subject break)

There is the matter, however, of this and next years awards. The nominations and election process of the Hugo Awards is written into the WSFS Constitution, and one of the little details in that document is that changes to the constitution require approval at the business meeting, then ratification at the *next* Worldcon's business meeting. So, the next Hugo Award that could operate under new nomination rules will be 2017. This year's and 2016's will operate under the current rules, and thus, are vulnerable to the slates.

This year's are almost impossible to fix. Almost^*. But assuming miracles don't happen, the best we can do is fairly vote the few non-slate candidates, and No Award the rest. Another option is to declare the whole thing hopelessly compromised and No Award the entire ballot (the nuclear option.)

In 2016, we could try to deflect the slate with our own. Basically, this means we essentially have to run a public nominations system before the actual nominations, then when the real nominations open, we all fill in whoever "won" publicly. I don't have the space to list all the ways this could go wrong. But, it is at least theoretically possible we could have functional awards next year, because everyone will be going into it aware of what could happen and be taking steps.

Will those steps work? Got me. But it won't be like this year.

* The Almost -- Look at Section 3.13. The Retrospective Hugos. If we No Award the entire slate, and it has to be *every single Hugo*, then 2015 would be a year when no Hugo Awards were given. We could then amend 3.13 to include, say, 3 years as an interval, and run the 2015 Retro Hugos in 2018 under the new rules and basically redo this.

But it demands that not one single award be given this year. I'd love to see that happen so we could have another chance, but I'm not sanguine that we could pull it off.
posted by eriko at 7:33 AM on April 10, 2015 [3 favorites]

GRRM has an interesting response to a lot of the rule proposal changes:

The worldcon business meeting is never exactly a funfest, but if the proponents of half these proposals show up at Sasquan, this year's will be a nightmare. And will probably still be going on when MidAmericon II convenes.

I am against all these proposals. If indeed I am at Spokane, and if I can get myself up in time for the business meeting, I will vote against every one of them.

Most of them, frankly, suck. And the mere fact that so many people are discussing them makes me think that the Puppies won. They started this whole thing by saying the Hugo Awards were rigged to exclude them. That is completely untrue, as I believe I demonstrated conclusively in my last post. So what is happening now? The people on MY SIDE, the trufans and SMOFs and good guys, are having an endless circle jerk trying to come up with a foolproof way to RIG THE HUGOS AND EXCLUDE THEM. God DAMN, people. You are proving them right.

posted by corb at 7:40 AM on April 10, 2015

Goodwill and muddling through and hoping more votes would fix it was the response last year - it blatantly didn't help and never will.

They haven't really been taken seriously before, because they were only modestly successful. That is not going to be the case next year. I think you'll see more nominations, and nobody will be wringing their hands over whether or not any of the Puppies' nominees knew what they were getting into.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 7:40 AM on April 10, 2015

ROU_Xenophobe: "But the tendency to give nominations for Most Recent Book By Someone We Like is pre-internet. I'd argue its peak was Foundation's Edge or Friday or Job, none of which were very good. Likewise, I expect being active in fandom helped many an author get nominated."

Ultimately, that's a problem of Every Popular Award Ever, and really, Every Juried Award Ever, Too. The Academy has given out plenty of, "This wasn't that great, but you didn't win for some other stuff you probably should have, maybe consider this a lifetime achievement award" Oscars over the years, for example.

People nominate and vote for works by people they like. This is a bug, but not one inherent to the Hugos.
posted by Chrysostom at 7:41 AM on April 10, 2015 [4 favorites]

Didn't Gaiman declare himself non-eligible after Graveyard Book to avoid being a guy who wins because he's a best seller? (Which is a shame because Ocean was a better novel, if not his best, I say having not actually read American Gods.)
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 7:44 AM on April 10, 2015

I wonder if they've really thought through the endgame here.

No one but them thinks this was a clever stunt. They succeeded in flipping off the other side in what was already mutual animosity -- yay them -- but also everyone who cares about the Hugos who didn't have a beef with them like, say, the people who put Correia and Torgerson on the Campbell ballot and Torgerson on the Hugo ballot the first time around.

This isn't going to make Worldcon a friendlier place for them.

I just read Correia's response to GRRM. I knew he liked him some guns -- I read Monster Hunter International and it's more than a little hard to miss -- but I didn't know he owned a gun store. Or that he was a Mormon.

Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy, why was I left out of your ruthlessly efficient whisper campaign?
posted by Zed at 7:46 AM on April 10, 2015 [6 favorites]

eriko: "8) A rule that increased the final ballot size in the face of a slate means that the primary harm of the slate -- knocking off nominees who would have made it without the slate vote -- doesn't happen. This has issues, of course, there are real costs to nominees, the biggest two being the pre-Hugo reception (aka, get them in one room and get some food into them) and the Hugo Loser's party (aka, get the losers into one room and let them relax before facing the world. The winners usually can't wait to get on the party floor holding the new shiny.) "

I would favor this one. I think this answers GRRM's complaint that "now we are really ARE rigging the process!" complaint. With this proposal, if you want to slate vote, go for it. Your slate will be on the ballot. It just won't crowd other people off.
posted by Chrysostom at 7:49 AM on April 10, 2015

I wonder if they've really thought through the endgame here.

VD has pretty explicitly said that the endgame for him is destroy the Hugos (and has said that any category that gets No Award this year will, in the future, be No Awarded forever -- I don't think he actually has the power to do that, though).
posted by jeather at 7:55 AM on April 10, 2015

I don't think GRRM's read all the proposals. There *are*, in fact, a whole lot of really bad ones out there. He needn't worry. The Business Meeting Regulars will spend about 10 minutes with the OTC shotgun and mow them down in short order. Indeed, I'm pretty sure most of them won't even make it to the business meeting, guys like Kevin, Ben, Tim and the Gang of Mikes are busy talking to people and damping down the worst ideas.

In particular, ones allowing an administrator to reject nominations by judgement call not only need to die in a fire, if they ever pass, I'm renouncing the award forever. I'm with him 100000% on that one.

The 4/6 and 2/6 proposal change things so that a slate can't sweep a ballot. You can still get 4 or 2 on the ballot, but you cannot take the whole ballot. Indeed, a 1/5 proposal *ends* slates on the same category. If you can only nominate one person, there's no room for a slate in that category. They don't completely remove the harm of campaigning, but they do prevent what happened this year. They are the simplest answer with the least side effects. I personally like 2/6, then 2/5, then 1/5. I think 4/6 is too many, but we're fighting the traditional 5/5, and 2/5 may be seen as too drastic.

Mike Scott's expand-a-ballot tries to accept slates by mitigating the damage. The problem with it (and he's the first to acknowledge this) is he's writing it without the data we need to set the key variables His current formula: Take the total number of nominations, subtract the number of nominations the top nominee received (only one of them if a tie) and then take 10% of that number. Any one with more than that number makes the final ballot. It also eliminates the 5% rule -- currently, even if it's in the top five, a nominee that doesn't receive 5% of the nominations doesn't make the ballot.

But until we actually see the numbers from this year, we don't know if 10% is the right value, or if subtracting the top nominee is a good marker for a slate. So, we really can't propose it this year unless the ceremony is early enough in the con that we can amend the proposal if needed before the main business meeting. I told Mike that my prediction is that we'll either add about 60 people to the ballot (meaning the numbers he set worked) or 0 (meaning they didn't.) They did work for 2014 and 2013, but added a few others, which implies 10% may be too low. We will see.
posted by eriko at 8:09 AM on April 10, 2015 [8 favorites]

VD has pretty explicitly said that the endgame for him is destroy the Hugos (and has said that any category that gets No Award this year will, in the future, be No Awarded forever -- I don't think he actually has the power to do that, though).

He can try. $40 SAIT. The Worldcons will love his money. And that threat has made *my* choice even clearer. No Award *all the way.* Indeed, clearly it's time to raise the supporting membership cost.

But NA is a lot hard to pull off than getting on the ballot. The current nomination is really Fifth Past The Post voting. For NA to win, it has to fully win a STV ballot.

Threatening the entire membership and the award itself, though, is a great way to get it. The tweet of the night, I forget who said it, was "No Award is going to need a killer dress."
posted by eriko at 8:12 AM on April 10, 2015 [6 favorites]

I really hate the idea of a 1/anything ballot because it fairly demands voter collusion in order to get a balanced shortlist any year where there's a clear front-runner for an award. 3/6 sounds like a much better mix to me.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 8:13 AM on April 10, 2015 [5 favorites]

I really hate the idea of a 1/anything ballot because it fairly demands voter collusion in order to get a balanced shortlist

Yeah, shit, you're dead right there. You just moved me from 1/5 to the (2-4/5-6) group, and I think 3/5 or 3/6 may in fact be the sweet spot. This means the 4/6 proposal isn't far off and somebody's already moving that one (they were before all this, actually.)

Thanks, HZSF, for saving me from that dumb.
posted by eriko at 8:17 AM on April 10, 2015 [2 favorites]

Yeah, the reduce the number of nomination slots/increase the number of final ballot slots tactic seems like a reasonably simple and straightforward measure without a lot of downside.
posted by Zed at 8:18 AM on April 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

N.K. Jemisin responds to the puppies, and Torgersen in particular: Not the affirmative action you meant, not the history you’re making (emphasis in original)

SFFdom has not been immune to this societal tendency to give straight white guys more, treat them more kindly, eagerly open doors to them that are firmly shut against others. For every John Campbell who openly refused to publish black or woman protagonists, there were likely a few dozen other editors who did the same thing quietly — thus effectively reserving publication spots for white men. White male authors get more reviews (written mostly by white male reviewers), and have a better chance of prominent ones in places like the New York Times Book Review, even though women and people of color buy more books. Women in the business side of the genre get publicly shamed for… well, existing, while white men can be sexual predators or white supremacists and still end up on awards juries or editorial staffs, unquestioned. White protagonists are proudly exhibited on book covers and in the lead roles of films, with little fear of whitewashing; male protagonists are rarely sidelined so that a non-male supporting character can be showcased instead; straight-white-male-centric stories, like Tarzan being the awesomest person on the African continent and endless iterations of “let’s go subdue the natives (in space)” have been granted such pride of place in this genre that for years it was nearly impossible to get published writing anything else. These are our legacy admits, our GI benefits (but only for some GIs), our governors standing in the schoolhouse door. This is the way it’s always been, until very very very recently.

And just as Abigail Fisher complained only about the 5 black/Latin@ students who beat her out for a seat at U of T but not the 42 white people who did the same, most people in this genre don’t notice the imbalances. They don’t realize that the massive overrepresentation of straight white men in this genre might have an artificial component; they perceive the overrepresentation as normalcy, and assume those people got there strictly on merit.
[...]
Brad Torgersen sees Affirmative Action where only the most minimal efforts at redressing the imbalance exist. He ignores the actual affirmative action which has kept this genre — and this country — mired in a virtual caste system since its inception. But hilariously, he and his cronies have resorted to a lesser version of the very same tactics that his forbears used to defend their hoarded privileges — like enlisting the aid of violent bigots, and blatantly hamstringing processes intended to be fair.

Affirmative action has been at work in SFFdom pretty much since its inception — just not the kind that Brad Torgersen is talking about. And when the various Puppies say they want to take us all back to a golden age of history, it’s clear they haven’t actually studied history… or they might realize they’re replicating some of its ugliest episodes.

posted by zombieflanders at 9:14 AM on April 10, 2015 [27 favorites]

The 4/6 and 2/6 proposal change things so that a slate can't sweep a ballot. You can still get 4 or 2 on the ballot, but you cannot take the whole ballot.

That sounds like a challenge.

(Everything can be gamed, and there's always some asshole out to prove it).
posted by Leon at 9:49 AM on April 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

The 4/6 and 2/6 proposal change things so that a slate can't sweep a ballot. You can still get 4 or 2 on the ballot, but you cannot take the whole ballot.

That sounds like a challenge.

(Everything can be gamed, and there's always some asshole out to prove it).

"This year, if your last name starts with A through H, you are part of the Alphabetical Puppies 1 slate. Here are the works you should vote for. If your last name starts with I through P, you are part of the Alphabetical Puppies 2 slate. Here are the works you should vote for. If your last name starts with Q through Z, you are part of the Alphabetical Puppies 3 slate. Here are the works you should vote for."

It's not foolproof, and it really just encourages counterslating, but it'll happen the instant the nominating process changes.
posted by Etrigan at 10:08 AM on April 10, 2015 [2 favorites]

I think 4/6 just means that to run the whole slate you would need ~50% more slate voters relative to the rest of the voting pool, assuming they all vote for a random selection - difficult but not impossible to do, depending on how voter numbers go. Assigning a slate based on your surname removes any pretence at this being not a slate but the result of voters happening to read the whole list and deciding it was their best of the year, and the slate organisers may not want to lose that.
posted by penguinliz at 10:22 AM on April 10, 2015

Half the puppies may not be the effective force all the puppies was - we're dealing with low numbers here, they;ve just had a disproportionate effect because they've had a low threshold to get over.
posted by Artw at 10:25 AM on April 10, 2015 [2 favorites]

(Everything can be gamed, and there's always some asshole out to prove it).

Yes, but they still have less nominations and they have to spread them out, which makes the slate much less effective. Assume they have 150 people willing to drop the $40. They get, currently, 5 nominations per category, so 750 total nominations, and they spend them evenly on 5 candidates, 150 per candidate.

With a 2/6, they only have 300 total nominations. If they split three ways to try to cover the entire slate, they have 100 nominations in each group, and thus only 50 per candidate. It's an enormous difference when it comes to covering an entire slate. They can get the 150 per candidate they have now, but only on two candidates, the other 4 slots are untouched.

Yes, you can always game things, but you can also set the rules to make gaming more-or-less effective. With the current setup and the size of the current nomination pool, 150 lockstep nominators own the ballot. With a 2/6, they might own a couple of the smaller categories but by and large, they actually hurt themselves if they tried to grab the entire slate. They would certainly own two slots if they chose to do that, but they risk losing slots if they try for the whole ballot.

Combine that with the fact that fandom is now paying attention, and I suspect 50 votes won't be enough to get on the ballot -- because I think there will be a lot more people nominating next year.
posted by eriko at 10:29 AM on April 10, 2015

Combine that with the fact that fandom is now paying attention, and I suspect 50 votes won't be enough to get on the ballot -- because I think there will be a lot more people nominating next year.

That's what will really protect the process, far more than changing the rules. Elections are won by those who show up. There's also a good chance that the Puppies will declare a victory regardless of the actual Hugo results ("Look at how much time and effort and money the SJWs spent proving that they totally hate us! We win!") and not bother next year if they aren't certain they can win.
posted by Etrigan at 10:40 AM on April 10, 2015

and not bother next year if they aren't certain they can win.

Except they always win either way. Either their slate gets a Hugo or they get further proof of the SJW conspiracy.
posted by Zed at 10:47 AM on April 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

You know, one thing that I'm getting more and more fascinated with is how the intersection of milbloggers with some of the milSF establishment is tying together, particularly in regards to Puppygate. I went to Tom Kratman's website, for example (which I do not recommend) and found a recommendation from Nikki Fellenzer, which sparked my interest, as I've mostly seen her around the milblog circuit during the Iraq War debates. Well, lo and behold, it turns out she's started self-published writing paranormal, and is blogging about the Hugos too. And then a little more searching on some of the milblogs shows that BlackFive (a pretty reputable milblogger) is hosting a post from LaughingWolf about the same - and of course Brad Torgensen himself is a currently serving officer.

I'm wondering - and this is me wondering, I don't really have enough evidence for a full blown theory yet - if the increase in military fans of science fiction (books on deployment, among others, plus Baen providing a lot of free ebooks and actual books for soldiers) during an active war has increased the amount of people who are used to taking tactical responses to things as a first option - who are primed already to see an enemy and attempt to defeat it.
posted by corb at 10:47 AM on April 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

Also, I'm going to say it here, shut the fuck up, Tom Kratman, you are a shame to the military service, please stop waving your CIB around like it is your dick and it is on fire.
posted by corb at 10:51 AM on April 10, 2015 [8 favorites]

And jesus fuck, offering to duel people. Tom Kratman is like a caricature of everybody I ever hated when I was in.
posted by corb at 10:52 AM on April 10, 2015 [4 favorites]

Based on the Athene read you linked of "A Desert Called Peace" I've basically concluded he is just a crazy person. I tend to give people leeway for fantasies and fiction but an author insert who has orgasmic pleasure at murdering Muslims is...slightly too far for that.
posted by Drinky Die at 10:58 AM on April 10, 2015

That's what will really protect the process, far more than changing the rules. Elections are won by those who show up. There's also a good chance that the Puppies will declare a victory regardless of the actual Hugo results ("Look at how much time and effort and money the SJWs spent proving that they totally hate us! We win!") and not bother next year if they aren't certain they can win.

Which is GRRM's point in his latest post:

This year, the Puppies emptied the kennels and got out their vote, and we didn't. Fandom danced the usual, "oh, too busy to nominate, I will just vote on the final ballot," and for that complacency, we got blindsided. We lost. They kicked our fannish asses, and now we have the ballot they gave us. If we don't want that to happen again, we need to get out our OWN vote.

He also comes out against any changes. I think that's a bit much. Changing the number of nominations a person can do to be less than the total number, while it is game-able, will stop one slate from dominating.
posted by zabuni at 11:01 AM on April 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

Except they always win either way. Either their slate gets a Hugo or they get further proof of the SJW conspiracy.

I don't give a flying fuck how they feel. Why do you? If they want to feel all hurt, they can. The hurty corner is over there. They can live with whatever conspiracies they want to. Doesn't bother me at all.

They either win a Hugo, or they do not win a Hugo. How they feel about it? Absolutely no concern of mine. I don't vote the Hugos based on how the authors -- a number of whom I'm honored to call friends -- feel. I vote for the best works, unless they're not on the ballot, then I vote No Award.

Why? Because that's what authors who *really care* about the award want. They want to win it because they went against the best that year and won. Charlie (forex) would probably be pissed if I voted for his books because he was a friend. I ranked his books on my ballot where I thought they should rank. Sometimes, he wins. Sometimes, he doesn't, which makes the Hugos he does have *that much more meaningful to him.* It would be an insult to the winners, to the losers, and to everyone who cares about the award to do anything but vote what you think are the best works.

Fuck how anybody feels about it at the end of the day, because the people I care about agree with me. To make sure the award has meaning, you vote for the best works, not for how anybody feels about it at the end of the day.

And that's why I fucking hate this so much. Because this has nothing to do with voting for the best works, and thus, it deserves our greatest condemnation.
posted by eriko at 11:10 AM on April 10, 2015 [9 favorites]

He also comes out against any changes. I think that's a bit much.

Agree, but I see his point. To use a sports analogy, it's like changing the rules because one team beat you. Except, of course, professional sports do this all the time....

He's afraid of a bad rule getting in (as am I) and he's afraid that any rule that could be use to exclude SP3/RP nominations could be used to exclude others. He's dead right about that. He's afraid of judgement calls, and yep, he's right about that as well.

I think he's missing thing like the 4/6 proposal, which while limiting each voters nominations a bit, increases the ballot, and Mike Scott's, which *only* increases, never decreases, the ballot.

But really, his position -- "when in doubt, do not change the rules" -- is a good one to have. Far too many times bad rule changes happen when people panic. See, well, the entire Department of Homeland Security.

So I don't fault him for it. I disagree with him, but I don't fault him for it.
posted by eriko at 11:15 AM on April 10, 2015 [6 favorites]

Also, I'm going to say it here, shut the fuck up, Tom Kratman, you are a shame to the military service, please stop waving your CIB around like it is your dick and it is on fire.

I know we don't agree on much, but we agree on this, so I offer you this token in a sincere spirit of mutual understanding and peace.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 11:18 AM on April 10, 2015 [20 favorites]

I was expressing doubt about Etrigan's hope that they wouldn't bother if they didn't think they could win, eriko.

Here, have a hug and this battered Orbit paperback.
posted by Zed at 11:21 AM on April 10, 2015

He acknowledges that more organised campaigning is likely and in fact required, which is a bit of a cultural shift and going to happen now whether people like it or not, so I'd grant him that, but he also has faith in people just sort of muddling through with the broken system and the trolls just eventually going away, and no, that's not going to happen at all.

I never though I'd say this, but the author of Game of Thrones isn't enough of a cynic when it comes to human behaviour.
posted by Artw at 11:22 AM on April 10, 2015 [10 favorites]

I was expressing doubt about Etrigan's hope that they wouldn't bother if they didn't think they could win, eriko.

Just remember. It's $40, SAIT.

Fandom pays the membership for other reasons, in fact, they usually pay the much more expensive attending membership. They look at the Hugo noms and vote as a bonus.

If you want to game the Hugos and don't care about the Worldcon, you're paying $40 every year you want to try to fuck with it. Is it really worth it?
posted by eriko at 11:29 AM on April 10, 2015

If you want to game the Hugos and don't care about the Worldcon, you're paying $40 every year you want to try to fuck with it. Is it really worth it?

A better way to look at is: would you, if the situation is reversed, donate $40 to an effort opposing them? While i recognize that not everyone is in this position, 40$ for a lot of people is kind of normal for a donation to an ideologically centered organization. NRA memberships are $35 yearly, as are a lot of other memberships that people shell out for specifically to do lobbying. If you think of $40 as more of a 'Sad Puppies Membership Fee', I don't think it's unlikely that people will pay it year after year, particularly if they get $40 worth of reaction and fight out of it.
posted by corb at 11:37 AM on April 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

I'm wondering - and this is me wondering, I don't really have enough evidence for a full blown theory yet - if the increase in military fans of science fiction (books on deployment, among others, plus Baen providing a lot of free ebooks and actual books for soldiers) during an active war has increased the amount of people who are used to taking tactical responses to things as a first option - who are primed already to see an enemy and attempt to defeat it.

War veterans wrote Slaughterhouse Five, The Forever War or 1984. I don't think military experience correlates necessarily with the kind of rightist milSF that we're seeing here.
posted by sukeban at 11:45 AM on April 10, 2015 [13 favorites]

I'll be blunt about it: Maybe I'll fork out $40 to counter the Hugo Awards having a vulnerability to trolls once or twice, but no way in hell am I doing it forever if they don't fix their shit.
posted by Artw at 11:47 AM on April 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

Yeah, if the Hugos turn into a constant culture-war battlefield, the smart move is to drop them entirely, not to keep waging a war that only has as much significance as the Hugos themselves. Because at that point the awards would be utterly devalued.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 11:52 AM on April 10, 2015 [2 favorites]

Yeah, if this keeps happening then the effect will be to completely devalue the Hugo, at which point not even the most rabid puppy is going to keep ponying up cash to stick it to people who no longer care about the award. A lot of people don't want that because the Hugo is an institution with a long and fondly remembered history, but even the best-case for Correia et al. is not a sustainable one.

(or what HZSF said)
posted by kagredon at 12:10 PM on April 10, 2015

also last night I realized that in Torgersen's Solomon metaphor, he is the deranged baby-thief and I laughed and laughed
posted by kagredon at 12:11 PM on April 10, 2015 [7 favorites]

There's some funny stuff going on at the #NewHugoCategories hashtag.
posted by Zed at 12:19 PM on April 10, 2015 [3 favorites]

There's no realistic outcome where a Puppy wins a Hugo and the Hugos are worth a damn.their best case victory is tht shitty trolls get to wreck something people like and bask in the adulation of other shitty trolls for having done so.

I have no idea why a serious science fiction fan or a writer would be up for that, but trolls? Sure, they live and breathe that shit.

So no, I don't see any Puppies giving up any time soon.
posted by Artw at 12:24 PM on April 10, 2015 [2 favorites]

Yeah, if this keeps happening then the effect will be to completely devalue the Hugo,

In all honesty, getting one of GRRM's Hugo Loser ribbons sounds more meaningful to me right now.
posted by nubs at 12:28 PM on April 10, 2015 [4 favorites]

So no, I don't see any Puppies giving up any time soon.

I do. Trolls get bored -- or distracted. Now, if No Award doesn't take a bunch of categories this year, then the award isn't worth a damn. That will be sad, but true. What you won't see. You won't see them getting any sales. You won't see any more Hugo Award Winner displayed. You won't see "Hugo Award Winning Author" on book covers.

Basically, the award will just fall to nothingness. It happens. Everything ends.

But there's a reason people are still talking about this a week after the nominations were announced. Right now, it does mean something to many people. And they're fighting for it.

We will see. The ballot will open soon.
posted by eriko at 12:30 PM on April 10, 2015 [3 favorites]

What I anticipate happening next year is someone doing a kickstarter to buy WorldCon associate memberships. 8,000 gaters putting in 10 dollars each would buy 2000 memberships.

Hm. If I had no sense of ethics or decency, and wanted my novel to win a Hugo...
posted by happyroach at 12:45 PM on April 10, 2015

I beleive that doing something that centralized would get those nominations shitcanned under the present rules, so they are doing that right at least.
posted by Artw at 1:02 PM on April 10, 2015

Martin mentioned an earlier case where a stack of identical nominations that came in attached to sequential $40 money orders got thrown out, so there's precedent for that.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 1:08 PM on April 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

Hm. If I had no sense of ethics or decency, and wanted my novel to win a Hugo...

And we would simply reject those ballots as "Not a natural person" and/or "One person/one vote" violations. That's been tried before -- Scientology tried it. Mailed in a bunch of ballots. Memberships paid in sequential money orders. *Bloop* went the ballots into the trashcan.

If we found out that one person is buying memberships in exchange for you voting their slate, we can legitimately reject those ballots/nominations. Worldcons have done it before. I'm guessing that there was no evidence that Sasquan could see that the SP3/RP slate was paid for by other people. Telling people to vote your slate? Legal. Buying their membership in exchange for voting your slate? Violates 1p1v, since the actual member doesn't get the vote, the person buying does.

Note that buying someone a membership is not illegal and does not deny them voting rights, so long as the person you bought the membership for gets a fully independent vote. If you insist on *any* condition, even "You have to nominate me in this one category" or even "You cannot nominated this guy" then we can toss that ballot, because it breaks the 1p1v rule.

Obviously, this can be hard to detect. But if you ran a kickstarter, bought a stack load of memberships from it, and they all nominated you, we'd drop every single one of those ballots on the floor, without a moments hesitation.

By rule, the committee hosting that year's Worldcon is, by default, ineligible for a Hugo. They can make themselves eligible if they devolve complete control to a subcommittee. At that point, the members of that subcommittee are ineligible, but they have *sole* power to validate ballots, and nobody can overrule them, but the rest of the concom is eligible again. By practice, this is always done because it provides a nice firewall between the committee as a whole and the vote

Really, the Hugo Admin is All Powerful here. They make eligibility judgements, they make the call on ballot validity, and there is no appellate. Apparently, there's no evidence of this so of thing happening this year, at least not on any scale. If people *choose* to pay their own money and vote the SP3/RP slates, that's perfectly legal. If they were bought memberships and choose to vote those slates, that's borderline, but if they honestly chose without any pressure from the person who paid for the membership, it's legal -- otherwise, if a spouse pays for both their and their partners' ballots, the partner couldn't nominate/vote. It's only an invalid nomination if there was any constraints on voting attached to that membership.
posted by eriko at 1:08 PM on April 10, 2015 [2 favorites]

Oh yeah -- note that the memberships are valid. You can buy Agent Of XXX memberships, things like that. What you can't do is vote with them, and the core rules are that only Natural Persons can vote (so no corporations) and One Person gets exactly One Vote. Constraints on votes transfer part/all of that vote to another person, and if you do that both the person making and accepting the constraint no long have Exactly One Vote, so both are now ineligible to nominate/vote.

But the money's still good, so the memberships are unaffected.
posted by eriko at 1:15 PM on April 10, 2015

Think DDOS - you want your attacks to look as much as possible like regular traffic that there is no way of distinguishing the two. Their current setup is already as good as it can be at that- arguably because it IS regular traffic under the terms and conditions of the hugo commity blah blah blah.
posted by Artw at 1:29 PM on April 10, 2015

Well, it's good to know that Beale and GG would have to go through convoluted acrobatics to get the scenario to work. Which isn't to say that they still wouldn't try something in that line.

Of course doing the kickstarter and then saying "Oops, it won't work, pity I can't give the money back" also seems like something a grifter would do.
posted by happyroach at 1:32 PM on April 10, 2015 [3 favorites]

The GamerGaters have been taken that way a couple of times and would probably still come back for more.
posted by Artw at 1:52 PM on April 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

And jesus fuck, offering to duel people. Tom Kratman is like a caricature of everybody I ever hated when I was in.

To be fair, Kratman only joined the US army because Das Reich wasn't in any position to take volunteers anymore.
posted by MartinWisse at 3:05 PM on April 10, 2015 [6 favorites]

oh my god that #NewHugoCategories hashtag is making my day
posted by NoraReed at 3:17 PM on April 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

Well, rule zero of any rulemaking system is don't ratfuck the rules to such an extent that we need a new rule.

But a 3/6 system strikes me as a decent idea. As much as I think mass no-voting might be good, I'd be a bit disappointed for Rat Queens, although Volume 2 is just a bit better than Volume 1.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 3:31 PM on April 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

Yeah, the comics category seems to have gotten great just in time for this crap to kick off.
posted by Artw at 3:47 PM on April 10, 2015

3/6 assumes good faith actors. The reavers will be perfectly happy to put up a website which assigns with of two slates to vote for, and thus their overall roughly 10x advantage in voting power will remain (since other voters will also be reduced.). If it helps at all, it will likely be by reducing the diversity of the nominations the good-faith voters put up (I don't know if it will, but in theory it might if the items with the most nominations are also appear preferentially in the top half of the nominators' personal rankings.)

It does have the advantage of being simple, but the only solution I really see working long term is a jury step, or possibly one of the more complex schemes that automatically expands the list in reaction to slate voting. And I have doubts whether those are durable and simple enough.
posted by tavella at 4:09 PM on April 10, 2015

Yeah, I don't see how 3/6 solves the problem.

"Ok, Puppies, all of you with last names from A-K vote for X,Y,Z and those with last names from L-Z vote for X2,Y2,Z2".
posted by Justinian at 4:19 PM on April 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

It will require a lot more people to game the nominations.
posted by MartinWisse at 4:27 PM on April 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

Except that the people nominating normally will also have their voting power reduced. It might help a tiny bit if there are real works sitting just behind the puppy numbers, and that might be true for Best Novel (where at least one book still out nommed the puppies) but because the puppies are voting the slate, not if they've read, they are drowning the smaller categories. If current is:

Each nominator gets five votes, a thousand people vote, 900 real and 100 puppies, there are

Real Work A appears on 90 slates
Real Work B appears on 80 slates
Real Work C appears on 60 slates
Real Work D appears on 50 slates
Real Work E appears on 30 slates
Real Work F appears on 20 slates

Puppy works P1 through P5 appear on 100 slates, voting is blocked.

So now if people can only nom 3, then assuming the preferences for each of A through F are spread equally, ie A was the 1 favorite of 18 voters, the 2 favorite of 18 voters, etc, then all that happens is that it is now:

Real Work A appears on 54 slates
Real Work B appears on 48 slates
Real Work C appears on 36 slates
Real Work D appears on 30 slates
Real Work E appears on 18 slates
Real Work F appears on 12 slates

And Puppy works P1 through P6 appear on 50 slates, and only one real work makes it through. And that's where there are nearly enough nominations for real works; in cases like the shorter fiction awards, the slate is block voting close to twice the numbers of even the most nominated works.

So it helps a tiny bit, as will more nominations in general, but it still doesn't cure the fundamental problem of slates, in that slates have 10x the power of people voting their sincere pick for best X when there are hundreds of 'candidates'. Which means that even people of goodwill will feel they have to start assembling slates, which means the Hugos turn into a political election, instead of a poll of sincere opinions of the best of the year. And at that point, what's the point?

Which is why my opinion is that if they are to survive, a juried filter will probably be necessary. Which is not great -- if you pick from previous Hugo winners, it will tend towards backwards-looking nominations (since the ones most likely to not have works in contention and willing to serve as jurors will also be the oldest.) And it's hard to get a truly balanced and diverse jury of varied tastes.
posted by tavella at 4:53 PM on April 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

O.K., this is a stretch, but bear with me. In the 80's, I spent way too much time watching movies instead of studying. And I got obsessed by Some Kind of Wonderful, a John Hughes written re-write, kind of, of every other damn film he'd made to that date. Obsessed to the point of actually comparing it, seriously (and to my eternal embarrassment) to Romeo and Juliet.

But Correia's response to GRRM got me thinking, and I realized his story replicates Some Kind of Wonderful to a frightening extent. In the movie, you've got Eric Stoltz playing this wrong side of the tracks kid who wants to be an artist, who's in love with Lea Thompson, a hot classmate who's dating some rich snobby Corvette-driving fuck. And then there's Mary Stuart Masterson's character, a drum-playing tomboy who's Stoltz's best friend, and who is really secretly in love with him.

And it's all class warfare-y, with the rich snobby fucks making Eric Stoltz's life miserable because he's so, you know, good and earnest, that Lea's Thompson's kind of interested in him after all. And they cleverly plan to beat him up at a party thrown by one of the rich snobby fucks, but their plans are foiled by his even more clever plan to invite a bunch of quasi-delinquents (with whom he's bonded in detention) to crash the party in order to intimidate the rich snobby fucks. And that scene ends with some of the quasi-delinquents being given come-hither looks by the rich snobby fucks' girlfriends.

And then Stoltz's character demonstrates his eternal love for the Thompson character by breaking into the local art museum to show her a (pretty crappy) portrait of her which he's had hung in the museum by one of the quasi-delinquents, whose father is a museum guard. Stunned by the overall marvelousness of the Stoltz character's passion, and his skill as an artist, Thompson makes the supreme sacrifice and decides to let him go, so that he can discover that he REALLY loves the Mary Stuart Masterson tomboy best friend character. And those two drive off into the sunset in a limousine he'd rented to impress the Thompson character. That's most of it, shorn of a couple of other sub-plots about money and class and annoying little sisters which don't really apply here.

But, BUT, this is Larry Correia's life. He's the Eric Stoltz character being mistreated by the rich snobby fucks, who are probably planning on beating him up at the next con. And he's an artist! And the quasi-delinquent friends? That seems pretty clear, doesn't it? But now, with their help, he's turned the tables on the rich snobby SJW fucks, who have lost their girlfriends to the quasi-delinquents. The only thing I can't figure out is who the Lea Thompson character is. I think the Masterson character is 'normal' SFF fandom, who don't want to show that we're secretly in love with this other-side-of-the-tracks genuine artist. It's the Thompson hot teenager character that I can't quite pin down. I suspect it's VD. That makes some kind of twisted sense. But maybe I'm being unfair. Maybe it's all of the SPs, collectively.

Let me know what you think.
posted by my dog is named clem at 5:14 PM on April 10, 2015 [4 favorites]

surely the Thompson equivalent is all of those "literary" SFF writers/fans/voters, who will realize that those jerky SJWs never really cared about them, and will be content to admire Eric Stoltz from afar now that he's shown them the way.
posted by kagredon at 5:22 PM on April 10, 2015

The only thing I can't figure out is who the Lea Thompson character is.

The Hugo.

FWIW, I spreadsheeted the nominee list and the corresponding Puppy status.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 5:25 PM on April 10, 2015 [4 favorites]

ChurchHatesTucker: Thanks, that's going to help a lot. Do you mind if I link to it from outside MeFi (although an even less public venue, my G+)?
posted by seyirci at 9:16 PM on April 10, 2015

seyirci: Sure. I'd appreciate if you'd take the time to double-check it for accuracy. And if anyone wants write access, MeMail me.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 9:20 PM on April 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

So, I've been reading some of the posts by the organizers and defenders of the Puppies, and there is a strong strain of, "No, we are NOT racist, misogynistic, and homophobic, and how dare you call us that!" (Including at least one classic, "Actually it is our opponents who are the TRUE racists!") They often point to the scattering of women and minorities on their slate as evidence, and sometimes offer evidence from their personal lives.

It kind of falls apart under examination, though.

If we look at what the organizers of the two Puppy slates claim their goals were, we see three very different claims (I am, of course, paraphrasing):

TORGENSEN: We just want the vote to go to rollicking sci-fi adventure stories that don't make you think, which is what people really like! The other side is the one that votes on ideology!

CORREIA: No, we are totally voting on ideology because the other side did it first! But it's not a sexist, racist, homophobic ideology! (Also they were MEAN to me!)

DAY: BURN THE INFIDEL WITH FIRE!!!!!

Looking at the three, Torgensen's falls apart with a poke. His slate is supposed to be all about rollicking sci-fi adventure stories? Then why does it include things like "Wisdom From My Internet" (from "Patriarchy Press"), which appears to be a rambling collection of right-wing political jokes with no sci-fi content? I find it hard to believe he's fooling anyone other than himself, if that.

Correia is at least more honest that these are, deliberately, ideological lists. His basic claim is that the Popular Kids vote on left-wing ideology rather than writing quality, so he got together a bunch of the Unpopular Kids to pack the nominations with right-wing authors and ideology rather than quality, so there. His claims that Only Left Wing Books Can Get A Look Now And Heinlein Books Would Never Make The Ballot Today seem dubious to me (and somewhat ironic, since his slate probably kept a well-regarded biography of Heinlein off the award ballot), but at least his stated motives hold up a little better. It's an ideological slate, which is why it mostly looks like one.

However, he is also at pains to state that the Puppies have no motives which are sexist, racist, and homophobic; they are just yay for guns and capitalism types that want a fair shake. There's kind of a big problem with that, though, which is his deafening silence about Vox Day when he talks about this stuff.

The fact of the matter is, the slate that got on -- the slate that got the most votes out of the Puppy followers -- was really the Rabid Puppy slate, not the Sad Puppy slate. That's where the heart of the voters was. And the Rabid Puppy slate is quite vocal about its ideology, and what that ideology is. John C. Wright did not get nominated six times because he is having a career best year that somehow all the critics and other awards missed. He did not even get nominated six times because he is yay for guns and capitalism. He got nominated six times, mostly by Vox Day and his followers, because he is the kind of guy who has an internet meltdown over two girls holding hands on Legend of Korra.

I don't know if Correia himself is sexist, racist, homophobic, or what have you. But he is sure acting like the nomination vote, which was primarily for an admittedly racist, sexist, homophobic ideology, was a victory for his side. And he sure has never said, "Hey, I know there's some overlap between Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies, but let me be clear, those guys, the ones who got most of the votes on this, we don't support what they stand for." Which, given the circumstances, is kind of a statement he needs to make right now if it's one he feels is true.

Which leaves me pretty much left with the belief that the ideology most of the puppies are following is the one that got the most votes, and the one that one organizer supports wholeheartedly and the other two have taken no pains to distance themselves from: BURN THE INFIDEL WITH FIRE.

It sure isn't about rollicking sci-fi adventure, I can tell you that much.
posted by kyrademon at 6:29 AM on April 11, 2015 [34 favorites]

Correia is at least more honest that these are, deliberately, ideological lists. His basic claim is that the Popular Kids vote on left-wing ideology rather than writing quality, so he got together a bunch of the Unpopular Kids to pack the nominations with right-wing authors and ideology rather than quality, so there.

Is there a word for that sort of thing? They do it all the time. The media is liberal! Instead of creating an unbiased network to do it right, create Fox News. Wikipedia is liberal! Instead of creating an unbiased encyclopedia they create Conservapedia. Facebook is liberal! Instead of creating an unbiased social network, they create Tea Party Community. In every case, the existence of bias in the original source is questionable at best but the conservative alternative is clearly, clearly extreme.

They just seem unwilling to even try to work with the mainstream or create something welcoming to everybody.
posted by Drinky Die at 6:42 AM on April 11, 2015 [5 favorites]

Where the wind blows tall
(Maybe just Rex)
Interlude
posted by Dumsnill at 7:05 AM on April 11, 2015

Which is why my opinion is that if they are to survive, a juried filter will probably be necessary.

Which essentially kills the Hugos and gives the SPs a chance to argue that they're right. "See? There IS a cabal keeping us out!".

If you're right about this, then the Hugos and pretty much any popular contest in SF is now dead r
posted by happyroach at 7:23 AM on April 11, 2015

That's why I support the "expand the ballot" option. SF already has several juried awards. It would nice to be able to keep the Hugos popular.
posted by Chrysostom at 9:06 AM on April 11, 2015 [3 favorites]

Mary Robinette Kowal offers to buy supporting memberships for those who can't afford it:

And to my readers — If you can afford it, I encourage you to buy a membership to WorldCon and become part of fandom. If you cannot afford it… I will buy a supporting membership to WorldCon for ten people who cannot afford it.
posted by 445supermag at 10:19 AM on April 11, 2015

Nussbaum: The 2015 Hugo Awards: Why I Am Voting No Award in the Best Fan Writer Category
posted by Artw at 10:29 AM on April 11, 2015 [2 favorites]

They just seem unwilling to even try to work with the mainstream or create something welcoming to everybody.

Where are - I ask this sincerely - the people offering to create something welcoming for the more conservative SF writers? Where are the people trying to welcome Wright and Correia to the table? Because, yes, Wright did indeed have an epic Gandalf meltdown over Legend of Corra - but he is also indeed, undeniably, a very prolific science fiction writer. He should not be excluded from fandom, much less awards, because he is a vocal and devoted True Believer of his religion. (I could even say that golden plates being awarded by a god-like creature which require a Babelfish Stone placed in a hat to read should count as EXTRA SCIENCE FICTION but I will mostly refrain.)

And Larry Correia has written an incredibly heartfelt and personal piece talking about exclusion - about being treated badly even by those with experience of being treated badly who have sworn not to treat others in that way. Where are people reaching out to him from the other side, and offering to meet him for beers and talk about their beliefs in a friendly way? (Mind you I think GRRM probably will, but he's not really fully on the Other Side, more a mountain of the community holding out his hand and calling 'Stop!')
posted by corb at 10:37 AM on April 11, 2015

Absolutely nothing can be welcoming for everyone. Something welcoming for Wright will necessarily not be welcoming for LBGTQ people, and vice versa. Fans aren't required to make NoHomoCon so that prolific homophobic writers feel comfortable.

Having looked at his recent fiction, it seems like he is being excluded from awards because it isn't good. Maybe his earlier stuff was -- but there is a lot of good stuff out there, and a lot of prolific writers, and most of them are equally bereft of awards.
posted by jeather at 10:44 AM on April 11, 2015 [13 favorites]

It's an interesting question, jeather - but I actually think, specifically within the context of cons, because of the weird structure of parallel tracks - that there totally can be.

Like, if 'Religious Oriented SF' wants to have a track at cons, puts up its own people for panels, and runs its own shebang, that is not functionally impacting other people at the con who choose not to go to their panels, as long as they still have to abide by anti-harassment rules about dealing with other con participants.

We absolutely have the ability, within the context of conventions, to have welcome space for everyone, as long as we can all commit to a policy of don't be shitty to each other.

And so for example, you can say, "Hey Tom Kratman, you're totally welcome to come to con, but the first time you say something shitty and he totally will you are banned from con for the remainder of the year. Next time it's five years. Next time it's 'don't come back'." And you can do that completely without referring to his beliefs, by making it about his actions at con. And you can also say, "Hey, we know Tom Kratman is a dick, but it is not okay to go to his panels specifically to call him a dick." And that also takes it out of the realm of ideology, and puts it into the realm of "Con is not an appropriate place to confront people publicly for what you feel about their beliefs."
posted by corb at 10:49 AM on April 11, 2015 [1 favorite]

> Where are the people trying to welcome Wright and Correia to the table?

Which table? Whose table? Because they already have seats at the table, based on their book sales, award nominations, award wins. How is that somehow them not being at the table?

There is nothing inherently not-conservative (politically, at least) about including rounded characters of a variety of races, sexes, sexual orientations, and the like from stories authors write.

I would personally never reach out to someone like Wright, because the stuff he's said about people who are me does not make me think he would accept it even if I were able to put aside my antipathy towards ignorant homophobes. If you want to take that on, good luck to you.
posted by rtha at 11:05 AM on April 11, 2015 [21 favorites]

They have got up, dropped their trousers, and shat on the table. Now they want a pat on the head for it.
posted by Artw at 11:13 AM on April 11, 2015 [14 favorites]

I think it depends on what kind of tracks JCW would want and the content in them. Could you do a track that is "The problem of SJW fiction" which would be presumably called something less overt? What about "The white guy authors of the 50s and why fiction today sucks in comparison"? Are you not allowed to disagree (politely) afterwards? Because either way, I think the con becomes unwelcome to people. (And I think a lot of people would feel unwelcome if there was a track of programming that had those topics -- a program that is "we care about this subgenre" is very different from "we don't like these people".)

Remember that JCW had a fit when animated characters held hands -- would you need to make rules about PDAs in order to make him feel welcome at a con? We're not just talking about allowed, we're talking about feeling welcome.

I really do not imagine there could be a group that talks about science fiction and fantasy that could make both JCW and LBGTQ people feel welcome. I absolutely don't think that so-called SJWs are doing anything wrong by not proactively reaching out and making people who explicitly insult them feel welcome.
posted by jeather at 11:13 AM on April 11, 2015 [13 favorites]

Trolls are by nature antisocial. I doubt they'd even be welcome at the 1950s convention of their dreams.
posted by Artw at 11:20 AM on April 11, 2015 [2 favorites]

corb: "He should not be excluded from fandom, much less awards, because he is a vocal and devoted True Believer of his religion."

Wright is Catholic, not Mormon, and I am a vocal and devoted "true believer" of the same religion, without being a gigantic dickhead about it. It's not his Catholicism fandom objects to; it's that he uses religion as a weapon of hate. You don't to excuse your personal hatefulness because "God said so." Indeed, I'd argue that he should be held to a higher standard of moral behavior, and probably not lean on an all-loving God while saying things like, "You are disgusting, limp, soulless sacks of filth. You have earned the contempt and hatred of all decent human beings forever, and we will do all we can to smash the filthy phallic idol of sodomy you bow and serve and worship. Contempt, because you struck from behind, cravenly; and hatred, because you serve a cloud of morally-retarded mental smog called Political Correctness, which is another word for hating everything good and bright and decent and sane in life," about other authors and artists.

corb: " to have welcome space for everyone, as long as we can all commit to a policy of don't be shitty to each other."

Exactly. Wright can go first.

I mean, get real. Don't keep acting like John C. Wright is some paragon of moral virtue being unfairly excluded by The Mean People. He's an angry, hate-filled person who vents his spleen with alarming frequency. I mean, here's what he says about people who think Muslim terrorists don't represent all of Islam:

"No one can explain Leftism any more than anyone can explain the Fall of Lucifer. To be sure, some theorize that Leftists are utterly depraved and evil and love making false accusations merely because they are evil. Others theorize that Leftists are utterly stupid and actually believe their own unconvincing lies because they are too stupid to be skeptical about such transparent and obvious and unconvincing bullshit. Other point to the reproductive strategies of rabbits or to arrested brain development leading to he growth of gonads, producing a hysterical fear complex rendering the Leftist unable to face reality or even think about it, but also unable to shut up his damnable mouth. This addiction to unreality combined with a neurotic inability to shut his damnable mouth forces the pathetic yet annoying Leftist utter statements utterly unrelated to reality. He must, must utter such statements even though he knows that they are stupid; but the internal pressure of his own gormlessness forces him, unwillingly, to humiliate himself in public, while decent men look on, aghast at the grotesque display. ... Bigots hate. That is what they do. Leftists are bigots. Hatred and more hatred, whining hatred, irrational hatred, frothing brain-diseased incomprehensible epileptic hatred is their only stock in trade. That is what they sell. That is all they sell. They are HATE-R-US. And even when world civilization hangs in the balance, they would rather fling open the gates to the barbarian, and watch the world burn, and die themselves, rather than live with themselves, knowing that there is a Christian or a Jew or a White Man or a Rich Man anywhere on the globe living a happy and contended life."

This is really the guy you want to hang your "good and decent and polite conservatives being attacked by nasty politically-correct SJWs" hat from? Really?

BTW, I just picked the most popular post on his blog, that he highlights himself as necessary for visitors to read. I didn't have to go digging around for that. That's who he wants you to know he is.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 11:24 AM on April 11, 2015 [42 favorites]

Where are - I ask this sincerely - the people offering to create something welcoming for the more conservative SF writers?
Conservative writers go to cons all the time. I have personally met some of them there (when I used to go). But why should cons bend over backwards to attract asshats like the puppies? Artw nailed it (above).
He should not be excluded from fandom, much less awards, because he is a vocal and devoted True Believer of his religion. (I could even say that golden plates being awarded by a god-like creature which require a Babelfish Stone placed in a hat to read should count as EXTRA SCIENCE FICTION but I will mostly refrain.)
Wright is Roman Catholic, not Mormon, but just as fantastical IMO.
posted by zakur at 11:25 AM on April 11, 2015

I fundamentally disbelieve the narrative about Stalinist persecution of the conservative, the libertarian, and the religious. And that is because it is REALLY OBVIOUS BULLSHIT.

Gene Wolfe, Tim Powers -- conservative Catholic writers, popular, award-winning, critically acclaimed, well-liked.

Brandon Sanderson -- Mormon, has said out loud that he's what most people would consider conservative, has taken a bunch of flack for statements about homosexuality, and yet still: recent Hugo winner, buddies with a bunch of the people the puppies seem to consider the heart of the SJW cabal (co-hosts a popular podcast with Mary Robinette Kowal et al), massively popular and best-selling.

Vernor Vinge -- outspoken libertarian, many of his works directly examine libertarianism, best-selling, award-winning -- his most recent novel was the only one of his last four to NOT win a Hugo, well-liked.

That's just off the top of my head.

If Correia is disliked (I'll take his word on that part), it's not because of religious or political persecution.
posted by Zed at 11:26 AM on April 11, 2015 [14 favorites]

poor OSC and David Brin and Poul Anderson and Jerry Pournelle, all doomed to toil in obscurity due to the unwelcoming SF community
posted by kagredon at 11:31 AM on April 11, 2015 [9 favorites]

This is really the guy you want to hang your "good and decent and polite conservatives being attacked by nasty politically-correct SJWs" hat from? Really?

Sorry about the Catholic v Mormon error - I must be more tired than I thought, or maybe was just mixing him up with Torg.

I don't know that Wright is good and decent or polite in person. I really mean that - I have no idea! But the thing I'm trying to hang my hat on is more 'Let them come, be welcoming to them, and then if they pick up their own feces and fling it at someone, push them out the door."

Because the thing is - if Wright simply cannot control verbal diarrhea and is going to say something shitty to someone, then he's going to say something shitty to someone and that makes it a really clear ban at that point. But banning people for how you think they're going to act - particularly when there are often really huge differences between people's Behavior When Someone Is Wrong On The Internet and people's Behavior In Real Life - or just what you think you'll be thinking in their head - is just a bad idea and really does a lot to tear down the inclusive nature of fandom in a way that I think does permanent harm. And even with Wright as an example - sure, he wrote a strong post about his reaction to Terry Pratchett talking about euthanasia to applause, but did he say anything at the con itself? Does anyone have any instances of Wright Was Cruel To Me Personally In Person?

I posted earlier about just having been to a con - I took my kid, who has had difficulty making friends, as every adolescent does, to convention, and she was nervous about it, but it was so great and she was having so much fun and everyone was nice to her even though she has FriendStoppingAdolescentIssues.

And I guess a lot of my anger and upsetness over this whole thing is kind of about how there's a nice place that doesn't have to be shit on, and fuck it we don't have to be fighting like this is life or death.
posted by corb at 11:37 AM on April 11, 2015

Then stop making every excuse possible for the people who are shitting on it just because they share some aspect of your politics.
posted by Artw at 11:40 AM on April 11, 2015 [30 favorites]

Like, if 'Religious Oriented SF' wants to have a track at cons, puts up its own people for panels, and runs its own shebang, that is not functionally impacting other people at the con who choose not to go to their panels, as long as they still have to abide by anti-harassment rules about dealing with other con participants.

We absolutely have the ability, within the context of conventions, to have welcome space for everyone, as long as we can all commit to a policy of don't be shitty to each other.

And so for example, you can say, "Hey Tom Kratman, you're totally welcome to come to con, but the first time you say something shitty and he totally will you are banned from con for the remainder of the year. Next time it's five years. Next time it's 'don't come back'." And you can do that completely without referring to his beliefs, by making it about his actions at con. And you can also say, "Hey, we know Tom Kratman is a dick, but it is not okay to go to his panels specifically to call him a dick." And that also takes it out of the realm of ideology, and puts it into the realm of "Con is not an appropriate place to confront people publicly for what you feel about their beliefs."

All of this is already what happens. There are panels on religion in SF at Worldcon. It already is frowned upon, just as a culture thing, to go to someone's panel just to get in their face (and any competent panelist knows how to shut it down, laugh it off, and move on. That's not enough for Correia, because he doesn't want it to be a two-way street, where people who disagree with him are free to get together and hold panels about representation in SF, etc.
posted by kagredon at 11:42 AM on April 11, 2015 [15 favorites]

Gene Wolfe, Tim Powers -- conservative Catholic writers, popular, award-winning, critically acclaimed, well-liked.

FWIW, I have read most of Tim Powers, and the most Catholic work of his is Declare (a Cold War supernatural spy thriller with djinns and angels) which is... not terribly close to the Catechism, I'd say.

But that he's Catholic in RL (which I honestly didn't know until now) makes the end of the novel more understandable, at least. It's a good novel, anyway, so give it a go.
posted by sukeban at 11:48 AM on April 11, 2015 [2 favorites]

> But banning people for how you think they're going to act

Wright et al. haven't been banned anywhere, as far as I know? (Except I guess VD, is he banned from cons?) Where are you getting this?
posted by rtha at 11:49 AM on April 11, 2015 [11 favorites]

But the thing I'm trying to hang my hat on is more 'Let them come, be welcoming to them, and then if they pick up their own feces and fling it at someone, push them out the door."

I haven't heard of cons which have refunded their membership when they try to buy one, so they seem to be allowed to come. So what would "be welcoming to them" mean?
posted by jeather at 11:51 AM on April 11, 2015 [9 favorites]

there are often really huge differences between people's Behavior When Someone Is Wrong On The Internet and people's Behavior In Real Life

The Internet is Real Life.

Again and again, conservatives confuse freedom of speech with the demand for freedom from the consequences of speech.
posted by overglow at 11:54 AM on April 11, 2015 [12 favorites]

I love Declare, but come on: Genesis is the literal truth in it, Communists are godless monsters, and a very specifically Catholic faith saves the day.
posted by Artw at 11:59 AM on April 11, 2015

I haven't heard of cons which have refunded their membership when they try to buy one, so they seem to be allowed to come. So what would "be welcoming to them" mean?

Hmmm. I think for me - the minimum bar would be a clear sense that harassment to them will be treated like any other kind of harassment, which is to say Not Tolerated - I vividly remember when people were saying that if Elizabeth Moon went to Wiscon, they would stalk her to every panel to let her know how upset they were, and it was very upsetting to hear. A clear sense that you can't say nasty things to people or follow them to panels just to confront them just because you don't like their views, and that doing so will have real consequences, regardless of what their views are.

And beyond that - in the social 'What We Should Do' sort of sense - I think just treating them like they're an average con goer. Being friendly and helpful and kind and part of the family. If you're inviting all the writers at the con to a party upstairs, then invite the conservative writers too. Don't leave them sad at the bar feeling like a wallflower who's not going to get asked to dance. If they win an award and you don't like it, clap anyway. If they're up for an award, and you think that the work sucks, say it, sure, but don't say 'It sucks because he's Xist and Yquality". Don't make things personal.
posted by corb at 11:59 AM on April 11, 2015

Nobody should harass them. Nobody is. Nobody should be obligated to put up with their bulllshit either.
posted by Artw at 12:02 PM on April 11, 2015 [6 favorites]

I love Declare, but come on: Genesis is the literal truth in it, Communists are godless monsters, and a very specifically Catholic faith saves the day.

And angels are made of debris and movement and can be killed by marked stones and they live in Noah's ark and there's the immortality plant from Gilgamesh and the deal with the city in the desert and the ankh stones and why the hell do the protagonists end up being Catholic if they have seen that kind of weird shit.

Yeah. The end didn't make much sense to me until now.
posted by sukeban at 12:03 PM on April 11, 2015

There's a good bit on Declare and its politics and religion here, FWIW. And I would thoroughly recommend reading the book as well, catholic bits and all.
posted by Artw at 12:08 PM on April 11, 2015 [1 favorite]

(Note: the angels and djinn in Declare are more like Lovecraftian entities from out of space and time than anything else, not your cute Botticelli androgynous figures.)
posted by sukeban at 12:08 PM on April 11, 2015

John C. Wright is publicly and loudly homophobic. Asking people to ignore that--demanding that queer people be friendly and helpful and treat someone who thinks we are disgusting as "part of the family" is uninformed at best and crazymaking at worst.

As Jemisin pointed out when discussing Wright's ally Vox Day:

Certainly, if the nasty little aggressor in question had had a day-job at most US-based companies of any meaningful size and had expressed similar sentiments as he expressed on SFWA’s twitter feed aloud in the workplace, he’d have been fired. In some companies, he’d have been fired just for posting those thoughts in a public, but not-work-related, forum.

Talking about how to make public spaces more welcoming for--let me repeat--loud and publicly homophobic individuals is deeply unsupportive of queer people.
posted by overglow at 12:11 PM on April 11, 2015 [19 favorites]

(Note: the angels and djinn in Declare are more like Lovecraftian entities from out of space and time than anything else, not your cute Botticelli androgynous figures.)

They are very pleasingly spooky.

(I think the main reason why the Christian bits in that book irk me slightly is more to do with how it lessens to them a little, much like Derleth's Christian bits lessen Lovecraft. If he was doing something with more of a straight up Catholic horror vibe it wouldn't bother me in the slightest.)
posted by Artw at 12:13 PM on April 11, 2015

Asking people to ignore that--demanding that queer people be friendly and helpful and treat someone who thinks we are disgusting as "part of the family" is uninformed at best and crazymaking at worst.

We do that here, though. If you participate on AskMe, you have to be friendly and helpful, regardless of what the person asking the question thinks of you and your practices. And moreover, in practice, it plays out. I've answered questions as helpfully as I could for people that I think are deeply, deeply wrong about things - and some people that find my own politics vile have given some really great, helpful responses. And I mean, of course the natural tendency is to say that Mefites are just better, but is there really a reason a similar culture can't mean similar expectations are applied in SF fandom?
posted by corb at 12:14 PM on April 11, 2015

So it seems like what I'm hearing is that there are lots of conservatives who are not just welcome in but fixtures in fandom. I mean, if your argument hinges on the nonexistence of Tim Powers, you might want to rethink.

Furthermore, as GRRM proved fairly conclusively, there is no bias against conservative SF authors being nominated for and winning awards.

Meanwhile, the overwhelming majority of authors being publicly aggrieved on the *puppy slates are ... well ... kind of a little bit fucking assholes. I'm not counting Brad Torgersen, but Larry Correia, John C Wright, and VD, certainly. These are people who are publicly and aggressively insulting to people who are not like them on a continual basis.

Now Larry Correia even acknowledges this, but he says that, "hey, I didn't used to be an aggressively public jerk! I was a real nice guy, and everyone was a jerk to me because I'm a conservative!" And yet his con report from the time doesn't mention this, and, again, non-fucking-asshole conservatives seem to do just fine.

And also, and I'm speculating, I have a hard time believing that someone who's true self is 'fucking asshole' can mask it all that well for all that long. I suspect that his 'nice guy persona' was not as airtight as he claims.

Corb, you say that what you think is fair is:
I think just treating them like they're an average con goer. Being friendly and helpful and kind and part of the family.

I know it's been said before, but please consider that the available evidence is that that's exactly what's happening. People are being nice and friendly to people who are nice and friendly to them. People are being hostile to people who are hostile to them. Is it about politics? Well, I doubt Benjanun Sriduangkaew got invited to too many parties by the people she viciously attacked and insulted, either.
posted by Myca at 12:20 PM on April 11, 2015 [11 favorites]

I agree that no one should be harassed at cons, sure. I don't think a con should publish an anti-harassment policy that says "we do x to any sort of harassment, in particular if it's against a conservative" for a lot of reasons, but a clear anti-harassment policy that is enforced against everyone is a good thing (see: Readercon).

And I guess, if you interact with JCW etc, you should be polite -- I don't think it's on people to be actively seeking them out to prove how friendly and helpful they are. In askme, you are obliged to be helpful in those questions that you choose to answer. You are not obliged to answer any given question; similarly, I'm not obliged to interact with any given person.
posted by jeather at 12:22 PM on April 11, 2015 [3 favorites]

I am sure I missed something, but what was the unfriendly, unhelpful behavior? Was there something more than nominating what they consider to be SJW-sanctioned stuff for Hugos?
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 12:22 PM on April 11, 2015 [7 favorites]

Other people went around having more fun than them, basically.
posted by Artw at 12:25 PM on April 11, 2015 [10 favorites]

I think there's a slight difference between offering an answer to a question and treating someone like part of the family and inviting them to your party. On AskMe, people have the option to simply pass by questions by people they would prefer not to engage with. But you explicitly argued that ignoring John C. Wright counted as being unwelcoming.

Am I arguing that queer people should be cruel to John C. Wright? No, not at all. What I'm saying is that a standard of welcoming which includes treating a stranger who publicly attacks people like you as a family member is not a good or fair or informed one.
posted by overglow at 12:27 PM on April 11, 2015 [9 favorites]

> ut is there really a reason a similar culture can't mean similar expectations are applied in SF fandom?

You keep insisting that it somehow isn't, and hasn't been, and that famous writers with lots of sales have been harassed and/or shunned at bars between panels.

Why is the weight on someone like me to reach out the hand of amity to someone who has publicly said things like "we will do all we can to smash the filthy phallic idol of sodomy you bow and serve and worship"? Will you go to his blog and ask him to tone down the talk about filthy sodomites, and how maybe that is perceived as unwelcoming? Or are we the only ones deserving of this advice?
posted by rtha at 12:30 PM on April 11, 2015 [24 favorites]

I think maybe part of the disconnect is the understanding that viciously hateful homophobic screeds like Wrights are personal attacks, even if they don't name specific people.

So, like, Corb, I don't think you would expect "Sally," who was called "vile subhuman filth," by Benjanun Sriduangkaew to then invite her to parties and generally hang out with her. And I think that this would probably extend to Sally's friends as well, right?

I think that there needs to be an understanding that the same rules apply if "Sally," was called "vile subhuman filth," not directly, but obliquely on account of her sexual orientation or race, by John C Wright or Vox Day.

But if it's about sexual orientation or race, there are a lot more Sallys, and a lot more friends. So yeah. I'd imagine there are a lot more parties they don't get invited to. Because they've personally attacked and insulted people.
posted by Myca at 12:37 PM on April 11, 2015 [7 favorites]

I'm pretty sure that if a user repeatedly calling being gay "a sexual aberration" or "perversion"/making references to "the homosexual lobby" and referring to other users as having "a shrill little clique of social justice freaklings", he'd get banned regardless of how helpful he was in AskMe.

In fact, I'd seriously reconsider the amount of time I spend here if that weren't so.
posted by kagredon at 12:38 PM on April 11, 2015 [16 favorites]

So does this mean there should also be panels for avowed racists to talk about how much better white people are? Why should we be giving 'safe space' (and how I loathe your appropriation of that term, as though you don't understand that 'safe spaces' are created quite specifically to allow us freedom from these misogynist, racist, homo- and transphobic dinosaurs) to people who literally and in their own words think I am less than human?
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 12:44 PM on April 11, 2015 [20 favorites]

Wright is Catholic, not Mormon, and I am a vocal and devoted "true believer" of the same religion, without being a gigantic dickhead about it.

Indeed. Gene Wolf is also a very vocal, devoted and conservative member of the same religion. He is also not a giant dickhead about it, I'm honored to know him, he is one of the true greats of the field.

I feel for Larry Correia in many ways. I feel he's stepped in it, doubled down, and can't understand why he's gotten the reaction he has, but I honestly don't think it's malice. I think if we can step back, we could mend that breach and make him part of the family. He refusal of the nomination was the right step, I think he realize he was going to cross a line that couldn't be recrossed if he accepted, and he did not. I could be wrong, but I'm not willing to condemn. I feel he has done some wrong to fandom, but many have, including myself, and we can all forgive, learn and grow.

Jim C. Wright is too busy spewing fire and hate to reach. I don't know if we can ever cross that divide, and unlike Larry C, he's not even willing to try. So, fine. It is what it is. But he's committed one unforgivable sin, and that's he's all in with....

VD? Holy cow, that's a whole other thing. I honestly, in bones, feel he is, by my morality and standards, the *most evil person I've encountered.* I will not treat with him. There is no negotiation with him. Period. His goal is clear, and simple, and I grant him credit for in no way hiding it, he wants an absolute theocracy, with himself at the head of it, with females little more than slaves in it, and with anybody else who isn't white and Christian either enslaved or dead.

This is literally the level of evil that has resulted in the legendary genocides of history, and he is *all in* for it. And if this doesn't scare you? You need to read his stuff again.

And you know what? I had a bit of ephinany last night.

This has *nothing* to do with the Sad Puppies. They are a shield. Larry C made that list, VD has been hiding behind it. Let's stop calling it what it isn't. It's not the Sad Puppies doing this. It's VD's Rabid Puppies and Gamergate.

That's who we're fighting. If a true SP wants to join us in that fight, we should welcome them. They've been used too.
posted by eriko at 12:53 PM on April 11, 2015 [18 favorites]

That, and the fact that they already have safe spaces. It's called most of the rest of the world, and most of the last couple centuries. They've had safe spaces in SFF for over a century. The fact that the slightest bit of effort in welcoming to someone or something that isn't what they want causes them to run to the gates and try and close them is their problem. And if someone is more welcoming to a bunch of people outside the community for the very reason that they're trying to shut people out by force, I honestly think there's almost an obligation to make them as unwelcome as possible.
posted by zombieflanders at 12:53 PM on April 11, 2015 [10 favorites]

Larry C made that list, VD has been hiding behind it. Let's stop calling it what it isn't. It's not the Sad Puppies doing this. It's VD's Rabid Puppies and Gamergate.

Personally, I think Correia crossed the line several months ago. He's pretty firmly in bed with both the RP and GG at this point, and genuinely seems to revel in the hate they spread. He speaks their lingo, he favorably passes on much of the worst they put out, and he's very chummy with their figureheads. That's not something that can be fixed over a couple of beers.
posted by zombieflanders at 1:00 PM on April 11, 2015 [4 favorites]

And I mean, of course the natural tendency is to say that Mefites are just better, but is there really a reason a similar culture can't mean similar expectations are applied in SF fandom?

There's a big difference between MeFi and SF Fandom.

MeFi has a banhammer.

Everyone here agrees to get along because if you don't, your replies get deleted, if that's not enough clue, you get The Letter From The Mod, and if that doesn't do it, the Banhammer is warmed up and you get a time out. Enough of that and BOOM. You are no longer a MeFite. Everyone here has basically passed a test, and that test is "you will be a reasonable MeFite, or you will not be a MeFite." So, yeah, even when we really disagree, we can talk about it.

Fandom, historically, has not only been welcoming, but there has been an actively and intense rejection of the very idea of rejecting anyone from fandom. Basically, everyone thought "well, I was nobody until I found fandom, who am I to reject anyone else?" This mutated into the "we have to welcome all" attitude that has pervaded fandom for decades and it is only in *very* recent years that this social rule has been brought into question. The idea of banning someone because of something they said or did somewhere else was tried at the first Worldcon, when a few Michelists (basically, pro-Communists) were barred, and that went over like a dead horse.

Then there was the Breendoggle. I'll elide the whole sordid affair (note that Walter Breen died in prison a convicted child sex offender and leave it at that) but the whole thing left a very bad impression on fandom (he'd not be convicted or even arrested at the point he was excluded from the Worldcon) and that started the idea that We Do Not Exclude.

Really, it's only been in the last couple of years that the thought of declaring someone Persona No Grata has really been brought up, and there's still a significant amount of resistance to it, but at least it's no longer a complete faux pas to even bring the idea up.
posted by eriko at 1:04 PM on April 11, 2015 [7 favorites]

Personally, I think Correia crossed the line several months ago.

I'd thought that too, but in the last few days, I'm not so sure. I'm not willing to automatically be all chummy with him, but if he were to walk into a bar, buy me a beer and say "can I have a few minutes of your time?", I'd give him that and a fair hearing, and the honor of an honest reply given in a reasonable tone, and if there was common ground, I'd tell him how to reach it, and be honest in how difficult it would be to reach it with many fans.

But we'll see in the next few weeks. He could just redouble and then we'll know. But in my personal fannish book, while he's not on a good page, he's not written out yet.

Yet. The pen is always rewriting.
posted by eriko at 1:13 PM on April 11, 2015 [2 favorites]

And still no reason scamming a nomination should earn any of them anything other than NO AWARD. Sorry George.
posted by Artw at 1:29 PM on April 11, 2015 [1 favorite]

Let's not forget that Correia reached out to Milo Yiannopolous (@Nero,) who has been a recent media cheerleader of the gamergators.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 1:33 PM on April 11, 2015 [8 favorites]

corb: " to have welcome space for everyone, as long as we can all commit to a policy of don't be shitty to each other."

Corb -

First, I'm glad you're here, I don't agree with you all the time, but you're a valid voice, you're respectful of other people, and truth be told, MeFi does lean strongly progressive/liberal, and a few strong conservative voices are welcome and needed.

And I know you catch flack. A couple of people should be glad we don't have dope slap over IP, because they'd have headaches right now.

But this? I'm willing to welcome those willing to be welcomed and play by the rules and social conventions of the space. Here, the only people we call drunken fuckwits would be people with the username "drunken fuckwits." We don't wish members to be killed, we cry when they die. We don't accept that you walk into the space you've been welcomed into and demand to change the rules and social conventions. If you don't like them, go find your owns spaces, and speaking as a white male, I know *exactly* how easy it is for White Males to find spaces where they can say and do basically whatever the hell they want, including things that are flat out illegal.

All are welcome here -- but all follow the same rules. We are civil. We discuss the topic. Arguably, I'm really pushing the rules by doing this here and not on MeTa, but I'm bringing this on topic in a sec, so hopefully the mods will give me some doubt, besides, I only posted the Treaty of Westphalia *once* and it was on CAPS LOCK DAY, I'm sorry.

You, and I, and everyone else here follows the rules, so you, and I, and everyone else is welcome, even if FFFM keeps trying to egg you on AND I WISH THEY'D CUT YOU A BIT OF SLACK OK HINT but I'm not a mod that's a personal opinion anyway where was I?

If others come into this space, they are welcome too -- so long as they play by the rules and conventions. If they don't, however, *boom* goes the banhammer.

If they come into a space and demand that all the rules and social conventions be changed to favor them? Then, well, here's where my welcome turns into a spear. I'll be honest, I'm mostly gafiated from fandom right now, but SF Fandom has been a big part of my life, a goodly number of my close friends, I've met there, and this was a deliberate and explicit "fuck you" to them.

That's why I'm taking this in the spirit of "fuck you back." And why I'm not saying that to you. You? You are playing by the both the rules and the social conventions. I'm good with you being here. Hell, I'm glad you're here. If you're ever in Chicago, let me know, if you drink such, I'll buy you a beer, help find you the right church, if you have diet restrictions, point you to the right place so you can eat, and all that. You're being social here. I will be social there. You've held up your hand, I will embrace it. It's the social condition, and you are playing by it.

You come in demanding this and that, and you'd have been ban hammered. You didn't, and you are one of the valid voices of the site. Fandom, alas, doesn't have a banhammer. But socially, that's what's happening, esp. when you look at the stated positions of some of these folk, which involve direct physical harm to my friends and family.

Forgive me for taking that poorly.

Anyway. That's why, at least in my opinion, Fandom Has Been Plunged Into War. The odd thing, though, is it's not with itself this time.
posted by eriko at 1:35 PM on April 11, 2015 [9 favorites]

Let's not forget that Correia reached out to Milo Yiannopolous (@Nero,) who has been a recent media cheerleader of the gamergators.

CONDEMNED FOREVER.
posted by Artw at 1:39 PM on April 11, 2015

Let's not forget that Correia reached out to Milo Yiannopolous (@Nero,) who has been a recent media cheerleader of the gamergators.

Reached out in January. If Yiannopolous was a GG cheerleader then, then yes, he's hit a line that'll be very hard to cross back. If that's new, I'm not going to auto-condemn. If you've never talked cordially to someone who turned out to be a complete fuckhead later, you are a really lucky person.

Lord knows I have. Hell, one of them is on the goddamn Hugo ballot!
posted by eriko at 1:43 PM on April 11, 2015

Yiannopoulos's grotesque and transparently opportunistic (except, it seems, to GGers) latching on to Gamergate extends well into last year.
posted by kagredon at 1:47 PM on April 11, 2015 [8 favorites]

Okay, he's fallen that much farther then. Thanks, all.
posted by eriko at 1:57 PM on April 11, 2015 [1 favorite]

Not to pile on, but he's also buddy-buddy with Adam Baldwin, who among other general awfulness kicked off the "5 Guys"/Zoe-Quinn-whores-herself-for-reviews crap.
posted by zombieflanders at 2:09 PM on April 11, 2015 [1 favorite]

The follow up to that tweet makes it clear Larry knew about Milo's GG prominence.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 2:29 PM on April 11, 2015 [3 favorites]

Is it still guilt by association if the association is not just voluntary but enthusiastic?
posted by rtha at 2:33 PM on April 11, 2015 [2 favorites]

Community moderation at its finest In The Guardian story about Martin's condemnation of the slate voting.
posted by Kattullus at 2:39 PM on April 11, 2015 [6 favorites]

GRRM: Hatespeech

Interesting parallel he draws b/t Requires Hate and Vox Day.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 2:42 PM on April 11, 2015 [6 favorites]

Most Thunderous Dickweasel #NewHugoCategories
posted by kagredon at 2:46 PM on April 11, 2015 [8 favorites]

I feel for Larry Correia in many ways. I feel he's stepped in it, doubled down, and can't understand why he's gotten the reaction he has, but I honestly don't think it's malice. I think if we can step back, we could mend that breach and make him part of the family.

I really appreciate you noting that. Honestly, Correia's post hit me like a punch to the gut, because it's so much "I love you and wanted to love you, why is it like this?" I feel the same way about him as I do about Torgersen - who Correia affectionately describes as 'too naive to survive in Westeros'. I think they both seem like really great guys who are disturbed by what they see as wrong - and honestly, I do think they have at least the seeds of a legitimate beef, even if it's not what they see as the biggest one.

Hell, GRRM, who despite his D/R voting preference, seems to be coming out swinging as knowledgeable and measured as possible on this, has openly admitted a lot of the things they were saying: yes, there has been Hugo campaigning, yes, there are cliques, yes, some of them get things on the ballot that would not have been there, this has all happened before - this is an escalation, but it is not the first step on the path that led here. So it's possible to not be bigoted and to still feel that there are some legitimate points, even if you think some of the stuff is a bridge too far.

My take on Vox Day is that he's still fuming from his SFWA boot. Honestly, I think here's where Torgensen nails it on the head (linked above);

Will anybody listen to me? I know Vox sure as hell doesn’t give a fuck what I think. When did he ever? He didn’t give a fuck when SFWA sent him packing. He doesn’t give a fuck who hates him. If Sad Puppies evaporates tomorrow and ceases to exist, Vox won’t give a shit at all. Because Vox doesn’t give a shit what any of us think, and doesn’t care. When did The Kurgan ever? This is a fight for The Prize. You cut off his head, he cuts off your head.

posted by corb at 2:54 PM on April 11, 2015

To clarify, because I realize that may seem confusing - I think Vox Day cares but only in the doing battle, negative way. I don't know that he cares about anyone positively. I don't know anyone who could lay a kind word in Vox Day's ear and have it be listened to.
posted by corb at 3:00 PM on April 11, 2015

True, but I would assume that calling out Day's awfulness would be more about giving Correia and Torgersen legitimacy than making day stop. Simply calling Day an unpredictable wild man doesn't cut it.
posted by Going To Maine at 3:14 PM on April 11, 2015 [1 favorite]

My take on Vox Day is that he's still fuming from his SFWA boot.

Guess he shouldn't have been calling black folks "subhuman animals" then.
posted by Justinian at 4:20 PM on April 11, 2015 [19 favorites]

Not using the SFWAuthors Twitter feed he shouldn't have, the thing he did that got him kicked out.

They probably would have let him be obnoxious on his own platforms till the end of time.
posted by Artw at 4:25 PM on April 11, 2015 [7 favorites]

I don't really give a damn about the religious beliefs of authors at cons if I'm sitting down to a discussion about the struggles writing time travel, world building, or economics of galactic empires.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 5:09 PM on April 11, 2015

Now Larry Correia even acknowledges this, but he says that, "hey, I didn't used to be an aggressively public jerk! I was a real nice guy, and everyone was a jerk to me because I'm a conservative!" And yet his con report from the time doesn't mention this, and, again, non-fucking-asshole conservatives seem to do just fine.

And also, and I'm speculating, I have a hard time believing that someone who's true self is 'fucking asshole' can mask it all that well for all that long. I suspect that his 'nice guy persona' was not as airtight as he claims.

Harlan Ellison is such a famous asshole at cons that it was the plot of a Hardy Boys novel, but he still seems liked. At least, I like him. But he's a good writer and an equal opportunity offender and not, I think, a flaming bigot.
I first heard of Vox Day through anti-Men's Rights and GamerGate blogs. I know him as a culture warrior first and a writer second, if it all.
As Phil Sandifer said, no other community would be welcoming to people with his views. His hatred of women and racial and sexual minorities has no place in a civilized society. But it's found a home in fandom.
Why?
Norman Spinrad's The Iron Dream skewers some Sci-fi as literal facist power fantasy, and it stings. Even GRRM, the current voice of reason, traffics in Orientalist fantasy of racialized Mongol hoards.
posted by Charlemagne In Sweatpants at 5:45 PM on April 11, 2015 [3 favorites]

But Vox Day hasn't found a home in fandom. That's one of their grievances.
posted by Justinian at 7:01 PM on April 11, 2015 [1 favorite]

Well, fuck that. The moment you stop being a tax exile living in Italy threatening to kill half my friends, then I'll be welcoming.
posted by eriko at 7:27 PM on April 11, 2015 [9 favorites]

I'm very much not saying he should have a home in fandom, I was just disagreeing with CiS' assertion that he had found one, which is a bit of a libel against fandom.
posted by Justinian at 7:31 PM on April 11, 2015 [2 favorites]

this is an escalation, but it is not the first step on the path that led here.

So? The escalators are not somehow absolved of responsibility for their escalation.

Furthermore, neither they nor you have provided anything remotely resembling evidence that the "first step" (whatever the hell that supposedly was) was ideologically driven in the same way that SP/RP is - and they have flat out admitted the ideological motivations more than once in public and in writing.

GRRM is very clearly talking about past cliques and campaigning in the context of "friends promoting friends because friends", no ideology necessary or in evidence.

So it's possible to not be bigoted and to still feel that there are some legitimate points, even if you think some of the stuff is a bridge too far.

However, many people pushing the SP/RP slates have thoroughly and publicly established their bigotry, so that possibility is not relevant here, because that's not what's happening.
posted by soundguy99 at 7:33 PM on April 11, 2015 [8 favorites]

Ok. I've had a couple of beers. I've carried this dark secret with me for decades. Today, I come clean.

I sawed Courtney's boat.

And I'm not sorry.
posted by eriko at 7:47 PM on April 11, 2015 [4 favorites]

GRRM is very clearly talking about past cliques and campaigning in the context of "friends promoting friends because friends", no ideology necessary or in evidence.

The only way it would at all comparable is if GRRM had recruited the Wolf Rescue people he supports to vote a slate for Hugo nominees.

Which he didn't because he's not a psychopath with a bone.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 8:14 PM on April 11, 2015 [6 favorites]

I don't really give a damn about the religious beliefs of authors

It must be nice to have the luxury of not caring about what these people believe, when what they believe is that large portions of humanity--including many people right here in this thread--aren't human.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:19 PM on April 11, 2015 [9 favorites]

Announcing The Mulligan Awards

HOW DO I NOMINATE FOR THE MULLIGANS?

You already have or haven’t. The nominations will be based on Hugo nomination numbers rather than being a completely separate procedure. Each year the Hugo committee publishes a list of the top 15 nominees with voting counts for each one. The Mulligan nominations start with the Hugo nomination list, but estimates what the top 5 would be in the absence of the voting bloc.
posted by Artw at 11:19 PM on April 11, 2015 [9 favorites]

It must be nice to have the luxury of not caring about what these people believe, when what they believe is that large portions of humanity--including many people right here in this thread--aren't human.

I really hate it when one half of a sentence is pulled out of context, especially when that context involves a very particular situation in the thread and an explicit limiting clause. Doing so, IMO, is a dishonest shit move.

To explain that further, the number of authors on my will-not-read (or listen to) list can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Correia and Butcher are not on that list yet. Wright, Day, and Card are because I think they've gone out of their way in public bigotry. I don't routinely do background checks on authors to figure out their political and religious affiliations. I'm not in the business of asking strangers their political voting habits, congregations, and party affiliations. Frankly, I don't know what any of the puppies look like, and wouldn't be able to identify them in a crowd or at a party anyway.

Half of my family are Whovians, half of them are fundamentalist Christians (at least until my niece leaves the house). Talking about SF&F helps bring us together in spite of politics. If I'm at a con or book talk, I want to talk about books. If we did start self-segregating on politics in those spaces, I'd likely be in a corner with my partner.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 5:50 AM on April 12, 2015 [2 favorites]

Someone is reviewing all the Puppy stories here (and thinks that one of the JCW stories is ineligible).
posted by jeather at 7:01 AM on April 12, 2015 [10 favorites]

TL;DR version - Animal Farm with the Holy Spirit instead of Communists

Heh. Is anyone still beating the drum that this guy could have got by on merit? That sounds worse than the VD thing from last year.
posted by Artw at 7:18 AM on April 12, 2015 [1 favorite]

(and thinks that one of the JCW stories is ineligible).

The thing about SF short fiction is that there's SO MUCH of it in any given, especially if you are not too fussy about quality, so I really wonder why they were so hard up for things to nominate they had to scam one onto their list. Are they just reflexively dishonest?
posted by Artw at 7:32 AM on April 12, 2015 [3 favorites]

I really hate it when one half of a sentence is pulled out of context, especially when that context involves a very particular situation in the thread and an explicit limiting clause. Doing so, IMO, is a dishonest shit move.

You can call it whatever you like. I was pointing out that for some of us, picking and choosing when we care about an author's personal convictions isn't really a luxury we have.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 7:35 AM on April 12, 2015 [1 favorite]

And one of the RP/GG people is claiming that the "we'll buy a supporting membership for someone who can't afford it" (they're at about 75 now) is buying votes.
posted by jeather at 8:02 AM on April 12, 2015

Yeah, the second I read about the supporting membership plan, I knew it would be called vote-buying.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:14 AM on April 12, 2015 [1 favorite]

I really wonder why they were so hard up for things to nominate they had to scam one onto their list. Are they just reflexively dishonest?

That was one of the ones that was only on the Rabid Puppies list, so...
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 8:29 AM on April 12, 2015

A few comments deleted. Please drop the interpersonal needling and accusations. Thanks.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 9:06 AM on April 12, 2015

Of course, I care. A nearly crippling phobia of straight people is something I struggle with on a daily basis.

But when I go to a convention, I meet dozens of strangers, some of whom are authors, and I know nothing about them beyond a name, a book title, and maybe an elevator speech. If that elevator speech includes something about their personal convictions, then I care. But otherwise I must extend the benefit of the doubt that John Doe peddling Amazon published swordpunk isn't one of "these people."

Because assuming that everyone or anyone is going to act with violent heterosexism and cissexism isn't healthy for me.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 9:12 AM on April 12, 2015 [1 favorite]

I'm not talking about assuming, I'm talking about publicly-stated positions.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:22 AM on April 12, 2015 [1 favorite]

In the comments to the ineligibility post it is alleged that Wright's nominated "One Bright Star to Guide Them" is only slightly different from an earlier story by the same name, though it might still be technically eligible.

A significantly changed story becomes eligible again, though if it's also changed size, it moves to the appropriate category. There have been cases of winners being expanded to novels and being nominated again.

Who decides if the change is significant enough to merit a new story? The Hugo Administrator for the year is the sole arbiter here. If they rule it's different enough, then it is and it is an eligible work. There's no appeal available if a Hugo Subcommittee is in place, as it is here (and always is) Theoretically, the entire concom could overrule if there wasn't, but *everybody* does the subcommittee to make sure nobody loses a nomination because they're on the concom. (Yes, it happens, esp. in Fanwriter/Fan Artist.)

Historically, we've given a large bit of leeway to the authors on this point. Generally, if they say they've substantially reworked the story, we don't demand diffs from them as proof.
posted by eriko at 9:58 AM on April 12, 2015 [2 favorites]

Yeah, the second I read about the supporting membership plan, I knew it would be called vote-buying.

Which is why the person on point very carefully stated in public (at the suggestion of someone you might know....) that they were explicitly not constraining voting in any way, shape or form.

Merely buying someone a membership does not disqualify votes -- if you buy a membership for you and your spouse, your spouse can vote. What you cannot do is vote both your and your spouse's memberships. There are other benefits to membership besides nominating and voting the Hugo awards -- you also get to vote in Site Selection, and you get all the publications of the convention, and if you decide to attend, the supporting membership cost is deducted from your attending membership cost when you convert it.
posted by eriko at 10:05 AM on April 12, 2015

That's really not going to make any difference to them objecting to it, but since one of their talking points is how their slate is totally within the rules and this is also within the rules who gives a shit?
posted by Artw at 10:13 AM on April 12, 2015 [4 favorites]

I have so much sympathy for the Sasquan administrators this year. What terrible luck for them to have been dropped into this kind of crap.

fffm, there are a lot of writers out there and most of them I don't know what positions they have publicly stated, even if they are authors whose books I read.
posted by jeather at 10:24 AM on April 12, 2015 [1 favorite]

It seems that an unexpected party is joining the fray for next year's Hugos.
posted by sukeban at 10:30 AM on April 12, 2015

I've had a supporting membership since shortly after Sasquan won the bid, I think, but I'm tempted to make a point of converting to attending partly so I can attend the business meeting because I fear that the various contingents of bad puppies are going to either try and push through some displeasing-to-me rules change, or to at least block any attempts to adjust the rules to somehow limit the effect of slate-based voting.

Look, really look, at Torgensens' blog, or Correia's

Sure. Here's what Correia says about the "typical Worldcon voter"

If you can’t stomach the comments long enough to hear what a typical WorldCon voter sounds like, let me paraphrase: “Fantastic! I’m so sick of people actually enjoying books that are fun! Let’s shove more message fiction down their throats! My cause comes before their enjoyment! Diversity! Gay polar bears are being murdered by greedy corporations! Only smart people who think correct thoughts like I do should read books and I won’t be happy until my genre dies a horrible death! Yay!” (and if there is beeping noise in the background, that’s because they’re backing up their mobility scooter).

posted by rmd1023 at 10:38 AM on April 12, 2015 [9 favorites]

Which. Is why he's pushing a slate of preachy no-fun shit.
posted by Artw at 10:47 AM on April 12, 2015 [6 favorites]

I was really tempted to buy an attending membership even before all this (Spokane is about a 1.5 hour drive from where I live), but I don't have $200 to spare in the foreseeable future. Maybe we can have a Mefi meetup anyway, since it sounds like a couple people are thinking about it?
posted by kagredon at 10:56 AM on April 12, 2015 [3 favorites]

and if there is beeping noise in the background, that’s because they’re backing up their mobility scooter

way to stick the landing, big guy.
posted by Zed at 10:57 AM on April 12, 2015 [12 favorites]

It seems that an unexpected party is joining the fray for next year's Hugos.

Oh, FFS. I'm all in favor of celebrating fanfiction, because it can have a lot of creativity and value -- I wrote my own unauthorized sequel to a well-beloved children's classic, after all -- but the Hugos are for professionally published science fiction. Not Harry Potter AUs.

If you can't get paid for writing it (without getting sued by the richest author in the world), I don't think you should be campaigning for literary awards for it.
posted by suelac at 11:02 AM on April 12, 2015 [6 favorites]

Where are - I ask this sincerely - the people offering to create something welcoming for the more conservative SF writers?

Correira himself was rather enthusiastic about his first Worldcon back in 2011 before he let his entitlement over run his common sense; so was his pal Turgidson. But even then the clues were there that they had a rather inflated opinion of themselves, seeing as how much both talk about not winning any Hugo or Campbell awards.

This idea that Worldcon or the Hugo Awards were just mean against decent, honest, hardworking writers like Turgidson or Laaarry is nonsense. Fandom has never not been welcoming to rightwing assholes, as long as they don't quite shit in the punch bowl. People like David Weber, for all his clumsy attacks on liberals in the Honor Harrington books, has been massively popular for decades, while people like Tim Powers or Gene Wolfe have had masses of critical recognition too.

But the problem is that Torgensen and Correira just aren't that good, nor all that popular, certainly not on the same level as Scalzi, who has gotten all the recognition and success they feel should be theirs.

That drove them to their temper tantrum, that need for undeserved recognition, not anything fandom did.
posted by MartinWisse at 11:13 AM on April 12, 2015 [13 favorites]

Not sure about the exact rules for 'Related Work', but it seems like maybe HPMoR is better suited to that than to Best Novel. Since, you know, it's not a novel.

Not too worried about it messing up the Hugos though, since in the end The Wheel of Time voting bloc just got a nomination and not an award.
posted by tofu_crouton at 11:20 AM on April 12, 2015 [2 favorites]

Not sure about the exact rules for 'Related Work', but it seems like maybe HPMoR is better suited to that than to Best Novel. Since, you know, it's not a novel.

HPMoR doesn't qualify for either, as far as I can tell, it's not professionally published and both Best Novel and BRW are for professionally published works. If was was professionally published, that wouldn't apply, and I think it fits Novel more than BRW.

Arguably, it does (and this is going to sound insulting, and I do not mean it to) qualify for BDP-L. BDP is, quite deliberately, a very wide category. Screenplays are BDP, not Best Novel/Novellette.

It certainly has qualified the author for Best Fanwriter, and would have qualified the artist for Best Fanartist for the cover (if he was paid for that, then Best Artist) in the year the work was created, assuming I'm correct about the lack of professional publication.

He is correct that *next* year would be the correct year to nominate it if it finishes this year. It would be treated as a serialized work, those become eligible when they are complete. Multi-part works have each part eligible upon release. And, yes, arguably, if that happens, the whole series is then ineligible as a series, but It's Complicated.
posted by eriko at 11:48 AM on April 12, 2015 [2 favorites]

I think a Best Transformative Work would make a good new category, for the Hugo or for whatever succeeds it. The qualities that would make a good candidate are distinct enough from existing ones, and it would be a way of reaching out to the broader fan/reading community (and not just in the "vote for us, Gamergaters!" way), it has traditional precedent in the Fan Writer/Author and Zine awards. Even if Yudkowsky were to file the copyright-infringing serial numbers off, HPMOR still relies too much on the structure and context of the original works to really stand alone in a coherent way. But as a Transformative Work, yeah, I could see it.
posted by kagredon at 11:51 AM on April 12, 2015 [1 favorite]

The Things got a short story nomination in 2010, so if you can somehow get your fanfic published without being sued to oblivion there doesn't seem to be any other barrier to it going in the main categories.
posted by Artw at 12:00 PM on April 12, 2015

And Pride and Prometheus, John Kessel's Frankenstein/Pride and Prejudice mashup was a nominee in 2009. (And it really is uncanny how well they piece together.) No worries about suit there, of course.
posted by Zed at 12:09 PM on April 12, 2015 [1 favorite]

I think a Best Transformative Work would make a good new category, for the Hugo or for whatever succeeds it.

My test for a category is that I want to see five works that are worthy of winning but that wouldn't make the ballot because there are five better works. That is, if you don't have 10 honestly worthy works every year, that category is problematic.

Yes, this means I believe we need to collapse the written categories down to at least three. This will happen, basically, never, but hey, you have to stand for something.

I'd almost rather have a Best Other Thing category for something you think is Hugo Worthy but doesn't fit a category. Bonus: It will torture the Hugo Administrators. But seriously, no, this a bad idea and I'm a bad person for suggesting it. BOOOOOOO!
posted by eriko at 12:44 PM on April 12, 2015 [7 favorites]

If you can't get paid for writing it (without getting sued by the richest author in the world), I don't think you should be campaigning for literary awards for it.

Sssh. He's a Very Smart Dude who can Outthink all the competitors. And I swear I'm keeping a straight face as I type.
posted by sukeban at 1:00 PM on April 12, 2015 [3 favorites]

He could try and get Rowling to publish it and donate the proceeds to charity, she's a sucker for that kind of thing.
posted by Artw at 1:03 PM on April 12, 2015

Maybe we can have a Mefi meetup anyway, since it sounds like a couple people are thinking about it?

I'd be down with that.
posted by RakDaddy at 1:19 PM on April 12, 2015

Kattullus: "In the comments to the ineligibility post it is alleged that Wright's nominated "One Bright Star to Guide Them" is only slightly different from an earlier story by the same name, though it might still be technically eligible."

To bring in another thread about authorial embarrassment, I am having hardcore Catholic fremdscham on JCW's behalf after reading these. He's making Catholicism, and himself, look ridiculously shallow and facile, but doesn't even have the wit to be embarrassed by how superficial and simplistic this comes across. I am in a full-body cringe on his behalf. These sound like an 18-year-old fundamentalist Catholic with wealthy parents who's working hard to flunk out of freshman philosophy class in his effort to stick it to his "cafeteria Catholic" philosophy professor who, he believes, is nowhere near as smart as he is. He's just sitting there in his smug, entitled certainty while everyone laughs behind their hands at him. And he doesn't realize it. Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, I cannot read any more of this. It's not just bad, it is causing me emotional pain that he thinks it's not just good writing but morally superior writing! GAAAAAAH
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 1:30 PM on April 12, 2015 [16 favorites]

So I read Yes Virginia, There Is A Santa Claus, and among the many things it is (badly written, badly argued), it doesn't actually seem to be any sort of SFF. For all the complaints about "If you were a dinosaur, my love" being not SFF you'd think the puppies would have at least stuck to genre stories.
posted by jeather at 2:09 PM on April 12, 2015 [7 favorites]

OH JESUS WHAT IS THIS EVEN WHAT HAPPENED TO THE GOOD STUFF?
posted by corb at 3:35 PM on April 12, 2015

This entire story is like "If You Could Talk to a Pompous Saint, My Love.
posted by corb at 3:37 PM on April 12, 2015 [4 favorites]

Oh God I'm sorry for triple posting but sweet Jesus it just keeps getting worse is he writing this to troll Catholics? Does he have a brain tumor?
posted by corb at 3:42 PM on April 12, 2015 [6 favorites]

HPMoR doesn't qualify for either, as far as I can tell, it's not professionally published and both Best Novel and BRW are for professionally published works.

I don't believe there's any requirement for professional publication, last year's winner of BRW was a blog post, but for BRW the work needs to be non-fiction or "if fictional, is noteworthy primarily for aspects other than the fictional text" and also not eligible in any other category and I think HPMoR fits into novel.
posted by penguinliz at 4:05 PM on April 12, 2015

...Does he have a brain tumor?
posted by corb at 6:42 PM on April 12

Wright was your basic Libertarian Atheist Asshole - until he had a heart attack. The near-death experience apparently gave him a 'Road to Damascus' conversion experience: he came out of it leaving his 'Atheist Asshole' persona entirely behind, and has newly constructed for himself one of the basic 'New-Convert/Zealot Asshole' personas. He's spent the last decade or a so being a walking advertisement for everything that's wrong with religion. (...Because HE has The Truth....)

Reading his recent comments: yes, he sounds genuinely unhinged, delusional, insane.

Which reminds me that Beale's daddy went fully and publicly delusional: while up on federal felony charges, Beale Senior convened a Pretend Court and issued Pretend Writs and Pretend Warrants to the Quite Real federal judge who was trying him. Literally, crazy stuff.

It bought him extra time in the pen for threatening a judge.

So, judging by the insane world-view he's constructed for himself, I've long wondered if Beale was also mentally ill, suffering from some sort of hereditary delusional condition. It explains a lot.
posted by AsYouKnow Bob at 4:10 PM on April 12, 2015 [1 favorite]

I told you he turned to shit, corb! You did not listen and now you have suffered.
posted by Justinian at 4:21 PM on April 12, 2015 [7 favorites]

Hey, corb. I just want to say -- without bringing in the larger discussion for this comment -- that I really feel for you right now.

I can think of a number of times when I've picked up something by an admired, even beloved author, and just found myself thinking, "... What HAPPENED?"

It feels like meeting an old friend, and then feeling that anticipation dissolve into dismay or anger or sadness when you realize that instead of a conversation, you're going to get a lecture, or a rant, or an incoherent rambling anecdote.

You have my sympathy.
posted by kyrademon at 4:29 PM on April 12, 2015 [15 favorites]

Never appreciated actual CS Lewis as much as I do right now.
posted by Artw at 4:47 PM on April 12, 2015 [5 favorites]

Oh God I'm sorry for triple posting but sweet Jesus it just keeps getting worse

I... I guess trinitarian posting is on topic, just this once....
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:29 PM on April 12, 2015 [16 favorites]

I can think of a number of times when I've picked up something by an admired, even beloved author, and just found myself thinking, "... What HAPPENED?"

I just went through this when I tried to reread Tigana last winter. So awful: the Suck Fairies had attacked in force, and left only burning wreckage behind. I couldn't get more than 30% into it before stopping.

I had stopped reading Kay after getting fed up with his pretentious foreshadowing and tendency to really obviously hide the plot, but I had thought his older stuff was still reasonable.

I can never reread the Fionavar Tapestry, for fear it will be irreversibly destroyed.
posted by suelac at 5:46 PM on April 12, 2015 [2 favorites]

Well, I'm more confident about someday getting that novel published.
posted by Going To Maine at 6:12 PM on April 12, 2015 [5 favorites]

I can never reread the Fionavar Tapestry, for fear it will be irreversibly destroyed.

That's the worst part, when you realize that the thing you originally loved is likely a lot more like the sucky thing than you want to admit. It's the reason I'm probably never going to do that rewatch of The West Wing.
posted by kagredon at 6:14 PM on April 12, 2015 [1 favorite]

Found in Wright's fromage to C S Lewis:

John C Wright says:
December 28, 2013 at 1:53 am

The author only provides the soil and fertilizer for the reader’s imagination.

Soil. And fertilizer. How very apt; his "fertilizer" certainly left me feeling soiled.
posted by Joe in Australia at 7:02 PM on April 12, 2015 [1 favorite]

Right can we not mock people for finding out things now?

Because other people have found out things on this thread. You know, like me?

So, people, stop being jerks about it?

Seriously.
posted by eriko at 8:55 PM on April 12, 2015 [1 favorite]

Well, when people have repeatedly posted evidence and the naysayers have chose not to read the linked evidence, then my answer is no. Not gonna mock but fer fuck's sake much of the disagreement on here could have been totally avoided.
posted by futz at 9:16 PM on April 12, 2015 [2 favorites]

eriko, are you talking about this comment? Because that seems to be totally good natured to me.
posted by overglow at 9:34 PM on April 12, 2015 [4 favorites]

Yes, reading Wright's later works is punishment enough.
posted by Justinian at 9:55 PM on April 12, 2015 [1 favorite]

But I still maintain his GOLDEN AGE trilogy was quite worthwhile if you're into that sort of SF. Until the Objectivism. Which turned out to be the fundamental building blocks of the universe.
posted by Justinian at 9:59 PM on April 12, 2015 [2 favorites]

But I still maintain his GOLDEN AGE trilogy was quite worthwhile if you're into that sort of SF.

Thanks, I'd been meaning to ask you or corb what his decent works were (I'd been flicking through them at random in the library, and what I read was pretty bad).
posted by Pink Frost at 10:04 PM on April 12, 2015

alternatively you could just read The Expanse by James SA Corey, which is pre good and the authors are unlikely to become awful and disappointing (I think) (I choose to believe they are exceptional because they live where I live)

read it

reeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaddddddddddd iiiittttttttttttttt
posted by NoraReed at 10:06 PM on April 12, 2015 [4 favorites]

Yeah, the Golden Age trilogy is what I read and fell in love with. I'm hoping some of that is still in him somehow and will be in my packet.
posted by corb at 10:13 PM on April 12, 2015 [1 favorite]

I choose to believe they are exceptional because they live where I live

I've met Daniel Abraham (i.e., half of James SA Corey which NoraReed obviously knows but I'm spelling it out for anyone else's benefit) and I consider it extremely unlikely he'll become awful and disappointing and extremely likely he'll continue to be awesome.
posted by Zed at 10:18 PM on April 12, 2015

that is my guess too!! I don't know him personally but I follow him on Twitter and my dad's interviewed him and he seems like a pretty OK dude, and Ty Franck seems great too. They seem to be trying really hard to be inclusive and social justice aware in their books, and between that and the fact that they seem to approach so much of their worldbuilding less from Rule of Cool and more with an actual sense of economics, they don't constantly jolt me out of the narrative because of the total lack of sense that a lot of the standard anti-SJ tropes make in scifi contexts.
posted by NoraReed at 10:53 PM on April 12, 2015

I can think of a number of times when I've picked up something by an admired, even beloved author, and just found myself thinking, "... What HAPPENED?"

/me pours one out for Wright, Hogan, Anthony, Card, dare I say Heinlein, and all the other victims of THE BRAIN EATER, whose gastronomic rapacity knows no satiety.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 11:07 PM on April 12, 2015 [6 favorites]

See, this is where being a Lovecraft fan is good - his writing actually got better towards the end of his career and if I really want to kid myself I can say that had he lived longer he would have got reverse-brain eater and become not a horrible racist.
posted by Artw at 12:30 AM on April 13, 2015 [10 favorites]

it seems kind of right that it's Lovecraft, creator of lots of awful brain-eating things, that may have had some reversal of its effects
posted by NoraReed at 12:32 AM on April 13, 2015 [5 favorites]

So the consensus is that it's the Golden Age trilogy that is JCW's best stuff? My only reading experience with him is that I picked up "Orphans of Chaos" based on a brief synopsis that sounded like something I'd probably like, got to the grubby teen B&D, spanking and rapey stuff, tossed it away and never read anything else by him.
posted by taz at 1:38 AM on April 13, 2015

I'm not certain it will read the same now that everyone knows Wright is off his rocker, unfortunately, but it is fair to say that if you dislike the first Golden Age novel you're not going to like anything he has written.
posted by Justinian at 2:06 AM on April 13, 2015 [2 favorites]

I've really been loving Abraham's The Dagger And The Coin series. Maybe I should check out The Expanse ...
posted by kyrademon at 2:09 AM on April 13, 2015

I love Dagger and Coin but haven't been able to get into The Expanse when I tried to read the first part of the first novel. It just seemed kind of confusing and weird. For anybody who has read both...should I push through?
posted by Drinky Die at 2:14 AM on April 13, 2015

I find D&C a lot more confusing than The Expanse; I love Abraham's writing but I think Franck is carrying a lot of the worldbuilding and so I get a much clearer idea in my head of what everything looks/feels like in it, whereas I still find myself looking up which of the 12 Races he's talking about when he introduces non-Firstblood characters. I think Leviathan Wakes is my least favorite in the Expanse series and it really does get a lot better once it's not narrated exclusively through the perspective of Miller and Holden, and there's a lot of expository worldbuilding that has to happen to set everything up. So it depends on what parts are confusing and weird, I guess? There are still multiple narrating characters, most of which have a significant amount of secondary characters that are important to their stories, so if it's keeping track of people, that'll still be hard, but that's the case with D&C too.
posted by NoraReed at 2:37 AM on April 13, 2015

My recollection of trying to read Leviathan Wakes is, (and this could be inaccurate since it was a while ago), spaceship with weird stuff happening, spaceship with something weird happening but like a few centuries ago or something, detectives investigating some shit with a character who speaks an unreadable dialect...then I give up.
posted by Drinky Die at 2:53 AM on April 13, 2015

Thankyou everyone who has been recommending good books in this thread. I'm one of the people who relies on Hugo nominations and winners for trying new-to-me authors, so it's good to have MeFi to fall back on when there's too much drama.

What I've learned about the Hugos so far:

Firstly, it's a popularity contest for the Worldcon group. There are other awards for merit, ideology, media format, etc but this one is essentially about which authors are the most popular with a dedicated but middle-of-the-road (broad?) audience. This is why friends vote for friends, why (like the Oscars, e.g. Gangs of New York, Return of the King) there are sometimes "belated" awards for an author who did excellent work a few years ago but missed out for some reason but has a new story out now so it's getting the love. This is the kind of thing that always happens with popularity contests, it's the nature of the beast.

And secondly, there have always been right-wing authors nominated and winning this popularity contest, as shown by GRRM's breakdown. In fact, those conservative authors are not merely included in the convention and awards, but liked and respected by the fans.

Thirdly, previous cabals and attempts to force a nominees list have been roundly condemned. There is self-promotion, there's promoting your friends, and then there's blatant pushing against the wishes of the fans. The latter is only prohibited by an unwritten rule which has generally been respected.

So to take the ideology out of it just for a moment, I want to compare the Sad/Rabid Puppies authors who have been nominated but lost or not nominated (Torgeson, Correia, JCW, etc) only with the other conservative nominees and winners (Wolfe, Weber, Powers, some Heinlein).

Conspiracy theories are constructed by people who don't want to face a difficult truth. It seems to me that if these guys aren't winning when other conservatives have, there are 3 plausible reasons.
1. Their work is not of the same quality as the other conservative writers, it's just not Hugo-worthy.
2. Their quality is fine, but their style or content is too specific for a mainstream SFF audience.
3. Their quality, style and content are a good fit for the awards, but they are not as likeable or respected as the other conservative authors.

So then that leaves 3 options for getting awards:
a. Admit that their work is not as good as it could be, and work on improving their writing skills.
b. Look for validation from other awards or ways of demonstrating approval (sales? fans at signings?) which are available to non-mainstream stories.
c. Look deep into their hearts and see if there's a reason people like other conservative authors more. Maybe that's being less of a douchebag, but maybe it's about doing more social/online stuff so that you can build a fan base and become more popular generally.

Note that there is no option d: Force everyone to vote for you by exploiting the nominations process.
posted by harriet vane at 2:55 AM on April 13, 2015 [9 favorites]

Martin writes an epic reply to Larry Correia's already lengthy response to Martin's earlier posts.

Here's some of my favorite bits.

First, discussing last year's response to Sad Puppies 2:

I think that once again you are paraphrasing and turning the insult dial up to eleven. I will agree that there was a backlash. Permit me to suggest that much of the negative press you got derived from the fact that one of the stories you placed on the ballot was that novelette by Vox Day, who was already infamous by that point because of his attack on Nora Jemison, his run for SFWA president, and his expulsion from that organization. Here we are back again to the "lumping together" we discussed earlier. Had Vox Day not been on your ticket, I suspect the backlash would not have been a tenth as vociferous as it was. Imagine, for example, that there had been a "SJW" slate the same year, and that they had gotten half a dozen stories on the ballot, but one of those had been by Requires Hate? (Actually, of course, Hate was nominated for the Campbell, but under a pseudonym). The lashback would have been just as nasty. In your case, it did not help that the Day story was terrible. Your public platform was all about restoring "quality" to the Hugos, and yet one of your standard bearers was the worst piece of writing on the ballot. (In my opinion, of course. All of this is opinion).

And here, with the bit in brackets from Correia:

[[...Unlike the existing cliques, Sad Puppies 3 didn’t give a damn about politics, race, religion, or orientation. All we cared about was could they tell us a damned good story.]]

Got it. Politics, race, religion, and sexual orientation, OUT. Damned good stories, IN. And for this year's Damned Good Story standard bearer, you chose... John C. Wright SIX TIMES!!! John C. Wright, a writer famed far and wide for having no opinions on politics, race, religion, or sexual orientation, and would never dream of injecting such messages into his Damned Good Stories. Because, after all, the Puppies get sad when they are made to read Message Fiction.

So Wright is in, and who is out? James S.A. Corey. Emily St. John Mandel. John Scalzi (of course). THREE BODY PROBLEM. Joe Abercrombie. Larry Niven. Greg Bear. Daniel Abraham. John Varley. William Gibson. Joe Haldeman. Greg Benford. Lev Grossman. Stephen King. No damned good stories there. I guess. No real science fiction, no exciting fantasy, nothing entertaining or commercial, just pretentious left-wing literary crap, right?

posted by overglow at 3:10 AM on April 13, 2015 [16 favorites]

From GRRM's reply:

I knew Jim Baen. He was well to the right of you, I suspect, and we had nothing in common politically, but TUF VOYAGING made money for him [...]

Heh. I have that on my bookshelf. It's about a very large, very liberal atheist who reactivates a spaceship mothballed by the long-defunct Ecological Engineering Corps. He has several distinct adventures, but most of the book is taken up by a framing story in which he [hover for spoilers]. It's a rollicking hero-in-a-spaceship story of the sort Jim Wright professes to love, but which is absolutely contrary to everything Jim Wright believes.
posted by Joe in Australia at 4:31 AM on April 13, 2015 [5 favorites]

That's a great reply from GRRM. Another of my favourite quotes from it:

"Has your career been sabotaged? From reading Monster Hunter Nation, it seems as if your career is going rather well. You're on the TIMES bestseller list, are you not? I know a hundred writers in this field, damn good writers, hard-working and talented, who would love to have their careers sabotaged so that they could be on bestseller lists too."

How much praise and love do people like Correia want? Nominated as one of the six best new authors for his first book, in a tough field. On the best-seller lists. And still complaining because some (not all) awards go to stories that aren't to his taste. It seems very much like a persecution complex.
posted by harriet vane at 5:01 AM on April 13, 2015 [12 favorites]

ROU_Xenophobe: "/me pours one out for Wright, Hogan, Anthony, Card, dare I say Heinlein, and all the other victims of THE BRAIN EATER, whose gastronomic rapacity knows no satiety."

I've always felt a *little* uncomfortable with using the Brain Eater trope about people like Heinlein and Keith Laumer who really did have something happen to their brains.
posted by Chrysostom at 5:06 AM on April 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

Drinky Die: The first spaceship with weird stuff happening was by way of being a story hook. The second spaceship with weird stuff happening (if I recall the order these things are in correctly, it's been a while and it was on audiobook) was by way of introducing you to some main characters. Also, unless I really, really missed something there's nothing there that is set a few centuries ago, unless there was a short scene with some really heavy foreshadowing that I forgot. The unintelligible accent doesn't show up much and actually almost never after that investigation scene (if memory serves), which is there to introduce you to the cop. And it is absolutely worth pushing through, because they are, ultimately, very well-crafted, carefully built and written fun.

(Also, one of the future books introduces one of my favorite female characters ever.)
posted by seyirci at 6:07 AM on April 13, 2015

I'l probably give it a third try at some point, but I think I'll just resume appreciating Cithrin as one of my favorite female characters and thinking about how much fun it would be to get drunk with her. :P
posted by Drinky Die at 6:24 AM on April 13, 2015

Lovecraft was actually reaching forward through time and eating the brains of future authors, towards the end of his own life.

oh my god. THAT'S WHAT HE WAS REALLY TELLING US IN THE SHADOW OUT OF TIME!!!

It's all so clear now.
posted by Zed at 6:55 AM on April 13, 2015 [2 favorites]

On the bright side of things (for me, at least), the first third of my birthday present just arrived in the mail. Total birthday present: The Goblin Emperor, City of Stairs, The Southern Reach Trilogy, Shadow Scale, Dearest, Persona, Half the World, Love is the Drug, The Boy Who Lost Fairyland, The Ruby Circle, Saga Volume 2, Saga Volume 3, Ms. Marvel Volume 1, and Lightspeed Magazine Women Destroy Science Fiction Special Issue.

My sweetie is THE BEST sweetie.

Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me ...
posted by kyrademon at 7:05 AM on April 13, 2015 [18 favorites]

Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me ...

Happy birthday. (UGH!)
Happy birthday. (UGH!)

May the candles on your cake
Burn like cities in your wake!

Happy birthday. (UGH!)
Happy birthday. (UGH!)
Now you've lived another year
Now you know that death is near

Happy birthday. (UGH!)
Happy birthday. (UGH!)

So far Death you have bypassed
Don't look back, he's gaining fast!

Happy birthday!
posted by eriko at 7:24 AM on April 13, 2015 [5 favorites]

Reading that Correia post and ugh, to me he just looks like a bitter and dreadfully dull self-pitying narcissist. Harlan Ellison on James Cameron, Samuel Delany on racism, Neil Gaiman on tech support for his PC--these are interesting, entertaining complaints despite being very personal. Correia's? Not so much.
posted by johnofjack at 7:38 AM on April 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

GRRM on LC's complaint about how he was treated at a Worldcon panel:

Must admit, I would be curious to see this panel. Many worldcons videotape their programming. It would be fascinating to see the tape of your Reno panel, to get a better idea of who said what.

I would like to see this too.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 7:49 AM on April 13, 2015 [9 favorites]

It does remind me of the (dreaded SJW) concept of fragility. It's like these guys have never encountered real hardship, so they think being nominated for a prestigious award but not winning it, or not having many people to talk to at a convention, means the whole thing must be corrupt so let's burn it to the ground. Those aren't fun experiences, but shit happens and you grit your teeth and move on.
posted by harriet vane at 7:49 AM on April 13, 2015 [13 favorites]

I've always felt a *little* uncomfortable with using the Brain Eater trope about people like Heinlein and Keith Laumer who really did have something happen to their brains.

That is a fair cop. I am going to go to the penalty box and feel shame for a bit.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 8:20 AM on April 13, 2015 [4 favorites]

If you are a writer then people will say things you don't like about your stuff, and probably by extension you. You'll do promotional stuff and it won't work out and you won't get the response you want, you'll go to conventions and it will feel like you are twiddling your thumbs while everyone else is making all kinds of contacts and setting up awesome deals. This is shit that goes with the territory and I've had them all happen to me with way less success balancing it out than Correia has seen, so his crybaby routine just seems utterly contemptible to me regardless of his politics or his horrible friends.

Not everything is going to go your way, fucking deal with it you big baby.
posted by Artw at 8:31 AM on April 13, 2015 [8 favorites]

I would be curious to see this panel.

Out of morbid curiousity, I looked up the Renovation program. (I was there but not at any of these things.) Correia's panels (as printed in the guide; actual panelists might have been different.)

Meet the Campbell Award Nominees. Saladin Ahmed, Lauren Beukes, Larry Correia, Lev Grossman, Seanan McGuire (moderator), Dan Wells.

Steampunk versus Alternate History. Phillipa Ballantine, Larry Correia, Karyn de Dufour, Tee Morris (moderator), Alan P. Smale, Eric Swedin.

Fantasy in the Real World: The Rich World of Urban Fantasy. Larry Correia, Lisa Goldstein, Sharon Lee, Tim Pratt, Madeleine E. Robins (moderator.)
posted by Zed at 8:38 AM on April 13, 2015 [2 favorites]

hades: Lovecraft was actually reaching forward through time and eating the brains of future authors, towards the end of his own life.

So *that's* what happened to Nick Mamatas!
posted by tavella at 9:01 AM on April 13, 2015

Artw: If you are a writer then people will say things you don't like about your stuff, and probably by extension you. You'll do promotional stuff and it won't work out and you won't get the response you want, you'll go to conventions and it will feel like you are twiddling your thumbs while everyone else is making all kinds of contacts and setting up awesome deals. This is shit that goes with the territory and I've had them all happen to me with way less success balancing it out than Correia has seen, so his crybaby routine just seems utterly contemptible to me regardless of his politics or his horrible friends.

I think one of the best rules of being a public artist is to never, ever, ever respond directly to your critics. It's one of those interactions that never goes well.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 9:03 AM on April 13, 2015 [2 favorites]

Well, almost never. Jon Stewart got away with it because his whole career has been built on deconstructing the talking-head game. Spike Lee can do it because he understands his relationship to the industry. Most writers don't have the PR chops to do it successfully.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 9:15 AM on April 13, 2015

Googling yourself? Probably a bad idea but human nature means it's going to happen. Making a big deal out of it and publicizing the results? Really, really shirty idea, how is that not going to make you look self absorbed and pathetic?
posted by Artw at 9:28 AM on April 13, 2015

Oh, yeah, it's that very special conservative white boy thing. The one where they confuse "free speech" with "everyone must be nice to me and listen to whatever I say." Someone decides they have better things to do than listen to you and makes a personal decision to leave the room and go find fun somewhere else? OPPRESSION! ABUSE!
posted by tavella at 10:20 AM on April 13, 2015 [7 favorites]

Your public platform was all about restoring "quality" to the Hugos, and yet one of your standard bearers was the worst piece of writing on the ballot. (In my opinion, of course. All of this is opinion).

In my opinion, George, I think it is a demonstrable fact. Beale's "story" was fucking awful. A thousand blessings on you for saying it.
posted by RakDaddy at 10:22 AM on April 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

Man, I love GRRM so much, in part because he is equally merciless to some of the bugbears on both sides.

I wish I could disagree with that, but I won't. I am not dishonest either. You're right, Mr. Correia. You will never win a Hugo. Whether you could have won one before the Sad Puppies, well, I don't know, but now, it is true, you have pissed way too many people off.

posted by corb at 10:22 AM on April 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

the bugbears of both sides are the hobgoblins of the fake center
posted by nom de poop at 11:08 AM on April 13, 2015 [12 favorites]

Well, I'll be honest. I would feel bad about Larry Correia being denied a Hugo, regardless of the merits of his work, except, well you know, his slate did it first. His response to fandom getting mad at this is to promise to get more mad and do it again? Well, then.

Perhaps he was coopted by VD. But he keeps doubling down on it. So, well, yes, he will never win a Hugo. Fandom will happily destroy the Hugos before they give one to him. The mistake he made is thinking he could just take them. Fandom's reaction proves that this simply isn't true.
posted by eriko at 11:13 AM on April 13, 2015 [8 favorites]

Championship B'Tok" is organized into chapters. Which makes sense as this is in no way a stand alone story-it's an excerpt from a novel.

Do these people seriously not have any actual readable, standalone short fiction from the right year they can nominate?
posted by Artw at 11:55 AM on April 13, 2015

Thinking about it more, I'm actually having a lot of complicated thoughts about the generational and cultural differences between fans and how they are affecting this brouhaha. And I think some of it is broken down into old and new, but I think it's really important to note that not everyone is receiving the same generations at the same time - not everyone of an age is Of An Age, as it were. In particular, with books that have been created for about a century, and from parent to child it's pretty easy to get far astray.

When I first read science fiction, I primarily read 'old' science fiction. Cheap used books that made their way to me or to my house - the oldest and most popular. I read books like "Starship Troopers" and "Foundation" and "The Lord of the Rings" and "John Carter of Mars" and "Soldier, Ask Not" even though all were published decades before I was born. When I started reading 'newer' fantasy, even that was just stuff new enough to be published about the time I was born. And to me, as I suspect is the case for others, the Real, Great Science Fiction/Fantasy, to me, has always been at least structurally similar to the stuff I grew up reading - my first taste of Nutty Nuggets, if you will, but really just because the things you loved as a teenager, that time period when you love everything intensely, are always going to be special to you.

This is categorically true regardless of belief - look at the rise of 'nostalgia' movies, games, and marketing. Look at how we all, as humans, react when we think of the music of when we were young, the movies we loved. As others have noted, some of these don't stand a revisit, but our memories of them are always they strongest. We loved things back then the hardest.

And so for me, I will admit that my One True Science Fiction has always been unironic stories about men conquering the stars and finding freedom there - the Golden Age being talked about by Torg and Correia - even though I am not, by age, of the generation that was expected to be reading that. I didn't have disposable income, or Kindle self-published options. What I read was used books or what people lent me. And when I got into Fandom - hey, everyone knew those stories and could talk about those stories competently! You can go a long way in Fandom on old stories, and people do - or did, when I entered Fandom - tend not to thumb their nose at the Greats.

But at the same time, in a parallel universe, people my age were maybe getting science fiction from libraries with sharp librarians buying modern SF, or from what was new and hot in bookstores. Some of those stories probably involved criticism of race. A lot of the stories now may have those criticisms of race. I am culturally disconnected from my fan generation. I am a gray fanhead in a youngish body. Though I buy my books now on Amazon, when Amazon recommends things, it recommends me things based on what I've already read. I do not see the SF world they see, unless people from that world recommend things to me.

So when people say that it's completely implausible that this is the kind of stuff that Torg and Correia were reading and seeing as the One True SF - well, I'm a walking example of how that might not be the case.
posted by corb at 12:49 PM on April 13, 2015

The problem is ignoring the fact that The Greats were not homogeneous. Heinlein wasn't even consistent within his own oeuvre. There were always some greats that addressed race, and maybe due to the selection at local bookstores, folks were free to ignore them. Great, they're still free to ignore them! That's entirely different from waging a war against them.
posted by tofu_crouton at 12:59 PM on April 13, 2015 [9 favorites]

The slate, corb, look at the shit they put on the slate.
posted by Artw at 1:02 PM on April 13, 2015 [11 favorites]

folks were free to ignore them

I should also note that possibly, because of age, we just don't catch the larger issues in the books we read. A young adult could totally read Left Hand of Darkness and just walk away with 'weird alien species adventures in snow.'
posted by tofu_crouton at 1:03 PM on April 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

I believe the profound awefullness of the slate is 100% by design, part of the big fuck you VD et al intend to send to the fan community they despise.
posted by signal at 1:12 PM on April 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

Also being the same age of Corria, with the New Wave receeding on the bookshelves as I grew up and the hot new kids of Cyberpunk popping up, I'm not really sure there's a generational argument to be made for his pretense that it's still the 50s.
posted by Artw at 1:13 PM on April 13, 2015 [2 favorites]

So when people say that it's completely implausible that this is the kind of stuff that Torg and Correia were reading and seeing as the One True SF - well, I'm a walking example of how that might not be the case.

I see what you're getting at, but -- I hope you'll take my word for it that I don't mean this judgmentally; what I read as a teen was also very "classics"-heavy though light on Heinlein -- that only clarifies that the nature of their error about what SF was like back In The Good Old Days was plausibly sincere. But it's still factually in error, no matter how understandably they might have arrived at their error.

And, honestly, I think they should have taken the time to better understand the facts on the ground before embarking on their awful quest.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 1:17 PM on April 13, 2015 [4 favorites]

Martin's latest post simply demolishes Correia. Demolishes. He is now a greasy smear on the pavement.
posted by Justinian at 1:21 PM on April 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

Well, GRRM may look like a jolly sea captain, but murdering people with words is literally how he makes his living.
posted by Artw at 1:22 PM on April 13, 2015 [20 favorites]

The slate, corb, look at the shit they put on the slate.

you could gather together all of these "what if we ignore 90% of the puppies' words and actions to put them in the most favorable possible light" comments and have a better work of speculative fiction than most of the slate

surely if novel chapters are fair game, that would be too
posted by kagredon at 1:23 PM on April 13, 2015 [13 favorites]

signal: I believe the profound awefullness of the slate is 100% by design, part of the big fuck you VD et al intend to send to the fan community they despise.

I'm perfectly willing to extend the benefit of the doubt and grant that it is more than plausible that Vox Day has terrible taste in fiction.
posted by Kattullus at 1:28 PM on April 13, 2015 [5 favorites]

This is just more moving of the goalposts (now it's not about ideology? C'mon...) , and all it does is change the puppies from being malicious and purposefully wrong to being malicious and uninformed. So I don't buy that as an attempt to excuse their rabidly reactionary behavior and associations. Hell, as others have pointed out, Big Names like Heinlein and Asimov and Clarke (just to name a few) all dealt with social justice issues and playing with the existing tropes in SFF before these knuckleheads were even born. So maaaaybe if they were stuck in a backwater, barely-out-of-Jim-Crow locale, they might not have been exposed to a LeGuin or Delany, or Stranger In A Strange Land would have been banned by local prudes. Still, even if I grant them all of what you claim, it just makes what they have done worse, not better. The responses from people like GRRM, Scalzi, Jemisin, and others have proven IMO beyond a shadow of a doubt that they're just parroting the same discriminatory, bullying behavior of horrible people in society at large. Not to mention the fact that there's all of the other horrible stuff like Torgersen's "boys will be boys" handwaving about VD, or Correia's admiration for GG and their tactics. In the end, their theory on "what SFF used to be" was debunked by the SFF community at large long before they engaged in their shitty crusade. We've already gone over it in this thread, and so thoroughly that it's pretty sad that it's still being trotted out to explain away their horrible behavior.
posted by zombieflanders at 1:34 PM on April 13, 2015 [6 favorites]

But at the same time, in a parallel universe, people my age were maybe getting science fiction from libraries with sharp librarians buying modern SF, or from what was new and hot in bookstores. Some of those stories probably involved criticism of race. A lot of the stories now may have those criticisms of race. I am culturally disconnected from my fan generation. I am a gray fanhead in a youngish body.

Corb, the New Wave began in the 60s, which happened 50 years ago. Michael Moorcock was skewering heroic fantasy with an albino antihero decades before I was born. Look up Ursula K LeGuin and the dates of publication of Earthsea and tell me if she's a young interloper.

I feel you because I grew up with Asimov and Verne and Wells and the rest of the old crusty farts, but so many interesting things have happened since, that it would be a pity to munch John Carter to the end of time.

(John Carter has been munched a lot, even when it's called Avatar and you get blue aliens instead of green martians. I liked the JC movie and would have liked the books a lot more if they weren't so previsible, but eh, not bad)
posted by sukeban at 1:35 PM on April 13, 2015 [4 favorites]

Michael Moorcock was skewering heroic fantasy with an albino antihero decades before I was born

Elric isn't a skewering of anything so far as I can tell, much less heroic fantasy which didn't even exist as a true genre for decades after Elric's appearance!
posted by Justinian at 1:40 PM on April 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

Wells, of course, being utterly free of an social or political implications in his work.
posted by Artw at 1:40 PM on April 13, 2015 [8 favorites]

much less heroic fantasy which didn't even exist as a true genre for decades after Elric's appearance!

As I understood it, heroic fantasy = Tolkienesque, while low fantasy = pulps (RE Howard, Leiber, and so on)
posted by sukeban at 1:42 PM on April 13, 2015

Justinian - you should hear Moorcock on Tolkien or Lewis sometime.
posted by Artw at 1:42 PM on April 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

heroic fantasy which didn't even exist as a true genre for decades after Elric's appearance!

Think Conan, Fafrhd, etc.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 1:43 PM on April 13, 2015

Wells, of course, being utterly free of an social or political implications in his work.

What is this thing about socialist stuff in my time machine adventure that you're saying sir
posted by sukeban at 1:43 PM on April 13, 2015 [8 favorites]

Tolkienesque would be High Fantasy, no?
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 1:44 PM on April 13, 2015

Conan and Fafhrd are not heroic fantasy, though.

you should hear Moorcock on Tolkien or Lewis sometime

Moorcock is on record explicitly denying Elric is influenced by Tolkien, though. That's not definitive but it's certainly suggestive.
posted by Justinian at 1:44 PM on April 13, 2015

(A more direct influence would, I submit, be Poul Anderson.)
posted by Justinian at 1:47 PM on April 13, 2015

Tolkienesque would be High Fantasy, no?

Actually, yeah, you're right.
posted by sukeban at 1:47 PM on April 13, 2015

at the very least, Torgersen is familiar with Asimov, Bradbury, and Herbert

I'm picturing him throwing The Martian Chronicles across the room as a teenager in disgust. I think "There Will Come Soft Rains" would be the final straw, though he'd also be very disappointed by "Ylla", which for some reason didn't culminate in some Martian-human sexytimes even though it TOTALLY could've. "Whither the dashing spacemen?! Whither the daring deeds?!" he'd cry.
posted by kagredon at 1:50 PM on April 13, 2015 [5 favorites]

Wikipedia appears to be on my side, at least: Heroic Fantasy

Initially undistinguished from the other early fantasies of the Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries; pulp writer Robert E. Howard wrote short stories about a Barbarian Hero named Conan; with tales of fantastic adventure with 'a king-sized dose of the supernatural.'[2]

posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 1:51 PM on April 13, 2015

if "Yes, Virginia" wins I want my previous comment nominated for short story next year
posted by kagredon at 1:52 PM on April 13, 2015 [5 favorites]

Let's pretend that I said "high fantasy" in my response to corb and stop this derail, please.
posted by sukeban at 1:53 PM on April 13, 2015 [3 favorites]

Subgenre discussions are usually garbage but in this case it's a light hearted reprieve.
posted by Artw at 1:55 PM on April 13, 2015

It's not like we're talking about whether something is House, Trance, House Trance, Trance House, Chicago Trance House, or whatever other identical sounding electronic music genre people try to claim is not identical.

I note that Correia is taking a break. Good timing! All this special pleading and whining must really take it out of a guy.
posted by Justinian at 1:58 PM on April 13, 2015

Maybe what he's actually saying that Ender's Game couldn't win the Hugo today, that fits the timeline.
posted by Artw at 2:02 PM on April 13, 2015

I also grew up on "classic" science fiction. My dad was in the Science Fiction Book Club when he was in high school in the early 1960s, and I plowed my way through Asimov, Heinlein, and Clifford Simak (am I the first person to mention him here?) starting in late elementary school. I loved Susan Calvin, and tried my hand at writing my own robot stories. But I really really loved Simak.

They Walked Like Men, like all body-snatcher books, has some obvious political overtones that I got when I was 13. But I really really loved (and still do) Way Station. It is the story of a veteran of the US Civil War who was recruited to run a way station on earth for traveling extra-terrestrials, in exchange for immortality. He provides food and rest for them and has conversations with them about the universe, but he obviously must isolate himself from his own species to do so. Again, the political implications to this story were obvious to me in junior high.

Then, my brother joined the Science Fiction Book Club himself, and suddenly there were new books in our house. Some were by the same authors of our childhood, (including Friday, which is still my favorite Heinlein (shutup haters)), but there were also great new things from folks like Greg Bear and Harlan Ellison and of course the beautiful Good Omens which introduced me to Gaiman and Pratchett. The world was getting bigger and more interesting. Women besides Susan Calvin could be central characters in stories. New stories were being told.

And then I became an adult. And I discovered Octavia Butler and Margaret Atwood and Connie Willis and now Scalzi and N.K. Jemisin and Sofia Samatar and Elizabeth Bear and brand new voices like my friend Monica Byrne, who just won the Tiptree for her astonishing The Girl in the Road. And I discovered John Brunner, who my dad had somehow completely missed and who to me is the most amazing "classic" science fiction of all because all of his speculation was right (except the thing about merkins). And I still love Caves of Steel and Way Station and I even still love Starship Troopers, but there keeps being new, exciting stuff that keeps the speculative and science in science fiction. And that's just amazing and I love it, and why would I want to give that up when I can keep reading the classic old stuff and also keep reading new stuff that keeps inspiring and exciting me?
posted by hydropsyche at 2:18 PM on April 13, 2015 [16 favorites]

It's weird... I'm enrolled in a pop lit course right now, covering sci-fi, and we're reading one representative work of the genre from each decade since the 50's, so it's Caves of Steel, Left Hand of Darkness, Rendezvous with Rama, Ender's Game, Parable of the Sower, Altered Carbon, and probably some assorted short stories in there that haven't been announced to us yet. Kinda hard not to see so-called SJW themes in most of this work, even the Asimov with its Leave It To Space Beaver dialogue (seriously, thousands of years in the future and people still say "gosh"?). I really can't understand where these dudes are coming from.
posted by palomar at 2:57 PM on April 13, 2015 [6 favorites]

Altered Carbon is an excellent but unexpected choice for its decade. I understand why Parable of the Sower was picked though I may have gone with Bujold or Vinge since I'm not sure how representative PotS is despite it being great.
posted by Justinian at 3:53 PM on April 13, 2015

Now I kind of want to read Acid House High Urban Fantasy. It was really big for about two weeks back in 1992. In a 4 block area of Minneapolis.
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:53 PM on April 13, 2015 [8 favorites]

That'd make Pulp the GRRM of music, bringing things back down to earth with a thud and telling us it's just 20000 people in a feild leaving bits of brain everywhere.
posted by Artw at 3:56 PM on April 13, 2015 [2 favorites]

I understand why Parable of the Sower was picked though I may have gone with Bujold or Vinge since I'm not sure how representative PotS is despite it being great.

I feel like that was probably the instructor's personal preferences winning out, but we'll see... there's honestly so much to choose from in each decade that this same course taught by another instructor with free reign of book choice would likely be mega different. In fact, going over previous course syllabi from the same instructor, the book choices have varied in previous years, but always with the same format of one book per decade from 1950 through today (with lots of supplemental reading on classification within SF and so much more!).
posted by palomar at 4:17 PM on April 13, 2015

Now I kind of want to read Acid House High Urban Fantasy. It was really big for about two weeks back in 1992. In a 4 block area of Minneapolis.

So, Emma Bull's War for the Oaks, then? Although that was from 1987.
posted by graymouser at 4:53 PM on April 13, 2015 [3 favorites]

Actually, Bone Dance, by Bull, is in some ways closer, and was from 1991. No seelie court, but post-apocalyptic dance clubs and post-human telepathic monsters, mixed with voudon and high weirdness.
posted by my dog is named clem at 5:01 PM on April 13, 2015 [3 favorites]

Now I kind of want to read Acid House High Urban Fantasy

That would pretty much be Jeff Noon, especially the Vurt series (rave-era Manchester reimagined as sf/urban fantasy).

[And now I want to put a feather in my mouth...]
posted by Pink Frost at 5:05 PM on April 13, 2015 [5 favorites]

I'm somewhat older than Larry Correia (HOW DID THAT HAPPEN I AM STILL YOUNG AND SPRIGHTLY DAMMIT), and am a second generation science fiction fan. And I read a lot. Like, really a lot. Always did and still do.

My introduction to the genre was "stuff from my parents' massive collection". Some of the writers I cut my teeth on were putting out classic work as early as the 30's -- Campbell, Weinbaum, del Rey.

A lot of them were certainly doing so by the 40's -- Sturgeon, Heinlein, Asimov, Kuttner, Moore, Clement, de Camp, Bradbury, Lem, Brown, van Vogt, Brackett, Merrill, Schmitz, Cordwainer Smith, Clarke, Bester. The 50's? Add in Kornbluth, Blish, Pohl, Norton, Anderson, Knight, Vance.

I mean, sure, I was reading later stuff, too, at the same time. Zelazny was a favorite -- and so was Le Guin, and Tiptree, and Powers, and Cherryh. I read Brunner, Dickson, Harrison, Ellison, Silverberg, Laumer, White, Farmer, Wilhelm, Herbert, McCaffrey, Niven, Lee, Vinge, the other Vinge, Varley, Russ, Brin, Martin, McIntyre, Morrow. (And yes, there were some I loved then but the authors or the works are troubling to me now -- Card, Bradley, and Anthony, among others.)

And I'm forgetting so many! And I haven't even started on Fantasy -- de Camp and Pratt! Collier! Lieber! Tolkien! Alexander! Hodgell! Lewis! McKillip! McKinley! Moorcock! Kurtz! AND I HAVEN'T EVEN HIT ADOLESCENCE YET!

Now ... some of it holds up better to me than others. Some is still great. Some I outgrew. Some I didn't get at the time and had to grow into. Some of it I can see flaws now that I couldn't then. Some flaws I can excuse. Some I can't. Some writers got better over time, some got worse, some had a peak somewhere in the middle.

But this is definitely, DEFINITELY, the stuff I grew up loving, too.

The Puppies' arguments do not hold up for me.

I see no conspiracy against old-school adventure stories in recent years. In fact, I see a lot of adventure stories winning the Hugos.

I see no conspiracy against conservative authors or works in recent years. Brandon Sanderson gets nominations and has taken home a couple of Hugos. I think Dan Wells has one for something. (Both of them authors I've read; in fact, I have a fat shelf of Sanderson, sitting comfortably nearby likely political opposites like Scalzi, Sandler, and Ryman.)

I do believe that authors who are well-liked in fandom and have prominent blogs get more Hugo nominations than authors who don't. That's not ideal, but also not a conspiracy.

I do believe a lot of (but by no means all) science fiction fans have liberal leanings and may like books that resonate with their opinions more than ones that don't. That's not a conspiracy either.

And I think most will give a fair shake to authors with opinions we disagree with. OK, for myself, yes I have limits on that. I'm reluctant to give my money to Orson Scott Card now. Or Dave Sim. Or Vox Day. But they are, you know, pretty damn extreme. I was fine with the Brin book where the villain was a radical environmentalist. And atheist, socialist me loved Declare, by Powers.

I do believe that there is a vocal portion of fandom that lights up with happiness when a good book comes out that acknowledges that more people exist than straight white men. Heck, I'm one of them, as my lists of books earlier in the thread probably indicates. (And I left Ellen Kushner off of it, gah, what was I thinking!) But that doesn't mean our brains fall out when we do. There are a whole bunch of books I left off those lists because I didn't think they were good enough to recommend. Others I waffled on before putting them on (Jane Fletcher pushes my specific buttons, but I'll readily admit she's a hit or miss author.)

Which brings me to my final disagreement with the Puppies. I do not think they are presenting us with unfairly kept down gems. Because I've been reading the stuff they put on their slate and an awful lot of it is shite. It reads like ... well, like stuff selected by someone so blinded by ideology that their brains fell out. And then voted on by people who didn't bother to read what they were voting for. Which I think is what happened.

Which is why I don't like the idea of a slate of any kind. But this slate in particular?

Is an insult to all those authors they claim to admire. All those authors I grew up loving, too.
posted by kyrademon at 5:08 PM on April 13, 2015 [17 favorites]

Vox Day says his totally-not-racist comments have been taken out of context. In context they’re even worse.
posted by Artw at 5:30 PM on April 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

Regarding how terrible the works are in the puppy slates: This isn't a new complaint, obviously. There were awful puppies last year, too. Yet for as much as Torgersen, Correia, and Day dump out words by the bucketful in response to criticism of the puppies, I still haven't seen them grapple with the accusation that hey, these books are really, really lousy. And I don't mean just claiming over and over that they're fun adventures, as if saying it will make it true. I mean actually acknowledging that people find these works to be crappy storytelling, and refuting with arguments why they're not.

Now, granted, I have very little patience for wading through their blogs to find such a response. So maybe I missed it. Is this a thing any of them have tried to address?
posted by Banknote of the year at 5:30 PM on April 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

Vox Day is doing a really creepy thing with Castalia House, trying to make it into a haven for traditionalist SFF that just happens to share his issues with "SJW"s. But considering that it publishes Beale's own work, I wonder if it shouldn't be considered a hate publisher. It's part of the white nationalist strategy that Leonard Zeskind in his book Blood and Politics (a definitive account of white nationalism) called "mainstreaming," trying to tack white nationalist beliefs into an existing reactionary right wing framework. Beale hasn't yet written a fantasy equivalent of The Turner Diaries yet, but his ideology is no less dangerous.
posted by graymouser at 5:56 PM on April 13, 2015 [6 favorites]

Sasquan Blows Up
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 6:30 PM on April 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

Those Sasquan number are seriously whack. Normally, you'll see about 1000 supporting members, overseas Worldcons often see about 2000, because of US voters who can't attend. (US Fandom is still the vast majority of Worldcon fandom.)

Sasquan is running basically 50/50 supporting/attending. It's setting up to be a very small Worldcon, in terms of who's actually there, but may be the largest US Worldcon ever, in terms of total members, and may even catch Loncon 3.

And it's obvious watching the graphs what is happening. There was a big burst of attendings last August -- that's Worldcon buyers buying for next year. There was a burst of supporting in February, that was the RPs buying in to steal the Hugo ballot.

In the last 12 day? 1300 supporting. That's fandom buying in to make a statement.
posted by eriko at 6:40 PM on April 13, 2015

Yeah, I've been expecting Sasquan to end up with a substantial cash surplus...
posted by Zed at 6:45 PM on April 13, 2015

Yet another breach with tradition, have the Puppets no shame.
posted by Joe in Australia at 6:53 PM on April 13, 2015

Well, 1300 x 40 = $52K, which, while not chump change, is not change-the-worldcon levels of money either. And you are required to send out all publications, so there are actual costs involved with a supporting membership.

But yeah, the $132K total in supporting they have right now is a big help to the budget, and a number of those will convert to attending -- probably not the two later pushes, but a number of the initial 1000 supporting members will convert once they figure out they can afford to go.
posted by eriko at 6:53 PM on April 13, 2015

FWIW, I went through the thread where Torgersen solicited Sad Puppy 3 recommendations, distilled them down as best I could, and added them as a second sheet to the spreadsheet I mentioned earlier. I then went through and added a column to the main sheet showing how many recommendations each nominee got from Torgersen's readers. There are a lot of zeroes.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 6:55 PM on April 13, 2015 [7 favorites]

Vox Day is doing a really creepy thing with Castalia House,

Something I haven't seen attention called to amidst all the other things to be angry with here. As bad form as I feel promoting a slate was, at least Torgerson showed the decency to leave himself off of the Sad Puppies slate.

Beale's Rabid Puppies slate featured himself twice and beyond that things published by his own company 7 times. (Sad Puppies' slate featured 3 Castalia House stories.)

I suspect no one's bothering to talk about it because, well, considered in context it's not like this makes him look like an incrementally worse human being. But if the bar weren't so high there, there'd be some good ranting to be had about how grossly bad form it was to promote a slate that self-serving.
posted by Zed at 7:03 PM on April 13, 2015 [5 favorites]

This makes me wonder: has Sasquan checked to see if the nominators are actual people? I mean, we can see that a lot of people are buying into the Worldcon now, but how easy is it to get 300 people to put down $40 at a time when the success of a slate is merely theoretical?
posted by Joe in Australia at 7:30 PM on April 13, 2015

Banknote of the year: "And I don't mean just claiming over and over that they're fun adventures, as if saying it will make it true. "

YOUR NEARLY-DEAD CHILD MEETING ST. NICHOLAS IN HEAVEN ISN'T A ROLLICKING SPACE ADVENTURE STORY? What do you mean it's a pedantic, patronizing kinder-catechism better-suited to the 1700s?

PS have more fremdscham, it's so bad. "I am not so impertinent as to dispute the tastes or judgment of the fans who ponied up the money and took the time to nominated me. They are my employers; their word is my law." GAAAAAAAH.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 9:05 PM on April 13, 2015 [14 favorites]

Re Eyebrows McGee quoting: "[The fans who nominated me] are my employers; their word is my law."

Um, Mr Wright? That was your outside voice.

(How long do you think would it take for one of the puppies to jump on it if any of the writers they see as being on the SJW side were to say something like this, MeFi? Rounded up to the nearest millisecond?)
posted by seyirci at 9:14 PM on April 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

Oh, Mr. Wright. Respects is earn, not shrilly claimed.
posted by Going To Maine at 10:00 PM on April 13, 2015 [2 favorites]

Vox Day's Involvement in the Sad Puppies Slate. A blogpost by Naomi Kritzer. I think she does a good job of unpacking the relationship between VD and the other puppies.
posted by Kattullus at 11:01 PM on April 13, 2015 [12 favorites]

I find it really weird that they repeatedly refer to NK Jemisin as "Nora Jemisin", as if referring to her by the name that she puts on her books would fail to remind readers to be sexist against her in addition to being racist. It's a small thing, and I think half the reason I notice it is because it's the same name as mine, but it strikes me as passive aggressive sexist dickery.
posted by NoraReed at 11:56 PM on April 13, 2015 [17 favorites]

And, we have a ruling. Via File 770, "Yes, Virgina..." is found to have been published in 2013 and is ineligible for the 2015 Hugos, and Jon Eno was found to have created no eligible works in 2014, so he's removed from the ballot. Replacing them are “The Day The World Turned Upside Down” by Thomas Olde Heuvelt in Novelette and Kirk DouPonce in Best Artist.
posted by eriko at 12:57 AM on April 14, 2015 [4 favorites]

And checking -- Kirk DouPonce is on the RP slate. "The Day The World Turned Upside Down" is on neither slate, so depending on how you feel, is either your 2015 Hugo Winner or is still getting No Awarded for lack of competition.
posted by eriko at 1:01 AM on April 14, 2015 [2 favorites]

From the John C. Wright link Eyebrows McGee just posted: "... [T]he numbers speak for themselves. We can take the Amazon rankings of books as a rough measure of the popularity of a work ... The numbers prove objectively that our suggested slate better represents the tastes of the SF public."

I just ...

1) Wow, the ginormous 0.27 difference in Amazon ratings between the Puppy novel picks and the Non-Puppy novel picks this year really convinces me that your the Puppy choices are much better regarded by all!

2) It's even more impressive when you realize that most of that difference comes from the fact that they slipped book 15 of a series onto their slate. I'm sure tons of people who hate the series stuck around to review book 15!

3) But sure, yeah, Amazon reviews are no doubt the best way to make these decisions. I'm going to call up science fiction on Amazon and sort by average customer review to see what the Hugo slate SHOULD have been this year! Here are the first five that come up with 2014 publication dates:

Transmission: V Plague Book 5 -- "With the virus mutating, new dangers appear that threaten a bloody end to the struggle for survival. With Rachel still missing, it's up to Major Chase to rescue her and reaffirm the alliance to bring down the Russian president."

Rise of the Alliance (The Frontiers Saga) (Volume 12) -- "Things finally seem to be coming together for Captain Scott and the Alliance, as he takes his forces on the offensive. However, the Jung may in turn give him more trouble than he bargained for."

The Fires of Atlantis (Purge of Babylon) (Volume 4) -- "The survivors’ radio broadcast has elicited surprising responses from around the globe. It might be the start of a resistance against the ghoul domination … if Lara can keep everyone alive long enough."

Slow Burn: Bleed, Book 6 -- "Zed and Murphy are trying to find their surviving friends to finally get out of Austin and head west to safety, away from the zombie hordes. But trouble, their perpetual companion, dogs them at every turn as they discover that infected humans aren’t the only source of mortal danger."

Zombie Fallout 8: An Old Beginning -- "Mike and his family escaped a vast zombie horde to find themselves imprisoned by a clandestine group that seeks global domination by the most nefarious means possible. Help is coming, in the form of a 500-year-old PopTart-loving vampire named Tommy."

So there you go. These books were ROBBED. I am shocked that the Puppies dared to nominate The Dark Between the Stars, with a mere 4.4 rating (from a piddly 52 reviews), when Transmission: V Plague Book 5 has a 4.9 with more than twice that many reviewers! What of Transmission: V Plague Book 5, Sad Puppies? WHY DID YOU STEAL THIS NOMINATION FROM TRANSMISSION: V PLAGUE BOOK 5?
posted by kyrademon at 1:47 AM on April 14, 2015 [16 favorites]

ChurchHatesTucker, thanks for doing that count so I don't have to wade through the thread. I see there are zeros by Abyss and Apex, and Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine. Did they go to the Semiprozine Directory and take two off the top?
posted by penguinliz at 2:46 AM on April 14, 2015 [2 favorites]

And via the comments on File 770, the whining has already begun! From VD himself:

"The fact that OLD MAN’S WAR was deemed eligible for Best Novel three years after being openly self-published on John Scalzi’s website while 'Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus' is disqualified is further evidence that Worldcon has one rule for its approved SJWs and another for everyone else."

(Because despite taking over the Hugo nominations process for editors, Beale apparently doesn't think a professionally edited book is substantially different from a self-published version of the same story.)
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 3:58 AM on April 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

Wait, Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish, is 'Yes, Virginia' officially disqualified and off the ballot now?
posted by Andrhia at 4:55 AM on April 14, 2015

Yes, Virginia is off, his other story was deemed substantially changed and therefore eligible.
posted by jeather at 5:09 AM on April 14, 2015

Worldcon has one rule for its approved SJWs and another for everyone else

Vox Day is a fucking idiot. I mean, not just because I disagree with everything he says, but because he is actually stupid and fails at basic comprehension of things he is saying and doing.

In 1966, Dune beat The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and won the Hugo for Best Novel. In 1967, Moon won the award. Because there are different rules for a serialized novel, than for a short story appearing for the first time in an anthology. A serialized novel can be eligible when it is serialized, and again when it is published as a standalone novel. It actually applied to both Herbert and Heinlein in this case, since both novels had been serialized and both won their award in the last year that they were eligible. This is important, because a novel that is serialized may get much wider attention when it is published in book form. Certainly this was the case with Old Man's War. Not understanding this and yet playing science fiction publisher is a sure sign of the Dunning-Kruger Effect at work.
posted by graymouser at 5:32 AM on April 14, 2015 [7 favorites]

There will be. The fact that OLD MAN’S WAR was deemed eligible for Best Novel three years after being openly self-published on John Scalzi’s website while “Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus” is disqualified is further evidence that Worldcon has one rule for its approved SJWs and another for everyone else.

Notice how it’s ALWAYS the same name that keeps appearing at the center of the Hugo-related controversies, from award pimpage to Guardian articles to disqualifications? Do you seriously still think it is mere coincidence? (VD, at the File770 link)

No, it's because you keep bringing him up! It isn't coincidence, it's your weird obsession with Scalzi.

And also, the other Wright story which had been published earlier and was republished in 2014 was in fact eligible! Why is there one rule for approved SJWs like JCW and one for puppies like JCW? Unfair!

(I don't totally understand why Old Man's War was self-published, then published with Tor and eligible that year, but The Martian was not, though.)
posted by jeather at 5:50 AM on April 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

As far as I can tell, it wouldn't fall under the serialization rule -- Old Man's War was serialized too long before the award it was nominated for. It very well might, however, fall under the "substantial change" rule -- e.g. why two different versions of Dune were nominated for best novel, once in 1964 and once in 1966.

If there were substantial differences between the serialized version of Old Man's War that appeared on the website and the published version, it was completely fair game to nominate -- Just as Kratman's Big Boys Don’t Cry and Wright's One Bright Star to Guide Them are still on the ballot, despite appearing before; they were judged to have changed enough.

If the serialized version of Old Man's War and the published book are mostly identical, then in fact I would probably agree its being on the ballot was a mistake and it shouldn't have been eligible.
posted by kyrademon at 6:07 AM on April 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

I see there are zeros by Abyss and Apex, and Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine. Did they go to the Semiprozine Directory and take two off the top?

ASIM's Simon Petrie seems to think so:

I cannot help but feel that OSC’s IGMS was probably, for reasons of hierarchy and politics, the first preference of the slate organisers, and that ASIM and Abyss & Apex were there perhaps merely to lend some semblance of impartiality to the Sad Puppies’ list of recommendations, and may have owed as much to their position in the alphabet — you don’t have to trawl far through Ralan’s to find us — as to their merits as purveyors of fine speculative fiction.

posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 6:22 AM on April 14, 2015

I'm not finding a statement from the 2006 Administrator about the work, but given that the book that Tor released would have been edited, I'm willing to assume it was changed enough to qualify as a different work. I don't have fair copies of the 2002 and 2005 texts of the work to be able to judge myself.

I will note the only reason it made the ballot was that Neil Gaiman pulled his nomination for Anasasi Boys, allowing OMW to slip in to the final slot, just ahead of Dan Simmons Olympos, but if you want to see how close it can be, the orginal 4-7 slots had 47, 46, 45 and 44 nominations.

The other four that year? Charlie Stross, Accelerando, Ken MacLeod, Learning The World, George R. R. Martin, A Feast For Crows and the winner, Robert Charles Wilson, Spin.

Scalzi, Stross, and GRRM. It's practically a thread replay. I suspect both Stross and MacLeod did well in 2006 thanks to 2005 nominators, the 2005 Worldcon was in Glasgow. I know why RCW won -- Spin was an amazing book, and it won in a walk. (Last place? GRRM!)

Scalzi did win the Campbell that year. That was also the year I first met Scalzi, Cory Doctorow introduced me to him, and when Cory gave me an early copy of what would become Little Brother, Scalzi said "Sign that, dude, if you become famous, that's *bank* for him!"

Heh. Of course I still have it.
posted by eriko at 6:39 AM on April 14, 2015 [6 favorites]

A serialized novel can be eligible when it is serialized, and again when it is published as a standalone novel

That was, at one time, literally true, but is not long true. A serialized work is eligible when completed, and yes, we have trouble with things like "A Wheel of Time" which was both a number of eligible independent works and arguably a single serialized work. See also "The Lord of The Rings", "The Baroque Cycle", and for future consideration, "A Song of Ice and Fire."

But once a given work is nominated as a serial, it can't just be collected into a single work and become eligible again. If the text of the 2005 Novel Old Man's War was substantially the same as the 2002 serial "Old Man's War", then VD is correct, that work was not eligible.

I suspect, thanks to the edit process, it was very different, and given that it didn't win, I'm not too worried about it. Scalzi himself is currently recovering from traveling back from Australia and a leg injury received there, and has made it known that while he has comments about everything, he's basically on hold until he actually gets home and settled, because there are far more important things than the Hugos, like the dog, the cats, the house, the ukuleles, and most importantly, his daughter and wife. They come first, the rest of the list is 2nd and the Hugos are *way* behind that list, as are things like Whatever, MeFi, or anything else on the Internet.

As, of course, it should be. Because say what you will about Mefi's Own jscalzi, this is a man who knows what's important in life, and while that shiny rocket award is rather cool, it has nothing on his family.

Yes, we have discussed, briefly, a "Best Serial Work" Hugo, and it quickly fails the basic test -- can you show me at least 5 (and I personally demand 10) worthy nominees every year for the last few years?
posted by eriko at 7:03 AM on April 14, 2015

The most astounding thing to me about all of this is that so many people, on both sides, care so much about all this. I've been a fan of fantasy and science fiction since grade school in the 80s and I never realized so many people saw the Hugos as this important. This isn't a judgement on if you should or not, just an expression of I had no freaking idea so many people, clearly smart and engaged people, were so invested in this pillar of the fandom and the associated seemingly arcane democratic voting rules surrounding it.
posted by Drinky Die at 7:30 AM on April 14, 2015

Larry responds - mostly to the effect that SJWs totes do exist and the Hugos are totally biased because John Scalzi was mean about the puppies last attempt to scam them failing.
posted by Artw at 7:40 AM on April 14, 2015

Aside: Since everybody and their bot has bought a supporting membership, it should be noted that 2017 Site Selection balloting has opened today.

Voting in Site Selection is not free. It's $40 US, SAIT. The result of this payment, however, is that you become a supporting member of whomever wins the 2017 Worldcon. This will enable you to:

1) Nominate in the 2016, 2017 and 2018 Hugo Awards.
2) Vote in the 2017 Hugo Awards final ballot.
3) Vote in the 2019 Worldcon Site Selection.
4) (tentative) Approve constitutional amendments ratified by the 2016 business meeting (assuming 2+1 ratifies this year.)
5) Receive all publications of the 2017 Worldcon.
6) And, for the first 90 days after the vote, be allowed to covert your supporting membership to an attending membership for the absolute lowest rate possible.

If you don't care, you may vote No Preference. This means you don't care, and you become a supporting member of the winner. If you are a bot, the rules require you to vote No Preference, but you are still welcome to join! If you hate all the choices, you may vote "None of the Above." Should that win, the 2015 Business Meeting will be required to decide what to do about the 2017 Worldcon. Heh. I recommend voting NotA first just to scare them. You can also write in a vote, but that candidate is required to file paperwork certifying a valid site for the Worldcon before the close of voting.

Voting is by Single Transferable Vote, just like the Hugo Vote, simplest way is to rank the sites you feel are acceptable in order, then "NotA", then if you care to, rank the rest. However, do *not* rank No Preference if you have still have preferences, because the moment No Preference is ranked higher than anybody who hasn't been eliminated, your ballot becomes NP and is set aside as such.

Site Selection is by paper ballot (ht to DC17 for the online copy) or by emailing a filled out copy of the pdf as a pdf. There's no direct online voting (there needs to be a strong audit trail, because we need to present a stack of money and a list of members to the winner.) You may pay the $40 online, apparently, but that's not up yet, as far as I can tell. Just send a check, I know, it's retro, or wait for the payment. Apparently, you'll get a token number, you can then fill that in. They promise to *try* to keep your secret ballot secret, but when they go to print it out, someone might see it.

Our four (!) bidders, in order of filing, because that's how Sasquan has them listed:

DC in 17 (Washington, DC, USA, Aug 16-20)
Nippon in 2017 (Shizuoka City, Japan, Aug 24-28)
Montreal in 2017 (Montreal, QC, Canada, Aug 31-Sep 4)
Helsinki in 2017 (Helsinki, Finland, Aug 9-13)

Historically, DC has seen two prior Worldcons, Discon ('63) and Discon II ('74) as well as the nearby ConStellation ('83) and BucConneer ('98), both in Baltimore, MD.

Japan has had only one, Nippon2007 in, well, 2007, in Yokohama.

Montreal has also had one, Anticipation, in 2009.

Helsinki has not yet hosted. They last bid two years ago, losing in a three way race between the Orlando, Helsinki and Spokane bids, the winner is this year's convention, Sasquan.

For those wanting more details of the bids, you have the bidsite links above, and Sasquan has published copies of the bid's filed paperwork on their site selection page.

Now back to your regularly scheduled Hugo turmoil.

posted by eriko at 7:40 AM on April 14, 2015 [5 favorites]

And, I'm going to give another shout out to a DC fan whom we lost this year, because she was one of the great conrunners, and the DC17 bid is much lessened by her passing. Farewell, Peggy Rae Sapienza, you followed the Great Rule to the highest: Do Good, Avoid Evil, Throw A Room Party.
posted by eriko at 7:43 AM on April 14, 2015 [6 favorites]

Larry responds - mostly to the effect that SJWs totes do exist and the Hugos are totally biased because John Scalzi was mean about the puppies last attempt to scam them failing.

If anybody still doubts that Correia has gone full 'gator, notice how all his rant is missing is an MSPaint picture with red arrows linking Worldcon to DIGRA. I especially love how he uses the sealioning comic in the exact opposite of what it actually means. Oh, and how he can't actually pinpoint any of the Worldcon '11 nastiness he alleged, which as far as I've been able to determine isn't backed up by any of the accounts of his fellow panel members or attendees. I would assume at least Dan Wells would have backed him up, but his roundup of the con (and everyone else's) says basically the same thing Correia's original glowing report does.
posted by zombieflanders at 8:00 AM on April 14, 2015 [5 favorites]

VD: "[blah blah blah] further evidence that Worldcon has one rule for its approved SJWs and another for everyone else."

If there really was two sets of rules, one for regular people and one for rampaging assholes actively seeking to damage the awards, I would be very okay with that. Even though this is just the people pushing the limits of the rules getting extra scrutiny, and Day is smart enough to know that.

Drinky Die: I'm surprised by how strong my reaction is, too. I think for me it's that for years I've used Hugo nominees and winners to guide what I read. By now, I'm well-connected enough to fandom to find good stuff even if the Hugos turn to crap. But the me of 10 years ago wasn't, and I want the new fans of today to have meaningful Hugos. That, and how the puppies don't want SF/F to write about people like me.
posted by Banknote of the year at 8:01 AM on April 14, 2015 [3 favorites]

I don't really think OMW did something weird or wrong or that Scalzi was at the time part of some fictional cabal to get himself nominated, I just don't entirely understand why his book was allowed and The Martian not. Maybe The Martian wasn't edited as thoroughly? Maybe it wasn't as clear then what to do with self-published stuff and the rules have been clarified since.

The one story I do remember being disqualified was actually by someone who would be considered part of the cabal, Mary Robinette Kowal's The Lady Astronaut of Mars. (It got on the next year's ballot and won. Presumably those two cancel each other out, cabal-wise.)
posted by jeather at 8:12 AM on April 14, 2015

I don't think we know if The Martian was eligible or not, all the discussion I have seen has been assuming it wouldn't be, but I don't think we have an official answer. The only way to get a definitive ruling would be for it to get enough nominations to make the ballot but be disqualified by the admins, and we don't know if that happened until they release the full details after the awards are announced. But I think this is going to be increasingly common as publishers pick up more work which has been previously self-published, and determining whether a work has undergone substantial changes is going to be tricky and subjective and determined by the Hugo admin at the time.
posted by penguinliz at 8:20 AM on April 14, 2015

Hey, looks like some of the Puppies are deleting embarrassing things! Too bad that’s not how the internet works. If you know of more, let me know! I’ll add them to this post.
posted by Artw at 8:26 AM on April 14, 2015 [12 favorites]

I had no freaking idea so many people, clearly smart and engaged people, were so invested in this pillar of the fandom and the associated seemingly arcane democratic voting rules surrounding it.

I love it because of the arcane democratic voting rules. It's the only democratic process I can participate in that uses one of the more interesting voting systems, so it's great to see it in action. While what happened this year is unfortunate and sad, I think it's at least useful to see a potential fail point in action with this year's nominations, too.
posted by asperity at 8:33 AM on April 14, 2015 [3 favorites]

I find it really weird that they repeatedly refer to NK Jemisin as "Nora Jemisin", as if referring to her by the name that she puts on her books would fail to remind readers to be sexist against her in addition to being racist.

It's really easy to find examples of people who like Jemisin and her work calling her Nora Jemisin. It's pretty common in fandom to use the name a writer uses in everyday life instead of byline when the difference is well-known, like Stan Robinson, or Chip Delany, or Lois Bujold. So this in particular I'm not finding sinister.
posted by Zed at 8:38 AM on April 14, 2015 [6 favorites]

Wright is such a goddamn coward. Not just deleting his Korra comments, but he damn well knew his story wasn't eligible, that's why he deleted it from his site. If he sincerely thought it should be eligible, he would have left it up proudly.

I'm not going to say he's a worse person than Beale, because Beale is a truly awful person, but he manages to be even more pathetic than Beale. Someone described him as Alfrid, and I think that's right. Alfrid to Beale's Master.
posted by tavella at 8:38 AM on April 14, 2015 [3 favorites]

Someone described him as Alfrid, and I think that's right. Alfrid to Beale's Master.

I had him pegged as Grima Wormtounge.
posted by eriko at 9:03 AM on April 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

Nah, Beale doesn't have the chops to be Saruman. Hell, Grima Wormtongue at least managed to subvert a king. Pathetic little Alfrid is just about right for Wright.
posted by tavella at 9:07 AM on April 14, 2015

Pathetic little Alfrid is just about right for Wright.

Upstaging the primary characters by doing trash drag?
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 9:09 AM on April 14, 2015

Hey, looks like some of the Puppies are deleting embarrassing things! Too bad that’s not how the internet works. If you know of more, let me know! I’ll add them to this post.

The hypocrisy of "information wants to be free!" glibertarians who are alleging various nefarious conspiracies to suppress them simultaneously attempting to scrub damning references from the internet is astounding.
posted by zombieflanders at 9:32 AM on April 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

Hey, looks like some of the Puppies are deleting embarrassing things! Too bad that’s not how the internet works. If you know of more, let me know! I’ll add them to this post.

If you read the comments to that, it's even better: Wright shows up to accuse Dara Korra'ti of libel. Because she. . . linked/quoted something he wrote on purpose in public, I guess? That is not how libel works, good sir!

(Full disclosure: Dara is a personal friend of mine, a close personal friend for decades now. But I would find this hilarious regardless.)
posted by KathrynT at 10:09 AM on April 14, 2015 [13 favorites]

Sasquan meetup thread
posted by kagredon at 10:17 AM on April 14, 2015 [2 favorites]

Angular?

Damn those SJWs of Tindalos.
posted by Drastic at 10:42 AM on April 14, 2015 [2 favorites]

I wish my efforts were angular. Maybe if I work really hard my efforts will become many-angled or even noneuclidean...
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 10:44 AM on April 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

Maybe if I work really hard my efforts will become many-angled or even noneuclidean...

Well, they've certainly gone hyperbolic.
posted by eriko at 10:44 AM on April 14, 2015

I wouldn't say they're THAT fast.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 10:45 AM on April 14, 2015

I can't decide if it goes against my ethics or not to buy a supporting membership just so I can vote no award in any category I can, but damn if these fools don't make that option seem more and more appealing every day.
posted by palomar at 10:45 AM on April 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

So, after my initial outrage at just how bad some of the Puppy nominations are ... I'm personally going to let that aspect drop.

There are people on the Puppy side who believe that Ancillary Justice is terrible, no one really liked it and it won with an "affirmative action" vote.

Do I think that makes them crazy people from the crazy planet? Yes.

Do I think they are right that the people who voted for it did not really like it? No.

Do I think they believe that Ancillary Justice is terrible? Well ... I mean ... That's their opinion. It is LITERALLY their opinion. I cannot tell them, no, you actually did like it.

But the flip side of that is they really should be willing to believe I ACTUALLY did like it if I say I did. One of my resentments in this is that they keep saying I don't.

And that works both ways. If they say they love, I don't know, "Burly Man-Man and His Space Harem", they think it is the best book ever, well. OK. I kind of have to take their word for it.

If a majority of Hugo voters pick "Burly Man-Man and His Space Harem" for best novel because they love it, well ... that's how a fan vote works, I guess.

My real objection is to a slate.

A nomination slate allowed a minority of voters, through a quirk of the rules, to hijack the process and shut out works the majority would have preferred.

A slate encouraged voters to vote for many things they have not read and/or are not familiar with, which I believe is contrary to the spirit of the nominations, and I think there is significant evidence that this happened this year.

But I'm not going to argue that the slate let in works that are "bad". I will take people's word that someone, somewhere likes them. And the separate issue of whether or not I like them is not really a concern in how I'm going to vote, because I am voting against the slate concept.

That probably will make them lump me in with exactly the kind of people they rail about. "See, here is someone who admits they are not judging all the Hugo nominees on their merits!" But they'd be wrong about why. It isn't about their ideology, or the ideology of their choices. It's because I think what they did was fundamentally undemocratic and wrong.

"Within the rules", sure, but wrong.
posted by kyrademon at 11:11 AM on April 14, 2015 [7 favorites]

But I'm not going to argue that the slate let in works that are "bad". I will take people's word that someone, somewhere likes them.

I think the two are slightly different questions. I like a lot of books; I don't think they're all excellent, best of the year. And although I don't always like books that are often thought of as good books, I can usually see what qualities they have that other people like.
posted by jeather at 11:24 AM on April 14, 2015 [3 favorites]

Damn those SJWs of Tindalos.

Talk about your rabid puppies....
posted by GenjiandProust at 11:27 AM on April 14, 2015 [2 favorites]

Here is Wright in that deleting embarrassing things post: "I am under no obligation to assist you in your libels. You go to such angular and absurd efforts to portray me in an unfavorable light: why not portray me as I am?"

Holy socks, he uses Howard Chaykin's version of The Shadow as his comment avatar. Doesn't that just speaks volumes about how he wishes to portray himself...

"Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of SJWs? John C. Wright knows! A ha ha ha!!"
posted by Doktor Zed at 11:33 AM on April 14, 2015 [4 favorites]

Also being the same age of Corria, with the New Wave receeding on the bookshelves as I grew up and the hot new kids of Cyberpunk popping up,

Even worse with Brad Torgensen, only a few months older than me, which makes him about a decade younger than the New Wave and way way too young, even if like me he started out reading science fiction half a century old already, to get all grumpy about a golden age he never knew nor ever existed.

He keeps banging on about being betrayed by science fiction when the kind of sf he supposedly used to read wasn't being published anymore since before he was born, if it had ever.
posted by MartinWisse at 11:47 AM on April 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

I don't really think OMW did something weird or wrong or that Scalzi was at the time part of some fictional cabal to get himself nominated, I just don't entirely understand why his book was allowed and The Martian not. Maybe The Martian wasn't edited as thoroughly? Maybe it wasn't as clear then what to do with self-published stuff and the rules have been clarified since.

I think it's a combination of the two: self publishing hadn't quite taken off to the extent that the Hugos had to worry about it and publishing meant still being published by a proper publisher, while Kevin Standlee, Hugo rules lawyer extra ordinaire, thinks it was the revisions rule that it qualified under.

The Martian was said not to qualify by people who knew the Hugo rules inside and out, but hasn't been put to the test because it didn't gain enough nominations.

The one story I do remember being disqualified was actually by someone who would be considered part of the cabal, Mary Robinette Kowal's The Lady Astronaut of Mars. (It got on the next year's ballot and won. Presumably those two cancel each other out, cabal-wise.)

That story was disqualified because it was first published as an audio story and those were only eligible for the best related works category. Therefore its print publication was its first official publication under the Best Novel/Novella/Novelette/Short Story rules. If I'm not mistaken there are proposals to let audio fiction compete in these categories as well.
posted by MartinWisse at 11:57 AM on April 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

The Martian was said not to qualify by people who knew the Hugo rules inside and out, but hasn't been put to the test because it didn't gain enough nominations

And possibly didn't get enough nominations because people were told it wasn't eligible.

Which is a real shame, because that was a hella-fun old fashioned SF yarn. The kind of book I recommend for people who aren't that into SF.
posted by suelac at 12:31 PM on April 14, 2015

If I'm not mistaken there are proposals to let audio fiction compete in these categories as well.

It's up for ratification this year, the motion title is, IIRC, "A story is a story."

The Martian was said not to qualify by people who knew the Hugo rules inside and out, but hasn't been put to the test because it didn't gain enough nominations.

Fundamentally, this is just a matter of people time. First you let nominations happen. You move mis-categorized works into the correct category, if possible, you then run the count. You check your first five, if you see no reason to doubt their eligibility, you call them up and see if they accept the nomination. If they do not, you move up however many are needed, test their eligibility, and call them. Once you have 5 accepted nominations, you stop, simply because this has cost you a bunch of time already, there are something like 14 more categories to do nowadays, you're not getting paid for this and you have a real life as well as this job.

So, nobody blanket verifies eligibility, we only check if it needs to be checked.
posted by eriko at 12:40 PM on April 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

I think I started reading science fiction when I could pick out the book with the spaceship on the cover. (BTW, I have an undying soft spot for the V2-style rocket design that's used by the Hugo trophy.) And children's science fiction/fantasy that I encountered once I graduated to books without illustrations included such lovely optimistic pieces as:

* John Christopher's Tripods (and other post-apocalyptic works of kids left alone)
* Susan Cooper's Dark is Rising, which was dark and spooky modern fantasy
* Le Guin's Earthsea, which was Lathe of Heaven for kids
* Lloyd Alexander's Chronicles of Prydian, with that whole thing of stuffing people in cauldrons.
* L'Engle's Time Quintet.

I grew into Piers Anthony, who's just creepy in other ways, and Stephen King, who was the contemporary horror/fantasy god at the time. (I think King, Straub, and Barker had a big influence on urban fantasy of both mythopoetic and monster-hunter flavors.)
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 12:42 PM on April 14, 2015 [2 favorites]

Even worse with Brad Torgensen, only a few months older than me, which makes him about a decade younger than the New Wave and way way too young, even if like me he started out reading science fiction half a century old already, to get all grumpy about a golden age he never knew nor ever existed.

I hate to read into things too much, but I think Torgensen's position probably has more to do with alienation from his wartime service than with his actual generation. It's something I know well and have experienced personally - you come back from years of war, so you are actually culturally separated from the home you left behind, but also while you're away, you idealize everything about America, and there's no way the real thing can match up. There definitely can be a sense - there was for most guys I knew - that while they were away, the America they loved had been destroyed from within. It didn't even matter what their politics actually was. Left wing vets were convinced that all the police shootings were suddenly new and had never happened before they left, right wing vets were convinced that communism had taken a bite out of the heart of America while they were sleeping. Everyone missed the home they had built up for themselves to keep them sane; the mental image that focused upon America as another generation kept photos in their helmets.

So maybe he started reading science fiction half a century old. Maybe he went to a couple cons and had a great time. And then he went away, and when he came back, everything looked like it was in flames - because the world he'd idealized hadn't existed for a long time.

I also see a problem with booting authors or no-awarding them based on personal politics. But I don't think it's something that has just sprung up like magic in the last three years.
posted by corb at 2:17 PM on April 14, 2015 [6 favorites]

corb: I also see a problem with booting authors or no-awarding them based on personal politics.

I agree in most cases, though I'd make an exception for Vox Day.

However, I think it's perfectly acceptable to vote No Award when authors have gamed the system. Playing unfair should have consequences.
posted by Kattullus at 2:32 PM on April 14, 2015 [7 favorites]

It's not actually that complicated. The people actively engaged in booting people because of personal politics are the sad and rabid puppies. We've seen the stats, we've seen the personal statements from the puppies engaged in the booting and we've seen the total absence of statements from the alleged SWJs who the puppies allege have been doing booting of their own.
(In other words, cite or it didn't happen. "I think" and "I don't think" don't count. In other other words, fish or cut bait.)

As for not making the puppies feel welcome despite all their "angst" - it's really simple. Basic primary-school playground politics, in fact:*
There's a group of kids in the playground making a great big circle and inviting everyone to play with them. Wheeee! They like making friends!
There's another group of kids who think all the other kids aren't as good as they are, and some of them even put their hands on their hips and yell that the other kids should be punished for the immoral scum that they are. Gosh, that's really mean!
Now, if one of those mean superior kids walks up and punches a kid from the circle in the nose - and then another one, and then another one, the appropriate response is not for the circle to be kind to them and show them that they are still special.
What happens is that the kid in question gets a stiff time out and a lecture about how hitting people is not nice, and they are told that they will not be welcome back in the playground until they have agreed not to hit people. Or incidentally, say mean things to people who want everyone to come and play. It doesn't matter if you are very sad or very lonely or don't think other people are as good as you are, you aren't allowed to punch other people in the face. It's a learning experience - thou shalt not be an entitled and punchy little prick, and if you are, your recess privileges are taken away until you learn how to behave. And if you have been punched because you like to make lots and lots of friends, you have just had a lesson in how to stand up to bullies!
Yay! Everybody wins!

*This works for the Vox Dei SWJs-do-it rebuttal as well. Even more so.
posted by tabubilgirl at 2:51 PM on April 14, 2015 [7 favorites]

maybe Richard Wayne Gary Wayne kept him in a bunker for 16 years and the only book down there was Starship Troopers

we just don't know
posted by kagredon at 2:52 PM on April 14, 2015 [5 favorites]

Here is Wright in that deleting embarrassing things post: "I am under no obligation to assist you in your libels. You go to such angular and absurd efforts to portray me in an unfavorable light: why not portray me as I am?"

THEY ARE SO BAD AT WRITING

this is like a cross between how I wrote when I was 12 and trying to sound smart and how I talk now when I'm pretending not to be drunk
posted by NoraReed at 2:54 PM on April 14, 2015 [18 favorites]

I agree in most cases, though I'd make an exception for Vox Day.

However, I think it's perfectly acceptable to vote No Award when authors have gamed the system. Playing unfair should have consequences.

I mean, I guess it might be a tougher call if any of them could win on merit, but hey, guess what?
posted by Artw at 2:54 PM on April 14, 2015 [5 favorites]

you come back from years of war, so you are actually culturally separated from the home you left behind

I'm sure Torgensen probably believes that SF based on this premise could never receive an award!
posted by Justinian at 3:05 PM on April 14, 2015 [13 favorites]

Ugh, fine. I bought a supporting membership, only because a friend said he'd do it if I did it and if we agreed to actually read at least some of every single publication nominated. So I'm in. I thought the 50 Shades trilogy was the worst reading experience of my life but I'm pretty sure this is going to blow that right out of the water. Sigh.
posted by palomar at 3:14 PM on April 14, 2015 [9 favorites]

Hey wait I have an idea. Who's up for a virtual meetup, where we wait for the first day of packets and then read the short stories at least with a drinking game on Chat?
posted by corb at 3:15 PM on April 14, 2015 [11 favorites]

you should film your face reading it and then make gifs of the expressions you make

we've gotta get some entertainment out of this steaming pile of conservative hawkshit
posted by NoraReed at 3:15 PM on April 14, 2015 [2 favorites]

Do you get credit for reading the Virginia thing?
posted by Artw at 3:18 PM on April 14, 2015

I mean, I guess it might be a tougher call if any of them could win on merit, but hey, guess what?

Torgersen's "The Chaplain's Legacy" (a nominee last year courtesy of Sad Puppies 2) was a perfectly readable story. Correia's Monster Hunter International showed a genuine talent for action scenes. I found a lot of what wasn't action to be clunky, but hey -- good thing it was mostly action scenes. And it was a first novel.

I'm not saying either left me personally excited to seek out more of their work, but they were good enough that I wouldn't rule out that either of them could have won a Hugo in time. Seriously.

Y'know, if they hadn't gone the show contempt for all of Worldcon fandom route instead.
posted by Zed at 3:19 PM on April 14, 2015 [3 favorites]

Gene Roddenberry flew almost 100 combat missions during WWII. Gene Wolfe served in Korea. Joe Haldeman fought in Vietnam. And yet all of them didn't turn into obnoxious douchenozzles who are cool with blatantly hating on women and PoC and LGBT people. For the most part, they went in the opposite direction. And FWIW, even though it's not related to SFF, my dad came out of his time in the Army a socialist firebrand. Being in the military isn't an excuse or an explanation, nor should one's experience be used to universalize how it affects others.
posted by zombieflanders at 3:19 PM on April 14, 2015 [9 favorites]

I second corb's motion. Esp. if it involves shots.
posted by eriko at 3:20 PM on April 14, 2015 [4 favorites]

That's why I said it affects people differently, zombieflanders - one person alienated for example might become a socialist firebrand to try to get back the world he thinks could be, while another becomes super conservative. The point is the alienation and focus, not how it turned out.
posted by corb at 3:20 PM on April 14, 2015 [2 favorites]

Esp. if it involves shots.

If it involves shots we may end up dead.
posted by corb at 3:23 PM on April 14, 2015 [3 favorites]

David Gerrold fires all phasers, and on Torgerson in particular:

I've seen a half-century of history in this field, some of it good, some worth serious head-scratching. I've seen people make horrendous mistakes. I've seen others rise to the challenge. I've seen this community raise thousands of dollars for good causes and thousands of pints of blood at conventions all over the nation. Fans are accepting and inclusive -- much more so than almost any other group I've ever been a part of. (Yeah, some fans are jerks -- but most fans are not.)

But back to that old man thing -- I get invited to conventions as a guest and I enjoy going, but I'm well aware that I represent the past -- part of the tradition that the community is built on. All these new writers, people whose names I'm still learning, people whose works I'm still discovering -- they're the future of this community. And for the most part, it looks like a very exciting future. I hope I live long enough to see some of these new sparks mature into bright stars. I love what they're inventing.

This year -- this stuff, this little turd in the punch bowl -- the community will survive it. Whatever happens, the Hugo will survive. With an asterisk, perhaps. (Maybe we'll hand out official asterisks with the trophies this year.) But the one thing that is growing more and more likely ... the architects of this squabble will have indelibly damaged themselves in the eyes of the SF community. There are invitations and acknowledgments that will never be offered -- not because it's a blacklist, but because nobody wants to hang out with assholes.

And if that's "unpersoning," then it's self-inflicted.

Whine all you want, Brad. It won't work. I learned it by the time I was five. I never got anything I wanted by whining -- so I stopped wasting energy and learned how to work for results the old-fashioned way.

But then, what do I know about any of this? It's always the young turks who know better, right?

Tell me again how Star Trek wasn't about social justice...?

posted by zombieflanders at 3:32 PM on April 14, 2015 [19 favorites]

If it involves shots we may end up dead.

It is far, far, better thing I do than I have ever done; it is a far, far better consuite that I go to than I have ever known.
posted by eriko at 3:35 PM on April 14, 2015 [9 favorites]

I hate to read into things too much, but I think Torgensen's position probably has more to do with alienation from his wartime service than with his actual generation. It's something I know well and have experienced personally - you come back from years of war, so you are actually culturally separated from the home you left behind, but also while you're away, you idealize everything about America, and there's no way the real thing can match up.

I think you may be reading a lot into things, since Torgersen (c'mon, y'all, even if we disagree with him get the man's name right) has never been deployed, especially not overseas. His Wikipedia page says he was a cook in the Navy and spent his time at Naval Station Mayport in Florida. I suspect that's bullshit, though, since Torgersen is very open about his long-standing service in the Army Reserve (he joined shortly after 9/11), where he's now reached the rank of Warrant Officer.

Torgersen's military record, in his own words:

Sept. 28, 2009: "I’m just a 420A paper pusher. My role is to HELP the real fighters who run, jump, fly, and drive into the teeth of battle."

Sept. 9, 2011: "I am what’s called a Personnel Technician. I’m trained to know my way around the Army’s equivalent of HR. It’s not a glamorous nor macho job. But it’s portable, and it’s allowed me to do what I think I do best: help other soldiers get their jobs done without having to worry that their paperwork and records and other necessary vitals aren’t being taken care of."

March 18, 2014: "See, I’m a cake-eating civilian most of my time too, and only serve as a part-timer: U.S. Army Reservist. I’ve been in 12 years, through 3 different units, and no deployments. Yup, you read that right. No deployments. I am also a paper pusher by MOS — Chief Warrant Officer Paper Pusher, to be exact. So I won’t waste anybody’s time trying to put my hand into the “Operator” cookie jar, grabbing at crumbs. I am a civilian at heart, and I know it, and I am glad for it."

He will, apparently, be deployed (for the first time) while Sasquan is happening, so he won't be there.

This is not at all to denigrate or mock his service.

But you seem to be putting forward the idea that he is the way he is because he was isolated from American society while serving in a combat zone. He has never seen service in a combat zone, he has been a part-time soldier in the Reserve for his entire military career, I don't think that any of his work for the Army has taken him outside the U.S. or away from his family for more than 2 weeks at a time.

He is not alienated because of his wartime service.
posted by soundguy99 at 3:42 PM on April 14, 2015 [22 favorites]

Torgersen's "The Chaplain's Legacy" (a nominee last year courtesy of Sad Puppies 2) was a perfectly readable story.

It appears to be written in human language and actually a story, so I'll give it that.
posted by Artw at 4:00 PM on April 14, 2015 [2 favorites]

"I am under no obligation to assist you in your libels. You go to such angular and absurd efforts to portray me in an unfavorable light: why not portray me as I am?" I'm still scratching my head trying to figure out what Wright is getting at here. OK, this is kind of inside baseball, but Wright is a lawyer and should be able to remember tort law from the first year of law school.

Here's the thing: under common law, a libel is a written misrepresentation about someone whose reputation is harmed by that misrepresentation. And truth is generally an absolute defense to charges of slander (verbal misrepresentation) or libel (written misrepresentation). In the US at least, if you call someone a lying murdering scumbag and s/he sues you for libel/slander, if you can prove to a court that such person is in fact a lying murdering scumbag, that person has no cause of action against you. So Wright seems to be actually saying, "Even though I wrote and published these horrendous but clearly heartfelt things in a medium which theoretically allowed millions upon millions of people around the globe to read them, I'm going to take them down and act as though I never said them. So, hah! All you people misrepresenting my positions can't use my own words to prove the truth of what you're saying about me."

There are so many things wrong with those two sentences of his that it's hard to know how to list them all. Tactically: a mistake. Technically: shows a complete lack of understanding how the internet works. Legally: seems to show a profound misunderstanding of tort law. Not to mention constituting a written communication which doesn't seem to have crafted by either a trained lawyer or a professional writer. So what the hell is going on here? Honestly, I kind of worry about Mr. Wright's psyche.
posted by my dog is named clem at 4:04 PM on April 14, 2015 [8 favorites]

Please not that in my previous post I am NOT accusing anyone , including but not limited to Mr. Wright, of being a lying murdering scumbag. It's an example, that's all. Just so we understand each other.
posted by my dog is named clem at 4:10 PM on April 14, 2015 [3 favorites]

MOS 420A is Human Resouce Technician (Warrant.) He's not lying when he says he's a paper pusher, and 11B and the like have a much harsher name for his type: REMF.

Still, he's at least a CW2, which means he's not an incompetent paper pusher. (W1 is a Warrant Officer, CW2 through CW5 are Chief Warrant Officers. Enlisted call all of them sir/ma'am.)
posted by eriko at 4:13 PM on April 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

Did Gerrold coin "slate-mongers?" Because that's hilarious.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 4:19 PM on April 14, 2015 [3 favorites]

Take a drink every time someone meets an angel or a more-or-less angel.

Take a drink every time someone checks something off the manly list mentioned here.

Take two drinks if there's a fully clothed female character.
posted by tofu_crouton at 4:37 PM on April 14, 2015 [9 favorites]

Holy crap we are going to die.
posted by eriko at 4:39 PM on April 14, 2015 [10 favorites]

Take a drink every time someone meets an angel or a more-or-less angel.

That is murder and you know it.
posted by Artw at 4:45 PM on April 14, 2015 [11 favorites]

Holy crap we are going to die.

This is what happens when you fail to heed my warnings. Get the stomach pumps ready.

Take a drink every time a character eerily physically resembles the author or one of their loved ones.

Take a drink every time specific religious catechism is referenced.

Take a drink every time a thinly veiled Christian is subjugated by a thinly veiled Muslim. (Can we survive Tom Kratman? WHO KNOWS?)
posted by corb at 5:23 PM on April 14, 2015 [4 favorites]

And truth is generally an absolute defense to charges of slander (verbal misrepresentation) or libel (written misrepresentation). In the US at least, if you call someone a lying murdering scumbag and s/he sues you for libel/slander, if you can prove to a court that such person is in fact a lying murdering scumbag, that person has no cause of action against you.

True, and even if wrong, the defence can steal a page out of the Blumenthal v. Drudge playbook and threaten to summon everyone who might be a witness (assuming deep enough pockets.)

But it wouldn't even go that far since "lying anti-gay scumbag" is likely to be considered an opinion and therefore, not defamation. "Lying murdering scumbag" is a mixed statement of fact since a jury can determine wrongful death as a question of fact. But even there, you could rely on the Larry Flynt defense if it's obviously in the genre of editorial satire.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 5:24 PM on April 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

zombieflanders: "Gene Roddenberry flew almost 100 combat missions during WWII. Gene Wolfe served in Korea. Joe Haldeman fought in Vietnam. And yet all of them didn't turn into obnoxious douchenozzles"

Not to mention Vonnegut!
posted by vasi at 5:56 PM on April 14, 2015 [6 favorites]

if you can prove to a court that such person is in fact a lying murdering scumbag, that person has no cause of action against you.

Not necessarily:

"A long-established principle of libel law — truth is an absolute defense — has been called into question by a decision handed down last week [2009] by a federal appeals court in Boston. The court ruled in the case of Noonan v. Staples that truth published with “actual malice” gleaned from the context of the statement can give rise to a libel lawsuit."
posted by MikeMc at 6:02 PM on April 14, 2015

Why I Won't Be a Presenter at the Hugo Awards This Year by Connie Willis.

I love Connie Willis.
posted by Zed at 6:14 PM on April 14, 2015 [17 favorites]

MikeMc -

Although that is a scary decision, I note that 1) the ultimate case result was that the plaintiff lost his claim of libel, and 2) at least in a very sketchy first read-through of articles surrounding the appellate court decision, that court seemed to rely on a circa 1902 Massachusetts statute which said truth was a defense unless "actual malice is proved." So one wonders whether other jurisdictions would be willing to rely on a decision based on a 1902 statutory exception which would seem to be limited to Massachusetts.

For what it's worth. Lord knows I retired from the law so I wouldn't have to worry about crap like this anymore.
posted by my dog is named clem at 6:17 PM on April 14, 2015 [4 favorites]

Why I Won't Be a Presenter at the Hugo Awards This Year by Connie Willis.

I love Connie Willis.

I have this mental image of a presenter walking up to the microphone, reading a previous Hugo-winning story or excerpt from a previous Hugo-winning novel (preferably one by Heinlein or someone else who is patently not an "SJW"), then mumbling, "andthisyearshugogoestojohnwright," placing it on the ground by the microphone, and walking off the stage.
posted by Etrigan at 7:07 PM on April 14, 2015 [4 favorites]

I imagine the light, on-stage banter with John Wright and Vox Day will be the evening's highlight.
posted by Going To Maine at 7:15 PM on April 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

No the highlight will be the words "No Award"
posted by eriko at 7:38 PM on April 14, 2015 [6 favorites]

> Why I Won't Be a Presenter at the Hugo Awards This Year by Connie Willis.

Wait wait did Brad Torgersen actually post a link in that thread to the Danny DeVito clip from Other People's Money? Yes, yes he did.

Do none of these people understand irony?
posted by rtha at 8:05 PM on April 14, 2015 [3 favorites]

Torgerson has written a long post to respond to GRRM's question of how he can be in an interracial marriage & not criticize Vox Day in which he a) never actually mentions Vox Day, and b) equates all modern prejudices with "tribalism", thus nicely creating an equivalence between worldcon stalwarts getting mad about the puppies & gamergators with, uh, the actual racism voiced by Day because it's all just, you know, tribal.
posted by Going To Maine at 8:18 PM on April 14, 2015 [6 favorites]

People who are racist, think people of opposite ethnicities are inferior human beings.

opposite ethnicities

what
posted by kagredon at 8:31 PM on April 14, 2015 [3 favorites]

also, the comma splice means that the sentence reads as a command.
posted by kagredon at 8:32 PM on April 14, 2015 [6 favorites]

opposite ethnicities

what

Antipodean cities, perhaps?
posted by Joe in Australia at 8:59 PM on April 14, 2015

Ana Ng and I are getting old and we still haven't walked in each other's majestic presence.
posted by kagredon at 9:04 PM on April 14, 2015 [3 favorites]

Maybe he meant apposite
posted by bq at 9:04 PM on April 14, 2015

Ana Ng and I

I see what you did there. I'm actually grooving out to what you did there.

Because I'm you're only friend, I'm not you're only friend, but I'm you're only glowing friend but I'm not actually you're friend but am i?
posted by eriko at 9:07 PM on April 14, 2015 [4 favorites]

Can someone fill me in on the political symbolism of Way Station? I was not as precocious a middle schooler as some.
posted by bq at 9:10 PM on April 14, 2015

The Connie Willis link keeps taking me to a Facebook error page. What does it say?
posted by RakDaddy at 9:13 PM on April 14, 2015

What does it say?

Just assume it says that Connie Willis is awesome.

Trust me on that.
posted by eriko at 9:15 PM on April 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

The Connie Willis link got deleted from Facebook, I guess after Torgerson showed up in the comments to be a douche things got out of hand. Stay classy, Torgerson.

It's also posted here.
posted by palomar at 9:16 PM on April 14, 2015 [7 favorites]

Also I just read the Virginia story and it is. Hmmm. Not good. Let's leave it at 'not good'.
posted by bq at 9:20 PM on April 14, 2015 [2 favorites]

I seem to recall someone was looking for lesbian romance SF?

Sleeps With Monsters (Liz Bourke) reviews some for you.
posted by suelac at 9:21 PM on April 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

See? I told you Connie Willis was awesome.
posted by eriko at 9:21 PM on April 14, 2015 [4 favorites]

Torger--rhymes with Grrr--sen:

In the U.S. military, we endure a breaking-in period known as Initial Entry Training — boot camp. It’s specifically designed to make everyone look the same, talk the same, and to a certain extent, think the same.

That explains much. "Hey guys, I'm going to solicit your opinions. OK, fuck those opinions, here's how we're voting."
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 9:23 PM on April 14, 2015 [5 favorites]

Also I just read the Virginia story and it is. Hmmm. Not good. Let's leave it at 'not good'.

Not an actual story, not much resemblance to actual human language.
posted by Artw at 9:36 PM on April 14, 2015 [2 favorites]

Ok, Connie Willis is indeed awesome.

Since I've never actually paid attention to the actual ceremonies: is it really lots of joking around, as Willis's piece indicated? Like award show banter (only nerd themed, I guess)?
posted by TwoStride at 9:40 PM on April 14, 2015

CON-NIE WIL-LIS

clap clap clapclapclap
posted by RakDaddy at 9:40 PM on April 14, 2015 [3 favorites]

Well, at least Harlan Ellison won't assault her this year.
posted by Chrysostom at 9:46 PM on April 14, 2015 [3 favorites]

Since I've never actually paid attention to the actual ceremonies: is it really lots of joking around, as Willis's piece indicated? Like award show banter (only nerd themed, I guess)?

Sure, yeah. Set your expectations reasonably low and try watching John Scalzi (et al.) from 2012 and especially Paul Cornell (et al.) from 2013. If you're this far down in this thread, I bet it'll be fun, though maybe something you'd put in the background after a bit.
posted by Monsieur Caution at 10:38 PM on April 14, 2015 [2 favorites]

This Facebook post by David Gerrold about hosting the Hugos is just about heartbreaking. Excerpt:

For the past several months, I have been toiling over an outline for the Hugo Award Ceremony. I had some really nice stuff written. I had planned a statistical analysis of the nominations -- can't do that now. I had planned to tease Connie Willis and Mike Resnick about all their awards and ask them to leave something on the table for someone else. That joke won't work anymore. I had written some witty banter about how Tananarive and I, as co-hosts, represent diversity in the field. A young black woman and an old gay man, we touch all the bases. Even that joke seems pointless now.

I had asked Connie Willis to present the Campbell award -- she declined. Because she cannot pretend that this year's awards are business as usual.

In fact, none of us can. And as the host of the award ceremony, I can't either.

So, Brad, Larry, Vox -- congratulations. You've spoiled the party. Not just mine, but everyone's.

I waited nearly a half century to get here, and when I do get here, there's ashes.

posted by Kattullus at 10:46 PM on April 14, 2015 [15 favorites]

Harlan Ellison is a good example of why the Puppies are so full of it. By accounts an unbearable, impossible to work with person who acts badly and yet, because he has more talent in a single toenail clipping (and not from one of the bigger toes) than all the Puppies put together have in their entire bodies he has been more-or-less embraced by the field and received all the awards you could name.

(Yes I realize he is complicated and am not simply writing him off as "unbearable". He contains multitudes.)

These guys don't win awards not because fandom doesn't like them but because they mostly write crap. When they don't write crap they get nominated for awards. Or, like Orson Scott Card, become one of only 3 authors in history to have two novels win both the Hugo and Nebula awards, and he did it back to back.

But, sure, they're excluded. Bunch of crying baby cryers.
posted by Justinian at 10:47 PM on April 14, 2015 [9 favorites]

I also see a problem with booting authors or no-awarding them based on personal politics.

Nobody is doing that, so please stop repeating this lie. Puppy authors are rejected based oin their actions, not their beliefs. If they wanted to be treated "fairly", they shouldn't have resorted to slate voting to get on the Hugo ballot.
posted by MartinWisse at 10:47 PM on April 14, 2015 [15 favorites]

Also their actions of writing crappy stories.
posted by Justinian at 10:48 PM on April 14, 2015 [12 favorites]

I don't know of any good fiction writers who aren't at least passable in the other stuff that they choose to write and present to the public, and holy shit, the unclear, pseudo-poetic, pretentious and frequently bigoted horseshit that these bozos crank out and post online is awful. I'm not gonna read the stuff they cheat-nominated because it's not really anything I'm interested in; most of that brand conservative-bent sci-fi fails to understand a lot of axes of reality in ways that I don't have the energy to suspend my disbelief over. But even if it was the kind of fiction I was interested in, judging by the quality of their blog posts, essays and comments, I don't exactly think they're likely to be good at writing that, since they are obviously really bad at writing nonfiction. (Well, "nonfiction" as in "not intended to be read as a fictional story", as opposed to "not completely made up horseshit", which their opinions clearly are.)
posted by NoraReed at 11:11 PM on April 14, 2015 [3 favorites]

I am curious to know if they've ever stated with any degree of certainty when this supposed period of absolute liberal Hugo tyranny began. I imagine it's recent, which is why Orson Scott Card winning in the mid-80s wouldn't be much of a salve to them.

Similarly, for whatever you think of Ellison he's a proud outspoken leftist, and so the fact that he angers tons of people even on the left and alienated folks with his Connie Willis stunt wouldn't matter much to them either. I imagine they see that sort of thing as the usual sort of People's Front of Judea leftist circular firing squad -- an "internal" squabble that doesn't affect their main point.

I just don't know why they didn't just pick a few stories they loved and voted the hell out of them. Did they really think that everyone was just going to be a-ok with slate voting? How do you not foresee the reaction that this would create?
posted by Palindromedary at 11:17 PM on April 14, 2015

The Connie Willis link keeps taking me to a Facebook error page. What does it say?

I suspect that it was the same as this blog entry.
posted by JiBB at 11:28 PM on April 14, 2015

Oh, they foresaw the reaction. Day and Correia did, at the least, and for all that Torgersen acts the big-eyed babe in the woods, I'm sure he also is smart enough to understand what he was doing. The shitstorm was part (most?) of the goal.

They don't want the Hugoes, they just want your half.
posted by kagredon at 11:50 PM on April 14, 2015

Yeah, apparently Torgersen showed up in the comments and started mocking her, so Gerrold deleted the post and reposted as a link to a post of it on her blog.
posted by tavella at 12:08 AM on April 15, 2015

~what a swell guy~
posted by NoraReed at 12:17 AM on April 15, 2015

Does anyone have any links that talk about what went down in the comments of that post?
posted by overglow at 12:34 AM on April 15, 2015 [1 favorite]

VD and the Puppets are beneath contempt, as are the authors on the slates that have not withdrawn their nominations. None the less, there's more blame to go around:

This hole in the Hugo process has been known for years. During that time it was notoriously the case that Worldcon business meetings were dominated by obsessive geeks that treat rules of order as if they were a cross between a game of Flux and Diplomacy. I was never into this part of fandom, but that's what I observed and what I was told. So there was this gaping hole in the process all this time. In any normal organisation- I accept that WSFS is not really normal- it would have been patched long ago, but process administration was basically deputised to people more interested in minutiae than the big picture. And that's why we're where we are today.
posted by Joe in Australia at 2:26 AM on April 15, 2015

So Torgersen is explicitly siding with the gators now, complete with the assertion that everything they've done is lies by the SJWs. Not really surprising, but it's a decision he'll come to regret, since now they're actually trying to eliminate and/or terrorize lawmakers trying to stop them:

"I look out my front door. There's six cop cars. They have the street closed off. They have helmets, flak jackets and rifles," Moriarty said. "I walk out and walk towards them. They motion me to keep walking towards them. The minute I walked out the door, I was still on the phone with the dispatch person, I said 'I think I've just been swatted.' It just then occurred to me what happened."

Moriarty has been quoted in several regional news outlets over the last couple weeks, including NJ Advance Media, because of his legislation to address the growing trend of swatting. There's been a string of recent incidents in New Jersey, most notably at a video game store in Clifton.

Swatting has its roots in online video game culture. Callers anonymously phone in emergencies to authorities to send them to an unsuspecting gamer's house — often while the gamer is streaming video of himself playing online.

posted by zombieflanders at 3:58 AM on April 15, 2015 [4 favorites]

> "Torgerson has written a long post to respond to GRRM's question ..."

Dear god reading their shit is so tiring.

There's just no acknowledgement, ever, of the problems with what they did.

"Sad Puppies 3 ... made the audacious claim that the totem for all, should be decided by all. Anyone willing to pay the poll tax (Worldcon membership) should have a say. We invited everyone to the democratic process."

No you didn't. WORLDCON made it so that anyone willing to pay $40 would have a say. YOU exploited a quirk of the nomination rules so that a RELATIVELY SMALL MINORITY of the voters nonetheless dominated the selection process.

There's no acknowledgement that maybe if they got on the ballot both before and after the whole Puppy thing existed, but didn't win, maybe that was because a majority of the people voting didn't think Warbound was the best novel of the year. No, it must be a Conspiracy!

There's this weird, well, sense of entitlement they seem to have. Correia literally complained that, sure, Baen novels have been up for the award seven times before his, but they were all, like, by Baen's most popular author of all time (which isn't even true, incidentally, Bujold isn't the only other Baen writer to get a novel nomination.) Poor unloved Baen, with only two best Novel Hugos!

(Ace has three Hugo novel wins. Ballantine has two. Del Rey has one, that they finally nabbed in 2010 after first getting a book on the ballot in 1979. DAW has one, no winners for them since 1982. I could go on. For a long time. Even if I only restrict it to publishing houses that have ever won anything at all.)

I haven't even scratched the surface ... Torgersen's definition of racism that excludes any acknowledgement of power differentials or history ... His increasingly weird failure to engage with the fact that the slate that got on is really Vox Day's, and that associating yourself with someone who literally advocates throwing acid at people may cause a reaction based on more than "tribalism" ... Torgersen and Correia's general, utter refusal to acknowledge that their own work has political elements, leading them to reflexively react to any criticism of sexism, racism, or homophobia by shouting back that the only possible motivation for such a criticism is misandry, racism, or heterophobia on the part of the critic ...

It's just a well with no bottom.
posted by kyrademon at 6:13 AM on April 15, 2015 [19 favorites]

There's this weird, well, sense of entitlement they seem to have.

This is a problem with the Right (and especially the religious Right) these days. They cannot abide being challenged in any way and claim disagreement as persecution. Any disagreement or even contrary evidence is seen as a direct affront, to be shouted down if possible and ignored if not. It's funny how the Puppies present themselves as not being heard when their real goal is to have only one voice heard -- their own. They seem incapable of accepting that their voice has been heard over and over -- and largely rejected (at least in the prose they want to wrap it in).
posted by GenjiandProust at 6:45 AM on April 15, 2015 [3 favorites]

Whenever I think this story cannot get any worse....

I just wait a few days.
posted by Fizz at 6:50 AM on April 15, 2015 [2 favorites]

This hole in the Hugo process has been known for years.

Yes. It was deemed safer to close by social means. One complaint the WSFS-BM has gotten from some is that the Hugo and Site Selection votes are too complex. They are more complex than First-Past-The-Post voting, but we deliberately chose STV because of real issues with FTP. However, that did bias us into not wanting to make nominations any more complicated, and because of the response to the Scientologists trying to pack the Hugos back in 1986-1987, the social contract of "don't slate vote" worked very well until outsiders came in and ignored it.

Obviously, that's now changing, and talk is flying about in various places (I'm sure SMOFS-L is melting down right now) about what to do. Thankfully, there's a few months before the business meeting, so the worst ideas shouldn't even get close. And lordy, there are some *bad* ideas out there.

During that time it was notoriously the case that Worldcon business meetings were dominated by obsessive geeks that treat rules of order as if they were a cross between a game of Flux and Diplomacy.

There was a time in the 1970s where this was very much true, but it hasn't been that way for a long time. There are a number of folks who are experts in our parliamentary system (Robert's Rules Of Order, Newley Revised (RONR)) but in general, they all believe the same thing, the system is there to be fair, not to be gamed, and motions designed to game the system are rapidly slapped down by the chair as dilatory and the chair is supported by the meeting.

However, there is the impression that we're hostile to new business, and that's a fair impression, because we backed ourselves into a corner. One motion in the system is "Postpone Indefinitely", which for a short term meeting such as this one, becomes a kill motion -- if you postpone something without scheduling, there's never enough time to bring it back. We didn't like that, so we barred it by standing rule. Tabling a motion (in the US sense) has the same problem so we limit that as well, but we didn't bar it because we do use it for committee-of-the-whole work.^*

Then someone dug out OTC. Objection to Consideration. It's an incidental motion, but it's a very highly privileged one. In most parliamentary bodies, it's very rarely seen, because it's purpose is to stop things that you simply do not want to discuss. "Moved, that the member from Hillbourough is a bucket of" "Object to Consideration!"

OTC has to be called before *any* debate, but if it is, it trumps. There's no debate, you vote immediately, and if 2/3rds of the body agrees, the motion is dead and unrevivable. BANG.

But, remember how we'd killed Postpone Indefinitely? So, for motions that simply weren't going anywhere, this was the only tool we had to stop them early, and for people new to the process, they'd bring the motion, it would get OTC, and that was it. They never even got to debate it.

I do not blame them for feeling that this was hostile. It was hostile -- but for things that were not going to pass, it was the only tool the meeting had to get them out of the way to get to business that might pass. It did not help that it would always be the most annoying voices in the room yelling "Object to consideration."

So, *FINALLY* they fixed it (after I stopped going to Worldcons, of course.) During the preliminary business meeting only, the motion of Postpone Indefinitely is allowed, and unlike OTC, it is debatable, 2 minutes per side. So, you get a chance to say *why* we should discuss a motion. If you can get 1/3rd of the meeting to agree with you, then the motion will fail and it'll move to the main meeting. If you can't, it'll get PI'd -- but even then, we could bring it back later if something changed by suspending the rules (against bringing amendments not approved by the preliminary meeting) and rescheduling the motion. But now you get a chance to speak, and it's a big difference in how welcoming the meeting appears.

OTC is still there, but back to it's original purpose. It now requires a 75% supermajority for the insta-perma-kill, and if you want to move that So-and-so is a dirty so-and-so, it'll get OTC'd or ruled out of order as a personal attack.

Fundamentally, the point of these rules is to be fair -- to the minority, to the majority, and to the members not present. Kevin Standlee put it best -- the goal is to be fair. Being fair does not me you always win. But it is a process.

Mark Olson described it as a true participatory democracy. If you are a member of WSFS, you have the vote -- but you *have* to participate in the process to use that vote.

* Committee-of-the-whole is the way you say "Can we kind of skip process for a moment while we figure out what we need to do?" Since a committee is, by itself, its own parliamentary body, it can choose its own rules of procedure, or carefully not really chose any. So, you can "pause" the formal procedure, hack through a complicated amendment without dealing with a long stack of motions, and once you've got it, the CotW rises with one motion to amend-by-subtitition.

Remember this trick if you're ever in a parliamentary situation that's getting complex. "Madame Chairman, I move we refer this motion to a committee of the whole with the direction to return a perfected motion." Once that committee seats, then you can just gather around a table and figure it out, then rise and (as directed) present the motion. Since everyone was there to perfect it, it'll usually pass quickly at that point.
posted by eriko at 7:22 AM on April 15, 2015 [10 favorites]

The Latest Hugo Conspiracy Nonsense Involving Me from MeFi's own jscalzi.

Bonus: Mentions "big kid pants"
posted by eriko at 7:44 AM on April 15, 2015 [12 favorites]

I recently saw a talk about how unspoken values in an organisation can make it harder to meet goals while staying user-friendly. It was about design decisions for websites, but I thought it was more generally applicable. It seems to me that the Worldcon committee has been relying on some unspoken values in their rules, like 'be fair' and 'don't abuse the loopholes we all know are there'. But that's probably not a good long-term solution now that time and the internet are increasing the fan base beyond the group who knew and understood those values.

The solution in the talk was to bring those values to the surface and make them explicit. For Worldcon, I wouldnt necessarily make them rules, but part of a values or principles statement thingy that summarises the point of the rules. That way they can be used to guide rule-making but also so newcomers can be informed before they start rocking the boat.
posted by harriet vane at 7:56 AM on April 15, 2015 [2 favorites]

"Unspoken values" are the most likely things to trip up and confuse newcomers. Maybe this fans the flames of the hurt feelings underlying Correia's counter-campaign? Maybe?

(I'm not his natural ally, just leaning over sideways to try to be empathetic.)
posted by puddledork at 8:12 AM on April 15, 2015 [2 favorites]

It seems to me that the Worldcon committee has been relying on some unspoken values in their rules, like 'be fair' and 'don't abuse the loopholes we all know are there'.

That is called "security through obscurity" - it works until it does not work, and then you better scramble and fix things because it is never going to work again.

For WorldCon it stopped working in 2014 and they should have fixed it then.
posted by Artw at 8:17 AM on April 15, 2015 [2 favorites]

True. Here's the talk in case I've mis-summarised it: The Values Are The Experience.
posted by harriet vane at 8:17 AM on April 15, 2015 [1 favorite]

Oh that was a response to puddledork, not ArtW! And I agree with that too.
posted by harriet vane at 8:19 AM on April 15, 2015 [1 favorite]

Eh. They knew campaigning was considered bad form. This was Sad Puppies 3 after all. I find it hard to call this an unspoken value; it was a spoken-of value that as eriko had it above was considered best addressed by social means.

They even acknowledge their familiarity with the principle. They're just continuing to insist "but they did it fiiiiiiiiiirst!" because "these are my eligible works from last year" posts are totes the same thing as active campaigning for a slate.

(Taking those things together, one could almost conclude that they're... anti-social.)
posted by Zed at 8:23 AM on April 15, 2015 [3 favorites]

> There are a number of folks who are experts in our parliamentary system

Of course I read this as "experts in our planetary system" at first.
posted by rtha at 8:32 AM on April 15, 2015 [2 favorites]

For WorldCon it stopped working in 2014 and they should have fixed it then.

By the rules, they can't fix it in one year -- a change to the constitution has to pass the business meeting and then be ratified by the next business meeting, it then takes effect for the next convention^*. Indeed, there's a change waiting to be ratified to then require the membership-as-a-whole to vote yes-no on that change the year after, which would make it even longer.

In fact, they didn't take any measures, and the way that 2+1 was written states that it itself needs to be approved, so even if it is approved this year, it would go to the members next year. Yeah, that's complicated.

So, amendments passed this year could be ratified by next year's meeting (2016) and they would take effect at the end of the convention and be in effect at the 2017 Worldcon. Amendments passed next year (2016) would need to be ratified by the meeting in 2017, and if 2+1 fully ratifies, they would then need an up-and-down vote of the membership in 2018 to become part of the constitution, if successful they would then take effect at the 2019 Worldcon. If 2+1 fails to ratify (and I suspect it will be at least punted for a bit) then the final ratification vote won't be needed, and amendments proposed in 2016 would need to be ratified in 2017, and would take effect for the 2018 Worldcon.

The system is deliberately designed to be slow to change. Normally, this is a feature, but this year, it might be a bug, but given some of the issues we had in the 1970s, the idea of quickly changing the constitution became anathema to WSFS.

* Or, more precisely: Once ratified, it *immediately* becomes part of the WSFS Constitution, so you could make a motion to amend it. This being a constitutional amendment, it would need to be ratified by the next year's business meeting. However, the actual Worldcon you're at when you ratified the amendment follows the Constitution as it was at the start of the convention, so if you've just added a new Hugo, they don't have to rush out and award it in a day. They operate under the old rules, and the next convention would be required to enact the amendment you just ratified, so in this example, they would award the new Hugo.

Why? Simple practicality -- the next Worldcon needs to know what it needs to do. There's no way it can know what amendments are actually going to ratify, or in what form. So, we don't make it guess. They know, basically a year out, what the state of the WSFS Constitution they have to follow is, and when the business meeting adjourns sine die, that sets the state of the WSFS Constitution for the next Worldcon.
posted by eriko at 8:40 AM on April 15, 2015 [4 favorites]

Of course I read this as "experts in our planetary system" at first.

I've seen Brother Guy Consolmango and David Clements at a WSFS business meeting, so, yeah, we've got those too!
posted by eriko at 8:41 AM on April 15, 2015 [5 favorites]

Did they get anything on the table in 2014? Mainly it semeed like they hoped it would all blow over, per GRRM this year.
posted by Artw at 9:45 AM on April 15, 2015

opposite ethnicities

what

If you believe that the only race is the human race, and that racial 'differences' were created by racist scientists, what were races become ethnicities instead.

Actually I found his post about tribalism fucking spot on up to the point when he's talking about the Hugo.

The Hugos (and the Worldcon tribe alike) brand the Hugo as the award for the entirety of SF/F: books, stories, movies, television, music, art, you name it. This is not just the totem of the single SF/F tribe. This is the totem of all the SF/F tribes.

posted by corb at 9:57 AM on April 15, 2015

I think the problem is with the word "opposite," which has no meaning in the racial/ethnic context unless you're ascribing fundamental attributes by skin color.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 10:02 AM on April 15, 2015 [9 favorites]

Did they get anything on the table in 2014?

Business passed on (pdf, picky levels of detail) :

1) Popular Ratification ("2+1") -- requires amendments to the Constitution to be ratified by the next meeting and then a popular vote of the next Worldcon's membership.

2) A Story By Any Other Name -- Amends Article 3 (the Hugos) to clarify that category eligibility should be based on content, not on format or delivery. Call this the MKR Amendment -- indeed, I think she either made the original motion or seconded it.

3) Hugo Finalists -- Changes the name of the five who make the final ballot from "nominees" to "finalists" in Article 3, clearing up confusion about what a "nominee" is.

4) WSFS Membership Types and Rates -- Bars conventions from selling a membership with voting rights for less than the cost of a supporting membership.

And that's it. So, no, nothing about changing Hugo Nominations from 2014, other than the five making the ballot will potentially be called "finalists" rather than "nominees."
posted by eriko at 10:06 AM on April 15, 2015

There should have been. Lets hope the lateste escalation lights a fire under their asses.
posted by Artw at 10:22 AM on April 15, 2015

What was the intent behind A Story By Any Other Name?
posted by corb at 10:36 AM on April 15, 2015

> "What was the intent behind A Story By Any Other Name?"

Making things like stories released in audio format eligible to be nominated. (There was a story released that way a few years ago that was deemed ineligible; the next year the author put together a small print run, and it got on the ballot and won.)
posted by kyrademon at 10:44 AM on April 15, 2015 [3 favorites]

Yes, Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish has it that "opposite" is what stood out, because at best it is nonsensical and at worst it has a creepy Races of Man vibe to it.
posted by kagredon at 11:00 AM on April 15, 2015 [2 favorites]

The story in question can be read online: The Lady Astronaut of Mars. The introductory note by PNH explains the rule amendment.
posted by sukeban at 11:02 AM on April 15, 2015 [2 favorites]

I am sorely tempted to attend under the name "Noah Ward."
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 11:05 AM on April 15, 2015 [5 favorites]

eriko: So, no, nothing about changing Hugo Nominations from 2014, other than the five making the ballot will potentially be called "finalists" rather than "nominees.

I once participated in a minor way in some rules-fixing to avoid disaster in a vaguely similar situation (people with values orthogonal to the larger organization exploited some known loopholes). Do the Worldcon rules of order allow for clarifying previously unused terms in to-be-ratified amendments? In this case, defining "finalist" in such a way that doesn't allow for slate voting. I realize that's pretty heavy lawyering, but if it could serve as a stop-gap until an actual amendment could be fully ratified. Nobody in the case I mentioned was happy with that solution, but it was the only way to avert a complete disaster, comparable to the Hugo Awards nominations being hijacked by slate-voting.
posted by Kattullus at 11:13 AM on April 15, 2015 [1 favorite]

I am sorely tempted to attend under the name "Noah Ward."

Don't count on attending the Hugo Loser party.
posted by Zed at 11:15 AM on April 15, 2015 [3 favorites]

Actually I found his post about tribalism fucking spot on up to the point when he's talking about the Hugo.

The Hugos (and the Worldcon tribe alike) brand the Hugo as the award for the entirety of SF/F: books, stories, movies, television, music, art, you name it. This is not just the totem of the single SF/F tribe. This is the totem of all the SF/F tribes.

I also am skeptical of this. There's been much ink spilled over the years about how Worldcon has come to be more of a con for and by an older, more written-works oriented group of fans. Does he really think that the Hugo is more of a "totem" for SFF artists than the Chesley is? That fantasy fans and writers put it above the WFA? That the Gators Correia mobilized to stack the vote ever gave a shit about the Hugos (or give a shit about them now, apart from a way to cause trouble?)
posted by kagredon at 11:15 AM on April 15, 2015

Monica Byrne, a writer with ties to both speculative and literary fiction, points out a silver lining: At least, in her observation, the SF side is openly confronting its internal sexism and racism.
posted by seyirci at 11:17 AM on April 15, 2015 [5 favorites]

Making things like stories released in audio format eligible to be nominated.

Be nominated in the written story categories, that is. The ruling before was an audiobook only release wasn't written fiction, thus couldn't be nominated for Best Novel/Novella/Novelette/Short Story. In this ruling, it could have been nominated as BDP-S, it was transferred to that category, but didn't make the ballot there. The work was "The Lady Astronaut of Mars" by Mary Robinette Kowal.

The next year, the written version of that work made the ballot and won Best Novelette. It was explicitly allowed because it was declared a transformed work. Normally, that happens going from written to BDP, and this one went the other way, but the precedent was clear there.

The general meta-rule is Vox Populi, if enough people nominate something as X, it's X. However, there are some bright lines. The Hugo administrator that year decided that one of the bright lines was that Best Novel/Novella/Novelette/Short Story are for written fiction (3.2.5 in the Constitution calls them the "written fiction categories",) therefore an audio work couldn't be nominated, even though it was just a reading of a written fiction work.

This motion grants the administrator the flexibility to take an audiobook only story and file it as a story rather than as a dramatic presentation if they feel (and the nominators feel) that it is more of a story via audio than a dramatic presentation -- so, it generally extends the flexibility we already grant the administrator in cases where the nominating public says "this is really an X."

Note that the motion has passed at Loncon 3, but not ratified yet.

Yes, there are concerns that we could have a work be eligible for two Hugos at once, which is *not* explicitly prohibited between things like BDP and the written categories. So, you could see an administrator deciding not to decide on a spilt and finding that an audio works makes the ballot in both Best Novelette and BDP-S. Historically, the sense of WSFS is that this shouldn't happen, but it has not been explicitly ruled out, and perhaps that needs to be done.

This would *force* the Hugo admin to either transfer nominations or void-as-invalid the ones in the wrong category, which is problematic as well.

In short, it's never as easy as it seems.
posted by eriko at 11:20 AM on April 15, 2015 [2 favorites]

Actually I found his post about tribalism fucking spot on up to the point when he's talking about the Hugo.

The Hugos (and the Worldcon tribe alike) brand the Hugo as the award for the entirety of SF/F: books, stories, movies, television, music, art, you name it. This is not just the totem of the single SF/F tribe. This is the totem of all the SF/F tribes.

I also am skeptical of this.

Torgersen is saying that the Hugos/Worldcon present themselves "as the award for the entirety", not necessarily that everyone else agrees. Like how the Oscars present themselves as the award for all of the motion picture industry, while there are also the WGAs and the SAG awards and suchlike for subspecialties.

(I think he's confusing himself about specialty vs. population, though -- the fact that the Hugos include categories for books and TV and art doesn't really mean that they have to be somehow more democratic in their balloting.)
posted by Etrigan at 11:23 AM on April 15, 2015 [2 favorites]

In this case, defining "finalist" in such a way that doesn't allow for slate voting.

WSFS won't touch that with a 10' pole, and I'm with them completely on that.

How do you enforce that? Declare "identical" ballots to be a slate? What if they just email each other the slate rather than put on the website? There's so many ways that this could go wrong that, to me, it's a non-starter.

I don't see a practical way to ban slate voting. If there's a fix, it's going to come in minimizing the harm of slate voting, either by minimizing the effectiveness, or by detecting it and expanding the ballot to make sure the works that would have been knocked off will still be on the ballot.

Frankly, the 2016 Hugos are going to be less than fun as well, and it'll take a lot more than 3000 nominators to block a 200 person slate ballot. Go do the math, it's a very effective tactic. However, there may well be a lot more than 3000 nominators next year.
posted by eriko at 11:25 AM on April 15, 2015 [3 favorites]

Ah, that does make more sense. Though I still wonder how much it's really true--as the discussion about the "popularity contest" aspects and unstated norms in general make clear, there's also plenty of people who acknowledge that it is, in the end, an award for and by the segment of fandom that go to Worldcon. But I suppose that's his point with the " Whitelibbycon" (ugh) paragraph.
posted by kagredon at 11:28 AM on April 15, 2015

Don't count on attending the Hugo Loser party.

I just realized that will likely be sparsely attended. :(
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 11:29 AM on April 15, 2015 [1 favorite]

I love these EVE Online threads. Thanks for explaining this stuff, eriko.
posted by grouse at 11:32 AM on April 15, 2015 [4 favorites]

Don't count on attending the Hugo Loser party.

Would you want to attend this one? Not I!

I have in fact been to one -- I was an acceptor for one of the fan writers. He didn't win, so basically, I got to put on a suit, never read a speech, and then get some fancy nosh in the party.

Torgersen is saying that the Hugos/Worldcon present themselves "as the award for the entirety", not necessarily that everyone else agrees.

WSFS certainly doesn't. Witness Section 1.2 of the WSFS Constitution.

Section 1.2: Objectives. WSFS is an unincorporated literary society whose functions are:
(1) To choose the recipients of the annual Hugo Awards (Science Fiction Achievement Awards).

(2) To choose the locations and Committees for the annual World Science Fiction Conventions (hereinafter referred to as Worldcons).

(3) To attend those Worldcons.

(4) To choose the locations and Committees for the occasional North American Science Fiction Conventions (hereinafter referred to as NASFiCs).

(5) To perform such other activities as may be necessary or incidental to the above purposes.

So, yeah. That's what they do. They don't assert anything other than they are "Science Fiction Achievement Awards." The fact that they've been around for as long as they have and, until this year, have been run fairly is why they've become a major award, but that's it. The only thing that WSFS asserts is the Hugo is an award of achievement in Science Fiction that they give out. (And let's just pretend the word Fantasy is in there, because that's eligible too -- it's called out explicitly in 3.2.1)
posted by eriko at 11:35 AM on April 15, 2015 [1 favorite]

eriko: WSFS won't touch that with a 10' pole, and I'm with them completely on that.

Yeah, broadly I agree with that. In the situation I was tangentially involved in, it was potentially an existential threat to the organization, and it was a case of rule-bending to counter rules-subverting, neither of which is quite the case here.
posted by Kattullus at 11:42 AM on April 15, 2015

Annie Bellet has withdrawn her story "Goodnight Stars" from consideration for the Best Short Story award.

It is unknown how this particular case will be handled -- if the ballot will remain at 4 or if there's a work that can be promoted to the final ballot (remember, they have to accept *and* it has to pass the 5% test, if you don't have 5% of the total nominations, you can't appear on the final ballot.)
posted by eriko at 11:51 AM on April 15, 2015 [6 favorites]

Web cache of David Gerrold's posting of Connie Willis's statement, feat. TNH, Usman T. Malik, Jack Skillingstead, and of course the man of the hour himself, Brad Torgersen.
posted by kagredon at 11:58 AM on April 15, 2015

Wait, we're holding up the Oscars as super-objective and not run by a small clique?
posted by Artw at 11:58 AM on April 15, 2015

I find my story, and by extension myself, stuck in a game of political dodge ball, where I’m both a conscripted player and also a ball.

This is pretty much accurate. (Though she is someone I was only half-sympathetic to, since she was clear she had okayed being on the ballot in advance.)
posted by jeather at 12:04 PM on April 15, 2015 [1 favorite]

Reasonable decision - good luck to her in future Hugos.
posted by Artw at 12:08 PM on April 15, 2015 [1 favorite]

Marko Kloos is withdrawing "Lines of Departure" from consideration for best novel.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 12:11 PM on April 15, 2015 [7 favorites]

"It has come to my attention that “Lines of Departure” was one of the nomination suggestions in Vox Day’s “Rabid Puppies” campaign."

But we already knew that weeks ago. It feels like some people not invested in the culture war here were hoping the slate voting controversy would die out, but instead the SMOF have become more and more upset and the slate organizers have become more and more toxic.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 12:18 PM on April 15, 2015 [6 favorites]

I wonder how this'll change the whole discussion of "consider all candidates anyway" vs. "vote non-slate, then no award" vs. "no award everything"? Best Novel is going to be 3/5 non-puppied.
posted by kagredon at 12:34 PM on April 15, 2015

SMOF have become more and more upset

It's not the SMOFs. They've been trying to figure out how to cope with this, because this has real world implications. They have to deal with the actual ceremony, which is not likely to be Happy Fun Time given all the talk between the RPs and fandom, including the terms "war" and "destroying the Hugos" and other such fun things and dealing with what appears is going to be one of the largest Hugo votes ever.

It started as Worldcon fandom-as-a-whole, and it's extended beyond that. Fandom is more and more upset, and as the RPs ratchet up the rhetoric, they're getting more upset and taking more action.

But the people actually running Sasquan and dealing with the Business Meeting and Hugo Awards in particular are dealing with the actual practical problems of this, and the folks at Midwestcon 2, the 2016 Worldcon in Kansas City, are dealing with both getting their convention off the ground *and* having to run the Hugo Losers party.

They're kind of on the sharp end of the stick right now. They really don't have time to be upset on the Internet.
posted by eriko at 12:34 PM on April 15, 2015 [6 favorites]

It feels like some people not invested in the culture war here were hoping the slate voting controversy would die out,

Yes. Without guessing to either writer's motives, it's clear social pressure is working on at least some of the people nominated by either group of Puppies and Bellet and Kloos are either smart enough to jump from a sinking ship or decent enough not to want to be on the Hugo ballot this way. Either way, they should be appreciated for their stance.

Hopefully this will open the doors for some of the other people nominated who've come out as being nominated by the Puppies slate without their knowledge or permission to withdraw themselves from consideration.

The more writers see the Puppy slate as toxic, the more Day and Wright stand alone, the less effective it will be as a way to grief the Hugos in future years.
posted by MartinWisse at 12:35 PM on April 15, 2015 [11 favorites]

"It has come to my attention that “Lines of Departure” was one of the nomination suggestions in Vox Day’s “Rabid Puppies” campaign."

But we already knew that weeks ago.

And he was on the Sad Puppies slate, which they allegedly cleared with the members of beforehand. My more cynical side is saying "He knew damn well he wouldn't win, and he gets even more PR by being The Bigger Man about it all, and he needs that boost a lot more than Jim Butcher or Kevin Anderson."
posted by Etrigan at 12:36 PM on April 15, 2015 [1 favorite]

(Though she is someone I was only half-sympathetic to, since she was clear she had okayed being on the ballot in advance.)

I can't really understand this reasoning, given what else she's had to say publicly about her nomination, and what we know about how lax the Puppies were about actually notifying their picks instead of just claiming they'd notified all of them, as I've seen quite a lot of talk about that particular issue... maybe it's super-inside baseball and she's said some really shitty things elsewhere that I don't know about but you do, and that's why you're withholding sympathy, who knows, but I'm not seeing any actual reasons to think poorly of her.
posted by palomar at 12:40 PM on April 15, 2015 [3 favorites]

And he was on the Sad Puppies slate, which they allegedly cleared with the members of beforehand.

We know a couple of cases where they failed to do so, but Larry Correia did at least try to clear most of the people on the slate, so I'm willing to attribute that mistake rather than malice.

And, you know what, what's done is done, and they've withdrawn. The more that do so, the less effective the slate becomes. Just because it took them a while to do the correct thing doesn't mean they didn't do the correct thing.

Let's stop letting perfect be the enemy of the good.
posted by eriko at 12:45 PM on April 15, 2015 [17 favorites]

Well, we've already found out that not everyone was actually contacted by the SP organizers. And not everyone on the slate agrees with the SP's politics. I'm pretty sure Torgersen was less than forthcoming with at least some of the people he contacted. More, hey, can we recommend your story and less, hey, want to be a pawn/human shield in a new front of the culture war?

This new development of nominated writers withdrawing feels very powerful to me. It feels like it puts the Puppies and their defenders in a very difficult position. What can they say about this? Are they going to attack the people they've previously been championing?

Nominated writers withdrawing highlights the illegitimacy of the whole thing in a way that nothing else can, I think.
posted by overglow at 12:45 PM on April 15, 2015 [7 favorites]

Are they going to attack the people they've previously been championing?

The deliberate intersection with goobergort is a pretty strong predictor of Yes.
posted by Drastic at 12:50 PM on April 15, 2015 [7 favorites]

Bellet and Kloos are either smart enough to jump from a sinking ship or decent enough not to want to be on the Hugo ballot this way. Either way, they should be appreciated for their stance.

I'm really uncomfortable qualifying Bellet's response as either 'smart' or 'decent', given that she's pretty obviously just upset and tired of being in between two groups of people in a war, neither of which are showing much compassion for her actual situation and both of whom are quite okay with accepting collateral damage.

I don’t want to stand in a battlefield anymore. I don’t want to have to think over every tweet and retweet, every blog post, every word I say. I don’t want to cringe when I open my email. I don’t want to have to ask friends to google me and read things so that I can at least be aware of the stuff people might be saying in my name or against my name.

This is not why I write. This is not the kind of community I want to be a part of, nor the kind of award I want to win.

posted by corb at 12:50 PM on April 15, 2015

I don't know how far inside baseball (I swear I already had that metaphor in mind before palomar's comment!) all of the nominees are. If one weren't familiar with fandom and Hugo voting and someone said "hey -- I plan to recommend your story as deserving an award" it wouldn't be obvious that there would be any reason to consider that to have a downside.

I'm inclined to extend the benefit of the doubt (and not inclined to sieve their online presences looking for what they knew when.)
posted by Zed at 12:51 PM on April 15, 2015 [1 favorite]

What can they say about this? Are they going to attack the people they've previously been championing?

Well, duh. The evil left-wing conspiracy pressured them into withdrawing.

(1290 posts, BTW. Way to go.)
posted by Leon at 12:51 PM on April 15, 2015 [3 favorites]

Best Novel is going to be 3/5 non-puppied.

We don't know that yet, because we don't know what #6 was on the slate. It could well be an SP/RP slate member who was pushed off by the two that weren't, so we'll just swap one for another.

Or, again, they may not promote a candidate up since they withdrew after the announcement. They did promote after a work was ruled ineligible, since it shouldn't have been there in the first place, but they might rule that withdrawing after the announcement may just leave the ballot short.
posted by eriko at 12:53 PM on April 15, 2015

I recall her saying she was contacted in advance.

I'm not going to hold this against her -- I have the first two apocalypse collections and intend to read them all shortly, when book 3 comes out, including her stories. And I do think she's doing the decent thing -- whatever she feels, the action is that she isn't supporting the slate.
posted by jeather at 12:56 PM on April 15, 2015 [2 favorites]

The evil left-wing conspiracy pressured them into withdrawing.

Yeah, I mean, I think probably a lot of the SP supporters will say that. But the organizers?

From what I've heard and seen, Torgersen and Correia have already burned a lot of goodwill and trust with all this. For them, this is more than an Internet argument. The writers who are withdrawing (and all the writers and editors and hard-core fans and the whole SFF world that is watching all this) are their peers and colleagues and potential collaborators and gateways to professional opportunities.

So far, they seem to have shown more interest in playing to their redpill/Gamergate/culturewar supporters than to the SFF world. You have to wonder how far they're going to take things, though. These writers withdrawing ratchets up the pressure on them, I think.

I mean, honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if they kept sinking to further and further paranoia and epistemic closure. But doing so seems likely to burn them pretty hard (at least in the non-insane world--they could probably still have careers as professional conservative assholes, and maybe that's what they want.)
posted by overglow at 1:01 PM on April 15, 2015 [3 favorites]

The evil left-wing conspiracy pressured them into withdrawing.

I mean, mock quotes aside, here's the thing. Reactions from the left are part of the reasons that Bellet at least withdrew - and people in this very thread expressed that they hoped that the people on the slate did feel pressured. So while no, I'm sure that they're not being danced like puppets on strings, to say that your particular wing of fandom holds no blame whatsoever for these choices is disingenuous at best.
posted by corb at 1:05 PM on April 15, 2015

I am sure that nominees withdrew because of, let's call it the SJW wing of fandom. I just am not convinced that this is a bad thing.
posted by jeather at 1:07 PM on April 15, 2015 [3 favorites]

Reactions from the left are part of the reasons that Bellet at least withdrew

No, actually.

It's reactions from fandom. I know *plenty* of very conservative fans who have the exact same disdain for what the SP/RP slate has done that very liberal fans have. The SP/RP want to make this an Left/Right argument, but it's not, and it has never been one.
posted by eriko at 1:08 PM on April 15, 2015 [21 favorites]

Brad Torgersen says he is not responsible for the atrocity known as "Yes Virginia There Is a Santa Claus." Drone strikes have accordingly been canceled and I am filled with optimistic unbridled hope for the other stories on the ballot. Which are totally going to be fine, every one of them. Right? Right?
posted by corb at 1:12 PM on April 15, 2015 [1 favorite]

Anyone else remember that petition that floated around about the non-existent SFWA "editorial death panels" where signers put their name on different versions of the petition?
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 1:12 PM on April 15, 2015 [1 favorite]

corb: If that "you" was directed at me personally (curse our imprecise pronouns), I just wanted to say I really don't have a dog in this fight.

Though this thread caused me to finally read Old Man's War and... this is the hated SJW-SF? Reads a lot like bog-standard normal SF to me.
posted by Leon at 1:13 PM on April 15, 2015 [2 favorites]

And now he's calling the RP slate a "copycat." Maybe somebody else is feeling a bit of pressure from the left-wing conspiracy that is The Entire Rest Of The World?
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 1:13 PM on April 15, 2015 [2 favorites]

Yeah, that's a thing that doesn't make sense to me. SP defenders keep saying that the people who are upset with them are evil SJWs who hate people because they have the wrong politics and keep ignoring the real and large contingent of people who are upset with them for their behavior, for the choices they've made, for the way they've broken the social contract around not slate-voting for the Hugos. Sure, for some people the association with Vox Day and the obnoxious anti affirmative action rhetoric also is a source of anger. But the Puppies emphasize the politics because they have no good answer to the fact that they're violated the spirit of the process.

There's a Heinlein quote that's been going around that I think is appropriate:

The rules permitted a contestant to submit any number of entries as long as each was written on a Skyway Soap wrapper or reasonable facsimile.

I considered photographing one and turning out facsimiles by the gross, but Dad advised me not to. "It is within the rules, Kip, but I've never yet known a skunk to be welcome at a picnic."

If this was simply a left/right fight, well, I doubt the nominees would have withdrawn. But the skunks have sprayed their stink all over the picnic and everyone with a functioning nose is unhappy with them.
posted by overglow at 1:16 PM on April 15, 2015 [6 favorites]

But doing so seems likely to burn them pretty hard

Convention-going fandom is vocal but not all that big compared to the book-buying world at large. Correia's a New York Times bestseller. Baen's not going to dump someone moving that many books, and readers aren't going to dump Baen for publishing him any more than they've dumped Tor for publishing Card. They're still going to have fiction careers and might well see a net gain in fans as they lose convention-going fandom and gain gamergaters.

I believe you're absolutely right, of course, that a whole bunch of anthology invites and convention guest invites and other professional opportunities that could have come their way won't be there because of all the good reason they've given people to think they'd be unpleasant to work with. The things that are the sort of dues-paying Martin and Gerrold have mentioned that could have contributed to them getting the award down the road.

Give it 3-5 years and it wouldn't shock me at all if we saw a PuppyCon (with its own award, the SourGrapie) or maybe, god help us, a pan-fandoms GG-con.
posted by Zed at 1:17 PM on April 15, 2015 [3 favorites]

Though this thread caused me to finally read Old Man's War and... this is the hated SJW-SF? Reads a lot like bog-standard normal SF to me.

Wait until you read Ancillary Justice. Apart from the pronouns, it's not particularly genre-transgressive space opera.
posted by sukeban at 1:17 PM on April 15, 2015 [8 favorites]

If there's a pan-fandoms GG-con, what are the odds it gets SWATted?

(Which makes me wonder if the sasquon folks have talked to local LEOs about SWATting...)
posted by rmd1023 at 1:22 PM on April 15, 2015 [4 favorites]

One of the biggest things I just don't get about Brad Torgersen is how he is able to handle the inherent cognitive dissonance in constantly wail about tribalism and how his sad puppies just want a seat at the table while simultaneously claiming his particular brand of "get yer wimmin and feelings out of my escapist spaceships and 'splosions" SFF is the way things USED TO and SHOULD ALWAYS be. Either you dominate the category or you don't, but if you reject diversity in the genre and you also reject accusations of trying to dominate it how does your head not explode? I just don't get it.
posted by Wretch729 at 1:32 PM on April 15, 2015 [9 favorites]

readers aren't going to dump Baen for publishing him

Anyone who would dump Baen for vaguely-ideological reasons would have done so a long time ago over Kratman.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 1:34 PM on April 15, 2015 [6 favorites]

Which makes me wonder if the sasquon folks have talked to local LEOs about SWATting...)

In a just world, the puppies would be required to foot all additional expenses (like security, larger spaces, etc) due to their actions, as well as costs incurred by any misbehavior.
posted by zombieflanders at 1:38 PM on April 15, 2015

Correia's a New York Times bestseller. Baen's not going to dump someone moving that many books, and readers aren't going to dump Baen for publishing him any more than they've dumped Tor for publishing Card.

I've actually been sort of wondering about the role Baen has played in this whole kerfuffle. Not that I think they're behind the Puppies, but rather that they've helped create the climate in which Torgensen and Correira could feel justified to grief the Hugos.

Because so much of their justification about why they deserve awards if not for those evil liberals sound so much like people like Eric Flint where bleating about in rec.arts.sf.written a decade and a half ago: that sales are the only measure of quality, that conservative sf is overlooked or disdained by the SF elite, that all that matters is writing good apolitical adventure stories should be the pinnacle of any writer's ambitions, undsoweiter.

Baen is also the publisher which was proud to be compared to Del Monte tinned fruit, liking that their writers were mostly interchangeable and it has deliberately cultivated an Us against the rest of the world among its fan base. All of which was sort of kept on a low boil when Jim Baen was still alive, who was always much more eclectic in his tastes than his readers were, but under the new management they seem to have followed the Teabaggers culture wars handbook.
posted by MartinWisse at 1:40 PM on April 15, 2015 [7 favorites]

And remember: Jim Baen was Tor's first editor, Tor (via Tom Dorherty) owns 25% of Baen Books. They all started at Ace Books.

This whole idea of Tor vs. Baen is just stupid. Everyone has worked with everyone in the business.
posted by eriko at 1:41 PM on April 15, 2015 [9 favorites]

Wait MartinWisse isn't Eric Flint a pinko commie former labor organizer? When was he whining about conservative SF being neglected? And how could he possibly have advocated for unpolitical adventure stories he loves writing political stories! The 1632 series is basically "Let's start the Enlightenment a century and a half early! (and also let's fix slavery, antisemitism, and Europe's bloody modern history!)" I am confused.
posted by Wretch729 at 1:50 PM on April 15, 2015 [1 favorite]

Baen had a secretary named Tor, and Tor had a secretary named Baen.
posted by Chrysostom at 1:50 PM on April 15, 2015 [8 favorites]

Convention-going fandom is vocal but not all that big compared to the book-buying world at large. Correia's a New York Times bestseller. Baen's not going to dump someone moving that many books, and readers aren't going to dump Baen for publishing him any more than they've dumped Tor for publishing Card. They're still going to have fiction careers and might well see a net gain in fans as they lose convention-going fandom and gain gamergaters.

I see it as mostly a tempest in a teapot consisting of big-name fans and authors. Granted, it has the potential to become a very ugly tempest if it escalates to doxing, terrorist threats, and swatting as we saw with gamergate. But most of the people who buy books are just going to go to Amazon or B&N and pick up whatever is marketed based on the blurb and the author's name.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 2:14 PM on April 15, 2015 [1 favorite]

Give it 3-5 years and it wouldn't shock me at all if we saw a PuppyCon (with its own award, the SourGrapie) or maybe, god help us, a pan-fandoms GG-con.

This would be the most hilarious trainwreck ever. I bet it would go worse than that Tumblr con with the sad ballpit and every MRA hatefest ever combined
posted by NoraReed at 2:19 PM on April 15, 2015 [15 favorites]

sad ballpit.
posted by Justinian at 2:36 PM on April 15, 2015 [2 favorites]

Though this thread caused me to finally read Old Man's War and... this is the hated SJW-SF? Reads a lot like bog-standard normal SF to me.

I thought of it as a (pretty good) Heinlein pastiche when I read it, ironically enough.
posted by Artw at 3:08 PM on April 15, 2015 [1 favorite]

So, because I am, apparently, a crazy person, I decided to see for myself just how badly poor old Baen Books had been treated by the Hugo Awards. So I made a little chart of all the Publishers who had ever won a Hugo for best novel (trying as best I could to group imprints of the same company together), and looked at three aspects:

Number of Nominations (is the Conspiracy keeping Baen off the Ballot?)
Number of Wins (is the Conspiracy denying Baen victory?)
Ratio of Wins to Nominations (is the Conspiracy keeping Baen from its rightful share?)

So first, the numbers:

Tor Books – 38 Nominations, 8 Wins, 0.21 Win Ratio
Bantam Books or Bantam Spectra or Spectra Books – 24 Nominations, 6 Wins, 0.25 Win Ratio
Ace Books – 22 Nominations, 3 Wins, 0.14 Win Ratio
Harper & Row or HarperCollins or HarperPrism or William Morrow or Morrow or Eos – 18 Nominations, 8 Wins, 0.44 Win Ratio
Galaxy Science Fiction – 13 Nominations, 6 Wins, 0.46 Win Ratio
Doubleday – 12 Nominations, 4 Wins, 0.33 Win Ratio
Ballantine Books – 12 Nominations, 3 Wins, 0.25 Win Ratio
Analog Science Fact & Fiction – 12 Nominations, 2 Wins, 0.17 Win Ratio
Del Rey Books – 12 Nominations, 1 Win, 0.08 Win Ratio
Putnam Publishing Group or Berkeley Putnam – 11 Nominations, 3 Wins, 0.27 Win Ratio
Orbit Books – 11 Nominations, 1 Win, 0.09 Win Ratio
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction – 9 Nominations, 2 Wins, 0.22 Win Ratio
Baen Books – 8 Nominations, 2 Wins, 0.25 Win Ratio
Astounding Science Fiction – 8 Nominations, 2 Wins, 0.25 Win Ratio
St. Martin’s Press – 4 Nominations, 1 Win, 0.25 Win Ratio
Victor Gollancz or Gollancz – 4 Nominations, 1 Win, 0.25 Win Ratio
DAW – 4 Nominations, 1 Win, 0.25 Win Ratio
Warner Books or Warner Questar or Warner Aspect – 4 Nominations, 1 Win, 0.25 Win Ratio
Bloomsbury Publishing – 3 Nominations, 2 Wins, 0.67 Win Ratio
If – 3 Nominations, 1 Win, 0.33 Win Ratio
Chilton Company – 2 Nominations, 1 Win, 0.50 Win Ratio
Houghton Mifflin – 2 Nominations, 1 Win, 0.50 Win Ratio
J. B. Lippincott & Co. – 1 Nomination, 1 Win, 1.00 Win Ratio
Dial Press – 1 Nomination, 1 Win, 1.00 Win Ratio
Night Shade Books – 1 Nomination, 1 Win, 1.00 Win Ratio

Now, a little analysis:

Median Number of Nominations: 8
Number of Nominations for Baen: 8

Median Number of Wins: 2
Number of Wins for Baen: 2

Median Win Ratio: 0.25
Win Ratio for Baen: 0.25

Oh my god. The numbers do not lie.

THE CONSPIRACY IS MAKING BAEN LOOK AVERAGE!
posted by kyrademon at 3:16 PM on April 15, 2015 [25 favorites]

The Baenzillas probably don't count Bujold (who alone accounts for 6 of their 7 pre-puppy nominations) for... reasons... and stuff...
posted by Justinian at 3:22 PM on April 15, 2015 [6 favorites]

THE CONSPIRACY IS MAKING BAEN LOOK AVERAGE!

As noted, that's among publishers with at least one win. They look better than average overall.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 3:25 PM on April 15, 2015

If all I had read of Scalzi was OMW I'd have presumed that he was pretty right wing. Not just because of the whole war thing, but because the social setup is that 1) the war is ongoing and inescapable; 2) civilians do not understand the needs of war; 3) it is necessary that civilians not understand the needs of war, but support it anyway; 4) ~~the franchise~~ immortality is justly awarded to those who are willing to make the supreme sacrifice for their ~~country~~ ~~planet~~ species.
posted by Joe in Australia at 3:30 PM on April 15, 2015 [5 favorites]

GRRM: Larry Correia, Once again:

Anyway... no, I am not going to reply to his reply to my reply to his reply to my posts. This is not a fifteen-round title bout, thank you. We have reached the point of diminishing returns on this. The discourse has, I think, been revealing, and I appreciate that both of us have kept the tone relatively civil, but I sincerely doubt that either one of us has swayed the other an inch.

Larry has been declared the winner by a knockout on Monster Hunter Nation. Yay for him.

I have been declared the winner by a knockout here on my Not A Blog. Yay for me.
posted by nubs at 3:34 PM on April 15, 2015 [1 favorite]

This would be the most hilarious trainwreck ever. I bet it would go worse than that Tumblr con with the sad ballpit and every MRA hatefest ever combined

can you imagine the program guide

State of the Neg: New Developments in NLP (mod. Roosh V)

Whores Whores Whores Whores: An Evening with Frank Miller

Feminazi Stole My Ice Cream Social
posted by kagredon at 3:35 PM on April 15, 2015 [12 favorites]

> As noted, that's among publishers with at least one win. They look better than average overall.

Oh, yeah. If you want to include Publishers who were nominated but never won, Pyramid Books were 0 for 4, Avon Publications were 0 for 5, Timescape Books were 0 for 3, Arbor House was 0 for 3, Harcourt was 0 for 3, and there were a whole bunch that were 0 for 1.

If you wanted to include Sci-Fi and Fantasy Publishers who were never even nominated, I'm not sure how you'd even do that but there's loads, especially when you consider Small Press etc.

> "The Baenzillas probably don't count Bujold (who alone accounts for 6 of their 7 pre-puppy nominations) for... reasons... and stuff..."

While I didn't analyze it, incidentally, it didn't look that unusual for a big chunk of nominations to come from a single author, or a couple of authors, for the mid-chart Publishers. I mean, it was by no means all of them, some were and some weren't, but most of DAW's nominations are Cherryh, for example.
posted by kyrademon at 3:40 PM on April 15, 2015 [2 favorites]

Yeah, the obsession with Scalzi as the Enemy of All That is Right(-Wing) can't be justified based on his professional writing. His major series has been Heinlein pastiche - the first of which was explicitly Starship Troopers inspired - and his other stuff doesn't really work any "SJW" tropes, that I'm aware of. He's not Octavia Butler or anything.

Now, there's a *kernel* of truth in their obsession with him as the center of a cabal. Scalzi is a self-promoter and schmoozer par excellence, and that's undoubtedly done him a lot of good in terms of editor/author/SMOF goodwill and such. He's absolutely part of an insider group with the NHs, Doctorow, etc. BUT a) mentioning your book is Hugo-eligible is nowhere near this slate horseshit, b) people have been buddy buddy in SF since the dawn of the genre - it's a small industry, and people know each other, c) Hugo voting has always been *less* personality driven than say, the Nebula, which was infamous for logrolling, and d) being a nice person is an option open to everyone, not just Scalzi. 90% of success is showing up, and not being a dick. The SP/RP group decided that frothing at the mouth was the better path, though.

My personal criticism of Scalzi is that I don't think he is working up to his potential. It's fine to say, "I write what I do because that's where the money is," but at least sometimes try something more challenging? Cripes, even a hack like Piers Anthony gave a shot at the Great American SF Novel in Macroscope. Admittedly, he failed, and it's as problematic as most of his work, but he did *try*.
posted by Chrysostom at 4:00 PM on April 15, 2015 [6 favorites]

[Regarding new WSFS amendments]: WSFS Membership Types and Rates -- Bars conventions from selling a membership with voting rights for less than the cost of a supporting membership.

Just curious what the deal with this one is. Was a Worldcon trying to sell voting rights at a discount?
posted by Banknote of the year at 4:06 PM on April 15, 2015

Yeah, the obsession with Scalzi as the Enemy of All That is Right(-Wing) can't be justified based on his professional writing.

I think they must view him the equivalent of a "race traitor" to a group of white supremacists. He's a guy with every single one of the hallmarks of someone who should be on their side (even to writing Heinlein pastiches) and yet he publicly recognizes them as ethically, socially, and mentally deficient. Nothing could be more enraging.

My personal criticism of Scalzi is that I don't think he is working up to his potential.

I agree. Redshirts was the most slight and inconsequential novel to win the Hugo in decades, even more than the Sawyer a while back and I froth at the mouth just thinking about the Sawyer win.

And it's still less infuriating than the Puppies slates.
posted by Justinian at 4:16 PM on April 15, 2015 [6 favorites]

> "He's a guy with every single one of the hallmarks of someone who should be on their side ..."

That disconnect makes their objections to him sound SO WEIRD sometimes.

"I can't believe Scalzi won for that fun space romp!"
"Oh? What do you think should have won instead?"
"Something completely different, like a fun space romp!"
"Wait. What?"
"Something like that would never have a chance these days, I tell you!"
"..."
posted by kyrademon at 4:28 PM on April 15, 2015 [14 favorites]

Maybe they would have preferred the fun fantasy romp by Saladin Ahmed?
posted by Artw at 4:32 PM on April 15, 2015 [2 favorites]

Just curious what the deal with this one is. Was a Worldcon trying to sell voting rights at a discount?

For the previous five years or so, there had been some calls for a much cheaper voting membership to extend Hugo enfranchisement to poorer people. The people calling for this were the sort of SJW-types that allegedly give fandom its marching orders but here on non-bizarro-Earth its proponents are kind of pissed about how it turned out.
posted by Zed at 4:33 PM on April 15, 2015 [1 favorite]

his other stuff doesn't really work any "SJW" tropes, that I'm aware of

His latest book, which didn't tell you about the main character's gender, sort of did. I guess.

(I like his books, I've read them all. I don't really think Redshirts deserved it, but I had fun reading it which was more than could be said for the previous year's winner, Among Others.)
posted by jeather at 4:35 PM on April 15, 2015

Having not read his blog (aside from the entry years ago with the video of his daughter waving Cthulhu around and being mad about Pluto being demoted), after I read OMW, I sort of assumed he was a reasonable, sane sort of conservative.
posted by rmd1023 at 4:41 PM on April 15, 2015

What can they say about this? Are they going to attack the people they've previously been championing?

Well, duh. The evil left-wing consapiracy pressured them into withdrawing.

Actually, I'd bet you any amount of money that the SPs and RPs will take the "more in sorrow than anger" approach, and regret that these poor souls were forced to cave in under pressure by the heinous SJWs all around. And for what it's worth, I'm sorry for them too. They got stuck in the middle of something they clearly didn't see was coming. But they won't take heat from the Day/Correia/Wright crowd, because that would undermine the SP/RP original position that this was all about QUALITY, people. Period.

You should also check out Dave Freer's latest posts on the Mad Genius blog (I'm not going to bother linking to them, you can google them if you're interested and I'm lazy), where he spends several thousand words demonstrating to his satisfaction that Teresa D.H. is an evil leaker and otherwise a horrible soul, who conspired with others in a smokey back room somewhere to limit the nominations (and therefore the potential wins) of politically incorrect writers. I couldn't make my way all through his post without starting to bleed through my eyeballs, but I didn't see any argument about why a slate was a good idea, except for the "they did it first (albeit in a sneaky and smoke-filled back room kind of way)" defense.

The weird thing is that I LIKE Freer's fiction. And I'm going to keep reading it and buying it. But, jeez. This is really painful to watch.
posted by my dog is named clem at 4:42 PM on April 15, 2015 [1 favorite]

Thanks, Zed. I was hoping it wasn't that kind of reaction.
posted by Banknote of the year at 4:45 PM on April 15, 2015

I think the hatred for Scalzi comes from his role in the 2013 SFWA controversies. Basically, he didn't give the sexists a free pass to bash their peers in The Bulletin.

Jemisin is a case of "someone is wrong on the internet" since her Australian speech criticizing Beale and his supporters is more political than any of the fiction I've read from her.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 4:50 PM on April 15, 2015 [3 favorites]

More a case of "a black woman is wrong on the internet*"

* where WOTI = disagrees with me
posted by kagredon at 5:19 PM on April 15, 2015 [9 favorites]

While Torgersen danced around disavowing Vox Day after GRRM's request, I believe that Correia flat-out labeled Jemisin a racist blogger and equivalent to Day. Not sure what specific things she'd said that he considered to be racist, but I'd say that that beef is still quite strong.
posted by Going To Maine at 6:21 PM on April 15, 2015

Teresa D.H.

1) N. H, but really, universally, just note her as TNH. Everyone else does.

2) The first leaker was one Micheal Z. Williamson, who announced a couple of weeks before the release that he'd been nominated. This, BTW, is *very* much against the social contract.

3) Everyone in publishing rapidly gets a sense of who's nominated, because of the preponderance of shit-eating grins. The thing that stood out this year was the complete lack of shit-eating grins. That's what led to the rumors that something wasn't normal this year.

4) If anybody thinks they can scare TNH? Well, think again. She's been through vastly more shit than you can possibly imagine. She deals with a crippling neurological disorder daily. She's lived in bad NYC neighboorhoods. Your words on the Internet? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

She still is one of the most clever, erudite and funny people I've ever met, and I'm am utterly honored and chuffed to call her a friend. We only get to see each other once every half decade anymore, and we immediately fall back into the last conversation we were on, break open the nearest bottle of whatever good strong liquor is nearby, and the hours disappear again. I have literally dressed her wounds, and I'd do that again in a heartbeat. We've laughed together -- which is a problem when you have cataplexy and this leaves you lying on a street in San Jose -- we've cried together, we've mocked together, and when she's gone, I will be one broken person, but I'll get over it, because if I don't, she will crawl out of the grave and kick my ass.

And if you don't know her? Well, I'm honestly sorry for you. Maybe you should get over whatever reason that is and talk to her. She loves talking to people -- and while she does not suffer fools gladly, the Metafilter Test pretty much ensures anybody on this thread will not fall into the fool category. She'd be happy to talk with you all. So, if you're at Sasquan, go talk to her. Tell her I said you should say hi. (Erik V. Olson, in full.) If you want bring an offering, she love good tequila, her husband loves good rye.
posted by eriko at 6:42 PM on April 15, 2015 [17 favorites]

I thought of it as a (pretty good) Heinlein pastiche when I read it, ironically enough.

I saw Bill The Galactic Hero (Chingers, Deathwish Drang) and The Forever War (Marygay) too.
posted by Leon at 7:00 PM on April 15, 2015 [1 favorite]

I believe that Correia flat-out labeled Jemisin a racist blogger and equivalent to Day. Not sure what specific things she'd said that he considered to be racist, but I'd say that that beef is still quite strong.

I'd really love to know more about that. I'm kind of assuming, based on previous track record, that Nemisin probably did something horrible like acknowledge white privilege and point out that we live in a racist society and there are systemic imbalances. Because that's the kind of thing that made the unbalanced wingnut in my life flip out and start screaming that I was bullying him and being racist toward him, and that's the kind of overreaction that I'm learning to expect from Correia. But I really would like to see what he's actually said about her, if anything.
posted by palomar at 7:03 PM on April 15, 2015 [7 favorites]

Correia: Last year I liked a story written by a guy SJWs think is racist. Could a comment made a few years ago by Vox Day to Nora Jemisin be seen as racist? Yep. Has Nora Jemisin said a whole bunch of racist things herself leading up to that and then a bunch after? Yep.

So, to attempt to put this into SJW terms, did a Person of Color (man, I hate that stupid term) aggress against another Person of Color who was also committing aggressions? I think so, but I got an accounting degree instead of gender studies, so I’m not sure.

Here is the speech that Jemisin gave at Continuum. It's quite moving, and funny in places, too; just an all-around good speech, regardless of if you agree with the point she's making (I do.)

Day's ensuing tantrum. You can read it, but...well, let's just say that as bad I imagined it to be based on the much-quoted bits ("half-savage", etc.), it actually managed to be worse.
posted by kagredon at 7:24 PM on April 15, 2015 [2 favorites]

How is Beale a "Person of Color"?
posted by Justinian at 7:33 PM on April 15, 2015

He's referred to himself as Native American, though you'll note a conspicuous absence of that in his blog post about how great white men are, or in the post quoted in this link from upthread.
posted by kagredon at 7:34 PM on April 15, 2015

Wikipedia says: "He is of English, Irish, Mexican, and Native American descent". Which is weird, because usually when White Nationalists find out they have some Mexican descent they drop out of sight, like that Panzerfaust Records dude.
posted by Pope Guilty at 7:35 PM on April 15, 2015

He's such a douchebag that he probably means that every American born here is a native american.
posted by Justinian at 7:36 PM on April 15, 2015

I looked at wikipedia. Those are the results of one of those DNA test things. That doesn't make him a person of color any more than anybody else.
posted by Justinian at 7:39 PM on April 15, 2015

So, as it happens, the racist whites of SFWA not only expelled a Person of Color, but one of its very few Indian members. I have to admit, I'm rather looking forward to the next person to resort to the "well, are you a Native American?" argument during a debate concerning the evils of immigration.

Vox Day: super excited about playing the race card.
posted by kagredon at 7:40 PM on April 15, 2015 [5 favorites]

I am assuming he is 1/16th Cherokee Princess.
posted by Artw at 8:05 PM on April 15, 2015 [11 favorites]

Okay, yeah, it's pretty much like I remember it from following the SFWA "kerfuffle"... she said nothing in that speech that I can really call racist. It's not racist to call someone a bigot and an asshole, and that's the most objectionable thing she did. So... basically, Correia's either dishonest, deluded, or both. Quelle surprise.
posted by palomar at 8:17 PM on April 15, 2015

From Correia's totally-no-political-message-here Monster Hunter International:

Don’t go getting high and mighty because of slavery. You grew up out West, you have no clue about the South. My family might own this house, but that doesn’t mean that we approve of the kinds of things that happened here. I had ancestors who fought for the Confederacy, but I would be real surprised if any of them had two nickels to rub together, let alone owned a slave. People think that the South is racist, and it was, and some parts still are, but for the most part, we’ve dealt with our history. The biggest racists I’ve ever met aren’t here, they’re in politics, and they are smug bastards. They’re the ones that are quick to play the race card, the ones that pimp poverty. Those are the real bigots.

Cherry on top: this speech was delivered overlooking the remains of the slave quarters of "one of the finest of the great antebellum homes of the Old South, [...] the crown jewel of a once-massive plantation."
posted by Zed at 8:42 PM on April 15, 2015 [12 favorites]

That sound you hear is irony screaming for mercy.
posted by rtha at 8:44 PM on April 15, 2015 [11 favorites]

oh, for the love of pete, these people
posted by palomar at 8:47 PM on April 15, 2015 [1 favorite]

Again, you really, really, have to be following all the inside baseball to know what's going on. NK Jemisin, or nojojojo on LJ (not a dox, she puts them both together openly) is a lot more politic in public at major speeches than she was, say, in the comments on Elizabeth Moon's LJ or other comments during RaceFail. If memory serves, she was somewhat mocking about people talking about their abuse triggers, frex. Now mind you, Vox may have lost his shit about trivial speeches, but Vox and Correia are not the same. (And Correia is, iirc, Portugese, so this isn't 'clueless white dude vs POC' this is more 'POC vs POC') And also mind you, Jemisin was on the concom so this was all super personal and dramatown, but it's not hard to see where a reasonable person could be like "alright, there are a lot of people acting badly here."
posted by corb at 8:47 PM on April 15, 2015

So basically, Jemisin has had to deal with respectability politics on top of everything else, and so by those super racist double standards, she maybe said a mean thing once and is now in the "angry black woman" category forever.
posted by NoraReed at 8:54 PM on April 15, 2015 [19 favorites]

And Correia is, iirc, Portugese, so this isn't 'clueless white dude vs POC' this is more 'POC vs POC'

Portugal is part of Western Europe. It strikes me as a stretch to call someone Portuguese "POC."
posted by Chrysostom at 8:59 PM on April 15, 2015 [11 favorites]

I don't know anything about Correia's actual experience with being treated in a racist manner because he may be seen as a person of color, but I also don't see any point in speculating about it since he seems fine with openly allying himself with an actual no-shit White supremacist.

I mean, corb, you wanted Correia cut slack because of his alleged "wartime" experience but it seems like he hasn't actually had any in combat so why look to cut him slack on maybe or maybe not being/being seen as/identifying as a person of color? Fine, we get it, you want people to cut him slack for reasons. Most people here seem to be firmly in the "no slack" camp because he is acting like an asshole. And he is killing poor irony. That shit needs to stop.
posted by rtha at 9:11 PM on April 15, 2015 [2 favorites]

it's not hard to see where a reasonable person could be like "alright, there are a lot of people acting badly here."

Well, no, because what you describe with handwavey vagueness as "somewhat mocking about people talking about their abuse triggers" could be literally anything. I still have no idea what was allegedly said by her, but you want me to take you at your word that she's behaved "badly". Given that you also categorize Vox Day's actions as "behaving badly", I really just can't get what you're about here. Painting this in a "both sides are equally bad" way is really, really weird when one side is headed up by a legit white supremacist and people who are all too happy to be his stooges, and the other side is the people those guys regularly attack.
posted by palomar at 9:15 PM on April 15, 2015 [11 favorites]

you wanted Correia cut slack because of his alleged "wartime" experience but it seems like he hasn't actually had any in combat

I'm starting to believe that people think that Torg/Correia/Vox (and sometimes me) are a holy trinity at this point, so to draw a roadmap:

Vox Day: created Rabid Puppies, wants to burn the world and the Hugos down, a crazypants asshole. He is basically one step from jumping up and down and smearing feces on himself with a crazy grin.

Correia: created Sad Puppies, former military contractor, no wartime experience

Torgersen, not Correia, is the one with military experience, and you don't need to put quotes around 'wartime'. If someone has served their country in a time of war, they have wartime experience. Sure, Torgersen plays down his job as just a 'paper pusher', because that's what you do, but those guys are crucial to the warfighting mission. If people's families aren't getting fed or housed or paid, you think the infantry can concentrate on their job of not getting killed? Hell to the no. Torg says he has no 'deployments', but mentions that he does have time overseas, which either means that he was posted overseas for a significant amount of time, or that he was sent for a short period of time - some call it deployed - to a place which is not America in order to further the wartime interests of the US military.

And alienation takes place even for those people who do not directly serve in combat.
posted by corb at 9:29 PM on April 15, 2015

If Correia didn't want to be associated with Vox Day he probably should have named his slate something besides "Sad Puppies". It's like if I named my pro-consumer movement "Gamer Gaze" and then said, hey, I have nothing to do with those GamerGaters. Just because we have similar names and there is a bunch of overlap in the people involved doesn't mean anything.

Correia's group is like Sinn Fein to Vox Day's IRA.
posted by Justinian at 9:33 PM on April 15, 2015 [2 favorites]

Actually one of the better explanations for this line of argument came from Shetterly:

* Jemisin's advocacy comes from Critical Race Theory.
* Critical Race Theory proposes a class-based conflict between white and black.
* Defining white as a race is racism.
* Therefore, Jemisin is a racist.

Personally, I don't buy it since Jemisin (and also Lord) take great pains to describe how systems of racial categorization are arbitrary and politically constructed. Jemisin gives us a whole mess of mixed-ethnicity characters who arbitrarily get or are denied power on that basis. Lord gives us (as part of her Afro-Caribbean creole model) a culture that discriminates based on visible phenotypes that are not genetically linked to the abilities claimed. Lord's setting also points out that people with brown skin are not ethnically or culturally homogenous.

Race isn't an essential feature of human biology under this model, it's a political construct built on a history of slavery and immigration in North America. It's real in America to the same extent that our borders with Canada and Mexico are real.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 9:36 PM on April 15, 2015 [6 favorites]

No quoting Sweaterly! He's an inveterate self-googler and inevitably descends on the forum like a rotting murder of sea lions who want to tell you how they can't be racist because they marched with MLK.
posted by suelac at 9:42 PM on April 15, 2015 [11 favorites]

> Torgersen, not Correia, is the one with military experience, and you don't need to put quotes around 'wartime'.

Oops, got them crossed, yeah. FWIW, I put "wartime" in quotes because I've known combat vets who got cranky about REMF being all "yeah war!" And anyway, my main point is that you are speculating on this without an iota of evidence in an effort to give them the benefit of the doubt and I do not fucking get it. They have collectively and individually chosen to ally with someone like Day, and they insist that making the Hugos about politics is Bad while they make their slate about goddamn politics.
posted by rtha at 9:52 PM on April 15, 2015 [12 favorites]

I've known combat vets who got cranky about REMF being all "yeah war!"

Vets are funny critters who like to pick on each other a lot, but who generally close ranks when other people do. It's the old "Nobody gets to pick on my brother but me!" Like, I'm not going to lie and say I don't have a ton of jokes about admin, or officers, or Reservists, because I totally do - but it really rubs me the wrong way when civilians pick on any of the above.

Anyway, I guess that I think it's nice to give people the benefit of the doubt and try to understand where they're coming from unless they've deliberately forfeited it. I don't really give Vox Day a lot of benefit of the doubt - I mean, I tend to think he's a troll because no human currently alive could really believe views as noxious as his seriously, but that may be my wishful thinking for humanity at work rather than trying to give him the benefit of the doubt.

But I do try to empathize with people who are not Vox Day. I mean, I even think I understand where a lot of people on sides I disagree on stand on this one, and I don't think it makes them bad people. Empathy, to me, seems always to be a net positive no matter where you aim it. It's hard to hurt people with empathy.
posted by corb at 9:58 PM on April 15, 2015 [1 favorite]

If Correia didn't want to be associated with Vox Day he probably should have named his slate something besides "Sad Puppies". It's like if I named my pro-consumer movement "Gamer Gaze" and then said, hey, I have nothing to do with those GamerGaters.

I understand where you're coming from, but this seems a bit off for three reasons:
a) I think Sad Puppies 3 predates Rabid Puppies? Certainly the previous sad puppies campaigns do...
b) As noted elsewhere, Correia and Vox are both in the "evil league of evil authors". Heck, Correia put Vox on his slate for Sad Puppies 2.
c) In none of the recent posts have I ever seen Correia comment on Vox by just saying "Vox is a white supremacist. White supremacy is bad", or anything to that effect. It seems like a very small thing to say. I've seen variations on "I don't care about Vox's politics, I like the story", etc., but no "I don't like his politics." I think that the inability to say such a thing speaks to their personal closeness. As Torgersen noted in his own tribalism nonsense, it's hard to speak ill of someone in your tribe. And the evil league of evil authors sure has a hard time speaking ill of one of its members.
posted by Going To Maine at 10:06 PM on April 15, 2015

> Anyway, I guess that I think it's nice to give people the benefit of the doubt and try to understand where they're coming

I've never noticed you doing this with the people like (in this instance) Jemison. You'll bring up that maybe she behaved badly in web postings but you don't go another inch and say "Maybe she was cranky because [reasons I would make up for people like Torgersen/Wright/Correia];" I don't see you offering her a place at your table. So I'm going to disagree that you think it's nice to give benefit of the doubt to people, because you really only give it (publicly) to some people. Please aim your empathy equally, because it really doesn't look like you do.
posted by rtha at 10:09 PM on April 15, 2015 [29 favorites]

Torgersen's own rationale for supporting Day is...really odd. He's clearly aware of Day's repellent words and actions, and while I don't totally agree with his dismissing Day as just a gadfly, I can see where he's coming from on it. The part that's weird is his characterization of people who are asking him to acknowledge and take a firm stance on Day's bigotry.

It seems to me SFF fandom is and thinks of itself as a big tent, full of different priorities and opinions. Racefail, to take an example that's been touched on in this thread and in offsite discussion, had big names on both "sides" of the argument. Worldcon, if anything, is seen as the time when everyone comes together and has a drink and throws a party for the one thing we all love.

But Torgersen, with his obsession with "tribal" divisions, concludes that everyone--his fans, people who may have supported or opposed or not have given a shit about Dead Puppies--are all shunning Vox Day because of...some sort of lockstep that has only just now manifested around Vox Day, and not because Day has said a lot of things that many people agree are awful in venues that many people agree were inappropriate, but because of some ingrained tribalism looking for a target. There's references to gaslighting in Torgersen's post (filtered through ST:TNG, but yet.)

I worry this will come off disingenuous or concern-trolly, but I mean it when I say that it makes me wonder if there's something big and difficult in an unrelated sphere of his life that he's having trouble dealing with and that's spilling over, because it seems really odd for someone who otherwise comes off as a fairly level-headed guy.
posted by kagredon at 10:25 PM on April 15, 2015

corb: Empathy, to me, seems always to be a net positive no matter where you aim it. It's hard to hurt people with empathy.

I agree, but in this matter you've shown empathy to one side only. You have not shown any empathy for the people hurt by the Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies, not those they've harassed verbally, nor those authors whose works were pushed off the Hugo ballot by slate voting. You could say that they've been shown plenty of empathy by other people in this thread, and that's true, but it's hard to understand your points about empathy and inclusiveness when it's all directed at SP/RP. I have empathy for everyone involved, but that doesn't mean I suspend judgment indefinitely. Correia, Day, Wright and Torgersen did bad things and it's unreasonable to expect no one to acknowledge their dishonorable actions.
posted by Kattullus at 10:28 PM on April 15, 2015 [18 favorites]

You'll bring up that maybe she behaved badly in web postings but you don't go another inch and say "Maybe she was cranky because [reasons I would make up for people like Torgersen/Wright/Correia];

I apologize if it's seemed that way! I haven't really been defending or pointing out that Jemisin also deserves the benefit of the doubt and needs empathy because it hasn't really seemed like anyone here has been questioning it. It's seemed like everyone at least on Metafilter has it. But I absolutely think that she was probably frustrated and exhausted from dealing with RaceFail, which I remember as being personally exhausting myself, and I was in no way someone on the front lines of that. I think that she was probably frustrated at feeling like her own concerns were being posed as lesser than other people's concerns, and as someone who feels often that their own concerns are ignored, that is a shitty starting place and tends to make you easier to rile. I mean, I myself have this problem! I struggle with it a lot. I think that she also probably was struggling with what it feels like when you're fighting about something important to you but you're also fighting with someone with their own issues that you feel like are important, and so maybe you say something shitty about their issues that any other day you might be cool about.

I think that Jemisin should have done a lot of things differently, and I may not like her fiction writing, or the way that she thinks ostracization should work, but that doesn't mean I think she's a bad person.
posted by corb at 10:32 PM on April 15, 2015

urgh, Sad Puppies. Sad Puppies is Torgersen's slate. Dead Puppies is a game I played in college where you tried to slap the backs of other people's hands and if you lost both your hands you were out.
posted by kagredon at 10:33 PM on April 15, 2015

I don't know anything about Correia's actual experience with being treated in a racist manner because he may be seen as a person of color

He may be of Portuguese descent, but he is and looks like the All-American meathead. That sort of stretching of the concept of person of colour to its breaking point vexes me enormously and it's almost always done by white guys jealous of what they percieve as the benefits of being able to play the "race card" (sic).
posted by MartinWisse at 10:55 PM on April 15, 2015 [15 favorites]

what you describe with handwavey vagueness as "somewhat mocking about people talking about their abuse triggers" could be literally anything

In fact, what N. K. Jemisin, among others, did during RaceFail was behaving in that great Heinleinian tradition of not suffering fools gladly and telling people exactly where they get off. A lot of people who'd normally be the ones to behave that way didn't like it up them, so she got a reputation for being difficult among assholes.

Ironically, for all the whinging about SJW cabals, much of the anger raised by Jemisin and others was aimed at people like (and including) Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden and other white liberals within fandom for not acting better.
posted by MartinWisse at 11:03 PM on April 15, 2015 [16 favorites]

I'm starting to believe that people think that Torg/Correia/Vox (and sometimes me) are a holy trinity at this point

They are. Torgensen and Correia provided cover for Day's fascist slate, they clearly have no issue with him as an ally other than for PR purposes and their actions are indistinguishable from each other.

You on the other hand are just doing your usual "but if only you ignore all the facts and trust my interpretation, you see this rightwing idiocity isn't really all that bad, if you think about it, really" dance.
posted by MartinWisse at 11:05 PM on April 15, 2015 [11 favorites]

That sort of stretching of the concept of person of colour to its breaking point vexes me enormously

I know you mean well, but it's also frustrating to hear people who do not define themselves as people of color attempting to regulate how other people do or who they are. A really powerful piece on this is “Juan Valdez” (or “Why is a white guy like you named ‘Carlos’?”) by the freaking incredible Carlos Andreas Gomez. Short version: thinking that someone is an all-American meathead just because you perceive them as such may be incredibly dismissive of who they actually are.
posted by corb at 11:11 PM on April 15, 2015

In this case I'm happy to say that Correira is as much a person of colour as I am.
posted by MartinWisse at 11:22 PM on April 15, 2015

whether "Portuguese" is read as person-of-color is highly context- and individual-dependent, but Correia himself has expressed disdain for the term and guess what? People of any ethnicity whining about how white people are the real victims of racism are idiots, every blessed one. It's almost like race of the speaker isn't the deciding factor in that! What a crazy SJW thing to say.
posted by kagredon at 11:23 PM on April 15, 2015 [5 favorites]

Especially because his socalled ethnicity only comes up when his apologists are attempting to excuse his racism.
posted by MartinWisse at 11:23 PM on April 15, 2015 [12 favorites]

Unfortunately they're flinging poop at other people of color, along with queer folk and women. And they've reached out to a hate group to do so.

However, you're right that we shouldn't be snide or contemptuous about their stated ethnicity.
posted by sebastienbailard at 11:24 PM on April 15, 2015 [1 favorite]

Torg says he has no 'deployments', but mentions that he does have time overseas

Do you have a cite for this? Because I see nothing about overseas service by searching for "army" on his blog. Or for "military." Some mentions about how his Reserve work puts him at places like Fort Dix, NJ and Fort Jackson, SC, sometimes for longer than the standard two weeks. But not word one about being outside the U.S.

And alienation takes place even for those people who do not directly serve in combat.

No doubt. But the evidence so far is that he serves the standard one weekend a month plus two weeks plus some years an extra week or three.

In the U.S.

If he's alienated I doubt it's because of his service.

And if he really is that alienated from modern American culture because of said moderate exposure to military life, then, frankly, he shouldn't be in the military.
posted by soundguy99 at 11:26 PM on April 15, 2015 [9 favorites]

Anti-Blackness is totally something that can be practiced by POC, though? I mean, this isn't something I'm an expert on, but I see this talked about a lot.
posted by NoraReed at 11:40 PM on April 15, 2015 [2 favorites]

Regardless of their motivations, the Puppies have wrecked the Hugos this year. It was a goal they set out to achieve a couple of years ago, and look, they've done it. So far, they actually seem happy with the results. If it had been accidental and they were sorry, I'd try to find empathy. But as it is, they've gleefully dropped a turd in the punchbowl.

The nominees get no satisfaction whether they win or lose. The organisers have to deal with an angry crowd for a pointless awards night. The attendees won't have any fun and no fan anywhere gets any good book recommendations.

This is what the Puppies wanted. I don't care what their reasons are, purposely destroying an awards night and hoping it will destroy the award forever is not something a community has to forgive.
posted by harriet vane at 2:42 AM on April 16, 2015 [37 favorites]

The puppies et al remind me of no one as much as all the idiots who were upset that Rue was cast black in the Hunger Games movie. It's the same basic mix of racism, idiocy, lack of reading comprehension and zero relation to actual facts.
posted by signal at 5:37 AM on April 16, 2015 [5 favorites]

George R. R. Martin's latest post is as pessimistic as its title suggests: On a Darkling Plain. I don't want to excerpt it because it deserves to be read in full. Martin is not in a happy place. The Hugos have been of great value to him for his entire adult life and now they're possibly facing destruction.

For what Earthly reason have the Sad Puppies done this? I mean, I can understand the Rabid Puppies insofar I can understand how ideologues function, but what Torgersen and Correia are trying to achieve is beyond me. They've managed to desecrate a decades-old institution of the community they belong to through exploiting the voting system and I don't understand for what end they do this. They're bringing a deep unhappiness to a great many people. Either they back down or they're really no better than Vox Day.
posted by Kattullus at 5:46 AM on April 16, 2015 [13 favorites]

Isn't their reason basically just spiteful immaturity? "If we can't have it, nobody can"?
posted by johnofjack at 5:56 AM on April 16, 2015 [1 favorite]

Despite GRRM's impassioned pleas, and my deep respect for him and his love of the awards and of fandom (and yes, he was fan before he was pro), I can't agree with him. Following his "don't no award, don't change the rules" plan means that, at best, we end up with two slates next year, at worst, the RPs kill the Hugos.

He may be willing to let them win. I am not. I have loaded Big Noa Ward, and it'll fire the moment the ballots open. Cry Havoc, and let slip the ballots of war!

I despise people who call this the nuclear option. No Award is in the rules *for a reason*, and it's not there to never be used. The reason it hasn't been used since 1977 is that we haven't had a need.

This, folks, is the nuclear option:

Short Title: Kill Them All, Let Ghod Have the Hugos.

Moved, that we amend the WSFS constitution as follows.

1) Amend Section 1.2 as shown
Section 1.2: Objectives. WSFS is an unincorporated literary society whose functions are:

~~(1) To choose the recipients of the annual Hugo Awards (Science Fiction Achievement Awards).~~

(2) To choose the locations and Committees for the annual World Science Fiction Conventions (hereinafter referred to as Worldcons).
2) Amend Section 2.1 as shown
Section 2.1: Duties. Each Worldcon Committee shall, in accordance with this Constitution, provide for:

~~(1) administering the Hugo Awards,~~

(2) administering any future Worldcon or NASFIC site selection required, and

(3) holding a WSFS Business Meeting.
3) Amend Section 2.2 as shown.
Section 2.2: Marks. Every Worldcon and NASFIC Committee shall include the following notice in each of its publications: “World Science Fiction Society”, “WSFS”, “World Science Fiction Convention”, “Worldcon”, “NASFiC”, ~~“Hugo Award”, the Hugo Award Logo, and the distinctive design of the Hugo Award Trophy Rocket~~ are service marks of the World Science Fiction Society, an unincorporated literary society.
4) Delete Article 3

5) Amend Section 6.3 as shown
Section 6.3: Electronic Voting. Nothing in this Constitution shall be interpreted to prohibit conducting ~~Hugo Awards nominating and voting and~~ Site Selection voting by electronic means, except that conducting Site Selection by electronic means shall require the unanimous agreement of the current Worldcon committee and all bidding committees who have filed before the ballot deadline. Valid paper ballots delivered by any means shall always be acceptable. This section shall not be interpreted to require that such elections be conducted electronically, nor shall it be interpreted to allow remote participation or proxy voting at the Business Meeting.
6) Direct the Nitpicking & Flyspecking Committee to renumber sections and paragraphs as needed.

If you moved that at Sasquan, and it passes, you've launched the nuclear option. If it ratifies at Midamericon 2, the nuclear option detonates, and there are no 2017 or later Hugo Awards. Period.

That's the nuclear options. *ANYTHING SHORT OF THAT* is not. So, don't let hyperbole sway you. No Awarding a few, many, or even all categories will not destroy the Hugos. Letting the Puppies control them will damage them beyond recognition, but will not destroy them.

That motion above is what destroys the Hugos. Nothing short of it will.
posted by eriko at 6:03 AM on April 16, 2015 [9 favorites]

"Despise people" is too strong, and I shouldn't have written that. I apologize. However, I'm not going to use the Edit option to take it out -- that's not why we have it. (I did edit to take out a stupid auto carrot.)

I am *frustrated* by people saying that. But that's a long way from despise.
posted by eriko at 6:06 AM on April 16, 2015 [1 favorite]

Oh, and the problem with two slates is simple. If there are two slates, call them happy kitty and fuckheaded asswipes, then there really *two* nominators for the Hugos.

And that's fucked up. You now have two competing Jurors. If we want the Hugos to have a Juried nomination process, there's a way to make that happen. You will primarily need to work with changing Section 3.7 through 3.9 of the WSFS constitution. Amend those as needed.

But right now, the Hugos have a polled nomination process, and the sense-of-fandom is we'd like to keep that if possible, and selecting between two slates is barely keeping that, and if one of them is RP, really, that means one person has the power to nominate the Hugos and we've really screwed this up badly, haven't we?

And if we have dozens of slates? If RP sticks to theirs and everyone votes their own, RP wins anyway.

So, yeah. If we want a polled nomination process, we'll have to change how we do that.
posted by eriko at 6:12 AM on April 16, 2015 [6 favorites]

I agree. Slates are a terrible horrible no good very bad idea, period. The political views of the slaters are irrelevant.
posted by johnofjack at 6:16 AM on April 16, 2015 [5 favorites]

Either they back down or they're really no better than Vox Day.

In all seriousness, what makes them that much better than VD right now? If anything, at least he's being honest about what they really want, and AFAIK hasn't resorted to the craven "aw, they're just good ol' boys" defense and tried to claim his allies are just honest, ethical enthusiasts being defamed by the ~~Jewish~~ ~~liberal~~ SJW media.
posted by zombieflanders at 6:20 AM on April 16, 2015 [3 favorites]

Eriko: you probably wouldn't want to let go of the IP on the award (I imagine there are other documents that would supersede the constitution in the case of IP, but why take the chance?)
posted by Leon at 6:24 AM on April 16, 2015 [1 favorite]

Eriko: you probably wouldn't want to let go of the IP on the award

Yeah, probably not (and this is why you can amend motions) but I deliberately constructed that motion as a "nuclear option", in that there would be absolutely nothing left of the Hugo Awards in the WSFS Constitution. It would be a complete abjuration of the idea.

Currently, there's no way in hell it would pass, indeed, I doubt it would even be given the courtesy of a Postpone Indefinitely. I would expect a straight OTC, followed by a JPG of Zoidberg with the words "YOUR MOTION IS BAD AND YOU SHOULD FEEL BAD."

Although I would argue that, given the current state of the award and having no idea of what disasters await us next year, passing it this year just to have the option of detonating it next year is *not* an inconceivably bad idea -- and of course, passing it this year does not kill the Hugos, it would just give the Business Meeting at KC the option of doing so.

I'm not saying it's a *good* idea, mind you. I'm just saying that, unlike the last 25 years, it's not a inconceivably bad one. Maybe WSFS needs to go DEFCON 3.

I imagine there are other documents that would supersede the constitution in the case of IP, but why take the chance?

Because of WSFS's oddball status, I don't think there is. There is a standing committee of WSFS, the Mark Protection Committee, that exists to protect the trademarks of the organization, but the marks they're empowered to protect are listed in Section 2.2. Delete the Hugos from there, and the authority of the MPC to protect them evaporates. While there may be filed trademarks, the MPC wouldn't have the authority to take action to defend them, and they'd soon fall for lack of defense.
posted by eriko at 7:38 AM on April 16, 2015 [2 favorites]

From GRRM's latest: "Vox Day has apparently threatened that if NO AWARD wins in any category, he will see to it that no award is ever given in that category again."

Since Vox Day is Literally The Worst, and Torgerson, et al, are at least minimally responsive to peer pressure and market pressure, is there some way WorldCon can say "Vox Day as an author is no longer eligible for the Hugos; anything published by a publishing house owned by him in whole or in part is no longer eligible for the Hugos; he may no longer purchase WorldCon memberships to vote for the Hugos; and any ballots found to be influenced by his recommendations will be discarded, at the discretion of the Hugo administrator (who may decide if he's spitefully attempting to slate works he hates to get them removed). In short, Vox Day is The Worst and determined to destroy the Hugos, so nothing associated with him in any way is any longer permitted to be involved in the Hugos."?
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 7:55 AM on April 16, 2015 [2 favorites]

Maybe WSFS needs to go DEFCON 3.

Done.
posted by Chrysostom at 7:59 AM on April 16, 2015 [1 favorite]

I only hope we can avoid escalating to Blackwatch Plaid.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 8:20 AM on April 16, 2015 [3 favorites]

I don't really see the point in banning someone who will never win a Hugo from winning a Hugo, especially if they can still organised their freinds spam the nominations with junk, which is why we are having this conversation.
posted by Artw at 8:24 AM on April 16, 2015 [3 favorites]

From GRRM's latest: "Vox Day has apparently threatened that if NO AWARD wins in any category, he will see to it that no award is ever given in that category again."

GRRM, I think, is misreading this.

He saw that 1300 supporting as the RPs coming to kill us all. Nope. I see those as the white blood cells coming to save the Hugos. Those supporting memberships showed up after the slate came out when fandom went THE FUCK and a bunch of people decided they needed to vote to make sure the RPs didn't get the award.

THIS IS A GOOD THING.

GRRM was angry that there there weren't enough nominators^*. Guess what? There's 1300 more nominators now for 2016 and 2017. This is as it should be, right?

Yes, it will involve a lot of No Awards this year. What I wish he'd understand is that this is *the correct answer* here. If the Best Novelette, in your opinion, is not on the slate, the correct answer is No Award. If you feel the category has been corrupted by improper nomination tactics, the correct answer is No Award. That's why we have very carefully maintained the No Award (and it's cousin None Of The Above in Site Selection.) There are no defaults -- just because you owned the ballot doesn't mean you win the Hugo. The voters are going to speak.

Yes, the 2015 Hugos have taken a hit. Maybe they need to be sacrificed. I think we can redo them, but that's another argument for later. But Fandom as a whole is *well aware* now. We're going to, at the very least, be nominating and voting. That's what GRRM wants! We're also going to be looking at limiting slate effectiveness, and while he disagrees about that, I think that's the right answer. Our social rules limiting slates have failed. It's time for a process rule to do so. We just need to make sure we pick a good rule.

Finally, he seems despondent that no matter what, VD will declare victory. SO FUCKING WHAT GEORGE? Why do you care what he thinks? It should be what *you* think that you care about, not what he thinks, and if you think that the Hugos have survived an attack, well, he can declare all the victories he wants. It does not matter.

It's how *fandom* feels at the end of this. It's our award. If we save the Hugos, we win, and I don't care what VD say about winners and losers. We've lost the 2015 Hugos, we may well lose the 2016 Hugos, but if you want to give up on the award now? There's the motion, right up there, go make it!

Then, get out the way. I'm not done with this damn award yet.

* And lets talk about that. He's wrong about how a few more nominations would have stopped them. The problem is fannish nominators are picking five out of dozens, and slate voters are picking five out of five. It wouldn't take 200 fannish nominators to counteract 200 RPs nominators, it would take on the order of a magnitude more, and to be certain, close to two magnitudes more.

That's why we need to limit the power of a single nominator to fill a ballot, because if they can multiply that power via a slate, then they can force others off. Even 3/6 dramatically limits the power to do so.
posted by eriko at 8:31 AM on April 16, 2015 [6 favorites]

That motion above is what destroys the Hugos. Nothing short of it will.

Let's assume what Vox Day has done is told the world that winning a Hugo Award will henceforth be a sign that an author's work has been given a seal of approval by racists, sexists and bigots.

Instead of a way potential customers could trust that a work they were about to buy was considered one of the very best in the genre, by people just like them.

Devalue the award that thoroughly and yes, its value will be utterly destroyed.
posted by zarq at 8:32 AM on April 16, 2015 [4 favorites]

Vox Day as an author is no longer eligible for the Hugos

You could propose such at the business meeting, but again, the Exclusion Acts/Breendoggle, it would not go down well. Yes even for someone like him, Fandom would not put a blanket bar.

As to banning for the conventions, matters for the conventions are left to the conventions, you'd need to first change that, then formalize a bar form the Worldcon, and that would be even less popular.

So, basically, no -- and I'd be one of the first fight it, to be honest. A tool to bar your worst enemy is a tool that, in the fullness of time, will be used to bar your best friend. Best to never ever pick up that tool at all.
posted by eriko at 8:33 AM on April 16, 2015

Devalue the award that thoroughly and yes, its value will be utterly destroyed.

To you? Sure. To racists, sexists, and bigots, it might have been raised immeasurably. There would still be a Hugo. Value changed is not value destroyed. Some value may have been destroyed, sure, but if other now value it, there's still value.

The motion above destroys the Hugos for *everybody*. It won't matter why you want one, why you would award one, why you would value one, they would be gone.
posted by eriko at 8:38 AM on April 16, 2015

and it's cousin None Of The Above in Site Selection

Could that ever win? What would happen if it did?
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 8:41 AM on April 16, 2015

I have my doubts that 1300 GamerGaters would put their real world names and financial details on a list.
posted by Artw at 8:51 AM on April 16, 2015

the Exclusion Acts/Breendoggle, it would not go down well.

Which is one of the great weaknesses of fandom, of course, that inability/unwillingness to exclude even dangerous fuckwits from our community, that people got upset about excluding a known kiddie fiddler (even if not convicted at the time, his local fandom knew to keep their kids away from him, though they put most of the onus on the kids themselves to "barricade themselves in their rooms").

And for ghu's sake, is there even anybody still alive who was part of either side of the Exclusion acts?

A tool to bar your worst enemy is a tool that, in the fullness of time, will be used to bar your best friend. Best to never ever pick up that tool at all.

That seems to be an article of faith amongst a particular type of (American) liberal, but I'm not sure that's actually true. We've seen that with the filibuster and the nuclear option there, where the Democrats were so afraid to limit the use of filibusters they did themselves more harm by allowing Republican intransigence to continue, than they avoided by keeping the filibuster alive for a mythical moment they could use it.

It also assumes that if your side doesn't use a tool, neither will the other. And with the puppies this is a theory already proven wrong.
posted by MartinWisse at 8:51 AM on April 16, 2015 [4 favorites]

hades, you're right, and I stand corrected on Torgerson's overseas service and amount of time he may spend away from home.

I still find corb's vague theories about the causes of his behavior implausible, because, as you point out, he spends the majority of his life as a civilian.
posted by soundguy99 at 8:52 AM on April 16, 2015 [1 favorite]

Could that ever win?

Usual STV vote, of course it could win.

What would happen if it did?

4.5.5: If “None of the Above” wins, or if two or more bids are tied for first place at the end of tallying, the duty of site selection shall devolve on the Business Meeting of the current Worldcon. If the Business Meeting is unable to decide by the end of the Worldcon, the Committee for the following Worldcon shall make the selection without undue delay.

4.5.6: Where a site and Committee are chosen by a Business Meeting or Worldcon Committee following a win by “None of the Above,” they are not restricted by exclusion zone or other qualifications.

4.5.7: Where a site and Committee are chosen by a Business Meeting or Worldcon Committee following a tie in tallying, they must select one of the tied bids.

It used to be explicitly written, and is now just implicit, that a NotA win disqualifies all the written bids, but the explicit bar was removed because the sense was they'd rather not have their hands tied and be force to vote for No Worldcon. The later change to allow the Business Meeting to pass the matter to the next Worldcon Committee makes this much less likely to happen, however. In fact, what would almost certainly happen should NotA win is the Site Selection meeting would very carefully drop the ball on this, and let the next concom deal with it, simply to give time for an emergency Worldcon bid to form or for the bid that failed to fix whatever annoyed everyone. (The most likely situation for NotA winning is there's only one bid on the ballot, and everyone hating it.)
posted by eriko at 8:53 AM on April 16, 2015 [2 favorites]

It also assumes that if your side doesn't use a tool, neither will the other. And with the puppies this is a theory already proven wrong.

No, but it does assume that if you do you a tool, the other side will most assuredly use that tool against you comprehensively and repeatedly should they get a chance.

I have my doubts that 1300 GamerGaters would put their real world names and financial details on a list.

Oh, but wouldn't that be awesome if they did!
posted by eriko at 8:56 AM on April 16, 2015

To you?

No, to science fiction authors, readers, publishers and the news media who cover them. To the business world related to science fiction and those who create it.

Sure. To racists, sexists, and bigots, it might have been raised immeasurably. There would still be a Hugo. Value changed is not value destroyed. Some value may have been destroyed, sure, but if other now value it, there's still value.

The awards have existed for more than 60 years. They quite literally are considered the highest possible honor the science fiction world can bestow on their members' achievements. That is their current value. It is a value that translates into actual opportunities for those nominated and awarded, in terms of not only recognition by publishers but contracts, advances and consideration of potential sales. Hugo awards and nominations help get authors and screenwriters hired for other projects, including screenplays for television and movies, inclusion of their other works in anthologies, various consulting opportunities, speaking gigs, etc. They typically also increase both the sales of the honored work and an author's other works.

That is the infrastructure the Hugos support. It is their brand, whose image propels sales and opportunities for content creators. Remove that infrastructure and the brand's practical worth collapses. Devaluing that brand isn't a zero sum game. You can slap a Lamborghini decal on an Edsel Corsair but that won't increase its practical value to a consumer.

Sure, you can destroy a thing's value without making it completely useless to everybody. But from a practical perspective....
posted by zarq at 9:01 AM on April 16, 2015 [6 favorites]

People of any ethnicity whining about how white people are the real victims of racism are idiots, every blessed one. It's almost like race of the speaker isn't the deciding factor in that!

You know, I find myself puzzled by this and by the "it doesn't matter if we award No Award, because there's nothing worth voting for" kind of ideas. If it doesn't matter what race Correia is, then why bother questioning his ethnicity? You can certainly call him an idiot without it. If the stories are universally going to be shit, then you don't have to talk loudly about how you're going to No-Award in protest - just read the damn stories, and rank them below No Award if you think they're shitty, which is what you're supposed to do every single year. (I definitely would have no-awarded Yes, Virginia, except now it's off the ballot. If anyone has links to free offerings of the slate before it gets sent out, I'll read now and comment on the quality)
posted by corb at 9:01 AM on April 16, 2015

If it doesn't matter what race Correia is, then why bother questioning his ethnicity

Because reasonable people often resent it when someone uses a trait like this as a shield against criticism. See also Torgerson's trotting out of his black wife as proof that he can't possibly be racist, and Vox Day's trotting out of his supposed Native American heritage as proof that he's not a racist.
posted by palomar at 9:04 AM on April 16, 2015 [11 favorites]

If it doesn't matter what race Correia is, then why bother questioning his ethnicity?

I didn't. Others did, I wrote a comment, which you quoted, to point out that it's both not really something we can judge from here and also irrelevant. We aren't actually all an SJW hivemind here, y'know.
posted by kagredon at 9:13 AM on April 16, 2015 [2 favorites]

Yeah no, kagredon, I chose that quote poorly. I meant to kind of agree with you but also use it to question other stuff, and that sort of bombed.
posted by corb at 9:17 AM on April 16, 2015 [3 favorites]

just read the damn stories, and rank them below No Award if you think they're shitty

To really evaluate, you need to read more than just the finalists. The award is "Best X". You need to have a sense of the whole field, not just the five finalists.

I've always argued that if you read *one* short story that was better, in your opinion, than the five on the final ballot, your correct #1 vote on the ballot was "No Award", because the Best Short Story could not win.

That's also my problem with the "read the packet and judge." It implicitly argues "the best five stories are here, pick one of them" and with the slate, I'm betting that nowhere near the best five are there. You should read stories you haven't read and judge, but the idea here is "We hope you haven't read anything else and buy the idea that these must be the best five because they are on the ballot."

So, no, I don't buy the "read the packet and if you hate them all, then No Award." There are many valid reasons to No Award, such as:

1) You think the category should not exist. I No Award Best Artist every year, because we need to do Best Artwork, not Best Artist, and Best Artist is a broken category that awards Body of Work, and the Chesleys do a much better job of honoring the artists in our field. (No Award 1st, either rank or not, depending. I don't rank BA because I don't know the artists well enough.)

2) You think the category is flawed by design or lack of nominees. I No Award Best Semiprozine every year because of this, though lots agree and there are active steps in progress to try to save the category. I like the idea, but the implementation is broken. (I just NA it. I hope we can fix it.)

3) You feel the nomination/voting process has been tampered with, thus, it does not represent a fair view of the electorate. (In this case, NA #1, the rest blank is the only valid choice.)

4) You feel that, while the five finalists are worthy, there is a better work that was eligible that did not make the ballot. (In this case, rank no award 1st and then rank the works)

5) You feel that all the works are shite (In which case, rank No Award 1st and rank nothing else.)

(The difference -- 4 says "The best work isn't there, so No Award should be given, but if an award is given it should go to X, then Y, then Z. The latter says No Award should be given, and nobody should get it even if it is.)

6) You feel that two are worthy, one is the best, and three are shite. (Rank the best 1, the other one 2, No Award 3, and do not rank the rest. There are arguments about this, I write this from the view that the only thing that matters is the first place vote. If you care about who comes in lower places, then rank the shite after No Award.)

7) You just want to watch the world burn. (Okay, that's not really valid, but it's your money. Rank however you want.)

In short: No, I don't accept "Just read the damn stories and rank them." The Hugos are about the *Best*, not the Best on the Final Ballot. While the nomination process is supposed to try to get the best onto the final ballot, it can fail, and when it does, No Award is the tool we have to use.

Brad Templeton noted something very valid -- the Hugos are not an election, they are a survey. We are trying to survey all of WSFS fandom to find out what, in aggregate, we think is the Best X. When 200 outside people jump in and alter the slate, they've broken the survey, just as many other surveys have been broken by collusion.

And the correct thing to do with broken surveys is to disregard the data.
posted by eriko at 9:25 AM on April 16, 2015 [13 favorites]

> They quite literally are considered the highest possible honor the science fiction world can bestow on their members' achievements. That is their current value.

Really? I thought that hadn't been true since the Nebula Awards were created, almost half a century ago now. I love the Hugos, and if I were a sf writer I'd definitely want to win one, but vox populi is not all that dependable.
posted by languagehat at 9:39 AM on April 16, 2015 [1 favorite]

I thought that hadn't been true since the Nebula Awards were created, almost half a century ago now.

Having seen the grins on the faces of a number of newly minted winners, the Hugos mean a great deal to them.
posted by eriko at 9:43 AM on April 16, 2015

is there even anybody still alive who was part of either side of the Exclusion acts?

I believe Dave Kyle is still alive. Kyle had printed up the pamphlet that started the controversy, although ironically he did not himself get excluded.

Futurians (excludees)
Frederik Pohl d. 2013
Donald A. Wollheim d. 1990
Robert W. Lowndes d. 1998
Cyril Kornbluth d. 1958
John B. Michel d. 1969
Jack Gillespie (unknown)

Triumvirs (excluders)
William S. Sykora d. 1994
Sam Moskowitz d. 1997
James V. Taurasi d. 1991
posted by Chrysostom at 9:53 AM on April 16, 2015 [4 favorites]

Let's assume what Vox Day has done is told the world that winning a Hugo Award will henceforth be a sign that an author's work has been given a seal of approval by racists, sexists and bigots.

Day is also the guy who ran for SFWA president on a platform of banning women from writing anything but vampire or wereseal fiction, which may or may not have been a joke.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 10:02 AM on April 16, 2015 [5 favorites]

> "... just read the damn stories, and rank them below No Award if you think they're shitty"

No.

I am only voting for stories that I feel got onto the short list because of their merits, not because of someone gaming the system.

Anything else will be below "No Award" for me, in the sense that I'm leaving them off my ballot entirely.
posted by kyrademon at 10:03 AM on April 16, 2015 [10 favorites]

Really? I thought that hadn't been true since the Nebula Awards were created, almost half a century ago now. I love the Hugos, and if I were a sf writer I'd definitely want to win one, but vox populi is not all that dependable.

My subjective sense from author interviews I've seen over the years is that even though both are prestigious and give exposure, the Hugos are better at boosting book sales and opportunities for nominees and winners.
posted by zarq at 10:03 AM on April 16, 2015

I am only voting for stories that I feel got onto the short list because of their merits, not because of someone gaming the system.

Even if you feel they deserved to be on there for their merits, even if may not have been how they got there?
posted by corb at 10:05 AM on April 16, 2015

I thought that hadn't been true since the Nebula Awards were created, almost half a century ago now. I love the Hugos, and if I were a sf writer I'd definitely want to win one, but vox populi is not all that dependable.

Looking at the results, I find it hard to credit that a Nebula award is reliably a better predictor of quality than a Hugo award. Certainly, the worst Nebula award winning novel I've read was much worse than the worst Hugo award winning novel I've read.
posted by Zed at 10:05 AM on April 16, 2015 [1 favorite]

The Nebulas were notorious historically for log-rolling. I believe there have been some changes in recent years to reduce this, though.
posted by Chrysostom at 10:07 AM on April 16, 2015 [1 favorite]

> "He's wrong about how a few more nominations would have stopped them."

Here's a statistical analysis that shows it would have taken, for example, 1450 additional "regular" Hugo voters get just one non-Puppy story into the Short Story category, and 6800 additional "regular" Hugo voters to completely push them off.
posted by kyrademon at 10:10 AM on April 16, 2015 [2 favorites]

Even if you feel they deserved to be on there for their merits, even if may not have been how they got there?

Speaking for myself, absolutely yes. If a work would not have made it to the ballot without one or both of the Puppy slates, then voting it ahead of No Award legitimizes slate nominations even if I personally agree that it's good.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 10:20 AM on April 16, 2015 [9 favorites]

> "Even if you feel they deserved to be on there for their merits, even if may not have been how they got there?"

Yes, that is correct.

I refuse to reward this.

Maybe they *could* have gotten onto the short list on their own merits. But I cannot be sure that they did not push off another story, equal in merit to theirs or more so, which would have gotten on in their place if not for actions I consider unethical. In fact, I consider that very, very likely.

And I refuse to say, "Well, what's done is done." No. This might have cost someone else a Hugo. Someone the majority of voters would have wanted on the ballot. Someone the majority of voters might have said should win. All because a small minority of voters exploited a quirk of the rules and hijacked the nomination process.

They don't get a Hugo for that, not with my vote anyway. They don't get a Hugo that was stolen from someone else.

If they are good writers, I hope they get on another year, not on a slate. But this year, they do not get my vote.
posted by kyrademon at 10:28 AM on April 16, 2015 [15 favorites]

Actually, here's a question for probably eriko as resident guru - is there anything preventing the publicization of the nominees and vote totals? This way you could read the works and read the works nominated underneath them, and if you feel the ones not on the ballot that would have been on are better, no award, but if you feel the ones under are worse, still award.
posted by corb at 10:30 AM on April 16, 2015

It sounds like nomination totals are only released after the Hugos are done for the year.

I understand why in that it could influence voting/cause grousing if a low-nomination count work won out over works more popular during the nomination process--but it seems like something else to consider amending.
posted by kagredon at 10:36 AM on April 16, 2015

Those numbers still won't give you the full story. Even the puppies themselves would have nominated different, probably better things if it weren't for the slate. Those works won't appear in the full nomination counts because the puppies were too busy nominating JCW. The spreadsheet of puppy nominees demonstrates the full variety of things they would have nominated.
posted by tofu_crouton at 10:48 AM on April 16, 2015

> Having seen the grins on the faces of a number of newly minted winners, the Hugos mean a great deal to them.

I didn't say Hugos didn't mean anything to people (for Pete's sake), and I find it hard to see how my comment could be read that way. I was specifically disputing the statement that they are "the highest possible honor the science fiction world can bestow." Zed's response that "the worst Nebula award winning novel I've read was much worse than the worst Hugo award winning novel I've read" is to the point, though of course it doesn't prove anything about the overall preponderance of merit. I don't have anything invested in my idea, but if you want to argue with it, argue with it and not a straw man.
posted by languagehat at 11:14 AM on April 16, 2015

Actually, here's a question for probably eriko as resident guru - is there anything preventing the publicization of the nominees and vote totals?

By rule, they're not published until after the award ceremony. The intent is to not let the nomination vote pre-judge the final ballot. Nominees are listed on the ballot in fixed order (usually alphabetically, other systems have been used) not by number of nominations, and there are many cases where the most popular work by nomination total did not win.

However, usual practice is only the top 15 are listed, to save paper and embarrassment for the legions of 1 and 2 nomination works. One of the things that happens at the Worldcon is the "H" issue of the newsletter^*, where the front page has the winners and the vote details, and the back has the nomination details. This is also when we normally find out about withdrawn nominations. Historically, you didn't announce you'd withdrawn except in the case of just *after* the ceremony where you'd announce a blanket withdrawal from consideration, here, you were also trying to prevent even being nominated. Examples of that: Michael Whelan as Best Artist, Kaja and Phil Foglio in Best Graphic Novel, a moved that saved the nascent category IMHO, and so on.

I recall a case where the nomination slate was announced and a nominee comes forward and says "Oh, shit, I'm not actually eligible, sorry," and cases where the nominee was contacted before the announcement and withdrew but this year's pattern of publicly announcing withdrawals, and withdrawing after the nominations were out, is all very new, just one more oddball factor in this very strange year.

* The At-Con newsletter is numbered, indeed, nowadays it's "watermarked" with that number, first done by Chaz Boston Baden at Chicon 2000. Since you have all the data for the Hugos beforehand, the Hugo issue is often printed before the con (and occasionally offsite) and kept locked up, so it's gained the tradition "number" and watermark of "H" since you don't know what number in the newsletter sequence you'll be on when the ceremony announces the last award and the embargoes lift.

Having walked around with that disk in my pocket (and that should pretty much give you an idea of when that was, given that it was "a disk in my pocket") I can tell you there are about a dozen to two dozen people at the Worldcon on day one who know who won -- the Hugo sub com as a whole, the newsletter and web chief heads, often the chair, whomever is involved with the Hugo ceremony who's in charge of the envelopes, whomever actually makes and handles the physical awards themselves, and whomever's in the press office getting the embargoed press release out to the press. There are a number of people in the press who know about this time as well, the "embargo until" rules are well established there and work well enough that when they don't work, that's newsworthy in and of itself.

As the con progresses, select web staff and newsletter staff also find out as the web pages are prepared offline and the H issue is run off. It's a newsletter point of pride to be right outside the ceremony with hot-off-the-press H issues, because there are lots of people in the house who want to see the numbers. Sometimes, the web staff will be posting the awards as a play-by-play (I did that in 2000) since each award is unembargoed the moment the card is read in front of the ceremony, plus we're generally webcasting the ceremony anyway.

It's interesting to compare this to the Oscars, where remarkably only two people know who the all the winners. Even in the counts, the ballots are deliberately unevenly sorted and handed to separate tellers, so that no teller can get an idea of who won based on their stack, which would, if they spilt the ballots randomly, be a fair sample of the actual vote. Only the two officers who sum up all the tellers know the true totals. They are given two full sets of cards with all the nominees by the Academy, and after they add up the numbers, they put the winning cards in the envelopes, and destroy the rest of the cards and ballots. They then put one set each into two brief cases, and each takes one of them in a separate car to the theatre. They literally stand just offstage, and when cued, show the outside of the envelope to the cuer, who confirms it is the right envelope, then they hand to the presenter/runner as they walk onto the stage.

But getting early word of an Oscar is a much bigger deal than our little award. So, we just trust the people not to tell, and if you did tell, well, we'd apologize to everyone, and then we'd *never* trust you with that information again.
posted by eriko at 11:15 AM on April 16, 2015 [7 favorites]

You know ... I feel this very long Hugo thread is sadly lacking in discussion of the Hugo nominees I *will* be voting on. So I'm going almost entirely puppy-free (and hopefully spoiler-free) for a bit to do some reviews and criticism and chit-chat, dammit!

My copy of The Goblin Emperor hasn't yet arrived in the mail (and will have to wait until I finish Beukes' Zoo City, and then I promised my sweetie I'd read Hardinge's Fly By Night next so we can talk about it, so even if it comes soon it'll have to wait for this weekend.) So ... more on that later.

Ancillary Sword felt in many ways like the second book of a trilogy -- which is what it is, after all -- and seemed to be setting a lot of pieces into place for the next book. In some ways, that means that how they are resolved will determine how I feel about it, which means the book doesn't stand as well on its own as the first one. This isn't a criticism, per se, but could be a consideration given that the book is up for the award and not the series. Setting up the big things also meant a lot of the forward motion in this book came from things that were often smaller, more local, and more personal than in the first. I do think it was all done with excellent writing, and wouldn't mind at all if it won the Hugo, but I will admit it didn't blow my mind the way the first book did, at least not standing on its own. We'll see if Goblin Emperor DOES blow my mind, I guess, certainly I've heard some raves about it ...

The Day The World Turned Upside Down initially didn't work at all for me because I started by taking the story literally. Once it became apparent (to me at least) that it was meant to be taken as a metaphor, that the events of the plot were not "things actually happening" so much as commentary on a state of mind, I started liking it considerably more. So I've warmed to it.

For Wesley Chu, I'm guessing I should read The Lives of Tao? Should I put that on the to-get list? (Not sure yet exactly how the "packet" works, or if Campbell award nominees are even included in it ...)

I haven't yet read Saga Volume 3, but have liked what I've read of Saga so far. Haven't gotten to Sex Criminals: One Weird Trick either. Both are waiting over to my left on the "to read" shelf.

Rat Queens: Sass and Sorcery, I liked less than I thought I would. I thought it was fine, but so many people were raving about how awesome it was that I expected more. It, well, reads to me like a lot of D&D campaigns I've played. Fun ones, but still.

Ms. Marvel: No Normal, on the other hand, TOTALLY lived up to how much everyone was raving about it! I read it a couple of nights ago and it was awesome! I've got to say that Saga and Sex Criminals have a pretty high bar to clear here.

A lot of the other stuff I'll have to familiarize myself with a bit more. Julie Dillon would obviously have to be a pretty bad artist for her not to get my vote, and same for Journey Planet for Fanzine, but while I assume that's not true I still want to check them out. I'll need to look at all the fan artists' stuff, and give both Tea And Jeopardy and Galactic Suburbia Podcast a listen ... For Semiprozines, Lightspeed has been doing stellar work, but I don't know much about Beneath Ceaseless Skies or Strange Horizons so obviously need to check them out before I decide ...

Oh, and of course Laura J. Mixon got nominated for Best Fan Writer for her epic expose on Requires Hate. Wow, that's certain to be the most controversial topic at the Hugos this year!

*cough*
posted by kyrademon at 11:36 AM on April 16, 2015 [5 favorites]

The Lives of Tao is currently on sale for 2.99 for Kindle Kobo and all the other usual suspects, so it would be a good time to pick it up if you don't want to wait for the packet (and it's not guaranteed the complete novel will be in it.) I picked it up myself.
posted by tavella at 11:47 AM on April 16, 2015

And I've adored the stuff I've seen by Julie Dillon -- backed her Kickstarter, in fact.
posted by tavella at 11:50 AM on April 16, 2015 [1 favorite]

Oo, I really like her Slumbering Naiad.
posted by kyrademon at 11:58 AM on April 16, 2015

I know it would be a complex issue to deal with on the tech side, but... what would be the ramifications of allowing a single write-in slot for each category, to be ranked that ballot's #1? Would chaos ensue, or would it allow a overlooked but potential winners (like Three-Body Problem, perhaps) to rise to win in the face of a slate? A failsafe in case the nominators fail the will of the voters?
posted by Andrhia at 12:33 PM on April 16, 2015

what would be the ramifications of allowing a single write-in slot for each category, to be ranked that ballot's #1?

More puppies, basically.
posted by jeather at 12:35 PM on April 16, 2015

I'm not Vox Day
posted by Artw at 12:40 PM on April 16, 2015

For Wesley Chu, I'm guessing I should read The Lives of Tao? Should I put that on the to-get list? (Not sure yet exactly how the "packet" works, or if Campbell award nominees are even included in it ...)

I wished Lives had been better. It's a fun, light premise and Chu's a decent writer. But I didn't really like the last half. His jokes fell flat (for me, ymmv) and even though so much of the story centers around his main character, (Roen, not Tao) he still felt thinly sketched.

I picked up the second book for Kindle anyway, but can't decide if I want to bother.
posted by zarq at 12:46 PM on April 16, 2015 [1 favorite]

I'm not Vox Day

"You know the situation has gotten weird when I’m the voice of moderation."

Ha!

"As far as I am aware, Vox Day hasn’t ever called for censorship or tried to ruin any author’s career."

Blocking them from being nominated by stuffing a ballot isn't an attempt to attack careers?
posted by zarq at 12:51 PM on April 16, 2015 [7 favorites]

Also, I'm going to reiterate this, he said people should throw acid at each other. Is it really so much better because he didn't say "authors"?
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 12:54 PM on April 16, 2015 [9 favorites]

I can't get the song "You And Your Racist Friend" out of my head now.
posted by kyrademon at 12:56 PM on April 16, 2015 [11 favorites]

From the Correia link:
Look at it like this. I’m Churchill. Brad is FDR. We wound up on the same side as Stalin.

Right, see, that's the problem. You think that you are on the same side as Stalin. You are actually on the same side as Hitler, and people are reacting the way they are because you have allied yourselves with Adolf fucking Hitler.
posted by Myca at 12:58 PM on April 16, 2015 [15 favorites]

I'm not Vox Day

What a load of weaselly nonsense. Like I said above, there's not much to differentiate them at this point. When you're enthusiastically supporting the people burning crosses on lawns, it doesn't really matter whether or not you want to bomb churches.
posted by zombieflanders at 12:59 PM on April 16, 2015 [2 favorites]

No, he's not Vox Day. He's a pathetic cringing lickspittle who thinks Nora Jemisin is the real racist.

Too much of a coward to even stand up for his own views when they come under pressure.
posted by tavella at 12:59 PM on April 16, 2015 [9 favorites]

Right, see, that's the problem. You think that you are on the same side as Stalin. You are actually on the same side as Hitler, and people are reacting the way they are because you have allied yourselves with Adolf fucking Hitler.

Well, look: VD is one of the more repulsive people whom I've had the displeasure of encountering in the wild, but I'm not sure that I would say that he's comparable to Hitler. Godwin and all that, and while he might advocate acid attacks, I haven't seen anything to suggest that it's anything but pathetic talk. But in that metaphor, the Sad Puppies are FDR and Churchill, and the Rabids are Stalin and who does that make Hitler? Because clearly, teaming up with Stalin was probably not something that FDR or Churchill would have done in the absence of an existential threat to civilization. So is he saying that the SJWs are Hitler? Because yeah. No. You're not the voice of reason, asshole.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 1:07 PM on April 16, 2015 [1 favorite]

From Corriea's "I Am Not Vox Day":
I started Sad Puppies a few years ago. My goal was to demonstrate that the awards were biased, represented the likes of only one small part of fandom, and that authors with the wrong politics who got on the ballot would be attacked. All of that has been demonstrated rather conclusively.
A BIG LIE that puts him smack dab in the same bucket with Vox Day.
The problem with the Hugos is that for its claims to be "the award of the Fans", it drew a tiny percentage of Fandom into its selection process. The Sad Puppies was always representative of a small, reactionary and regressive part of SF Fandom who didn't like the direction the entire field was going. The goal was to "return control" to their clique and they are succeeding.

I've stated before that I expect the Puppies to sweep the awards. While a small clique, they are also the most motivated clique... SFWs are never as organized as the Injustice Warriors, and if the pizza parlor in Indiana can get $840,000, then the Puppies can get enough $40 contributions to overwhelm all else (and that record 1300 from 'all sides' is only the start... I expect Vox or one of his more 'reasonable' allies to get an appearance on FoxNews that will open up the floodgates from thousands of right-wingers who otherwise ignore SF). The Hugos will be the Award for the Racist, Sexist "SF Traditionalists" from now on (and Worldcom needs to separate themselves from the whole thing ASAP). Fortunately, there are other awards, and new ones that can be created and named after someone more relevant than Hugo Gernsback - I still suspect the founder of an old sci-fi magazine might not disapprove of this direction for his namesake.
posted by oneswellfoop at 1:07 PM on April 16, 2015 [3 favorites]

Look at it like this. I’m Churchill. Brad is FDR. We wound up on the same side as Stalin.

Right, see, that's the problem. You think that you are on the same side as Stalin. You are actually on the same side as Hitler, and people are reacting the way they are because you have allied yourselves with Adolf fucking Hitler.

Even if one doesn't want to go that far, Churchill and FDR didn't "wind up" on the same side as Stalin, they weighed the alternatives and decided that they'd rather ally themselves with Stalin to fight Hitler. Correia is expressly saying that the portion of fandom that voted for the Hugos before the Puppies started yapping were the Nazis in this scenario. That is so far beyond the pale that I wouldn't blame Worldcon at all for saying "We can't deal with someone who has said that we are Hitler, Larry -- you're banned."
posted by Etrigan at 1:10 PM on April 16, 2015 [9 favorites]

Yes, Corriea threw out the first Godwin, and his judgement of what constitutes "like Hitler" puts him in the same category with the "Obama is Hitler" crowd, only worse.
posted by oneswellfoop at 1:14 PM on April 16, 2015 [1 favorite]

At least Obama is, y'know, a head of state with broad executive powers. These guys hand out statues shaped like rocketships. Y'know, just like Hitler did! That was what World War II was about, right?
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 1:16 PM on April 16, 2015 [6 favorites]

In fairness, they look a lot like V2 rockets.
posted by sukeban at 1:18 PM on April 16, 2015 [2 favorites]

The Nazis handed out rocketships that were shaped like that statue. Similar enough.
posted by rmd1023 at 1:18 PM on April 16, 2015 [4 favorites]

I thought WWII was about Ethics in Game Journalism.
posted by oneswellfoop at 1:19 PM on April 16, 2015 [8 favorites]

(and every other rocket too)
posted by sukeban at 1:19 PM on April 16, 2015 [1 favorite]

But he's trollish and disingenuous enough that if he were called on his shit metaphor he'd claim he didn't mean that at all, and that the evul libruls must have a guilty conscience to make that association (which would also, incidentally, be an argument that he's not in control of his prose, but I wouldn't expect him to make that connection).

I've never read one of Correia's books, but three months ago I had no opinion about him and now I know he's a lying narcissistic jackass. Which doesn't mean I won't read any of his books--Harlan Ellison is a world-class jackass, but he's also an immensely talented writer--but wow. Was this really the publicity he wanted? Making people cringe in vicarious embarrassment?
posted by johnofjack at 1:20 PM on April 16, 2015 [5 favorites]

I'm not even sure which side of the war Portugal fought for.
posted by Artw at 1:31 PM on April 16, 2015

Was this really the publicity he wanted?
Right-wing jackasses are the most growing segment of the publishing industry. Right-wing jackass SF authors have not gotten onto this gravy train yet. But one appearance on FoxNews will not just sell a shitload of Worldcom memberships, but at least a half-shitload of books. Vox Day's publishing imprint is nothing if not totally mercenary and totally predatory (i.e. totally capitalist).
posted by oneswellfoop at 1:34 PM on April 16, 2015 [1 favorite]

Was this really the publicity he wanted?

I'm sure at least some gamergators buy books too.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 1:36 PM on April 16, 2015

while he might advocate acid attacks, I haven't seen anything to suggest that it's anything but pathetic talk.

I have friends who have been assaulted because of homophobia and bigotry. I know people who have died of such. Usually it's proceeded by threats.

Beale has made his intent clear- I'm not about to give him the benefit of the doubt. If he were to show up in my neighborhood I would call the police; if he shows up at a convention I or my friends go to, I will call hotel security and the police. I don't intend to give him or one of his followers the opportunity.

I’m Churchill. Brad is FDR.

I would classify Correa as Lord Haw Haw, myself.
posted by happyroach at 1:39 PM on April 16, 2015 [9 favorites]

I'm not even sure which side of the war Portugal fought for.

During World War II, the Portuguese Republic was an authoritarian political regime under António de Oliveira Salazar and the Estado Novo, often regarded as pro-fascist. Although Portugal was officially a neutral country, it exported goods to the Allies as well as Germany and other neutral countries.

posted by Chrysostom at 1:40 PM on April 16, 2015

Sure, but I doubt there are even close to as many Gaters as there are just general SF/fantasy fans who are pissed off by these shenanigans. Maybe this is a case of people thinking a vote is certainly going to go a certain way because all their friends vote that way, while failing to consider that they're living in an echo chamber and are not friends with the majority of the voters.

I don't know. If nothing else, the results will be very interesting this year.
posted by johnofjack at 1:43 PM on April 16, 2015

kyrademon: I can't get the song "You And Your Racist Friend" out of my head now.

When you said that I immediately got another song stuck in my head, Me and My Black Metal Friends by Atom and His Package. By attempting to destroy the Hugos, the Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies are getting into the church burning phase of their movement. Though say what you will about the tenets of Varg Vikernes and friends, at least they wrote some kick-ass songs.
posted by Kattullus at 1:47 PM on April 16, 2015

GRRM: Joining Sasquan

You can buy a Supporting Membership for $40, which will give you the right to vote on this year's Hugo Awards. Whether you vote for the Sad Puppies, or for the Rabid Puppies, or against the Puppies, or vote NO AWARD on everything, or read the work and vote on what you like, or abstain, or elect some combination of all of those... that's up to you. The important thing is that you vote, however you think best.

Even better, you can buy an ATTENDING membership, and actually come to the convention. Usually they are a lot of fun. That's why I keep coming back. Don't believe what you may have heard, we will not be parading about with the heads of puppies impaled on spears.
posted by nubs at 1:52 PM on April 16, 2015

Honestly I'm buying a supporting membership mainly so I can vote for a DC WorldCon in 2017. Even if we won't get to parade around with puppy heads.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 2:01 PM on April 16, 2015 [1 favorite]

Well, look: VD is one of the more repulsive people whom I've had the displeasure of encountering in the wild, but I'm not sure that I would say that he's comparable to Hitler.

Sure, but if you're going to stick to Correia's (bullshit, self-aggrandizing) metaphor, VD is the party whose views most closely align with those of the ex-Fuhrer. I mean, my god, he's certainly not Stalin.
posted by Myca at 2:01 PM on April 16, 2015 [2 favorites]

I've stated before that I expect the Puppies to sweep the awards

I don't think they will. I don't think they'll win a single one, in fact.

The reason is the voting system. The nominations are *easy* to steal. 200 people nominating a slate can control it, because it's fundamentally a fifth-past-the-post vote, and in terms of bad effects, there are very few worse voting system.

But the final ballot is STV. So, if you wanted to vote for one of the non-puppies, you are not risking giving the vote to a puppy later. Just rank No Award below them -- if your chosen candidate is eliminated, then your ballot goes to your #2 choice. Nobody wins until one person has over 50% of the votes. Then there's the 2nd test. Another election is held, just the provisional winner vs. No Award. If No Award beats the provisional winner head to head, then No Award wins. The only way they can win is to get 50%+1 of the ballots at some stage of the process.

There were already at least 5000 members of Sasquan before this whole sad business started, and you can bet most of them will be voting. Those 1300 that joined since the announcement? They're mostly fans. They all jumped in after the announcement.

Those 200 that stole most of the ballot slots don't stand a chance against the 5000 who were already there and the 1300 that have joined since. EVEN if every single one of those 1300 is puppy, that's 1500 vs. 5000, and pretty much nobody else is voting for them.

And those 1300 are not all puppy. Those 1300 are almost all fans. Trust me on that, but when the next membership list comes out, you'll be able to see it, because the names will be there.

The question isn't "Will the puppies win." The last time an RP made the ballot, he came in dead last, behind No Award. He will not be alone. The question will be how many Hugos will be awarded this year. My feeling is 4. I'm voting 0.

Seriously. Look at the chart. They had about 2000 at the vote, and about 800 converted to attending. By next April, they had 1200 attending, and the same 1200 supporting. Come September 2014, they picked up another 800 attending, this was people at Loncon 3 buying in for next year's Worldcon. All the way to February, 2015, the supporting number stay bascially flat, 1200 members, and the attending categories slowly grow as people buy in.

The, early February we see supporting jump by about 800 people. Why? Hugo nominations open. And this is when the puppies buy in to nominate the RP slate. We know there wasn't 800 of them, if there were, the minimum to nominate would have been much higher. There were fans who bought in at the same time -- we see that every year.

Now we're at 2000 supporting. That number holds all the way until last week, which is the first datapoint reported *after* the ballot announcement. That's where we see supporting jump to 3300.

But the important thing to remember is the 4000+ who were already in before Hugo nominations were open. None of them are RP. Most of them are long time Worldcon fans, esp. the 2000 who voted site selection back in London.

If half of them vote, that's 2000 votes alone that RPs have to overcome before they're now even. And I'll bet we see 5000+ voting.
posted by eriko at 2:19 PM on April 16, 2015 [6 favorites]

Last year's voter packet had Campbell nominee works in, including The Life of Tao (I'm 90% certain that's why it's on my Kindle, anyway), so it seems quite likely it will be in there again. You should get an email when it's released for download.
posted by penguinliz at 2:34 PM on April 16, 2015 [1 favorite]

I hope I'm wrong and you're right eriko, but I never underestimate the potential of the batshit insane, and if the advice of GRRM (whose books show that he SEEMS to know the power of conspiracy) is simply "The important thing is that you vote, however you think best", I don't think the general fandom takes this takeover effort nearly as seriously as the SonsOfBitches (a better way of saying Puppies) consider it an opportunity. If the Right Wing Media don't get involved, it could fall flat, but if they do, there are enough people out there who don't read SF but think Glenn Beck's "The Overton Window" qualifies, and who have $40 to throw away toward 'a cause' and that's the whole business plan of Vox Day's publishing empire.
posted by oneswellfoop at 4:02 PM on April 16, 2015

I actually think the Puppy slates will lose - I don't think they're engaging to their utmost, at least the people who could, like Torg and Correia. I'm not going to go into details because I don't think these things would be good ideas if anyone did them, but there are a host of steps they could be taking if they wanted to totally sweep things with strangers, and they're not. You're not really seeing the wardrums in places where it would be trivially easy to get wardrums. Which is good!
posted by corb at 4:21 PM on April 16, 2015

they did already call in GamerGate, which pretty much says "we are at the lowest point we can possibly get to, dignity-wise, and are happy to call in an actual hate movement in order to help us win"

i mean that is less a "wardrum" and more a rallying wet fart but still
posted by NoraReed at 4:39 PM on April 16, 2015 [7 favorites]

And I don't think GG is willing to drop the $40. The RPs are willing to, to get Dear Leader the Shiny Rocket, but are GGer's really willing to pay to troll when trolling others is free?
posted by eriko at 4:55 PM on April 16, 2015

Uh, yes? There have been multiple Gamergate-related Kickstarters and funding drives. It's well beyond trolling, at this point, and very much a culture war thing.
posted by kagredon at 5:06 PM on April 16, 2015 [5 favorites]

40$ is less than the cost of a new game. If the game is 'entertainingly watching people get kerfluffled' many people might consider it worth the investment.
posted by corb at 5:09 PM on April 16, 2015 [3 favorites]

And, apparently, we're going to replace the withdrawn works. I'm hearing from a reliable but not official that the replacement for Lines of Departure is The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu, translated by Ken Liu.

No word on the other withdrawn work.
posted by eriko at 5:32 PM on April 16, 2015 [4 favorites]

talking of trolls, NYPA (Not Your Personal Army) used to be (maybe still is?) a common refrain on /b/ when someone would come in whining about someone or something that had wronged them while dropping just enough identifiable detail to try to unleash the Internet Hate Machine, the idea being that trolling was sport that had to be directed at something more interesting than petty personal issues. Near as I can tell, Gators will Personal Army for anyone who flatters them a bit and says "SJW" derogatorily a few times.
posted by kagredon at 5:32 PM on April 16, 2015 [2 favorites]

Aha. "Goodnight Stars" has been replaced by "A Single Samurai" by Steven Diamond. There's also been a statement that as of now, the ballot is going to the printer and further withdrawals will not be replaced.

Which, IMHO, is a bullshit position. Either you don't replace any post-annoucement withdrawals, or you replace all of them. But then again, this is the same con that sent out the paper nomination ballots something like 3 days before the deadline -- which explains why there were basically no paper nomination ballots.

But there it is. That's the ballot, or at least, that's the only works that will be on the ballot, if any withdraw after this, the category will drop to 4.
posted by eriko at 5:38 PM on April 16, 2015

eriko, does that mean The Three Body Problem is or is not on the ballot?
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 6:02 PM on April 16, 2015

The Three-Body Problem and "A Single Samurai" *are* on the ballot. If there are later withdrawals, they will not be repalced.
posted by eriko at 6:05 PM on April 16, 2015

Thanks.

Spreadsheet updated
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 6:08 PM on April 16, 2015

An actual press release.
posted by eriko at 6:15 PM on April 16, 2015

The Three-Body Problem was, I think, the thing I was most pissed about getting left off, so this makes me quite happy indeed.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 6:16 PM on April 16, 2015 [3 favorites]

Ironically, Vox Day said he would have put it on the slate if he was aware of it earlier.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 6:30 PM on April 16, 2015 [1 favorite]

Was this really the publicity he wanted?

I've a sneaking suspicion that the Vox Day post means Corriea has just wised up to the fact that hes the one with most to lose, having had some degree of mainstream success which may evaporate after this. Hanging out at the troll's tea party might not be that great a trade for that.
posted by Artw at 6:33 PM on April 16, 2015 [2 favorites]

Ironically, Vox Day said he would have put it on the slate if he was aware of it earlier.

And I'm glad he didn't, because if it got in via a slate I'd feel obliged to rank to below our friend Noah.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 7:01 PM on April 16, 2015 [2 favorites]

"The announcement from the 2015 Worldcon further noted that this year appears to be the first time that multiple fiction finalists for the Hugo Award were originally written in languages other than English."

This is very cool!
posted by mixedmetaphors at 7:14 PM on April 16, 2015

Yes, Correira has burned any goodwill he has -- I am not going to hold everyone on the slates responsible for being on it, but he actually deserves responsibility. His series didn't sound particularly interesting anyhow, so it's no great loss to me, but I think that this might actually have a negative effect on his sales.
posted by jeather at 7:17 PM on April 16, 2015

Ironically, Vox Day said he would have put it on the slate if he was aware of it earlier.

I thought he was this knowledgeable and discerning real fan? I've known about this one for ages because mefites will not shut up about it in any vaguely related thread.
posted by rtha at 7:20 PM on April 16, 2015 [6 favorites]

I think that this might actually have a negative effect on his sales.

It may well be a net positive. At least it'll get the gators reading.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 7:26 PM on April 16, 2015

I mostly listen to audiobooks and so am not qualified to snark too much about the format people choose to consume prose in, but I am not sure about gators reading books. I mean, an audiobook is one thing, but do you think any of these will be available in the form of nigh-unwatchable, unbearably long YouTube videos done by a dude while he is bathing?
posted by NoraReed at 7:42 PM on April 16, 2015 [8 favorites]

don't give them ideas, it's way too easy to imagine JCW stacking up 8 nominations next year for "Best Dramatic Presentation." He seems like he would take to the turgid YT monologue format reeeaaaally quickly.
posted by kagredon at 8:03 PM on April 16, 2015

do you think any of these will be available in the form of nigh-unwatchable, unbearably long YouTube videos done by a dude while he is bathing?

NoraReed, you know how someone posts a link and people say, hey, wow, that was great, thanks for posting it?

Yeah, no.

Off to get eye bleach.
posted by Joe in Australia at 9:31 PM on April 16, 2015 [2 favorites]

misery loves company, and since I've seen Jordan Owens ranting about porn while in the bath you can damn well bet I'm TAKING THE WORLD DOWN WITH ME
posted by NoraReed at 11:41 PM on April 16, 2015 [8 favorites]

Just so people are aware, "A Single Samurai" was on the Sad Puppy slate.

(This is not surprising, statistically; given how slate voting affects things, how spread out non-slate voting for short stories tends to be, and the fact that there were seven short stories between the two slates, there was basically no chance whatsoever of a non-slate short story getting on the ballot unless at least *three* slate short stories were withdrawn or deemed ineligible or some such.)

"Three Body Problem" was, as has already been mentioned, not on either slate.
posted by kyrademon at 2:05 AM on April 17, 2015 [4 favorites]

Thinking about it, incidentally, that means that going to, say, a 3/6 nomination process is pretty useless at solving the problem by itself. It would work against one slate, but there are already two; if there were a 3/6 nomination process, there is no reason whatsoever that Vox Day wouldn't shrug and put up a slate with no overlap. Slate voting distorts the counts so much that unless there were counter-slates (ugh), they would still most likely sweep, of the written categories, short story, novellette, and best related work, and would stand a decent chance of sweeping novella as well.
posted by kyrademon at 2:46 AM on April 17, 2015

It would work against one slate, but there are already two;

The assumption there is SP and RP had identical support, and I think that's very much an unwarranted assumption. But we saw in Best Novel that SP+RP wasn't enough to sweep, cut them in half with 3/6 and they become less effective.
posted by eriko at 3:04 AM on April 17, 2015

I disagree, actually, based on the analysis laid out here and here.

It looks to me like there were about 300 "combined slate" puppy votes, with about 150 coming from each one.

Last year, 150 votes would have swept Novella, Novelette, Short Story, Related Work, and Long Form Editor.

And in fact, that's what we've seen this year -- it isn't just the "combined" ones that were on both slates that got on. Ones which were just on one slate or the other also got on.

This year, if the two puppy slates had been completely different, with no overlap whatsoever, they almost certainly still would have swept most of the categories they did. Even with each wielding somewhere around 8 to 9 percent of the total vote. That's how much slate voting distorts the kind of process the Hugo nominations use.

There are ways to mitigate that, but a 3/6 nomination process, by itself, will not work.
posted by kyrademon at 3:47 AM on April 17, 2015 [3 favorites]

> "Wait MartinWisse isn't Eric Flint a pinko commie former labor organizer? When was he whining about conservative SF being neglected?"

He is, and I don't think that was exactly his argument. As far as I can tell, his thing was that awards do not reflect the opinions of the reading audience. Which is pretty much what he's still saying now.
posted by kyrademon at 3:55 AM on April 17, 2015 [3 favorites]

> "It looks to me like there were about 300 "combined slate" puppy votes, with about 150 coming from each one."

(To correct myself, it was probably more like 150 Rabid Puppies and ~125 Sad Puppies. When Rapid-Puppy-Only went against Sad-Puppy-Only stories in the short story category, the Rabid Puppies won - it went Combined/Combined/Combined/Rapid-Puppy-Only/Rapid-Puppy-Only. But as soon as Annie Bellet withdrew her Combined story, it was a Sad-Puppy-Only story that was next in line. I think the general point still stands. It's very likely that had Rabid Puppies not existed and given no votes, Sad Puppies would still have swept that category, and vice-versa.)
posted by kyrademon at 4:08 AM on April 17, 2015 [2 favorites]

And sorry for the multiple posting, but I want to be totally clear what I mean - it will *help*, it just won't help *enough* to work all by itself.
posted by kyrademon at 4:15 AM on April 17, 2015

Honestly, I think Flint's piece is great. No yelling. No name-calling. I don't agree with all of it, but certainly find it a pretty convincing overview. Now whether or not any of the SPs or RPs will pay attention is another question altogether. Flint's Baen connection may provide some cover (I hope it will). Let's see if Correia or any of the the others fires back some more bloviation.
posted by my dog is named clem at 4:27 AM on April 17, 2015

Personally, I think I favor reduced nominations-per-person, an expanded ballot, and adding a third stage to the current two-stage system.

Something like --

Stage 1: Everyone gets 3 nominations to a long list of 16. Slates can get stuff on, but even four or five competing slates with no overlap aren't going to take up the whole long list.

Stage 2: From that list, everyone gets 2 nominations to a final list of 7. You could attempt to slate at this stage, but (1) it is MUCH harder for a slate to work when the rest of the votes are concentrated on selections from a long list instead of "everything that is", and (2) you'd still need four slates to totally cover everything.

Stage 3: Hold the traditional ranked instant run-off voting (or whatever the actual technical name for it is) for the winner.

I realize that adding a long list stage means more expense and effort, but I really think it would be worthwhile to examine how much; the return might be worth it.

I know there are other suggestions out there to skip the middle stage and simply have an expanded final list (simply putting on everything that gets above a certain percentage according to a mathematical model), but I don't see how that can work to fairly let in stuff that's not-on-slates unless you're talking like ~10 items per category on the final list, which feels to me like it's starting to get pretty daunting for a "rank these works in order of preference" style vote. (I picked 7 because it seemed like the highest plausible number to me, but for the mathematical model system, it'd still be 7 picks from a "vote on everything and that's what you get" system and therefore would still be pretty easy to slate a big chunk of it if you were so inclined.) If I'm wrong about that, I'd be happy to hear why.
posted by kyrademon at 4:56 AM on April 17, 2015 [2 favorites]

There are ways to mitigate that, but a 3/6 nomination process, by itself, will not work.

Of course not.

*NOTHING* short of a single nominee system (which has other bad effects) or non-public nominations prevents slate voting. Our current electoral system is basically built around party voting, which is *TA DAH* slate voting. But the current system with the Hugos, where you nominate five for five slots is *incredibly* vulnerable. If you can get 500 lockstep nominators, you will own every category completely and utterly, and 200 nominators owns most of them, as we've see this year.

The prevention before was not legislation, it was social. The prevention in the future will not be purely legislation, but it may partly be. But anything that forces a slate to split reduces the effectiveness of a slate by forcing it to spread its effort, which makes it more closely match the normal nomination pattern. Combine that with just the awareness that we'd better be nominating and voting if we want to keep them, and that may well be enough. We may not be able to overcome a 200 nominator block in novella, but we may be able to overcome two 100 nominator blocks or 3 66 nominator blocks trying to sweep the ballot. They could just focus on 3 or 2 slots, but then the other slots are free and clear.

Or, maybe we have to give up on public nominations. I can see building a jury system. WSFS already has a standing committee (the Mark Protection Committee) and I can see a system where the various Worldcons nominate a slate of jurors, say, oh, 15 each to serve for 5 years. That gives you 75 jurors doing the nominations. It's a very different model than the current one -- but it's workable and completely slate resistant, and it would still end in a popular vote amongst WSFS members for the final winner.

Personally, I think I favor reduced nominations-per-person, an expanded ballot, and adding a third stage to the current two-stage system.

If you really want to break slates, you make it so that you cannot nominate in the second stage if you nominate in the first. If you try to slate, you have to split your slate right from the start.

But I can tell you right now that's too complicated to get past the business meeting right now. If this keeps getting worse, they might accept that, but right now, the proposals that stand the best chances are going to be the ones with the smallest effect, the least side effects, and the least added work for the Hugo Administrators.
posted by eriko at 5:08 AM on April 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

I was sort of amused by Eric Flint's list of people who had been unjustly denied Nobel prizes, because surely, according to his way of thinking, Joyce and Borges didn't deserve recognition or prizes. They were nowhere near the most popular authors among readers, as counted by sales, and they are not primarily known as gripping story-tellers. They are and were mostly appreciated by a small cadre of elites whose tastes are very different from those of the general book-buying public. According to his logic about the Hugos, the Nobel prize for literature should instead probably have been awarded to global best-selling authors like Sidney Sheldon and Danielle Steele.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 5:33 AM on April 17, 2015 [2 favorites]

ArbitraryAndCapricious -

I don't think that was his point. He wasn't saying that the awards should follow sales numbers or that they do follow sales numbers. Instead, what he was saying was that they don't follow sales numbers, with a carve-out for the Oscars which he sees as being driven to a certain extent by sales. And then he goes on to describe why that might be the case. But, unlike Correia et.al., he doesn't seem upset by the gap between sales and awards. And Misty Lackey, in her comment, uses the word 'hack' in an approving way to describe herself.
posted by my dog is named clem at 6:02 AM on April 17, 2015

Yeah, I think he makes a pretty compelling case that artistic awards in any medium don't just go to the big sellers or to the generally acknowledged masters or to the people with the "right" politics - that no matter what criteria you're trying to apply, you still end up with, to some degree or other, a crapshoot.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 6:13 AM on April 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

Note difference between David Eddings: Tons of sales, no awards, and Ted Chiang, almost no sales, tons of award and acclaim.

With the Hugos, popularity is a factor -- if you're not known, it's harder to get nominated. But lesser read words do get nominated, and when they get read because the made the final ballot, they can win.
posted by eriko at 6:35 AM on April 17, 2015 [2 favorites]

Oh, that's interesting, my dog is named clem! I probably shouldn't read blog posts before I've had coffee, but I thought he was saying that things were better when the Hugos did. But I'll reread the post, because you're probably right that it was descriptive, rather than prescriptive.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 6:54 AM on April 17, 2015

but I thought he was saying that things were better when the Hugos did.

I think that's more about the argument that the Hugos are structured for the SF/F market of the 1950s and 60s rather than how people are writing today, though.

(Which is something I hadn't thought about before but now that he brings it up it's head-slappingly obvious. In such a sequel-focused market, how do we get away from awards that only look at isolated works? Why are there still three short fiction awards and only one for novels when there are a billion times more novels than short works now? How do you deal with a writer like Sanderson, who's undeniably successful but writes in metaseries? These are not easy questions but they're things the WSFS should certainly think about.)
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 8:03 AM on April 17, 2015

I think Flint makes a good point about the various literary categories, and how the focus on short fiction (3 of 4 categories) doesn't really represent the market anymore. I wouldn't mind seeing it simplified to "Best Long Form" and "Best Short Form" as is done with Dramatic Presentation categories.

The Sidewise Awards do this. Note: they are presented at Worldcon but are not Hugos or WSFS-affiliated.

The Sidewise categories are split at 60k words. Re: Series -

If a book is part of a series, it must be able to stand on its own to be considered. If it is part of a serial novel — a series in which the storyline is continuous and no volume can stand on its own — the complete serial novel will be considered when the final volume is published.

posted by zakur at 8:28 AM on April 17, 2015

> "In such a sequel-focused market, how do we get away from awards that only look at isolated works? Why are there still three short fiction awards and only one for novels when there are a billion times more novels than short works now? How do you deal with a writer like Sanderson, who's undeniably successful but writes in metaseries?"

Well ... one fix would be, instead of the weird "you can nominate a series for best novel" thing that exists now, just make a separate award for best series.

Call a series any set of novels that are marketed as a series or are otherwise clearly parts of a single narrative. You could say it's for any series completed in the past year, or you could say (to allow for ongoing works or the possibility of uncompleted series), any series at least two books in length with one book published in the previous year. In either case, any which have had any part (book, or set of books) previously nominated would be ineligible.

I mean, they already kind of *do* it, this would just split it off into another category. I bet it would pass eriko's "can you show me 5 worthy works each year" rule easily.

(And, hey, as long as I'm changing all the Hugo rules here on Metafilter, can I ask that all people with my name be given free chocolate and hugs as part of the award ceremony? Because since I'm gonna have no effect whatsoever, I should make it good!)
posted by kyrademon at 8:34 AM on April 17, 2015 [4 favorites]

TBH I am fully in favour if an award that favours Chiang over Eddings. I suspect Eddings isn't exactly hurting over this.
posted by Artw at 8:45 AM on April 17, 2015 [7 favorites]

Ahh, thank you kyrademon. That post from Flint was clarifying, and several high profile authors dopped by in the comments to add their 2 cents.
posted by Wretch729 at 8:46 AM on April 17, 2015

I suspect Eddings isn't exactly hurting over this.

Definitely not, given that he died in 2009.
posted by Chrysostom at 9:02 AM on April 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

Apparently there's something weird going on at Calgary Expo right now with GamerGate types turning up and being weird and disruptive.
posted by Artw at 9:03 AM on April 17, 2015 [2 favorites]

Definitely not, given that he died in 2009.

Oof. I didn't actually know that. A shame. I'm not going to call him a friend, but I did have dinner with him and pleasant conversation.

I swear the worst part about getting old is all the people who stop getting old.
posted by eriko at 9:04 AM on April 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

Definitely not, given that he died in 2009.

[insert Eddings equivalent]
posted by Artw at 9:04 AM on April 17, 2015

They bought a freaking table.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 9:05 AM on April 17, 2015

Um, yeah. This sucks. I live in Calgary and my wife and I plan to take the boys to this when they are a little older and able to handle the crowds...but if shit like this is going to happen, I don't want to be there.
posted by nubs at 9:19 AM on April 17, 2015

At least the Expo is investigating. Of course, it looks like the usual insects are slithering out of the woodwork to show how much they don't understand about both free speech and private venues work in either the US or Canada.
posted by zombieflanders at 9:36 AM on April 17, 2015

I just did a really quick Google search for "calgary expo gamergate" and saw a result from KotakuInAction (the gamergate headquarters subreddit) saying something about how Milo Yiannopoulous and Christina Hoff Sommers were planning a meetup of their minions there?
posted by palomar at 9:38 AM on April 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

I don't know about Calgary, but they're coming to DC tomorrow. Ugh.
posted by zombieflanders at 9:42 AM on April 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

Ah. It's this group. How lovely. They're affiliated with A Voice For Men, so that should tell you all you need to know...
posted by palomar at 9:44 AM on April 17, 2015 [4 favorites]

Sounds like an exercise in being disruptive so they can complain about being opressed when anyone objects, par for the course.
posted by Artw at 9:51 AM on April 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

I'm a little curious what went on in their interview with Torgersen and friends. Not sure if that's curious enough to listen to it.
posted by kagredon at 10:01 AM on April 17, 2015

Apparently there's something weird going on at Calgary Expo right now with GamerGate types turning up and being weird and disruptive

According to Wil Wheaton's twitter feed, they're going to feminist panels and starting shit with the panelists.
posted by suelac at 10:04 AM on April 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

Calgary Expo's twitter feed says they're investigating.

I'm guessing they sold a table to this HoneyBadger group, not knowing it was an MRA/Gamergate group.
posted by suelac at 10:08 AM on April 17, 2015

Sounds like an exercise in being disruptive so they can complain about being opressed when anyone objects, par for the course.

Yeah, the poor sod running @Calgaryexpo is getting sealioned really bad right now.

According to Wil Wheaton's twitter feed, they're going to feminist panels and starting shit with the panelists.

The Expo says that the complaints are from actual attendees. Naturally, all of the the people harassing the Expo Twitter account are not.
posted by zombieflanders at 10:09 AM on April 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

Wait MartinWisse isn't Eric Flint a pinko commie former labor organizer? When was he whining about conservative SF being neglected?

Yes, he was, but the only difference it made in his fiction was that the good guys with guns were union members rather than libertarians like with most of his fellow Baen writers. And to be honest, Flint never was as big a crybaby as the current crop of Baen hacks, rather more into the whole "only sales count" as a measure of quality.

Which leads him to some strange places, as in the third part of his explanation of why the Hugo Awards are out of step with the average sf reader that kyrademon just linked.

Because he is correct that long before the Puppy shenanigans, the Hugos already had problems with keeping its finger on the pulse of science fiction, the problem isn't that the people nominating and voting have too refined tastes. Just look at the list of winners and nominees for the best novel. Look at the most recent pre-Puppy winners, from 2001 to 2013 it's J. K. Rowling, Neil Gaiman, Robert J. "Canada's most successfull living sf writer" Sawyer, Lois McMaster Bujold, Susanna Clarke, Robert Charles Wilson, Vernor Vinge, Michael Chabon, Gaiman again, Paolo Bacigalupi, Connie Willis, Jo Walton and John Scalzi. Of those arguably only the Clarke can be considered "arty" rather than "popular".

The dichotomy between sales and award worthiness or critical appeal is wrong on the face of it, or Dhalgren wouldn't have been a million seller.
posted by MartinWisse at 10:17 AM on April 17, 2015 [2 favorites]

Apparently the Expo has kicked the Honey Badgers/gators/disruptive shitheads out.
posted by zombieflanders at 10:23 AM on April 17, 2015

Kameron Hurley: Hijacking the Hugo Awards Won't Stifle Diversity in Science Fiction
posted by homunculus at 10:24 AM on April 17, 2015

> "Of those arguably only the Clarke can be considered 'arty' rather than 'popular'."

Her book spent eleven weeks on the New York Times best-seller list, was in Amazon's top ten sellers, and went through 8 printings in a month when its INITIAL print run was 250,000 copies.

I don't think that one fits in the "not popular" box either.
posted by kyrademon at 10:25 AM on April 17, 2015 [7 favorites]

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell sold over a million copies. That's not exactly 'arty'. China Miéville (you missed the tie with Bacigalupi) is probably the only one who could be called arty and less well known in the field, and he's not exactly obscure. I don't think Wilson and Bacigalupi are huge mainstream sellers compared to some, but it's not the 'most weeks on the NYT bestseller list' award either.
posted by tavella at 10:58 AM on April 17, 2015

I think "arty" is getting used to mean "not like Ringworld." And Among Others is not like Ringworld, it's true.
posted by Chrysostom at 10:59 AM on April 17, 2015

Any more details on the Calgary kick out?
posted by corb at 11:08 AM on April 17, 2015

According to palomar's link, the Honey Badger Brigade raised ~$9,300 to send its people to Calgary. That'd buy about 232 supporting memberships for Worldcon, in case anyone thinks gamergators won't spend money.

That's essentially media spend for various idiots who've glommed on to GG to keep themsleves in the headlines, not sure there's an equivalent set of hangers-on who would pony up for puppies.
posted by Artw at 11:09 AM on April 17, 2015

(I guess maybe they were expecting to make some of that back selling stuff, but I doubt it. Also $9000 for a table at a smaller con sounds kind of steep, though I guess that might include travel and hotel)
posted by Artw at 11:11 AM on April 17, 2015

There's some more info at The Mary Sue.
posted by sukeban at 11:16 AM on April 17, 2015 [5 favorites]

not sure there's an equivalent set of hangers-on who would pony up for puppies.

It's at least a subset of the same group.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 11:24 AM on April 17, 2015

There's some more info at The Mary Sue.

Thanks for that. One of the panelists, Brittney Le Blanc, does a good job summing up the problem with GG, MRA, etc. disruption:

It’s disappointing that they weren’t there to have a conversation or to listen to what we, and members of the audience, were saying. They wanted to stand up and have their say, but not to listen or try to understand the points of view other people in the room had.

posted by audi alteram partem at 11:28 AM on April 17, 2015

Also $9000 for a table at a smaller con sounds kind of steep, though I guess that might include travel and hotel)

I feel it's important to note that just because they raised 9K to go somewhere doesn't mean it actually cost that much - some of that might have been like, their secret beer fund.
posted by corb at 11:40 AM on April 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

Or bail money.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 11:42 AM on April 17, 2015 [2 favorites]

Given that one of their initial complaints was that Anita Sarkeesian was getting too much money via KS for making a video they sure do like getting fleeced.
posted by Artw at 11:46 AM on April 17, 2015 [3 favorites]

China Miéville (you missed the tie with Bacigalupi) is probably the only one who could be called arty and less well known in the field

Mieville less well known in what field? 'Cause it surely isn't SFF where he is very well known!
posted by Justinian at 11:47 AM on April 17, 2015

The most expensive exhibitor booth at CalgaryExpo was $5500 (pdf, see page 5) The cheapest was $275. Additional tables, carpets, signage, additional walls and displays, electrical, telephone, a/v, plants, etc., all cost extra. (pdf, see page 11 onward.) Extra exhibitor badges were $90 each. And then there can be storage, shipping, set up and parking fees for the booth and products.

$9000 still seems steep. Also, a big waste of money considering they got tossed for being idiots.
posted by zarq at 11:51 AM on April 17, 2015 [3 favorites]

Also, a big waste of money considering they got tossed for being idiots.

It depends on their game plan. They might be doing the "We were just doing the thing you, our donors wanted, and we were KICKED OUT! We need MORE MONEY to counter these forces."
posted by corb at 11:52 AM on April 17, 2015

Awhile back, I ran press for a scientific conference in Portland for a couple of years. Costs, forms, directions etc., are nearly always made available online. Conference staff (especially when run by nonprofits) is often small and in some cases the conference isn't a staffer's primary job, so the more info you have publicly available, the less need there is for people to become involved.
posted by zarq at 11:54 AM on April 17, 2015

They might be doing the "We were just doing the thing you, our donors wanted, and we were KICKED OUT! We need MORE MONEY to counter these forces."

Oh, sure. It can be spun in many ways. But I bet the money could have been put to better use than making a brief, forgettable public nuisance.
posted by zarq at 11:58 AM on April 17, 2015 [2 favorites]

Setting it on fire on a small island, KLF-style, would be a better use of money than that.
posted by rmd1023 at 12:01 PM on April 17, 2015 [6 favorites]

There's a short update at the TMS article: "[Update #2: Calgary Expo have let us know, “The booth was shut down before the floor even opened to the public.”]"

That's fast.
posted by sukeban at 12:23 PM on April 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

There's a short update at the TMS article: "[Update #2: Calgary Expo have let us know, “The booth was shut down before the floor even opened to the public.”]"

Good. I was wondering.

Conference / Show / Expo staff typically walk the floor each day prior to show openings, to make sure no exhibitor is breaking either show or venue rules. They're primarily looking for egregious violations that can cause bigger headaches. Because the last thing you want to have to deal with is a big problem when the place is flooded with attendees.

I can't imagine they missed that booth.
posted by zarq at 12:27 PM on April 17, 2015

Looking back on some other stuff - it seems that even though people are framing the SWFA controversy as very 'everyone vs Vox Day' it seems very not the case, which I had forgotten - names like Raymond Feist and Robert Silverberg were involved. (Here is one timeline, I do not endorse the author of it but it's a useful starting place, especially to the tumblr).
posted by corb at 12:29 PM on April 17, 2015

Re: Eric Flint, a point I saw raised by Matthew David Surridge (in his post declining his SP/RP nomination) was that even that slates aren't representative of commercial genre work, where sales of dystopian YA novels, urban fantasy, and Outlander seem to be crushing old-school Thrale-Onlonian Empire SF. Genre boundaries are tricky to define.
posted by snarkout at 12:39 PM on April 17, 2015 [3 favorites]

old-school Thrale-Onlonian Empire SF

...and I bet even that is crushing dull stories in which angels deliver long winded essays about why Muslims and atheists are bad, which seems to be a major component of the slates.
posted by Artw at 12:47 PM on April 17, 2015 [4 favorites]

On reading through that all and thinking, it seems likely that the Sad Puppies are both right and wrong. There is a fight for the heart of science fiction and its level of PC, but also a lot of people just don't like the slate shit.

For those who don't want to read through the tumblr, it's a lot of SFWA members talking about what they feel about everything - mention of a cabal comes from William Barton,

Susan Shwartz comments "I am, however, profoundly distressed at Jemison’s use of “Moonfail.” THAT particular mess was a mess at the time, unless you really like self-righteous groupthink. I’m sure Jemison feels Very Good about herself and its inclusion. I don't."

Jerry Pournelle says "I expect they can manage to work the witch hunters into a frenzy if they continue to try." and later The SFWA officials are too busy apologizing to the feminists for not hiring a hit man to kill Mr. Beale to do anything mundane like member service.

This site has a lot of unsourced quotes from SFWA writers on the forum, but it seems like the perception that Scalzi and Kowal brought in a new generation that they don't seem to like so much seems broader than the Puppies.
posted by corb at 12:52 PM on April 17, 2015

And I guess they can't attack the Nebulas yet, so, close enough.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 1:03 PM on April 17, 2015

Yeah, the SFWA ran a messgabeoard that served as the clubhouse for reactionary dinosaurs for a good long time, until they managed to attract enough attention to themselves to get it shut down. This is known.
posted by Artw at 1:09 PM on April 17, 2015 [6 favorites]

Susan Shwartz comments "I am, however, profoundly distressed at Jemison’s use of “Moonfail.” THAT particular mess was a mess at the time, unless you really like self-righteous groupthink. I’m sure Jemison feels Very Good about herself and its inclusion. I don't."

I had to Google this, but the "Moonfail" thing appears to be a pretty standard Islamaphobic screed about the "Ground Zero Mosque."

The only group think it revealed was that the author was a victim of the group think that convinced people that was a thing in any real, important sense. Fighting back against that message was the exact opposite of doing what the crowd was doing.
posted by Drinky Die at 1:11 PM on April 17, 2015 [5 favorites]

There's no person whose opinion is more rigorously objective when thinking about issues involving racism than Jerry Pournelle, corb. Maybe we could also ask him for his opinion on anthropocentric climate change.
posted by snarkout at 1:15 PM on April 17, 2015 [2 favorites]

The #CalgaryExpo is depressing as hell.
posted by rtha at 1:18 PM on April 17, 2015

The only group think it revealed was that the author was a victim of the group think that convinced people that was a thing in any real, important sense

Even the mosque wasn't the thing that got people pissed off at Moon: it was her assertion that Muslims can't be good Americans, that there was a fundamental conflict between the two.

Which, of course, is exactly what was said about Catholics once upon a time, and is no more true now than it was then.

She also bungled the business: she allowed comments, and then deleted them all, and it was a whole thing. Badly managed, but the end result was merely being disinvited as GOH at Wiscon. Which I think might have been a mistake, except that many of the attendees would have been pretty unhappy about the con honoring her, and there certainly are some Muslim Wiscon-goers.
posted by suelac at 1:23 PM on April 17, 2015 [5 favorites]

The #CalgaryExpo is depressing as hell.

If there's one thing GG is good at, it's flooding a hashtag in a depressing way.
posted by Artw at 1:37 PM on April 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

I will say there is one part of the Mary Sue article that is off base. They say that this was a claim that they were attending with false pretenses:

We plan to infiltrate nerd culture cunningly disguised as their own. Each of us has been carefully crafting a persona of nerdiness through decades of dedication to comics, science fiction, fantasy, comedy games and other geekery, waiting for this moment, our moment to slip among the unaware. Once there we will start distributing the totalitarian message that nerd and gamer culture is… perfectly wonderful just as it is and should be left alone to go it’s own way.

I think the thing about spending decades pretending to be a nerd is obvious sarcasm. They were very clear with the rest of that quote that they were there to push the GG agenda. The only way the Con handled this poorly was in not sniffing this out ahead of time and preemptively disallowing them.
posted by Drinky Die at 1:42 PM on April 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

They linked to some webcomic instead of their actual site, there was clear intent to misrepresent themselves.
posted by Artw at 1:45 PM on April 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

I thought the false pretenses were that they registered as a booth for Alison Tieman's webcomic, Sowing Strangers, rather than the thing they were actually there for.

(To be clear, Tieman is part of the group, so they didn't link themselves to some random schmoe, they just misrepresented the purpose of their table/attendance.)
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 1:46 PM on April 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

Official statement (twitter) from CalgaryExpo
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 1:48 PM on April 17, 2015

There's no person whose opinion is more rigorously objective when thinking about issues involving racism than Jerry Pournelle, corb.

Oh don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting he's some kind of impartial arbiter, I'm just saying this thing is bigger than the Puppies and has a some well known names involved - so the Puppies are both right that there's a brawl over this still ongoing, and wrong that they're being targeted just for said brawl.
posted by corb at 1:49 PM on April 17, 2015

If you can still show enough 'compassion' for the SonsOfBitches to be "both right and wrong", you are as much an unwitting tool of the Vox Days of the world as Corriea. This piece that I was pointed to today so perfectly explains the mindset of not just the Tea Party, but also the GatorGoobers, the SonsOfBitches and all movements in America that are considered "traditionalist". They don't want to return SFF to the 1950s, they want to go back to the 1850s, with them as plantation owners. (But then, as the piece explains, there wasn't that much difference between the 1850s and 1950s after all)

The "Culture War" is a one-sided affair; it is only those who are trying to destroy everything but their sacred White Male Christian culture who are really fighting. That is why I still feel that the SonsOfBitches can succeed in making the Hugo's "their" awards this year, and if not this year, they eventually will. And the Calgary Expo attack is just the beginning. These SocialInjusticeWarriors will probably achieve a full takeover of at least one Con (probably one without a clear anti-harassment policy) within a year or two. The only thing holding them back is the fact that some of their organizers, like the HorrableBadgers, are first and foremost lining their pockets with anything more than their actual costs from the contributions of the gullible. The Creflo Dollar Effect.
posted by oneswellfoop at 1:49 PM on April 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

Yes, there are always reactionary idiots grumbling about things. Not sure what your point is, except a vague desire for the puppies to be "right' about something.
posted by Artw at 1:50 PM on April 17, 2015 [4 favorites]

Ahh, yeah you guys are right. I parsed it out now. Publicly they were open about the goals, but with the Con they were not.
posted by Drinky Die at 1:53 PM on April 17, 2015

If you haven't noticed, they don't desire to be "right", they desire to be in power, and to silence all who oppose them (making their claims that they are being censored the biggest lie). The "reactionary idiots" have majorities in both house of Congress and most state legislatures. And whatever they have an interest in, they want control over. And if they are not opposed vigorously, they'll get it, just because of their relative vigor.
posted by oneswellfoop at 1:56 PM on April 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

Let's be clear; "Loudmouth dinosaur" is a perfect description of Jerry Pournelle, but to be completely fair, the loudmouth part is in large part hearing damage from his cannon-cocking days in the US Army.
posted by eriko at 1:57 PM on April 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

The #CalgaryExpo is depressing as hell.

I'm not going to look at the hashtag, but just share my little corner of things today. This afternoon I had to go represent my organization at a function at the University of Calgary. As luck would have it, the LRT route between the office and the campus took me right past the location of the Expo.

I got on the train, which was reasonably crowded. Nearby were two young ladies (I would guess high school? I don't know, I'm lousy at guessing ages of teenagers), both wearing T-shirts from the expo and both with their passes, obviously on their way. I wasn't eavesdropping, but I heard one of them talking excitedly about her "character, who is going to be this half-orc ranger, but with -" I have no idea if they were talking about a tabletop RPG or a computer game or a story/comic she is working on or whatever. But it was cool. And I'm standing there thinking how neat it is that I'm on a train with two teenage girls who are apparently into the same stuff I was (and still am) into as a teenage boy.

So we get to the stop where you'd get off if you were going to the Expo, and I watch them leave and am smiling about it, and then this other young lady walks past, dressed up as Daenerys Stormborn as a Dothraki rider, complete with stuffed dragon stitched to the shoulder of her costume (and I bet the real Dany wished she had the sunglasses during her sojourn in the desert). And so I'm thinking about how awesome that is. Getting on the train is a lady about my age, not in costume, but with her Comic-Con pass around her neck, talking on her phone about how she just has to go visit her daughter for a bit. And then I get on campus, and I pass two other young women (both also visible minorities) on their way to the train, dressed in Avengers costumes.

And I realized that if there's a battle on for the heart and soul of SF&F fandom, it's over. Because nothing I saw this afternoon on the way to Expo looked like me, but I knew I would be happy to sit and chat with any of them about what they liked and what they didn't like, and I wouldn't care too much if we didn't like the same things. Because I got happy because I saw them happy, going off to this event. And I'd be happy to hear about what resonates for them in the stories they love. I'm happy to recognize other fans. Happy to realize that they probably aren't looking for the same stories and movies and things that I am, because that means the market is supplying things for both me and them...and that is a good thing, because it means I get a chance to see more and do more and experience more. I might not like all of it, but that's ok. Anime isn't my thing, and it probably never will be, but that's fine. More power to them, and I know that some of the stuff I do love likely has anime influences in it that I may never grasp and understand. They are the richer for it. I know very little about the Marvel Universe, but by Grabthars Hammer I have a ball at those movies and I am very glad that there was enough of a fanbase out there for them to get made in the first place. I am the richer for it.

From the business side, the audience is larger than ever. The audience is more diverse then ever. They will want stories and media of all kinds that speak to them, speak about them, and include them. The market will follow them...and the market will also continue to produce the more traditional "rocket ships and laser guns" stuff as well, because it has fans too.

I know this is all anecdotal, but yeah.

Once there we will start distributing the totalitarian message that nerd and gamer culture is… perfectly wonderful just as it is and should be left alone to go it’s own way.

You know what? I agree. It is a wonderful thing, and it should be allowed to go it's own way. The problem is that I see the way it is going and am filled with happiness because I see it trying to be more, trying to improve, trying to include everyone who identifies as a nerd and a gamer. That's a culture I want to be a part of, a culture that believes we have to keep extending our reach, keep finding fresh ideas and ground to cover, keep challenging itself to be better. Not one that attempts to say that it's continued evolution should be more of the same of how it's been. Really, who needs to leave it alone? Because I bet the answer to that question probably leaves out most of the people I saw today. And I suspect it leaves me out, because as much as I grew up on the "traditional" SF&F of my day, that doesn't stop me from being a critical consumer and pointing out ways and ideas that things could be better.

Ok, disjointed rant done. Off to find a beer. And maybe finally purchase a supporting membership for Sasquan.
posted by nubs at 2:45 PM on April 17, 2015 [46 favorites]

Thanks for the Calgary Expo updates, y'all are making it much easier to run my single-serve whatisgamergatecurrentlyruining website.
posted by NoraReed at 3:03 PM on April 17, 2015 [10 favorites]

nubs, I wish I could flag/favorite your comment a million times. Thank you for articulating what has baffled me about this whole puppies thing: why is being inclusive seen as a Bad Thing, when there is such joy in sharing common interests with all sorts and conditions of people?
posted by emilypdx at 3:31 PM on April 17, 2015 [4 favorites]

MRA Group Honey Badger Radio Removed From Calgary Expo For False Information, Disruption
posted by Artw at 3:41 PM on April 17, 2015

why is being inclusive seen as a Bad Thing, when there is such joy in sharing common interests with all sorts and conditions of people?

I think it's because the end goal of 'inclusive' is, as stated above by others, not actually the full goal, because the perception is that it's impossible to be inclusive with everyone. The reach is not for the joy in sharing common interests with all type of people. The reach is for some of those people to be gone.

Like, for example: people aren't saying, "Hey, Orscon Scott Card has some shitty ideas. Oh well, what do we care? There are also people with great ideas." They're saying - whoa, boycott his books.

The very second comment in this thread is an outraged, "Who nominates human scum?" with the implication being that the authors' views however shitty should mean that they should not be awarded for their novels.

And that's the thing, right? We can argue over whether or not there's an effective SJW cabal or not until the cows come home, but here's a real question - IF THERE WERE ONE, would you think it was bad? If it became the case that nobody you thought was a racist or a homophobe or a bigot could get an award, or get invited to panels, or what have you, would you and others think that was a bad outcome?
posted by corb at 4:03 PM on April 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

You know ... it occurs to me that Three Body Problem is a book that:

1) The puppy organizers have admitted is exactly the kind of thing they want to see on the ballot,
2) Stands a good chance of winning, and
3) Was nearly kept off the ballot by their antics.

I'm sure that this, especially if it actually does win, will be a wake-up call to them that whatever their personal beliefs, the tactics they have chosen to employ have done nothing but cause harm to the very medium they ahahahahahahaha no just kidding I'm sure that all we're going to hear is how any category that gets No Awarded is entirely the work of bastard people who hate them personally for daring to speak Truth to Power and next year they're doubling down.
posted by kyrademon at 4:06 PM on April 17, 2015 [7 favorites]

Like, for example: people aren't saying, "Hey, Orscon Scott Card has some shitty ideas. Oh well, what do we care? There are also people with great ideas." They're saying - whoa, boycott his books.

It's been explained to you over and over across multiple threads how what Card has done goes beyond just having "shitty ideas," so for you to keep repeating this mantra seems like you're approaching this from a place of deep dishonesty.

The very second comment in this thread is an outraged, "Who nominates human scum?" with the implication being that the authors' views however shitty should mean that they should not be awarded for their novels.

That comment was referencing authors advocating for and working towards violence against women, PoC, and LGBT people. The puppies, including Torgersen and Correia, have explicitly aligned themselves with hate groups that are not just advocating for, but actively committing violence against those same groups. This isn't the same as just disagreeing over politics, and you know it.
posted by zombieflanders at 4:17 PM on April 17, 2015 [25 favorites]

If it became the case that nobody you thought was a racist or a homophobe or a bigot could get an award, or get invited to panels, or what have you, would you and others think that was a bad outcome?

I wouldn't be a fan of that. I think some people here might want to quantify it a little differently. How many black women, gay men, and Muslims are you driving away by honoring bigots? That has to be an important part of how we evaluate it, I think. When we aren't talking about government censorship, private organizations should be free to make this sort of calculus on their own and other groups can go in different directions if they want.

But...even if I agree with you on the potential slippery slope...you acknowledge that GRRM was pretty on point when he painstakingly looked at the past awards and didn't find evidence that what you fear might happen is yet occurring, right?
posted by Drinky Die at 4:18 PM on April 17, 2015 [3 favorites]

Well, regarding Card it's a case of "do as I say, not as I do" since he was involved in organizations that boycotted businesses that ran LGBT-positive advertising.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 4:28 PM on April 17, 2015 [4 favorites]

you acknowledge that GRRM was pretty on point when he painstakingly looked at the past awards and didn't find evidence that what you fear might happen is yet occurring, right?

I think GRRM is right in that we are not yet at the point where having conservative views is a complete Hugo-killer, not even close. The idea that the SJW contingent has completely shut out the Hugos to everyone not in complete lockstep is an error.

However, I suspect we are close to, if not already at, the point where a conservative or considered conservative work cannot win at the Hugos. (For example - take Harry Turtledove, who is still producing incredible work. Hugo and Nebulas in the late 90s. He has not had any work-shittening near death experiences to my knowledge - but I haven't seen nominations in the last decade or so, and it may well be that things like Southern-sympathetic alternate history are no longer considered acceptable mainstream discourse).

I also think we are already at the point where a vocal social conservative cannot win the Hugos. I absolutely think we are at that point. I think that the chance that someone who, say, signed an amicus brief for Prop 8 or something, could win on the ballot is virtually nil, even if their science fiction crawled down from the heavens with words so shining they burned when you read them.
posted by corb at 4:36 PM on April 17, 2015

> "If it became the case that nobody you thought was a racist or a homophobe or a bigot could get an award, or get invited to panels, or what have you, would you and others think that was a bad outcome?"

OK, I'll bite. In the case of awards, yes, I would think that was a bad outcome. I believe I am on record in this thread as saying that I think Orson Scott Card, whom I think is a terrible human being, deserves his Hugos. An award given for artistic merit should be based on artistic merit.

Panels are a more complicated thing. If someone's outspoken opinions include "people the organizers would like to welcome to this convention are lesser human beings", I am not at all sure that convention organizers deciding not to pick that person as a representative of the public face of the convention is quite the same issue.
posted by kyrademon at 4:36 PM on April 17, 2015 [5 favorites]

"If it became the case that nobody you thought was a racist or a homophobe or a bigot could get an award, or get invited to panels"

When Martin Luther King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, Bull Connor objected that the Nobel Committee was "scraping the bottom of the barrel" to come up with honorees who agreed with their ideology. Other white supremacists alleged it was a communist plot.

This is literally the same argument you are making. Do you feel bad for Bull Connor that he wasn't considered for national policing awards? Or an honorary degree from Howard? What right does he have to those honors?

Being a racist IS an act of exclusion. There is no "But SJWs excluded us first." No. Racism, sexism, homophobia, that is exclusion. Tolerant people are not required to tolerate the intolerant, and it's the worst kind of sophistry to claim that if they don't allow intolerance, they are themselves intolerant.

You are demanding that they be insulated from the repercussions of speaking their repugnant beliefs. Sorry, no. That is not how free speech works. You do not have a right to a platform beyond your own pen, and philosophers like Milton who laid the groundwork for free speech explicitly argued that part of the value of free speech was that people who were wrong would get ARGUED DOWN.

Stop crying a river for Bull Connor and his ilk. Nobody's taking away the Sad Puppies' right to speak or vote or receive a jury trial. Just telling them they have no natural right to an award.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 4:42 PM on April 17, 2015 [33 favorites]

That Harry Turtledove isn't winning Hugos has little to do with political bigotry. He's a competent writer (but not, I think, a great one), and while he sells consistently, he's basically been telling the same stories for the last twenty years. That type of alt-history isn't generally considered to be strikingly original and award-worthy material. (IMO: it's been a looong time since I read anything by him.)

Also, and at risk of buying back into the whole log-rolling argument, Turtledove doesn't seem to play the social media game. He doesn't cater his work or his promotion to the type of people who go to Worldcon, although I'm sure he does some promotion as part of his contracts.

So: is it bigotry that someone who writes something not a lot of Worldcon voters are into, and who doesn't reach out to Worldcon voters, doesn't get nominated for Worldcon awards?

Frankly, I think that has more to do with it than the fact that he portrays Southerners sympathetically.
posted by suelac at 4:53 PM on April 17, 2015 [8 favorites]

... which is all to say: I don't see political bigotry in people's choices of what to read, recommend, and nominate.

What I do see is people naturally bouncing off work that doesn't respect their own understanding of the world. I don't like books in which women only show up as madonnas and whores or books in which the only Asian person is the treacherous and deceitful political-enforcement officer (I'm looking at you, R. M. Meleuch). I'm not going to hold those books up as representative of the best of the field, because I don't believe they are. (For one thing, that sort of bullshit is Bad Writing. Racist and sexist stereotypes are bad writing, cheap and easy and stupid and not representative of how the world works.)

But my choice to put the book down and walk away--that's not me punishing the author for being A Bad Person: that's me not liking the book.

If the world has become a place where people don't naturally like books filled with homophobia and racism and misogyny, isn't that okay? And shouldn't writers who want to sell books then write books which are not filled with those things?

I see the Puppies like Canute on the shoreline, although in this instance the tide is going out, and they don't understand why they're being left behind.

I have no interest in punishing Correia or Torgersen, or in stopping them from writing and selling their work to anyone who wants to read it. But I am not going to be told that I must be lying about what I do like, because I have been politically brainwashed or some such nonsense.
posted by suelac at 5:03 PM on April 17, 2015 [14 favorites]

For example - take Harry Turtledove, who is still producing incredible work.

Yeah, I've read and enjoyed a lot of his earlier work and eventually gave up since I wasn't getting anything new out of it. I kind of got the idea he was churning it out a little too fast to send his kids to college or something. Which I can respect as a motivation and all, but I don't want to read it.
posted by asperity at 5:06 PM on April 17, 2015

For the record, I'm a fan of boycotts, as a thing that can be instigated by anybody, no matter their politics. They have a long and honorable tradition, and by god if I have to live in a capitalist society then I will defend anyone's right to spend their money or not as they wish, and talk about the reasons for doing so in public and invite their friends to join them. So boo fucking hoo to someone like Card if some people not going to see his movie is some kind of oppression.

And if explicitly including people who say things about me like how I'm disgusting, limp, soulless sacks of filth. You have earned the contempt and hatred of all decent human beings forever, and we will do all we can to smash the filthy phallic idol of sodomy you bow and serve and worship, then you are explicitly going to exclude me. You don't get to have it all; sometimes you have to pick. If all I ever see someone do is give benefit of the doubt to one end of the spectrum and demand fair consideration only for them, I know what choice has been made.
posted by rtha at 5:07 PM on April 17, 2015 [18 favorites]

Actually, I have a further point, corb. You keep saying, "But what if these REALLY GREAT stories aren't recognized because of the political beliefs of their authors?" as if the two are somehow separable, but that's a serious, fundamental falsehood in thinking about art. Art is inherently political, because it is (mostly) ABOUT something. It might not be about politics explicitly, but it's about people, or the natural environment, or our relationship to science. When you create or perform art, you make a window, a viewfinder, to show other people how you want them to view that little bit of the world. Art -- and especially literature -- is there to show, persuade, explain, inform -- to change people's minds, or affect their emotions, or broaden their intellects, or simply show them a different point of view, or reinforce a view they already hold. That is an inherently political act. The First Amendment doesn't just protect political speech but speech -- expression -- generally, because expression always has a political dimension. The clothes you wear say something about how you view the world and your place in it. The way you groom your eyebrows. The food you eat.

Literary awards are never just about the author's technical proficiency with language; they are always, and always, also about what the art is ABOUT. Authors are not xerox machines. If you just want to award "really good English language skills" we could all write business memos or SAT essays (although they are still, of course, political in ways we don't always recognize). Art is also subjective -- even SAT essays. Human judgment and taste enters into it. It's not like an arithmetic problem where there's a correct answer. You can't complain that other people are failing to recognize your technical proficiency as a writer because they don't like the content or ideas -- it's all an inseparable part of the whole.

And look, I appreciate more than most people what it's like to suffer for speaking out politically (after the past 18 months or so when I've suffered intense repercussions over a minor local political issue, which have been so bad I've considered changing my damn name so these people would leave me alone). It sucks when people disagree with you, and it double-sucks when you're targeted for your beliefs. But these aren't people sitting quietly in their homes bothering no one; they're authors publishing stories for the reading public, and then upset when the public has reactions to them. Nobody is forcing them to speak, or to make art, and when you do choose to speak out or make art, people are going to judge you by that speech.

I get it that the ground has shifted under them in terms of what's acceptable and taboo, but that is a story as old as humankind, and as old as art, and it is literally in Plato, and anyone making art for the public knows -- or should know -- that tastes shift, sometimes radically, and someone can be lionized, then mocked, then forgotten, then rediscovered, then disdained, then canonized, and that that process doesn't stop when you stop making art, or even die ... it just goes on.

Authors who don't want the public to engage with their ideas should not publicly release their art, especially in a genre as idea-driven as SFF ... there are no bonus points in SFF for a photorealistic rendering of the world as it is -- it is explicitly a genre of ideas and imagination and alternatives -- such a "realism" that took no liberties with reality would not even qualify as SFF.

So please stop saying that these authors should be recognized because their art is great as long as you totally detach it from their ideas. That isn't how art works. And awards are not a comprehensive catalog of "everyone doing pretty good work." They're a specific recognition, in a specific moment in time, by a specific group of people. Art is about ideas, not just technical craft. The two cannot be separated.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 5:15 PM on April 17, 2015 [41 favorites]

I agree with that argument but I think it is unnecessary. Until somebody can point out a work which should have won the Hugo but failed to do so because of its author's conservative views this is all just talking bullshit.
posted by Justinian at 5:26 PM on April 17, 2015 [2 favorites]

Hell, Brandon freakin' Sanderson made the ballot last year. He didn't win, but WoT is garbage so the fact that he made the ballot at all should be enough to silence this line of argument.
posted by Justinian at 5:29 PM on April 17, 2015 [3 favorites]

what Justinian did you decide there are not enough nerd wars going for you? you have to s*** on the Wheel of Time? They can hear you.the pitter patter of Robert Jordan fans are in the wind thank you very much.

Eyebrows I am on the move but really appreciate your substantive contribution it is raising a lot of thoughts that I want to respond to but I'm going to wait for the computer. I just didn't want you to think I was blowing you off in responding to Justinian.
posted by corb at 5:36 PM on April 17, 2015

Wheel of Time is not garbage, though it has many an issue, and it is as close to a blockbuster as you can get in this genre without being turned into an HBO show or movie. It's not a good baseline for the average work of any kind.

Sanderson does have some mediocre quality stuff out there so maybe keep an eye on that, but I've never really seen any bad politics seep into his writing. There is a difference between being disliked for personal politics and being disliked for works of fiction based on offensive personal politics expressed in the work itself.

Be a southern apologist if you want as far as I'm concerned, but don't try to sell me a southern apologist novel.
posted by Drinky Die at 5:36 PM on April 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

Surely if these alleged great neglected works existed they'd be on the Puppy slates? Instead merely listing work that is competent and eligible seems to be a real stretch for them.
posted by Artw at 5:48 PM on April 17, 2015 [4 favorites]

On screaming "We're not VD!" while ignoring your relationship with VD
posted by Artw at 6:02 PM on April 17, 2015 [9 favorites]

gaaaarbage.
posted by Justinian at 6:05 PM on April 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

The Psychology of Hugo Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies
posted by Lexica at 6:24 PM on April 17, 2015 [6 favorites]

1) If there are so many great works being passed over for 'political' reasons, and the slates were created to nominate said great works, why the goddamn fuck was 'Yes Virginia…' on the slate???? Have you actually read it? It's an insult to feces worldwide to refer to it as 'shit'. It's like a slime that grows on a strange substance that oozes out of shit if you leave it out in the sun for a week.

2) I have lost all tolerance for these sad little man-children throwing a public tantrum because all the mean icky girls and brown people want to use the same playground as them. Fuck them. Fuck civility. Fuck their sea lion simulation of discourse. Just fuck them all.
posted by signal at 6:40 PM on April 17, 2015 [11 favorites]

I also think we are already at the point where a vocal social conservative cannot win the Hugos. I absolutely think we are at that point.

Actually asking: do you think it's possible for someone to be a "vocal social conservative" without being a tedious asshole? Or does being "vocal" require a level of being confrontational that will necessarily make one a tedious asshole?

I mean, at some level Gene Wolfe has to count as a vocal social conservative if everyone knows he's a quite conservative Catholic. But does he not count as "vocal" because he's not an asshole?
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 6:50 PM on April 17, 2015 [4 favorites]

come join the eeeevil SJW cabal, signal. we have better stuff anyway (especially videogames, since they only want super boring ones)
posted by NoraReed at 6:52 PM on April 17, 2015 [7 favorites]

I mean, sure you can moan on about OSC being ostracized, but has he actually written anything of interest since the 90s?
posted by Artw at 7:06 PM on April 17, 2015 [5 favorites]

Regarding what corb said in response to my comment:
it's impossible to be inclusive with everyone. The reach is not for the joy in sharing common interests with all type of people. The reach is for some of those people to be gone.

I can only quote what Eyebrows McGee said better than I ever could:
Tolerant people are not required to tolerate the intolerant, and it's the worst kind of sophistry to claim that if they don't allow intolerance, they are themselves intolerant.

I am basically Queen of the Lurkers, so I'm outta here, but this is an amazing discussion.
posted by emilypdx at 7:28 PM on April 17, 2015 [7 favorites]

has he actually written anything of interest

That's an arguable point.
posted by asperity at 7:30 PM on April 17, 2015 [3 favorites]

OSC seems to have that problem so many authors have when they get big where their editors stop, you know, editing. And then go completely off the rails, self-insertion-wise, and then I think he wrote a book where Ender saves Christmas. He seems to have done so about 4-5 times as bad as Anne Rice did.
posted by NoraReed at 7:34 PM on April 17, 2015 [5 favorites]

because the perception is that it's impossible to be inclusive with everyone

It's not a perception, it is an actual fact. You cannot make a place inclusive to group X and also the group of people who talk about how group X is evil.
posted by jeather at 7:51 PM on April 17, 2015 [13 favorites]

GRRM: Back Into the Kennels

Number one, you wanted to use the democratic selection method of the Hugo Awards. And we're all in favor of democracy, of course. Except... was your own selection procedure democractic? The stories and novels on your slate, were those the ones that were selected most often, the ones that got the most nominations? If you tell me they were, fine... then you had a primary. But if you tell me that you (or you and Mr. Correia, or you and he and some other Sad Puppies) made judgment calls of your own from amongst the books and stories put forward by your readers... why, that would not be democratic at all. That would be, well, a clique operating behind closed doors. Maybe even a one-man clique, if it was just you.
posted by nubs at 8:40 PM on April 17, 2015 [6 favorites]

Well, guys, the heavy overlap between the two slates (and the fact that ALL of the nominees on the Sad Puppies slate were also on the Rabid Puppies slate, while a few Rabid Pups got nominated without Sad Pup support) shows fairly clearly that you may not be Vox Day, but you are thinking a LOT like him.
posted by oneswellfoop at 9:47 PM on April 17, 2015 [4 favorites]

The whole SP/RP "waaaah you are not inclusive of me" spiel seems to me, in its essence, to be saying "I have the right to scream my opinions from the mountaintop, but people are only allowed to respond to or act on them if they agree with me!" Like, YES, John C. Wright, you have the absolute right to believe that homosexuals are vile perverted filth. You do! Nobody can take that away from you, and nobody is trying to! But I also have the right to believe that this makes you an asshole, and furthermore to decide that I don't like to nominate assholes for awards. If you exhort opinions that are not welcome in general society, well, guess what, general society may decide that it doesn't much care for you. That's the way free association works.

Too many people don't seem to realize that the "freedom" in "freedom of speech" is freedom from prosecution, not freedom from consequences.
posted by KathrynT at 10:56 PM on April 17, 2015 [26 favorites]

Yeah, you can call a group of people subhuman or perverted filth, or donate money to politicians who want that group in jail or denied human rights. You can even incite violence by calling for that group to be doused in acid, or bashed.

But if you do, you can't get upset that the group (and their friends, and random bystanders) don't want to give you awards or even be in the same room as you.

You can say that decision to exclude you is about politics, but everyone else will call it self-preservation.
posted by harriet vane at 1:34 AM on April 18, 2015 [20 favorites]

The article linked earlier, The Psychology of Hugo Sad/Rabid Puppies is quite good. Relevant quote:

"...one of the first rules of psychology is that when there is a conflict between words and actions, believe the actions."

And then let's look at GRRM's latest, about what the Sad Puppies say their aims were. Democratic? We don't know. Transparent? Not yet. Having fun? Fuck no, they've ruined a fun event for thousands of people, simply because their feelings were hurt.

Entitled, spoilt brats.
posted by harriet vane at 1:57 AM on April 18, 2015 [8 favorites]

Sasquan's registration page is now completely blank (as in, if you view the HTML there's nothing there). Kind of weird, not sure what it means (if anything).

I've notified them, in case they didn't already know.
posted by johnofjack at 5:19 AM on April 18, 2015

The Sasquan registration page is working now, at least for me.
posted by Kattullus at 5:47 AM on April 18, 2015

Yeah, it's working again now.

I'm toying with the idea of making this my first con, but not really sure I can afford both it and other trips I had planned.
posted by johnofjack at 7:28 AM on April 18, 2015

Speaking of not being able to afford cons, Con or Bust is an awesome organisation aimed at getting more people of colour going to cons. I believe that the best way to fight the Puppies is to broaden the audience for science fiction and especially active fandom out from its old, white, male core; Con or Bust is one of the ways to help do that.
posted by MartinWisse at 8:23 AM on April 18, 2015 [10 favorites]

On The Media has a segment with Arthur Chu on the puppies.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 10:23 AM on April 18, 2015 [2 favorites]

I made the mistake of reading the comments on that psychology piece, and just lol:

So you did not mention me allegedly out of the pity and compassion you feel toward the Sad Puppies, whom you here hold up to public derision, by pretending to know the discreditable secret motives in our hearts, which, oddly enough, was somehow revealed to you but to no one else?

Uh, no John C Wright, she didn't mention you because you weren't an organizer of the slate.
posted by kagredon at 10:47 AM on April 18, 2015 [4 favorites]

That On the Media segment is absolutely brutal towards the Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies, simply by presenting the facts.
posted by Kattullus at 12:57 PM on April 18, 2015

Mark Waid has been on a Twitter tear about Calgary/GG.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 1:33 PM on April 18, 2015 [6 favorites]

asperity made a comment earlier that linked to a discussion of some interesting writings about Ender's Game and possible issues with it. Specifically:

John Kessel's "Creating the Innocent Killer: Ender's Game, Intention, and Morality"
Elaine Radford's "Ender and Hitler: Sympathy for the Superman"
localroger's "Orson Scott Card Has Always Been an Asshat", on both Card & some of SF's response to Radford.

posted by Going To Maine at 1:45 PM on April 18, 2015 [13 favorites]

It's clear that, yes, OSC has always been an asshat and that even the stuff in Ender's Game might be pretty problematic in a Iron Dream kinda way. But I don't think that makes the first two Ender novels any lesser. You don't win back-to-back Hugo&Nebula awards for garbage. He's the only person in history to do it after all.
posted by Justinian at 2:11 PM on April 18, 2015 [2 favorites]

While Radford thinks that Ender's Game is pretty junky, Kessel actually thinks that it's well-written, and that's the issue. In sad puppy terms, it's very much about the politics rather than about the quality of the writing.
posted by Going To Maine at 2:31 PM on April 18, 2015

Radford is entitled to her opinion but I think the weight of history is against her on that score.
posted by Justinian at 2:42 PM on April 18, 2015

You don't win back-to-back Hugo&Nebula awards for garbage. He's the only person in history to do it after all.
And it's the Puppies' sworn goal to ensure that Ann Leckie doesn't match that this year. "Speaker for the Dead" beat "The Handmaid's Tale" for the Nebula, while Atwood's masterpiece didn't even get nominated for a Hugo but L. Ron Hubbard did. Please remember that the Sad Puppies have Doggie Daddies who had much of the responsibility for the Hugos' reputation as the "political SF award". (The SonsOfBitches are only reclaiming what used to be theirs)
the weight of history
...is written by the winners.

"pretending to know the discreditable secret motives in our hearts, which, oddly enough, was somehow revealed to you but to no one else?"
Geez, Wright, it's not like anybody with a brain who isn't deeply in denial doesn't see that you are all Addicted to Privilege, the Opiate of the White Male Bourgeoisie...

And while I generally avoid Military SciFi like moldy meat*, I reluctantly picked up Scalzi's "Old Man's War" partly because its title and premise (recruiting retirees as humanity's soldiers) sounded exactly like "the Anti-Ender's Game"*, which it mostly was, and which I assume put him immediately on the True Believers' Enemies List even if he'd never written anything (gasp)Liberal(gasp) on his blog.

*because it is, and my experience TRYING to read Ender's Game was partly responsible for that assessment.
**also partly because I'd read his hilarious self-published "Agent to the Stars" and hoped for more such frivolity, which it had a little of - which is why I never touched the sequels and the only other book of his I've enjoyed since was "Redshirts".
posted by oneswellfoop at 2:54 PM on April 18, 2015 [2 favorites]

Wasn't Agent to the Stars published by Subterranean Press? My copy is, anyway?
posted by Justinian at 3:00 PM on April 18, 2015

Radford is entitled to her opinion but I think the weight of history is against her on that score.

Kessel's essay (which I've read more than once before) makes a strong point about the ways in which Ender's Game pushes a lot of male SF nerd buttons, especially teen & adolescent buttons (like the entire concept of the bullied Victim Hero). Which certainly raises the question of whether the awards and reputation are because it's a 'genuinely good' work or because it's sort of the Ultimate SF Gary Stu Novel.

Personally, while I thought the occasional Card stories I read in Asimov's back in the 80's were fine (but not groundbreaking or anything), I didn't get around to taking a whack at Ender's until I was well past 35, and I just couldn't get more than about halfway through. It didn't resonate with me at all, and I thought the structure was entirely too repetitive.
posted by soundguy99 at 3:16 PM on April 18, 2015 [2 favorites]

Wasn't Agent to the Stars published by Subterranean Press? My copy is, anyway?
Yes, later, but I got it before it was cool. (It was a 'fellow blogger' thing circa 2000)
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:21 PM on April 18, 2015

With all this emphasis on slates and voting and committees, the worst thing the Puppies have done is prove George Lucas right - SciFi fans DO want stories about embargoes and parliaments and voting blocs! The prequels were just ahead of their time!
posted by robocop is bleeding at 3:22 PM on April 18, 2015 [12 favorites]

omg it would be so great if this actually inspired some interesting sci-fi with good worldbuilding (so NOT STAR WARS)
posted by NoraReed at 3:28 PM on April 18, 2015

Already did: the Protomolecule in the Expanse stories is just ground-up Sad Puppies.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 4:10 PM on April 18, 2015

Oneswellfoop, if you like frivolous Scalzi, check out The Android's Dream. It starts with a chapter-long fart joke and only gets funnier from there.
posted by infinitewindow at 4:16 PM on April 18, 2015

I listened to The Android's Dream (the ebook was inexpensive and adding the audio was equally so) and I laughed out loud a lot on my after-work walks. Quite ridiculous and enjoyable.
posted by rtha at 4:33 PM on April 18, 2015

Yes, I read "Android's Dream", liked the fart joke (but knowing in advance it was a fart joke... sigh, SPOILERS) as well as the obvious title reference, and much of the wackiness but actually expected MORE wacky. And I didn't know whether the female protagonist having sheep DNA was metacomment or just cringeworthy, until her nothing-about-her-character-prepared-me-for-this dynamic actions at the end. Still, it speaks of Hugo politics that it didn't get nominated but two of the 37 sequels to OMD were. (But then, The Scalz has never been nominated for a Nebula, which means he needs to step up his game)
posted by oneswellfoop at 4:51 PM on April 18, 2015

I don't want to spoil anything about The Expanse, but the protomolecule can do some... stuff... that I don't think Sad Puppies are capable of.
posted by NoraReed at 5:30 PM on April 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

Write award quality SF?
posted by Artw at 5:38 PM on April 18, 2015 [10 favorites]

Behave in a civilized manner?
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 5:39 PM on April 18, 2015 [8 favorites]

Bathe regularly?
posted by Justinian at 5:56 PM on April 18, 2015 [7 favorites]

Ignore inertia?
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 6:07 PM on April 18, 2015 [7 favorites]

Accept differences?
posted by johnofjack at 8:38 PM on April 18, 2015 [4 favorites]

I just think the idea that OSC didn't even write those books is thoroughly hilarious. I want to believe!
posted by asperity at 8:53 PM on April 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

The more I think about it, the more absurd Correia's "I'm not Vox Day, I'm just on the same side as Vox Day and working with Vox Day and coordinating with Vox Day" defense gets. Come on, really? That's the best you can do?
posted by Justinian at 9:06 PM on April 18, 2015 [7 favorites]

And it's the Puppies' sworn goal to ensure that Ann Leckie doesn't match that this year. "Speaker for the Dead" beat "The Handmaid's Tale" for the Nebula, while Atwood's masterpiece didn't even get nominated for a Hugo but L. Ron Hubbard did.

thanks for posting this, i just went out with feminist nerd-friends and spent a significant period of time drunkely yelling about this, and it's all your fault
posted by NoraReed at 11:59 PM on April 18, 2015 [8 favorites]

Thank you, it's been too long since I've ruined a lady's evening. Good to know I've still got it.
posted by oneswellfoop at 12:02 AM on April 19, 2015 [6 favorites]

LRH was nominated because the Scientologists pulled a Puppies and bought him on to the ballot not because actual fans liked his stuff. He was roundly defeated on the final ballot. And the Scientologists had the decency to only buy up one spot on the ballot.

Correia and Torgerson: Worse than Scientology.

Maybe they should put that on their website mastheads.
posted by Justinian at 12:03 AM on April 19, 2015 [13 favorites]

Thank you, it's been too long since I've ruined a lady's evening. Good to know I've still got it.

it was great actually

A+ would yell again
posted by NoraReed at 12:04 AM on April 19, 2015 [9 favorites]

Has the Nebula ever gone to a novel by someone not in SFWA? Chabon in 2008 maybe?
posted by Justinian at 12:09 AM on April 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

The more I think about it, the more absurd Correia's "I'm not Vox Day, I'm just on the same side as Vox Day and working with Vox Day and coordinating with Vox Day" defense gets.

Reminds me of this GamerGate cartoon. (Note: not by an actual Gamergater.)
posted by MartinWisse at 1:02 AM on April 19, 2015 [7 favorites]

(Note: not by an actual Gamergater.)
No, Chainsawsuit's Kris Straub may occasionally go for shock value, but he is one of the good guys. (And even though he prefers his Starslip and Broodhollow comics to this 'quick and dirty gag strip', he often hits the nail right on the head)
posted by oneswellfoop at 2:25 AM on April 19, 2015 [2 favorites]

Part of John C. Wright's latest piece on the issue made me laugh out loud, albeit unintentionally:

"I concur with the peacemakers, and urge my fellow fans to whom science fiction is beloved and for whom the Hugos still recall an echo of dignity to adopt a less belligerent posture. Remove or silence those among you who see science fiction as a tool of social engineering and to whom entertainment is subordinate to political correctness, and I will break my saber over my knee and throw the shards in the sea."

OK, first, dude, I don't think that "if everyone who disagrees with me would simply shut up forever then I would be happy to stop being so belligerent" is quite the mutual olive branch you believe it to be.

Second, have you, um, read your recent work?

Because when the writers of wham-bang action fiction complain about science fiction being used as a "tool of social engineering", at least it's coming from people who probably have no conscious intention of embedding political messages into their works. When YOU complain about science fiction being used as a "tool of social engineering", it sounds like you are pointing your finger at yourself and saying, "STOP IT! BAD ME! BAD, BAD JOHN C. WRIGHT! I WILL NEVER MAKE PEACE UNTIL I STOP!"
posted by kyrademon at 9:26 AM on April 19, 2015 [17 favorites]

Apparently now we are the Morlocks to JCW. I wonder if he has read the book, because the metaphor, it doesn't do what you think it does unless you think liberal fen are ready to eat Puppies alive.
posted by sukeban at 10:30 AM on April 19, 2015

Although I should expect a full-blown class warfare allegory to sail over his head because there were no politics in SF until 1994, so yeah.
posted by sukeban at 10:35 AM on April 19, 2015 [7 favorites]

Morlocks get shit done. Up the Morlocks!
posted by Artw at 11:02 AM on April 19, 2015 [2 favorites]

Speaker for the Dead" beat "The Handmaid's Tale" for the Nebula, while Atwood's masterpiece didn't even get nominated for a Hugo but L. Ron Hubbard did.

Okay, some history here. In the late 1980s Margaret Atwood quite legendarily did not write "children's stuff" like Science Fiction, so, despite the fact that she wrote one of the great works of the genre, fandom pretty much wrote her off. Since then, she's mellowed about that and we've mellowed about her and everyone acknowledges The Handmaid's Tail as one of the great work of SF, including Ms. Atwood.

Also, in that time, Scott Card was nice guy famous for the "Secular Humanist Revival", which was an incredibly funny thing.

If you're looking at what happened then by looking at those two authors now, it's hard to understand, but both of them had very different attitudes towards fandom in the 1980s/1990s than they do now, and the Hugos, being a fan based award, do have a "how much does this pro respect us?" factor in them. And, in 1987, Atwood didn't respect fandom at all, and Scott Card loved fandom.

LHR's getting on the ballot has been mentioned before, it was a very classic stuff. He tried in 1986, but it was so obvious then that they rejected those ballots. They did a better job in 1987 and he made the ballot, came in last.
posted by eriko at 11:19 AM on April 19, 2015 [2 favorites]

(But then, The Scalz has never been nominated for a Nebula, which means he needs to step up his game)

I recall that when he became president of SFWA, one of the first things he did was announce that he was declining all nominations for the Nebulas while he was in office. So, that might be a factor as well.

But the idea of His Scalziness^* being an award monster simply isn't true. He's gotten the Campbell, Best Novel for Redshirts, BRW for "Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded" and Fan Writer. That's it for the Hugos. No Nebulas, a minor award, and that's it.

That's not an award machine. I don't get the idea that he owns the Hugos, because he doesn't even come close to doing so.

* I love this idea of "Each time The Scalzster is referred to, it must be by a new title", and decree it so.
posted by eriko at 11:29 AM on April 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

Black Gate has withdrawn from consideration as well - they were nominated for Best Fanzine. Given the last press release from Sasquan said the ballots were now being printed, I'm guessing it won't be replaced, and may have to stay on the ballot in order that the paper and electronic versions are the same.
posted by penguinliz at 11:38 AM on April 19, 2015 [2 favorites]

On the subject of Orson Scott Card and Margaret Atwood, I found it interesting that he gave The Handmaid's Tale an honorable mention as one of the best SF/F books of 1986. At the same time, he put The Shore of Women on his "best" list, above the honorable mentions, selected Wizard of the Pigeons for an honorable mention, and gave Sheri Tepper's True Game series what I thought was a reasonably accurate and positive review. His later praise for Octavia Butler is also interesting to read in retrospect. I don't really know what to say about it all, besides maybe people are complicated and OSC apparently couldn't help noticing a few good books when he read them, but the puppy folks should really include this in their histories of how diverse and/or progressive works of SF/F gained partial, incomplete, and occasional prominence in the field: they had to be so good that reviewers looked bad for ignoring them, as you can see OSC mention in his Octavia Butler review.
posted by Monsieur Caution at 11:50 AM on April 19, 2015 [2 favorites]

Oh, I guess The Shore of Women may make some sense as an OSC fave--naturally, the one I hadn't read turns out to be extra superduper heteronormative. The others remain puzzling.
posted by Monsieur Caution at 12:11 PM on April 19, 2015

So, to satisfy my own curiosity, I poked around (mostly on my own bookshelf but also a little online) to see if a "best series" Hugo would fit eriko's general requirement for a new Hugo category, which I interpret as, "Show me the five that have a chance of winning this year and then 6-10 MORE that are also Hugo-worthy."

If we make a category which is "best series that FINISHED in 2014", after a little poking I found 6 that might make a ballot, although frankly a couple of those are iffy ...

Grisha Trilogy, Leigh Bardugo
Eternal Sky Trilogy, Elizabeth Bear
Lynburn Legacy Trilogy, Sarah Rees Brennan
A Land Fit for Heroes Trilogy, Richard Morgan
Daughter of Smoke and Bone Trilogy, Laini Taylor
The Southern Reach Trilogy, Jeff Vandermeer

Finding more was hard, even looking around online. But it's pretty obvious at a glance why - every last one a trilogy. Longer series only finish once every blue moon, and ongoing series don't finish at all.

If it's opened up, though, suddenly you can add a flood of options. If it's "any ongoing series at least two books in length, never before nominated, with at least one book published in 2014" you can immediately add:

The Dagger and the Coin Series, Daniel Abraham
Mercy Thompson Series, Patricia Briggs
The Golden City Series, J. Kathleen Cheney
Craft Sequence, Max Gladstone
Kencyrath Novels, P. C. Hodgell
Imperial Radch, Ann Leckie (not eligible due to previous nomination for individual book)
Starglass Sequence, Phoebe North
Stormlight Archives, Brandon Sanderson
Archived Series, Victoria Schwab
Cassandra Kresnov Series, Joel Shepherd

And that's WITHOUT really looking around online, and I'm not listing another five or six I didn't think could be considered Hugo quality. I'm pretty sure I could easily double the length of that list with a half-hour search.

Frankly, though ... I don't see that ever happening. The concept of voting for an uncompleted series would sound weird to most people -- honestly, it sounds kind of weird to me. Even with a market that is now seriously series-oriented, coming up with a way to have an award for series is tricky.
posted by kyrademon at 12:30 PM on April 19, 2015 [4 favorites]

This earlier post on Black Gate is interesting: Fantasy Literature: Murder Hobos, Sad Puppies, and Change

To radically foreshorten the SPs argument, they want the River to not move — more to the point, to have stopped moving some decades ago. But without going into great detail on another topic, let me amend that to say instead “to have stopped moving some imaginary decades ago.” For not only has the River moved all this time, but the River always contained references to colonialism and gender issues. The SPs lamentation for a lost yesterday of SF & F rings as hollow as those who wail for a cultural return to Leave it to Beaver; neither ever existed.

posted by Lexica at 12:35 PM on April 19, 2015 [5 favorites]

Frankly, though ... I don't see that ever happening. The concept of voting for an uncompleted series would sound weird to most people -- honestly, it sounds kind of weird to me.

Likewise. Plus it doesn't seem right to have a series be permanently ineligible for the award after a single nomination, because it assumes that a series will never get better than the first installment fans think is really good. The only way I can see an award for Best Series working is if it only applied to completed series, and the only way I can see that working is if it's not awarded every year. So maybe if there was an annual award for Best Installment In A Serialized Work and a triennial (or thereabouts) Best [Completed] Novel Series?
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 12:56 PM on April 19, 2015

Would a series award make more sense on a more series type time scale? Like award it once or twice a decade instead of every year?
posted by Drinky Die at 1:03 PM on April 19, 2015

kyrademon: "So, to satisfy my own curiosity, I poked around (mostly on my own bookshelf but also a little online) to see if a "best series" Hugo would fit eriko's general requirement for a new Hugo category"

The other natural way to do "best series" would be to make it an every-other-year award, or to award it in years that also have Summer Olympics (i.e., every four), so that this year, all series finished in 2013-2014 would qualify, or that in 2016, everything from 2012-2015 would qualify (2012 having awarded 2008-2011). Would two years expand it enough, or four make it too unwieldy?

The other thing I'd like (and maybe this has already been considered) is turning Dramatic Presentation into "Dramatic Presentation -- EGOT-eligible" and "Dramatic Presentation -- Non-EGOT-eligible." That would sequester big-budget movies and television and so on off in their own category and allow weird YouTube series and podcasts and so on to get recognition. (Although I don't actually know what's EGOT-eligible and maybe it's not quite as elegant a delineator as I think, but you get what I mean!).
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 1:04 PM on April 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

Or, what HZSF said.
posted by Drinky Die at 1:04 PM on April 19, 2015

Okay, that's it. We'll have to form the Quadrennial Holy Drinky Demon McGee SciFi or Fantasy Series Award.
posted by Drinky Die at 1:06 PM on April 19, 2015 [2 favorites]

Hmm, well if we add in just 2013, light poking on bookshelf and internet shows me as finished series ...

Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, Stephen R. Donaldson (I know, I know, but, it was apparently a Thing That Happened in 2013.)
Spiritwalker Trilogy, Kate Elliott
Adaptation/Inheritance, Malinda Lo
Divergent Series, Veronica Roth
Faerie Trilogy, Jamie Lee Simner
Tower and Knife Trilogy, Mazarkis Williams

So a triennial or quadrennial award would definitely have the numbers.

It still would leave out ongoing series with no fixed endpoint, but that may simply be a lost cause.

The shorter the time between awards, the less the "recently completed series have an advantage because people have just read the last book" problem, so the shortest possible time that works would probably be best for such a thing ...
posted by kyrademon at 1:31 PM on April 19, 2015

Need a separate award for unfinished series, named after GRRM of course.
posted by Drinky Die at 1:39 PM on April 19, 2015 [2 favorites]

I'm hesitant to endorse a Best Series award just because of the many, many, fucking many series I've read that the author took up again later on. Do we take back the Hugo if an author starts another "trilogy" in the same world with many of the same characters (e.g., Donaldson, Eddings, Saberhagen)? Does that second "trilogy" count as a new series for another Hugo? What if a new author does something with the property?

The novel/novella/novelette/story breakdowns are based on word count, and they have to be like that because Oh my dear gods will nerds (myself included) parse the shit out of a thing if they get the chance. I feel like there would be some kind of uproar over "This isn't a finished series! See!" over and over again.

Plus I feel that there would be a chilling effect on unfinished series in the big-time awards. Remember how The Return of the King was the only LOTR movie to win Best Picture, and A Beautiful Mind and Chicago were judged to be better that Fellowship and Two Towers, even though come on, Academy? I think the voters were clearly holding their breath to make sure that Jackson didn't fuck up the whole trilogy before they gave any of them any awards, and I worry that the same thing would happen to the Hugos.
posted by Etrigan at 1:50 PM on April 19, 2015 [2 favorites]

> "Need a separate award for unfinished series, named after GRRM of course."

The Alexei Panshin Award for series that is never going to finish.

The David Gerrold Award for series that is theoretically supposed to get finished, but seriously, we don't think it's going to finish.

The George R. R. Martin Award for series we're starting to have our doubts about, and - hey, are you BLOGGING?

The Stephen King Award for oh, wait, you actually finished that thing? Well, good for you!
posted by kyrademon at 2:02 PM on April 19, 2015 [8 favorites]

Wright makes it unambiguous clear what this is really about. We want to be published, he wants us silenced.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 2:03 PM on April 19, 2015 [5 favorites]

But the idea of His Scalziness* being an award monster simply isn't true. He's gotten the Campbell, Best Novel for Redshirts, BRW for "Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded" and Fan Writer. That's it for the Hugos. No Nebulas, a minor award, and that's it.

That's not an award machine. I don't get the idea that he owns the Hugos, because he doesn't even come close to doing so.

Well, considering there are writers who never ever get a lousy Hugo nomination (and big kudos to Marko Kloos and Annie Bellel for rejecting an unfair nomination though it may be the only one they ever get), Ill Scalzerino isn't doing too badly.

Need a separate award for unfinished series, named after GRRM of course.

Piker.

It should be the Gerrold: how people can fret about Martin wasting time on the Puppies and not finishing his next novel when Gerrold still has three Chtorr novels to write, with the last novel having come out in 1992, I don't know.

Though of course that's nothing as compared to those still waiting for The Universal Pantograph, which has literally been delayed longer than I've been alive, the previous novel in Panshin's Villiers series having been published in 1969...
posted by MartinWisse at 2:08 PM on April 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

I thought the holdup with the Chtorr novels was to do with his publisher, not him. No?
posted by Lexica at 2:28 PM on April 19, 2015

The Jordan/Sanderson Award for series that outlives the author.

The Harper Lee Award for series that outlives the author's intentions.

The Douglas Adams Award for series that outlives the series.

The V. C. Andrews (TM) Award for author that outlives the author.
posted by kyrademon at 2:49 PM on April 19, 2015 [8 favorites]

At this point I'm beginning to think that this comment thread---what with the new award suggestions and the earlier discussion about the relative capabilities of the Expanse protomolecule vs. puppies---is quite possibly the best thing to come out of this whole mess.

(So far. I'm still sanguine for an awards ceremony that is essentially an interpretative dance of fandom using a flyswatter on puppies, as well.)
posted by seyirci at 3:03 PM on April 19, 2015 [3 favorites]

The George RR Martin award for series that everybody's pretty sure will outlive the author so why wait for it to actually happen, yanno?
posted by Pope Guilty at 3:05 PM on April 19, 2015

So if you give a series an award upon its Official Conclusion, then the author must not be allowed to come back years later and decide "I can think of another story in the same Universe" or else they'll forfeit the award?

But if you're going to give an award for a series ending when they author does, the first one MUST be awarded to Sir Terry Pratchett, and be henceforth named for him. In fact, can we just designate all postmortem awards "The Terry Pratchett Honors". Hell, the Pratchett Awards is a great name for a new award to replace the chewed-up-swallowed-and-pooped-out-by-puppies Hugos.
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:15 PM on April 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

4/16/15 CalgaryExpo "Women in Comics" Panel Rough Transcript
posted by Artw at 3:49 PM on April 19, 2015 [6 favorites]

So if you give a series an award upon its Official Conclusion, then the author must not be allowed to come back years later and decide "I can think of another story in the same Universe" or else they'll forfeit the award?

You say that like it's a bad thing. :)

In the afterword for Existence David Brin said he was planning on returning to the uplift universe soon. Can't wait!
posted by zarq at 4:21 PM on April 19, 2015

But if you're going to give an award for a series ending when they author does, the first one MUST be awarded to Sir Terry Pratchett, and be henceforth named for him.

Love this idea, but name it after Pratchett, and award the first one posthumously to Iain Banks.
posted by zarq at 4:24 PM on April 19, 2015 [4 favorites]

I would not bet money on there being no more Pratchett books.
posted by Artw at 4:34 PM on April 19, 2015 [2 favorites]

The Gamergate comic strip referenced here is one of those things that any political movement benefits from, whether right or left wing. It's hardly unique to GamerGate.

By having a "radical" wing that does scary things (insurgent activity, terrorism, etc) and a "political" wing that does nice, safe, moderate things (wear suits, interact with the government or King, dispense charity to the people), a movement can be more effective.

Often the political wing disavows any connection to the radicals, while the radical wing denounces the political wing as quisling sellouts. (Sometimes those claims are even true - i.e. there may be no formal connection between the radicals and the moderates).

In the GamerGate case, using a hashtag is all you need to "be a member", so the barrier to entry is nonexistent. Serious professionals can coexist with the most angry of crazy trolls.
posted by theorique at 5:48 PM on April 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

The Piers Anthony Award for series that outlives all human reason and good taste.
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:49 PM on April 19, 2015 [10 favorites]

The Gamergate comic strip referenced here is one of those things that any political movement benefits from, whether right or left wing. It's hardly unique to GamerGate.

#notallmovements
posted by Etrigan at 6:08 PM on April 19, 2015 [5 favorites]

Social Justice Warrior Radical Wing.
posted by Artw at 6:10 PM on April 19, 2015

FWIW it sounds like there's at least one terrible non-puppy story, for balance.
posted by Artw at 6:13 PM on April 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

I became the sworn enemy of Piers Anthony when he published a book in THAT series titled "Swell Foop" a year after I had begun my OneSwellFoop blog.

Social Justice Warrior Radical Wing.
If you can give me some contact info, I've been looking for a way to join up. If not, I guess I'm it.
posted by oneswellfoop at 6:14 PM on April 19, 2015 [5 favorites]

And the "one terrible non-puppy story", is the ONLY non-puppy nominee for Best Novelette. Providing that the Hugos are even closer to Social Injustice Warrior domination than you may have thought.
posted by oneswellfoop at 6:20 PM on April 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

It's a little sad that was apparently the top non-puppy pick. BUT, if it weren't for the Puppies there'd be four other stories to choose from.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 6:43 PM on April 19, 2015 [2 favorites]

Literary awards are never just about the author's technical proficiency with language; they are always, and always, also about what the art is ABOUT.

So this is the first of your really interesting points - that the award must be, itself, inherently political, because art is political, and that the judgement of the viewers is explicitly supposed to select for politics. And that's an argument I'm inherently sympathetic to. When I myself make art, it is often political in some ways. As you say, who you are and how you express yourself is always affected by how you see the world. And I do definitely agree that in our own reading preferences, the politics do affect what we want to read. Sometimes I have that reaction myself. For example - for personal reasons, I'm a pretty staunch anti-communist. As such, I find it really, really difficult to read and enjoy pro-communist or class-warfare literature - even when I recognize that it's literature that other people enjoy very much.

But the questions we then need to ask are: is it possible to separate the assessment of a work's quality from the work's political climate? And is it desirable to do so?

I don't think it's as impossible to separate the assessment of a work's quality with an assessment of the work's politics. Tolkien is generally regarded as a great fantasy writer - even though his work had some strong politics of anti-industrialization, rural fetishization, with some weird shit about class and war. Even people who hate those themes tend to acknowledge him as a great writer, and it's not merely for technical competency. He told a great and attractive story, even if people looked at it with sober eyes and saw problems. So I would say yes to the first.

The question of whether or not it's desirable to separate a works' political context from its quality, particularly in the context of awards, is another thorny one. I think there's absolutely a time and a place for the recognition of works for political contexts. And we have those awards - we have the Tiptree, we have the Prometheus. We have ways to recognize works explicitly for the political context in which they are created in addition to their quality - and so I don't think we're starved for that. I think there's room for recognition of art purely for art's sake, because if not, what are we really awarding?
posted by corb at 9:01 PM on April 19, 2015

And we have those awards - we have the Tiptree, we have the Prometheus. We have ways to recognize works explicitly for the political context in which they are created in addition to their quality - and so I don't think we're starved for that.

And that is the goal of Vox Day and the Rabid Puppies. To save themselves the trouble of creating their own awards, instead to hijack a 60-year-old institution in order to recognize works explicitly for political context that THEY endorse.

And what does Mr. Beale/Day endorse?

"[I]n light of the strong correlation between female education and demographic decline, a purely empirical perspective on Malala Yousafzai, the poster girl for global female education, may indicate that the Taliban’s attempt to silence her was perfectly rational and scientifically justifiable."

If there is any political opinion that should make one ineligible for any respectable award, that is it, and his expulsion from the SFWA should earn applause from anyone who treasures freedom, education AND human life. But his manipulations have now earned him two nominations personally and eight more for content from his brand new publishing house (the most of any publisher this year and a feat rarely equaled). Any discussion of the relative politics of past awards is muted by the sound of jackboots led by a self-defined evangelical Christian who agrees with the Taliban on the issue of education for women.

I want to be proven wrong, but I remain pessimistic that when a "fan driven" award attracts the attention of the truly fanatical extremists, that they will shout down and vote down anything not to their liking.
posted by oneswellfoop at 10:27 PM on April 19, 2015 [11 favorites]

But the questions we then need to ask are: is it possible to separate the assessment of a work's quality from the work's political climate? And is it desirable to do so?

It depends how badly the writer has shat the bed. We're only human beings. If someone's going on about how it's natural to attack gay people with ax handles and tire irons when he's not calling a black woman an ignorant half-savage, and then reaches out to anti-woman hate group to stuff ballot boxes in a way that violates the spirit of a decades old popularity/merit award, then we're going to fold that into our judgement of their art.

Like Hitler's watercolors, basically.

If some social conservative is writing a kick-ass yarn but not actively vilifying or harassing people, the community doesn't seem to care about their politics.

I think there's room for recognition of art purely for art's sake, because if not, what are we really awarding?

The feminist-flavored and post-colonial flavored stories that are getting hugo noms are getting attention because they're also good storytelling, on top of pushing the form by bringing in other ways of seeing the world. e.g. Ancillary Justice.

When you suggest that we need to work harder to overlook political climate and recognize art for art's sake, I'd really like to know if you're talking about a generic social conservative or someone who has behaved like Vox Day or Orson Scott Card. Because you're strongly hinting that we're treating unfairly and unkindly writers who are generic socal conservatives.
posted by sebastienbailard at 1:48 AM on April 20, 2015 [9 favorites]

I think there's room for recognition of art purely for art's sake, because if not, what are we really awarding?

C'mon, are you still beating that drum?

Hugos are voted on by members of the WSFS. All you're getting is a poll of what this year's members enjoyed this year (with a side-order of who does the best fan-pandering). Nobody, on any side, should be pretending it's anything more than that.

(The fact that Iain M Banks never won a Hugo, I think, proves that it takes more than pure art, (I'm thinking of Feersum Endjinn and Excession particularly)).

Even people who hate those themes tend to acknowledge [Tolkien] as a great writer, and it's not merely for technical competency.

*raises hand*. Can't stand Tolkien's mechanics and writing. No problem with the politics and love how his world's been built on and remixed (eg Stan Nicholls' Orcs books).
posted by Leon at 2:50 AM on April 20, 2015 [1 favorite]

> "FWIW it sounds like there's at least one terrible non-puppy story, for balance."

That review pretty much sums up the first impression I had when I started reading that story, but I think it ignores what I think is a lot of eventual internal evidence that the story is taking place entirely in the narrator's head and none of the "events" are actually happening. That considerably changed how I viewed it, for the better.

Because of that, I will probably vote for above No Award. However, I will admit it still didn't blow me away.

Though so far, of the (admittedly few) things on the ballot I've read, not much other than Ms. Marvel: No Normal has truly done so. I'm holding out hope for a number of the ones I haven't gotten to yet (Goblin Emperor, Three Body Problem, Sex Criminals 1, Saga 3, and The Lives of Tao, for example.) And I'm looking forward to checking out the Semiprozines and the Fan Artists, some of the others. It'd be really nice to have a few more categories where I could cast ENTHUSIASTIC votes ...
posted by kyrademon at 4:42 AM on April 20, 2015 [1 favorite]

The feminist-flavored and post-colonial flavored stories that are getting hugo noms are getting attention because they're also good storytelling, on top of pushing the form by bringing in other ways of seeing the world. e.g. Ancillary Justice.

And because everyone in SF&F loves to bitch about seeing the same old characters, settings, and plots over and over again.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 4:49 AM on April 20, 2015 [2 favorites]

"Nutty Nuggets again? Mooooom!"
posted by sukeban at 4:55 AM on April 20, 2015 [1 favorite]

Yeah, I'm searching out diversity in the fantasy I read right now. Not for political or social justice reasons or representation reasons...I just got bored with the same old. So if you throw me a plausible matriarchal society that isn't just gender role reversal or an Amazon trope that simply reimagines the role of male strength I'm like, "Now I'm not bored!" (Still can't believe you don't like Jemisin, corb. :P )
posted by Drinky Die at 4:55 AM on April 20, 2015 [2 favorites]

sukeban: "Nutty Nuggets again? Mooooom!"

I still have a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that "Nutty Nuggets" is the real name of a real cereal and not made up to signify: "I want chunky testes in my sci-fi".
posted by Kattullus at 5:22 AM on April 20, 2015 [1 favorite]

sebastienbailard: "Like Hitler's watercolors, basically."

Which, all else aside, are pretty mediocre.
posted by Chrysostom at 6:27 AM on April 20, 2015

I think there's room for recognition of art purely for art's sake, because if not, what are we really awarding?

According to the puppies, hopefully NOT art for art's sake. Torgerson's complaint about literary scifi winning Hugos has been quoted several times already in this thread.
posted by tofu_crouton at 6:30 AM on April 20, 2015 [3 favorites]

Which, all else aside, are pretty mediocre.

Well, it's not how well the bear waltzes, it's that he doesn't commit genocide while waltzing at all.
posted by eriko at 7:09 AM on April 20, 2015 [5 favorites]

Hugos are voted on by members of the WSFS. All you're getting is a poll of what this year's members enjoyed this year (with a side-order of who does the best fan-pandering).

The problem with the Hugo award for Best Artist is that they usually have no idea who created what art in a given year, so they're nominating names of artists they've seen before they liked. It's a body-of-work award, which the award was specifically *not* supposed to be. Even the ones that seem to be (Artist, Editor, Fan Artist, Fan Writer, Semiprozine, Fanzine) are supposed to for things created *that year*, not lifetime.

But for Artist, and to some extent (how much is arguable) it's a lifetime body of work, and it often become Artist X winning until they pull themselves off the ballot. Thus the number of times Frank Kelly Freas, Micheal Whelan and Bob Eggleton have won it. Whelan and Eggelton pulled themselves off the ballot, FKF passed away, but now, it seems, we're cycling between Shaun Tan, John Picacio, and Julie Dilion.

Not to say that Ran, Picacio, or Dilion are not incredibly talented or award worthy -- they are both. It may be, with the Internet, the voters are see much more recent work and the award is become much more based on recent work than body of work. Historically however, it's been a real problem.

But SF/F Art has always been an important part of the genre, and WSFS has always wanted to have that award as part of its stack, despite the problems we've had with it.
posted by eriko at 7:17 AM on April 20, 2015 [1 favorite]

FWIW it sounds like there's at least one terrible non-puppy story, for balance.

Well, I'll be honest, the review was basically "I hate this author's position so much" that even if it was the best writing in the world that review was doomed to be negative. But hey, that's the reader's prerogative.

Again -- the award is "Best X." If you can find one X that's better than the five on the ballot, you are perfectly justified in voting No Award over the five on the ballot. And it's in Your Humble Opinion.

Just remember -- the scope is not constrained to the five on the ballot. This is one of the explicit reasons we put No Award on the ballot. WSFS recognizes that the nomination process isn't perfect and the Best X may not make the ballot. If that's the case, No Award is the correct vote.
posted by eriko at 7:30 AM on April 20, 2015 [2 favorites]

So Scalzi's back home and Keeping Up With the Hugos. Looks like his policy of politely ignoring Vox Day is toast.

He’s a fine con man, in other words, and Correia and Torgersen fell for his con. Day was looking for a way back into relevance in science fiction and fantasy and they very happily gave it to him, and didn’t realize until after the Hugo awards were actually announced just how thoroughly they had been played. Torgersen delirously announced after the Hugos came out that the Puppies had “stolen the Enterprise”; he didn’t realize he and Correia were the redshirts in that scenario, or just how much and how closely the two of them would be associated with Day’s feculent character and actions.

posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 8:58 AM on April 20, 2015 [16 favorites]

> Thus the number of times Frank Kelly Freas, Micheal Whelan and Bob Eggleton have won it

Don't forget my man Ed Emshwiller!
posted by languagehat at 9:14 AM on April 20, 2015 [1 favorite]

Second, it's just false that the work of women and minorities is somehow inferior on the art-for-art's-sake model, that is, inferior as craft and storytelling.

To be clear, I have never, ever, endorsed this, and I don't even think the puppies (short Vox Day, because who the hell knows what gerbils are in his head) have said anything like this. In fact, most of the Puppies have talked about the work of women and minority writers that they do enjoy. I don't think anyone is saying "The problem with the ballot is that there aren't enough white people/TOO MANY LADIES" and I would probably giggle at anyone who was saying that.

What this honestly reminds me a lot of (and I hate to keep bringing in parallels, but it seems to be the best way to understand this) is actually the actual military - which, much like early SF, was also a bit of a boy's club. I was in no way among the very first women who were a part of it, but I was definitely a part of the military before the military was really used to having women. And what I quickly found is that it wasn't that my fellow soldiers didn't like women or thought women were bad soldiers. It's that they thought femme women weren't good soldiers and they didn't respect women who presented as femme. If you came in as a hard-drinking, hard-smoking, fight-fighting badass, they didn't really care whether you had dangly bits or not.

And so there was definitely this weird dichotomy, where I, being a little rough around the edges, was rapidly assimilated into my unit with no problems, but sometimes when there were women who were like 'you're all a bunch of rabid alcoholics, what the hell is wrong with you?' they would have difficulty integrating.

And I think you see that with science fiction, especially looking at those SWFA forums. Nobody's saying, "What, how did all these POC and women get here?" They're saying, "Hey, hey, we're cool with the POC and women when they smoke cigars and talk about space with us, but we wish they'd stop talking about racism and ladyfeels all the time." It's the difference between the welcoming hand of assimilation and the welcoming hand extended even after a refusal to assimilate.

And I am in no way suggesting that this view is unproblematic, because it definitely has its issues - but I don't think it's as simple as "they just don't like POC and women." Because they do, categorically do, like women and POC who act and think like them. Look at Annie Bellet's story, now published online - it's a story featuring a female POC, but a story where the female POC picks up a gun and shoots someone to defend herself and her boyfriend is a Soldier and the only time her POCness really comes up is in the naming scheme and occasional descriptions of her home life. It is basically a story that functionally could have been written by any of the OG Puppies. They welcome it and its assimilationist ways to the fold.
posted by corb at 9:22 AM on April 20, 2015 [2 favorites]

I'm holding out hope for a number of the ones I haven't gotten to yet (Goblin Emperor...)

Goblin Emperor is basically the epitome of Not My Cup of Tea: court intrigue, steampunk-infused fantasy, so many characters there's a fourteen-page-long who's who at the end of the book. But so far, it's transcending all of that — mainly on the strength of the plotting, and the characterization of said goblin — to be quite enjoyable.
posted by Banknote of the year at 9:23 AM on April 20, 2015 [3 favorites]

I don't think anyone is saying "The problem with the ballot is that there aren't enough white people/TOO MANY LADIES"

Honestly, what do you think all that moaning about SJW is a dog whistle for?

The whole point of the sad puppies is that "politically correct" (sic) work keeps getting voted on the Hugo ballot that nobody who matters could like, that men of talent are kept off it due to a conspiracy of white knights pandering to minorities and females, that True Science Fiction has no chance against the affermative action driven slates of the SMOFs.

It's bog standard culture war. Of course it's about kicking out those of the wrong race or gender.
posted by MartinWisse at 9:36 AM on April 20, 2015 [12 favorites]

Goblin Emperor is basically the epitome of Not My Cup of Tea

The Goblin Emperor is the novel to read for anybody who played Crusader Kings II or Long Live the Queen and found themselves in over their heads.
posted by MartinWisse at 9:37 AM on April 20, 2015 [2 favorites]

So Scalzi's back home and Keeping Up With the Hugos.

<begins slow clap.>
posted by Zed at 9:42 AM on April 20, 2015

Comment removed, please think a lot harder about when and how you want to use rape as a rhetorical cudgel in conversation here.
posted by cortex (staff) at 10:06 AM on April 20, 2015 [6 favorites]

The Goblin Emperor is the novel to read for anybody who played Crusader Kings II or Long Live the Queen and found themselves in over their heads.

God I can't wait to read it.

I've read the Ancillary novels and I'm currently reading The Three Body Problem. TBP has its moments, but I find the characterization a bit weak, and I'm worried about whether or not things will pay off at the end.
posted by tofu_crouton at 10:06 AM on April 20, 2015

Three Body Problem is the novel of the three that gives me potential Not My Cup Of Tea (NMCoT?) concerns. I've heard there's some heavy scientific exposition and it can get a bit dry. (And now a report of weak characterization ...) On the other hand, those comments usually came as part of reviews that were fairly glowing in general, so I guess I'll see ... and of course, if something can transcend someone's NMCoT issues, that would speak very well of it ...

Just read Saga 3. Really, really great. This is looking like a strong year for Graphic Story. I think I may still be giving Ms. Marvel the edge, though. Next up: Sex Criminals.
posted by kyrademon at 10:19 AM on April 20, 2015 [1 favorite]

Corb: I can totally understand your desire to be as precise as possible in this discussion, since there does exist a category of minority writer that the puppies don't openly hate on. But the distinction between being rejected and being accepted upon condition of assimilation is, from where I stand, a distinction without difference. Either way, I'm being rejected for being who I am as I exist today.
posted by Banknote of the year at 10:24 AM on April 20, 2015 [13 favorites]

I've really been enjoying Saga just a ton, but Ms. Marvel is just super great too, and I flat out love Sex Criminals. So I'm really, really torn on that category. There may be a series of coin flips in my future.
posted by palomar at 10:25 AM on April 20, 2015 [4 favorites]

Yeah, "you're welcome as long as you don't behave like you normally do or talk about the things that interest you" is not actually all that welcoming.
posted by Lexica at 10:25 AM on April 20, 2015 [14 favorites]

I've heard there's some heavy scientific exposition and it can get a bit dry.
The infodumps tend to be way way way shorter than the equivalent Neal Stephenson infodump, so there's that.
posted by tofu_crouton at 10:27 AM on April 20, 2015

So, last night I dreamed that No Award took everything and that we'd get to do a Retro Hugo in three years. I maybe should take a break.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 10:32 AM on April 20, 2015 [4 favorites]

Neal Stephenson is off the charts with infodumps, but at least manages to make them pretty painless or even entertaining.
posted by Artw at 10:32 AM on April 20, 2015 [4 favorites]

I don't really understand the online love for Sex Criminals. It's juvenile and lowbrow with pretentiously unlikeable characters. I can't find the redeeming qualities. Ms. Marvel is obviously great, but in the last year it hasn't been able to match the incredibly high standard set by the first few issues. Saga is basically a nonstop masterpiece.
posted by painquale at 10:33 AM on April 20, 2015

It is the first few issues of Ms. Marvel that are being voted on, though, not the full run.
posted by kyrademon at 10:36 AM on April 20, 2015 [1 favorite]

OK, then that is a tough vote! Ms Marvel #1 is probably the single best superhero origin issue ever.
posted by painquale at 10:39 AM on April 20, 2015

Yeah, "you're welcome as long as you don't behave like you normally do or talk about the things that interest you" is not actually all that welcoming.

Coming back to corb's defense of the Sad Puppies... I mean, basically, what you're saying is that as long as a woman or a POC doesn't ever acknowledge that they're a woman or a POC, and as long as they parrot the same viewpoints and beliefs as the Sad Puppies, then they'll be accepted. Acceptance contingent upon strict adherence to a proscribed set of behaviors and beliefs is not acceptance at all. I honestly can't believe that you don't understand that.
posted by palomar at 10:48 AM on April 20, 2015 [16 favorites]

Acceptance contingent upon strict adherence to a proscribed set of behaviors and beliefs is not acceptance at all. I honestly can't believe that you don't understand that.

It's less that I don't understand that, and more that I think it comes down to a fundamental difference on how acceptance happens and what acceptance means, which has actually really started to change a lot in the last thirty to forty years and has not fully spread to the majority of the US.

When I was a kid, we still learned about America as 'The Great Melting Pot" where the ultimate ideal was assimilation to a culturally homogenous whole.

"The fusing process goes on as in a blast-furnace; one generation, a single year even-- transforms the English, the German, the Irish emigrant into an American. Uniform institutions, ideas, language, the influence of the majority, bring us soon to a similar complexion; the individuality of the immigrant, almost even his traits of race and religion, fuse down in the democratic alembic like chips of brass thrown into the melting pot."

And you see this kind of in the construction of whiteness as an identity when the majority of immigrants were European (a great book on this is How the Irish Became White), but the concept of assimilation has grown and changed to adapt to other racial and religious characteristics. The idea basically - the idea many of us were raised and acculturated into, even and maybe especially those of us who come from an immigrant background - is that you, too, can be an American, if you leave who you were behind and bring only enough flavor to make it interesting, without enough to be challenging. It is important to understand that for many people, across the country, this is their idea of what it means to be tolerant and noble and good - to forget people's identities once they have entered and come through the melting crucible.

But in the last thirty or forty years, the concept of multiculturism has been pushing back, imported from other countries with different ideas - the 'salad bowl' or 'cultural mosaic' concept rather than a 'melting pot' - where you can maintain your identity as a member of the place from whence you came, without forfeiting being a Good American. You can keep your distinct qualities, and still be part of the whole. That is a concept that is embraced by a lot of the newer thinking on sociology overall - I'm not sure if it's made it into grade school textbooks yet, but it is a thing that's up and coming in how we think about being a coherent part of a whole as well.

And it's important to remember, whichever place you come from, that this is a controversy - this is not a settled issue, even if it's settled personally for you or among your friends. And this I am beginning to think is at the heart of the conflict between Puppy and Non-Puppy. The Puppies are saying loudly - we will accept you if you assimilate to who and what we have always been! (whether or not that's true is a different argument, I think their perception at least is honest) And the Puppies are truly, truly confused as to why they're being perceived as racists. They are open to all assimilating members of all races! And you have the Non-Puppies, like you, saying 'Assimilation is bullshit! Take me as I am or not at all!'
posted by corb at 11:37 AM on April 20, 2015 [4 favorites]

And the reason that shift away from the "melting pot" idea happened was because people became aware that it's racist and imperialist, and that certain groups of people really were never going to be allowed to become white, no matter how they acted.
posted by jaguar at 11:48 AM on April 20, 2015 [15 favorites]

It's a complete derail, corb, but your immigration history just isn't right. There never was an uncontested ideal of the melting pot, and the idea of a pluralistic society definitely didn't originate in the past 40 years. People like Horace Kallen and Randolph Bourne were arguing for a pluralistic society in the 1910s.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 11:48 AM on April 20, 2015 [11 favorites]

we will accept you if you assimilate to who and what we have always been!

Sorry, it's just hard for me to see this as anything but retrograde wishful thinking on the part of these people and their supporters/defenders. To believe that all sci-fi has ever been is manly space romps until recent memory would require a severe head injury.
posted by palomar at 11:56 AM on April 20, 2015 [4 favorites]

corb: The Puppies are saying loudly - we will accept you if you assimilate to who and what we have always been!

You would think that science fiction fans, like the Sad Puppies undoubtedly are, would understand that "you will be assimilated" sounds like a threat.
posted by Kattullus at 11:56 AM on April 20, 2015 [15 favorites]

And for god's sake Correia was born in 1977 and Torgersen in '74. Not only are the nostalgia-sizing a time in SFF that never really existed, they were born 30 years after it allegedly existed.
posted by rtha at 12:08 PM on April 20, 2015 [15 favorites]

Boy, if we could just get back to nuts and bolts SF like 1977's Best Novel, Kate Wilhelm's Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang.
posted by Chrysostom at 12:33 PM on April 20, 2015 [6 favorites]

The Puppies are saying loudly - we will accept you if you assimilate to who and what we have always been! (whether or not that's true is a different argument, I think their perception at least is honest)

Can you clarify what you mean by "their perception at least is honest"?

I think maybe you're saying that when the Puppies say they accept minorities, from the Puppy POV they're genuinely willing to offer up acceptance as they understand it, which is tacitly conditional upon assimilation. Even if many of us on the receiving end of that offer find the Puppies' understanding of acceptance to be hollow.

But maybe you meant something else?
posted by Banknote of the year at 12:57 PM on April 20, 2015 [3 favorites]

No, you're right, that is exactly what I meant by that.
posted by corb at 1:27 PM on April 20, 2015 [1 favorite]

Exploring social change through science fiction
posted by Artw at 1:55 PM on April 20, 2015 [1 favorite]

And for god's sake Correia was born in 1977 and Torgersen in '74. Not only are the nostalgia-sizing a time in SFF that never really existed, they were born 30 years after it allegedly existed.

After all, science fiction died in the 70s.
posted by Artw at 1:58 PM on April 20, 2015

"Coming back to corb's defense of the Sad Puppies... I mean, basically, what you're saying is that as long as a woman or a POC doesn't ever acknowledge that they're a woman or a POC, and as long as they parrot the same viewpoints and beliefs as the Sad Puppies, then they'll be accepted."

Speculative fiction that doesn't rock the boat doesn't speculate very much. Soothing and reassuring repetition of the same archetypal stories is not what I think awards should be given for. Dashing tales of explorers and conquerors that exalt the protagonist and don't even notice the impact on other people are rather out of fashion, yet that's the kind of tale of daring Brad T. seems to want to be able to vote for this year and subsequent years.
posted by puddledork at 2:01 PM on April 20, 2015

It has been [1] day since our last loss of nominated work. Hugo safely!
posted by eriko at 2:34 PM on April 20, 2015 [11 favorites]

I don't think the latest withdrawal will be accepted.
posted by Justinian at 2:37 PM on April 20, 2015

David Gerrold, SF writer and Sasquan Hugo Awards host, has written a lot on all this. This Facebook post is worth reading. I was especially struck by this bit:

4) Ultimately, the puppy movement is a dead end. The more it proceeds, the more publicity it gets, the more it looks like they're winning -- but the part that doesn't show is that the more publicity the puppies get, the more opposition they create.

Again, the business meetings in August will be contentious -- but the result will likely be a modification of the balloting process.

If the committees are smart -- and I'm sure they are -- in addition to counting next year's ballots by the existing rules, they can test the proposed modifications by also counting the ballots according to the proposed mods. This would allow fans to compare the old rules with the proposed new ones before voting on permanent adoption. If the puppies try again -- as they have threatened to, it will be a good test.

posted by Kattullus at 2:58 PM on April 20, 2015 [2 favorites]

After all, science fiction died in the 70s.

Mansquito. I rest my case.
posted by zarq at 3:04 PM on April 20, 2015

science fiction died in the 70s.

wait, what, Hogan was the major innovative figure of the '70's ?

BoggleboggleBOGGLEboggle
posted by Zed at 3:06 PM on April 20, 2015

I don't think the latest withdrawal will be accepted.

I don't think they can truly say that with a straight face. They can say "we've already printed the paper ballots and were not reprinting them," and that's fine.

I get why they want get the paper ballots out, doubly so after their epic fuckup with the paper nomination ballots. But fundamentally, anybody can withdraw anytime from now to close of balloting. If you vote for them, the admin just treats them as eliminated and moves to your next preference. If none, it becomes a no preference ballot and possibly changes the number of ballots needed to win - you need a majority of ballots with preference to win.
posted by eriko at 3:22 PM on April 20, 2015

Brad Torgersen's 'Science Fiction Civil War'
posted by Artw at 3:34 PM on April 20, 2015 [3 favorites]

From a now-deleted blog post, Torgersen likens himself and Correia to Civil War generals. (If the google cache dies, it's reproduced here.

He leaves ambiguous whether they're supposed to be Union or Confederate to remind us, I imagine, that history is written by the winners.

(Darn it, ArtW!)
posted by Zed at 3:36 PM on April 20, 2015 [5 favorites]

If you vote for them, the admin just treats them as eliminated

I understand that they can be withdrawn and treated as you suggest. But I stand by my though that I don't think that is what will happen. I think any votes for stuff that is "withdrawn" at this point will be counted.
posted by Justinian at 4:04 PM on April 20, 2015

So, does Torgersen come from an alternate history where the Nashville Declaration never happened, and the Civil War really was primarily about rights beyond owning people as chattel?
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 4:20 PM on April 20, 2015 [1 favorite]

No, he's just an idiot.
posted by Justinian at 4:28 PM on April 20, 2015 [3 favorites]

From a now-deleted blog post, Torgersen likens himself and Correia to Civil War generals.

Well, if they're Union, they're probably incompetent, and if they're Confederate, they're going to lose.
posted by eriko at 4:29 PM on April 20, 2015

I bet these guys are all big Guns of the South fans, if you know what I mean.
posted by Artw at 4:30 PM on April 20, 2015

And I suppose Deja Thoris lecturing the Tharks on the evils of communism, and de Camp's Earth explorers teaching monogamy to matriarchal insect people don't count as social engineering.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 4:33 PM on April 20, 2015

Hey, Wacht am Rhein is just rip-roaring adventure. They don't put politics in their books!
posted by Justinian at 4:33 PM on April 20, 2015

And I suppose Deja Thoris lecturing the Tharks on the evils of communism, and de Camp's Earth explorers teaching monogamy to matriarchal insect people don't count as social engineering.

Try H. Beam Piper's Temple Trouble in which our heroes, the Paratime Police, help protect operations like kidnapping priests, brainwashing them, and literally installing radios in their heads to ensure that their worlds continue to run in accordance with Transtemporal Mining's interests.

(I first read that as a much younger man with a great capacity to be oblivious to problematic content. And even then I recall thinking "that's kind of messed up.")
posted by Zed at 4:59 PM on April 20, 2015

Posted by Jonathon Side over in Scalzi's comments:

Just to address the theory that it all started with Correia being pissed at not winning, here’s a brief timeline:

August 2011: he does not win the Campbell.
February 2012: he posts a blog literally asking his followers to help him get a Hugo (complete with picture of Sad Larry).
2013: The Puppening begins.

posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 5:01 PM on April 20, 2015 [4 favorites]

2012 - the year of sad Brad

For people who are horribly oppressed they sure have racked up a shitload of nominations.
posted by Artw at 5:09 PM on April 20, 2015

The grays have thrown off their teeth-grit veneer of second-class citizenship, and the blues are rallying to the status quo. Voices long quiet, have erupted with the yell of rebellion. And there is every sign in the world that the blues will stop at nothing to put down the grays.

you know how sometimes you'll read something so gormless that you can't even get mad, you just feel a deep tiredness of the soul

yeah
posted by kagredon at 5:20 PM on April 20, 2015 [16 favorites]

A few comments deleted. Let's skip the IRA derail. Thanks.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 6:21 PM on April 20, 2015

For people who are horribly oppressed they sure have racked up a shitload of nominations.

That's the worst part, in my estimation -- clearly, for the Puppies, nominations don't mean shit, but they're absolutely determined not to even give that scrap of approval to anyone they don't like.
posted by Etrigan at 6:38 PM on April 20, 2015 [2 favorites]

February 2012: he posts a blog literally asking his followers to help him get a Hugo (complete with picture of Sad Larry).

Fuck, if you want a Hugo that bad just commision a trophy maker to construct a replica and engrave your name on the plaque. It would be as meaningful as one you get from gaming the voting system.
posted by octothorpe at 6:50 PM on April 20, 2015 [11 favorites]

He leaves ambiguous whether they're supposed to be Union or Confederate to remind us, I imagine, that history is written by the winners.

More like he realized about halfway through the thing that unequivocally associating his position with slave-owners and the losers of the war might not have been the sharpest move.
posted by soundguy99 at 7:03 PM on April 20, 2015 [6 favorites]

Anyone got a spare dildo we can spraypaint silver and hand to them? Maybe that would shut them up.
posted by Artw at 9:20 PM on April 20, 2015

No, I'm not taking a dildo away from someone who could use it.
posted by eriko at 9:22 PM on April 20, 2015 [11 favorites]

i may have one i bought when i was young and foolish that actually turned out to be one of those "not body safe" ones that are full of carcinogens
posted by NoraReed at 9:36 PM on April 20, 2015

Seems appropriate.

We'll need a base as well...
posted by Artw at 9:46 PM on April 20, 2015

(Aside: this page is becoming a browser-hanging longboat. Hoping that something substantive enough to stand as a new FPP comes along soon.)
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 10:24 PM on April 20, 2015 [2 favorites]

ChurchHatesTucker: So, last night I dreamed that No Award took everything and that we'd get to do a Retro Hugo in three years. I maybe should take a break.

Last night I dreamt that I was interviewing Brad Torgersen and he took me to the science fiction bookshop he'd gone to in his childhood and teens. I bought the three novels not nominated by the puppies. It was kind of a nice dream.
posted by Kattullus at 10:38 PM on April 20, 2015 [4 favorites]

i dreamed about marvel becoming suddenly and irreparably gay

there was a musical number and everything

also taylor swift joined the mcu

basically my dreams are better than anything that will ever be nominated for a hugo. or made, for that matter
posted by NoraReed at 11:14 PM on April 20, 2015 [4 favorites]

irreparably gay
posted by Pope Guilty at 1:03 AM on April 21, 2015 [5 favorites]

I started looking at Larry Correia's blog and discovered that an old friend is one of the enthusiastic commenters there. I haven't talked to him in years but he used to be a reasonable guy. A bit of a libertarian but we could talk. Now ... I don't know. He sounds like he's been living off of Fox News for the past decade. It's depressing.
posted by maurice at 3:51 AM on April 21, 2015

Read Sex Criminals and was unimpressed. So for me, it's between Ms. Marvel: No Normal and Saga Volume 3 for Graphic Story. Nice choice to have!
posted by kyrademon at 5:47 AM on April 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

Actually, I'd kind of like to see a MCU Taylor Swift. It could be like a reboot of Dazzler but (probably) without the roller skates.
posted by rmd1023 at 6:53 AM on April 21, 2015

The best Dazzler story that never was.

And she always wears the rollerskates.

Fun fact: The in-universe Dazzler movie, which you'd think would be a big step forwards in mutant visibility, actually backfired and ended up drumming up a lot of anti mutant hatred. Some kind of metaphor there.
posted by Artw at 7:23 AM on April 21, 2015 [4 favorites]

i dreamed about marvel becoming suddenly and irreparably gay

I'm not sure what this means, but I would like to subscribe to your newsletter/dream journal.
posted by nubs at 7:49 AM on April 21, 2015 [2 favorites]

It's only the barest of a rumor, but we could be getting a Kamala Khan Ms. Marvel TV show. This would be perfect for exploding the heads of the assholes who believe that she's an example about how comics "have stopped telling stories of heroes who fight for truth, justice, and the American Way, and have started telling stories about victims"
posted by zombieflanders at 8:08 AM on April 21, 2015 [4 favorites]

Fun fact: The in-universe Dazzler movie, which you'd think would be a big step forwards in mutant visibility, actually backfired and ended up drumming up a lot of anti mutant hatred. Some kind of metaphor there.

Same thing happened (will happen?) when she was (will be?) elected president in the future.
posted by painquale at 8:15 AM on April 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

Those clogs better be able to pop wheels.
posted by Artw at 8:18 AM on April 21, 2015

Philip Sandifer sums it up.
posted by infinitewindow at 8:32 AM on April 21, 2015 [9 favorites]

Our course is now set. Our purpose is now clear. It was, perhaps, inevitable that it would come to this. Although we tried to deny the necessity, tried to avoid going this far, I think deep down we all knew that their actions could have only one answer, and this battle could end only one way.

Set phasers to irreparably gay.
posted by kyrademon at 8:33 AM on April 21, 2015 [12 favorites]

Somebody set up us the gay.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:49 AM on April 21, 2015 [3 favorites]

Pretty great piece by Philip Sandifer on Beale (and the his puppy sidekicks) here.
posted by Artw at 8:53 AM on April 21, 2015 [2 favorites]

Bah. Infinite window beat me to it. Stupid long thread.
posted by Artw at 8:55 AM on April 21, 2015

That Sandifer piece is great. I even enjoyed the part titles.

Part Three: The Unbelievable Noxiousness of Theodore Beale

posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 9:22 AM on April 21, 2015

In fairness Artw, I totally stole it from cstross's twitter.
posted by infinitewindow at 9:43 AM on April 21, 2015

i dreamed about marvel becoming suddenly and irreparably gay

IT HAS BEGUN
posted by zombieflanders at 9:50 AM on April 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

This means the Marvel Universe simultaneously has a gay Iceman (the younger one from the First Class era, time-shifted into the present) and a straight one (modern-day Iceman). Sadly they already killed off Evil Age Of Apocalypse Iceman.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 9:52 AM on April 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

The Marvel Comics explanation for all characters'* orientations/relationships/personalities: "It's complicated."

*except Squirrel Girl
posted by oneswellfoop at 9:59 AM on April 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

I know it's bad form to look a gift horse in the mouth, but multiple panels of the Iceman reveal are a bit cringeworthy.

I'm a bit guilty of skimming some of the Sandifer text, but the conclusion about Monae (who's gotten onto the Tiptree recommended works list) stuck out for me:

But perhaps best of all, it (Electric Lady) is completely unconcerned with the likes of Theodore Beale. It does not seek their praise, which it would clearly never get anyway. It does not seek their antagonism, although it surely receives it. It does not consider itself for their consumption or use, and does not care one way or the other what they make of it. It simply loves itself, and its ideas, and the joy of them, and invites us to love them too.

I'm currently reading Karen Lord's Galaxy Game, and I'm struck by how she plays with the social construction of race, gender, and sexuality without ever seeking to justify it.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 10:08 AM on April 21, 2015 [2 favorites]

i dreamed about marvel becoming suddenly and irreparably gay

is this not what Hickman's 5-year plot has been building to
posted by kagredon at 10:21 AM on April 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

Good lord this Sandifer piece is fantastic. Quoting from John C. Wright's Korra-seizure:

And, of course, note that evocative phrase: “you struck from behind, cravenly.” Did they stab you in the back, John C. Wright? Is that what you’re trying to say?

Comedy.

Gold.
posted by Myca at 10:21 AM on April 21, 2015 [2 favorites]

I was thinking of doing a FPP for the Sandifer post, given this is getting overloaded. Any other suggestions for links while I'm putting it together?
posted by tavella at 10:28 AM on April 21, 2015

Also, Jesus, this Sandifer guy wrote a critical analysis of TMBG's Flood and a critical history of Wonder Woman comics?

How come he's not a MeFite? Hell, how come he's not my roommate yet? Get on it, someone!
posted by Myca at 10:31 AM on April 21, 2015 [5 favorites]

We've linked to all the GRRM posts here, but probably collecting them together wouldn't be amiss?
posted by seyirci at 10:33 AM on April 21, 2015

I recognized Sandifer's name but didn't at first twig to him being responsible for this kickstarter for essays discussing Alan Moore and Grant Morrison whose results have been steadily trickling in.
posted by Zed at 10:36 AM on April 21, 2015 [2 favorites]

There've been several good links posted to this thread recently. Torgersen's civil war post would seem to tie in well.
posted by Lexica at 10:39 AM on April 21, 2015

Sandifer is great - you may also remember him for getting banned from Wikipedia for calling out its horrifying handling of Chelsea Manning's page.
posted by Corinth at 10:42 AM on April 21, 2015 [5 favorites]

Really, any links that are being posted here would probably be good there. Here's a piece by Jeet Heer on both the industry and award demographics that does a good job at demolishing arguments of Torgersen and other puppies.
posted by zombieflanders at 10:43 AM on April 21, 2015 [2 favorites]

How much longer do we have on the thread? I think maybe once we're close to closing, another roundup wouldn't be totally amiss, maybe focusing more on the internal response rather than the media one.
posted by corb at 10:51 AM on April 21, 2015

One piece I liked very much that I kept meaning to link here: Abi Sutherland's Both More and Less Than Political. I think it's a wonderful portrayal of (one part of) why this is personal.
posted by Zed at 10:56 AM on April 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

How much longer do we have on the thread? I think maybe once we're close to closing, another roundup wouldn't be totally amiss, maybe focusing more on the internal response rather than the media one.

When Gamergate was new there was one thread or another open for months. When MeFi wants to talk about something (and 1800 comments later, clearly we do), somebody posts something. :)
posted by Pope Guilty at 11:02 AM on April 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

Guys, this thread doesn't have *anything* on the World Cup threads, or the election threads, or the longboats of times past.

We used to do these threads on 386s with 14" CRT monitors. Buck up, kids.
posted by eriko at 11:13 AM on April 21, 2015 [11 favorites]

We used to do these threads on 386s with 14" CRT monitors. Buck up, kids.

You're having USENET flashbacks, Erik.
posted by Zed at 11:18 AM on April 21, 2015 [9 favorites]

Scale: We are about 200 posts behind the MH370 thread, 1000 posts behind the Egypt Revolution thread of January 2011, 3000 posts behind the Bin Laden killed thread, 4000 posts behind the Mitt Romney internal memo leak post, and nearly 6300 short of the all time record.

In the other direction, we're 200 more than the Aurora, CO theatre shooting, 500 more than the original iPad thread, and 700 more than your typical Eurovision thread.
posted by eriko at 11:19 AM on April 21, 2015 [3 favorites]

You're having USENET flashbacks, Erik.

I use nn to read Metafilter.
posted by eriko at 11:22 AM on April 21, 2015 [4 favorites]

I used to use lynx. It Looks Like Work™
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 11:34 AM on April 21, 2015

If someone does a new post - I would, but I just posted this morning - here's a good roundup of relevant links from Dave Langford.
posted by Chrysostom at 11:42 AM on April 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

All you lot should just follow Mike Glyer's File 770 blog, which has done Hugo worthy coverage of the whole Puppygate, pro and con both, as objective as one can be in the circumstances without denying his own feelings.

And really, if Puppygate has proven one thing, it's that there are plenty of old pharts, even old, white male pharts, who do get it, who do do their best to make fandom a welcoming place for everybody, not just the he-man girl haters clubhouse.
posted by MartinWisse at 11:48 AM on April 21, 2015

If someone does a new post - I would, but I just posted this morning - here's a good roundup of relevant links from Dave Langford.

Okay. This world is weird, because I just popped open a link in another window, it's about The Mekons. One of the people in The Mekons is, of course, Jon Langford.

Yes. Dave and Jon are brothers. And to see you mention Dave just as I see Jon mentioned is really really spooky.

(Bought Dave a pint at Eastercon. Said I'd read enough Ansibles, he earned it.)
posted by eriko at 11:50 AM on April 21, 2015

Alright, I'm going to announce: I'm going to take Nick Mamatas' challenge, to find a winner per year since 1995 where left messages foregrounded such that it affected story.

I do this in a spirit of scientific inquiry. I have the feeling that this has certainly happened of late, but that feeling may be in error, as feelings are. I announce it here so you guys can keep me honest and also see the results. (To be honest, though, I'm going to rely a lot on reviews for things I haven't read)
posted by corb at 12:00 PM on April 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

Captain Christian White grimaced, heterosexually.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 12:05 PM on April 21, 2015 [14 favorites]

If you're going through them anyway, it would also be interesting to track which ones have a foregrounded story-affecting right message.
posted by Zed at 12:06 PM on April 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

I will totally try to do that as well - though I should warn that I'm looking only at winners, looking at every nominee for twenty years seems like a lot more data than I have the capacity for right now.

Also I'm going to leave off stuff like 'best artist' and 'best editor' maybe because that's less of a measurable field? I'm not trying to game the system, I just don't know how you'd even measure that.
posted by corb at 12:10 PM on April 21, 2015

You're having USENET flashbacks, Erik.

[yorkshiremen] 386? Oh, I used to dream about having a 386 system to read USENET... [/yorkshiremen]
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 12:14 PM on April 21, 2015 [3 favorites]

Alright, I'm going to announce: I'm going to take Nick Mamatas' challenge, to find a winner per year since 1995 where left messages foregrounded such that it affected story.

1997 Blue Mars. For sure.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 12:17 PM on April 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

ChurchHatesTucker: Captain Christian White grimaced, heterosexually.

That was great.
posted by zarq at 12:21 PM on April 21, 2015

But not, I hasten to add, in a gay way. :D
posted by zarq at 12:23 PM on April 21, 2015 [3 favorites]

Having just finished the Sandifer piece - God damn that's some fine writing. Especially "Part Eight: God Will Bury You. Nature Will Bury You."
posted by Myca at 12:24 PM on April 21, 2015

Also I'm going to leave off stuff like 'best artist' and 'best editor' maybe because that's less of a measurable field? I'm not trying to game the system, I just don't know how you'd even measure that.

I'd assume that this is just the fiction categories -- novel, novella, novelette, short story, graphic novel. Related work doesn't have a story to distort, dramatic presentations seem beside the point.

I think winners only is a good metric, because though I don't think the Hugos have been destroyed by slates in the past, I could easily believe that out of 25 stories a year, one of them has infodumps of political opinion.
posted by jeather at 12:43 PM on April 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

Hello! Long-time lurker, first-time poster. Thank you, corb, for accepting my challenge. I look forward to seeing what you come up with.
posted by Mamatas at 12:47 PM on April 21, 2015 [13 favorites]

Goblet of Fire is clearly anti-Voldemort.
posted by Artw at 1:03 PM on April 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

I'd assume that this is just the fiction categories -- novel, novella, novelette, short story, graphic novel. Related work doesn't have a story to distort, dramatic presentations seem beside the point.

Graphic Novel wasn't a category until very recently, and the first few wins were all Kaja and Phil Foglio for Agatha Heterodyne books. So, you're basically working with the Big Four.
posted by eriko at 1:08 PM on April 21, 2015

I am not up to going through everything the way corb is doing (and I'm also looking forward to seeing what you find, corb!)

I did, out of curiosity, look at who has won multiple times since 1995 in the Big Four Fiction categories, as a rough guide to Who Is Favored:

Six Times: Connie Willis
Five Times: Michael Swanwick
Four Times: Vernor Vinge, Neil Gaiman, Ted Chiang
Three Times: Allen Steele, Charles Stross
Two Times: Joe Haldeman, Lois Bujold, Mary Robinette Kowal, Mike Resnick, Ken Liu, Bruce Sterling, Elizabeth Bear, James Patrick Kelly

Personally, I'm seeing a mix there. Some old-fashioned storytellers, some experimentalists, some people I've heard vaguely associated with left-wing politics, some people I've heard vaguely associated with right-wing politics, and many where I frankly have no idea.

Honestly, the key to winning Hugos seems to be "Be Connie Willis". (I have no idea what her politics are, but since one of the things she's famous for is biting satires of political correctness -- e.g. Uncharted Territory, Bellwether, Remake, Ado -- I'd be surprised if she were considered a culture warrior for political correctness.)
posted by kyrademon at 1:11 PM on April 21, 2015 [2 favorites]

Thus far I've pared it to: Best Novel, Best Novella, Best Novellette, Best Short Story, Best Related, and Best Dramatic. I'm starting on the 1995 end, and am trying to read what I can (easy with the short stories esp.) I figure I'll add in graphic novel as it comes if anything pops in it.
posted by corb at 1:11 PM on April 21, 2015

Most Best Related Works are also most often works of non-fiction, so message/story doesn't quite work. When I made the challenge, I was just thinking of the traditional fiction categories: novel, novella, novelette, short. As mentioned above, Graphic is a new category, and Best Dramatic is a problem as it is for the most part overdetermined by test audiences, the MPAA, what the Chinese market might think, whether the producer's niece gets to be in the movie, etc.
posted by Mamatas at 1:49 PM on April 21, 2015

Phew! Thanks for the clarification, that'll knock out some work for me. :)

I am actually learning a lot from this - I'll probably write up some commentary about each year as I go as well that may include the other stuff. On 1997 now. (Yeah, slow, I know, but I'm actually reading everything available to be fair.)
posted by corb at 1:59 PM on April 21, 2015

I feel like we should have some sort of read-along so we can all debate the politics of various works, but I am not volunteering, because I don't even read sci-fi. And the one sci-fi thing that I actually do like is Firefly, which seems to be sort of a political rorschach test where every fan thinks that it shares their politics and they all have plausible explanations for why.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 2:05 PM on April 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

I'm not sure who is writing this, but it provides some (perhaps) sorely-needed entertainment at this point.
posted by jokeefe at 2:09 PM on April 21, 2015 [3 favorites]

And the one sci-fi thing that I actually do like is Firefly, which seems to be sort of a political rorschach test where every fan thinks that it shares their politics and they all have plausible explanations for why.

I'm pretty sure Firefly shares neither my politics nor Joss Whedon's politics, really. There are little flashes from place to place, but in general, I think Firefly (and much more, Serenity) is straightforwardly anti-big-government, pro-rugged-individualism.

And I love it. And sci-fi fandom loves it.

Because I'm not the kind of guy, and it's not the kind of fandom, which requires all media to conform to our preexisting political biases.

Point being: I can understand why the puppies feel like they don't fit.
posted by Myca at 2:23 PM on April 21, 2015 [2 favorites]

Firefly fails to mention that the Old Space South was super racist against robots.
posted by Artw at 2:29 PM on April 21, 2015 [3 favorites]

> I'm not sure who is writing this, but it provides some (perhaps) sorely-needed entertainment at this point.

That's great!

Remember your Orwell -- merely silencing their opponents isn't enough for people like this; they have to force conformity. And what better way to do it than to capture us at Sasquan? We could disappear into the rain forest of Washington -- a place hallowed by Scalzi and his acolytes -- and they could do whatever they want to us. Then, a year from now, Brad and Larry and, yes, even Vox would emerge and denounce their past "heresies". Soon they'd start publishing new books, but these books wouldn't be science fiction classics like Monster Hunter, "The Exchange Officers" and "Opera Vita Aeterna". No, these would be stories about transgendered bisexuals in a multiracial society fighting an evil, capitalistic empire through folk song. They'd be praised throughout the liberal blogosphere for their sensitive portrayals of "the Other" and would be handed Hugo nominations for their efforts. Vox Day would declare his love for N.K. Jemisin and explain that he'd always been wrong about The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. And then they would take to their old blogs and denounce all their former allies as fascists.

posted by languagehat at 2:32 PM on April 21, 2015 [3 favorites]

Nonsense, Artw, the war of Old Space South Independence was about the Old Space North trying to control the Spice Trade. Anyway, my Skinner Box was a robot, as were most of my friends' Skinner Boxes, so it's impossible I'm racist against them.
posted by bswinburn at 2:33 PM on April 21, 2015 [5 favorites]

Goblet of Fire is clearly anti-Voldemort.

Well, Dumbledore is gay, and merely acknowledging that people who are not hetereosexual or cis-gendered exist is considered by puppies to be a blatant political message. (Instead of, you know, a reflection of reality.)
posted by tofu_crouton at 2:35 PM on April 21, 2015 [5 favorites]

As a white, straight, Western man, I can freely speak for my fellow SF readers

I'll add another voice to the "Hey, dumbass, my lefty-liberal PC-LGBTQA-SJW tinted politics were forged in the fires of teenage SF reading, what even is wrong with you" choir.

I mean, Iain M Banks alone - A billions-strong civilisation of communist, post-money, post-gender, post-sexism individuals who synthesize their own drugs internally and can transition genders at will?
posted by Jon Mitchell at 2:40 PM on April 21, 2015 [6 favorites]

Corb, I might be willing to do some readalongs with you, to try to cover both sides of the political spectrum.
posted by jeather at 2:43 PM on April 21, 2015 [2 favorites]

Well, Dumbledore is gay

As evidenced in the books by him and Grindlewald making their sigil the pride flag.
posted by Artw at 2:43 PM on April 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

Via File 770:

Lou Antonelli on Facebook – April 20

Got my annual Mensa membership card in the mail today. I’m not showing this out of vanity, it’s just I’ve found it’s a good idea to keep it handy because the first slur the Anti-Puppy snobs usually toss out when disrespecting you is “stupid”.

He keeps his Mensa card handy so people won't call him stupid.

You couldn't make this sort of thing up.

Also, Dave Freer invokes THE SPIRIT OF ANZAC!

It’s not about winning (or losing). It’s about the battle and how you fight that defines the heroes and the villains. For Australians and New Zealanders, that’s almost defined by Gallipoli [N.B. WHITE AUSTRALIANS and new zealanders BRAVELY TRYING TO LIBERATE TURKEY FROM THE TURKS AND LOSING GLORIOUSLY BUT MORALLY THE VICTORS] (...)

And the average battler hasn’t got much, but he’s got a sense of humor, and the little bastard just won’t stay down. A man who fought his own way up… or even started with a few advantages and fought up from that, he’s a winner. Even if he dies broke and by his own hand.

FROM HELL'S HEART I STAB AT ME!!!
posted by Joe in Australia at 3:35 PM on April 21, 2015 [10 favorites]

I just realized I've been confusing Lou Aronica with Lou Antonelli. My apologies to Mr. Aronica.
posted by Chrysostom at 3:57 PM on April 21, 2015

He keeps his Mensa card handy so people won't call him stupid.

Can we convince them all to make this a thing?
posted by Artw at 3:58 PM on April 21, 2015 [4 favorites]

From that File 770 update, quoting JCW:

"At a real witch trial held by the real Inquisition, even the devil gets an advocate and someone speaks up for defendant being accused of witchcraft."

First of all, the Inquisition typically did not hold witch trials (as we think of them, they mostly occurred in Protestant countries, not Catholic ones, although a small handful occurred under Inquisitions; in fact, Inquisitions were sometimes tasked with stamping out witch trials as the belief in witchcraft was superstition.

Second of all, "Devil's Advocates" come from the process of canonization of saints, not the Inquisition. The Devil's Advocate doesn't argue on behalf of the accused anywhere; they bring up evidence against the canonization of a saint in order to uncover character flaws that would prevent them becoming a saint.

Third of all, the accused in Inquisition trials were not entitled to counsel, a trivial fact familiar to most lawyers and most scholars of Catholicism, as it figures in the development of both modern curial courts and the modern American legal system.

That's a big giant "F" for catechism class, Mr. Wright. Literally not one tiny piece of that statement is factually correct and it betrays a shocking ignorance of the history of law and the history of Catholicism, two areas in which I believe he considers himself quite expert.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 4:07 PM on April 21, 2015 [22 favorites]

Got my annual Mensa membership card in the mail today.

If you haven't realized what a better deal the lifetime membership is, you're not that bright.
posted by Etrigan at 4:14 PM on April 21, 2015 [3 favorites]

Alright, I'm going to break these into five-year chunks, to save my sanity if nothing else. The first thing I will note is that a lot of these really defy precise left-right comparisons, particularly as the left and right of the 1990s are not the left and right of 2015.

That said...

1995 - "None So Blind" by Joe Haldeman - an interesting concept, but with an interracial romance that seems spackled onto the story. My first impulse is to say that in the 90s, this would mean that it was on the 'left' - though I will note that it has some major problems with sexism and consent, including fake operations on the wife's eyeballs without telling her but magically she loves him anyways.) Drecht.

1996- "The Diamond Age" by Neal Stephenson - this one definitely skews extremely left in theme, but is truly marvellous science fiction. However, I'm also a biased observer because I really loved the shit out of this book, despite the class/corporate overtones.
"The Death of Captain Future" by Allan Steele - deconstructus and subverts the pulp adventure genre in what seem kind of left wing ways - however, this is, like 1995, incredibly sexist as hell. I'm not really sure how to judge this other than as crap.

There are two other really political stories this year - 'The Lincoln Train' and 'Babylon 5 - The Coming of Shadows' but for the life of me, I’m not sure whether they are left or right, and they’re both really good regardless. Interestingly, however, the 1996 Hugo win for Babylon 5 is credited to campaigning online.

1997- As duly called above, Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson is being described by many as politics-heavy left stuff, but I haven't personally read it and can't say. Since I only have to choose one for each year, I have, however, read and chosen "Bicycle Repairman" by Bruce Sterling. This one isn't even really trying - an anarchist community draws ranks together against a 'right wing reactionary wacko' paramilitary force for a right-wing senator who's faking a country accent? I know this will get harder ahead, but for now, this year was easy.

Also - Whoa! Whoa! GRRM, you've been telling us all about how you never won a Hugo , and here is your name highlighted in red for 'Blood of the Dragon'. I call a foul, sir.

1998: Forever Peace by Joe Haldeman – This one seems like another gimme. The protagonists, an interracial couple, seek to submit everyone to a surgical procedure that leaves them a docile pacifist in order to stop war. However, it is really important to note that I have not personally read this one, and I’m going off reviews. Feel free to hotly debate, or jeather I'm up for doing a readalong if you're thinking this.

Best Novelette “We Will Drink a Fish Together…” by Bill Johnson - oh man. This one isn’t demonstrably Right, but to be fair, I’d better flag it. It’s…rural-sympathetic, I guess, and about the importance of family hierarchies, but so damn good. Check it out.

1999: This is one of the years where I and the Puppies might disagree, but I can see where they're coming from. I'd call “Oceanic” by Greg Egan – the lefty pick of the year. You have some genderfucking, you have a deconstruction of religion that has its implications for real life. However, I found it a really good story, with all of that naturally interwoven into the text, and even if he came out deciding 'I'm going to write an atheist story' it is still a fabulous read.

From the right, we potentially have "Taklamakan” by Bruce Sterling (jeather or someone, keep me honest). It doesn't seem super right to me, and it contains 'neuter' gendered folk, but it also places military guys prominently and speaks of them favorably, but then also goes into the 'ethnic minority suppression' Really I don't count this for one side or the other, but I don't want someone to think I'm leaving it out. I found it a deadly dull read, personally.
posted by corb at 4:20 PM on April 21, 2015

My god, not inter-racial romance!
posted by dng at 4:26 PM on April 21, 2015 [4 favorites]

Whoa, the question is not "are there leftie stories" (which: sure, let's accept that as a given), it is "are these stories distorted into bad stories because of their politics". As you note, "The Diamond Age" is pretty left-leaning, but it isn't a bad story.
posted by jeather at 4:28 PM on April 21, 2015 [2 favorites]

Yeah, I mean, if the Puppies consider interracial romance to be a lefty invasion of their beloved home turf, does that mean that the rest of us have to think that's reasonable? Because I don't know that they would think that, with the exception of VD who is not someone whose opinions on such matters I care about, and I don't think it's reasonable if they do.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 4:30 PM on April 21, 2015 [2 favorites]

Is it, even? I remember it as a pretty defense of Victorians.
posted by Artw at 4:31 PM on April 21, 2015

The Victorians were secretly the most left wing people of all.
posted by dng at 4:33 PM on April 21, 2015

I'm sorry if it wasn't clear - since I am going through these, I would only like to go through them once and take notes while they're fresh. This is kind of a massive undertaking. I'm also making sure to note the stories that I think are actually good despite their bias, and ones where political fights no longer map but I think they may have been ongoing at the time of their writing. I'm even game for reading all the best novels, tentatively, but I'm wibbling about whether I want to actually buy them or not. In pursuit of this, I will commit to reading and honestly reviewing any Hugo-winning novel since 1995 that any Mefite or SF fan cares to provide me.

So, frex, I"m not saying "Quelle horreur! Interracial romance! I, corb, am shocked and disturbed!" I'm saying, "I think, in the 1990s, based on my own admittedly imperfect recollection of the 1990s, this would have been a somewhat liberal/left position."
posted by corb at 4:35 PM on April 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

Is it, even? I remember it as a pretty defense of Victorians.

There's that, but then there's the whole Mouse Army thing which seems to be Chinese exceptionalism powered by knockoff goods/Intellectual Property theft.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 4:36 PM on April 21, 2015

Blue Mars was not in any way ruined by anything. It was a great book and classic science fiction. I read it before I was a political person, and I just found the disputes involved to be part of the story, not a part of a screed. The Mars series seemed to be to be full of viewpoints the author viewed as totally valid but still in total conflict with each other. That is real life, not an agenda.

Whatever could have been a story in "Atlas Shrugged", it was ruined by turning it into a political screed. I am 100% certain there are similar left wing works where politics sabotages the story...but I can't name them. I think they don't get awards or have fans endlessly promote them. Corb, for real, I think I have established myself as someone who will fairly consider your ideas...is there a left wing "Atlas Shrugged", and is there a left wing "Atlas Shrugged" this is relevant to the current awards crisis?
posted by Drinky Die at 4:38 PM on April 21, 2015 [2 favorites]

"The Diamond Age" by Neal Stephenson - this one definitely skews extremely left in theme [...]

What? No! The world is physically divided into conformist nations that provide stability and security by invoking stereotyped depictions of former empires. The most powerful ones appear to be neo-Victorians and neo-Confucians, each of which is based around the idea of virtue through constancy and fidelity, and obedience to an anointed leader who is not merely right but definitively right. Our heroine is a Girl Who Makes Good through education and (substitute) maternal love, despite her bad circumstances; our hero is an engineer who wants his daughter to enter the ranks of the privileged, through education. His plan fails because his daughter just doesn't have the right stuff; she runs off to be a leftie art student and we never see her again. Our heroine literally becomes the empress of an army of indistinguishable Chinese children that were saved from infanticide - but you know that's a metaphor for abortion. Her substitute-mother is saved from the evil undersea hippies and I guess they found their own empire or whatever.

It couldn't be more right-wing if Jesus drove up in a Cadillac with Confederate numberplates.
posted by Joe in Australia at 4:49 PM on April 21, 2015 [6 favorites]

Calling "Blue Mars" an automatic left story is really handwaving over the core tension of the story. Indeed, one of the biggest fights in the story is the "reds" vs. the "greens', but it's not what you think. The "Reds" believe in "Red Mars" -- do not terraform the planet, the Greens want to terraform Mars, and mapping these into conventional left-right models seems easy, until you realize that it's perfectly easy to make your main character map to the right wing extreme *and* the left wing extreme at the same time.

There is a strong corporate/anti-corporate theme, which is also subverted as the trilogy goes on.

In short, the only thing classifying the Mars Trilogy is good for is an argument. I'd seriously call it "intractable" and move on.
posted by eriko at 4:57 PM on April 21, 2015 [4 favorites]

I'm going to see which of the stories I can still find -- we might have to pass on the novels -- so we can determine if the winners (only) were distorted into bad stories by politics, not so we can determine if they have a political bent at all.
posted by jeather at 5:01 PM on April 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

Blue Mars was not in any way ruined by anything. It was a great book and classic science fiction.

I was more bothered by the shitty science than by the politics.
posted by Justinian at 5:01 PM on April 21, 2015 [2 favorites]

Forever Peace was a sequel to a novel that had won the Hugo the year Torgersen was born (and therefore before Correia was born). So not only does it disprove the theory about the 90s being when this all started, it also disproves the theory about the 60s/70s/80s stories and authors being cut from different political cloth.
posted by zombieflanders at 5:06 PM on April 21, 2015

It's been a while but I thought that the United Nations was one of the big villains in the Mars series.
posted by octothorpe at 5:09 PM on April 21, 2015

See, this is why I love fandom! FIGHT ABOUT DIAMOND AGE!

I thought that Diamond Age was lefty because you have Nell, from the incredibly shitty underclass, getting a stolen copy of the Primer, thus subverting the intent of it going to the upperclass only, and it is she, rather than the upperclass recipients of the Primer like Elizabeth, who becomes the leader of the new phyle. Not to mention the post-scarcity economy and the doom-warnings of allowing private corporations and separatist societies to run rampant.

This may actually lead more into the heart of the problem - what do we each see as 'left' and 'right'? I am fascinated by the idea that we can each be looking at the same books, and say 'That's the other guys' fiction!" each time.
posted by corb at 5:12 PM on April 21, 2015

It couldn't be more right-wing if Jesus drove up in a Cadillac with Confederate numberplates.

Not to derail, but Jesus would have been a super-lefty SJW by the puppy's standards. Universal healthcare? Redistribution of wealth? Not a single word about treating gays as subhuman? Harmony of races and genders? These guys may believe in a Jesus and profess that his views support theirs, but let's not confuse that one with the one the actual text describes.
posted by zombieflanders at 5:15 PM on April 21, 2015 [2 favorites]

I'm not entirely sure what the point is of finding a "left-wing Atlas Shrugged" as a general thing here. If you want one, though, maybe "Uncle Tom's Cabin" -- politically motivated, hugely influential, viewed by many critics as not having the writing quality to live up to its impact.

Finding a left-wing mini-Atlas-Shrugged "relevant to the current awards crisis" would have a point, I agree -- or rather, finding a whole bunch of them would be. E.g. are there a whole bunch of not-well written left-wing polemics (but not right-wing ones) that have nonetheless won Hugos? I'm pretty sure the answer is no. I'll be interested to see corb's opinion when she gets through the list.

One problem we're already seeing though is the question of what is left wing and what is right wing? In books as in life, a lot of things don't slot neatly into one category or another. I mean, sure, some are REALLY OBVIOUS. But quite a lot aren't.
posted by kyrademon at 5:15 PM on April 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

Man, I am really impressed by this undertaking. I kind of want to re-read The Diamond Age now just to be able to argue about it.

For the record, GRRM talks in his puppy posts about winning Hugos, just never winning what he calls 'The Big One', Best Novel.
posted by tofu_crouton at 5:15 PM on April 21, 2015 [2 favorites]

The Diamond Age, whether it is left- or right-leaning, is irrelevant to this, because we all agree that whatever its politics are, they do not distort the book into terribleness.

I am putting together a spreadsheet of the short fiction categories with links, where available, to the stories. I will share the link when I have done the first run through and people can edit as desired to add links.
posted by jeather at 5:23 PM on April 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

Not to mention the post-scarcity economy and the doom-warnings of allowing private corporations and separatist societies to run rampant.

There's no doom-warning. The private corporations and separatist societies are explicitly successful and presented as not-unflawed but far better than the phyle-less cretins. Atlantis/Shangai and... Ashanti? Azanti? the phyle of polite black badasses, anyway are good things and good ways to live. The most you can suggest as being "lefty" is that what seems to be the most friendlily-described community are the group of independents who work with and for Atlantis, not Atlantis itself.

Like almost all of Stephenson's work, Diamond Age is clearly and I think unavoidably conservative insofar as he almost always points out more-or-less traditional ways of living as good and sensible, or even superior to what people would commonly think of as "lefty" ways of living; pomo is bad and stupid and moral relativism is bad and stupid. He even explains this in some of his infodumps. In much the same way, the Mafia in Snow Crash are a traditionalistic and conservative way of living through intense economic and social dislocation that Stephenson presents as reasonably sensible and way better than the way that, say, Hiro has been living. The only way you can get "lefty" out of him is that he doesn't extend this to describing conservative policies as intrinsically good and sensible the way he does a conservative ordering of ones' own life.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 5:27 PM on April 21, 2015 [6 favorites]

Science Fiction's White Boys' Club Strikes Back

John W. Campbell, the contentious and influential editor of Analog, claimed he enjoyed shaking up his audience with outrageous ideas, but Nova proved too much for him. According to Delany, Campbell called the author’s agent and said that while he liked the novel “he didn’t feel his readership would be able to relate to a black main character.” Campbell’s contention that fans weren’t ready for a book like Nova was belied by the fact that it was shortlisted for a Hugo in 1969.
posted by Artw at 5:29 PM on April 21, 2015 [2 favorites]

FWIW If I had to take a guess I'd peg Stevenson as a moderate American (eg centre right most places) with libertarian leanings.
posted by Artw at 5:33 PM on April 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

Nabokov and Rand shared more than just the happenstance of time and place of birth. They shared a milieu in which Nikolai Chernyshevsky was a revered figure in the pantheon of the anti-establishment intelligentsia. Doubtless, neither found much to fancy in Chernyshevsky’s socialism. Yet in a sense, both writers-to-be responded to the Chernyshevsky tradition in ways that fundamentally shaped their future work. Rand took her utilitarian view of literature (and style) from Chernyshevsky — although substituting a very different ideological content. Chernyshevsky’s famous 1863 novel What is to be Done? From Tales about the New People, written in prison, became the progenitor of Socialist Realism and Rand’s Capitalist Realism — although in both cases the “realism” was anything but “real.” Rand, by the way, divided literature into “Naturalism,” an odious value-free approach that focussed on the seamy sides of man and society, and “Romanticism,” which exalted the feats of the principled rational individualist (Branden 24). Although her professed model was Victor Hugo (Branden 24-25), any connoisseur of Russian literature will recognize Chernyshevsky’s ascetic revolutionist Rakhmetov as a major prototype of her literary heroes and heroines. Rakhmetov was, of course, the foremost representative of “the new people” heralded in the subtitle of What is to be Done?

Both Chernyshevsky’s opus and Rand’s Atlas Shrugged center upon a young woman who is or becomes an entrepreneur. She is one of the new people who will, after the collapse of the old society, build a better, rational world. Just as John Galt displays his ideal community to Dagny Taggart, Chernyshevsky’s heroine, Vera Pavlovna, offers her dream vision of a new perfect society. Each novel ends with the old world on the verge of being replaced by the new — although the message is obviously much muted in Chernyshevsky’s work. Both novels are cast as mystery melodramas full of didactic harangues. And, not least, both have been seen as monuments in the women’s rights movement.

The Soviet Short Literary Encyclopedia sums up What is to be Done? as a “publicistic, socio-philosophical, educational novel,” something “almost unknown in earlier Russian literature.” The description fits Rand’s Atlas Shrugged like a glove, and if her opus is not the first American novel to do so, it is a fine example of that Russian genre transferred to American soil. Not surprisingly, Rand’s literary manifesto sounds quite at home in the context of Socialist Realism: “The motive and purpose of my writing is the projection of an ideal man” (Romantic Manifesto 161).

posted by Rustic Etruscan at 5:34 PM on April 21, 2015 [2 favorites]

FWIW If I had to take a guess I'd peg Stevenson as a moderate American (eg centre right most places) with libertarian leanings.

You're not entirely wrong but I do think it's worth noting that the cyberpunk dystopia of Snow Crash is literally caused by Bitcoin.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 5:36 PM on April 21, 2015 [2 favorites]

I think I lost track of what the point was in this long thread, but I just had a discussion regarding the language of sexuality. Why would a culture that never had a Victorian age use "lesbian" and a culture that never had a Krafft-Ebing use words like "bisexual?"

I don't know, I think there are a ton of issues in evaluating whether fictional worlds are left-wing or right-wing in general. Look at how everyone got Fahrenheit-451 wrong for decades, more recently disputes about what The Incredibles really means, or whether the X-Men narrative is flawed because registration of people with superpowers makes sense.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 5:42 PM on April 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

One thing I haven't seen yet on this very long thread is a serious discussion of the claim by Mr. Torgersen's defenders that he can't be a racist because he's married to an African-American and, I think, has children of mixed ancestry. Here's the thing: this is so wrong in so many different ways that I find it difficult to write without spluttering.

First is the notion that being in a relationship or marriage with someone constitutes a "Get Out of Jail Free" card when someone is called to account. How many times have you heard a line like"I have a black friend. We get along great. I'm not a racist." In the olden days, it used to be a Jewish friend, but it's the same fucking thing. You can still have friends of color and still behave in a racist manner.

Which gets to point number 2: Even if you personally aren't a racist (whatever that term means), you can still behave in a racist manner. It's actions that count here, not how you feel when you engage in those actions.

Thirdly, I'm surprised that no-one has yet mentioned Strom Thurmond, who for years was basically the walking personification of the word 'racist.' Look him up on Wikipedia, and note that in 1948, his money quote was "I wanna tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that there's not enough troops in the army to force the Southern people to break down segregation and admit the Nigra race into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our homes, and into our churches". And after that he filibustered against one of the earlier Civil Rights Acts, wrote the first draft of the Southern Manifesto in opposition to Brown v. Board of Education, and "...decried the Supreme Court opinion in Alexander v. Holmes County Board of Education (1969), which ordered the immediate desegregation of schools in the American South." [per wikipedia] Of course, this was all decades after 1924, when as a 22 year old he'd impregnated a 16 year old African American maid in his parents' house, and then spent the remainder of his life paying for her education but never actually acknowledging her. I'm not saying Brad Torgerson is the reincarnation of Strom Thurmond, but I am trying to point out how it's quite possible to be intimately involved with someone from another race as a parent or a lover, or merely a friend, and still behave in profoundly racist ways.

Phillip Sandifer put it more clearly than I could "Observe the list of things that Torgersen does not want in his science fiction: racial prejudice and exploitation, sexism and the oppression of women, gay and transgender issues, the evils of capitalism and the despotism of the wealthy. "

So please, no more of the "Get Out of Racist Jail Free" ploy. It won't work.
posted by my dog is named clem at 5:46 PM on April 21, 2015 [13 favorites]

Okay, I am in the middle of the spreadsheet but this is as far as I am going tonight. A few of the links are audio versions.
posted by jeather at 5:57 PM on April 21, 2015 [2 favorites]

corb: "So, frex, I"m not saying "Quelle horreur! Interracial romance! I, corb, am shocked and disturbed!" I'm saying, "I think, in the 1990s, based on my own admittedly imperfect recollection of the 1990s, this would have been a somewhat liberal/left position.""

I feel like you know way worse Republicans than I do. My aunt, who is white, started dating a black man in 1965, in rural Michigan, and her white, conservative, Catholic, Republican parents welcomed him into their home even though doing so led to them being shunned by some friends and neighbors, including their pastor, and they were forced to drop out of some civic organizations.

"Yay interracial relationships!" and standing up for them even in the face of social censure is a rural, religious, Republican position in NINETEEN SIXTY-FIVE.

Seriously what do you imagine the average Republican is that they are anti-interracial-relationships in 1990? What you're presenting as right-wing beliefs -- that interracial relationships are progressive in 1990! -- is so insanely caricatured that I don't even know what the goal here is. I'm not really in the business of standing up for Republicans, but, Jesus Christ, why are you trying to make them look like racist assholes? My mom's a Republican, corb. An interracial relationship in 1990 was not shocking to her and it was not outside her reading milieu because she's not a moron and she's not a bigot, she's just a Republican.

My aunt and her gentleman friend are still married in 2015, and most of the shunners later apologized to her and her family. Amor vincit omnia.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 6:10 PM on April 21, 2015 [8 favorites]

Pardon the minor digression, but I recommended a 2014 story by K. J. Parker near the top of this thread and don't have it in me to flesh out an FPP tonight with some good K. J. Parker links, so I feel compelled to mention a bit of current SF/F news here: Tom Holt has stepped forward to say he is K. J. Parker, and you may have heard a very careful comment connecting them a while back on Metafilter (or elsewhere--I think a lot of people suspected).
posted by Monsieur Caution at 6:12 PM on April 21, 2015 [4 favorites]

I don't know. There's something about KJ Parker's writing that's ineluctably feminine.
posted by Joe in Australia at 6:22 PM on April 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

I think there's absolutely a time and a place for the recognition of works for political contexts. And we have those awards - we have the Tiptree, we have the Prometheus.

It must be noted that the Libertarian Futurist Society's Prometheus Award has been won twice by Neal Stephenson, in 2005 for The System of the World and a Hall of Fame Award for Cryptonomicon in 2013. The mix of authors deemed "Libertarian" by these honors include both Ayn Rand (twice) and Ursula K. LeGuin, Robert Heinlein more often than anyone (6 Hall of Fame Awards), Cory Doctorow 3 times in the last 6 years, as well as Tolkein, Bester, Orwell (twice), Pratchett, MeFi's Own CStross (even the infamous JScalzi was nominated once for "Ghost Brigades") and Patrick McGoohan for the not-a-book original The Prisoner. A genuinely inconsistent mix of voices, in terms of politics, literary quality and fun-to-read-ness. Which does feel very "Libertarian".

As for the James Triptee Jr. Literary Award (there's that word, Literary), I've been going through the awards on its rather awkward website and have not yet found any winner or short-lister that was also nominated for a Hugo. If they started showing up in recent years, it would provide support to the SOBs' claims about an "invasion of the literary", but sorry, it just ain't been happening.

I appears to me more and more that the ultimate goal of Team Rabid is to have a Traditionalist, NeoFascist version of the Triptees but not to go to the trouble of creating one themselves. Besides, the Hugos are named after one of the oldest Old School editor/publishers and “Father of Magazine SF”. A throwback award that this particular clique just wants thrown back to them. (Not AT them.) If the survey MeFites are making proves anything (and I doubt it will prove much of anything), it's that a "fan award" decided on the vote of a few thousand among the multi-millions of fans of SF was already fatally flawed; we might as well throw it to the Hounds.
posted by oneswellfoop at 6:28 PM on April 21, 2015 [2 favorites]

1998: Forever Peace by Joe Haldeman – This one seems like another gimme. The protagonists, an interracial couple, seek to submit everyone to a surgical procedure that leaves them a docile pacifist in order to stop war. However, it is really important to note that I have not personally read this one, and I’m going off reviews.

I've read it, and TBH I think that's kind of an uncharitable synopsis. They're not trying to force everyone to undergo sheeple surgery - there's a mind-linking technology already used for military purposes, and the protagonists discover that given enough time in this linked state one's empathy becomes strong enough that killing any other human becomes unthinkable.

I mean, yeah, the novel's undoubtedly liberal/progressive in theme, no argument there, but the Wikipedia article on the book offers a far more neutral description.
posted by soundguy99 at 6:31 PM on April 21, 2015 [2 favorites]

The Prometheus Award has been won by Ken MacLeod *three time*. After that, and Charlie's awards, we dubbed it the Prometheus Award for Scottish Socialist Fiction.
posted by eriko at 6:35 PM on April 21, 2015 [4 favorites]

Seriously what do you imagine the average Republican is that they are anti-interracial-relationships in 1990?

Relevant XKCD
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 6:36 PM on April 21, 2015 [6 favorites]

The Tiptree Awards are not about "literariness" or promulgating some kind of "political context"--it is to honor work

that expands or explores our understanding of gender[...]The aim of the award is not to look for work that falls into some narrow definition of political correctness, but rather to seek out work that is thought-provoking, imaginative, and perhaps even infuriating. The Tiptree Award is intended to reward those women and men who are bold enough to contemplate shifts and changes in gender roles, a fundamental aspect of any society."

posted by kagredon at 6:44 PM on April 21, 2015 [2 favorites]

And yeah, the political diversity present among awardees of the Prometheus really puts the lie to the "all of these politics in our fiction is creating cliques and cabals and ruining the sanctity of our awards!" whining.
posted by kagredon at 6:48 PM on April 21, 2015 [2 favorites]

Eyebrows McGee: Seriously what do you imagine the average Republican is that they are anti-interracial-relationships in 1990? What you're presenting as right-wing beliefs -- that interracial relationships are progressive in 1990! -- is so insanely caricatured that I don't even know what the goal here is.

As an aside and to be entirely fair, at least within the United States according to Gallup, public support for interracial marriage cracked 50% in 1994 . So given that in 1990 the majority of the country was still against the matter, I'd say calling it relatively progressive for the time is probably accurate.
posted by CrystalDave at 6:50 PM on April 21, 2015 [5 favorites]

Seriously what do you imagine the average Republican is that they are anti-interracial-relationships in 1990?

My community in the mid 90s included people who were not happy about interracial marriage. They were resigned to its inevitable acceptance, and they started having enough sense to not mouth off about it too loudly, but they'd make their feelings known. So it's not much of a stretch for me to imagine those folks, in that era, complaining that a story "shoved that interracial couple down our throats."
posted by Banknote of the year at 6:53 PM on April 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

There are two other really political stories this year - 'The Lincoln Train' and 'Babylon 5 - The Coming of Shadows' but for the life of me, I’m not sure whether they are left or right, and they’re both really good regardless.

Over at AV Club, Rowan Kaiser read Babylon 5, the whole series, as a spirited defence of liberal democracy and of the power of institutions to solve intractable problems. Which would put it on the left. But Coming of Shadows as an individual episode does seem more about the ways that expanded power restricts one's options, which I don't find particularly political.

The liberal democracy thing was a recurring theme in Kaiser's reviews. I don't have the time right now to pick out the ones where he develops that line of thinking.
posted by Banknote of the year at 7:05 PM on April 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

Anyway, no offense to Nick Mamatas or anyone taking a look through the various Hugo winners, but the whole idea of

c. while foregrounding a left message to the extent that the story was ruined or misshaped

seems to be handwaving away the fact that whether a story is "ruined or misshaped" is totally a matter of opinion. There's no mathematical equation any of us can point to where [X] number of interracial relationships times [Y] number of female protagonists divided by [Z] number of space gun fights = Lefty Ruination Factor of [R].

And trying to argue or examine the controversy from that perspective is buying into the SP/RP narrative, getting suckered into playing the game on their terms, with their rules. Nobody needs to "prove" that they're wrong, because they can't "prove" that they're right, because this is all about their apparent inability to maturely deal with the concept that here in the 21st century a significant number of WorldCon members have different opinions about what constitutes "good" SF/F than they do.

It is literally (yes, literally) childish, where "I don't like it" = "It is terrible." Actual adults can recognize that them personally not liking something is not necessarily a sign that that something is objectively terrible.

It's a buncha fucking five-year-olds burning down the kitchen because they don't like broccoli and don't care that other people do.
posted by soundguy99 at 7:07 PM on April 21, 2015 [15 favorites]

Also, big thanks to eriko for his work in this thread giving us a clear look behind the scenes at the mechanisms and process of the WorldCon and Hugo rules. This all would have been far less comprehensible without you.
posted by soundguy99 at 7:10 PM on April 21, 2015 [17 favorites]

'Babylon 5 - The Coming of Shadows' but for the life of me, I’m not sure whether they are left or right, and they’re both really good regardless.

JMS, who created B5 and wrote The Coming of Shadows is very much a liberal. But, I don't think that comes across very strongly either in that particular episode or the series as a whole - if anything, I would boil the political message boils down to "blind adherence to ideology is bad" (hmmm. HMMM, I say.) The episode itself really doesn't have a political message, I don't think - its strength is setting in motion some wheels that had been slowly built up and watching the immediate impact, as well as really being the starting point for certain key elements of the main story arc.
posted by nubs at 7:12 PM on April 21, 2015

Banknote of the year: " So it's not much of a stretch for me to imagine those folks, in that era, complaining that a story "shoved that interracial couple down our throats.""

Yes, but corb's baseline assumption is that people who object to interracial marriage are right-wing and that stories that show interracial marriage are left-wing.

I know there were still a lot of racist assholes wandering the mainstream in 1990, but I'm not sure it follows that those people were particularly left-wing or right-wing on an American spectrum. If, as corb suggests, opposition to interracial relationships is an inherently right-wing position, then, yes, I think she's going to find that the Hugos reflect a left-wing sensibility. The fundamental claim here is that the party of Lincoln (who died 150 years ago last week) is the party of racism and that racism is inherent and inalienable to the right wing -- a core tenet. Is that what you're claiming, corb?
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 7:26 PM on April 21, 2015

Seriously what do you imagine the average Republican is that they are anti-interracial-relationships in 1990? What you're presenting as right-wing beliefs -- that interracial relationships are progressive in 1990! -- is so insanely caricatured that I don't even know what the goal here is.

Well, the Atlantic reported on a poll that claimed 46% of Mississippi Republicans wanted to ban interacial marriage, with a further 14% being 'not sure'. In 2011.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 7:35 PM on April 21, 2015 [3 favorites]

I know there were still a lot of racist assholes wandering the mainstream in 1990, but I'm not sure it follows that those people were particularly left-wing or right-wing on an American spectrum.

Well, they were *predominately* right wing, even though you could find contrary examples on either side of it. (And I could.)

Similarly, you can find very liberal people who think gay marriage is capitulation to heteronormative values, but *most* people that are against it aren't on that side of the spectrum.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 7:36 PM on April 21, 2015

Yeeeeah, not to take anything away from Lincoln, but he and many of his contemporaries would have viewed vocal support of interracial marriage as a fringe abolitionist position. It even was the subject of a hoax/smear campaign during his re-election.
posted by kagredon at 7:48 PM on April 21, 2015 [2 favorites]

Why would a culture that never had a Victorian age use "lesbian" and a culture that never had a Krafft-Ebing use words like "bisexual?"

Why would you ever use a word with any etymology? How would a culture without any of our history ever develop our language? Why aren't science fiction novels all written in indecipherable glyphs
posted by NoraReed at 7:50 PM on April 21, 2015 [15 favorites]

I agree with soundguy99's comment. Someone mentioned Blue Mars upthread as an example of a book where left wing politics distort the story, but arguably the whole point of the Mars trilogy, especially this third volume, is to chronicle an imagined anarcho-socialist utopia on Mars. The politics are definitely foregrounded but whether that ruins the story depends entirely on subjective taste of the reader.
posted by Wretch729 at 7:53 PM on April 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

I know there were still a lot of racist assholes wandering the mainstream in 1990, but I'm not sure it follows that those people were particularly left-wing or right-wing on an American spectrum.

Turns out there's data on this. Are White Republicans More Racist Than White Democrats? via Nate Silver and Alison McCann of FiveThiryEight.

A longstanding question on the survey has asked whites whether they’d object to a close relative marrying a black person. The percentage of white people saying so has fallen drastically over time, to 20 percent of white Democrats and 27 percent of white Republicans as of 2012. In 1990, by contrast, 65 percent of white Democrats and 71 percent of white Republicans said they’d object to an interracial marriage of a close relative.

So yeah, both sides look pretty racist to me, but the Republicans are a bit more racist.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 7:54 PM on April 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

Hmmm, I think casting Bilbo Baggins as a rebel is a bit much.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:03 PM on April 21, 2015

The racist assholes I was thinking about were definitely right-wing Americans who saw interracial relationships as one aspect of how The Left (cue scary music) was distorting culture. But it's a good point to remember that when it comes to racial issues, leftists don't have a spotless record either.
posted by Banknote of the year at 8:15 PM on April 21, 2015 [2 favorites]

NoraReed is onto something, but the Hugo voters ignored true science fiction and gave the rocketship to a bunch of English words strung together by Vonda McIntyre.
posted by snarkout at 8:16 PM on April 21, 2015 [2 favorites]

I'll definitely score the Haldeman as schmaltz-over-story but not politics-over-story. Basically, it's "Ain't love grand!" with an SFnal gloss. That sort of sentimentality always plays well with Hugo voters. The question of the interracial relationship is this—does it hurt the story? (It likely doesn't add very much, honestly.) But does the narrative warp itself to show that Interracial Relationships Are Good and Racists Are Bad? It doesn't even seem to come up.

On the other hand, though I liked Red and Green Mars, I thought Blue was a slog (partially due to my own sectarian disagreements) and I'll put that on the list as message-over-story, sure.
posted by Mamatas at 8:22 PM on April 21, 2015

Metafilter: all written in indecipherable glyphs
posted by Joe in Australia at 8:37 PM on April 21, 2015 [2 favorites]

Correction: Metafilter: all written BY indecipherable glyphs
posted by oneswellfoop at 9:13 PM on April 21, 2015 [3 favorites]

i think he spells it "griphus" actually
posted by NoraReed at 9:23 PM on April 21, 2015 [11 favorites]

The politics are definitely foregrounded but whether that ruins the story depends entirely on subjective taste of the reader.

Yeah, I'll have to agree with Justinian that if there's anything that ruins the story in RGB Mars, it's the atrocities against high-school level physics.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 10:06 PM on April 21, 2015

KSR's Mars books and Capital trilogy are for those who like a little fiction with their policy. If that doesn't get in the way of the story for you, then I can't imagine it's the political leaning that would be the sticking point!
posted by rtha at 10:12 PM on April 21, 2015 [3 favorites]

Hmmm, I think casting Bilbo Baggins as a rebel is a bit much.

Moorcock thinks he's reactionary.

Tolkien does, admittedly, rise above this sort of thing on occasions, in some key scenes, but often such a scene will be ruined by ghastly verse and it is remarkable how frequently he will draw back from the implications of the subject matter. Like Chesterton, and other orthodox Christian writers who substituted faith for artistic rigour he sees the petit bourgeoisie, the honest artisans and peasants, as the bulwark against Chaos. These people are always sentimentalized in such fiction because traditionally, they are always the last to complain about any deficiencies in the social status quo. They are a type familiar to anyone who ever watched an English film of the thirties and forties, particularly a war-film, where they represented solid good sense opposed to a perverted intellectualism. In many ways The Lord of the Rings is, if not exactly anti-romantic, an anti-romance. Tolkien, and his fellow "Inklings" (the dons who met in Lewis's Oxford rooms to read their work in progress to one another), had extraordinarily ambiguous attitudes towards Romance (and just about everything else), which is doubtless why his trilogy has so many confused moments when the tension flags completely. But he could, at his best, produce prose much better than that of his Oxford contemporaries who perhaps lacked his respect for middle-English poetry. He claimed that his work was primarily linguistic in its original conception, that there were no symbols or allegories to be found in it, but his beliefs permeate the book as thoroughly as they do the books of Charles Williams and C. S. Lewis, who, consciously or unconsciously, promoted their orthodox Toryism in everything they wrote. While there is an argument for the reactionary nature of the books, they are certainly deeply conservative and strongly anti-urban, which is what leads some to associate them with a kind of Wagnerish hitlerism. I don't think these books are 'fascist', but they certainly don't exactly argue with the 18th century enlightened Toryism with which the English comfort themselves so frequently in these upsetting times. They don't ask any questions of white men in grey clothing who somehow have a handle on what's best for us.

Beale is noxious, but he just proves Moorcock and Spinrad and the rest of the New Wave right when talking about how reactionary sci-fi and fantasy can be.

And yes, Phil Sandifer is fantastic. I think I got into him through MeFi. He's reviewed every Doctor Who episode, every NES game, and the magical war between Alan Moore and Grant Morrison. Currently he's writing about some little show about games and thrones, but I don't watch it so I don't follow those blogs.
posted by Charlemagne In Sweatpants at 10:33 PM on April 21, 2015 [5 favorites]

PSA for anyone who is confused, like I was, about what the Nick Mamatas challenge is, and where it appeared – which I don't think was explicitly linked here: it was in a comment on jscalzi's "Keeping up with the Hugos" post.
posted by taz at 1:34 AM on April 22, 2015 [2 favorites]

Just coming back to the inter-racial romance bit: in the early 80s there was a Hugo and Nebula-nominated novel which featured the main character involved in an inter-racial group marriage - and lecturing other members of the marriage when they proved not to be as racially tolerant as they appeared:

Friday, by Robert Heinlein.

Not to mention that PKD's 'Human Is' dates to the early 50s and is easily read as an anti-racist piece. Neither of those authors being exactly left-wing.
posted by Pink Frost at 2:02 AM on April 22, 2015 [6 favorites]

More importantly, where's the kickstarter for the irreparable gaying of Marvel?
posted by Pink Frost at 2:05 AM on April 22, 2015

it is just 100% ridiculous to me that it is somehow challenging immersion to use commonly accepted words for sexual orientations and yet it is totally unchallenged that a gagillion other sociological constructs, (heteronormativity, kissing, precious-metal based currency, romantic love, marriage, the English language, the nuclear family, gender roles, binary gender, the existance of modern sexual orientations at all, ritualized eating habits, 24 hour clocks, base-10, etc) pretty much stay unchallenged most of the time

In come cases, that reluctance is down to deemphasizing LGBT people in a way that makes us almost invisible.

But those "commonly accepted words" are both ethnocentric and heterosexist constructions. And that is killing people, not just in America, but cross-culturally as well. A fair bit of queer and feminist science fiction involves a radical deconstruction of heterosexism (along with all the other cultural constructions you mention). So I'm not willing to write off Jeminsin's Kingdoms or Sulway's Rupetta for re-imagining the cultural construction of sexuality by putting same-sex relationships at the center of the cultural myths. Or Delany for using different slang to describe bisexual plural marriage and how it's subculturally marginalized. Or Slonczewski, Lord, Le Guin, and Leckie for imagining cultures where heterosexuality isn't a primary method of social organization.

That usually involves deconstructing family, gender, and sexual orientations as well.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 5:21 AM on April 22, 2015 [3 favorites]

I am as sympathetic to Moorcock's views on Tolkien as I am those of Edmund Wilson ("Oo, Those Awful Orcs!").

But this is a total derail, so I will let it go.
posted by Chrysostom at 5:59 AM on April 22, 2015

More importantly, where's the kickstarter for the irreparable gaying of Marvel?
posted by Pink Frost at 4:05 AM on April 22 [+] [!]

1) Pink Frost is the name of my next Prog Rock band.

2) "The Irreparable Gaying of Marvel" is their first album.
posted by eriko at 6:23 AM on April 22, 2015 [2 favorites]

Not to mention that PKD's 'Human Is' dates to the early 50s and is easily read as an anti-racist piece. Neither of those authors being exactly left-wing.

Really? PKD was pretty counterculture before there was a counterculture, as well as anti-war. The FBI had a file on him (though, admittedly, this was largely made up of a letter he sent them complaining about neo-nazis.

From his books the main thing he values is empathy above all else.
posted by Artw at 6:39 AM on April 22, 2015 [8 favorites]

It doesn't help much that there is no "commonly accepted word" for my sexuality or gender that isn't both mired in medical/psychological models and a focus of ugly conflict.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 6:39 AM on April 22, 2015 [1 favorite]

Hmm. I wonder what the overlap is between these folks who are upset that they cannot judge a book by its cover on account of being upset that they might be exposed to UNEXPECTED QUEERNESS or UNEXPECTED FEMINISM and the folks who think content warnings are a stupid liberal SJW plot.
posted by rmd1023 at 7:38 AM on April 22, 2015 [23 favorites]

Trigger Warning: Irreparable Gayness.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 7:47 AM on April 22, 2015 [9 favorites]

The Irreparable Gaying of Marvel is my favorite Milan Kundera novel.
posted by kyrademon at 7:54 AM on April 22, 2015 [7 favorites]

Nothing a comic book publisher does is Irreparable. As has been shown time and time again, everything can be retconned (including, in Marvel's case, bankruptcy). And Stan Lee will be enthusiastically behind whatever it is this week as long as he gets his weekly "enthusiasm fee" check. And even though he claims to have finished his last Marvel Movie, I genuinely suspect that Joss Whedon is being prepared to become the New Stan Lee someday (because even though death is not irreparable in a comic book universe, it does require re-casting in Real Life).

But I digress.
posted by oneswellfoop at 8:23 AM on April 22, 2015

It's frustrating to me when people treat the issue of authors of fiction representing the variety of human experience and identity as a political issue. At its root it's an aesthetic concern, which has little to do with politics. Many above have spoken eloquently about the importance of representation, so I'm going to set that aside and focus on how the narrative possibilities multiply when an author is inclusive.

Inclusivity fundamentally changes the kinds of stories we tell. Though it isn't really true that there are only a limited number of plots, there are some narrative structures authors employ over and over again. I'd like to take an example of one of those recurring plots to show how being open to the variety of human experience and identity opens up an array of new narrative possibilities.

The love triangle has been a recurring narrative structure for many centuries, featuring in millions of different fictional works. Almost all love triangles take two forms:

1) One person is in love with two people and can't choose between them.

2) Two people are in love with one person and compete for their love's affection.

To represent this in a crude chart, the two forms of love triangle look like this:

1)

                   Alex
                    |
                    |
                    |
                    ↓
      Kayce -----→ Dana



2)

      Kayce -----→ Alex
         |
         |
         |
         ↓
       Dana

I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with those two types, many of my favorite works of fiction make use of them. However, these are not the only possibilities when you include more than just heteronormative pairings in a story. These two forms presuppose that humans are only attracted to one gender, that men are only attracted to women and vice versa. If we acknowledge the fact that many humans do not fit that pattern, we get different kinds of love triangles. Here are four that come immediately to mind:

3) Three people who are all in love with each other.

4) Person A loves person B and not C. B loves C and not A. And C loves A and not B.

5) Person A loves people B and C. B loves C and not A. But C loves A and not B.

6) Person A loves people B and C. B loves C and A. But C loves A and not B.

And in chart form:

3)

                 Alex
                 ↗↑
                / |
               /  |
              /   |
             /    |
            /     |
           ↙      ↓
      Kayce←----→Dana


4)

      Kayce-----→Alex
        ↑        /
        |       /
        |      /
        |     /
        |    /
        |   /
        |  /
        | ↙
       Dana


5)

                 Alex
                 ↗|
                / |
               /  |
              /   |
             /    |
            /     |
           ↙      ↓
      Kayce←-----Dana 


6)

                 Alex
                 ↗|
                / |
               /  |
              /   |
             /    |
            /     |
           ↙      ↓
      Kayce←----→Dana

By being inclusive, suddenly there are four further types of love triangle. Unlike the other two, they haven't been written about continuously for centuries, but are relatively unexplored. Furthermore, they're actual triangles, creating a dynamic between all three people in the love triangle. In the traditional ones, two people are inert to each other, i.e. there can be no attraction between them, in either direction.

Being inclusive is not just a political choice, but fundamentally an aesthetic one because it brings with it the possibility of telling many different kinds of stories. And the love triangle is just one example of the narrative possibilities inherent in inclusivity. Saying it's just political is wrong.
posted by Kattullus at 8:25 AM on April 22, 2015 [5 favorites]

And even though he claims to have finished his last Marvel Movie, I genuinely suspect that Joss Whedon is being prepared to become the New Stan Lee someday (because even though death is not irreparable in a comic book universe, it does require re-casting in Real Life).

That's what you think, Marvel fans! I cut out my heart and hid it in a MAGIC ACORN back in the seventies! DEATH itself has no hold on Smilin' STAN LEE!

posted by Iridic at 8:42 AM on April 22, 2015 [11 favorites]

I think I have added all the easily available shorts on my spreadsheet. Obviously this isn't everything, but it's good enough. It would be interesting to read them all in the same order and try to determine if they are political and if they are warped by being political.

Though it's hard to say with some of them -- Is 'The Water Which Falls Down On You From Nowhere' political simply because it's about a gay couple? In a way the entire plot is about that -- is that warped by it, or is it simply the plot? (This is essentially the question of can a protagonist be a Mary Sue in their own novel.) I think it's a lovely story anyhow.
posted by jeather at 8:49 AM on April 22, 2015 [2 favorites]

 That's what you think, Marvel fans! I cut out my heart and hid it in a MAGIC ACORN back in the seventies! DEATH itself has no hold on Smilin' STAN LEE!



Some eagle-eyed fans might've spotted Stan's Acorn in the background of Irreparably Gay X-Men 231-233. Great job, True Believers (in the Godhead of Stan Lee)! --Ed.

posted by kagredon at 8:57 AM on April 22, 2015 [12 favorites]

I guess that could be considered both left wing and ruining the story If you were an insane bigot. For normal people not so much. I think really we should go with normal people on this.
posted by Artw at 8:58 AM on April 22, 2015 [7 favorites]

I mean, that's the real million dollar question, jeather - but I think getting into all this data will help us figure out some of what's being talked about. And I think no, Artw we can't go with our own image of 'normal people' on this - I think we have to, really fairly, consider whether people could consider something left or right wing. (I note my own cite of where something could be considered right even though it wouldn't jump out at me as it.) And much as we might say 'well obviously people who don't like gay marriage are bigots' for example, a bare seven years ago, none of the candidates for the Democratic Primary were willing to endorse it. It's really important to consider not what we believe, but what the broad 'People' believe when measuring where something falls politically.

I would especially appreciate eyes like jeather and others' noting if they think something which won is conservative or from the right - it might be something that I might not notice, but someone more left wing than myself might. As it stands, through the five year period I already looked at, I don't see a lot of conservative SF, but other people may disagree (and we do have one Cadillac-driving Jesus vote for Diamond Age, frex)
posted by corb at 9:01 AM on April 22, 2015

Also for those who are looking for jeather's spreadsheet, it's here.
posted by corb at 9:05 AM on April 22, 2015

> "As it stands, through the five year period I already looked at, I don't see a lot of conservative SF ..."

Might change when you hit the years when, say, Vernor Vinge was winning a lot. "A Deepness in the Sky" (best novel winner in 2000) is supposed to have some seriously pro-market themes in it, for example.
posted by kyrademon at 9:09 AM on April 22, 2015

Fantastic post, Kattullus. That is the kind of thing I'm talking about when I say I want diversity for the sake of story and not politics or representation. (Not saying those hurt) Just give me something new! You did a great job of laying out how much story a simple change towards inclusiveness can open up.
posted by Drinky Die at 9:15 AM on April 22, 2015

Well corb, TBH if you're going to make it all about the views of freakish outliers I don't really see much point to the exercise since we already know what they think.
posted by Artw at 9:22 AM on April 22, 2015 [4 favorites]

stories that stop to make political infodumps

Yeah, that's the thing, which is hard to pin down.

Case in point: Tobias Buckell's Arctic Rising, which is a near-future thriller in a world where climate change has resulted in somewhat unregulated development in the Arctic. The lead character is a lesbian Nigerian helicopter pilot working for the UN, and the baddies are, IIRC, engineering geniuses who think they can engineer their way out of an environmental apocalypse.

I enjoyed the book, but found it flawed because it periodically stops the story to shoe-horn in a discussion of the backstory. The politics of the book are obvious: it's got a diverse cast, and a plot that deals directly with ongoing environmental issues we face right now. But the problems of the book are not associated with its politics: the problems are structural.

I think it's too easy to claim that X book is political, and it's not a good book, and therefore the politics are the problem. Which isn't necessarily true, or fair.
posted by suelac at 9:28 AM on April 22, 2015

But remember, we're not just talking about 'from the left' but also stories that are somehow bad

Yeah, that's exactly it - I've read lots of SF&F that is from a "right" or a "left" slant, but enjoyed it because it was still a good story. That's what this is supposed to be about, right?
posted by nubs at 9:35 AM on April 22, 2015 [2 favorites]

> I think we have to, really fairly, consider whether people could consider something left or right wing.

And also whether or not that viewpoint wrecks the story. A good story isn't one that doesn't have politics at all, is my understanding, but the politics of it shouldn't be the reason for the story (I think that's what I mean). That's going to be quite subjective; if one's politics are such that any appearance of positive portrayals of gay people (e.g. JCW's rant about the hand-holding at the end of Korra) ruins the story, well....
posted by rtha at 9:39 AM on April 22, 2015 [6 favorites]

Yeah, I can think of books that come from a leftish perspective that I think are actively bad books but not because of their politics. (There are also books I have read that I can tell are good books but which I just do not like.) We just have to assume that anyone who decides to read through them does so planning to be honest when reviewing them.
posted by jeather at 9:43 AM on April 22, 2015 [1 favorite]

And it's entirely possible to be somewhat right-wing and not a raging bigot. I doubt their sainted Heinlein would have any time for this bulllshit.
posted by Artw at 9:44 AM on April 22, 2015 [2 favorites]

This years Eisner nominations are out - bit of a breath of fresh air after the Hugos.
posted by Artw at 9:59 AM on April 22, 2015 [3 favorites]

Ecotopia is my go-to example of a left wing sci-fi that is totally lacking in story. But then...everybody treats it exactly as that. There is no pretending it is something else. I read it in my sociology class, not literature class. I wish the right wing could be happy in that same space when dealing with mainly political content.
posted by Drinky Die at 10:00 AM on April 22, 2015

And I think no, Artw we can't go with our own image of 'normal people' on this - I think we have to, really fairly, consider whether people could consider something left or right wing.

But people could consider anything to be anything. People could consider The Fountainhead to be lefty, Pacific Edge to be righty, The Handmaid's Tale to be pro-christian, or Piers Anthony's Firefly to be not gross pedo apologia. I mean, I see your point that you have to look at things from the imaginary viewpoint of someone 20 years ago, but still, there has to be some minimum level of reasonableness and not-a-fuckwit-ness.

Certainly by 1995 I think you have to count a basic acceptance and tolerance of homosexuality and broader LBGT stuff, as an element of a fictional future or fantasy world, as normal for sf and rejection of fiction that simply has LBGT characters or relationships for no other reason to be a mark of bigotry in the reader. There had just been to many LBGT characters and relationships under the bridge by that point; objecting to it is objecting to Clarke and Heinlein and sort of Asimov.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 10:07 AM on April 22, 2015 [2 favorites]

I think it's very fair to say that Ted Sturgeon was doing something progressive when he wrote "The World Well Lost" (a message story about homophobia that Sturgeon wrote under the orders of a time-traveling Commissar Scalzi) and that it bothered many readers (*koff* John Campbell *koff*), but that was in 1953. If the limbo bar is literally that many well-regarded science fiction stories feature gay protagonists or protagonists of color, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ .
posted by snarkout at 10:22 AM on April 22, 2015 [2 favorites]

But remember, we're not just talking about 'from the left' but also stories that are somehow bad -- let's say, plots that are essentially grafted on in order to make a political statement (JCW's 'Yes Virginia'), or stories that stop to make political infodumps (can't think of any offhand). I don't want to go simply 'left wing vs right wing'.

I happened to read it for the first time recently, but as far as stories that stop to make political infodumps ... on the right wing, yeah, Atlas Shrugged has been mentioned, but on the left, I could categorize The Tommyknockers as such. Gard's prolonged rant about the evils of nuclear power, fitting to the character and events as it is, is kinda still eight pages of politicized rage out of nowhere. My reaction to that whole passage was basically "Huh, guess Stephen King had some Opinions."
posted by kafziel at 10:28 AM on April 22, 2015 [2 favorites]

Certainly by 1995 I think you have to count a basic acceptance and tolerance of homosexuality and broader LBGT stuff, as an element of a fictional future or fantasy world, as normal for sf and rejection of fiction that simply has LBGT characters or relationships for no other reason to be a mark of bigotry in the reader.

But in 1995, a basic acceptance and tolerance of homosexuality was in no way a given with the broader general public - even if, which I'm not sure it was, it was totally cool in SF. I mean, in 1998, Matthew Shepherd was beaten to death and even though a lot of us were outraged and marching in the streets, I very clearly remember the reactions of others who didn't understand what all the fuss was - and it would take an additional 11 years for legislation to be passed.

But again, I think that this all gets to the core of why this is such a contentious issue. What counts as left-wing or right wing politicization of stories? Is it every appearance of X where X is not strictly necessary for the story to take place? (A gay character where the character does not need to be gay for the story to move, for example) Or is it only appearances of X when X seem violently shoehorned in or take over the story with talking about X? Or only appearances of X when appearances of X in the story outweigh the representative examples of X in real life?

Anyway, though - does anyone mind if we start our story reading from the early years and work up? I ask this purely selfishly since I already started in chronological order. :)
posted by corb at 10:29 AM on April 22, 2015

Is it every appearance of X where X is not strictly necessary for the story to take place?

No. I refuse to accept that every character who isn't a straight white Christianish guy is political by definition. Is there a REASON for [x] to be a guy?

I'll start reading them from 1995 up then.
posted by jeather at 10:35 AM on April 22, 2015 [11 favorites]

An example of a story where even far-right politics don't ruin a story: PAST MASTER by RA Lafferty, because the story is so odd and compelling and weird that it carries the day even if the theme is "Go attend Mass, you heathens."

An example of a story where left politics do ruin the story: THE WORD FOR WORLD IS FOREST by Ursula K. Le Guin as the baddies exist basically only to be bad. They have no motivation other than to be hissed at by the presumptive liberal reader. It's also an allegory about the Vietnam War that doesn't illuminate that conflict, or conflicts like it, in any way. Basically, it reads like a book for tiny children who need moral instruction—war is bad.
posted by Mamatas at 10:39 AM on April 22, 2015

It's worth noting that Torgersen and Correia do have people of color, gays, etc. in their own stories, so we can assume that when they say "message fiction" they don't necessarily mean "The judge was an old black lady with dreadlocks!"
posted by Mamatas at 10:40 AM on April 22, 2015 [1 favorite]

Is it every appearance of X where X is not strictly necessary for the story to take place? (A gay character where the character does not need to be gay for the story to move, for example)

Ok, seriously? That suggestion, that you can only have a gay character if there's some plot reason for the character to be gay, is itself political. The idea that straight white men are default people, and everyone else needs to have their existence justified? That's political. The idea that it's normal for straight, white guys to be overrepresented but a problem when anyone else is? That's also political.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 10:43 AM on April 22, 2015 [18 favorites]

I'm not sure science fiction and fantasy was so very accepting by the mid 90s. I mean, I remember there being plenty of books published in the mid-to-late 90s where LGBTQ characters were invariably the bad guys. Peter F. Hamilton's Reality Dysfunction springs to mind (qualifier: I never finished it because of that issue). That's one reason I turned away from reading science fiction and fantasy for a while.
posted by Kattullus at 10:43 AM on April 22, 2015

Man, Past Master is so good. I'll take Lafferty's short fiction over any novel of his, but just a delight.

(It's worth noting that The Word for World is Forest came out in 1976 and was based on a Nebula-nominated piece of short fiction from 1972; my personal touchstone for a book with politics that I guess I'm in sympathy with but which ruined the book is Brunner's The Stone that Never Came Down, from 1973, in which the indistinguishable-from-magic drug that makes people smarter also makes them match up with Brunner's anti-clerical and ZPG-oriented liberalism. Maybe in their copious free time jeather and corb can take a look at that or the LeGuin novella.)
posted by snarkout at 10:47 AM on April 22, 2015 [1 favorite]

Oh no, of course. I think what I'm trying to say is that there existed a period - which may actually continue to this day for some integers, I'm not even sure - where both prejudice existed against values of X and that people were bothered by prejudice existing against values of X, such that they would deliberately put them into stories as a way to say 'Stop being prejudiced against values of X, you assholes.' I will note that I think this is incredibly hard to measure, and also may have historical ties to the very beginning of SF - I am just noting it as a phenomenon and trying to be scrupulously honest about marking it.

For example, something I can think of offhand - Mercedes Lackey and sexuality. Mercedes Lackey's stories, I seem to recall, have higher-than-proportional rates of LGBT characters. I don't think this ruins them in any way- actually I will admit here that my guilty pleasure is Mercedes Lackey stories, especially her fairy tale pieces - but I do assume that this means Misty Lackey is trying to Say Something about Stop Being Assholes.
posted by corb at 10:47 AM on April 22, 2015

Maybe in their copious free time jeather and corb can take a look at that or the LeGuin novella.)

If you link it, I will read. ;)
posted by corb at 10:48 AM on April 22, 2015

Mamatas: "An example of a story where left politics do ruin the story: THE WORD FOR WORLD IS FOREST by Ursula K. Le Guin as the baddies exist basically only to be bad."

Which (as a novella) was a nominee for a Nebula and winner of a Hugo. Man, those SJWs have been at work since before the SPs were even born!
posted by Chrysostom at 10:48 AM on April 22, 2015

I think(?) people are missing a little what corb is trying to do here ... I get the impression she's approaching the project in stages.

Stage 1: What Hugo-winning works can be reasonably identified as having either progressive or conservative political themes?

Stage 2: Once these works have been identified, are there any that can be said to have sacrificed writing quality for the sake of Message?

I think it's been acknowledged that both of these questions are tricky and highly subjective, and can be argued about extensively for many individual works. And getting an answer to them for any individual work is still meaningless in terms of the Hugos. But it is still possible to use these questions as rough guides to detect larger patterns.

What I mean:

Many people (not all) believe that Blue Mars could reasonably be said to contain progressive political elements. Many reviews of the work (not all) seem to feel that Blue Mars was kind of a slog to read through.

This, in and of itself, doesn't mean anything. A lot of people don't think it's the politics that made the book a slog to read. I tend to think that Green Mars and Blue Mars won as consolation prizes because the much more popular and interesting Red Mars didn't, which has nothing to do with left/right politics.

But if we start seeing that it as a pattern, it might be more meaningful. If year after year after year, there's stuff where it could reasonably be said, "many people believe X is progressive, many reviews say X is pretty meh", that can be taken as evidence that there is a tendency to reward progressive politics over storytelling.

Do I think we're going to see that? No, I think it's a ridiculous contention. But there's no harm in looking and discussing.
posted by kyrademon at 10:50 AM on April 22, 2015 [3 favorites]

What counts as left-wing or right wing politicization of stories?

There is no One True Answer. It's going to be subjective.
posted by rtha at 10:52 AM on April 22, 2015 [1 favorite]

I tend to think that Green Mars and Blue Mars won as consolation prizes because the much more popular and interesting Red Mars didn't, which has nothing to do with left/right politics.

I really think personality plays a far bigger role here than explicit politics. It's why people get consolation Oscars, and it's no different for the Hugos. If you are well-liked, that's going to pay off at voting time.
posted by Chrysostom at 10:53 AM on April 22, 2015 [2 favorites]

To distract you all from my slow reading progress, I offer up the incomparable Jacob Clifton. He actually does not support the Puppies, but is sympathetic to all forms of humanity as only he can be.

It was bad because they exist in the same system I do, which says that we must reward each other for, and by, policing the boundaries of sexuality and gender: Locking eyes over my fabulous self let those two men reaffirm they were okay, in a world that is very scary and gets scarier every day, if you have a weakness for that kind of pressure. That by asserting what power they do have, they could ward off the demons in service of the power they don’t have, which is to look that system in the eye and tell it to fuck off. (A power I have asserted—in turn and n.b.—by existing. A power that comes with a multivalent and pretty heavy, welcome price.)

At the intersection of these smaller and larger power plays, the million kinds of gravity that are pulling down on all of us at different strengths, there is the possibility of a certain kind of community: At best, this is successful activism, an understanding of the need for and the way to achieve lasting change. At worst, it’s a loose affiliation of childish pockets of rage that spend more time attacking and complaining about one another than by ever engaging with the world it wishes were different.

posted by corb at 10:57 AM on April 22, 2015

> "... [T]hey would deliberately put them into stories as a way to say 'Stop being prejudiced against values of X, you assholes.' I will note that I think this is incredibly hard to measure ..."

Yeah, it is, and brings up a hidden problem. It means inclusivity FOR WHATEVER REASON gets counted as being a progressive message, and exclusivity FOR WHATEVER REASON does NOT get counted as being a conservative message.

For example, say there's an interracial couple in a story. Say that's a bit unusual for the time. You notice it. You wonder, OK, why is that there? Was it just how the characters seemed to be to the author, is there a message about tolerance there, are they just trying to project likely social changes into the future, what's up? Maybe it's a message about politics. Mark it tentatively as a progressive work.

Now, say there's a story which DOESN'T have an interracial couple. Do you even notice?

But do you know what the author intended there? Is it just how the characters came to the author, or are they someone who thought at the time, "interracial couples, ugh, can't have that?" How would you know? Just as with the first, you can't ... but this time, you didn't even ask. And suddenly the higher number of "progressive" stories as compared to "conservative" stories you're finding starts to look questionable.
posted by kyrademon at 10:59 AM on April 22, 2015 [14 favorites]

Many reviews of the work (not all) seem to feel that Blue Mars was kind of a slog to read through.

I've never finished it, and I've tried a few times after reading or re-reading the first two. I concur with the consolation prize/associated good feelings for Red Mars idea. (And 1993, when Red Mars was nominated, was a really strong year.)

It's not like Bujold needed more rockets, but Blue Mars getting more votes than Memory confuses me. (And that may well be why it did -- it's not like people don't people don't want to change it up a bit when a streak seems to go on for a while.)
posted by asperity at 11:08 AM on April 22, 2015 [1 favorite]

In the Hills, the Cities was 1984, for fucks sake... Barker's editor failing to get him to straight it up and it going on to be huge should have been an end to that kind of nonsense.
posted by Artw at 11:10 AM on April 22, 2015 [1 favorite]

And suddenly the higher number of "progressive" stories as compared to "conservative" stories you're finding starts to look questionable.

That is why I need yoooooooooooooooooooooooou. :) But in seriousness, I do know what you mean. For example - I just finished ‘Scherzo with Tyrannosaur’ (Winner: 2000 short story) and it screamed to me ‘Yes! I am a Hugo winner! I deserve to be a Hugo winner! Jesus fuck, that is everything I love about science fiction! Fuck yeah!’ But I am also capable of noting and can’t even help myself from noting that the women do receive rather short shrift in the story, condensed down to beautiful, vapid placeholders who have sex clutching dinosaur horns. And why is that? Is it because the author can't write women or doesn't consider them important? Is it because in the 90s that was considered just normal? Is it because the author was a super reactionary asshole who wanted to show women their place? I can't know. I want to know! I do! But I can't. That's one thing that makes this so damn hard. (Not to mention that even lefties were sexist sadly but that is a whole other story).
posted by corb at 11:14 AM on April 22, 2015

The journocaster tapped at his tablet, a device no larger than a pad of paper connected to the Worldwide Internetwork, a computerized communications system by which citizens throughout the empire could learn of the latest doings of their government, engage in commerce, and even send short recorded messages. "So, Honorable Brown, how does it feel to be the first bise-x'ual ruler of a province in the Am'rican empire? Do you have a message for the Earth people surprised or dismayed by your success as a member of the 'third sex' of the Am'rican peoples?"

Brown leaned back in her leather-covered chair of high office and smiled wisely. "As you know, Bob, ever since our Ultimate Court rulings during the Post-Millenial Regency, there has been increasing acceptance among the Am'rican people of relationships -- even marriages! -- between men and men or between women. Why, many provinces, including my own native O'r'gun, even now allow marriages between partners of the third sex! These 'third sex marriages' have been legal for only a short time, but our 'household partnership' laws have made things legal for over ten years." She laughed. "People thought it would cause problems, but it has been less of an issue than the failure of our O'r'gun Smeerps sportsball team."

Fanciful fiction? Or a glimpse into the terrifying future?
posted by snarkout at 11:16 AM on April 22, 2015 [11 favorites]

> "Fanciful fiction? Or a glimpse into the terrifying future?"

THE SMEERPS WILL LOSE AT SPORTSBALL?!

HOLD ME I AM SCARED
posted by kyrademon at 11:33 AM on April 22, 2015 [10 favorites]

So if we count as liberal anything that contains an interracial relationship or a gay character whose gayness doesn't serve a purpose, are we also going to count as conservative any work with no characters or color or where the characters are all inexplicably straight and male? Because if you're going to do the first, then I think you also have to do the second, although to be honest I think both are a little weird.

I don't think that's true. I think it's a perfect example of the concept of normalization and also the oft-attacked liberal whose conscious liberalness in some areas allows them to more confidently miss the fact that they are unconsciously reactionary in other areas.

Part of something being "normal" is that you can and often do communicate regarding it without at all considering what you are doing: it's default, it's passive. To step outside a norm requires effort, conscious thought: it's active. So a story that follows cultural norms may be conservative, or may be liberal: the mere absence of items challenging the norm within a single story isn't enough to reveal anything. But an active challenge gives a definite indicator. You'll never find a casual (unthinking, not used to make a point) interracial marriage in a bigot's work, for example.

As has been discussed, this becomes delicate as you approach the threshold of a paradigm shift, such as in the mid-90s, where interracial marriage acceptance at last pushes into the majority and becomes a norm itself.
posted by Palindromedary at 11:37 AM on April 22, 2015

For example, something I can think of offhand - Mercedes Lackey and sexuality. Mercedes Lackey's stories, I seem to recall, have higher-than-proportional rates of LGBT characters. I don't think this ruins them in any way- actually I will admit here that my guilty pleasure is Mercedes Lackey stories, especially her fairy tale pieces - but I do assume that this means Misty Lackey is trying to Say Something about Stop Being Assholes.

I thought Stop Being Assholes was a big and explicit subplot of at least one of her novels, which I remember as more of a coming out story with magic. But as I've said above, I don't see anything wrong with political science fiction whether we're talking Vonnegut, Heinlein, Tepper, or even Correa where firearms have more character than people. I actually thought that Correa was a more entertaining read for going full in with enthusiasm about his personal geekery. I'd pick a passionate and fun, if flawed story over an exercise in genre triangulation.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 11:47 AM on April 22, 2015

If you want examples of Politically Incoherent fiction, there are some in the FPP'd today "Little Lytton" contest honorees. (But then, those are SUPPOSED to be ridiculous)

“The experiment of multiculturalism has failed,” noted Captain Perry as he removed the laser-bayonet from the brown man’s chest.

“Why do you love me?” asked Wildflower.
“I love you because you are brave, strong, beautiful, tough, kind, spunky, and pure,” said Damien, “and unlike all the others, you stood up to Dictator James.”

The sky was gray, fitting for this grim dystopia. (which could fit into any political variation of dystopia)

and this, the Grand Prize Winner which seems Corriea-like per CBrachyrhynchos
I drew my customized Kimber 1911 .45, with the Pachmayr grips and skeletonized trigger, and leveled it coolly at the African-Americans.

In fact, the winner in the "Found" category (stuff actually published!) was the opening to REAMDE by Neal Stephenson: "Like any Russian, Sokolov enjoyed a game of chess. At some level he was never not playing it!" (also noting a sentence that begins a chapter of Stephenson's The Confusion: "Caramba!" exclaimed Diego de Fonseca, "a cucaracha has fallen onto the tortillas of my wife!". )

But there's one Little Lytton honorable mention that is relevant for other reasons: "They had the mettle of men, and yet they ate the biscuits of dogs."
posted by oneswellfoop at 11:57 AM on April 22, 2015 [1 favorite]

I know we're concentrating on the winners here, but I wonder if John Barnes' 1995 Hugo-nominated novel Mother of Storms counts as left-wing because its whole premise is about the consequences of anthopogenic climate change (consistent with what had been well-understood science for decades at that point.)
posted by Zed at 12:01 PM on April 22, 2015

> An example of a story where even far-right politics don't ruin a story: PAST MASTER by RA Lafferty, because the story is so odd and compelling and weird that it carries the day even if the theme is "Go attend Mass, you heathens."

Nothing ruins Lafferty stories. Nothing can ruin Lafferty stories. He's one of the best writers ever to grace the field (and still doesn't have enough recognition).
posted by languagehat at 12:04 PM on April 22, 2015

So basically what we're looking for here for non-lefty works is fiction that has made the most solid attempt to be wrong about things for longest?
posted by Artw at 12:04 PM on April 22, 2015

> I wonder if John Barnes' 1995 Hugo-nominated novel Mother of Storms counts as left-wing because its whole premise is about the consequences of anthopogenic climate change (consistent with what had been well-understood science for decades at that point.)

If we're counting "consistent with well-understood science" as left-wing, we might as well just give up.
posted by languagehat at 12:06 PM on April 22, 2015 [16 favorites]

Mamatas: An example of a story where left politics do ruin the story: THE WORD FOR WORLD IS FOREST by Ursula K. Le Guin as the baddies exist basically only to be bad. They have no motivation other than to be hissed at by the presumptive liberal reader. It's also an allegory about the Vietnam War that doesn't illuminate that conflict, or conflicts like it, in any way. Basically, it reads like a book for tiny children who need moral instruction—war is bad.

Perhaps... The Word for World Is Forest certainly had an effect on me as a young teen, though in that it really made me think about violence and gender roles in a way I never had before, so I think it's politics aren't really reducible to the Vietnam War, or war in general. I haven't read in a while, but when I returned to it in my twenties it held up for me. That doesn't go for all of my childhood favorites.
posted by Kattullus at 12:06 PM on April 22, 2015

2000, the 'Incomprehensible Left Insertion' story is "10 to the Sixteenth to 1" by James Patrick Kelly, which is actually a really good story with only a mild 'anti nuke' message until the last paragraph where he actually includes a link to the Green Party website inside the story and talks about it being the only party worth your vote. The thing is, it's a great story without that! It doesn't need it!

2001: I am forced to consider 'Different Kinds of Darkness' as a more-right-than-left story - it does contain children who expose the protection of adults as unnecessary, but it also involves eco terrorists willing to kill millions of people and children for their goals.

Now, as a true Harry Potter fan, what I totally want to do is deconstruct every angle of the politics of JK Rowling's "The Goblet of Fire" and spend pages and pages of happy geekery, but I will concede that though it contains multitudes of politics within it, some of which have been debated on this site, some of it by me, it is no way a 'Left' or 'Right' novel but a massively popular one.

"The Ultimate Earth" by Jack Williamson would have to be my left-pick here, but I have to admit it's pretty thin - it does posit this future society where all aggression has been removed and everyone is a pacifist through the use of nanobots, but that's also a pretty standard science fiction trope and there's not a lot of banging-over-the-head except from a conservation angle, which is again, a common trope.

2001 may be the Year Without A Contender!
posted by corb at 1:45 PM on April 22, 2015

I think it's worth pointing out that Williamson had been writing SF since 1928, and had written the novella when he was in his nineties, and had never won a Hugo for his fiction prior to "The Ultimate Earth." I think he was the sentimental favorite among fans, and that had a lot more to do with the nomination/win than any politics you could read into the story itself.
posted by creepygirl at 2:26 PM on April 22, 2015 [3 favorites]

I was curious about 10^16:1, and I read it and I would give it half points. The story is a pretty normal anti-war story -- kill this person, save the world from nuclear war -- and it's a good story, and then yes, a url to a political party and mentioning what causes he supports. Does it ruin the story? It certainly makes the story very weird, and I do think it deflates the ending, but the story is in fact still a good story, and I don't think it won because it said "vote green party!", but -- why would he do that?

GoF was the WORST Potter book, argh. I think we can all agree that whatever its problems were, they weren't about politics.

I haven't actually read any of the other stories yet (except ones I had read in the past, which are the more recent ones).
posted by jeather at 2:43 PM on April 22, 2015 [1 favorite]

Wall-E won a Hugo Award, and that movie, despite deserving to win, also ended with a heavy-handed environmental message to the extant that 'digging in the dirt of a dead planet is better than soaring through the stars'.
posted by Charlemagne In Sweatpants at 9:58 PM on April 22, 2015

Heinlein On The Puppies
posted by Artw at 11:00 PM on April 22, 2015 [15 favorites]

heh.
posted by taz at 11:25 PM on April 22, 2015

I think environmental SF (like Wall-E and the aforementioned Ecotopia) is probably the easiest place to point to situations where explicitly political messages are obvious and drive the plot or worldbuilding. Thing is, though, as consistent with what had been well-understood science for decades at that point implies, it's pretty hard to find straight-up climate change denialism in science fiction because…you know, science. The only real example I can find of a conservative/anti-environmentalist counterpart is Fallen Angels, which doesn't deny climate change, but whose dystopia is the result of environmentalists who took over the government and made the environment worse by trying to fix global warming and then also set up re-education camps because government is bad and environmentalists are bad so an environmentalist government has to be like quadruple bad.

More broadly, I think you could put construct a scale with "used-up earth" at one end and "space mining/expansion and exploitation of interplanetary resources" (a sort of galactic extension of "dominion over the earth") at the other, but you could find examples of either trope in works with a diverse showing of economic/social/political reasoning.
posted by kagredon at 11:49 PM on April 22, 2015 [3 favorites]

An example of a story where left politics do ruin the story: THE WORD FOR WORLD IS FOREST by Ursula K. Le Guin as the baddies exist basically only to be bad. They have no motivation other than to be hissed at by the presumptive liberal reader. It's also an allegory about the Vietnam War that doesn't illuminate that conflict, or conflicts like it, in any way. Basically, it reads like a book for tiny children who need moral instruction—war is bad.

I didn't think TWFWIF was at all subtle, so I understand having a reaction to it along these lines. However, I think its lack of subtlety should be read quite differently from this. For one thing, the baddies that I recall are colonialists, much more comparable to the baddies of the Black War or the Conquest of the Desert than to Vietnam's baddies. That isn't to say US involvement in Vietnam wasn't an allegorical target too--I understand that it was--but the supposedly unmotivated baddies in the story just aren't the same as Vietnam's baddies and instead share the motivations of genocidal, territory-grabbing colonialists from other periods in history. It's not a subtle representation, and you could reasonably wonder why 19th C. attitudes are governing the establishment of colonies in space, but the problem isn't that it's not based on kinds of motives real people have actually had. As to how the story illuminates that kind of conflict, it puts the focus on an indigenous resistance movement more comparable to the Pueblo Revolt or the Mahdi Uprising than to Vietnam in that there's a charismatic leader involved in stirring folks up, and several of his key characteristics have to do with things like having embedded local knowledge and being connected to divinity / local wisdom. Again, not subtle, but not wrong.

So I think what's crucial to recognize in reducing all the unsubtle stuff the story has in it to an allegory about Vietnam is that the reading is only allegorical, because, sure, the conflict in Vietnam was different. These other conflicts--generally well-known to anthropologists and presumably to Le Guin, daughter of one of the most famous anthropologists of the 20th C.--took place on a smaller scale well in the past, and the people involved generally had more obvious motives. But it's not wrong to see in them parallels to charismatic anticolonialist leaders from earlier episodes in Vietnamese history or to US policy-makers in the Vietnam War operating without a sensitive grasp of local points of view--which I recall being a problem explored in the story. I mean, the US Army at the time was well-aware of its need for an anthropological understanding of insurgent groups (it was kind of a big deal in anthropology at the time Le Guin was writing), but I don't know that they achieved the sympathetic and ethical kind of understanding that Le Guin tried to illustrate.

Incidentally, I also think it's very unfair to the story to say that its moral is simply that war is bad. My recollection is that it spends a substantial chunk of the narrative exploring how locals interact with each other, what the meanings of their behaviors are, and how they're constrained by a different set of norms, such that you have to look at things from their point of view to understand what they do. Le Guin borrows cultural stuff from Australian groups, but also from Native American groups, languages with gender-specific vocabularies, etc., etc. I remember it being one of the most straightforward examples of anthropological SF there is, and her point that maybe the locals were organized in a way that was ecologically important and meaningful continued to be current anthropology for at least a decade after she wrote the story. Anyway, I'm pretty sure that, in addition to the anticolonialist message perhaps aimed at children or the environmentalist message perhaps aimed at graduate students, you're supposed to get what was in the 70's still an undergraduate-level lesson in avoiding ethnocentrism and looking at the world from other points of view. Not subtle and not without its flaws, but especially for its time, a moral that's not just for tiny children and also not lacking a basis in empirical social science.
posted by Monsieur Caution at 12:37 AM on April 23, 2015 [9 favorites]

If we're talking about Le Guin where story is sacrificed for message, color me highly surprised that we're discussing The Word For World Is Forest and not Always Coming Home.

(In general, I love Le Guin, and The Dispossessed in particular is one of my favorite books.)
posted by kyrademon at 2:38 AM on April 23, 2015 [1 favorite]

Thing is, though, as consistent with what had been well-understood science for decades at that point implies, it's pretty hard to find straight-up climate change denialism in science fiction because…you know, science.

But then you get Michael Crichton (for airport thriller values of SF)
posted by sukeban at 2:55 AM on April 23, 2015 [2 favorites]

Jeet Heer makes a number of good points on taste and slate voting. I especially appreciated these:

7. The nomination process works on the wisdom of crowds, which the final vote winnows to a winner. Slate voting undermines.

8. For slate voting to be honest, you'd have to have hundreds of Sad & Rabid puppies having exact same taste in all categories.

9. Since it is impossible that hundreds agree exactly on all those categories, slate voting reflects not taste but a political consensus.

posted by Kattullus at 5:08 AM on April 23, 2015 [1 favorite]

GoF was the WORST Potter book, argh. I think we can all agree that whatever its problems were, they weren't about politics.

Dear Parents:

We're going to put some of your children in a life-or-death battle against a dragon, and then render some of them unconscious and stick them underwater and hope they're rescued! Care to come watch?

Regards
-- The most prestigious universities of magic in the world.

PS Because Health and Safety can FUCK RIGHT OFF because MAGIC!
posted by eriko at 5:52 AM on April 23, 2015 [9 favorites]

Oh man that Heinlein quote. There is nothing new in fandom, eh?
posted by Andrhia at 5:56 AM on April 23, 2015 [2 favorites]

Heinlein On The Puppies

The irony is, that was an argument against the Pious Critic. The politically correct ones who had either panned or refused to read Starship Troopers because of its libertarian, pro-military, quasi-fascistic philosophies. Google Books has the full quote, and it's worth reading for the context.

Heinlein is also quoted there for one of his more well-known statements regarding Starship Troopers' reception by the critics: "Surely any writer has the right to choose an unpopular theme, and develop it with all his skill, without being condemned -- without being identified with the thing he writes!"

Which is of course a similar yet somewhat opposite complaint to that of the Puppies, who believe they are being shunned for holding unpopular opinions in real life, not necessarily for writing them into their work, or for writing poorly. Similar in that the argument being made is that the art is not the artist. Opposite for obvious reasons.
posted by zarq at 6:47 AM on April 23, 2015

kagredon, it's interesting that you bring up Fallen Angels, because I presume based on some of his other work that Flynn is broadly in political consensus with Pournelle and he's picked up multiple Hugo nominations in the last ten years. Would anyone have been particularly surprised if Eifelheim had won a Hugo? (I don't think it was the best novel nominated that year, but I don't think that Rainbow's Edge was either.) Or if, say, The January Dancer had picked up a nomination? (Based on my minimal reading of the Puppies' slates, there is not a great body of unjustly overlooked Michael Flynns out there.)
posted by snarkout at 7:18 AM on April 23, 2015

Would anyone have been particularly surprised if Eifelheim had won a Hugo?

Surprised? I dunno. Irritated? For sure.
posted by Zed at 7:34 AM on April 23, 2015

Strangely, I think Heinlein largely does fit on that Procrustean bed he's decried. Sure I guess there's some slightly transgressive sex stuff in the later work (or wait.. isn't there incest in one of the last books?)

By today's standards he's reactionary. But at the time certain books were published, they and he were considered controversially progressive.

Stranger in a Strange Land (1961) in particular was deeply transgressive: it touted free love, polyamory and pushed the idea that sex was positive because it was pleasurable -- as opposed to the more traditional Catholic/Christian religious shaming of the act. Time Enough for Love (1973) featured Lazarus Long having an incestuous relationship with his mother. The two books fall into his "Middle Period" not his last works.

The Foundation series is about the problem with technocratic utopias, I guess, but not in a very relevant way compared to the ways that more contemporary work on dystopias tackle those issues.

I assume you mean the Future History series? Asimov did the Foundation series. Although Heinlein's novels and short stories often revolved around specific technologies, I don't know if I'd call the worlds of that series technocratic utopias.
posted by zarq at 7:49 AM on April 23, 2015 [1 favorite]

I wouldn't call Foundation's universe utopian, either - they're battling the collapse of civilization. *Maybe* in the late ones with Gaea, but I think most people pretend that didn't happen.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:05 AM on April 23, 2015

I wouldn't call Foundation's universe utopian, either - they're battling the collapse of civilization.

Robot series, the Settler planets, perhaps. The presence of robot servants creates a utopia that slows progress, evolution and eventually dooms the Settlers to the historical record. That series was eventually merged with Foundation, millennia later in-universe.
posted by zarq at 8:12 AM on April 23, 2015

The only real example I can find of a conservative/anti-environmentalist counterpart is Fallen Angels

It's not the whole thrust of the novel, but (also Niven and Pournelle's) Footfall has, IIRC, one character who's an environmentalist but otherwise smart who Comes To His Senses and gives himself a mental speech about how we should have been worrying about whether we have enough nuclear-powered orbital laser fortresses to fend off interstellar invaders and not about the environment because the invaders will just fuck it up anyway.

It would still make an awesome miniseries. Especially when Michael takes off.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 8:42 AM on April 23, 2015 [3 favorites]

Cheryl Morgan: Puppygate – Winners and Losers

The title of this post was inspired by a podcast that Kevin guested on. One of the hosts of the show was complaining that, no matter what fandom did in response to Puppygate, VD was bound to win. I thought that was wrong, so I started thinking about who the winners and losers were in all of this.

The most obvious losers are, of course, Correia and Torgersen. Firstly they have been portrayed in large numbers of articles all over the mainstream media as a couple of bad losers who, when they didn’t get the share of the Hugo cake they felt they were entitled to, invited a bunch of thugs (VD and GamerGate) to come and piss all over the cake so that no one could have it. Secondly, as has been pointed out by many people, they have been totally pwned by VD. And they daren’t try to dissociate themselves from him too strongly because if they do he’ll come after them next.
posted by Artw at 9:01 AM on April 23, 2015 [5 favorites]

I think The Word For World is about the long Vietnam War, including the activities of the French. That said, if people do not find it a good example of the sort of thing I am looking for, I'll peek through my shelves and find something else. I'm tempted to use another Le Guin—THE TELLING—but I don't think that was very widely read.
posted by Mamatas at 10:56 AM on April 23, 2015

I am shamefully excited at the prospect of drama this weekend when John C. Wright, his wife, and Brianna Wu are all at Ravencon this weekend.
posted by Going To Maine at 11:51 AM on April 23, 2015 [1 favorite]

Also, if you are interested in a weird listen, the Honey Badger Brigade (AVFM's women's auxiliary) had John C. Wright as a guest on their podcast.

Besides the whole MRA thing, the badgers tend to fall on the left of the social divide. Meanwhile, John C. Wright is boldly, deliriously on the right of many social issues, and is quite willing to mix it up on those topics. There's an awkward vibe running through the whole discussion of the hosts knowing that they are getting close to topics over which they'd be happy to get into shouting matches at and then steering things back to the badness of the SJWs. It's not great radio, but it is strange.
posted by Going To Maine at 12:50 PM on April 23, 2015 [1 favorite]

Brianna and Frank Wu have posted a statement about Ravencon that I think amounts to "Yo JCW, please don't pick a fight with us during the con."
posted by Andrhia at 1:22 PM on April 23, 2015 [8 favorites]

It's unreal how widespread the fight about this is. I stopped into a used bookstore the other night hoping to pick up some old Hugo winning novels so I could be more fair about those rather than relying on reviews, and the proprietor of said store talked to me about the contoversy and pointed me back to Jo Walton's Hugo series.

That said, they had none, so I'm probably going to Kindle a few, at least the ones that it looks like nitty gritty reads are required for. However, I did pick up a John C Wright novel, and I think I may understand why is writing may have gone off the rails. (I'm basing this on Yes, Virginia, I still am open to being pleasantly surprised by other offerings)

Wright made a habit of creating fiction in which gods or godlike beings played a huge part. As an atheist, however, they were fake gods, or techno gods, or gods without the problem of religion, and of course he never expected anyone to take him seriously.

Now, post-conversion, he may no longer feel like he can in good conscience make up these gods, and figures 'hey, I"ll work with gods that I think are real!' not understanding that part of what makes fake gods interesting is that you are building an entire ethos, not just repeating one currently in circulation.
posted by corb at 1:29 PM on April 23, 2015 [1 favorite]

There is a brief interview on youtube where Wright discusses his conversion. It sounds like a very personal experience, but Wright's framing it comes off (to me) as somewhat self-centered. Whatever happened, I suspect that this is a case of somebody burning brightly on one end of the spectrium all too glad to flip and burn brightly on the other.
posted by Going To Maine at 1:37 PM on April 23, 2015

While taking up the read-the-Hugos challenge is well and good, maybe we should consider specific examples from the Puppies themselves of what they consider to be political. Torgerson has specifically brought up
Mercedes Lackey's The Last Herald-Mage (deceptive packaging), and Ancillary Justice and "The Water That Falls On You From Nowhere" as getting nominated due to affirmative action.
posted by Going To Maine at 3:23 PM on April 23, 2015 [3 favorites]

Lots of interesting stuff from the File770 blog, including links to both/all sides of the issue, including this which I wholeheartedly agree with. I've said before that the "limited fan base" system of the Hugos was fatally flawed, and all that this year has done is identify those who would use it to kill the awards (or more likely, to steal them for their own Culture Warrior purposes).

But I was also shocked to see this news item:

Baen Books Announces... A new novel by Hugo finalist, Audie Award Winner, and New York Times best-selling author, Larry Correia, titled Wendell

It is speculated that the title character is a manatee. Now I am SO glad I don't go by 'Wendell' anymore, even though just a few days ago, I learned that Ursula "Digger" Vernon (an author I DO respect) has been publishing a series of children's books about Danny Dragonbreath, who has a best-friend/sidekick named Wendell and I had begun pondering my own Wendell revival (subject to reading the antics of Wendell in the books, of course).

Anyway, as a Former Wendell, I wish to formally disavow any possible connection with Corriea's Wendell book, and that my favorite aquatic mammal is NOT the Manatee, but rather the Otter.

(I have suffered this kind of Identity Theft before... when I was in the hospital for heart problems, I learned that Piers Anthony had published a book in his interminable Xanth series - the only content that ever made me weary of punning - titled "Swell Foop"... this was 2 years after I had registered oneswellfoop.com as the url for my blog. And yes, this did not do anything good for my recovery.)
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:35 PM on April 23, 2015 [5 favorites]

Mercedes Lackey's The Last Herald-Mage (deceptive packaging)

Oh god.

Nonetheless, I think it is significant that neither the books’ covers, nor any of the back-of-the-book summaries — the stuff, in short, that usually gets the browsing reader to pick up a paperback and buy it — mentions what is usually considered the most “important” aspect of Vanyel’s life story: the fact that he is gay. And it is not until the reader is at least 40% into the first book, and hopefully already well-engaged by the story, that this revelation is made not only about the character but to the character; in other words, the story is structured to draw readers in and then surprise them with that element, in such a way that I cannot help but think (though this is admittedly unproveable) it was deliberately designed to reach audiences who would not have bought the book if they had known about the hero’s sexuality right up front.

The covers in question. Make your own call about how deceptive they are.
posted by Zed at 3:52 PM on April 23, 2015 [5 favorites]

Ancillary Justice and "The Water That Falls On You From Nowhere" as getting nominated due to affirmative action.

I haven't read Ancillary Justice yet, but "The Water That Falls On You From Nowhere' is gorgeous. But the thing about it - even laying aside the gay angle that may be what's being objected to, if you make them just racially diverse or what have you - it is the human connections that make that story fly. That story is a romance about people with some sci fi elements, not a sci fi story with some romance elements.

However, that's also been a part of SF/Fantasy since the beginning. I refuse to embark on another reading project when I haven't finished my first one, but I'd bet there are a lot of others that meet that mold, but it's not obvious to them because it doesn't involve gay characters or a coming out.
posted by corb at 3:52 PM on April 23, 2015

This is why I would stick to my guns on the normal-people-not-crazy-bigots thing.
posted by Artw at 3:55 PM on April 23, 2015 [4 favorites]

Tell you what, when I'm done, I'll post this on Torg and Correia's posts and let them take or refute that these are their reasonings when looking at Hugos.
posted by corb at 4:03 PM on April 23, 2015 [1 favorite]

(I just noticed that the Last Herald-Mage thing that Going to Maine linked and I quoted is by Stephen J., a commenter on Torgersen's blog, not Torgersen.)
posted by Zed at 4:03 PM on April 23, 2015

Oops, my bad.
posted by Going To Maine at 4:17 PM on April 23, 2015

That gender is less important to Raadchai culture than planet of origin, class, and patronage is just set-dressing for Justice. The meat of the conflict centers on two different directions of transhumanism and the resulting effects on culture, politics, military policy, and moral accountability. That, and having a richly detailed setting is probably why it won six awards last year.

It's also, counter to stereotype, almost anti-romantic.

I find it interesting that no one is throwing The Player of Games against the wall for arbitrarily assigning gendered pronouns to Culture characters for the convenience of its barbarian readers who are even more savage than the antagonists that the Culture is trying to assimilate. The narrator breaks the fourth wall to tell us this in the introduction to Act 2. My personal opinion is that Games does translated gender ambiguity less well than Justice or Left Hand of Darkness.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 4:34 PM on April 23, 2015 [3 favorites]

God, I really hope the Wus don't get any shit at Ravencon for this. (I hadn't made the connection that Frank Wu was THAT Frank Wu before.) They've dealt with enough for several lifetimes.
posted by NoraReed at 4:35 PM on April 23, 2015 [3 favorites]

The idea that Ancillary Justice and The Water That Falls On You From Nowhere were nominated/won due to affirmative action is absolutely Torgersen's, though.
posted by kyrademon at 4:36 PM on April 23, 2015 [7 favorites]

OH CHRIST YOU GUYS I MADE THE MISTAKE OF LOOKING AT TOM KRATMAN'S FORUM HOLD ME.
posted by corb at 5:20 PM on April 23, 2015 [3 favorites]

Can someone near corb stage an intervention?
posted by Elementary Penguin at 5:22 PM on April 23, 2015 [4 favorites]

I...don't actually know if this is supposed to be satire or not, but it is fucking terrifying. I think I need to go home and pour myself a drink.
posted by corb at 5:25 PM on April 23, 2015

...okay I've been assured it is satire, thank God. But I maintain that the fact I legitimately could not tell is the scariest thing of all.
posted by corb at 5:30 PM on April 23, 2015 [1 favorite]

pullquote from corb's last link:
Anyway, just remember that the Social Justice Warriors are just as frightened as you are, and probably more so. They are not really "warriors". We are.
Sometimes the truth sneaks out.
posted by oneswellfoop at 5:31 PM on April 23, 2015

they can say that to my gaming's feminist illuminati shield

which i can then use to hit them in the face
posted by NoraReed at 5:36 PM on April 23, 2015 [5 favorites]

It has to be satire, because if Kratman actually wrote that, there's no way he'd keep his name off it.

Plus I do not believe he would use the phrase "size-positive," opting instead for any one of a dozen more loathsome options.
posted by KathrynT at 5:38 PM on April 23, 2015 [3 favorites]

OH CHRIST YOU GUYS I MADE THE MISTAKE OF LOOKING AT TOM KRATMAN'S FORUM HOLD ME.

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 5:58 PM on April 23, 2015 [6 favorites]

So in my quest to better understand what -if any- specific works or acts Brad Torgersen considers to be bad in the Hugos, Ive been digging through his blog. This has been a silly use of time, since its clear that the Sad Puppies are really just cover for Vox Days slate. Nonetheless, I wanted some evidence that I could grasp. Here are my observations. I tried to find good quotes, but some are really more from the gestalt.

Torgersen believe that Chicks Dig Time Lords won because of a whisper campaign
- "Chicks Dig Time Lords beat The Resnick & Malzberg Dialogues for Best Related Work [b]ecause TruFans are so obviously devoted to scholarly, serious discussion and inspection of the field."
- There are also “flash crowd” campaigns, such as the one which saw Chicks Dig Time Lords make, and then win, its respective category for its year. There were certainly more sage and scholarly related works competing with Chicks Dig Time Lords, but as one veteran said to me before the final vote, “You’ve got probably thirty women writing and editing in that book, and all of them have lots of friends. Of course it’s going to win.”

Unhappiness that The Wheel Of Time was nominated for a Hugo is a sign of problematic old guard outrage against the popular.
- Witness the literal booing and groans (last year) when it was announced that Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time was nominated.
- Wheel of Time fans managed to get the entire series (Jordan/Sanderson) on the ballot too — for Best Novel Hugo. Which is not precisely against the rules of the nomination process, but Wheel of Time is a massive series that is almost 30 years old. Seeing it in the Best Novel category alongside the other books for 2014 is highly unusual to say the least. So unusual, in fact, that some people in fandom have chosen to get upset about it

The fact that media tie-in books & popular books dont get Hugo noms is a sign of fandom/literary stuffiness.

Joy at diverse awards bodies because they happen to be diverse is a sign of affirmative action-esque tendencies.
- I noted with unhappiness the “squee” that erupted from some individuals when an all-female Nebula list hit the internet airwaves earlier in the season.

Baen authors and Analog authors dont win Hugos much these days.
- "As happened in 2012, I felt like something of an outsider to the final ballot, only more so this time because I’ve added “Baen author” to my list of credentials, along with a second Analog magazine AnLab readers’ choice award. Men with my kind of pedigree just don’t get to have Hugo awards very often these days. Maybe in 1970, when Larry Niven won for Ringworld. But not now. The Worldcon cotillion’s zeitgeist just isn’t there, for a guy like me to easily score a rocketship."

Theres a real concern that worldcon is small and shrinking, and that it needs to expand to soak up more of the folks who show up at ComicCons. This Worldcon v. ComicCon post.

Also, as a final note, Torgersen mentions that Vox Day also ran a slate during Sad Puppies 2. Has anyone crunched the numbers for how well it did at the time?
posted by Going To Maine at 7:02 PM on April 23, 2015 [5 favorites]

(Also, doing the skimming for that post was a hyper waste of time. Don't do it, kids. So many words! So many boring, boring words.)
posted by Going To Maine at 7:04 PM on April 23, 2015 [5 favorites]

Going to Maine: Please feel free to visualize me doing the exact same thing as the student wearing the Valve T-shirt in this strip.
posted by seyirci at 7:17 PM on April 23, 2015

The fact that media tie-in books & popular books dont get Hugo noms is a sign of fandom/literary stuffiness.

There's a grain of truth there, but the fact that media tie-ins don't, as a rule, get respect from their own franchises (e.g., the Star Wars EU) doesn't help.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 7:42 PM on April 23, 2015 [2 favorites]

In what could be considered a kind of statement on "sad puppies" and "rabid puppies", the Nebulas have selected as their Toastmaster for this year's awards ceremony none other than that truly Big Dawg and Man's Man, Nick Offerman, a.k.a. Ron F***ing Swanson.

I predict much Recreation.
posted by oneswellfoop at 8:06 PM on April 23, 2015 [2 favorites]

Men with my kind of pedigree just don’t get to have Hugo awards very often these days. Maybe in 1970, when Larry Niven won for Ringworld. But not now. The Worldcon cotillion’s zeitgeist just isn’t there, for a guy like me to easily score a rocketship.

And that does seem to be what it keeps coming around to, doesn't it. Winning a Hugo hasn't been easy enough for him. I mean, he's been at this for four years now.

(Also, dude, a "cotillion" is a kind of dance.)
posted by Zed at 9:39 PM on April 23, 2015 [11 favorites]

I'm trying to figure out what word he meant. Coterie maybe?
posted by Justinian at 10:07 PM on April 23, 2015

Yep, "a cotillion is a formal ball and social gathering, often the venue for presenting débutantes during the débutante season"... so it's for débutantes, the female aristocracy, and the men are merely window-dressing escorts. Everything these Real Men hate (forget that Real Women Who Aren't Privileged Nits don't like it either).
posted by oneswellfoop at 10:12 PM on April 23, 2015 [4 favorites]

I think he meant "cotillion", but he meant it as an insult, since a cotillion (at least in common use as I understand it) is a fancy-schmancy dance thing for rich people, often where they "introduce" their now-marriageable daughters to local society.

IOW, "WorldCon is a buncha (feminine) snobs putting on airs who only allow the "right" people in to their limited circle of approval" is what he was aiming for with "cotillion."
posted by soundguy99 at 10:19 PM on April 23, 2015 [2 favorites]

dammit, oneswellfoop . . . .
posted by soundguy99 at 10:20 PM on April 23, 2015

Yes, I was involved in one real life cotillion in my teenage, circa 1970... I hate the concept too, and I'm a Social Justice Wizard. And I suspect a Vox Day-controlled awards ceremony would actually resemble a cotillion, except the "debs" would be mostly male and all wearing Space Officer Uniforms with Atomic Epaulets.
posted by oneswellfoop at 10:39 PM on April 23, 2015

I'd thought he'd just had a brainfart going for "contingent." But I guess not, 'cause he does hit it over and over again. As tortured as the usage is, I think you're probably right, soundguy99 and oneswellfoop.
posted by Zed at 10:58 PM on April 23, 2015

I guess. I suppose you have to be a dumbass misogynistic crybaby to really grok it.
posted by Justinian at 11:40 PM on April 23, 2015

I'm trying to figure out what word he meant. Coterie maybe?

Mur Lafferty has basically ruined "coterie" for me because it means "pretty much all supernatural people" in her Shambling Guide books.

Which reminds me: those books are super fun and you should all check them out.
posted by NoraReed at 11:49 PM on April 23, 2015 [1 favorite]

Some of their contentions, I honestly struggle to figure out what they're talking about.

For example, on prominent Puppy blog posts and comments I've many times seen the contention that there is some kind of prejudice in the Hugos against authors published by Analog.

Looking at the years before the Puppies started getting works on in 2013, the last time a work from Analog got nominated for one of the Big Four Writing Awards was ... 2012. It was by Brad Torgersen. Before that, though, you have to look all the way back to ... 2011 (Eric James Stone AND Sean McMullen). What are they talking about? In 2003, long after the mid-90's when Torgersen says everything started going south, Analog stories WON THREE OUT OF THOSE FOUR AWARDS CATEGORIES.

Another contention is that the Hugos are prejudiced against Baen authors. As I've noted before Baen, which as far as I know mainly publishes novels, has been nominated and won in that category EXACTLY the median number of times for a Hugo-winning publishing company (8 nominations and 2 wins for best novel). And of course they're doing better than any of the many which have never won anything -- Avon has 5 nominations and no wins, Pyramid has 4 nominations and no wins, etc., etc., etc., and dozens if not more have never gotten a nomination at all.

(And during the very brief period when Jim Baen had a sci-fi magazine that published shorter works -- Jim Baen's Universe, which only ran from 2006-2010 -- stories from there got a few nominations.)

I read Puppy nominee Michael Williamson say that Gene Wolfe and Steven Barnes are the kind of authors the Puppies are trying to champion, because the Hugos are prejudiced against them. Barnes has been nominated. Gene Wolfe has been nominated NINE TIMES. No, they never won. But being nominated puts them ahead of Michael Moorcock, Tim Powers, and J.G. Ballard. Not winning puts them in the company of Lester del Rey and Ray freakin' Bradbury.

The things they said are winning unfairly are equally baffling to me. Ancillary Justice? So the affirmative action cabal not only controls the popular-vote Hugos, but also the Clarke, the Nebulas, The BSFA, Locus, and the Kitschies? And all the book reviews? And the readers who have bought more copies of it than, say, Correia's latest book?

I get that they don't like these works, but how can they possibly believe that everyone else secretly feels the same way and they're only being promoted by a small social-issues oriented cabal? Redshirts sold something like 80,000 copies BEFORE it came out in paperback. Who do they think was buying it? Do they think the ~400 people who ranked it number 1 on the 2013 Hugo ballot each duped 200 close friends into picking up a hardcover copy?

What are they TALKING about?
posted by kyrademon at 2:21 AM on April 24, 2015 [25 favorites]

kyrademon, don't go introducing evidence Into this conversation for goodness sake. This is about the hurt feelings and expectations of a couple of best-selling, Hugo-nominated authors who feel there is a conspiracy preventing them from having the success they deserve. They don't call the genre "science fact" after all.
posted by harriet vane at 5:16 AM on April 24, 2015 [3 favorites]

I get that they don't like these works, but how can they possibly believe that everyone else secretly feels the same way and they're only being promoted by a small social-issues oriented cabal?

But they do! They think Tor bought up copies Redshirts itself in order to get it on whatever bestseller lists (presumably also Ancillary Justice). And of course the juried awards are just full of SJW juries.
posted by jeather at 5:26 AM on April 24, 2015

One of the things I find interesting about novels offered by women over the last few years is that they tend to reject the romance plot line of meeting, misunderstanding, and resolution.

It's reasonable to interpret Breq in Ancillary Justice as aromantic if not asexual, although Sword briefly describes masturbatory sex among ancillaries. Seivarden's ambiguous interest in Breq has been largely unappreciated.

Lord's Best of All Possible Worlds has a romantic relationship without a romantic misunderstanding. Grace even has a business-trip fling with a third party, which results in absolutely no jealousy on the part of the man she marries in the last chapter. This is in refreshing contrast to, "You had sex with him? I must reevaluate my life and our relationship."

Goblin Emperor gives us an arranged marriage by government decree, so the question there isn't "will they?" but "what kind of relationship will they have?"
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 6:26 AM on April 24, 2015

I think he means that Justice got a huge boost from the cyborg soldier and AI segment of fandom.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 6:37 AM on April 24, 2015 [8 favorites]

The things they said are winning unfairly are equally baffling to me. Ancillary Justice? So the affirmative action cabal not only controls the popular-vote Hugos, but also the Clarke, the Nebulas, The BSFA, Locus, and the Kitschies? And all the book reviews?

What I take away from this is the magnitude of their dislike of these kind of works. The size of their pain that the culture is in a different spot from them. I think Torgerson's counter would be that, yeah, Ancillary Justice is well-reviewed, but is it popular?

But really, I'd say that the thing to double-down on is that Torgersen is incoherent. He's noticed things that could be construed as real problems (small worldcon attendance & voting relative to the popular interest in sci-fi, the -perceived- declining relevance of the Hugo) and to try and fix them by expanding the culture he's joined up with a project that explicitly started as an act of political trolling. He's fronted a slate that, while ostensibly constructed democratically, is largely made up of candidates not picked out by the comments on the post where he asked for suggestions.

It's a mishmash. It's gobbledygook. And I'm so perplexed because he doesn't seem to see that or want to address those issues. Say what you want about Vox Day and Larry Correia, but at least they were honest about their aim of commandeering votes.
posted by Going To Maine at 6:43 AM on April 24, 2015 [3 favorites]

As I've noted before Baen, which as far as I know mainly publishes novels, has been nominated and won in that category EXACTLY the median number of times for a Hugo-winning publishing company (8 nominations and 2 wins for best novel)

But those don't count because they're by Lois Bujold and she doesn't even have a dick and they're not real Baen books in spite of the Baen in large friendly letters and the spaceships exploding on the covers and them being milsf with long digressions about the use of tactics in military engagements and suchlike nosirreebob they aren't really Baen books at all they're really SJW-press books that pass as Baen.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 7:16 AM on April 24, 2015 [11 favorites]

Ancillary Justice is quite popular, incidentally - it's sold about 3 times as many copies as the average book. I think that's why the Puppies keep pointing to Amazon reviews; it's the one place where they seem to have an edge. It doesn't seem to occur to them that a work could be both popular and controversial, or popular and divisive, which would affect those scores.

The Catcher in the Rye, which has sold around 65,000,000 copies total and sells 250,000 every year, has a lower Amazon review score than Ancillary Justice, or for that matter any of the novels either the Puppies or the majority of the voters got on the ballot. I guess it must be "less popular".

And yeah, Torgensen's blog in particular tends to make my head spin. He really wants words to mean whatever he wants them to mean. E.g. (I'm paraphrasing here, but really not by much):

We tried doing it 'their way' and got nowhere! = We tried winning by getting enough votes but we couldn't get enough votes.

So we decided to bring in more Democracy! = So we figured out how to exploit the rules so that 15% of the votes would dominate 70% of the ballot.

And Transparency! = I looked at a few suggestions but mostly picked whatever I felt like.

We only did openly what has been going on behind the scenes for years! = The numbers pretty much prove that no one has done this ever before.

So they're mad because we let in the 'proles' and the 'wrong kind' of voters! = People are pissed because we figured out how to exploit the rules so that 15% of the votes would dominate 70% of the ballot.

It's dizzying.
posted by kyrademon at 7:43 AM on April 24, 2015 [9 favorites]

As I've noted before Baen, which as far as I know mainly publishes novels, has been nominated and won in that category EXACTLY the median number of times for a Hugo-winning publishing company (8 nominations and 2 wins for best novel)

I'd say three wins -- The Vor Game, Barrayar, Mirror Dance. I'm guessing maybe you didn't count Barrayar because it was originally serialized in Analog, but that was July-October '91 with the Baen publication coming in October '91 (according to its copyright page according to Wikipedia), still well before the nominations.
posted by Zed at 7:49 AM on April 24, 2015

Yup, I'd counted that as one of Analog's nominations and wins. Of course, the Puppies do say Analog never gets nominations or wins either ...

(Bujold's "The Mountains of Mourning", which won for Novella, was also originally published by Analog and later republished by Baen, I believe.)
posted by kyrademon at 8:07 AM on April 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

What's more likely:

1. A generation of science fiction fans who encountered Le Guin and Atwood on the curriculum, and had politically themed science fiction via ST:TNG, Babylon 5, Firefly, the Star Wars prequels, and post-British Invasion comics are buying a broader range of books.

2. A small number of SJWs have been cooking the books for the last ten years?
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 8:30 AM on April 24, 2015 [10 favorites]

kyrademon: Yep. "Mountains of Mourning" is in the omnibus Young Miles. I read it last year, paperback by Baen.
posted by johnofjack at 10:50 AM on April 24, 2015

Having read some of Torgersen's comments on his own posts, I can flesh out his perspective a bit more.

Torgersen knows about at least twelve campaigns for Hugos: "I’ve been doing this [going to sci-fi cons and writing?] for five years, and I’ve encountered no less than one dozen campaigns of various types. From the “buddy up” campaign surrounding Chicks Dig Time Lords to the campaign to get Red Shirts a best novel win, to the engineering of “socially conscious” voting that depends entirely on the sexuality, gender, and ethnicity of the author or the author’s characters."
“The Water That Falls On You From Nowhere” was a very up-front [“stick it to people who want science fiction or fantasy in their science fiction and fantasy”] story, in the same manner [as “If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love”]."
"Don't kid yourself [that SFWA isn't prejudiced against conservative writers [just because they nominated Chuck Gannon for a Nebula]. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day."
Lois McMaster Bujold and Mike Resnick haven't won Hugos in ten years; this is due to an unfair shift in the zeitgeist against them.
Mike Reznick was slandered during the SFWA Bulletin affair.
The Honor Harrington series and the 1632 series have been unjustly overlooked for Hugo nominations.
"The literature world has been forever spinning its wheels about what “good” writing looks like, and everyone has a different opinion. What can’t be faked is good storytelling. Something which both Eric Flint and David Drake agree is in much shorter supply, than “good” writing." (This is interesting because Torgersen also very much believes that "taste" is always both subjective and entirely justified.)
"[T]he honest truth is that Larry Correia’s work stands a high probability of being read and appreciated in 20 years, by a very broad spectrum of readers. The same cannot be said of (for example) a piece like, “The Water That Falls on You From Nowhere.” That’s a piece targeted to a very specific kind of reader with a very specific kind of taste, and the flat, hard truth of it is… there just aren’t very many people like that out in the big marketplace. Not in comparison to the number of readers for a Warbound or a Monster Hunter series book."
"To me [the word "pulp"] connotes classic, visceral storytelling that is action-filled and tends to have a lot of colorful, larger-than-life characters who engage in larger-than-life adventures. Indiana Jones being a very good example of what I’d call contemporary pulp done on film. I do not think a book like Red Shirts is pulp, as much as it is ambitious fan fiction. Because Red Shirts is far, far too conscious of the audience."
"Most of the (tiny group) of people who are dead set against me, have been dead set against me for a long time. Going all the way back to when I defended the racial diversity of the Battlestar Galactica reboot." (This is from back in 2014, immediately after SP2, but gives a better perspective on his perception of the fight.)
"[I agree that most of the "big names" in sci-fi aren't attacking the sad puppies], and most of the big names get shunned by the Hugos anyway, because being “too successful” is a huge strike against you with the TruFen. You have to ride that sweet spot: selling just enough to be a big fish in a small bowl, but never, ever selling well enough to actually get traction in the mainstream. Beyond Worldcon, beyond academic leftist circles. And Lord help you if you ever write a game or tie-in book. That’s kiss of death right there. The unforgivable sin." (This is from March 29, pre-everything blowing up; his perspective might be the same.)
"Also: since when did “GamerGate” become bogeyword for “All evil in the known universe”??" (Although I have misplaced the link, Torgersen -at least, at one point- relied on Vox Day to provide much of his perspective on GG.) *"K. Tempest Bradford and Nora Jemisin get away with what they do, because progressive white folk are too nervous to take on people who will accuse them of racism; and according to the “rules” of critical race theory, the brown person can never be wrong."
"It’s entirely accurate that if I published with anyone other than Baen, I probably could not do [Sad Puppies 3]. No way. Most of the other publishers’ editors all came out of TruFandom, and right now TruFandom’s self-selected mouthpieces are very unhappy with me."
"These are broken souls – Vox, and his arch-enemies — but they are still human beings." (I think this is the strongest language he uses to describe Vox.)
The Millenials aren't all right: "I see Chu was born in 1984. That puts him right on the lower edge of the “esteem movement” that taught an entire generation of children that they are a) magically perfect in every way and that b) nothing they ever say is ever wrong."

posted by Going To Maine at 12:29 PM on April 24, 2015 [2 favorites]

The Millenials aren't all right: "I see Chu was born in 1984. That puts him right on the lower edge of the “esteem movement” that taught an entire generation of children that they are a) magically perfect in every way and that b) nothing they ever say is ever wrong."

Sounds like somebody needs a hug.
posted by zarq at 12:31 PM on April 24, 2015 [6 favorites]

Ah -one last thing. While Torgersen is generally sparing with specifics, back in April of 2014 he commented that "a few names" on the below list "can definitely only claim prominence from having rung the “ism” fire alarm too many times":

Saladin Ahmed
Aliette de Bodard
Foz Meadows
Ann Leckie
Kameron Hurley
Jim Hines
Alex MacFarlane
Kate Elliott
N.K. Jemisin
K. Tempest Bradford
Sofia Samatar
Seanan McGuire
Cat Valente
Mary Robinette Kowal
Rose Fox
Brit Mandelo
Djibril al-Ayad
Daniel Jose Older
Liz Bourke
Benjanun Sriduangkaew
Sunny Moraine
Rochita Loenen-Ruiz
Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Shweta Narayan
Lavie Tidhar
Ekaterina Sedia
Fabio Fernandes

posted by Going To Maine at 12:39 PM on April 24, 2015 [2 favorites]

I've read almost all of Bujold, and yes, I think she's dropped a bit in quality since her last win of Paladin of Souls (2004). She's still good, but nothing sticks out as Hugo-quality. She also did not win for Memory, A Civil Campaign, or The Curse of Chalion, three works which I'd rank higher than Cryoburn or the Ivan book, as much as I think the Ivan book was hilarious.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 12:46 PM on April 24, 2015 [4 favorites]

Oh, and Brit Mandelo is prominent?
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 1:07 PM on April 24, 2015

The Honor Harrington series and the 1632 series have been unjustly overlooked for Hugo nominations.

To be fair, I actually agree with him on this one, at least. The 1632 books are phenomenally written with a lot of historical fleshing out and nuance - some of the better alternate history I've read, up there with Turtledove. The Honor Harrington books are likewise truly excellent mil-SF with a greater attention to detail than usually seen, with a rich world-grounding.

Now, this doesn't map totally on conventional left-right breakdowns - for example, the 1632 series showcases a group of union organizers - but Southern redneck union organizers, albeit a somewhat diverse set. There are strong women - but most of the strong women ultimately become partnered with other strong men, including kind of nerd archetypes. The world is rich, complex, and nuanced - but they also survive because of their good old-fashioned American values and training and ingenuity.

So I think there are really good questions to be asked - why hasn't the 1632 series secured some nominations? What is it about it that has not appealed to the Hugo voting population, which is a very small subset of the spec-fic population? And it's natural to ask these questions, even if you don't have the answers.

Likewise, Honor Harrington is a strong woman, whose mother is a sex-positive bioengineer. A major, major part of the storyline actually involves overcoming the fuddy-duddy religious bigot's feelings about her being in charge of things because she's a woman. Another portion showcases her sexual assault and taking justice for it. But she embodies traditionally 'masculine' values about war and combat and leading troops, has a conservative pro-military bent, and the liberals (aside from the anti slavers) kind of look like peace-at-any-price clowns.

So why hasn't the Harrington series been nominated? It's an important question. And why is it perceived as conservative -even by Torgensen - even though it has some fairly strong themes about diversity?

Personally, I think it may be about cultural overlap with political positions more than with actual political positions. Because 1632 has a lot of 'Good Old Boys', it is coded as conservative even though it has revolutionaries throwing bombs all over the place. Because Honor Harrington has 'the woman who is One Of The Boys', it's coded as conservative, despite the polyamorous relationships.

And I am beginning to think that if there is anti-conservative prejudice - just like anti-liberal prejudice, it's more about signaling and culture than about true politics. Because again - how is Honor Harrington coded as conservative to conservatives, even though it hits half of the 'SJW' points? That's a really important nut to crack.
posted by corb at 1:22 PM on April 24, 2015

Short answer: as a class, series novels have a much harder time getting nominated and a much harder time winning if they do. "The Wheel Of Time" getting nominated as a whole work was very much a surprise outlier.

Alt-History, as a class, has trouble getting nominated because a significant fraction of the nomination public hates alt-history as a class. When 30% of the nominators won't touch your work, that's a big hill to climb.
posted by eriko at 1:30 PM on April 24, 2015 [2 favorites]

Wow, Torgersen couldn't be more blatant about "I hate women and non-white people" if he tried, with that list. 'How dare they get the awards that should belong to meeeee! meeeeeeeeee!" What a piece of shit he is.

I know people of goodwill are trying to reframe this as evil Vox Day leading things astray, and it's not. Vox Day is an evil bastard, sure, but these are people who have cuddled up to him for years and don't see anything wrong with a guy who referred to the children Anders Breivik murdered as "invaders and quislings of his homeland" and who expects him to be "one day revered by Norwegians".

And fuck yeah, I rightfully judge people by the friends they choose.
posted by tavella at 1:47 PM on April 24, 2015 [11 favorites]

"And Lord help you if you ever write a game or tie-in book. That’s kiss of death right there. The unforgivable sin."

Ha. Somebody tell Barbara Hambly about that one. If I see one of her tie-ins in a used bookstore I will snap that right up, because she can make any franchise readable. (Most recently enjoyed: her novelization of the Beauty and the Beast TV show.) This does not lessen my respect for anything else she's written, and same applies to plenty of other authors who've done excellent tie-ins, like Diane Duane.

I'm seeing a lot of flailing about for nefarious reasons that works don't get nominated or win, when it merits more of a shrug and a "zeitgeist, what can you do?" No matter how much I like a series, I'm unlikely to nominate or vote for a later volume in the series, because how often does it happen that later volumes are better? As someone who used past Hugo award-winners as a reading list growing up, why would I want to direct other readers to books that don't make a good starting point? I like the rule allowing nomination of a complete series, and hope it'll get used for something other than Wheel of Time (which I am a fan of, but that nom really felt like a combo "sorry you're dead"/"congrats on actually finishing it somehow" thing.)
posted by asperity at 1:52 PM on April 24, 2015 [4 favorites]

Except for the battle scenes which are quite immersive, the prose in the Honor Harrington series, of which I've read about five is not at all stylish. The setting the political scene and reacapping the current ranks and assignments of all the prior characters is particularly difficult to slog through.
posted by puddledork at 1:55 PM on April 24, 2015

It's not Torgersen's list. The list was posted by James May, and Toergersen says, "I think James’ list is too broad, but I do think he plucked a few names (I won’t say who) that can definitely only claim prominence from having rung the “ism” fire alarm too many times. "

Since I'm babbling about Bujold, four of the books that she didn't get nominated for in the last decade were a fantasy/romance experiment. (Summary: Monsters live in the woods and Fern and Dag are still doing it, in case you forgot over the last chapter.) Her other non-nomination was Hallowed Hunt, the weakest of the three Chalion novels.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 2:03 PM on April 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

Re the Honor Harrington books, there's also that the space battles are excruciatingly dull. I get that that's intended, in part, to convey the experience — extended periods of tedium punctuated by terror — I just find it way too freaking boring to read any more of.
posted by Lexica at 2:03 PM on April 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

The Honor Harrington books are likewise truly excellent mil-SF with a greater attention to detail than usually seen, with a rich world-grounding

That rich world grounding consisting, for example, of naming venial politicians after the Clintons (in multiple series!) and calling the leader of the space empire equivalent of the French Revolution "Rob S. Pierre".
posted by Justinian at 2:06 PM on April 24, 2015 [5 favorites]

Weber's style in general has devolved to the point that his books consist of 750 pages of committee meetings between people with virtually identical authorial voices talking at eachother, 30 pages of well done battle scenes, and roughly 2000 instances of ellipses plus 2500 instances of the characters saying "on the other hand".

Seriously. Grab one of the last couple of Safehold novels. Open to a random page. Count the number of ellipses and "on the other hand" on the page. The over under is 4.
posted by Justinian at 2:11 PM on April 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

I find the rightist SPs defending Eric Flint (who was literally in the Socialist Workers Party way back) rich. But Flint's 1632 series is nearly impenetrable in the tangle of books it developed rather quickly, which I think has hurt its general cause. And alternate history isn't extremely popular, and 1632 is in the sub-niche of non-naturalistic alternate history. So, lots of strikes there, even if I liked book 1 quite a bit and haven't been able to keep up.
posted by graymouser at 2:16 PM on April 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

even if I liked book 1 quite a bit

That's it right there. It isn't like we can go back in time and nominate things even if we discover them later, either. (Retro Hugos excepted.) If enough Worldcon members haven't discovered a work while it's eligible, it's a shame, but it's not a conspiracy without a whole lot of other supporting evidence.
posted by asperity at 2:28 PM on April 24, 2015

why hasn't the 1632 series secured some nominations? What is it about it that has not appealed to the Hugo voting population, which is a very small subset of the spec-fic population? And it's natural to ask these questions, even if you don't have the answers.

Later books in series tend to get ignored by the Hugos unless the series was getting Hugo attention from the beginning. There's no good reason for that, so this doesn't really answer anything. (Goblet of Fire is an obvious exception.)
posted by Zed at 2:34 PM on April 24, 2015

If enough Worldcon members haven't discovered a work while it's eligible, it's a shame, but it's not a conspiracy without a whole lot of other supporting evidence.

I mostly am trying to look at all the data. It's obvious the Hugos have some problems - hell, even Jo Walton in her Tor series, when she was being incredibly generous, could only get to '70% of the hugo wins deserved to be there.'. I am even coming to some of my own conclusions, but I'm trying hard not to let them sink until I finish others years, which at least for short story/novella stuff should be this weekend. I'm also picking up some novels for KIndle.
posted by corb at 2:39 PM on April 24, 2015

I think there are some good reasons why later series novels tend to get less recognition. They tend to become increasingly self-referential. Bujold didn't get any wins for Cryoburn and Lord Vortapill because they don't really stand on their own. They elaborate on dramatic problems and comic foibles previously introduced. And while they're fun, readable, and I've given both as gifts to friends who are also fans of the series, that doesn't make them Hugo-worthy.

Which is something that Torgersen and Correia just don't get. There's lots of fun, readable, and bestselling stuff that isn't award-worthy. And on the other side, getting passed over for an award doesn't mean that you're not a best seller, or a fun read. We know this about the Oscars.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 3:07 PM on April 24, 2015 [6 favorites]

Yeah, the more this goes on the more I feel like there should be another Hugo category created for series works - something along the lines of 'for eligibility, at least one book in the series has to have been eligibly published this year. It doesn't have to be the closing book - but if you win the series Hugo once, you can't win it again for the same series.
posted by corb at 3:12 PM on April 24, 2015

I've read a shitload of Warhammer books, enjoy them and will continue to read them, but there's no way in hell any of them deserve a Hugo.

Come to think of it, *I'm* a tie-in writer. Where's my award? Conspiracy! Conspiracy!
posted by Artw at 3:15 PM on April 24, 2015 [2 favorites]

FWIW there is actually the Scribe Awards for tie-ins.
posted by Artw at 3:18 PM on April 24, 2015 [2 favorites]

It's obvious the Hugos have some problems

Sure. Individual voters are generally not as well-informed about the year's publications as they might like to be (or imagine others to be), and they can feel shy about nominating. I don't think I ever nominated in the off-and-on years I've voted -- I didn't feel qualified. Which is of course bullshit as evidenced by this year, but that's how it was for me. I can't imagine I'm alone there given the stats.

So much of it's just luck, who a small group of people heard of, read, and thought to nominate in a given year, and then what each of those nominations is up against. And until recently, there wasn't a super-convenient way to read all the works nominated in a year. Not winning a Hugo doesn't mean you fail as a writer; most of my favorites haven't.
posted by asperity at 3:19 PM on April 24, 2015

What the Hugos do not have:
* Problems that are not common to popular awards.
* Problems that the puppies have identified.
* Problems that are fixable by anything the puppies have done.
posted by Artw at 3:21 PM on April 24, 2015 [23 favorites]

Every award system has problems. Why does the best animated feature Oscar go to Pixar, Disney, and Dreamworks year after year? Because everyone watches them.

I must say that I'm not a big fan of open-ended series works. When I subscribed to Lightspeed, I got new-novel excerpts. About a third were complete gibberish. We're talking about impenetrable Bulwer-Lytton fantasy material with no hook and no apparent direction. Sure enough, when I went back to read the blurb, the gibberish was almost always the opening chapter of a second or third book.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 3:27 PM on April 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

The first couple of books in the Honor Harrington series were fun, although the ham-handed political wank was kind of extra-heavily ham-handed. I forget, now, how many of them I plowed through, but there was a gradual drop-off in enjoyment after the first few and I stopped.

I started reading 1632 but got distracted off of it. It struck me as good reading for a sick day when I'm curled up with a blanket and a hot cup of tea.
posted by rmd1023 at 3:56 PM on April 24, 2015

So I think there are really good questions to be asked - why hasn't the 1632 series secured some nominations?

I've only read the first couple, but I would think that the biggest reason is that alt-history isn't sufficiently popular -- you compared the series to Turtledove, who has zero nominations (for novels anyway). A second reason for that series is that, at least in the first couple of books, it's going through the same setup and issues that Stirling's Nantucket books did.

But I agree that how things get coded as liberal or conservative isn't always obvious or clear. I think the Honor Harrington books aren't as good an example -- in spite of not being about white dudes, the story is still about conflicts with a Big Bad Empire that has to eat its neighbors because it has a social welfare state, because obviously you couldn't just fund one with taxation, and one that's presented as deeply morally corrupting. Maybe Elizabeth Moon's stuff?
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 4:33 PM on April 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

, the story is still about conflicts with a Big Bad Empire that has to eat its neighbors

Ironically, you could describe Ancillary Justice in exactly the same way.
posted by KathrynT at 4:38 PM on April 24, 2015 [3 favorites]

corb: "why hasn't the 1632 series secured some nominations? What is it about it that has not appealed to the Hugo voting population, which is a very small subset of the spec-fic population?"

My impression at the time -- totally anecdotal -- was that it was historical fiction people reading 1632 the year it came out, not SFF people. None of my SFF friends had even heard of it but all my history-reading friends were BIG into it, especially as it was a break from all the "What if the Nazis won?" alternative history that was the bulk of the alternative history genre at the time. It was in with the historical fiction new releases at the library, too. My SFF friends didn't really twig to it until a couple of years later.

(And count me among those who thought the subsequent books got a little bit dull and diffuse ... loved the first one, was pretty meh on later volumes, although I thought the problem was there was just TOO MUCH HISTORY and he was so determined to be encyclopedic in how the even would have reverberated throughout the world -- both a virtue and a vice when it comes to writing.)

But also, my literary fiction book club looks at a lot of awards shortlists and winners to pick our books for the year, so I've read my way through a lot of Pulitzer, Booker, etc., awards lists over the past 10 years or so, and there are always books that you're like, "HOW DID THIS NOT WIN?" and others that you're like, "WHY DID THIS EVEN GET NOMINATED UGH IT IS TERRIBLE." The Booker in the late 90s often made me want to PUNCH things because the shortlists were often TERRIBLE and full of utterly nonsensical pretentiousness. And some years the Pulitzer shortlist is a collection of absolute gems and other years it's a big pile of meh. Sometimes that seems to be the judges' preferences; sometimes it seems to be what was published that year. "Catch-22" lost to "The Edge of Sadness" which like nobody's even heard of. "The Great Gatsby" lost to "Arrowsmith," which is actually a book I love, but has obviously not made the same mark as Gatsby. I'd enthusiastically recommend Arrowsmith -- it is fascinating and lovely and totally worth reading -- but it is a SAFE choice that is firmly within the genre of American realism at the time, and while it tackles some really big themes (how to live the idealistic pursuit of science and medicine in the real world, essentially, in big ways that were just starting to be important and impactful when it was written) and it's gorgeously written, it doesn't go nearly as big as Gatsby's commentary on America-qua-America or the ways Fitzgerald pushed narrative and language. But Gatsby is a much bigger leap and the Pulitzer committee that year couldn't recognize it for what it was; they were too close to it.

Awards can always be better and I'm not saying we shouldn't look to improve them, but yearly awards are necessarily short-sighted and they're never going to hit on the "best" book for that year more than 25% of the time, and at least 25% of the time they're going to choose a total stinker.

In conclusion, other people's taste in books is a foreign country with bad plumbing.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 5:27 PM on April 24, 2015 [12 favorites]

CBrachyrhynchos: "four of the books that she didn't get nominated for in the last decade were a fantasy/romance experiment. (Summary: Monsters live in the woods and Fern and Dag are still doing it, in case you forgot over the last chapter.)"

And I love Bujold and I love Fern and Dag's romance (even though I sort-of don't want to BUT I LOVE THEM) and I love the fantasy background world of these books, and they were STILL a massive disappointment and I had to quit midway through the third one. I don't know why they're bad because I like all the discrete pieces, but they're bad. Like, "I'm sorry I spent money on this book" bad, which is really, REALLY bad for me.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 5:34 PM on April 24, 2015

Re the 1632 and Honor Harrington books, corb, I'd have to argue that while they can be entertaining, the longer the series goes on the less well written and entertaining they are. Don't get me wrong, I buy books from both series, if for no other reason than to find out what happens next (I do, however, buy them on kindle so that no-one will see the godawful covers they're plagued by: Baen seems to have an 'anti-design' department). But honestly, I can think of 3 or four of the 1632 books which end almost mid-sentence: no resolution, no nothing. You just have to wait a year or two to find out if someone is alive or dead, or if the Walathians actually started the invasion or not. And the Honor books have way too many words. I sometimes wonder if David W. gets paid like Dickens on a per-word basis. In a couple of his last books, I've actually noticed where he uses the exact same language to describe the exact same scene in separate novels. The man desperately needs an editor.

And if we're discussing overlooked books, I could just as easily point to Elizabeth Moon and Martha Wells. Moon published 12 Mil SF books between 1993 and 2008 and AFAIK didn't get a single nomination, notwithstanding the fact (or my opinion at least) that her prose is tighter, tauter and more engaging than Weber's. And that's before the Islam blog thing blew up, which was a around 2010 or so, if I remember correctly. Until then, she'd generally been seen as progressive. But her books are more about space-fighting women marines and exploding rockets driven by characters with ladyparts, and thus suspect, I guess.

And Martha Wells, jesus. She's written nothing that hasn't impressed the living hell out of me. Her Ile Rien books are some pre-steampunk steampunk with magic and dirigibles and alternate worlds and just plain fabulous stories which combine deeply layered characters with Indiana Jones adventures. And she's been totally ignored since 1998 when she got a Nebula nomination.

And finally, Walter Jon Williams, who has done everything from first-gen cyberpunk to near future noir-ish mysteries to massive space battle Mil SF to fantasy masked as science fiction, and who hasn't got a single fucking nomination (that I can remember).

All three of these writers have put out stuff that is (OK, OK, in my opinion) way better and more thought-provoking than Flint or Weber. And like I said, I buy Flint and Weber's stuff. All I'm saying is that claiming there's a bias against conservative SF ignores the fact that there are lots and lots of REALLY GOOD writers who haven't received awards or even nominations., even though their politics skew liberal-ish.
posted by my dog is named clem at 5:41 PM on April 24, 2015 [6 favorites]

Walter Jon Williams, who has done everything from first-gen cyberpunk to near future noir-ish mysteries to massive space battle Mil SF to fantasy masked as science fiction, and who hasn't got a single fucking nomination

He's been nominated a bunch of times though not in the last 10 years AFAIK. The novel he was nominated for was City on Fire which is superb.
posted by Justinian at 5:51 PM on April 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

Thanks for the correction. that's what I get for relying on quick internet searches. But it looks as though he's published at least 4 novels since then without another nom.
posted by my dog is named clem at 6:00 PM on April 24, 2015

Moon published 12 Mil SF books between 1993 and 2008 and AFAIK didn't get a single nomination,

Moon's Remnant Population was a '97 Hugo Nominee.
posted by Zed at 6:30 PM on April 24, 2015

It would be pretty easy for me to name a dozen brilliant authors of left-ish books who have never been nominated for a Hugo. A dozen may be underestimating things. A lot. In fact, I'm going to look to directly to my right at my "Ki through La" shelf, which is handily beside my desk, and see what I find JUST THERE.

Here are all the sci-fi and fantasy authors sitting around there:

Caitlin Kiernan
Rosemary Kirstein
Alethea Kontis
Mary Robinette Kowal - Hugo nominee and winner!
Elizabeth Knox
Ellen Kushner
Mur Lafferty - Campbell award nominee and winner!
Larissa Lai
Laura Lam
Justine Larbalestier - Hugo nominee!

So, why do the Hugos ignore 1632 and Honor Harrington? I don't know. Why did they ignore The Drowning Girl? The Steerswoman? Enchanted? Dreamhunter? Swordspoint? Salt Fish Girl? Pantomime?

It's not like these are obscure works. The Drowning Girl won the Tiptree and the Stoker and was nominated for just about everything including a Nebula. Salt Fish Girl was shortlisted for the Tiptree. Dreamhunter won an ALA. The Steerswoman and Swordspoint and Pantomime were all books I got because everyone I knew was raving about how great they were. And if the Hugos really are looking to become some kind of diversity checklist, most if not all of these books would tick an awful lot of boxes.

So, that's one shelf.

I have forty-two shelves.

So I really have to think that pointing to any individual work or author doesn't prove much. Sure, there might be trends. If the numbers were crunched, I believe we might see that alt-history, or YA, or long series don't get nominated a lot. But frankly, if someone tries to prove a trend by saying, "Prominent author X has never even been nominated!", the appropriate reaction is probably to shrug and say, "Well, they can get in line."
posted by kyrademon at 6:46 PM on April 24, 2015 [13 favorites]

Ok, I've been nice but I'll say it plainly; Weber doesn't get nominated for a Hugo because his writing has turned to garbage.
posted by Justinian at 7:02 PM on April 24, 2015 [4 favorites]

I loved the Honor Harrington books but they're Horatio Hornblower IN SPACE. I mean yes Weber mixed things up a bit as the series went on but the first few are really the exact same story only in space with a woman. Pretty sure C.S. Forester's ghost would start haunting Worldcon if such a derivative work won. (I'm not saying Weber was doing anything bad, it's a great homage and he's very explicit about what he's doing, but it's still a derivative work.)

And Eyebrows McGee I share your pain - I love love love Bujold more than is probably reasonable, I have read just about everything she's ever written and adored it all, except for the sharing knife books. Just did not work for me at all. I loved Chalion so I know she can write fantasy. Not sure what went wrong with the Sharing Knife stuff.

As for Flint's 1632 I also love that series, but I'm not convinced the writing is Hugo-worthy. It's too bad there's not special award for doing really neat things with collaborative worldbuilding, which is where the series shines.
posted by Wretch729 at 9:23 PM on April 24, 2015

This thread has been epic. I got hooked by the sidebar announcement and Monsieur Caution's reading recommendations. I was already an Ancillary Everything fan, now I also love Goblin Emperor and the Southern Reach Trilogy.

I live within driving distance of Spokane, so I'm another person who is considering going to Sasquan. I have always used the Hugos as a reading recommendation list, never cared much about the process. So at least Torgersen has achieved one of his stated goals -- bringing wider awareness to the Hugo voting process. Other than that, I'm not so sure.
posted by isthmus at 11:40 PM on April 24, 2015 [3 favorites]

"why hasn't the 1632 series secured some nominations? What is it about it that has not appealed to the Hugo voting population, which is a very small subset of the spec-fic population?"

Because it's decent, but not that good, not even on the level of S. M. Stirling's Island in the Sea of Times series, which really the SJWs unfairly overlooked for starring a black, lesbian Coast Guard captain educating the barenaked savages of Great Britain on their treatment of women. Course, it also involved the "ironic" rape of a Foolish Environmentalist by a panther, so...

But the Real Truth is that you have five slots for best novel each year and on average anywhere from 1,000 to 1500 or so new SFF books published each year. That's why the Hugos so often can feel out of touch and have done so for decades, because the SFF field has become so incredibly splintered. Up until the mid to late seventies it was more or less possible to keep up with the whole of science fiction, so the Hugos could and did represent the whole of it.

This is of course no longer possible and combine that with the inherent small c-conservatism of the Hugo voting base (get nominated once significantly increases your chances of future nominations) and whole generations of writers can get ignored.

Ironically, last year's awards, save for the Puppy nonsense on it, could be said to be more in touch with the tastes of SFF as whole, considering how Ancillary Justice swept every major SF award, something never done before.

What the Puppies have done is replace the naturally grown limited outlook of the Hugo voters with their own artificially restricted view. Big improvement.
posted by MartinWisse at 2:55 AM on April 25, 2015 [5 favorites]

Ah -one last thing. While Torgersen is generally sparing with specifics, back in April of 2014 he commented that "a few names" on the below list "can definitely only claim prominence from having rung the “ism” fire alarm too many times"

You know, anybody who'd like to get a good grasp of the future of science fiction and fantasy, that list of writers is where you'd start. None of the people mentioned there is a bad writer.

And you know, Torgersen (or James "not the Top Gear bloke fortunately" May, who collected that list) is not entirely wrong when he says that people like Jim Hines or N.K. Jemisin have become prominent within SFF and fandom as much for their "activism" as for their writing; it's just that they think it's a bad thing.

For me personally it's the opposite: writers who are passionate about making science fiction more diverse, more open to people of colour, LGBT, women, etc are also writers much more likely to write innovative, diverse and open science fiction. I've been buying a lot of books, reading a lot of stories, based on how people behaved online and so far I've rarely been disappointed.

That idea that progressive politics automatically means bad writing is of course a right wing shibboleth, but just wrong. If anything, it's doctrinaire rightwing politics in a novel that stifles creative writing, and not just because my ox is gored.

Things like having thinly disguised versions of contemporary politicians be the bad guys in your space opera, or an incessant need to sneer at some political position which has no relevance for your far future setting whatsoever is something rightwing authors indulge in far more often than leftwing ones.

A weird list though, mixing in as it does writers, critics and bloggers, both political and apolitical and why list Jim Hines and not the Great Satan himself, John Scalzi?
posted by MartinWisse at 3:18 AM on April 25, 2015 [6 favorites]

(I expected my "Le" shelf to fare a bit better because of who ends up there, and indeed Leckie and Le Guin are both Hugo winners, and Leicht got nominated for the Campbell, but Tanith Lee has apparently never even been nominated! Nor has Madeleine L'Engle, or Rebecca Levine, or C. S. Lewis -- who I thought might have been too early, but actually quite a lot of what he wrote, including most of the Narnia books, would have been eligible for Hugos. Really pretty similar to "Ki through La", in the end. Moving down a shelf, Kelly Link is a Hugo winner, but no nominations for John Ajvide Lindqvist, Malinda Lo, Ruth Frances Long, Sergei Lukyanenko, or Elizabeth Lynn ... OK I'll stop now.)
posted by kyrademon at 3:27 AM on April 25, 2015 [2 favorites]

(Oh, except Astrid Lindgren can go on the no nominations list for that shelf, too. She was hidden behind the Lindqvist.)
posted by kyrademon at 3:42 AM on April 25, 2015

Incidentally ... does anyone else have a secret, dark little part of them that kind of would like to see what would happen if a genie granted the Puppies' poorly-worded wish, and the awards this year somehow went to the actual, "most popular" works of science fiction and fantasy?

Because I'm pretty sure that, for example, Nora Roberts would win for best novel this year in a walk, and I don't think that's exactly the result they had in mind.
posted by kyrademon at 5:48 AM on April 25, 2015 [7 favorites]

And Lord help you if you ever write a game or tie-in book. That’s kiss of death right there. The unforgivable sin.

I can't even tell if Scalzi's continued success following the release of his game this year supports or refutes these conspiracy theories.
posted by hydropsyche at 7:33 AM on April 25, 2015

> But the Real Truth is that you have five slots for best novel each year and on average anywhere from 1,000 to 1500 or so new SFF books published each year. That's why the Hugos so often can feel out of touch and have done so for decades, because the SFF field has become so incredibly splintered. Up until the mid to late seventies it was more or less possible to keep up with the whole of science fiction, so the Hugos could and did represent the whole of it.

This is of course no longer possible and combine that with the inherent small c-conservatism of the Hugo voting base (get nominated once significantly increases your chances of future nominations) and whole generations of writers can get ignored.

Yeah, I think that pretty much nails it. It's silly to take some particular title that didn't get a nomination/award and claim that it proves anything at all.
posted by languagehat at 7:59 AM on April 25, 2015 [2 favorites]

"And Lord help you if you ever write a game or tie-in book. That’s kiss of death right there. The unforgivable sin."

This reminds me of my recent discovery that Christopher Priest -- author of the World Fantasy Award-winning The Prestige, which also won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and thus put Priest in the same rarified atmosphere as people like A.S. Byatt and Salman Rushdie -- wrote the novelization of Short Circuit.
posted by snarkout at 7:59 AM on April 25, 2015 [5 favorites]

Hugo-winning authors who wrote tie-in books include Theodore Sturgeon, Isaac Asimov, David Gerrold, Vonda McIntyre, Orson Scott Card, Kristine Rusch, and Joan D. Vinge.

Everyone knows you gotta pay the bills, man.
posted by kyrademon at 8:06 AM on April 25, 2015 [5 favorites]

Because I'm pretty sure that, for example, Nora Roberts would win for best novel this year in a walk, and I don't think that's exactly the result they had in mind.

Amazon compiles numbers by year. Last year's genre novel winner appears to be The Heroes of Olympus Book Five: The Blood of Olympus by Rick Riordan (eighth overall.) It looks to be exactly what the Puppies say they want. It's recommended for ages 10-14.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 9:01 AM on April 25, 2015 [7 favorites]

Priest writing Short Circuit is made funnier by how super fucking snooty he is about all other writers.

He's also written a couple of unmade Doctor Who scripts, which is supposed to be some great loss though TBH I am not sure that it is.
posted by Artw at 9:20 AM on April 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

Never forget that Martin Amis wrote a guide on how to beat Space Invaders.
posted by Chrysostom at 10:21 AM on April 25, 2015 [2 favorites]

Bruce Bethke, coiner of the term Cyberpunk, wrote a Wild Wild West novelisation - a buck is a buck.

And then there's Kim Newman, who I suspect just delights in outdoing the source material.
posted by Artw at 10:32 AM on April 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

Arthur C. Clarke's novelization of "The Star Wars Holiday Special" really redeemed the whole project.
posted by Drinky Die at 10:39 AM on April 25, 2015 [5 favorites]

Bruce Bethke, coiner of the term Cyberpunk, wrote a Wild Wild West novelisation - a buck is a buck.

And has the distinction of having collaborated with Beale on a novel and as an editor to have recently bought a story from him.

Terry Bisson (Hugo winner) did the novelizations of Johnny Mnemonic and the Fifth Element and a couple of Boba Fett novels, Tobias Buckell (Hugo nominee) did a Halo novel, C.J. Cherryh (Hugo winner repeat offender) did a Lois & Clark novel, Joan Vinge did Cowboys & Aliens just a few years ago... but have any of them had a Hugo nomination subsequent to these things? Hmmm.
posted by Zed at 11:33 AM on April 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

I was just gonna link this writeup of how awful Vox Day is with the text "welp" but then realized it kinda needs trigger warnings for non-explicit descriptions of rape, plus some other shit about his awful racism.
posted by NoraReed at 2:20 PM on April 25, 2015 [4 favorites]

Brian Stableford and Kim Newman (neither of whom has won a Hugo but are well-regarded nevertheless) have both written multiple WarHammer novels. Michael Moorcock (also not a Hugo winner, but a Nebula and World Fantasy Award winner) has written a tion of stuff churned out to make a quick buck to pay the rent or lawyers. This is how the writing profession works, for most writers.
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:06 PM on April 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

Brian Stableford and Kim Newman (neither of whom has won a Hugo but are well-regarded nevertheless) have both written multiple WarHammer novels.

Torgersen is, I think, more peeved that Hugo voters never vote a media tie-in to the award rather than that people have to write media tie-ins. But bluuugh. I am so tired of unpacking this anymore, when the details all miss the forest for the trees.
posted by Going To Maine at 4:23 PM on April 25, 2015

...if a genie granted the Puppies' poorly-worded wish, and the awards this year somehow went to the actual, "most popular" works of science fiction and fantasy?
That's not their true wish - they want THEIR version of science fiction and fantasy to be the most popular, and they want to use dominating the Hugos as a part of the process of creating that. And failing that, just controlling the established Hugos to provide an awards system for their own little Balkanized sub-genre of the genre.

"Day is weirdly and floridly evasive on virtually every topic Pakman brings up, from rape to the intentions of #Gamergate ... sounding very little like the “alpha male” he so often proclaims himself to be."
Or just sounding more like the CEO of a publishing company who knows how to build a business. I'm generally a little more hopeful now that I may be wrong about my previous prediction that the Rabid Wolves will end up owning the Hugos, but when I hear VD smartly 'moderating himself', I get more skeptical of the general assessment of him as a "fringe nut".
posted by oneswellfoop at 4:32 PM on April 25, 2015

I am so tired of unpacking this anymore, when the details all miss the forest for the trees.

I don't understand what you mean by this.
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:35 PM on April 25, 2015

I am so tired of unpacking this anymore, when the details all miss the forest for the trees.
I can't speak for Going To Maine, but I'm rolling my eyes at all attempts to analyze the stands of the SonsOfBitches when all they are really doing is a blatant political power grab to improve their collective "image" and more importantly their book sales. That's the forest.
posted by oneswellfoop at 4:53 PM on April 25, 2015 [5 favorites]

Torgersen is, I think, more peeved that Hugo voters never vote a media tie-in to the award rather than that people have to write media tie-ins. But bluuugh.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure Hugo many voters would be pleased to vote a media tie-in to the award. If the TV series gets ahead of the novels, Game of Thrones books will very nearly count. But I think there's still a lot of love in fandom for classic media tie-ins by Diane Duane, Janet Kagan, John M. Ford, and Barbara Hambly. I hear relatively recent tie-ins by David Mack, Kirsten Beyer, and Karen Traviss are decent (I've read one novel and sampled two by them--they were OK and might fit Correia's idea of good SF fairly well). Recent and two-time Campbell nominee Max Gladstone has just signed on to write a Pathfinder book. MeFi's own Hogshead has written both Warhammer and Sonic the Hedgehog novels and deserves only kudos for trying to do interesting things with them.

But tie-ins face a ton of structural problems in getting recognition: they're usually deep in a series/setting that not all fans have liked in other regards; authors are constrained by both time and by what's OK to do and/or change in the series; authors likely don't have much incentive to put their hearts and souls into properties they don't entirely own; quite a lot of tie-in books, even by well-known authors, simply aren't that great; and given the foregoing, it would take a lot of noise from the niche reading a book to get a wide audience to believe in it and try it out in time to nominate.
posted by Monsieur Caution at 4:54 PM on April 25, 2015 [2 favorites]

all they are really doing is a blatant political power grab to improve their collective "image" and more importantly their book sales

That's even further than I would go; they're self-evidently people who did a bad thing and are doubling-down on it. I wouldn't think any better of them if they eschewed all future profits from their ... works.
posted by Joe in Australia at 5:31 PM on April 25, 2015 [2 favorites]

I don't understand what you mean by this.

I have spent a silly amount of time going through the Brad Torgersen's material looking for quotes that can establish his position on things. While I think that he has made some precise statements (authors have campaigned for their and other work, some works have won because of affirmative action / the public statements of their authors rather than on their own merits, fandom isn't representative enough), in general his descriptions of the motivation behind the puppies has never really added up to explaining why Sad Puppies was a good fix for anything.

Getting caught up in the weeds of figuring out just what Torgersen believes is driving me nuts. To steal a comment on Sandifer's blog post, I'm letting Torgersen live rent free in my head, and that's a problem. The puppies have no more concrete motivation than GG (especially when you consider the crossover) and thinking about the details of why this or that novel didn't get a Hugo is missing the point. I should put all this drama down and go read all the Iain Banks that I've wanted to get to.

(At least some part of this vexation is coming from the fact that I don't even particularly think the Hugos are great! I'm just mad that they've been co-opted by some people, pace Alexandra Erin.)
posted by Going To Maine at 6:07 PM on April 25, 2015 [7 favorites]

> "When I hear VD smartly 'moderating himself', I get more skeptical of the general assessment of him as a 'fringe nut'."

Eh, as far as I can tell, that's just part of his fringe nut MO and has been for years. It's always:

VD: Statement voicing approval for horrible thing.

EVERYONE SANE: Ugh, VD advocates for horrible thing.

VD: Well, stupid opponents of mine who are stupid, if you had paid attention to my PRECISE WORDING, you would have noticed that I did not say I ADVOCATE for it, I just said it COULD BE DONE FOR LOGICALLY SOUND REASONS. Which is backed up by SCIENCE, so since you disagree you are all MORONS. Ha ha ha, check and MATE!

EVERYONE SANE: *rolls eyes*

VD: I am so smart. Now you should interview me! Also, I was in a famous rock band you've never heard of.
posted by kyrademon at 6:09 PM on April 25, 2015 [14 favorites]

Yes, and Vox Day does that trick of saying how smart and honest he is every time when he's on neutral territory, like at File 770.
posted by MartinWisse at 2:41 AM on April 26, 2015

I think these guys have something wrong with them - besides malevolence, envy, spite, and hatred, I mean. It's late here and I'm blinking bemusedly at Brad Torgensen's website where he has unilaterally decided to invent a new insult for ... well, everybody helping out at Worldcons, I think. The infantile giggling over this in the comments is something to be seen.
posted by Joe in Australia at 5:50 AM on April 26, 2015 [2 favorites]

New Sasquan membership numbers. Total 8016, all attending categories 3833, supporting 4183.

Another 883 supporting.
posted by eriko at 6:09 AM on April 26, 2015 [1 favorite]

Wow. Brad Torgerson... he really seems like a well-adjusted great guy who really has no hateful axes to grind at all.
posted by palomar at 9:40 AM on April 26, 2015 [1 favorite]

The end of the Hugo voters packet?
posted by Artw at 10:32 AM on April 26, 2015

Actually, Torgerson's new word "CHORF", "Cliquish, Holier-than-thou, Obnoxious, Reactionary, Fanatic" is a perfect self-description of himself and the rest of the HellHound movement.
posted by oneswellfoop at 10:36 AM on April 26, 2015 [7 favorites]

Another puppy story review - making good use of reverse order storytelling to gradually reveal how bad a JCW take on All You Zombies can be.
posted by Artw at 10:50 AM on April 26, 2015

I've read my way through a lot of Pulitzer, Booker, etc., awards lists over the past 10 years or so, and there are always books that you're like, "HOW DID THIS NOT WIN?" and others that you're like, "WHY DID THIS EVEN GET NOMINATED UGH IT IS TERRIBLE."

Yeah, to be clear, I in no way think this is unique to the Hugos, it's just that with the balkanization of fandom, you're getting people who are like WHAT I CANNOT EVEN CONCEIVE THAT YOU WOULD HAVE PROBLEMS WITH THE HUGO SIR, which kind of drives me crazy from an accuracy standpoint. As many people have noted, the awards were more likely to produce the kind of 'epically best' books when the field was small enough that everyone could read everything. Now the field is huge. If I go to the bookstore, it's a crapshoot, and I'm likely to choose authors I've read before, which means I'm more likely to think their work is best. Some other people might be choosing by diversity methods. Other people might be looking at recommended reading lists, authors who are active on Livejournal or Baen's Bar, rolling some dice - what I'm trying to say is that the field is large enough that your method of finding good books is necessarily going to be straw-in-a-haystack behavior and whatever you do, you're going to be missing some good stuff.

And sometimes we have reading behavior that isn't exactly super "fair" - for example, it is now a matter of record that I hated Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. But it was recommended at a lot of places that I hang out, largely for its diversity perspective. But because I didn't like it, that means I don't trust those people to recommend again, which may mean I'm missing out on some truly great diverse stuff by less known authors, simply because those recommend lists are dead to me and other recommend lists aren't suggesting or reading them. And I see that problem, but I don't even have a solution, because books are a nontrivial expense at the speed I read and I am no longer a teenager who can hang out in a Borders reading the first few chapters of a work.
posted by corb at 11:08 AM on April 26, 2015

Yeah, to be clear, I in no way think this is unique to the Hugos, it's just that with the balkanization of fandom, you're getting people who are like WHAT I CANNOT EVEN CONCEIVE THAT YOU WOULD HAVE PROBLEMS WITH THE HUGO SIR, which kind of drives me crazy from an accuracy standpoint.

A view expressed by pretty much nobody here or linked.
posted by Artw at 11:25 AM on April 26, 2015 [10 favorites]

I'm not clear that there was much complaining there was about the voting process until the puppies blew it up. Is that not the case?
posted by Going To Maine at 11:48 AM on April 26, 2015

As with all awards griping about the Hugo is as much of an institution as the award itself. That doesn't make the puppies claims any saner or their sabotage any less shitty.
posted by Artw at 11:53 AM on April 26, 2015 [1 favorite]

No, I wouldn't disagree. However, I have seen puppies complain that, indeed, many of their opponents were claiming that everything was just fine as it was. Being able to say that Hugo voters had taken some long, hard looks at the voting process (see some of eriko's comments) before all this nonsense went down would help take the wind out of their sails.
posted by Going To Maine at 11:59 AM on April 26, 2015

I think what the Puppies are probably talking about is the response to either Sad Puppies 1 or Sad Puppies 2, when they were making their complaints and people were responding to them, but it didn't have the level of prominence this slate does as it was ultimately very unsuccessful. I do remember a lot of talk about 'The Hugos Are Just Fine' but I mostly remember it in response to Puppies, not predating them. However, as we are discovering by the data projects, memories are often faulty, so I wouldn't be astonished to be proven wrong.
posted by corb at 12:09 PM on April 26, 2015

The Hugos have long been criticised for rewarding mediocre fiction by well known writers over better books and stories, especially in the last twenty years, as the voting pool aged and got smaller relatively to the rest of fandom & SFF.

What's been unique to the Puppies is their idee-fixe that the Hugos are politically driven.
posted by MartinWisse at 12:14 PM on April 26, 2015 [3 favorites]

Anything that hampers their slate voting would also hamper the entirely fictional slate voting they complain of. The real but frankly not devestating problems inherent to it being a popular award are really only fixable by it not being a popular award anymore.

Or, you know, everyone being adults and accepting that things can be flawed but still useful.
posted by Artw at 12:15 PM on April 26, 2015 [3 favorites]

I'm one of the people who thinks the Hugos have too often rewarded mediocre fiction by well known writers but that's so much less objectionable than what the Puppies have done that there is no comparison. I think it's a mistake but it is the voters themselves choosing to make that mistake in traditional fashion. The Puppies are subverting the entire process and doing so for malevolent political reasons.

Some people still refer to this as a victory for the Sad Puppies but it has been shown pretty conclusively that it was the Rabid Puppies that made this happen. And they don't even pretend to respect fandom or the Hugos. Some men just want to watch the world burn.
posted by Justinian at 1:04 PM on April 26, 2015 [1 favorite]

I actually haven't seen the Puppies complaining about the rules. The main complaint about the rules has been coming from the other side, namely that the nomination process is too vulnerable to what the Puppies did.

While there have been some complaints about "secret slates" or whatnot from the Puppy side, it hasn't really been a rules issue -- in fact, they seem pretty against any changes to the rules; as far as I can tell, they tend to view proposed rules changes, even ones that would affect everyone equally, as attempts to shut them out.

They've mainly been focusing their complaints on the composition of Worldcon Hugo voters. They say that the number of voters is tiny, and that this has allowed it to be overrun with people who are not representative of fandom as a whole. There have been a lot of comparisons to much larger conventions (Comicon comes up a lot).

To be fair, the first part of the complaint (the number of voters is tiny) is something I have heard many people grouse about for years.

However, the Puppies' approach to solving these problems, real and/or perceived -- which is to say, "Give all power to an even tinier minority subset of the voting pool" -- has, let's say, failed to impress me.
posted by kyrademon at 1:08 PM on April 26, 2015 [5 favorites]

Some people still refer to this as a victory for the Sad Puppies but it has been shown pretty conclusively that it was the Rabid Puppies that made this happen.

This point should be forever repeated.
posted by Going To Maine at 1:40 PM on April 26, 2015 [2 favorites]

Not sure if it's been mentioned in the thread, but non-merkins might want to fill out Shaun Duke's Non-US Fandom Survey: Perspectives on the Hugo Awards:

This survey is intended to gather opinions from non-US sf/f readers and fans about the Hugo Awards and their perception abroad. Any non-US sf/f reader may take this survey, whether they are deeply aware of the Awards or have a passing knowledge. All perspectives are of value. Please be as detailed as you like.

One of the ongoing problems with the Hugos has been that it's always been a very American award for something awarded at Worldcon; there are many reasons for this of course.
posted by MartinWisse at 1:55 PM on April 26, 2015 [1 favorite]

LonCon seemed dominated by issues relating to the SFWA clearing house, including the last round of puppies and the Vox Day nom, to the point where I would question how worthwhile it is holding it anywhere outside America.
posted by Artw at 2:04 PM on April 26, 2015

That's not how my LonCon felt, to be honest. It does seem to have energised a lot of fans and professionals on this side of the pond.

There's even a honest to god new, internationally connected fandom scene starting to grow in the Netherlands. American concerns will always be a huge driver of English language fandom, but that doesn't mean other voices can't get a look in.

What you also see a lot more of, is "foreigners" involved in what at first blush look like typical American fannish organisations and causes. Disability in Kidlit frex is driven by two yanks and a cloggie author, Corinne Duyvis.
posted by MartinWisse at 2:14 PM on April 26, 2015 [2 favorites]

So ... I just finished reading Shadow Scale, by Rachel Hartman (the sequel to Seraphina.) It struck me, while I was reading it, that it is exactly the kind of book the Puppies hate and claim only gets anywhere through "affirmative action". Parts of this review will probably give you a good idea as to why I had that thought, if you care to look, particularly the paragraph that starts, "I also loved, with a passion verging on the desperate ..."

The thought made me feel oddly sad. On the other hand, Shadow Scale hit the bestseller lists the first week it came out.

They may not believe I love the books I love, but at least I'm pretty sure I'm not alone over here on my side.
posted by kyrademon at 2:20 PM on April 26, 2015 [3 favorites]

MartinWisse: "There's even a honest to god new, internationally connected fandom scene starting to grow in the Netherlands. American concerns will always be a huge driver of English language fandom, but that doesn't mean other voices can't get a look in."

Amazon buying non-English genre fiction and offering English translations through their Amazon Publishing arm has, anecdotally, been dramatically increasing the availability of European authors (in particular) in the US. They're picking from a broader pool than "critically acclaimed" or "Nobel possible" and have been offering rapid-selling genre and pop fiction. Already since January I've read recently-released books originally written in Norwegian, Dutch, and Finnish, plus two that were some eminently forgettable Bulgarian archer fantasy thing, but, hey! I paid $1.99 on Kindle Daily Deal, and they were no more or less forgettable than other low-grade SFF! But this is way more foreign-language fiction than I've ever had ACCESS to, and it's so delightful that some of it has been written in the last couple years instead of "okay it's been 20 years and everyone still loves it, I GUESS we should offer it in translation to the Americans." Now something catches my eye on the Kindle Daily Deal for SFF, and I read the description and at the bottom it says, "Originally published in Bulgarian" or whatever and I'm like, "Oh, huh, I've never read anything from Bulgaria, and I like archers, I should check it out!" I know they're fishing for the next Stieg Larsson but that's okay! I don't mind! IT IS AN ENTIRE NEW WORLD.

(The Norwegian and Dutch ones weren't SFF -- the Dutch one was "The Dinner" of course -- but I really enjoyed them and have been widely recommending them. The Finnish one, which I'm in the middle of, is SFF, and I'll definitely suggest to my SFF friends. Also if anyone wants to argue about "The Dinner" memail me because my husband is WRONGETY WRONG WRONG about it and I need to DISCUSS.)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 2:30 PM on April 26, 2015 [5 favorites]

Which Finnish book is it, Eyebrows McGee?
posted by Kattullus at 3:13 PM on April 26, 2015

Memory of Water by Emmi Itäranta. It's still on $1.99 kindle sale as of this post. (It's a bit YA-ish, but not in a bad way, just in case that's not your thing. And that one is Harper-Collins, not Amazon Publishing, but they've been promoting it pretty heavily for the kindle.)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 3:55 PM on April 26, 2015 [1 favorite]

However, the Puppies' approach to solving these problems, real and/or perceived -- which is to say, "Give all power to an even tinier minority subset of the voting pool" -- has, let's say, failed to impress me.

Call it my naivete, but I don't think anyone looks at the hats in front of them and puts the black hat on. I really don't think that they think they're trying to give the power to the minority subset. I legitimately, 100% believe that they think they're speaking for the 'silent majority'. Now whether that's accurate or not, that's another story. But I believe they are true recounters of the things that have happened to them. I have been over to Baen's Bar and seen people saying 'Yes! Thank you for sticking it to Those Guys!' I readily believe that they receive at least a few emails saying 'Thank you, I've been afraid to say X, but you alone are fighting the good fight.'

I say this, because it has happened to me. Now, I'm not idiotic enough to think that my general views are more than minority view here on Metafilter. But I definitely, even in my more unusual ideas, almost always get messages saying 'Thank you for speaking for me, I would be afraid to say that publicly.''

And you know, if I weren't a hardcore veteran of activism and deeply familiar with how seductive that pull is, it would act far harder on me than it does. And these guys aren't. This is, by all internet accounts, their first foray into any kind of Big Fight. And you are hardwired to respond to a fight with adrenaline. Every time someone says something Wrong on the Internet, your centers start kicking up fight hormone so you physically start feeling like it's more important than it is. And every time someone says 'Thank you for sticking up for me' you have to work hard not to feel like a goddamn hero. You have to really be self aware. And that is a learned skill, not an inborn one.
posted by corb at 4:08 PM on April 26, 2015 [3 favorites]

I don't know that we should care, really. They've deliberately allied themselves with Vox Day who is one of the most repugnant human beings out there and they're deliberately attempting to destroy the Hugo Awards. What's in their heart of hearts is immaterial.
posted by Justinian at 4:30 PM on April 26, 2015 [9 favorites]

Sure, I think it's totally valid not to let that knowledge affect how you act. I just think it's important to know what the situation is that you are choosing to react or not react to.
posted by corb at 4:33 PM on April 26, 2015

So ... I just finished reading Shadow Scale, by Rachel Hartman (the sequel to Seraphina.)

I LOVE THESE BOOKS SO MUCH

SO MUCH

I GET KIND OF TEARFUL THINKING ABOUT THEM SOMETIMES

I posted an excerpt on my blog that I feel does a great job of tying together diversity concepts + worldbuilding, which Hartman does SO WELL

The audiobooks of them are really good too, the first one has beautiful songs. I love them. Love love love love. READ THESE DANG BOOKS
posted by NoraReed at 4:43 PM on April 26, 2015 [2 favorites]

It is important to think the best of all the sad puppies motivations, even though all their words and deeds suggest you should probably do otherwise.
posted by dng at 5:05 PM on April 26, 2015 [1 favorite]

why would you want to think the best of their motivations? why bother giving them the benefit of the doubt? why bother when you could instead spend that mental energy on something valuable, like reading Seraphina
posted by NoraReed at 5:13 PM on April 26, 2015 [3 favorites]

Sure, I think it's totally valid not to let that knowledge affect how you act. I just think it's important to know what the situation is that you are choosing to react or not react to.

Yes. The situation is that these animals have brought in Vox Day and Gamergate to destroy the Hugo Awards. That's what there is to react to.
posted by kafziel at 5:18 PM on April 26, 2015 [6 favorites]

Because giving them, or anyone, the benefit of the doubt and trying to figure out how, with good intentions, they could come to various decisions, both makes me a better human being, and also helps me to realize that even good intentions can have bad results, and thus I need to be more careful of my own. It's important, in my view, to humanize the people you are at most risk of dehumanizing, the ones you want to feel least sympathy with.
posted by corb at 5:18 PM on April 26, 2015 [1 favorite]

I think Brad Torgersen's CHORF hilarity sort of suggests you know exactly how well intentioned his motivations are.
posted by dng at 5:23 PM on April 26, 2015 [3 favorites]

I find their psychology pretty explicable TBH: They are cowards, assholes, bullies and sore losers. And while they are deep down a rabbithole of their own making we have no obligation to go down it with them.
posted by Artw at 5:34 PM on April 26, 2015 [10 favorites]

Again, we don't need to try to figure out what good intentions might have led to these actions, because they're openly professing bad intentions.
posted by kafziel at 5:37 PM on April 26, 2015 [8 favorites]

I guess the thing is - look, even if you hate them, you can't murder them, right? That's not a way we solve our personal and political differences any more. So what are you going to do about them? Wall them off and pretend they don't exist? That's not healthy. You have to find a way of dealing with them. If you understand where they're coming from, maybe you can meet somewhere, see each other's points, understand that everyone is trying to be a good person the best they know how, and impart information. You can't change anyone by yelling at them, all you can do is get them to double down. Saying, "Hey, I see where you are. Have you thought about this? We're all friends here." is the only way I have ever known anyone to truly change their mind about anything.
posted by corb at 5:40 PM on April 26, 2015

I guess the thing is - look, even if you hate them, you can't murder them, right?

That's a weird escalation.
posted by dng at 5:46 PM on April 26, 2015 [11 favorites]

corb is arguing that we should feel compassion for them, she's not arguing that we should overlook when they act or speak with contempt for other people.

Hating them is easy, but it may not get us very far. Understanding them may get us further.
posted by sebastienbailard at 5:47 PM on April 26, 2015 [3 favorites]

No one here is saying that Brad Torgersen is the second coming of Hitler or whatever. I'm sure that in his personal life he's a perfectly pleasant person. That doesn't mean I have to ignore the shitty things he's saying or doing or try to figure out every nuance of the funhouse-mirror logic that he justifies those shitty things to himself with. There is a lot of space in between "walling them off" or murdering (?!?!?!) them and bending over backwards to accommodate them. So much space that I find it hard to believe that the equivalence between not accepting their premises and dehumanization is being made in good faith.

Also, as the discussion about 400 posts back about Vox Day's SFWA booting and what preceded it demonstrates, "This is, by all internet accounts, their first foray into any kind of Big Fight." is just straight up untrue.
posted by kagredon at 5:58 PM on April 26, 2015 [4 favorites]

Couple of comments deleted. Please skip the character assessment of people in the thread.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 6:00 PM on April 26, 2015 [1 favorite]

I think it's perfectly possible to understand them and still think there's nothing to be gained from engaging with them. I would further submit that refusing to engage with them is not really the same thing as murdering them.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 6:00 PM on April 26, 2015 [11 favorites]

Hating them is easy, but it may not get us very far. Understanding them may get us further.
I grew up with a very hateful, racist, sexist, assholish father, who I treated with respect (I had to for my own safety). I said "Hey, I see where you are. Have you thought about this? We're all friends here." a lot of times and it never helped him change his mind. I learned that such an approach was only seen as a sign of weakness from his kind. The only things that ever made him change his mind on anything was (1) to come up with something that he could consider 'in his best interest' or (2) to make him THINK something was in his best interest by lying about it.

Understanding him, knowing what he went through in his own life and how it shaped him, didn't help. Ultimately, I had to give up trying to love him like a father and just accept him as someone I couldn't cut ties with. And if it doesn't work on a relationship that close, how do apply it to people in the business of selling what they write? And the SELLING is as important as the WRITING (not to mention getting it in print makes it impossible to change your mind without making that which you wrote virtually worthless).
posted by oneswellfoop at 6:02 PM on April 26, 2015 [2 favorites]

> "I legitimately, 100% believe that they think they're speaking for the 'silent majority'."

I have no doubt they do. But I was discussing their actions, not their intentions. Sorry if that was unclear.

I wouldn't be pissed if they'd thought that and gone with "big recruitment drive for the Hugos, vote for the SFF of your choice and let your voice be heard!" I wouldn't be pissed if they'd gone with, "the rules should be changed to a 3/8 nomination process so the people we think are secretly controlling it can no longer do so!"

Instead, they went with the slate thing, which is "let's do a thing where a tiny minority gets to dictate the whole ballot", so I'm pissed.

If their thing is that they think they speak for a majority, they can prove it by getting a majority. Anything else means that they might think they're all about democracy and majority and expanding the voter base, but they're acting like people who lost a vote a couple years running and decided they should win anyway.
posted by kyrademon at 6:02 PM on April 26, 2015 [7 favorites]

Nobody is obliged to put up with their bullshit in the name of "understanding", which in this case seems to be an exercise in excuse making and an insistence that we waste our time searching for some nonexistent grain of truth in their morass of bullshit.
posted by Artw at 6:07 PM on April 26, 2015 [4 favorites]

I legitimately, 100% believe that they think they're speaking for the 'silent majority'.
And they do speak for a large 'silent constituency', most of whom don't buy SFF books. More likely to buy Tom Clancy thrillers or Bill O'Reilly "historicals". If they can tap into that audience, they're gonna sell a shitton of books. And if they can show "yeah, you hate SFF and 'the SFF establishment', but we just kicked them out and we're gonna give you what you like!"

That's why I never believed any of them want to 'destroy' the Hugo Awards, just control it and remake it in their own image. Awards for the "real audience". Their audience.
posted by oneswellfoop at 6:14 PM on April 26, 2015 [1 favorite]

If their thing is that they think they speak for a majority, they can prove it by getting a majority.
Even with a record number of voters for this year's Hugos... 7000+ at last count, with 3000+ attending Sasquan, it's still a tiny percentage of SFF Fandom. And if smartly managed (a big if), they actually could take what was learned from Vox Day's SFWA booting, the first two Sad Puppies campaigns and the failed 'Honey Badger' invasion at Calgary to accomplish the takeover I spoke of before.
posted by oneswellfoop at 6:27 PM on April 26, 2015

A large part of the "silent majority" perception, too, comes from the category error that adventure stories and social commentary are mutually exclusive, and so even though many people, from all over the SFF landscape have critiqued their methods and position, they'll readily dismiss it as people who don't understand or care about "real" SFF, or are too blinkered to see the SJW takeover of the Hugos. Everyone with them is a brave free thinker, everyone against them is marching in lockstep. It's quite ironic, given how many plaintive howls (see what I did there) we've heard from the puppies about tribalism and "wrongfan".

(Course, it doesn't hurt that they recruited Gamergate and had an immediate source of "silent majority", but hey!)
posted by kagredon at 6:39 PM on April 26, 2015 [1 favorite]

They don't have a majority. They don't have anywhere *near* a majority. They discovered a hole where a tiny minority acting in lockstep could move onto the final ballot.

What they are going to discover is that that hole exists on the nominating ballot, but not the electing ballot.
posted by eriko at 6:47 PM on April 26, 2015 [4 favorites]

I think Brad Torgersen's CHORF hilarity sort of suggests you know exactly how well intentioned his motivations are.

And also how clueless he is. He was using SMOF derisively until a commentator pointed out that it's a backhanded honorific.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 6:48 PM on April 26, 2015 [6 favorites]

He was using SMOF derisively until a commentator pointed out that it's a backhanded honorific.

And now it means Suck My Outpointed Finger.

Asshole.

(well, that last part was just implied before.)
posted by eriko at 7:05 PM on April 26, 2015

The claim that "adventure stories and social commentary are mutually exclusive" is flat-out lying. The previously linked review to one of John C. ~~Wright~~Wrong's nominated works shows just how much social commentary is central to their kind of SF, and just what kind.

I hope you're right, eriko, but I've seen the big-buck fundraisers for the businesses the got in trouble for declaring open discrimination against gays, and if they could get $100K+, well, that much buys 2500 Hugo Votes. And I'd thought the few dozen votes GGers put in seemed a little low for them - but getting some of the credit for the nominations have probably energized them, along with the Badgers/Calgary debacle. And if everybody at Baen's Bar was motivated to chip in... I just think how the Right Wing in the USofA has benefited so much from an "enthusiasm gap", because they are much more willing to come out just to vote AGAINST something than the "SFW" side.
posted by oneswellfoop at 7:11 PM on April 26, 2015

I hope you're right, eriko, but I've seen the big-buck fundraisers for the businesses the got in trouble for declaring open discrimination against gays, and if they could get $100K+, well, that much buys 2500 Hugo Votes

We will Noah this, or we will *end the damn awards permanently.*

These are a toy to them. These are *everything* to us. And if our children have to die, we're going to be the ones to kill them. Not them. Us.

More importantly -- look at them. They're either celebrating or scattering. Not fandom.

I've seen the membership lists. It wasn't 2000 puppies who joined last month.
posted by eriko at 7:17 PM on April 26, 2015 [1 favorite]

Oh, but don't let that stop you from joining, because if you want to fix the Hugos, the best way is TO NOMINATE. Don't think the last decade's worth of nominee's have been worth a damn? Nominate. You join now, you get to nominate in 2016 and 2017.

Even if you never want to attend a Worldcon, you become a supporting member at the right time, you can get a nominating vote by joining a Worldcon every third year. But if you want a vote on the final ballot, you have to join every one.

You want a pan-fandom award? You go make one. The Hugo is not that award. Maybe you can make that award, and maybe that award will surpass the Hugo and make this all just a bunch of meaningless kerfuffle. But if you think *this* award is important, well, this award is the WSFS award, and if you're not a member of WSFS, your opinion means nothing *to WSFS* who gives out this award.
posted by eriko at 7:23 PM on April 26, 2015 [2 favorites]

I already have put in my $40. (You said you've "seen the membership lists." didn't you see me?) I eagerly await the nominees reading packet because my bird's cage is overdue for getting its paper changed.

a pan-fandom award? ... The Hugo is not that award
Not a good enough fan to make one myself, but with a name like WORLD Science Fiction Society, it should've worked harder to live up to that name; instead it left itself vulnerable to an extremely hostile takeover.
posted by oneswellfoop at 7:37 PM on April 26, 2015

The idea that goodwill, just muddling through, and people just happening to nominate the same thing in sufficient numbers to defeat slates is as delusional as anything the puppies have come up with. Allowing the noms to be fucked over year after year in the hope that it will eventually fix itself will wear out peoples good will first . I'll certainly not be laying out $40 next year for this bullshit, WoldCon needs to fix its vulnerabilities or the Hugos are indeed a lost cause.
posted by Artw at 7:52 PM on April 26, 2015

So what are you going to do about them?

The same thing people have done in a wide variety of similar situations for decades - openly speak up against their limited and bigoted worldview (and these days "speaking up" certainly includes blog posts and tweets and FB posts and internet commentary). You will likely not change the minds of the ringleaders, but observers who may be undecided or uncertain will see that the bigots do not necessarily truly represent a "silent majority." Some of those people will go on to speak up against such bigotry themselves.

Sometimes you have to actually use the democratic process to create and enforce rules that will reduce the ability of the bigoted to affect the lives of those they are bigoted against. In this case, that would involve becoming a member of WorldCon and voting, and possibly changing the nominating rules to reduce the chance of this happening again.

No murdering is necessary. Nor is it necessary to somehow try to see their points. They may have sincere beliefs, but their sincere beliefs don't outweigh my sincere belief that what they believe is morally repugnant.

understand that everyone is trying to be a good person the best they know how

Except the problem here is that the ringleaders of this fiasco - Torgersen, Correia, and Beale - have extremely limited definitions of "good person." Many people are unable to be "good" by their definition because of genetics. And they have such an authoritarian take on the world that if you're not a "good person" as they define it, you are so "bad" that they feel morally justified in doing whatever they can to stop you. I can recognize that they may be acting out of sincere beliefs, and still recognize that they are fanatics who are unable or unwilling to compromise, and any attempt to "meet them in the middle" is a fool's errand.

Saying, "Hey, I see where you are. Have you thought about this? We're all friends here." is the only way I have ever known anyone to truly change their mind about anything.

This would be a valid point if anyone was interested in changing the minds of Torgersen, Correia, or Beale. But they're not. People are angry about a tiny minority gaming the awards system as part of a culture war. Changing the minds of the instigators & participants in the slate nominations is very low on the list of things people want to do, so arguing that the Anti-Puppies should approach this in a spirit of compromise is missing the point of the goals of the people angry about the PuppySlate.
posted by soundguy99 at 8:10 PM on April 26, 2015 [10 favorites]

So ... I just finished reading Shadow Scale, by Rachel Hartman (the sequel to Seraphina.)

I LOVE THESE BOOKS SO MUCH

SO MUCH

I GET KIND OF TEARFUL THINKING ABOUT THEM SOMETIMES

Is this where I can casually mention that I just came from a rehearsal with my early music/madrigal group, of which Rachel is a member, and we're going to be accompanying her at a reading on Tuesday (we did this for Seraphina too, and it was ace)?
posted by jokeefe at 11:05 PM on April 26, 2015 [8 favorites]

And for those of us who are a little short on money right now, when is the deadline for buying our Sasquan memberships?
posted by Banknote of the year at 11:53 PM on April 26, 2015

Is this where I can casually mention that I just came from a rehearsal with my early music/madrigal group, of which Rachel is a member, and we're going to be accompanying her at a reading on Tuesday (we did this for Seraphina too, and it was ace)?

*high-pitched kitten squeaking*
posted by NoraReed at 12:00 AM on April 27, 2015 [1 favorite]

> "Is this where I can casually mention ..."

Your life is fabulous and all sensible people envy you.

(BTW, while we're on the subject of Shadow Scale, please tell me I'm not the only one got all YES YES YES YOU WENT THERE I KNEW IT I KNEW IT YAY regarding the kiss followed by the "Oh." at the end of chapter 34 and cannot and never will be moved from being utterly convinced that this resolved happily all the way around because textual clues plus I'm sorry that character was NOT acting even remotely like someone who got rejected by the person they're in love with in the last few chapters of the book. Right?)
posted by kyrademon at 2:02 AM on April 27, 2015 [2 favorites]

Memory of Water by Emmi Itäranta. It's still on $1.99 kindle sale as of this post.

Also on sale at the Kobo store for the same price if you don't want to give your money to that particular evil empire.

(Course, I did have to use Hola, use a new email address and give out the White House as my residence, because clearly what we need in digital books is regional pricing. But this goes for all major book retailers.)
posted by MartinWisse at 2:54 AM on April 27, 2015 [1 favorite]

I really do not feel comfortable talking about Shadow Scale's AWESOME ROMANCE aspects because I saw nothing coming (well I figured I was just being a 'shipper) and do not want to spoil it for anyone, but you can memail me for squee-sharing.
posted by NoraReed at 3:19 AM on April 27, 2015

Many people are unable to be "good" by their definition because of genetics

You can say a lot of things about the puppies, but this particular one is grossly unfair. VD might feel this way, but the others would disavow it.
posted by Going To Maine at 5:11 AM on April 27, 2015 [1 favorite]

True enough, but it's not that much better morally speaking to freely yoke yourself to the racist and misogynist activism of an outspoken racist and misogynist.
posted by Kattullus at 5:21 AM on April 27, 2015 [4 favorites]

And for those of us who are a little short on money right now, when is the deadline for buying our Sasquan memberships?

In terms of voting on the Final Hugo ballot, the ballot will close July 1st, so some time before that. How much before depends on how well the web ballot is working, it could be as soon as "seconds" to "a day" before.

If you want to attend, there's no deadline, but the sooner you purchase, the less the cost will be for an attending membership.

The reason for this -- money in the bank sooner is much more useful to the concom, because they know they have it. At-doors are always an unknown factor, so they can't spend too much of that money hoping you'll show up then, and if a whole bunch show up at-door, there's not much they can do with the money other than consuite. if those same people by attending memberships well before, they can plan on more involved things with that budget.

This, by the way, is universally true of the Worldcon. The cheapest way to get an attending without dealing with the bidding process is to vote, then convert within 90 days to attending. Note that it doesn't matter who you vote for, the vote fee makes you a supporting member of whatever bid wins the Worldcon, and there's a flat conversion to attending. At con, there's usually a line.

Now, with the bids, you can sometimes get in a hair cheaper. To support the bid, many bids have "pre-supporting" memberships, which are basically donations to the bid. Some give you a cut on your conversion. Some bids also have "Friends of the bid", which are substantially more expensive, but if you're a friend and the bid wins, you auto convert to attending, and in some cases, the cost of being a friend of a bid + the voting fee is less than the voting fee + the conversion fee. The kicker is that if the bid you're a "friend" of doesn't win, you don't convert. That deal is with that bid only.

So, for simplicity's sake, just ignore that until you've been going for a while -- or if it's an obvious race, like an unopposed bid and the math says being a friend is cheaper than the conversion. That happened in 2005 when the Glasgow bid was running unopposed and the conversion fee was $105, but the friend of the bid fee was $100. Glasgow had a *lot* of friends.
posted by eriko at 5:23 AM on April 27, 2015 [3 favorites]

Frequently, respectful dialogue is the best way to reach people you disagree with. But this relies on them having good intentions, because then you can usually find common ground and work from there.

Obviously we're not mind-readers, but the actions of the Puppies are not the actions of sincere yet misguided people. There's been no democracy, no transparency among their group. They've exploited loopholes, not acted to close them. They claim a silent majority but called in the Gamergoons. Evidence proving their claims wrong has been ignored, not rebutted (even badly).

The things they say about their motivations don't match their actions, which makes them insincere. Insincere people can't be negotiated with, can't be engaged in a dialogue, because that requires honesty. So how long do we have to give them the benefit of the doubt? Until they destroy the Hugos?
posted by harriet vane at 6:10 AM on April 27, 2015 [12 favorites]

MartinWisse: "use a new email address and give out the White House as my residence"

Martin. Martin. Martin. Your correct fake American address from now on is "1060 W. Addison St., Chicago, IL 60613."

I feel like my presence here has taught you people nothing.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 6:16 AM on April 27, 2015 [17 favorites]

Your correct fake American address from now on is "1060 W. Addison St., Chicago, IL 60613."

Just remember -- when they ask, say, "Why, yes, I am staying with Elwood Blues."
posted by eriko at 6:27 AM on April 27, 2015 [4 favorites]

True enough, but it's not that much better morally speaking to freely yoke yourself to the racist and misogynist activism of an outspoken racist and misogynist.

Well, Correia and Torgersen display the baseline amount of racism and homophobia of the conservative base (which, let's admit, is pretty high), so there's that. And I have no problem calling Correia misogynist and transphobic, given his rhetoric over Sarkeesian/Quinn/Wu (and harassment in general) and his nasty lashing out over Tor's posting of an article promoting writing outside the gender binary. Torgersen I could kinda-sorta believe had good intentions (although so many other writers had essentially demolished the entire basis of his arguments), up until the point at which he signed on with the gators. Once you start talking up how well-meaning and honest the demonstrably racist/misogynist/etc lynch mob is, and welcoming them to your attempts to destroy something you don't like, I believe "good intentions" have gone right out the window.
posted by zombieflanders at 6:48 AM on April 27, 2015 [10 favorites]

Aside: Because this thread needs an aside, I will be at 1060 W. Addison St, Chicago, IL, 60613 on Wednesday evening with a friend. I hear that some small bears are appearing there. Unlike recent years, the small bears appearing there are being very entertaining, and they are appearing with, if I am reading this correctly, some pirates. I promise to say hello to Elwood for everyone, and, if he's there, MartinWisse.
posted by eriko at 7:15 AM on April 27, 2015 [9 favorites]

Sadly, those bear cubs will be made to walk the plank.
posted by Chrysostom at 7:20 AM on April 27, 2015 [1 favorite]

And I have no problem calling Correia misogynist and transphobic, given his rhetoric over Sarkeesian/Quinn/Wu (and harassment in general) and his nasty lashing out over Tor's posting of an article promoting writing outside the gender binary.

I have an RSS subscription to Tor's featured articles, and about 90% of what they run isn't my thing. If it's not your thing, you can just not read it. There's plenty of science fiction to go around, and there's plenty of writing about science fiction to go around.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 7:41 AM on April 27, 2015 [1 favorite]

I'll have you know those bear cubs split a series with a let's just say related set of pirates in some city near three rivers somewhere, and are doing a lot better than those beer makers up north are.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled Hugo disaster, already in progress.
posted by eriko at 8:24 AM on April 27, 2015

if our children have to die, we're going to be the ones to kill them. Not them. Us.

eriko you are worrying me.
posted by corb at 9:09 AM on April 27, 2015

Phil Sandifer: “Since he mentioned it on his blog, I suppose I should confirm. Yes, I will be interviewing Theodore Beale/Vox Day about the comparative merits of John C. Wright’s One Bright Star to Guide Them and Iain Banks’s The Wasp Factory for the Pex Lives podcast sometime in the next few weeks.”
posted by Going To Maine at 12:30 PM on April 27, 2015 [1 favorite]

Chrysostom, I expect those pirates are going to be surprised by the mauling they'll receive from the small bears this year.
posted by ursus_comiter at 12:42 PM on April 27, 2015

posted by ursus_comiter
Eponysterical. Have you ever visited Los Osos, on the Central California Coast (10 miles from foopville)?
posted by oneswellfoop at 1:17 PM on April 27, 2015

Never been to Cali.
posted by ursus_comiter at 2:12 PM on April 27, 2015

GRRM: Puppy Whines

Also... can we please stop it with the moronic World War II metaphors? Larry Correia is not Churchill, Brad Torgersen is not FDR, and no one is Hitler. We are not fighting the Battle of the Bulge. No matter how the Hugo vote goes, no one is going to a death camp to be gassed.
This is not a fight for freedom, on which the fate of western civilization depends. We are talking about a literary award here. Bottom line, we are arguing about whether the mantle of past Hugo winners like Robert A. Heinlein, Ursula K. Le Guin, Alfred Bester, and Robert Silverberg should be passing to Anne Leckie, John Scalzi, and Jo Walton, or rather to Brad Torgersen, John Wright, and Kevin J. Anderson. This is an argument about what makes a good story, about prose style and characterization and theme and originality. We do not need to make it a blood feud. Have a little sense of proportion, Puppies.

posted by nubs at 2:26 PM on April 27, 2015 [6 favorites]

My copy of Goblin Emperor finally arrived! Only just started it.

... You know, I'm going to miss this thread when it's gone.
posted by kyrademon at 2:39 PM on April 27, 2015 [3 favorites]

so... can we please stop it with the moronic World War II metaphors? Larry Correia is not Churchill, Brad Torgersen is not FDR, and no one is Hitler.

I note the tactical omission of Vox Day.
posted by Going To Maine at 2:47 PM on April 27, 2015 [11 favorites]

But in puppyland, Vox Day omits you!

...from consideration for a Hugo, quite possibly for reasons to do with racism, misogyny, or homophobia.
posted by kagredon at 3:09 PM on April 27, 2015 [2 favorites]

Hey guys - I have been slow reading in part because I started picking up the Hugo novels, and actually, I'm glad I did! Allow me to recommend Connie Willis' 'To Say Nothing Of The Dog' which is just a delightful time travel romp that made my heart sing. No politics there in either direction, but fantastically fun!
posted by corb at 3:14 PM on April 27, 2015 [6 favorites]

a (needed) silly digression...
The next iteration of SF Puppies?
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:18 PM on April 27, 2015 [1 favorite]

Edmund Schubert, SP/RP nominee for Best Editor (Short Form) for his work with Orson Scott Card's InterGalactic Medicine Show, withdraws his name from consideration.
posted by infinitewindow at 3:28 PM on April 27, 2015 [3 favorites]

And here's a letter from Mr. Schubert in his capacity as editor of IGMS.
posted by infinitewindow at 3:31 PM on April 27, 2015 [3 favorites]

It has been [0] days since our last loss of nominee. Hugo safe!
posted by eriko at 3:50 PM on April 27, 2015 [8 favorites]

eriko, you're the guru. If more people drop out but their names are still on the ballots, what happens come vote-counting time?
posted by corb at 3:58 PM on April 27, 2015

I'm not eriko but I think it's clear they'll be declared the winner but are at that point free to refuse to pick up the award.

But I have a feeling that a lot of categories are going NO AWARD.
posted by Justinian at 4:06 PM on April 27, 2015

It depends.

If the Hugo Admin honors the withdrawal, and someone ranks them, they'll just move to the next spot on the ballot.

If they don't, they'll just count the ballots as if nothing has changed. After the first round, if nobody has a clear majority, the candidate with the least votes is eliminated, those ballots move to their next choice and redistribute, and we recount. If that doesn't give us a majority, we knock out the lowest remaining, and do it again.

We keep doing that until we have a majority. That's the preliminary winner. We then run another pass, but only two candidates are in this one, the preliminary winner and No Award. If No Award wins here, no award is given. If not, the preliminary winner is confirmed.

For reasons, for which I will only describe as "dumb", people then insist on running the election for 2nd, which you do by running it all again but ignoring the winner and the No Award test. The winner of that comes in 2nd. You repeat for 3rd through 6th, No Award counts as just another entrant. I personally find this a bunch of noise that we never did until we wrote software to do the counting, and some FUCKING NERD had to write the code to run all that, and I hate that person so much. Back before that person, we counted with paper ballots, moved them between piles, and didn't bother with anything but the important one.

And if I'm the Hugo Admin, we won't calculate or publish anything but the first place. Because, well, second is first of the losers. Why tease them?
posted by eriko at 4:13 PM on April 27, 2015 [2 favorites]

Ohhh, okay. For some reason I had thought that the 'No Award Or Not' test was whether No Award got more ballots than all the other categories. Does that mean it's a lot more likely to get No Awards in?
posted by corb at 4:16 PM on April 27, 2015

John Scalzi kindly posted a copy of Mr. Schubert's letter to his website after the traffic from Metafilter crushed the original hosting site.*

*Metafilter's role may have been exaggerated a bit.
posted by infinitewindow at 4:28 PM on April 27, 2015 [3 favorites]

The point of the No Award test is that more voter should think that the final winner should win than people think no award should win. It's an explicit test for the work that gets a bunch of 1 votes and a bunch of no awards. You need to beat the no awards to win. Basically, if 4/5 of the voters rank no award ahead of you, you shouldn't win.

Now, for the record, the No Award test has never triggered, as long as we've been announcing the counts. Then again, No Award is pretty rare. Last time it won was BDP '77
posted by eriko at 4:59 PM on April 27, 2015 [1 favorite]

eriko: And if I'm the Hugo Admin, we won't calculate or publish anything but the first place. Because, well, second is first of the losers. Why tease them?

But then we'd miss out on hilarity like: In 2014 Beale's novelette, "Opera Vita Aeterna", was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novelette. It came in sixth out of five nominees, behind "No Award." [Wikipedia]
posted by Pink Frost at 5:44 PM on April 27, 2015 [5 favorites]

But then we'd miss out on hilarity like

Yeah, in that case, it's hilarity. Now, go back to when the the #5 nominee wasn't a Rabid Puppie. Did you want to tell that person they came in fifth?

Every time? Every time they came in fifth, you wanted to be the person to say "You sucked so bad, that you barely beat out No Award?" Except, of course, in the cases when they didn't, when you get to say, "you sucked so bad you didn't even beat out No Award?"

No.

It's an honor to be nominated. Even when these bastards break it. You either get the rocket, or you don't. Working out how much you didn't get the rocket is just torment, and in the years where we follow the normal social conventions on nominations, I'm not willing to torment those who didn't get the rocket.

Which is why I wouldn't publish the number for anything but first, and why I hate the idea of do so. Because if being nominated is such an honor, why is detailing how you lost so important?
posted by eriko at 9:30 PM on April 27, 2015 [7 favorites]

Fair point. We'll have to find another way to mock Beale. Which fortunately shouldn't be hard.
posted by Pink Frost at 10:03 PM on April 27, 2015

because nerds like statistics. And knowing who the big losers are.
posted by Justinian at 10:03 PM on April 27, 2015

Finally read the whole Phil Sandifer "guided by the beauty of their weapons" thing.

I can't believe he's interviewing Beale.
posted by Zed at 10:32 PM on April 27, 2015

The thing is, Sandifer is dead wrong about what he says. He says that Beale found a home in orthodox SF&F fandom and has big clout there. That's... the only way you could believe that to be true is if you lack even the tiniest bit of knowledge about the subject. The Puppies are mad because they feel that they've been excluded from orthodox fandom. That's the point! That's... I can't even...
posted by Justinian at 10:36 PM on April 27, 2015 [1 favorite]

The thing is, Sandifer is dead wrong about what he says. He says that Beale found a home in orthodox SF&F fandom and has big clout there.

Where does he say that? I just read the essay, and he calls Beale an ignorant, sexist, racist facist who writes poorly, as far as I can tell (I'm paraphrasing). I couldn't find any claim that Beale had clout in orthodox SFF.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 11:17 PM on April 27, 2015

In the essay.

Truth be told, I have trouble thinking of any mainstream groups or organizations where someone who publicly espoused those views would not be ostracized.

Except, apparently, orthodox sci-fi/fantasy fandom, in which Theodore Beale has sufficient clout within orthodox sci-fi/fantasy fandom to select 68% of the Hugo Award nominees.

It's not even an implication, it's just a statement. Fandom is the only mainstream group or organization in which Beale's views would not be ostracized, and Beale has enough clout with fandom to select 68% of the nominees. Hell, I'm not even changing his words in my restatement.

The plain fact is that Beale has been ostracized and has no clout with fandom. It isn't orthodox mainstream fandom in which he found his support, it is right wing nutjobby gamergaters.
posted by Justinian at 11:49 PM on April 27, 2015 [2 favorites]

Thank you for that, Justinian. I guess I was skimming a bit.

Except, apparently, orthodox sci-fi/fantasy fandom, in which Theodore Beale has sufficient clout within orthodox sci-fi/fantasy fandom to select 68% of the Hugo Award nominees.

Yeah, this is outright wrong; the issue is not that Beale has mainstream/orthodox acceptance and influence, it's that the Hugo's nominations system is ridiculously easy to game with a small number of people, and Beale and his band of nutjob asshole fans finally decided to exploit that.

But it's also true - Beale did have sufficent clout to select 68% of the Hugo ballot. It's just that it didn't take much clout at all.

It's possible that Sandifer meant that any other community would have just banned Beale from their WorldCon equivalent and awards, meetings...etc. But I think that's a bit of a stretch.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 12:06 AM on April 28, 2015

I really hate the notion of framing the Puppies/Baen crowd as "orthodox fandom". The thing is, Beale WAS ostracized- he was one of two people kicked out of the SFWA. I would however say he has a degree of support among the Baen crowd simply because of who his enemies are, and I'd be interested to see how much of his support can from that group, and how much from GamerGate.
posted by happyroach at 12:19 AM on April 28, 2015 [1 favorite]

Serious question - Who are the 'Baen crowd'?

I mean, Baen publishes Lois McMaster Bujold, who publishes some of the most progressive/pro-social justice scifi around and fantasy around, even if they do have terrible cover art. And those books are still fun space opera/fantasy romps.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 12:35 AM on April 28, 2015

Who are the 'Baen crowd'?

The Orthodox Church of Heinlein may offer some insight. Baen does publish plenty of great SF--Bujold, whom you mentioned, other favorites of mine like Sharon Lee & Steve Miller or P. C. Hodgell, and an awesome variety of reprinted classics. And then there's Oh John Ringo No! (TW: lots, probably--I'm not re-reading even the summary) kinds of stuff.
posted by Monsieur Caution at 12:53 AM on April 28, 2015 [2 favorites]

I was super-happy when Baen picked up P. C. Hodgell; she has had amazingly bad luck in the past with companies that publish her suddenly going bankrupt (it was something like three!)

I am ... also glad that Baen has finally switched cover artists with the most recent book, since P. C. Hodgell fans had to suffer through a few volumes where the artist's conception of the main character, a young woman who is described as slim and has been mistaken for her twin brother, was apparently, "So, really big boobs, then! Got it!"
posted by kyrademon at 1:41 AM on April 28, 2015 [4 favorites]

But it's also true - Beale did have sufficent clout to select 68% of the Hugo ballot. It's just that it didn't take much clout at all.

That's true, but he also had much of that clout with people outside fandom. They really did suck in the GamerGaters, I wasn't just using it as a rhetorical cudgel. You can't claim somebody has clout with fandom when the people that voted for him were in large part not members of organized fandom.

I agree that what little support Beale has found resides mainly with the Baen crowd, I just don't necessarily associate that with fandom. Fandom being those people who go to cons and participate regularly in the Hugo process and such rather than just rant about SJWs on Baen's Bar while pleasuring themselves in their mom's basement to Tom Kratman novels about glorious Waffen SS heroes.
posted by Justinian at 1:53 AM on April 28, 2015 [1 favorite]

And then there's Oh John Ringo No! (TW: lots, probably--I'm not re-reading even the summary) kinds of stuff.

The difference is that John Ringo appears in the comments to that post saying basically that yeah, it was idfic and wasn't even writing for anyone but himself. I don't recall Ringo appearing in Puppygate.
posted by sukeban at 2:48 AM on April 28, 2015 [1 favorite]

(which is to say, admitting that you've been writing for your own kink is miles ahead from trying to impose your favourite flavor of SF/F as The One True Fandom as the puppies try to do, and as far as I know Ringo hasn't been criticized for the content of that series of books)
posted by sukeban at 2:53 AM on April 28, 2015

Yeah, I think Beale/Day's ~trufans~ tend to reside less in sci-fi/fantasy fandom and more in Men's Rights Activists circles, which have a lot of overlap with organized white supremacists, #GamerGate, etc. I'm sure there are some of those kinds of assholes in the science fiction community (like Will Shetterly) and fandom at large-- there are plenty of overlapping spots in this particular depressing venn diagram-- but the bulk of the people Vox Day pulls in on any particular one of his Bigot Crusades aren't following him because they read his sci-fi, they're following him because they're excited someone "important" agrees with their horrible opinions about rape and stuff.
posted by NoraReed at 3:10 AM on April 28, 2015 [2 favorites]

The thing is, Beale WAS ostracized- he was one of two people kicked out of the SFWA.

Only after he put really a lot of effort into getting kicked out, though.
posted by Artw at 7:23 AM on April 28, 2015

Beale WAS ostracized- he was one of two people kicked out of the SFWA.

fuck. I just realized I'm going to be qualifying this for the rest of my life.

Beale is the only person to have been expelled from SFWA. In the case of Stanislaw Lem, he had been granted an honorary membership. Some SFWAns got pissed at Lem and wanted his honorary membership withdrawn, then realized that it was already the case that SFWA's bylaws required it: Lem didn't qualify for an honorary membership because he qualified for regular membership. SFWA withdrew his honorary membership and then-president Frederik Pohl specifically pointed out that he was welcome to join as a regular member and offered to pay Lem's dues out of his own pocket. Lem decllined. Lem was welcome as a member and declined.

Beale was expelled under the "Expulsion of Member" clause of the bylaws.

Lem deserves much better than to be grouped with Beale as an example of anything.
posted by Zed at 7:25 AM on April 28, 2015 [19 favorites]

The New Yorker profiles Gene Wolfe: Sci-Fi’s Difficult Genius
posted by Going To Maine at 7:47 AM on April 28, 2015

Beale claims that Massachusetts law (MGL ch. 180 §18) requires a full membership vote for expulsion. Since SFWA was a Massachusetts corporation at the time, Beale claims that the officers could not expel him and only the membership could, regardless of what the by-laws say. Has anyone else analyzed these claims?
posted by grouse at 8:16 AM on April 28, 2015

Has John Ringo withdrawn his opinion on the Hugo from two years ago? I don't know where he stands on Puppy-Hugo manipulation, but it seems fair to connect him to the 'Baen crowd' that has stirred the same pot (bearing in mind that Baen readers/authors are doubtless divided on the issue too and far from being the only folks on any side).

I see a large gap between "Oh, the Hugos are just a popularity contest for SJWs" and "Fuck the Hugos, we're going to burn them down." Ringo is dismissive, which is fine in my book -- I'm dismissive of the Golden Globes, but I don't campaign to take advantage of them and then threaten to burn them down, nor do I "accidentally" find myself running a parallel campaign with someone who's doing those things either. I just don't watch them on TV (and make snide comments here on MetaFilter about them).

Being in the same publishing house and sort of "hanging out" with those guys shouldn't tar Ringo, unless we can find more evidence of Puppydom.

Though I do find it interesting that his personal website seems to be down at the moment.
posted by Etrigan at 8:16 AM on April 28, 2015

I think no one in this thread has said Ringo supports how the Sad Puppies took action. The question posed was what does the 'Baen crowd' refer to in a context oppositional to 'orthodox fandom,' given that Baen's authors include figures like Bujold. Pretty sure John Ringo counts, and more importantly, that Toni Weisskopf's brief essay linked in the same comment intentionally tries to construct that oppositional identity for her readers.
posted by Monsieur Caution at 8:26 AM on April 28, 2015 [1 favorite]

Since SFWA was a Massachusetts corporation at the time, Beale claims that the officers could not expel him and only the membership could, regardless of what the by-laws say. Has anyone else analyzed these claims?

The answer is probably, "Beale is correct on points of law but doesn't want to pony up to sue, and no one else gives a fuck about the obscurities of Massachusetts law." At least, so says my experience with a similar membership organization issue.
posted by corb at 8:54 AM on April 28, 2015 [1 favorite]

SFWA stated at the time that they solicited advice from their legal counsel.

For Beale's assertion to be correct, it seems to me one of the following must be true:

Gould lied about having solicited legal counsel.
SFWA flouted the advice of their legal counsel and knowingly exposed themself to a suit.
Beale understands the law better than SFWA's lawyer.

For Beale's assertion to be false, it seems like one of the following must be true:

Beale is knowingly lying.
Beale brings the same surety and depth of understanding to matters of law that he does to genetics.

I know how I'd bet.
posted by Zed at 9:44 AM on April 28, 2015 [16 favorites]

Huh. I have no idea what the actual legal answer is, but as a result of glancing at bylaws today I learned that I am eligible to join the SFWA if I want.
posted by kyrademon at 11:29 AM on April 28, 2015 [6 favorites]

There are definitely other possibilities, Zed. They may have decided that Beale was simply unlikely to sue, or that if he did it would be easy to rectify the situation some other way at that point.

Anyway, I'd still like to know if there is a reason that this provision doesn't apply, and if so, why.
posted by grouse at 11:59 AM on April 28, 2015

They may have decided that Beale was simply unlikely to sue, or that if he did it would be easy to rectify the situation some other way at that point.

I think that's covered by "SFWA flouted the advice of their legal counsel and knowingly exposed themself to a suit." Given the rarity of expulsion, I can't imagine that they would have thought, Yeah, fuck it, it'll just be too damn hard to do it the right way. And given Beale's known truculence, I can't imagine they would have thought, Nah, he won't bother, even though he's totally right and will be able to get any lawyer to take this on and get us to pay all of his legal fees.

I could be wrong, but I'd put five bucks down on one of Zed's latter options.
posted by Etrigan at 12:36 PM on April 28, 2015 [1 favorite]

It occurs to me, that when the puppies crowd talks about wanting "good old fashioned SF" like from the 60s and 70s, they aren't talking about the books- I mean that was the whole time of the New Wave. I think what they want is 1970s FANDOM. That is, the days when a famous SF author could grope asses in pubic at a convention, and it was publicly accepted. When the covers of professional trade magazines could have women in chainmail bikinis and nobody would (publicly) object. Their idol may actually not so much be Heinlein, as Niven, whose ex-wife evidently said "I'm not surprised he created a race where the females were non-senient."

There has been a culture war going on in fandom between "the way things were", and modern thinking, with a lot of old behaviors no longer being acceptable. I don't think the puppies can really be blamed for starting the division of fandom into sides, they're just an outlyier that is forcing the old school fandom onto the offensive.
posted by happyroach at 12:43 PM on April 28, 2015 [16 favorites]

On his Facebook page, Ringo occasionally makes comments about not giving a shit about the Hugos:

"Don't bother to vote to nominate or award John Ringo. I won't actually publicly wipe my ass with it. I will simply turn down the nomination. I'd rather get a nomination from the National Socialist Worker's (Nazi) Party for running a particularly efficient Concentration Camp. That is, honestly, how I feel about the SF awards system."

But in other comments has been firmly in the support the Puppies camp, if not their actions:

"The SJW prats had already politicized the Hugos as a venue entirely for social agenda fiction (and furthermore their agenda.)"

"A few years back, both the Hugo and Nebula committee started to give out small trinkets to all the nominees who didn't win. Runner up awards if you will ... I just realized that the Hugo committee is going to have to pass those out to Tom Kratman, Toni Weisskopf, Brad Torgersen, etcetera, EVEN IF THEY DON'T WIN A HUGO. Or I suppose they can eliminate the practice. But I really want to see their faces when they're forced to give one to Tom Kratman."
posted by zakur at 12:50 PM on April 28, 2015 [3 favorites]

But I really want to see their faces when they're forced to give one to Tom Kratman."

They mailed one to VD last year. For the Hugos, it's a small silver pin shaped like the Hugo rocket, you get one for every nomination you've earned. They ask if you want it at the convention or if you want it mailed to you.

So, giving one to Tom Kratman, whoever he is, will be trivial. Seriously, I just don't get why they think it's such a big deal who we hand these out to. We've been doing the pins forever, it's not new by any means -- at least the last 15 years. I know people who literally have over a dozen of them -- earned, mind you, not just because they were Hugo admins and had the box of them in thier house.
posted by eriko at 1:14 PM on April 28, 2015 [9 favorites]

Seriously, I just don't get why they think it's such a big deal who we hand these out to.

Because when everything you do is driven by spite, you assume the same is true of everyone else.
posted by kagredon at 1:19 PM on April 28, 2015 [15 favorites]

For those of you guys who were following the Calgary Expo thing, I stand by my 'clever maneuvering' interpretation - especially in light of the fact that the Honey Badger Brigade has just raised 18K for legal defense.
posted by corb at 2:04 PM on April 28, 2015

It looks like they have raised that in 4 days. They still have 26 days left on the fundraiser.
posted by corb at 2:07 PM on April 28, 2015

18K for legal defense

Offense.
posted by Zed at 2:08 PM on April 28, 2015 [3 favorites]

Oh, sorry, you're right - I spend a lot of time in activist land, so it's kind of natural for me to refer to these things as 'legal defense funds' because we're always throwing them. They call it purely a 'Legal Fund'.
posted by corb at 2:10 PM on April 28, 2015

Well that will be going straight in their pockets.
posted by Artw at 2:13 PM on April 28, 2015 [1 favorite]

If you don't have particularly strong morals and can live with what you see in the mirror each morning, fleecing gamergaters in service to harassing women should be a very lucrative career.
posted by MartinWisse at 2:15 PM on April 28, 2015 [3 favorites]

It's basically Westboro without the hassle of going to court!
posted by Artw at 2:18 PM on April 28, 2015

Better get screenshots of all their posts talking about infiltrating the con and concealing their identity before they conveniently disappear.
posted by Palindromedary at 2:20 PM on April 28, 2015

The thing is -- I don't really thing GG is really involved with the Hugos. I know Torgensen *tried* to get them in, but I don't think they really came in big at all. This is all SP/RP nonsense.

Now, they might try something at con, but the award themselves? A little too abstract for their taste, I think. This just doesn't fit their MO. GG is much more about direct confrontation, and this is a long game with very little direct action whatsoever. Not their style, not their MO, really.
posted by eriko at 2:52 PM on April 28, 2015

The way I read it is that Torg, et al believe GGers are natural fans - they like stuff that often involves fantasy (Dragon Age, Skyrim, Mass Effect, hell, Halo..) and videogaming honestly these days is an art form, whatever cranky GRRM says at panels. However, I don't think that's returned - I think GGers see themselves as "cooler" than the kind of people who go to SF& Fantasy conventions. I think it's more of a schadenfreude than anything serious and committed.

I will make a friendly 5$ bet that Worldcon will not have any GGers show up - at least among the first 10 people to take me up on it. :)
posted by corb at 3:02 PM on April 28, 2015

Seriously, I just don't get why they think it's such a big deal who we hand these out to. We've been doing the pins forever, it's not new by any means -- at least the last 15 years. I know people who literally have over a dozen of them -- earned, mind you, not just because they were Hugo admins and had the box of them in thier house.

Obligatory link to Lois McMaster Bujold's nomination pins necklace (scroll down).
posted by sukeban at 3:05 PM on April 28, 2015 [3 favorites]

Obligatory link to Lois McMaster Bujold's nomination pins necklace (scroll down).

Wow, by forever, I mean a lot longer than the last 15 years then. Chicon V was 1991, she mentions the 1990 Worldcon as well, so more like the last 25 years, and probably longer than that. So, yeah, not new at all.
posted by eriko at 3:13 PM on April 28, 2015 [2 favorites]

Seriously, I just don't get why they think it's such a big deal who we hand these out to.

Because you're supposed to be gnashing your teeth and wailing in despair at giving the pins to such manly men. Like getting an SVD bayonet by wrestling it bloodily from the soldier, rather than buying it online.

Incidentally, what does "gnashing teeth" really mean? Is that actually a thing?
posted by happyroach at 3:34 PM on April 28, 2015

It's what Graham Nash does whenever anyone says they remember David Crosby and Stephen Stills and Neil Young, but blank on his name.
posted by zombieflanders at 3:48 PM on April 28, 2015 [1 favorite]

Just finished reading Goblin Emperor. Really, really good.

It wouldn't have surprised me to see this book marketed as a YA book, in many ways it very much has that feel to me (which I don't consider an insult incidentally, I'm a huge fan of good YA.) It's kind of interesting to me that the fact that it was marketed to adults may have changed what awards it got nominated for.

Right now, for me, it'd be a tough call between this one and Ancillary Sword. Haven't read Three Body Problem yet, so we'll see if that changes things. Got to admit, though, of three, Three Body Problem is the one with the premise that interests me the least.
posted by kyrademon at 3:49 PM on April 28, 2015 [1 favorite]

Now, they might try something at con, but the award themselves? A little too abstract for their taste, I think. This just doesn't fit their MO. GG is much more about direct confrontation, and this is a long game with very little direct action whatsoever. Not their style, not their MO, really.

I'm not sure what you're basing this on. Voting for the Hugos is not really any more "abstract" than invading hashtags or feminist subreddits, and as the Slate article upthread points out, stacking poorly-managed open votes is a trolly tradition that predates Gamergate by years. The ties between SP3 and GG go all the way back to the initial announcement of the slate and have only gotten stronger since the nominees were announced.

(That said, there already seem to be some rumblings of discontent.)
posted by kagredon at 3:50 PM on April 28, 2015 [1 favorite]

Content warning: Reddit
posted by Artw at 3:55 PM on April 28, 2015 [3 favorites]

I have just gotten my 2017 Site Selection Ballot. I noticed that one of the finalists is Helsinki, Finland... isn't that where Castalia Press is based? With minimal googling I have found nobody on the committee connected to VD... yet. Okay, maybe that's getting a little paranoid, but I'm leaning toward voting for Shizuoka, Japan, just to give Godzilla and Akira their due.
posted by oneswellfoop at 4:02 PM on April 28, 2015

I've been thinking about it, and I think there are going to be roughly four types of voters at this year's Hugos:

1) No-Award-Everything Voters. Basically, people who say the Hugos are broken this year, call the whole thing a loss and resume when appropriate. The prospect of people doing this has a whole bunch of commentators in a horrified tizzy. I think that's an over-reaction, because I think a negligible number of people are actually going to do this. I've seen tons of people agonizing about how this might happen, and almost no one saying they're actually planning on doing it. I personally doubt this group will affect things much.

2) Puppies. Some people are worried that they're going to overrun the voting, but honestly, I don't see it. They didn't get their nominations on the ballot with numbers, they got them on despite their lack of numbers. 17% of the nomination vote is the general estimate. I don't expect that to swell too much in the final vote. In fact, I suspect it will shrink.

3) Slate-Nominations-Do-Not-Exist Voters. (And variations thereof.) Basically, people who will leave all nominations from slates off the ballot, except possibly for narrow specific categories, and will always include No Award as an option. I'm one of these. If they prevail, there will likely be No Awards in five categories and awards in twelve. I expect there to be a fair number of these.

4) Vote-As-Usual Voters. These are the people who will go "well, the ballot is the ballot", and will only put something or someone below No Award if they feel it is of poor quality. I also expect there to be a fair number of these. If they prevail, there will probably be awards in all or almost all categories.

It's hard to say exactly how it will play out without really knowing the numbers. I think it will largely be a battle of Group 3 vs. Group 4; however, Group 4 would get a de facto boost from Group 2 in certain categories and Group 3 would get a de facto boost from Group 1 in certain categories.

Groups 2+4 may end up having the majority, which would most likely mean the Puppy Slates would win in categories where they dominate completely but will win little else. I don't think that's certain though. A LOT of people are pissed off, and it could very well be enough to throw it to Groups 1+3, which would most likely mean no or almost Puppy Slate wins and several categories given No Award.
posted by kyrademon at 4:14 PM on April 28, 2015 [1 favorite]

I wanted to respond to the question of Who are the 'Baen crowd'?, albeit a little late. I suspect the Baen crowd doesn't mean the authors Baen publishes, necessarily (which list includes Misty Lackey, Eric Flint, the late Kage Baker and L. Bujold, along with the more Puppy-ish side of the ledger like Sarah Hoyt, Dave Freer and L. Correia) so much as the fans who tend to congregate around the Baen online forum, Baen's Bar, which tends to skew, so far as I know, pretty heavily Puppy-like. I buy Baen books pretty regularly, but have no real interest in joining the confab at the Bar. Perhaps that just demonstrates my prejudice. Or just my suspicion that by joining I'd be forced to read the opinions of lots of people who think that Correia, Hoyt and Kratman are oppressed due to their political positions.
posted by my dog is named clem at 4:25 PM on April 28, 2015 [6 favorites]

I know a few of the Helsinki in 2017 committee, and they are not associated with VD or Castalia House. The bid chair talks about Castalia's lack of links with Finnish fandom over at cstross's blog. I would hate to see Helsinki lose a second time (they ran for 2015 and lost narrowly to Spokane) because VD decided to run his micro-press out of Finland, I hope this doesn't affect the voting too much.

It's a preferential ballot, anyway, so you can still put Japan in first place and put Helsinki lower down. Helsinki and Washington DC are the two front-runners, so your second and third-place selections could count.
posted by penguinliz at 4:26 PM on April 28, 2015 [8 favorites]

Helsinki's committee has noticeable overlap (including the same chair) with their 2015 bid that nearly beat Spokane. So they've been at this for a while, and I wish them luck, though I admit to being charmed mostly by a children's book they had on their table in San Antonio: a version of the Kalevala starring cartoon dogs. TBH, site selection is something I'd leave to people who'll definitely attend and/or who'll visit their table/party in Spokane to get to know them and drink their booze and talk with them about their con experience and whatnot.
posted by Monsieur Caution at 4:26 PM on April 28, 2015 [1 favorite]

I don't generally buy things Bean publishes (except for PC Hodgell, whom I was reading before she moved there). It's not for any ideological reason on my part; it's because most of the stuff is so samey and it's the sort of samey-ness that I find tiresome. I mean, I read the Hornblower and the Aubrey/Maturin books; I don't need to read them again, but set in space. I don't need to read The Man-Kzin Wars Number Ninety Seven. I don't need to read SF from the fifties/sixties, lovingly ~~mangled~~ ~~mutilated~~ edited by Eric Flint. I suppose I might read Baen's free stuff anyway, but you have to register and the Baen's Bar crowd seem just as tiresome as Baen's authors. It takes a lot for me to turn down free books, but there you have it, I just cannot deal.
posted by Joe in Australia at 4:57 PM on April 28, 2015

A semi-related 'shower thought' re: SF traditionalists...

How disappointed would the Sci-Fi writers of the 40’s to 70’s be upon learning that we just call our portable video communicators, our sum human pocket knowledge computers, our any desired movie screens… “phones”?

posted by oneswellfoop at 6:16 PM on April 28, 2015 [6 favorites]

The way I read it is that Torg, et al believe GGers are natural fans - they like stuff that often involves fantasy (Dragon Age, Skyrim, Mass Effect, hell, Halo..) and videogaming honestly these days is an art form, whatever cranky GRRM says at panels.

I suppose it's possible that a handful of GGers are doing Dragon Age, but they tend to be manbaby douchebags, and I'm pretty sure manbaby douchebags are still crying over that time Anders hit on one of their characters and David Gaider told them all to fuck off. So, yeah, maybe fans of the other franchises, but I'm pretty sure Dragon Age is thoroughly covered in social justice cooties.
posted by NoraReed at 6:41 PM on April 28, 2015 [4 favorites]

As Judith Tarr recently blogged at MeFisOwnCStross's site, there's an unfortunate divide between Science Fiction and Fantasy, and part of it is the attitude that "Boys Write SF, Girls Write Fantasy". (an interesting read for many reasons, but who'd expect Stross to allow a boring guest blogger in?)
posted by oneswellfoop at 7:00 PM on April 28, 2015 [1 favorite]

Was the Southern Reach trilogy eligible this year? I would consider voting for Annihilation even over Ancillary Sword and Goblin Emperor. I just finished book 2, and while it was a bit slower, it was a wonderful development of book 1, and I can't wait to read book 3.

Basically, it reminds me of the greatest mad-science elements of Lost, which I enjoyed greatly. I really wanted the Dharma Initiative and the Numbers to have a satisfying science fiction explanation. No such luck.

Southern Reach is reminiscent of that, but seems to have been very carefully plotted out, with quite a lot of depth and mystery. I have high hopes for book 3.
posted by isthmus at 7:02 PM on April 28, 2015

Charlie brings in guest bloggers when he's going to be either away from the blog for vacation, work or family reasons, or because. So, not unusual.
posted by eriko at 7:03 PM on April 28, 2015

I didn't say it was unusual, just good (and not surprising that it is good).
posted by oneswellfoop at 7:22 PM on April 28, 2015

As Judith Tarr recently blogged at MeFisOwnCStross's site, there's an unfortunate divide between Science Fiction and Fantasy, and part of it is the attitude that "Boys Write SF, Girls Write Fantasy".

Although that narrative is complicated by the sexism that comes into play when talking about "important" fantasy like ASOIAF, or "epic" fantasy like LotR.

Because, when you're talking about epic stories that cover continents and involve casts of thousands, suddenly writers like Judith Tarr, Kate Elliott, Michelle Sagara, Sherwood Smith, Martha Wells, P. C. Hodgell, Barbara Hambly, Violette Malan, Patricia McKillip, Gillian Bradshaw, Diane Duane, Naomi Novik, and Rosemary Kirstein are nowhere to be seen.

I will go to my grave with the conviction that Kate Elliott is a better writer than Martin; and a far, far better writer than Jordan. She at least knows how to end a series, and when.
posted by suelac at 7:54 PM on April 28, 2015 [10 favorites]

Hmm, what's a good Kate Elliott starter book?
posted by isthmus at 8:03 PM on April 28, 2015

Hmm, what's a good Kate Elliott starter book?

I tend to point people towards the Crossroads trilogy, starting with Spirit Gate. It's epic, with wars and battles, duelling cultures, slaves and demons, and giant intelligent eagles of justice. Also lots of people, both important and not, from a variety of backgrounds, all of them just trying to get along with their lives, and every one the hero of their own story.

Her more recent series, the Spiritwalker series (starting with Cold Fire), sold quite well, but as it's a first-person pov of a young woman, I suspect many people assumed it was more of a YA series, and it seems to have been ignored by the critics. It's not YA, and the universe is a post-colonial icepunk world in which dinosaurs evolved into lawyers and the Taino Empire is a serious threat to proto-Napoleon's takeover of the former Roman Empire (which lasted into the 1700s). It's pretty great.

I really liked the Jaran series, which starts as an interstellar version of modern girl meets the Cossacks (and falls in love), but warps into something far more complicated almost immediately. The second and third novels in that sequence are particularly good, in which an attempt at an interstellar rebellion is mirrored by an entirely-terrestrial campaign by horseback nomads against settled peoples.

She's probably best known for the Crown of Stars series, which is an 8-volume epic fantasy series from the 1990s, starting with The King's Dragon. That's another series which ended up far more complicated and interesting than I expected, although I recall thinking the story got away from her a bit towards the end. She's a better writer now, with a tighter handle on her structure & themes.
posted by suelac at 8:17 PM on April 28, 2015 [6 favorites]

The Spiritwalker books are indeed pretty excellent. Wish I'd discovered Elliott earlier, but on the other hand, it means I've got more left to read -- if only the Crown of Stars books had a cheap ebook bundle edition!
posted by asperity at 8:39 PM on April 28, 2015

Crown of Stars was great, but the last two books made me want to throw them across the room, especially the romantic ending tie ups.
posted by corb at 8:46 PM on April 28, 2015

suelac: "I will go to my grave with the conviction that Kate Elliott is a better writer than Martin"

Keep in mind Martin has been writing since the mid-70s and there's a lot more to him than A Song of Ice and Fire. He's got four writing Hugos and a couple of Nebulas and has done some interesting work.
posted by Chrysostom at 9:00 PM on April 28, 2015 [2 favorites]

Sandy Ryalls's essay The Proxy Culture War for the Soul of Middle Earth is one of the best commentaries on PuppyGate that I've read (and I have read a sickening amount of commentaries at this point, let me tell you.)
posted by overglow at 9:33 PM on April 28, 2015 [3 favorites]

I'll say this for the whole brouhaha, i've never bought so many books (or added them to my Read Later list) in my life. This thread and others like it elsewhere have been absolute goldmines of recommendations.

I'm deeply enjoying all the discussions of who and what the Hugos are and should be and I hope there's another thread when this one ends. (If only so that my reading list keeps exploding this way..!)
posted by pseudonymph at 10:29 PM on April 28, 2015 [7 favorites]

> "Was the Southern Reach trilogy eligible this year?"

Yes, it was, and there's a very good chance it would have made the ballot this year if not for slate voting. It still has a chance of getting the Nebula.

According to predictions / prognostications that were made before all this went down, without slate voting the most likely books on the shortlist would have been Annihilation, Ancillary Sword, The Goblin Emperor, and The Three-Body Problem. (With a fifth being more of a toss-up which could maybe have gone to any of Lock In, City of Stairs, Words of Radiance, The Mirror Empire, or a few longshots.)

Predictions are never certain, of course, but given that they were on the ball for Ancillary Sword, The Goblin Emperor, and The Three-Body Problem, I would not be surprised if Annihilation turns out to be just one or two books off the edge of the current ballot.
posted by kyrademon at 2:10 AM on April 29, 2015 [3 favorites]

Suelac do you mean the Spiritwalker books only get good starting with Cold Fire? Because I have been meaning to read them but I thought the first one was Cold Magic. Should I start there or skip to book 2?
posted by Wretch729 at 6:44 AM on April 29, 2015

I know a few of the Helsinki in 2017 committee, and they are not associated with VD or Castalia House.

In fact, one of the best things you can do to stop Puppies weeing on the Hugo carpet, after registering and voting, is to vote for Helsinki in 2017. As has been shown for most non-US worldcons, the audience that comes to the con and nominates Hugos is much more inclusive and diverse (except perhaps for Canadian Worldcons: there's no excuse voting Robert "Canada's greatest self promoting living SF writer" J. Sawyer an award for anything. )

Helsinki 2017, Dublin 2019 and New Zealand 2020 are natural firebreaks, so vote for them all when possible.
posted by MartinWisse at 7:58 AM on April 29, 2015 [2 favorites]

Definitely start with the first book on those. I think they'd likely be incomprehensible if you skip whatever the name of the first one is. Cold Magic, that's the one.
posted by asperity at 7:59 AM on April 29, 2015

Hmm, what's a good Kate Elliott starter book?

I started, just this month, with King’s Dragon (1997), finalist for the Nebula that year, first in an Epic Fantasy series of seven. I bought and read it because Elliott had been sensible on Twitter but expected to find the same sort of fantasy her fellow Australian female fantasy writers like Trudi Cavanan or K. J. Parker produced: fun, readable but lightweight.

Instead what I got was a fantasy story set in what looked like the usual pseudomedieval world populated by modern people in fantasy drag, but what actually turned out to be a properly medieval world with characters who were everything but modern in their attitude to religion, slavery, honour, etc, a world in which men and women were much more equal than in the real Middle Ages, for the usual Epic Fantasy reasons, but where that equality still was embedded in a framework of morals and values alien to us. The usual Robert Jordan gloss about how magic is woman's work yadda yadda was here explored and given depth and while there was a protagonist of a humble background getting himself a Destiny as a Chosen of the Goddess, for ninetynine percent of the novel he remains a humble, overlooked and even despised person.

Meanwhile the other protagonist is the daughter of magicians who didn't inherit the powers of her mother and whom her father tried to protect from their enemies, who on his death is sold into slavery to the corrupt priester of the village they live in, who desires her for his mistress. And that isn't the subject of tittilation or just a challenge for her to overcome, but is one of the most chilling and realistic depictions of what domestic abuse looks from the inside I've ever read, certainly in fantasy.

In a just world this should be as big as A Song of Ice and Fire because it is just as realistic and epic a fantasy as that one, though not so obviously GrimDark at first.
posted by MartinWisse at 8:14 AM on April 29, 2015 [5 favorites]

Keep in mind Martin has been writing since the mid-70s and there's a lot more to him than A Song of Ice and Fire. He's got four writing Hugos and a couple of Nebulas and has done some interesting work.

To be honest though, before his big break he was strictly a second tier writer: some good shorter stories, a few decent standalone novels[1], a moderately successful shared world series. Nothing before A Game of Thrones (and several sequels afterwards) hinted at the commerical and critical success he'd get in the last five-ten years.

[1] and one stinker, The Armageddon Rag, which is the purest example of pandering to Baby Boomer musical prejudices ever published in the eighties, the decade of the first flowering of the "elves come over here and like our rock music the way we liked it in the sixties" Urban Fantasy genre.
posted by MartinWisse at 8:18 AM on April 29, 2015 [1 favorite]

I've been thinking about it, and I think there are going to be roughly four types of voters at this year's Hugos:

Overlaps relatively well with my how to vote if you dislike Puppy slates overview.

I'd say the best way to vote is to No Award all categories with majority Puppy candidates, as slates should be boycotted while those candidates left through no fault of their own got an easy ride, didn't have to compete with their actual rivals. In those categories were proper candidates have the majority, vote as normal but again No Award any slate candidates.

This left me with Best Novel, Best Graphic Story, Best Semiprozine & Best Fan Artist to vote on, everything else No Awarded and a much easier reading list than last year....
posted by MartinWisse at 8:25 AM on April 29, 2015 [1 favorite]

> "To be honest though, before his big break he was strictly a second tier writer ..."

This is fair, but second tier still means a Name in the SFF world, even if not a Big Name. He had a solid career in writing both for books and television. (And Windhaven has long been a favorite of mine, although most people say that was far more Tuttle than Martin.)
posted by kyrademon at 8:31 AM on April 29, 2015 [1 favorite]

MartinWisse: "Elliott had been sensible on Twitter but expected to find the same sort of fantasy her fellow Australian female fantasy writers like Trudi Cavanan or K. J. Parker "

Parker is neither female nor Australian.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:41 AM on April 29, 2015 [2 favorites]

> "... slates should be boycotted while those candidates left through no fault of their own got an easy ride, didn't have to compete with their actual rivals ..."

I'm still voting in categories with only one or two non-slate candidates, on the grounds that they got on fairly and shouldn't be punished for it. They are still competing with No Award for my vote, so from my perspective it's not a matter of they-got-nominated-and-therefore-I-simply-give-it-to-them. They can still lose if they're not up to snuff, so I consider them fair game to vote on.

The Hugos don't exist in a vacuum, and I think it's perfectly fair for voters who have read SFF before to vote on the basis of "do I think this work is Hugo-worthy?" rather than in a direct comparison with other nominees.

(Interestingly, it's theoretically always been possible under Hugo rules for there to be only one or two entries in a given category. Although that fact isn't particularly affecting how I vote this year, I'd probably be doing the same thing - the-nominees-vs-No-Award on a subjective quality basis - if it did.)
posted by kyrademon at 8:43 AM on April 29, 2015 [1 favorite]

As has been shown for most non-US worldcons, the audience that comes to the con and nominates Hugos is much more inclusive and diverse (except perhaps for Canadian Worldcons: there's no excuse voting Robert "Canada's greatest self promoting living SF writer" J. Sawyer an award for anything. )

Umm.

*Every. Single. Member* of Loncon 3 was able to nominate at Sasquan. All 10K of them. My question is why didn't they? I mean, how inclusive is this -- the entire membership of the London, and the Spokane, and anybody who was a member of the KC Worldcon by January 31st of this year was eligible.

And I fail to see how location puppy-proofs anything. The puppies don't care about attending, so the location doesn't matter. They got VD, Correia, Torgensen, and Olde Heuvelt on the ballot at Loncon by purchasing supporting memberships. They took over the ballot by doing the same. They'll try the same next year, and it does not matter where they are. You seem to be implying that US fandom actually intentionally voted that slate onto the ballot. If that's you're implication, short pier is there, take long walk, get mugged by an octopus on the way down.

Arguably, if you want to puppy proof, the most important criteria is which site is going to attract the largest number of members, to increase the nomination pool.

A DC Worldcon is going to be larger than Spokane, on the order of Montreal, so it'll be fairly large, say 4000 attending, 5500-6000 total, maybe more now that we're out of the Great Recession which depressed the 2008-2011 Worldcons totals. Japan will be small, as it was last time, on the order of 3000 attending, but higher in supporting, also 5000. Montreal will be about the same as DC.

The kicker -- we simply do not know -- is Helsinki. Helsinki runs a very, very large but very much not like a Worldcon convention every year, we have no idea how many of those folks would become members. Helsinki is very, very popular in European fandom, but European worldcon fandom is much smaller than US Worldcon fandom. London, indeed, the whole UK, is a huge draw to the US Worldcon fandom, but Helsinki is a big unknown on that. The closest analog we have would be the Netherlands Worldcon in The Hague, but that was in 1990, long enough ago that I'm loathe to make any prediction about attendance, the fan base has changed a great deal in the last quarter century.

So -- strictly in terms of puppy proofing, there is no evidence that Helsinki would hurt or help. So, on that ground alone -- and this is a really flimsy reason to base a site selection vote on, so flimsy I would call it dumb -- I would vote Helsinki 3rd, after DC and Montreal.

There are far more important factors in site selection, the three big ones, indeed, the only three I think anybody should consider, are the concom, the facilities, and the city. The first is "Who is going to run this? Are they competent? What are they planning?" The second is "How far away is X going to be from Y? Where is my hotel room going to be? Where are the parties going to be? How are you going to handle X if it's not going to be the usual answer?" The last is tourism, but a lot of people take extra time off after/before, so tourist value is a real factor, and if the con is boring or a disaster and you're in a nice city, you have a fallback.
posted by eriko at 8:45 AM on April 29, 2015 [2 favorites]

MartinWisse: "Elliott had been sensible on Twitter but expected to find the same sort of fantasy her fellow Australian female fantasy writers like Trudi Cavanan or K. J. Parker "

Parker is neither female nor Australian.

And "Kate Elliott" (Alis Rasmussen) was born in Oregon and lives in Hawaii.
posted by Etrigan at 8:46 AM on April 29, 2015 [1 favorite]

> "This left me with Best Novel, Best Graphic Story, Best Semiprozine & Best Fan Artist to vote on ..."

Mine leaves me voting for those plus Best Novelette, Best Dramatic Presentation Long Form, Best Dramatic Presentation Short Form, Best Professional Artist, Best Fanzine, Best Fan Writer, Best Fancast, and the Campbell. (Bearing in mind that my ballot stands a chance of looking like yours on any of those categories if I decide the available options aren't any good.)

I also know some people are taking approaches like "No votes for Puppies except in Dramatic Presentation Long Form because those movies would have gotten on anyway", but I personally don't think we can know for certain if some other movie would have made it on but got booted off.
posted by kyrademon at 8:54 AM on April 29, 2015

Parker is neither female nor Australian.

Gee.
posted by MartinWisse at 8:54 AM on April 29, 2015

Interestingly, it's theoretically always been possible under Hugo rules for there to be only one or two entries in a given category.

Based on section 3.8.5 of the Hugo rules, you will always get 3 nominees even if they don't meet the 5% threshold, so I don't think it's possible to have only 1 or 2 nominees?Unless there are only 1 or 2 works named at all across the ballots, which is pretty improbable.
posted by penguinliz at 9:01 AM on April 29, 2015

I'm still voting in categories with only one or two non-slate candidates, on the grounds that they got on fairly and shouldn't be punished for it.

I'm not, unless I can assure myself that the non-puppy work on the ballot is in my opinion the best work I've read in the year. In at least three cases it is not, so that category gets NA. Sorry for the poor SOB who made the ballot, but it's not the Best Non-Puppy Award.

Yes, this makes them collateral damage, and that sucks, but it's no more harm that the ones who never made the ballot at all. Also, remember that we don't know the true scope. We don't know how many were nominated and quietly withdrew before the ballot was announced. This "I withdrew because of X" thing is unprecedented this year.

And as to the singletons? I would be embarrassed if they accepted. Do you really want to be known as the person who only won a Hugo because you beat out the puppies? That alone, to me, is a solid reason to No Award, but I'm going full on mock if you act all Stanley Cup after beating four high school teams.
posted by eriko at 9:03 AM on April 29, 2015 [3 favorites]

> "Based on section 3.8.5 of the Hugo rules, you will always get 3 nominees even if they don't meet the 5% threshold ..."

Ah, I didn't realize that. I was incorrect about that, then.
posted by kyrademon at 9:05 AM on April 29, 2015

> "I'm not, unless I can assure myself that the non-puppy work on the ballot is in my opinion the best work I've read in the year."

That's a good point. I'll think about that. Possibly my standard should be "might I have voted this #1 in a regular year" rather than "would I have voted this above No Award in a regular year".

I'll definitely give that more thought.
posted by kyrademon at 9:10 AM on April 29, 2015 [1 favorite]

Ah, I didn't realize that. I was incorrect about that, then.

Indeed, imagine this scenario: Nominees with ballots

A: 300
B: 20
C: 3
D: 3
E: 3
F: 3
G: 3
H: 3

Who appears on the ballot?

Answer: All of them. Last clause of 3.8.5 "except that the first three eligible nominees, including any ties, shall always be listed." First three would be A, B, and C, since D-H are ties, they appear too.

Unlike many of the edge-case rules in the system, the 5% rule does trigger fairly often, usually in short story.
posted by eriko at 9:10 AM on April 29, 2015 [1 favorite]

And I fail to see how location puppy-proofs anything.

It doesn't puppy proof it, but having non-North-American cons does help make Worldcons more diverse, does help create new ties between fans in that region and tie them into worldwide fandom. Also, anecdotically, non-US/Canada Worldcons in the past twenty years have had more diverse and interesting shortlists than their NorthAm counterparts, especially those smaller Worldcons in the more conservative parts of the US.

With regards as to whether why more LonCon3 members didn't vote in the Hugo nominations, I have the gut feeling that most people not heavily involved in Worldcon as such are more likely to vote in nominations for cons they go to, rather than for cons they've been to, even apart from some hiccups on the part of Sasquan, which hasn't been the most organised con to date.

What I'd really like to see is whether my instinct that non-US Worldcons are harder to game for Puppies, based on the fact they tried and largely failed for LonCon and almost entirely succeeded for Sasquan is true, or whether they just tried harder this year. But I do think that in relatively virginal Worldcon areas there are more new people voting in nominations much less likely to vote in lockstep.

And of course none of that is the fault of US fandom on the whole, but perhaps could lay some of the blame for the fact the Puppies were able to game the system the third time they tried it at the feet of a deliberately conservative and not very fast moving WSFS "fandom" who seem to think that if it didn't work in '66 there's no reason to try in 2015...

We have had advanced warning after all, but trusted in the implied social contract to keep the damage limited and the idea that voting them below No Award would be enough to deter them from trying again. Had Worldcon as a whole acted after the first Puppy slate and changed the rules some way, any way to make this harder, we couldn't have prevented last year's attemp, but this year would've been stillborn. Now however they have at least two more years to fsck things up.

(And I blame myself a little bit here as well for not taking the Puppies seriously enough after they lost last year's Hugos.)

You can't blame the voters or nominators for not standing up to those who game the system, you can't expect for people to keep chucking $40 down each year just to stop assholes when the WSFS as a whole is not able to change.
posted by MartinWisse at 9:20 AM on April 29, 2015

eriko: and this is a really flimsy reason to base a site selection vote on, so flimsy I would call it dumb

As I'll be living in Helsinki in 2017, I'll take any reason for people to vote for Helsinki. One thing I worry about is that few of those supporting memberships will vote for a Helsinki Worldcon. Before all this, I had high hopes Helsinki would win. That said, Helsinki has a long history of getting screwed out of global competitive shindigs. In fact, I live in an apartment designed for the 1940 Helsinki Olympics. It's a bit weird to live in the detritus of alternate history, if I sneeze very hard I catch glimpses of the ghosts of never-were Olympic athletes.
posted by Kattullus at 9:24 AM on April 29, 2015 [2 favorites]

kyrademon, I've spent enough time having Hugo debates on the internet that I am worryingly familiar with the WSFS constitution. I should probably get a better hobby before I find myself buying a propeller beanie.
posted by penguinliz at 9:24 AM on April 29, 2015 [1 favorite]

After due consideration, though ... I think I may still vote any Non-Puppy above No Award if I would have voted them above No Award in a regular year.

In a regular year, voting something above No Award is effectively making the statement, "Even if this is not my first choice, or even my fourth, I still think it deserves to win a Hugo." If I don't believe that, I should rank it below No Award or leave it off the ballot altogether. Otherwise, under Hugo rules, even if I rank it 5th, my vote could ultimately go to it, and my vote should only ever possibly go to stuff that could win a Hugo.

So, if I wouldn't normally rank it below No Award, I am de facto saying it is something I believe to be Hugo-worthy. If it could have effectively gotten a vote from me in a regular year, even if it wasn't my top pick, I think I should give it my vote this year, even if it wouldn't have been my top pick of everything I've ever read.

Bear in mind this means I very well still might give a No Award in a few categories with non-puppy choices. I'm pretty picky. So my ballot might end up looking like yours anyway.
posted by kyrademon at 9:27 AM on April 29, 2015 [3 favorites]

Suelac do you mean the Spiritwalker books only get good starting with Cold Fire?

Oh, no, I just got the name of the first book wrong. Start with Cold Magic. They are quite fun, and the world-building and politics are great. Don't get put off by the romancey elements in the first book, either. The most important relationship in the trilogy, by far, is between the two girl cousins, Bea and Cat.
posted by suelac at 9:35 AM on April 29, 2015

As I'll be living in Helsinki in 2017, I'll take any reason for people to vote for Helsinki.

Ahh, yes. I should have put that in -- voting a local Worldcon is *always* an acceptable thing.

Personally, I'm leaning Helsinki, but really haven't put much thought into it because I'm really out of the convention circuit right now for the most part, with a couple of small exceptions, like the Eastercon, which I more go to to see UK friends than anything -- though working the newsletter this year was fun.

I go to Midwestcon because, well, 'Doesn't go anywhere. Doesn't do much.' Anymore, that's really it. I'll probably cycle back at some point, but right now, I'm content.
posted by eriko at 9:39 AM on April 29, 2015

In a just world this [Kate Elliott's Crown of Swords series] should be as big as A Song of Ice and Fire because it is just as realistic and epic a fantasy as that one, though not so obviously GrimDark at first.

Yup. This is what I've been saying for years. People who love Martin would also love Sherwood Smith's Inda series, as well. All the politics, seiges, pirates, and battles, but with much less rape, and some interesting gender/orientation stuff.
posted by suelac at 9:43 AM on April 29, 2015

With a fifth being more of a toss-up which could maybe have gone to any of Lock In, City of Stairs, Words of Radiance, The Mirror Empire, or a few longshots.

Aw, man, I loved City of Stairs. Loved it so much it slipped right past my "ugh, I hate stories told in present tense" defenses. Dammit, Puppies!
posted by Lexica at 9:59 AM on April 29, 2015 [1 favorite]

Helsinki 2017, Dublin 2019 and New Zealand 2020 are natural firebreaks, so vote for them all when possible.

New Zealand's an option? If it comes off, some of you can sleep in my spare room. [Assuming it's in Wellington. It'd be kinda pointless being in my spare room if it was in Auckland, but you'd still be welcome].
posted by Pink Frost at 1:25 PM on April 29, 2015 [1 favorite]

Cool. Can you fit 4,000 of us?
posted by kyrademon at 1:46 PM on April 29, 2015 [7 favorites]

My copy of Goblin Emperor finally arrived! Only just started it. ... You know, I'm going to miss this thread when it's gone.

And my library hold on Goblin Emperor just came in!

I'm going to miss this thread, too -- it's been fun hanging out with Mefite sf geeks.
posted by Zed at 2:12 PM on April 29, 2015 [1 favorite]

Yeah, it's a pretty diverse and interesting group, better because all perspectives are treated with equal respect.
posted by Drinky Die at 2:15 PM on April 29, 2015

Now that the waters seem to be quieting down, we're starting to see more reflective posts about this year's Hugos. I liked this one by Scalzi. Excerpt:

As a moral and ethical matter, I do take to heart the adage, usually attributed to Buddha, but reasonable no matter who said it first, that hating someone is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. I don’t hate any of the Puppies; I have cause to personally dislike a couple of them, but even then I try not to get to that point of things, either. I posit that the large majority of them are or at least have the capacity to be, decent humans. I disagree with them on many points, and think their current course of action is stupid, wrong, detrimental and childish; I think many of them have behaved poorly, selfishly and in a way that highlights their own insecurities and personal issues; I think it’s sad they try to project those same insecurities and issues on others and use them to justify their own bad actions.

posted by Kattullus at 2:34 PM on April 29, 2015 [7 favorites]

I just read and would like to give a strong recommend to the middle grade fantasy novel that was just released by Ursula Vernon, Castle Hangnail, which is so intensely charming and nearly perfect as a book.
posted by jeather at 2:38 PM on April 29, 2015 [4 favorites]

Wellington is full of Vampires.
posted by Artw at 2:47 PM on April 29, 2015 [2 favorites]

If there's anyone out there who is thinking Righto, what's all this Goblin Emperor palaver about... Oh, court intrigue and stupid names and titles? Sod that, I thought the exact same thing when I started reading it (which I did based on the Scott Lynch cover blurb), but it's actually really good.

But I advise that you read the bit at the end that explains the titles ("Mer" for "Sir" and the like) and will make the world somewhat more easily understood. Stop before you read the character list, though -- there are spoilers in that part.
posted by Etrigan at 2:54 PM on April 29, 2015 [2 favorites]

Thank you, Etrigan. "Intrigue" is one of those words that will put me right off a book.
posted by wintersweet at 2:59 PM on April 29, 2015

I have heard NZ's bid is much more likely to be Auckland just because of the convention space and the ability for people to fly internationally direct.
posted by xiw at 3:54 PM on April 29, 2015

Cool. Can you fit 4,000 of us?

I can try kryademon, I can try. Though now we mention it, I find your 42 shelves of books intriguing and would like to propose MeFiCon 1, to take place at your apartment, and involve us reading your books. I'll bring whisky and cake.

Wellington is full of Vampires.

A vicious, hurtful and unsubstantiated rumour! And anyway, those guys spend most of their time in the US or Canada...

I have heard NZ's bid is much more likely to be Auckland just because of the convention space and the ability for people to fly internationally direct.

Yeah, that would seem the most likely outcome, mainly due to direct flights I'd say. The bid proposal page does say they're considering both, but realistically you'd make it Auckland (though Wellington is obviously better and the area around the convention site much nicer...).
posted by Pink Frost at 4:39 PM on April 29, 2015 [7 favorites]

So I have been reading like a fiend in response to a lot of different points - most notably the points about David Weber and the Honor Harrington series, because I wanted to be sure I was being fair to reality and not to fuzzy memory. And what I found has actually made me somewhat revise my statements.

Science fiction is often politically influenced, in part because even when people are trying to write their books with the best of intentions, they are positing what could happen based on their knowledge of reality and how the world works, and their knowledge of reality and how the world works is influenced by their political beliefs.

So, for example - I didn't think of the Honor Harrington series as message fiction, and I still don't - but I could see how it would appear as such to more economically liberal people. Indeed, one of the major plot points is how a Basic Living Stipend, or Dole, creates a failed society. Why I don't think of it as message fiction is that I don't think Weber wrote it in an attempt to get people to oppose basic living stipends. I think that he was just thinking of trends and extrapolating how they could apply to the future. But looking at it in that way requires me to think that it is at least somewhat plausible that a universal Basic Living Stipend could act on a society in that way - and that is a relatively economically conservative position. So to me, part of what I find wonderful about the series is, in fact, though I dont' generally think of it explicitly, political - I think he has some smart extrapolations about what could happen if a society did XYZ in a spacefaring age.

When I read more explicitly leftist fiction, often I feel as though it is deliberate - as though the author is trying to convince me of the rightness and justice of the politics. But it may also be that they see their own vision as a natural extrapolation from how things are going, but I, coming from a different position, see it as contrived and unlikely.

If this is the case, then without the slightest bad faith reading, it is easy to see how in many cases the Hugos - with a largely central-Democrat audience at the very least - are 'stacked' against conservative works - because central-Dems reading speculation from a conservative worldview are going to find it contrived and painful, even if they are trying to be scrupulously fair, and let's face it, many people from all sides aren't.
posted by corb at 4:48 PM on April 29, 2015 [1 favorite]

Isn't it equally possible, though, that the Puppies are unfairly labeling works as being deliberately and heavy-handedly political because the Puppies are biased by their politics?
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 4:51 PM on April 29, 2015 [8 favorites]

Indeed, one of the major plot points is how a Basic Living Stipend, or Dole, creates a failed society.

The People's Republic of Haven is patently a political message -- Weber might as well call them The Bad Empire of Bad Socialism Badness.
posted by Etrigan at 4:54 PM on April 29, 2015 [7 favorites]

The People's Republic of Haven is patently a political message

Yeah, when you name one of your villains "Rob S. Pierre", that's not a subtle indicator of your politics, that's a clear assertion. And not just an argument, it's a statement of truth.
posted by suelac at 4:59 PM on April 29, 2015 [4 favorites]

Well, "unfairly" is a weird term that is hard to quantatively judge. But that's part of what I'm saying up above, and why I included my own reaction to more 'lefty' fiction - because you look at things from your own bias of what is 'normal'.

So, uh, let's take an example of something that is not a hotly debated controversy so as not to gore anyone's ox. Let's suppose that a certain percentage of our population have a firm belief that, oh, oh current technology is actually sentient and conspiring to kill us (we will call this the ToasterKiller population). Let us say another percentage of the population (The ToasterFriends) have a firm belief that is not the case and technology is solely helpful.

If a ToasterFriend writes a book, it is likely not to contain any murderous toasters. The Toasterfriend doesn't think about the possibility of murderous toasters a lot. It's not a part of his daily experience, he doesn't think it's real, and he's not going to put it in a book he writes. A ToasterKiller writes a book, and naturally, she includes murderous toasters frequently and often, because it's a part of the world she sees.

The ToasterFriend and ToasterKiller don't have to be writing to try to convince each other. In fact, Occam's Razor would suggest that they're not, absent any other evidence, because the natural effect of being a Toasterfriend or a Toasterkiller is that the world you see is the world you represent in fiction.
posted by corb at 5:01 PM on April 29, 2015

The, uh, tl;dr of that I suppose is that bias can be unconscious and most people have it to some degree.
posted by corb at 5:03 PM on April 29, 2015

bias can be unconscious and ~~most~~ all people have it ~~to some degree.~~

Everyone is biased, everyone has blinkers and filters and subconscious prejudices. The question is how hard are we willing to work to recognize them?

The Puppies think that only liberals/progressives/SJWs have blinders, and they themselves understand the world perfectly. They think we're like the citizens of Oz, wearing green glasses, and they are all Dorothy, who sees without the filters. They don't get they're wearing glasses, too, but they're yellow or pink or whatever.
posted by suelac at 5:09 PM on April 29, 2015 [12 favorites]

He named the villain Rob S. Pierre and spends long tracts of the story talking about how the BLS motivates the People's Republic of Haven. If you genuinely can't see that as political, even if it's not supposed to be persuasive, then I can't see how you'll see anything as political.
posted by Etrigan at 5:14 PM on April 29, 2015 [4 favorites]

Etrigan, you're being weird. I clearly was talking about how I do see it as having political bias, I just don't think that it's meant as a Message To Convince Unbelievers. The Rob.S.Pierre thing is clearly meant as a small metajoke, he's not trying to critique those strong supporters of the French Revolution that exist in modern day America or anything.
posted by corb at 5:17 PM on April 29, 2015

Come on guys, mocking Weber for Rob S. Pierre and the Bad Clintons is my job. Get your own hobby horses.
posted by Justinian at 5:17 PM on April 29, 2015 [6 favorites]

...actually I want to hear who you think the Bad Clintons are as I am currently rereading the series and it is YOUR FAULT JUSTINIAN.
posted by corb at 5:20 PM on April 29, 2015

I just don't think that it's meant as a Message To Convince Unbelievers

No, he's preaching to the choir, although possibly not understanding that a certain percentage of his readers has no idea what he's talking about.

I'm reminded, uncomfortably, of those John Norman Gor books, which periodically have multiple pages about how much women love to be raped. I wonder if he thought he was going to convince anyone not already in agreement with that, or if he was just letting his mind wander about something that took up a lot of space in his brain?

... ew.
posted by suelac at 5:27 PM on April 29, 2015 [2 favorites]

Spiritwalker is the only Kate Elliott I've read and I loved it.

One of the best jokes I made in the #NewHugoCategories tag was the "John Norman award for creepiest fandom".
posted by NoraReed at 5:34 PM on April 29, 2015 [2 favorites]

Rob S. Pierre and the Bad Clintons

Great band, saw them live back in '07.
posted by kagredon at 5:46 PM on April 29, 2015 [2 favorites]

...actually I want to hear who you think the Bad Clintons are

Lets see... the most obvious example is Jasper Clinton in Weber's SAFEHOLD books. He is a moustache-twirling power hungry incompetent evil evildoer. The evilest evildoer who ever evildoered.

In the Honorverse there is Guillermo Rodham ("Bill Rodham"), who was a scummy immoral ladies man.

I think there was another one in the Honorverse as well but I haven't read them in ages.
posted by Justinian at 5:53 PM on April 29, 2015 [1 favorite]

But I advise that you read the bit at the end [of Goblin Emperor] that explains the titles ("Mer" for "Sir" and the like) and will make the world somewhat more easily understood. Stop before you read the character list, though -- there are spoilers in that part.

Oh, man, I waited way too long to read the part about the titles. Why is everyone named Osmer? So confused!

And I think I need to stop fighting the need to remember who all the characters are, and just let the confusion wash over me. To viscerally experience Maia's sense of being overwhelmed, like viscerally experiencing Breq being confounded by gender signifiers.
posted by Banknote of the year at 11:02 PM on April 29, 2015 [2 favorites]

I've been revisiting the March 2005 posts in my livejournal where I snarked about the first two Honorverse books (I couldn't take more). The first one is about the holographic display of interstellar space in On Basilisk Station's prologue that has directions like west and south, which was the moment when I realised that this was a very silly book. But it was while reading The Honor of the Queen that I had to share some snippets to my FL:

“I see,” she said, and wondered how the admiral tolerated such a nincompoop as his second in command. Houseman had a reputation as a brilliant economist and, given Grayson’s backward economy, sending him made sense, but he was also an ivory-tower intellectual who’d been plucked from a tenured position in Mannheim University’s College of Economics for government service. Mannheim wasn’t called “Socialist U” for nothing, and Houseman’s prominent family was a vocal supporter of the Liberal Party.

Houseman swelled with fury, and the corner of Honor’s mouth twitched as her own rage raced to meet his. After all his cultured contempt for the military, all his smug assumption of his own superior place in the scheme of things, all he could think of now was to order that same despised military to save his precious skin!

...And some plot point about how a military junta staging a coup d'êtat was something illogical and unthinkable, which... yeah, David Weber is as big on Earth history as on subtlety.
posted by sukeban at 1:25 AM on April 30, 2015 [6 favorites]

(After this, I spent many years with a severe allergic reaction to Napoleonic Wars in Space, which probably cost me a bit of a friendship-- a friend asked me to betaread his very Honoresque book but I had to decline)
posted by sukeban at 1:31 AM on April 30, 2015

> "The, uh, tl;dr of that I suppose is that bias can be unconscious and most people have it to some degree."

I pretty much agree with what you're saying here, corb. I do, however, think there's a good deal more to unpack beyond that about what's been going on.

The claims that the Puppies have been making include not just that the Hugos are biased towards works with left-leaning content, but also also that they are biased towards works by publicly left-leaning authors, biased towards works by visibly diverse authors (i.e., non-straight, non-male, non-white, non-cis, etc.), and biased towards works that are more literary in content. And also that the converse is true and the Hugos are actively biased against right-leaning works, publicly right-leaning authors, etc. They have also made claims that these things extend beyond the Hugos and are actually pervasive throughout the field of science fiction as a whole (e.g., Torgersen's complaint about book covers and book content.) And beyond that, there is the issue of the actions they have chosen to undertake to address these claims.

I'd like to write more on this, but right now I have to go get ready to light fires on the hill to make sure that summer comes ...
posted by kyrademon at 2:15 AM on April 30, 2015 [6 favorites]

> "Lets see... the most obvious example is Jasper Clinton in Weber's SAFEHOLD books ... in the Honorverse there is Guillermo Rodham ("Bill Rodham"), who was a scummy immoral ladies man."

Poking quickly around the web, I'm also finding, just within the Honorverse books, King Clinton III, who is called in a book review one of the "'public leaders' of the super villains" of Storm from the Shadows and Mission of Honor ... a character named Clinton who is a corrupt bribe-taking employee of the Jessyk Combine of Mesa ... a character named Clinton who is sergeant in a military squad which according to the web has "a license for thugs and leg breakers to hurt people" ...

Yeah, I think I'm gonna say that's not a coincidence.
posted by kyrademon at 3:10 AM on April 30, 2015 [2 favorites]

To viscerally experience Maia's sense of being overwhelmed, like viscerally experiencing Breq being confounded by gender signifiers.

Yes, this. That's one of the best parts of reading good science fiction or fantasy, that sense of confusion that slowly clears as the author clues you in to their world.
posted by MartinWisse at 4:46 AM on April 30, 2015 [2 favorites]

That thing I said some days ago about John Ringo not involving himself with the puppies? Scratch that. (via James Nicoll)
posted by sukeban at 5:58 AM on April 30, 2015 [1 favorite]

kyrademon -

It's funny, but I never noticed all the bad clinton references. After awhile, in long series like the Honorverse, all the subsidiary and tertiary characters get wrapped up in my head as various forms of redshirts and minor whitehats and blackhats. That's particularly true when Weber will, as he is wont to do, spend 5 or 8 pages describing the actions and thought patterns of a sub character only to have them blown away by a sneak attack by one of the primary blackhats or whitehats.

So my default is just to see them all as redshirts and not pay attention to their names. I suspect that says something bad about me. But I'm not going to unpack it any further.
posted by my dog is named clem at 6:06 AM on April 30, 2015 [2 favorites]

Actually, this bend of the thread pertaining to the Weber books and their relation to the French Revolution reminds me of a point I'd meant to raise weeks ago. And that's the extent to which some of the RP/SP rhetoric (I'm looking at you, JC Wright, among others) seems almost to recapitulate over 200 years later the work of Joseph de Maistre.

I'm afraid that I got stuck on him about 20 years ago after reading a marvelous and really depressing essay about de Maistre by Isaiah Berlin in the New York Review of Books. I haven't been able to track down a copy of that essay yet, although I hope to soon, but what I remember best was his descriptions of de Maistre's attitudes about aristocratic and Catholic hierarchies, and the justified use of force to keep those established hierarchies in place. And maybe this is just projection, but I have this vague sense of de Maistre's absolute contempt for people who today might be described as SJWs. The connection for me is the way some of the RP/SPs seem to view people who disagree with them as threats not just to SFF but to society as a whole.

I'll admit this may be a bit far-fetched, but wanted to raise it as a possibility.
posted by my dog is named clem at 6:26 AM on April 30, 2015 [2 favorites]

From a different John Ringo post, linked on File770:

By the way, I prefer SJBs to CHORFs as a term. SJWs, social justice warriors, is not an insult as many articles have indicated. It’s the preferred term of the SJWs.

That cheeses me right off! SJW blew up because GG took a niche label and made it apply to everyone who thought that yeah, maybe they had gone off the deep end. So yes, now it's the people's word, but it's not like the people asked for it or that they all want it applied to them. Y'all done screwed up by choosing a poor word, now chew on it.

(Incidentally, my impression is that SJW was designed to be an ironic pejorative that criticizes the notion that slacktivism can make a difference. Since it seems clear that slacktivism does matter -at least in the court of public discourse, if not elsewhere- it seems like an object lesson in the danger of ironic insults.)
posted by Going To Maine at 6:32 AM on April 30, 2015 [3 favorites]

Jim Butcher has mostly stayed out of the fray but not entirely. (I'm reminded that his response to this callout was only to complain people were mean to him.)

Meanwhile, Sasquan's Hugo voting is open email arrived. Let the games begin.
posted by Zed at 7:02 AM on April 30, 2015 [1 favorite]

The first one is about the holographic display of interstellar space in On Basilisk Station's prologue that has directions like west and south, which was the moment when I realised that this was a very silly book.

But those can be real directions, even though Weber may not have known that. ISTR that galactic east is spinward.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 7:31 AM on April 30, 2015 [2 favorites]

Galactic directions are like Discworld directions! Hubward, Rimward, Turnwise, Widdershins.
posted by Zed at 7:42 AM on April 30, 2015 [2 favorites]

And Here. We. Go.

You'll need you're membership number and PIN. There's a link to recover that if you haven't gotten it/lost it.
posted by eriko at 8:08 AM on April 30, 2015

Galactic directions are like Discworld directions! Hubward, Rimward, Turnwise, Widdershins.

That's missing two. I propose Elephantward and Skyward.
posted by eriko at 8:12 AM on April 30, 2015 [5 favorites]

And the first user interface error: What they call "Sasquan Voter ID" in the reminder email is in fact your membership number.
posted by eriko at 8:20 AM on April 30, 2015

That's one of the best parts of reading good science fiction or fantasy, that sense of confusion that slowly clears as the author clues you in to their world.

To clarify, I'm on page 336. My experience with Goblin Emperor isn't so much that of a world slowly coming into focus, but the realization that the complexities and nuance of Ethuveraz will never completely come into focus for me. That the confusion will never entirely clear, and that I'll spend the remaining 150 pages in a perpetual state of wait, who's that person again.

That's actually one of the charms of the book, though. Because the emperor himself is muddling through as best he can, without the complexities and nuance of his empire coming into focus for him. My confusion is something that Addison is deliberately engendering with her writing, to reflect on Maia's experiences.
posted by Banknote of the year at 8:26 AM on April 30, 2015

Okay, the answer to the late withdrawals is they are still on the web form. This makes the web ballot identical to the printed ballot, and I can see the logic behind that, even if I disagree with it. They did put a note at the top stating

After the ballot went to press, the following Hugo finalists have asked that voters please not vote for them:
Edmund R. Schubert (Best Editor, Short Form)
Black Gate (Best Fanzine)

Which is, well, I have to say wrong, they didn't ask not to be voted for, they stated they were withdrawing. Sigh.

But there's the news there -- they're still on the ballot. How they will be handled in the actual count? That I can't tell you. I have to assume they'll be counted normally and if they win, they win.
posted by eriko at 8:26 AM on April 30, 2015 [1 favorite]

Okay, this, however is a serious win, and I applaud Sasquan's web team and Hugo team for this.

There is no need to explicitly submit your final ballot. Once you begin to fill out your ballot, we keep track of your ballot throughout the voting period, and whatever the state of your ballot is as of the voting cutoff (TBD) will be treated as your final submitted ballot.

So, you can file a provisional ballot *now* and hit save -- which I did -- and go read things, and if you find your opinions changed, you can log back in, revote that category and save. You can do this right up until Friday, July 31st 2015 11:59PM PDT (0659UTC)

I also give them credit for using the 11:59PM trick so that everyone understands that the it is the end of the day on July 31st, in the time zone the con is being held at. Personally, I use a 24 hour clock and not screw that up, but the US in general does not, and does screw up the 12:00AM/12:00PM distinction constantly.
posted by eriko at 8:34 AM on April 30, 2015 [3 favorites]

Didn't London do the same save-as-you-go thing with their web ballot last year?
posted by Banknote of the year at 8:44 AM on April 30, 2015

but also also that they are biased towards works by publicly left-leaning authors, biased towards works by visibly diverse authors (i.e., non-straight, non-male, non-white, non-cis, etc.), and biased towards works that are more literary in content. And also that the converse is true and the Hugos are actively biased against right-leaning works, publicly right-leaning authors, etc. They have also made claims that these things extend beyond the Hugos and are actually pervasive throughout the field of science fiction as a whole (e.g., Torgersen's complaint about book covers and book content.)

Yeah, I'm trying to unpack one piece at a time as I get through it, and I need to get back to my readings of the Hugo winners (I got distracted by the Honorverse *cough* Books 1-5 *cough*)

My feelings as of the place I'm at in the reading, which may change later - not because I'm being shifty but just because I'm absorbing a LOT of new data and so my ideas are naturally influx -

works by publicly left-leaning authors

Well, even MartinWisse notes above that

Torgersen (or James "not the Top Gear bloke fortunately" May, who collected that list) is not entirely wrong when he says that people like Jim Hines or N.K. Jemisin have become prominent within SFF and fandom as much for their "activism" as for their writing; it's just that they think it's a bad thing.

And we've already heard it discussed by eriko and others that if the Hugos do have a problem, it's their habit of taking prominent people that have already won Hugos, or people that fandom likes overall, and voting for them.

So at the moment, the only thing I disagree with on that score is that I think this probably also applies to right-leaning authors.

towards works by visibly diverse authors

There have been some pretty noteworthy campaigns to get people to read more books by visibly diverse authors. 50 Books POCis the most prominent one that started small and snowballed, but I can recall a few others. There are even people here, in this thread, that have expressed that they try to make an effort to read more diverse authors. I don't think it's crazy to say that if someone is deliberately trying to focus more of their reading towards authors of color, that they are going to be more likely to nominate and vote for authors of color, because that's what they're reading. And I don't think it's much of a logical jump to think that people who really want more diverse representation in fiction and awards would choose to vote in accordance with their beliefs.
posted by corb at 8:57 AM on April 30, 2015 [1 favorite]

And we've already heard it discussed by eriko and others that if the Hugos do have a problem, it's their habit of taking prominent people that have already won Hugos, or people that fandom likes overall, and voting for them

Both the Hugo and the Nebula are open nomination awards which are then voted by a fairly large body. The only difference is that the Hugo voting body is fan based (in particular, WSFS fandom) and the Nebula is pro based (in particular, members of SFWA.) They both have many of the same weaknesses. The Nebulas don't have quite the openness of the Hugos because of the qualifications needed to become a member of SFWA and thus be eligible, thus the RPs can't steamroll that ballot. The Nebulas, until recently, didn't have the social contract preventing logrolling that the Hugos did, and such was very common there.

But, fundamentally, both the Hugo and Nebula start with a bunch of people -- and we're talking a pool of literally thousands of people -- with the right to write up to five choices per category on a slip of paper or a web form and have that tossed into the pile of nominations. Personal like and dislike, of course, is going to be a factor in any given person's nominations. How much of a factor depends on the person. There are people who will say "I fucking hate X, but damn, that's a brilliant book" and nominate it. There will be people who will say "I LOVE Y!!!!!" and nominate EVERY. SINGLE. PIECE. OF. DRECK. they write, which will be the 1 one nomination they get. There will be people who say "I HATE X, FUCK THEM" and never nominated them, and there will be people who will say "Buddy, love you, but I ain't nominating that story, it just isn't that good."

The hope is that with enough people, the biases will cancel out. Until 2013, they generally did.

In science, we'd call this year a bad data set and discard it, but this isn't science. Thus, this thread. :-/

Of what I consider the big three, the one award that's truly run differently is the Clarke. The Clarke is a juried award. Nominations are of two types. Accredited publishers may submit novels (only novels are considered) in the year they are published, and the jury may "call in" novels published that year as well. Three bodies provides jurors, BSFA, the British Science Fiction Association, The Science Fiction Foundation, a registered charity which supports the award, and a third group agreed by the first two, currently, Sci-Fi London, (The London International Festival of Science Fiction and Fantastic Flims,) which hosts the award ceremony.

The judges form a six work shortlist, which they then reconsider and vote on, the winner of that wins the award, which includes the award itself and a cash prize equal to the year of the prize in UK pounds, which is *not* a trivial sum of money.

Notably, Ann Leckie won the treble last year with Ancillary Justice, which is the first time that it's happened. Connie Willis came close with Doomsday Book which won the Hugo and Nebula and shortlisted for the Clarke, but Ann Leckie is the only one who hit all three.

Heck, it's more common for Fandom, Prodom and the Clarke Jury to pick three different novels in a year than it is for them to pick the same one! We all thought *for sure* that Blackout/All Clearby Connie Willis was going to get a shot at the treble, but it didn't even make the shortlist for the Clarke. One of the reasons the treble is hard is that if the publisher doesn't submit the work in the year of it's UK publication, or a juror doesn't call that work in, then it can't make the shortlist -- so the much more restrictive nomination policy may well be leaving possible winners out. But with that aside, the Clarke is a fundamentally very different model compared to the very similar Hugo and Nebula models.
posted by eriko at 9:57 AM on April 30, 2015 [6 favorites]

Didn't London do the same save-as-you-go thing with their web ballot last year?

I don't recall. If they did, good on them, and good on Sasquan for doing something that's regrettably rare in fandom, which is "hanging onto a good idea invented elsewhere."
posted by eriko at 9:59 AM on April 30, 2015 [4 favorites]

Message Fiction: Politics in Sci-Fi and Fantasy Literature.
posted by rtha at 9:59 AM on April 30, 2015 [3 favorites]

Until 2013, they generally did.

err...2014. And we really didn't notice it in 2014, other than VD. Sorry about that. Wish I'd caught that before the edit window closed....
posted by eriko at 10:04 AM on April 30, 2015

Psssh, it's the end of the thread, we're all friends here. I knew what you meant.
posted by corb at 10:06 AM on April 30, 2015

I don't think it's crazy to say that if someone is deliberately trying to focus more of their reading towards authors of color, that they are going to be more likely to nominate and vote for authors of color, because that's what they're reading.

Sure. People who are reading a lot of X-type books are more likely to nominate X-type books because they take up more of their reading list.

And I don't think it's much of a logical jump to think that people who really want more diverse representation in fiction and awards would choose to vote in accordance with their beliefs.

You're arguing that if people read books by diverse authors, not only are they more likely to nominate them because they are reading more, but they're more likely to nominate them than better books by white guys? Because this seems incredibly unlikely. (By better, I mean "books that the nominator themself feels to be better", not better on some objective standard of good books.)

I can see that if you are debating which of two books to give the last slot to, you might choose that one based on 'let's have a more diverse ballot', but I don't believe that a massive number of people are just choosing any books written by people who aren't white guys and nominating them just because.
posted by jeather at 10:23 AM on April 30, 2015 [8 favorites]

I can see that if you are debating which of two books to give the last slot to, you might choose that one based on 'let's have a more diverse ballot', but I don't believe that a massive number of people are just choosing any books written by people who aren't white guys and nominating them just because.

So I think it's important to note that I'm not talking about others here, or saying that they're bad people for doing this sort of thing. I do this, every single year, with voting. I do it not just in fan elections or board elections for member organizations but in real elections. I vote for the candidates who I know the positions of and like, but after that, in elections that I do not follow, I vote for the one with a female name. Some of this is because I trust an unknown woman to guard my interests better than an unknown man, but some of it is just because I want more women in government. I don't generally admit that, but it's true. This is how I vote, because of my ideology. Mind you, I try my damnedest to look at every candidate and see every position, but when I miss them, that's how I fill the blank spaces.

So it's not hard for me to see fans, in Hugo or other elections, voting first for the books they've read and loved, but after that, doing the equivalent of my actions - for the books they have no clue about, choosing the ranking order by 'Who do I know? Who have I heard of? And are there any ~~women~~ [Insert Diversity Issue Here]?

I don't think that fans are reading and loving books by white guys, but then turning away from their beloved books to nominate POC. I'm arguing that in cases where fans don't feel particularly strongly, they are more prone to be influenced by other considerations. (So, let's say you, of any political stripe, have only read 3 books that are FUCKING AMAZING. You're often still going to nominate 5. Who are those people? That depends on your biases.)
posted by corb at 10:35 AM on April 30, 2015

You're arguing that if people read books by diverse authors, not only are they more likely to nominate them because they are reading more, but they're more likely to nominate them than better books by white guys? Because this seems incredibly unlikely.

Right, that's the Puppies' argument, after all: that nobody could honestly prefer the more diverse work by women/people of color, and that all those nominations and votes for Ancillary Justice were solely political.

I doubt corb is making that argument, at least I hope not. It's the Affirmative Action argument, that pushes for diversity inherently result in less quality, because only white men can produce things of quality.

The Puppies may not admit that's the underlying rationale to their complaints about the last few years of award-winners, but it is.
posted by suelac at 10:39 AM on April 30, 2015 [6 favorites]

I think there there's graceless political messaging on the left and the right. I dropped Chalker's River of the Dancing Gods because the protagonist introduces himself with one monologue about divorce law, and a few chapters later he launches another monologue about the complexities of US tax law. There's also Doctorow's Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town which couldn't decide if it wanted to be a mythic urban fantasy about the son of a washing machine or a quixotic story about altruist vs. utility company.

But I repeatedly go back to Le Guin's introduction to Left Hand of Darkness, which I'd name as a soft SFF manifesto. Creating the gender-netural/fluid Gethen wasn't done as a feminist political screed that we should become Gethen. It's a plot device, a thought-experiment to explore how North American humans construct gender. Both the Gethen and Leckie's Radchaai are explicitly dystopian cultures. Jemisin and Lucas both share a thesis that an evil empire backed by weapons of mass destruction is going to suck. I think Lucas gets more explicitly political in the prequels than Jemisin does in Inheritance.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 10:57 AM on April 30, 2015 [1 favorite]

*You're arguing that if people read books by diverse authors, not only are they more likely to nominate them because they are reading more, but they're more likely to nominate them than better books by white guys? Because this seems incredibly unlikely.

Right, that's the Puppies' argument, after all: that nobody could honestly prefer the more diverse work by women/people of color, and that all those nominations and votes for Ancillary Justice were solely political.*

At the extreme one could probably make the argument that a voter confronted with two works that they consider to be of equal quality but one is by a minority & the other is by a straight white guy, they'll choose the minority as a kind of affirmative action. But that kind of preference seems like it's wholly justifiable; it's your vote, so you get to break the tie however you want.

Also, to give the puppies - or at least, the sad puppies - what I think is their due: looking over Torgersen's writing, his basis for argument is a belief there's a clear, bright line between taste and good writing. The voters have been choosing Hugo winners that, in his mind, suit their taste for SJW preachiness but just aren't good writing. This is a convoluted garbage sausage of contradictions tied in five kinds of knots, but I do think that Torgerson somehow doesn't yet realize that he is waging a war on women. So... good job, unthinking bias.
posted by Going To Maine at 11:14 AM on April 30, 2015

This is a convoluted garbage sausage of contradictions tied in five kinds of knots, but I do think that Torgerson somehow doesn't yet realize that he is waging a war on women

I mean, even if that thought flickered across his brain, he'd dismiss it because he's married to a woman so he can't be doing things that harm them, right?
posted by kagredon at 11:18 AM on April 30, 2015 [3 favorites]

Latest from GRRM.
posted by Chrysostom at 11:35 AM on April 30, 2015

The voters have been choosing Hugo winners that, in his mind, suit their taste for SJW preachiness but just aren't good writing. This is a convoluted garbage sausage of contradictions tied in five kinds of knots,

Actually I think the key may lie in the link rtha mentioned above, which talks about something really important.

I judge implicit political messaging according to different criteria. Simply put, I want it to meld into the background of the text, so it’s almost unnoticeable. But I also want it to pique my interest in the world presented, and I want it to reflect good choices—even when those choices are not consciously political.

As general rule, I like it when the social fabric in my speculative fiction is just as speculative as the science, and just as imaginative as the magic in fantasy—provided everything is intuitive and internally consistent. It should feel “natural” and “realistic,” if not by any supposed “rules” of our world, then within the “rules” set out by the author, whatever those are.

This tends to agree with my own opinions - I dislike books when they jar me with something that seems unrealistic or 'crammed in'. I would wager that most people do, actually - reading is generally seen as somewhat escapist and immersion in the story is to be desired.

But I think whether something seamlessly melds into the background of the story for you has a lot to do with your own political and other beliefs, and also probably how sensitive you are to the politics in question and how they're being raised - as well as, more importantly, where and how you were raised.

What is 'natural' and 'realistic'? What does 'natural' and 'realistic' look like inside social justice circles? What does 'natural' and 'realistic' look like outside those circles? Urban individuals of all types look at various books and television and say, "Why are 95% of the people presented there white? Why are they so racist?" Rural individuals from more homogenous areas look at various television shows and say, "Why are there so many POC? What are they trying to Say?"

I wouldn't have believed this, until I joined the military, and met guys who literally, before joining, had never met a single black or Jewish person before. They weren't what I would call racist - they didn't dislike POC - but they were just kind of weirdly confused by their prevalence, which I found mindbogglingly incomprehensible. Actually, at first I refused to believe them, how could you possibly have a town or high school without a single person of color? But I grew up in NYC.

I think that kind of thing may be going on, for example, with trans characters or genderbending characters. I think meeting trans and genderbending individuals is quite common in cities and areas where it is safe to express those identities. I know a lot of people who are somewhere on the genderbend spectrum. I know people who seamlessly use neuter or counter pronouns. If I see some genderbending in a book or switched pronouns, it doesn't take me out of the story. But for some people who have never encountered that before, that may be startling and alarming, and thus reach the 'bad/preachy' bar for them.
posted by corb at 11:47 AM on April 30, 2015

If I see some genderbending in a book or switched pronouns, it doesn't take me out of the story. But for some people who have never encountered that before, that may be startling and alarming, and thus reach the 'bad/preachy' bar for them.

One of the big points that the sad puppies have been making is that many of the books they've nominated have queer characters and female characters - you can see them riff on it at mad genius club, according to hoyt, and on torgersen's blog itself. So I really don't think that the presence of queer characters or female characters is the trigger. (& bear in mind that Correia believes that Starship Troopers, as is, unchanged, is a timeless and excellent work of science fiction that is presumably also not too preachy.) It really is just a mess.

If I had to theorize, I'd say that the puppies know which authors they consider to be activists, and any shred of dialogue or speech that voices an ideology with which they disagree in a book by that author must be the author lecturing the reader. Thus, monologues sometimes read as hectoring, and sometimes as necessary character development. The puppies believe that for the authors they dislike the cigar is never a cigar, and for the authors they like it always is.

But, again, this is giving them credit for being coherent, and they simply aren't.
posted by Going To Maine at 12:01 PM on April 30, 2015 [8 favorites]

If you want more you-got-your-men's-rights-in-my-sci-fi-no-you-got-your-sci-fi-in-my-men's-rights, the April 28 episode of Honey Badger Radio features the standard Honey Badgers, Sarah Hoyt, and Brad Torgersen with their current mass of thoughts on what all of this stuff must actually be about. (It will probably make you angry, so heads up.)
posted by Going To Maine at 12:41 PM on April 30, 2015 [1 favorite]

GRRM has convinced me that it would be wrong to No Award this year.

And I can't disagree more if he's convincing you not to use No Award at all. You may feel that you can vote some categories. But if he's convinced you that this, of all years, is the year not to use No Award, then the Hugos aren't dead, but they're meaningless, and I'm going to have to go to Sasquan and move to delete Article 3.

Because they will be owned by slates forever, and if that's the case, kill them dead.

I cannot believe GRRM posted that, and I'm calling him out, and I never ever thought I'd have to do that.

You don't have to No Award the whole slate. But if you're going to set aside No Award completely? You just handed the Hugos to the puppies.
posted by eriko at 12:50 PM on April 30, 2015 [1 favorite]

I can't disagree more if he's convincing you not to use No Award at all.

The first line in his blog post is "No, I am not saying don't use NO AWARD at all when you vote for this year's Hugo Awards."
posted by painquale at 12:59 PM on April 30, 2015 [2 favorites]

Y'know, I'd say it's very likely the case that "The Water That Falls on You from Nowhere" was nominated and voted for by some people whose reasons for liking it included that they were specifically happy to see gay people and Chinese people represented. If the Puppies were saying that instead of "because POLITICS", then I would agree with them on that particular point.

Where I expect we would still part ways is that I'd also say a lot of stories and books over the years collected some of their votes from people whose reasons for liking it included that they were happy to see straight white men represented.
posted by Zed at 1:13 PM on April 30, 2015 [4 favorites]

So, let's separate this into nominating and ranking.

In ranking, I believe most people read the books and other works -- or at least try to read them -- and rank them by preference. It wouldn't surprise me if, given two books people felt equally about, they might rank by other things than quality, but I don't think it happens that often because it's not that often you feel exactly equal about two books. Of course, you might have an underlying bias to prefer books by women, and so on, but I think in general people do try to vote on actual quality.

Let's say you are nominating and you have 2 spare slots. I figure -- because this has happened -- you ask other people what THEY thought was fabulous and use those to recommend. And probably you are sharing books with other people who share your interest in diverse speculative fiction, so they are also going to have a high proportion of diverse authors because it's what they read, also. I don't think people are just saying "here's this gay Chinese dude, let's nominate him because of who he is".

Maybe you'll read 'The Water That Falls on You from Nowhere' because you want to read about a gay Chinese guy and his boyfriend and his parents (I can't remember why I first read it, presumably someone recommended it to me), but the reason so many people recommended it and nominated it and then voted for it isn't because of the politics, it's because it's a lovely story. (And you can argue about HOW speculative it is, but again, I read some of the JCW stuff so the RP slate didn't object based on things not being science fictiony enough.)
posted by jeather at 1:35 PM on April 30, 2015 [4 favorites]

If you really don't want your vote to help the Puppies, you need to leave them off the ballot entirely. With the preferential voting system, sometimes a win will depend on who got the most 4th place votes.
posted by creepygirl at 1:54 PM on April 30, 2015 [6 favorites]

Yes that can't be overstated: if you're using "No Award" to cut out Vox Day and his buddies don't rank them (or anyone really) below it. To me "No Award" means "apart from the things I may have ranked above NA, nothing made the cut and passing over this category this year is preferable to compromise". It's how I'll be using it.
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 2:07 PM on April 30, 2015 [2 favorites]

> I'd No Award for #2 or #3 and then list the puppies afterwards.

Why would you list the puppies at all?
posted by languagehat at 2:36 PM on April 30, 2015

Why would you list the puppies at all?

If you have a preference between them. Let's say you don't want a winner in Novella at all -- so you rank No Award first. But if there HAS to be a winner, you want it not to have been published by Castalia House, so you rank "Flow" second, then leave everyone else off. This will change the way Flow interacts with the other nominees, but not the way No Award ranks with any of them, because No Award will be given preference in the No Award Test over everything either ranked below it OR unranked.
posted by jeather at 2:42 PM on April 30, 2015 [3 favorites]

But there's the news there -- they're still on the ballot. How they will be handled in the actual count? That I can't tell you. I have to assume they'll be counted normally and if they win, they win.

The thing about preferential vote systems is, the inclusion of otherwise-irrelevant candidates can affect the outcome even if they don't win. Let's say that you have three authors: Alice, Bob, and Cthulhu. You tally the votes; Cthulhu has the fewest first-preferences; those ballots get redistributed to the other candidates, and Bob wins.

But let's add a fourth candidate - Dagon. Dagon's supporters are mostly people who would otherwise have put Bob first. Now when you tally the votes you find that Bob has the fewest first-preferences: Dagon split the vote! Bob is eliminated! His votes get redistributed, most of them go to Cthulhu and Dagon. Dagon is eliminated; most of Dagon's votes go to Cthulhu. Cthulhu wins! We all lose.

So the question as to whether someone has successfully withdrawn their nomination is potentially very significant, and the fact that this is apparently unclear is actually a Big Problem. If you want to fix the Hugos, add this to the list.
posted by Joe in Australia at 4:02 PM on April 30, 2015 [1 favorite]

So the question as to whether someone has successfully withdrawn their nomination is potentially very significant, and the fact that this is apparently unclear is actually a Big Problem.

Yeah, this is essentially my question - how does the balloting work for people who have withdrawn. Is their whole ballot bumped up one or do the votes go through as tallied?
posted by corb at 4:52 PM on April 30, 2015

Is their whole ballot bumped up one or do the votes go through as tallied?

The answer, now, is we don't know. The phrasing Sasquan used on the web ballot is incredibly unhelpful in determining that, and is frankly not the statement that the two people made. The ballot says that the two have asked that people not vote for them, which implies that they are still candidates, but both have clearly stated that they have withdrawn, which states that they are not candidates, but the implication is that Sasquan is going to treat them as candidates if anyone votes them.
posted by eriko at 5:10 PM on April 30, 2015 [1 favorite]

Because the Hugos announce all the rankings and I want to make sure Vox Day and Patriarchy Press are LAST, even if there's No Award given.

If you vote A #1, B #2, C #3, NA #4 and leave D and E off the ballot, it is as if you voted D and E as tied for last. D and E will *never* get a vote from you. No Award will if A, B, and C are eliminated.

If A comes in 1st, B 2nd, and C 3rd, when they run the 4th place pass, they ignore votes for A, B and C. So your ballot will only have NA listed, so you will be voting No Award for 4th place, above both D and E. You don't need to list them to make that preference. You would be forgoing a vote in the 5th place ballot, unless D won 4th place, in which case, the only two candidates left for 5th would be E and NA, and you would vote, again, for NA. The one vote you do forgo is if it comes down to D or E, but as I said, by vote NA and then nothing, you're saying "tied for last", so you effectively split your vote between D and E.

So, if you really want to vote against all but one, you vote (say) A #1, NA #2 and done. So let's watch that work.

First pass. A wins YAY! Justice! A has placed, and A's author is going to have a great day at the con. Now, let's do 2nd place. You only have NA left, you vote NA for #2. But, it so happens C comes in with the majority, so C comes in 2nd place BOO!. On to the third place. A and C have placed and are out. You're 2nd preference is still NA, so that's your vote for 3rd place. Alas, D wins this once BOO!. D is 3rd. A, C and D are placed. 4th round. Again, your NA preference is still in the running, and still your top remaining preference. NA wins! NA comes in 4th. Now, B and E duke it out for 5th. Since you only voted A, then NA, your ballot is now out of the race -- you don't have B or E ranked, they're the only ones left on the ballot, so your treated as an abstain in the 5th place race.

But note how you basically voted against *everybody* by not listing them, equally. However, you didn't vote for anybody any less than anyone else either. If you hated B less than D, you might be disappointed by this result. In which case, you should have ranked B after NA.

But the risk of doing that is if NA is eliminated, that vote for B could be, if all your higher votes are eliminated as well, be the one that puts it over the top and wins them the statue, because it is a preference. You're saying "I want A, then I'd rather No Award, but if there must be an award, B."

If you *in no way shape or form* want a work to get the award, do not EVER list it. Do your ballot as "I want A to win, if not, C, if not, then No Award" *and stop*, and there is no way that your ballot will directly help B, D or E win the Hugo. If you rank B, D and E afterwards, and NA, A and C are the first three eliminated from the ballot trying to get a majority, then you are now voting for B. If you don't, then your ballot is put aside (for the moment) since it no longer has a preference. (It'll come back in a moment, though, for the No Award test. )

So, that's the difference there. But if all you care about is That Piece Of Crap being beaten by No Award, you don't have to rank it, just make sure you *do* rank No Award, and that'll have the exact same effect.
posted by eriko at 5:31 PM on April 30, 2015 [2 favorites]

Ranking A, NA, B is going to have the same effect come the No Award Test as voting just A, NA. I don't see any way in which A, NA, B can allow B to win compared to a vote for A, NA. (It might change the winner from C, D or E to B but I don't think it can change the winner from A or NA to B.)

I am not your voting theorist.
posted by jeather at 6:03 PM on April 30, 2015

Is there any talk of changing the process to get rid of the possibility of ranking competitors below No Award? I mean, yeah, sure, I guess some people really want the option to say "I guess if the Award has to go to one of these," but it seems to me that No Award should mean "I do not think any of the remaining competitors should receive the award," not "I do not think any of the remaining competitors should receive the award but yeah I guess if you twist my arm this one is slightly less undeserving." And, as the discussion here and elsewhere shows, it's somewhat unintuitive and generates confusion.

It really seems like a case of "Why do we even have that lever?"
posted by kagredon at 6:18 PM on April 30, 2015 [2 favorites]

Ranking A, NA, B is going to have the same effect come the No Award Test as voting just A, NA. I don't see any way in which A, NA, B can allow B to win compared to a vote for A, NA.

Race is A-E and NA. You've voted A, NA, B. I've Voted A, NA. Others vote in various ways. Nobody gets a majority in the first pass, so the one that receives the *least* votes is eliminated and those votes redistribute. Let's say that it is NA (because that's the usual case for the Hugos. Probably not this year, but it's usually the first one out.

Your ballot is now effectivly A, B. Mine is A. Others change as well. The ones that had NA first redistribute to whomever they had next (if anything). If they didn't have any, they drop out, and a new total is set, which sets a new majority. If anybody has a majority now, they're the preliminary winner. Let's say they don't. Okay. Who's the least vote getter now? Let's say it's A.

You're ballot now reads "B". Mine reads "No Preference" and drops out. If B is now the majority, B wins, and you're vote helped it win.

That's why if you absolutely positively do not want to directly help something win, you do not ever rank it, because if everything you rank above it is eliminated, you are now voting for it. EVEN if No Award was ranked above it. When it comes to the count, No Award is *just* another entry, and it can be eliminated just like any other entry.

Note that there's no way to prevent *indirectly* helping it being elected. Note when your ballot dropped to B, mine dropped out. That reduced the total ballots by one, and possibly reduced the majority needed by one, which means that I might have allowed B to be elected simply by making his formerly just 1 vote shy now just good enough. But the nature of the beast is that it's impossible for me to account for all the possibilities, and I'll risk the indirect harm to avoid the direct.
posted by eriko at 8:13 PM on April 30, 2015 [4 favorites]

Not to interrupt the voting analysis, but check your spam filter if you haven't received your voting info email. That's where mine was.
posted by wintersweet at 8:17 PM on April 30, 2015

> City of Stairs, Robert Jackson Bennett, Broadway Books

Yeah, okay, so because of the mentions of this in this thread I went and downloaded the sample EVEN THOUGH I am reading a bunch of other things right now, I've been sucked in and /shakes fist/ DAMN YOU!!
posted by rtha at 8:25 PM on April 30, 2015 [3 favorites]

Is there any talk of changing the process to get rid of the possibility of ranking competitors below No Award?

No.

1) Some people care that, in the final tally, VD comes below No Award. I think this is dumb, others don't.

2) Some people care about votes like "I want A, if not, C, if not, No Award, but if you must D, then E, but not B." Ranking after No Award is the only way to express that preference, and given that in normal years No Award doesn't win, this is not a dumb thing at all.

I stand by the simple method of voting -- select those that you thinks are worthy. Rank them. Rank No Awards next. STOP -- when explaining the system, esp. to people new to STV. The caveat here, though, is all I care about is selecting the Hugo Winner or No Award. I don't care about 2nd through last place at all, and I don't care which non-worthy work wins if the worthy works and No Award do not. I think most people should go into the election with the same posits, because it makes the ballot so much simple to understand and work.

Those who care about those things would want to then rank the stuff below No Award, but that can have the oddball side effect of helping something they ranked *below* No Award win, which is odd when you think "but I said No Award?!"

This, alas, is one of the many reasons Voting Systems Are Hard, and if you want to get into Yet Another Endless Discussion between Condorcet and STV, I'm happy to point you to one -- there's usually one going on the Internet -- but I'm not doing that here because the answer is the same. There's no answer. Condorcet is the clearly superior method, except for the nasty problem of when you hit a paradox (A prefers B, B prefers C, blah blah EVERYBODY *and* NOBODY GETS A HUGO!) and the ways of resolving that are pretty damn crappy. STV has lots of warts, esp. with No Award, but it either very clearly finds a winner or very clearly ties and shows you that, and you know the answer at the end of the count.

So, you can take perfect when it works, or ugly but always works. We took ugly. Other groups took perfect. If you can switch to another voting scheme if you hit a circular paradox, Condorcet is a really good scheme to start with, but we can't afford to suddenly run a snap Hugo election. P

And, yes, people have honestly suggested that everyone just cast two Hugo ballots, one Condorcet, and if that can't resolve, one STV to resolve the election. You know, because explaining how to vote the Hugos isn't hard enough now!
posted by eriko at 8:43 PM on April 30, 2015 [3 favorites]

You're ballot now reads "B". Mine reads "No Preference" and drops out. If B is now the majority, B wins, and you're vote helped it win.

But those two votes should help in the No Award Test. I might be missing something, because it sounds like we have lots and lots of other votes in this example. So I'd like to see a set of votes where one vote can be switched from A, NA to A, NA, B and the winner (after the No Award Test) switches from A or NA to B, because I don't see how that can actually happen.
posted by jeather at 9:07 PM on April 30, 2015 [1 favorite]

City of Stairs was one of my top books of 2014. Sequel (or possibly just another book set in the same world) due out in 2016.
posted by jeather at 9:08 PM on April 30, 2015 [1 favorite]

But those two votes should help in the No Award Test. I might be missing something, because it sounds like we have lots and lots of other votes in this example.

Yes, both would count against it in the NA test -- you explicitly ranked NA above B, I ranked NA and didn't rank B, which means I count towards NA in the NA test. However, there are other votes out there in that example, since I just called them 'other votes' I can't tally them. Normally, the NA test is a formality, and I'll assume that since B in fact won, that enough will have B over NA to beat our two NA over B. However, this year?

Hell, NOTHING is normal this year.
posted by eriko at 9:14 PM on April 30, 2015

What is the latest date one can register and still vote? I'm still deciding whether to buy an attending membership. It looks like I can buy a voting membership and then upgrade to attending for $170 more?
posted by isthmus at 10:20 PM on April 30, 2015

isthmus: I had the same question, and eriko has the answer. And, yes, you can buy a supporting membership now and upgrade to attending later. But note that the price to convert will rise as we get closer to the date of Sasquan.
posted by Banknote of the year at 11:11 PM on April 30, 2015

anotherpanacea: I don't want any of these to win, so my first choice would be No Award. But I especially don't want Wright or Williamson to win. Now: I know that at least some voters want Wright and some would like Williamson. So I'm going to rank everyone above these two but below No Award.

If you want neither Wright or Williamson to win, why do you write them on your ballot at all?
posted by Kattullus at 3:12 AM on May 1, 2015 [1 favorite]

Alexandra Erin: Sad Puppies and Magical Thinking
posted by Going To Maine at 6:28 AM on May 1, 2015 [3 favorites]

If B is now the majority, B wins, and you're vote helped it win.

This is an odd definition of "help." B had the majority, so it won with or without my vote

What if B got the majority by exactly 1? Your vote for B, under NA, was then that 1 that gave it that majority. If you had voted like I had, your vote would have gone to No Preference, and then B may have been at 50% of the ballots, which is *not* the majority, and would not have won yet. We'd eliminate another candidate. If C was at 49, maybe a few D voters swaps to C and C takes it. Remember: The majority is greater than 50% of the ballots with preference. Exactly 50% doesn't win.

But the important thing to remember about Single Transferable Vote is in the name.

You have a Single Vote which Transfers. As your preferences are eliminated, you move to the next listed preference, you could be voting for any candidate you rank to win. You cannot vote to win a candidate you do not rank.

You can end up not voting in the election if all the candidates you do rank are eliminated, but you will not vote for a candidate you do not want to vote for if you do not rank them. You will just abstain and reduce the total ballots in the election at that point. This does have the effect of reducing the majority, even two ballots going No Preference reduces the number needing to win by 1 (since, of course, nobody votes a half ballot.)
posted by eriko at 6:49 AM on May 1, 2015

isthmus: I had the same question, and eriko has the answer.

And eriko was slightly wrong, the ballots are going to close end-of-day July 31st, not end-of-day July 1st. I'd *love* to say that was a typo, but nope, I honestly thought it was the 1st.

(History digression!)

And in the old paper days, that was a reasonable day for it to close. We had to wait for mail to get through (and some of that was overseas mail -- and we had to stress AIRMAIL, PEOPLE!) and then we had to shuffle all those ballots by hand, or type them all into a computer and run the numbers. Really, I still though moving the stacks was fasters, I could do three counts by hand faster than typing them in. It wasn't until we got networked computers (so that you could have multiple people typing in ballots) that computers became notably faster for the vote count.

2000 was the year it really changed when myself and Chaz Boston Baden (as the Web Team) and Saul Jaffee (as the Hugo Admin) first put the Hugo Ballot online. I wrote a routine that fired the ballots to him as a formatted CSV that he could import straight into the count program, and it would automatically handle the new version rule^* if someone voted twice. It went very smoothly, much to the chagrin of everyone who predicted utter disaster, and to everyone who predicted that the Hugos would be hacked.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry, I was watching, Saul was watching, a couple of other really good sysadmins were watching, and we all had other good sysadmins and netadmins on speed dial.

It worked. It set the standard. It made people run to the business meeting and pass a rule mandating paper ballots. :-) (I voted for that, actually, I like a fallback plan, but I took it as a compliment.)

The funny thing about Chicago and this is the guy who's written the current Hugo software lives about three blocks from me.

Yep. For the last 15 years, you guys have counted on people from Chicago to count the votes.

Heh. Heh. Heh.

* Saul and I wrote the rules because, well, somebody had to and Tom Veal, the Chicon 2000 chair, said, "write the rules." We decreed that 1) Paper would trump, because if you bothered to send in the paper, then we'd take that over the online -- plus, if we had a critical problem, we could push the mail in back, tell everyone to mail in, and we already had a policy that let us override your online with the paper ballot 2) If you sent in two ballots, the newer would trump. We'd assume you'd read more. With paper, the rule had gone back and forth from "first", to "last", to "call and ask" but we said "last paper, then last electronic." From what I can tell, that's the now firm rule to this day, but I haven't asked. Certainly, "last electronic" is the current rule, you can change your vote right up to the deadline.

Chaz and I also tried for Site Selection online, but that was much more complicated, because we had to get all the bids to agree on everything, and the rules there aren't nearly as established. This is one reason that you still see the "send in the PDF" stuff, because often bids want to see the registration forms, which are the top half of the site selection ballots. Fixing this really means fixing the mindset on how we do the Site Selection handoff, but that fight is one of the reasons I stepped away from this game for a long while.
posted by eriko at 7:06 AM on May 1, 2015 [6 favorites]

Kevin Standlee on the mechanics of voting No Award. Anyone interested in this technical digression should read the whole thing, because the beginning focuses on the simplified answer. The whole truth is that it's fine to rank things below No Award too, as long as you prefer everything ranked over everything you've left off the ballot entirely.
posted by Monsieur Caution at 7:33 AM on May 1, 2015 [2 favorites]

The whole truth is that it's fine to rank things below No Award too, as long as you prefer everything ranked over everything you've left off the ballot entirely.

And then look at Brad Templeton come in and make it complicated again because Voting Systems. :-)
posted by eriko at 7:52 AM on May 1, 2015

And then look at Brad Templeton come in and make it complicated again because Voting Systems. :-)

My guess is that's the nagging addressed in the "edited to add" section in the body of the post and covered by the caveat that your ranked preferences do count for helping anything you've ranked knock out anything you haven't. So if you rank things below No Award, don't omit rankings for things you simply have no opinion on. For this ballot, I doubt that's a problem.
posted by Monsieur Caution at 8:08 AM on May 1, 2015

Is it wrong of me that I now want Hugo Rules to apply to politics?
posted by corb at 10:46 AM on May 1, 2015

Not at all! Welcome to the endless rabbit hole of alternative voting systems.
posted by Banknote of the year at 11:33 AM on May 1, 2015 [3 favorites]

> City of Stairs, Robert Jackson Bennett, Broadway Books

Yeah, okay, so because of the mentions of this in this thread I went and downloaded the sample EVEN THOUGH I am reading a bunch of other things right now, I've been sucked in and /shakes fist/ DAMN YOU!!

Me, too, rtha! Stopped reading another book in the middle to read City of Stairs now. :)
posted by taz at 11:55 AM on May 1, 2015 [2 favorites]

I've finished Of Noble Family so I've started City of Stairs today too, with The Goblin Emperor queued directly afterwards.

Damn, CoS looks good.
posted by sukeban at 12:43 PM on May 1, 2015

What freaks me out is that the PsychoPuppies might do to SF what the GabbaGabbas did to Gaming: something you're sort of embarrassed to be associated with, or that you have to spend a lot of time clarifying that you're not like those Gamers/SF fans, they don't represent the community, etc.
posted by signal at 12:50 PM on May 1, 2015

More generally, it looks like you're ignoring the No Award Test.

Let me sum this up as "I'm not." I've been on the Hugo subcomm, I've been working with this voting system for a quarter century. I know this system, I know more edge cases than I care to worry about, I am deliberately not bringing them up here, because fundamentally, they're really noise^*, and the No Award test is not the edge case here.

The No Award test triggers extremely rarely -- it basically comes up only when you're dealing with things like five very polarizing candidates, and it's there because the fundamental point is that we want at least 50% of the voters to go "I'm OK with that winning" and there are conceivable sets of nominees that could achieve a majority after several rounds that, in fact, more than 50% would in fact not be happy with winning.

It's *extremely* rare and I seriously doubt we'll see it even this year -- although if the puppies vote ABCD-NA and Fandom votes a combination of E-NA and straight NA, it's certainly possible. But I suspect the NAs this year will be straight NAs -- and there's no No Award test if No Award wins, obviously.

* Some 75% of them can only happen if 2X or less people vote, where X is the number of candidates.
posted by eriko at 12:59 PM on May 1, 2015 [2 favorites]

Well edge cases are pretty neat in general and I am suddenly convinced that IRV is a hugely ugly method that has weird, unexpected results.

But -- given the assumption that there will be on the order of a few thousand voters, not a bad assumption -- I was playing around with numbers and couldn't come up with an edge case where listing things after NA would help them compared to NA and stuff listed before NA. Obviously A, NA, B is going to help B compared to C, D and E -- that's why you didn't vote A, NA.

I feel like it should be provable, one way or the other, but I have no idea how.
posted by jeather at 2:49 PM on May 1, 2015

Is it wrong of me that I now want Hugo Rules to apply to politics?

No it is not! First Past The Post, ie how elections are done in the US right now, is a terrible system and needs doing away with. They tried to fix it in Canada, but idiots got in the way.
posted by kafziel at 3:16 PM on May 1, 2015 [3 favorites]

The only system worse than FPTP is LPTP. Random is better, random where the entire population is a candidate is vastly better.
posted by eriko at 7:07 PM on May 1, 2015 [1 favorite]

> "Though now we mention it, I find your 42 shelves of books intriguing and would like to propose MeFiCon 1, to take place at your apartment, and involve us reading your books."

Well ... OK, but just to warn you all, whoever ends up sleeping on the "I" shelf is going to have to read a lot of Ionesco.
posted by kyrademon at 9:04 AM on May 2, 2015 [5 favorites]

An Account of Juliette Wade’s Withdrawal from Sad Puppies 3
posted by Artw at 10:18 AM on May 3, 2015 [3 favorites]

The Hugo Nomination Problem or, I Am a Bad Reader
posted by Artw at 10:22 AM on May 3, 2015 [1 favorite]

Juliette Wade's account makes it completely likely how Torg could say that people were contacted and people could say, no they weren't. Torg is clearly saying, "Hey, want to be on my slate", but he's not saying "Also, by the way, this slate is kind of a shitstorm and you'll be plunged into a war."
posted by corb at 10:27 AM on May 3, 2015

No Award is Not the Nuclear Option
posted by Artw at 10:36 AM on May 3, 2015 [2 favorites]

sad puppy brad torgersen lies like crazy and juliette wade calls him on it
posted by Artw at 10:39 AM on May 3, 2015 [6 favorites]

sad puppy brad torgersen lies like crazy and juliette wade calls him on it

My maintenance of our friendship was out of courtesy.

Oh, snap.
posted by Etrigan at 10:42 AM on May 3, 2015 [8 favorites]

You go, Juliette! (We used to be in the same writers group.)
posted by Zed at 11:43 AM on May 3, 2015

This seems like a great opportunity for a painless concession on his part; I suspect it'll be missed, though. (Especially, since VD has joined the thread - the apology would split them.)
posted by Going To Maine at 12:31 PM on May 3, 2015 [1 favorite]

Well, he's made a non-pology. (It admits an error, but not about misconstruing her reasoning.)
posted by Going To Maine at 12:36 PM on May 3, 2015 [1 favorite]

Wait, what the fuck? Juliette says that she knew Torg was involved in Sad Puppies and that's why she wasn't looking at his wall or blog, but when he asked her about coming on his slate, she somehow did not associate the two and just 'assumed' this was an entirely separate and new slate?
posted by corb at 1:28 PM on May 3, 2015

It sounds like he said "can I endorse you for a Hugo?," and she read that as him personally endorsing her, not him adding her to the Sad Puppies slate. And while I'm sure you will see that as unreasonable, since you have just boundless generosity for the Puppies and no generosity at all for anyone who opposes them, I can't really understand why he didn't say "can I add you to the Sad Puppies slate?" if that's what he meant.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 1:32 PM on May 3, 2015 [9 favorites]

She say she blanked on the word 'slate' in the initial email. Given her actions thereafter and the immediacy of her withdrawal when she saw what was what, I see no reason to disbelieve her.

Yes, she seems to be drawing a stark distinction between "on a slate" and "recommended for a Hugo." I can see reasonable people disagreeing on how distinct those are.
posted by Zed at 1:39 PM on May 3, 2015

Yeah, I mean, bear in mind that:

1) We're reading this *after* a lot of discussion of slates and slate voting, and now everybody knows what a Hugo "slate" means and why they object to it (if they do), which wasn't so much the cast a few months ago even if you knew what happened last year;

2) Torgersen was involved with the Sad Puppies last year but I'm pretty sure he wasn't running it, Correia was, and if you hadn't been following along you wouldn't know that had changed, and;

3) Wade and Torgersen were on friendly terms, e.g., "We then discussed his upcoming work duties (army reserve stuff)."

So, a friend contacts her and asks if he can put her on "my Hugo recommendation slate" without mentioning Sad Puppies, which she knew he was involved in but probably doesn't think he's running, and there hasn't been a lot of discussion of "slates" yet so it's pretty easy to miss, so her thinking, "Oh, my friend is personally recommending some authors he likes on his personal blog, how nice" doesn't seem too utterly bizarre to me.

Also ... I'm not sure what the issue would be here? She withdrew months ago, so quickly that hardly anyone even noticed it. Mike Glyer only knew about it and contacted her because Brad Torgersen had mentioned she'd been on and withdrew in a comment on Glyer's blog. She said nothing publicly until directly asked, and when she was she was circumspect enough in what she said that Brad Torgersen still assumed she was on the side of the Puppies until she had to ask him to stop speaking for her.
posted by kyrademon at 1:49 PM on May 3, 2015 [6 favorites]

Juliette says that she knew Torg was involved in Sad Puppies and that's why she wasn't looking at his wall or blog, but when he asked her about coming on his slate, she somehow did not associate the two and just 'assumed' this was an entirely separate and new slate?

I was entirely unaware of the Sad Puppy connection because I had deliberately been avoiding looking at your wall, much less your blog, for going on two years. My maintenance of our friendship was out of courtesy. I guess I was too idealistic, thinking that Sad Puppies might be over and that you would just be talking to me about some Hugo recommendations, but I do like to think the best of people. It should not be my responsibility to go and look up whether a person is being dishonest every time they say they like my work.

Remember that Larry Correia had been the Chief Sad Puppy in years past -- if Wade hadn't been following Correia, Torgersen, or the Puppies campaign, it's not unreasonable for her to think that his "Hugo nomination slate" might not have been the Puppies. Also, Sad Puppies 1 and 2 weren't about sweeping the nominations -- they were just a couple of things in various categories that Correia et al thought were unfairly ignored by the Hugo voters. It wasn't until this year that they decided to try to exclude things they didn't approve of.
posted by Etrigan at 1:50 PM on May 3, 2015 [5 favorites]

We've been going on about this for a month, folks! Posted April 4, 30 days hast April, thread closure tomorrow!

THESE ARE THE END TIMES.
posted by Zed at 2:42 PM on May 3, 2015 [1 favorite]

I've been holding it in, but I just can't any longer, I'm sorry. Tom Kratman is the greatest writer in the English language since William Shakespeare.
posted by Drinky Die at 2:48 PM on May 3, 2015 [1 favorite]

And I absolutely ran out of energy to read the shorts. But I will do it, if I ever start sleeping well again, and comment in the spreadsheet anyhow.
posted by jeather at 3:00 PM on May 3, 2015

What do you mean, "since"?
posted by Going To Maine at 3:00 PM on May 3, 2015 [2 favorites]

Tom Kratman is the greatest writer in the English language since William Shakespeare.

You shall have other Jim Theis than Jim Theis.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 3:43 PM on May 3, 2015 [1 favorite]

Unless....
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 3:48 PM on May 3, 2015

Jim Theis didn't die in 2002... he went back in time to become Shakespeare!
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 3:50 PM on May 3, 2015

From the Rachel Acks piece that Artw posted:

I seriously need some helpful soul, or maybe some kind of crowd-sourced thing that can tell me what I should be reading as things come out so I’m not floundering under drifts of pages on book mountain when the Hugo nomination period opens. Preferably some recommendation engine... I don’t want reviews, I don’t even want opinions, I just want a simple list or titles and authors and maybe a helpful link where someone can say hey, I think this book should totally get a Hugo, and then other people who agree can maybe give it a plus one, and that’s it.

As far as technical solutions go, I think it has promise. I've seen some other suggestions that would need a lot of moderation to avoid getting swamped by trolls, but maybe a system with only books and likes could resist the worst of trolling. (With some protection from flooding the votes.)

But I keep thinking that maybe the solution is cultural, not technical. What if fandom was more willing to talk about Hugo nominees throughout the year, not just in February? Take John Scalzi, just as an example. He has annual open threads for his readers to suggest works. This year, it ran on Feb 12, a month before nominations were due. If a similar open thread also ran in, say, September then there would be more time to actually read the recommendations.

People already talk about stuff they like all year long, of course. But Hugo nomination season seems to open the floodgates: More recommendations from more voices. Can we give ourselves permission to talk up our favourite works earlier, when there's more of a chance to read them?
posted by Banknote of the year at 4:03 PM on May 3, 2015 [4 favorites]

Well, if nothing else, this thread got me reading The Goblin Emperor and I've got the Inheritance Trilogy in the queue. I'm early in, but loving this book so far. So thanks for that, I probably wouldn't have heard of either otherwise.
posted by kafziel at 4:04 PM on May 3, 2015 [2 favorites]

Oh yes, and I finished Goblin Emperor yesterday. It remained excellent throughout!

[vague spoilers]: However, I thought the event that kicked off the resolution needed a bit too much post-hoc explanation. And the biggest pump your hands and cheer moment ("No") came well before the climax proper; the actual climax didn't reach the same height. But these are by no means huge flaws.
posted by Banknote of the year at 4:20 PM on May 3, 2015 [1 favorite]

We've been going on about this for a month, folks! Posted April 4, 30 days hast April, thread closure tomorrow!

Oh no! I haven't contributed but I've been enjoying the discussion all month.
posted by dfan at 4:39 PM on May 3, 2015

Nooooooooo the thread can't be over what else will I do with my time!
posted by Andrhia at 5:26 PM on May 3, 2015

Read Hugo-worthy fiction?

(I say this as someone who has realized that I'm reading almost no fiction these days, because the internet occupies much of my reading time. I'm trying to figure out what to do about that.)
posted by rmd1023 at 6:44 PM on May 3, 2015

Well, I don't know about "Hugo-worthy" (especially after the Puppies are finished chewing it up and burying the bones), but for "Award-worthy", there's a brand new post about Women in Science Fiction & Fantasy Month, 2015 about quality authors and works the Puppies will despise.
posted by oneswellfoop at 6:56 PM on May 3, 2015 [3 favorites]

Quick, quick before the thread snaps shut. It amuses me to recall that one of the overt political ideas in Heinlein's Starship Troopers was the idea that voting was a privilege, not a right, and the franchise had to be earned in the society he depicted. Not sure why that thought hasn't had more sway on Puppy behavior. Surely they respect the great RAH whose name they invoke?
posted by puddledork at 7:05 PM on May 3, 2015

How long is our long boat? At 2,432 comments this thread is now the longest pop culture thread in MeFi history¹, surpassing Betty from Mad Men.

Cheers and back slaps all around! And I'd like to propose a toast: May we all meet back here next year with good health, good cheer, and a higher calibre of Hugo nominees to discuss.

¹Or second-longest, if you count the Boing Boing / Violet Blue thread as pop culture.
posted by Banknote of the year at 7:17 PM on May 3, 2015 [8 favorites]

In the back-and-forth on the FIle770 post on Juliettte Wade's withdrawal from the Sad Puppies slate, a comment by rcade mentions Torgersen's Facebook post in which he equates John Scalzi with Vox Day as another ego only worth ignoring.

Subjectively fine and good, but he follows it up with a comment suggesting that Scalzi might be gay (ewwww). Probably not serious, but it's shockingly immature and quite disingenuous coming from someone who's been boasting about how the SP3 slate includes folks of all different sexual orientations.
posted by Going To Maine at 7:34 PM on May 3, 2015 [2 favorites]

No! It can't end yet! Maybe a pull together of the responses and Where We Stand?
posted by corb at 7:54 PM on May 3, 2015

...voting was a privilege, not a right, and the franchise had to be earned in the society he depicted.
And one of the premises the whole Werewolf* campaign is that the Hugos had been taken over by "not-really-fan" voters, that is, those not worthy to vote.

Torgerson would seem to have now proven himself to be "another ego only worth ignoring", except that apparently doing so allows people like him to try to sneak in and steal all the good stuff for themselves, as they're doing to the Hugos. And if you need any further proof that Scalzi is not ego-driven, there's his regular feature on his blog where he lets other authors talk about their latest books and the Big Ideas behind them. I've noticed none of the notable Werewolves* have been featured there in recent memory, and it can't be because he's rejected them or they'd REALLY let everybody know, but I think they generally realize they have no actual Ideas, Big or Small, just perpetually rehashed political talking points.

*I HATE having to refer to them as 'Puppies', even 'Rabid' because I have always been a dog lover and dogs love me - I knew that pit bulls didn't deserve their bad rep before most people, thanks to a big lovable bull who was my neighbor - so I hereby christen these Bad People "Werewolves". I was considering alternatives, the next best I could come up with was Wiley Coyotes, but that kinda assumes their attacks will blow up in their faces, and I sadly do not expect anything like that.
posted by oneswellfoop at 7:58 PM on May 3, 2015

I kind of failed to create a new thread earlier, but I feel confident some of the dumb Puppies will do something worthy of a new one soon.
posted by tavella at 11:06 PM on May 3, 2015

Also, as a final note -- I would really, really strongly suggest that people who think they are ethically required to treat Puppy candidates in a vacuum, ie "but it would be wrong to put it below No Award if I wouldn't have in an ordinary year" or "I have to give them a fair shot", rethink. Because you are going to be rewarding people who acted unethically, which means you will have a whole lot of authors sucking up to the Puppies next year, including ones who could get Hugo nominations in a free vote, because they will control all routes to the hugo nominations. And even worse, you will be doubly punishing authors who acted ethically and withdrew.
posted by tavella at 11:16 PM on May 3, 2015 [6 favorites]

The only good thing about the "Puppies" name is that it gave me the idea of a pretty good tag for GamerGhazi*, which is "Sad Adult Dog".

"Werewolf" doesn't work for me at all because "Werewolf campaign" makes me super confused about how the Hugos turned into a World of Darkness game and "Werewolf" capitalized on my own makes me think you're on some metaphor about Werewolf/Mafia.

the anti-GG subreddit, which I've been using even though reddit is a pile of rancid sewage because I figured if people are going to read this whatisgamergatecurrentyruining thing I should take it seriously and try to keep up
posted by NoraReed at 11:17 PM on May 3, 2015 [6 favorites]

"Werewolf" doesn't work for me at all because "Werewolf campaign" makes me super confused about how the Hugos turned into a World of Darkness game

Thank you, I also had some cognitive dissonance there. Fucking Glasswalkers.
posted by corb at 11:25 PM on May 3, 2015 [3 favorites]

Addendum: I do not want to imply that the GamerGhazi folks are part of the rancid pile of sewage and I think my wording on that was unclear. They are great folks; I think it is shitty that reddit is poorly made and poorly run and so the mods prolly have to do more work than they should because of that shittiness.
posted by NoraReed at 11:29 PM on May 3, 2015 [1 favorite]

"Werewolf" doesn't work for me at all because "Werewolf campaign" makes me super confused about how the Hugos turned into a World of Darkness game

The WoD's Gamergaters are all passionate fans of Tellus and Black Dog, that's for sure.
posted by Pope Guilty at 1:40 AM on May 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

Well, what I've noticed is Torgensen has resorted to calling Scalzi gay on Twitter. Which 1) Didn't bother Scalzi one bit, and 2) well, last refuge of the incompetent and all that.

The puppies won't go away but slate voting in the nomination phase will become an accepted practice and their influence will become negligible.

Disagree. Torgensen and VD are all in, of course, but the slate itself is collapsing. We've got people running away from at fast as they can. And when the result of being on that slate is going to be Never Ever Ever Winning A Hugo, Period -- because that's what's happened, every one still on the RP slate has basically ensure they will never ever win a Hugo, ever -- the next person with a slate is going to be told GET ME OFF THAT GODDAMN SLATE, ASSHOLE.

If anything, this might in fact fix the slate problem by simply making it "Do you want to be those assholes?"

But we might need to do something about the nominations to make sure.
posted by eriko at 5:04 AM on May 4, 2015 [3 favorites]

Since we're wrapping up, I can announce the winner of the "spelling of Brad T.'s last name in this thread" category with confidence:

No award: 241
Torgersen: 159
Torgensen: 49
posted by dfan at 5:23 AM on May 4, 2015 [5 favorites]

So, I finished "City of Stairs" last night, and enjoyed it so much. What are we reading now?
posted by taz at 5:38 AM on May 4, 2015

Before it closes up, JCW wonders whether it is possible that maybe one of the negative reviews was written by a reviewer who didn't read the story, just figured out the plot through osmosis somehow. (The much shorter and less detailed positive reviews are definitely from someone who read it, obviously.)
posted by jeather at 5:40 AM on May 4, 2015

I recommend reading everything Ursula Vernon wrote as T. Kingfisher in preparation for her next fairy tale due out this month some time. (Don't forget she writes for children under her own name.)

Side note, I continue to wish there were a place for book discussion here, though I assume this conversation will continue in this awesome thread.
posted by jeather at 5:43 AM on May 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

Books will eventually make it to FanFare... it's just a matter of working out what that will look like, and having the time to spend making it happen (pb and cortex mainly).
posted by taz at 5:49 AM on May 4, 2015 [2 favorites]

Also read City of Stairs as a result of this thread and am going to finish it in an hour. This thread alone has probably sold 10 copies.
posted by tofu_crouton at 6:03 AM on May 4, 2015

I definitely see this continuing. Day, pretty clearly, is doing this for the sheer joy of fucking up something other people like. The cost to him is basically zero, so why not do it again next year?
posted by Chrysostom at 6:24 AM on May 4, 2015

And now one of my coworkers is also reading it.
posted by tofu_crouton at 6:37 AM on May 4, 2015

Subjectively fine and good, but he follows it up with a comment suggesting that Scalzi might be gay (ewwww). Probably not serious, but it's shockingly immature and quite disingenuous coming from someone who's been boasting about how the SP3 slate includes folks of all different sexual orientations.

Scalzi follows up here, with a comment noting Brad's weird semi-apology:

[T]he apology is for insinuating about my sexuality, but apparently not for suggesting that there is anything at all wrong with being gay. Which is to say Torgersen appears to be apologizing for the not offensive thing (insinuating regarding my sexuality), and not about the actual offensive thing: The homophobia that asserts that being gay is such a shameful thing that implying that I am so is an insult that rates an apology. Allowing that “even Scalzi” doesn’t deserve to be called gay does appear to apply that to Torgersen, being gay is a real problem. There’s a lot left unexamined, here.

[...]I think it’s interesting that when Torgersen thought to apologize, he thought to apologize first not to the person to whom he had directed his intended insult, but to the people to whom he offered the insult as snark, at least one of whom felt more than happy to continue the attempted insult (by offering up a picture of Wil Wheaton as my “wife,” because hur hur me and Wil are totally gay together). Apology by way of dependent clause is a curious way to go.

I accept Torgersen’s apology for attempting to belittle me, even if I was not in the least bit belittled; in this case it was not the specific insult, but rather that the insult was attempted at all. I do think Torgersen’s apology should be more properly offered to people who are gay, whose existence, and the fact of who they love, apparently so discomfits Torgersen that he uses who they are as a way to suggest that I am someone less than worthy of respect as a human being. I’m not gay, but if I were, I would be absolutely proud to be so, and Torgersen would still have no excuse for thinking of me as something less than equal for it.

It’s my wish that, in return for accepting his apology, Torgersen might take some time to examine what in his own thinking caused him to offer his attempt at an insult. I’m not asking it as a requirement for accepting the apology; it’s just a hope. As I said before, the Sad Puppies seem to be carrying around a lot of fear and anger, Torgersen no less than any of the rest of them. Some time looking inward, and possibly examining the roots of that fear and anger, might do him some good.

It's almost as if the puppies whining about how open-minded they were being by checking off "diversity" boxes was nothing more than a facade for them being bigoted assholes! I mean, I came to that conclusion a long time ago, but at this point it seems like either they just don't care, or their anger is making the masks slip off. If these guys get the evil eye and cold shoulder from Worldcon attendees, it will be well-deserved.
posted by zombieflanders at 6:44 AM on May 4, 2015 [9 favorites]

I predict we won't see the slate apocalypse but probably more best-of-2015 lists appearing early in 2016. These will tend to have at least a dozen items in each fiction category 'cause they want to avoid even the appearance of being a slate.

They Who Widdle on Floors will probably double down. Again.
posted by Zed at 6:45 AM on May 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

> "... either vote for a slate or accept another year of No Awards and similar nonsense."

Sorry, gonna go with option B. I am going to nominate whatever I feel like next year. I will happily take reading suggestions, but will ignore any call to rally behind any specific works.

There are elections where I'm willing to vote strategically, because the potential results are too important to too many people to risk catastrophic failure. This is ... not that. It's personally important to me in several ways, but frankly, the Hugo winners do not choose who is on the Supreme Court or anything like it.

So, if ignoring slates means another year or two of nonsense and No Awards while the Hugo gets its house and rules in order, so be it. It might go down that way. But the Hugos have been around for decades, and can survive a year or two of idiocy. I personally find that preferable to nominating any work I wouldn't normally have nominated.

And it might not even come to that. If there are dozens of slates next year, they might lose all power and meaning. But if it does come to that, I'll just ignore the Hugo, the same way I ignore a bunch of other awards, for as long as I need to.

I am, however, going to nominate next year, in every single damn category. I will scour the earth until I find five works, people, or organizations worth putting on the ballot in every single one. If the Puppies beat my nominations because I stuck to my principles, that's OK with me, but I'll be damned if they do it because I was too lazy.
posted by kyrademon at 6:47 AM on May 4, 2015 [10 favorites]

Torgersen has a post on his fb about free comic book day and he talks about how great it is to watch someone become a new fan of a thing and how awful it is to gatekeep people out of a thing because they are newbs and "Oh, sure, maybe the new folk aren't replicating your exact "passage" as a fan, but the truth is, they don't have to. Let it be organic — like it was for you! — and just be glad somebody else wants to celebrate your stuff too." and the cognitive dissonance is deafening me.
posted by rtha at 6:50 AM on May 4, 2015 [6 favorites]

As this thread prepares to find itself shunted to Infinite Fun Space, would anyone be willing to go through and collate 2014 Best Novel suggestions from the participants? My quick scan (but "novel" is hard to Ctrl-F through) gives:

Katherine Addison, The Goblin Emperor; Robert Jackson Bennett, City of Stairs (which I've purchased, so this thread produces another nickel in Bennett's pocket); Liu Cixin, The Three Body Problem; William Gibson, The Peripherial; Jacqueline Koyanagi, Ascension; Anne Leckie, Ancillary Justice; Jeff Vandermeer's Southern Reach trilogy, notably Annihilation; Ben Winters, World of Trouble

(I wouldn't rank it as better than what I've read from the above list as the best genre book published in 2014 -- nor is it the best book in the series -- but I also enjoyed Max Gladstone's Full Fathom Five, which was mentioned in passing.)

If nothing else, I've gotten some useful library suggestions and discovered Matthew David Surridge as a blogger to follow, so the Sad Puppies have in some small way contributed to my happiness. Thanks, Puppies! I and my disabled gay black space opera reading list salute you!
posted by snarkout at 7:03 AM on May 4, 2015 [5 favorites]

I also added:

Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven; Genevieve Valentine, The Girls at the Kingfisher Club (probably -- question of genreliness, not quality); Tom Pollock, Our Lady of the Streets; T. Kingfisher, The Seventh Bride.
posted by jeather at 7:17 AM on May 4, 2015 [6 favorites]

This is obviously false.

You have no idea how long fannish memory is. Those that withdrew, tried to get off the slate, didn't accept the nomination are all forgiven, but those who didn't? They are going to have a *long* road ahead of them to ever get a rocket. Any time they get a nomination, even if it's for a worthy work, the word "puppy" will go out and then the words "oh, hell no" will be uttered and if they're lucky, they'll be ranked above No Award, but I doubt it.

They basically said "Fuck you" to Fandom, and Fandom is *legendary* about remembering things like this. We are still talking about the Exclusion Acts and the Breendoggle. If Worldcon fandom exists 75 years from now, they'll be talking about this. Somebody alive today will be a Worldcon FGoH, and they'll be asked questions about *this very thing* because they were there.

There are orgs in Fandom dedicated to preserving history. All of this will be saved. I fully expect this entire thread to end up in FANAC's archives, to be honest -- if they can get permission from everyone to do so. Hmm, that gives me an idea.

(FANAC -- you have permission to save my posts on this thread. Note this extends solely to my posts. Note that you do not need permission to point to this site, but you almost certainly do need permission to copy this thread elsewhere, and you have *for my posts only*, because I cannot grant that permission any further than for myself.)
posted by eriko at 7:27 AM on May 4, 2015 [2 favorites]

Looking forward to 2015, so far I've really enjoyed The Country of Ice Cream Star (Sandra Newman) and Archivist Wasp (Nicole Kornher-Stace).
posted by tofu_crouton at 7:28 AM on May 4, 2015 [2 favorites]

I think the possibility's unlikely, but sure FANAC, go hog wild if you need with my stuff.
posted by corb at 7:29 AM on May 4, 2015

Liu Cixin, The Three Body Problem;

And this work stands why I and several other fought against the Best Non-English or Best Translated Hugo. Amongst other objections, we don't want to make Best Hugo be Best Hugo that isn't X, Y or X.

The Three Body Problem, is, by all accounts, a really good work. Why does it need to compete in a separate category? Answer: It doesn't. It should fight in the big ring with the others, and I'm glad it is. I'm just sad it's not fighting against four other worthies.

Aside: This is also one of many reasons why I'm against a Best YA Novel -- because I don't want Best Novel to be Best Novel that isn't YA, and I have yet to have *anybody* give me a definition of a YA novel that I can have a randomly selected Hugo Administrator^* administer properly. Novel/Novella/Novelette/Short Story involves number of words, BDP-L/BDP-S involves running time. Hard numbers you can split on.

One of the meta-rules of the Hugos is that a given work is eligible for One and Only One award, so if you construct a Best Translated or Best YA or Best Work Featuring Cats Hugo, you remove that work from some other Category. There's no multi-category awards, the way you win multiple awards is have multiple works nominated.

Best Translated was really hard, because I actually love the idea of giving the *translator* an award, because translation of fiction is really really hard. But the problem is we'd be award for translation *to English* and the work would be eligible itself that year because that would be the year it was first published.

The other problem is currently, there aren't enough translated works per year to fill a category. Right now, the very few that make it tend to be excellent works, but this is selection bias, only the very best sellers tend break through to foreign markets, so you tend not to see mediocre works translated, with the possible exception of English works translated elsewhere, simply because SF/F is currently an English dominated field.

And how do you judge the translation, unless you can read the original work and the translated work? We're really not the right group to judge this. So, yeah, best to let that one go by the board.

* This is a polite way of saying "a complete idiot," by the way.
posted by eriko at 7:43 AM on May 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

I found Mefite recommendations on this thread for the following 2014 novels:

Ancillary Sword, Ann Leckie
Annihilation / Southern Reach Trilogy, Jeff Vandermeer
Ascension, Jacqueline Koyanagi
The Book of Strange New Things, Michael Faber
Cibola Burn, James SA Corey
City of Stairs, Robert Jackson Bennett
Full Fathom Five, Max Gladstone
The Girls at the Kingfisher Club, Genevieve Valentine
The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison
Our Lady of the Streets, Tom Pollock
The Peripheral, William Gibson
Rhesus Chart, Charles Stross
The Seventh Bride, T. Kingfisher
Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel
Three Body Problem, Cixin Liu
World of Trouble, Ben Winters

The following were also recommended without name as part of a series (e.g., a series was recommended by one or more Mefites without naming any books; the following book from that series was published in 2014):

The Dark Defiles, Richard K. Morgan (Land Fit for Heroes series)
The Sea of Time, P. C. Hodgell (Kencyrath series)
The Widow’s House, Daniel Abraham (Dagger and the Coin series)

The following series were also named in the "search for nominees for the nonexistent Hugo series award" (e.g., these series were put forward as possibilities for a nomination if there existed an award for ongoing or completed series with a book published in 2014; these may vary in quality more than the previous lists as an attempt was being made to find any decent qualifying 2014 book):

Dreams of Gods and Monsters, Laini Taylor (Daughter of Smoke and Bone series)
Night Broken, Patricia Briggs (Mercy Thompson series)
Operation Shield, Joel Shepherd (Cassandra Kresnov series)
Ruin and Rising, Leigh Bardugo (Grisha series)
The Seat of Magic, J. Kathleen Cheney (The Golden City series)
Starbreak, Phoebe North (Starglass series)
Steles of the Sky, Elizabeth Bear (Eternal Sky series)
The Unbound, Victoria Schwab (Archived series)
Unmade, Sarah Rees Brennan (Lynburn Legacy series)
Words of Radiance, Brandon Sanderson (Stormlight Archives series)

The following were not specifically recommended by any Mefite, but were noted as novels that might potentially have made the Hugo ballot this year:

Lock In, John Scalzi
The Mirror Empire, Kameron Hurley
posted by kyrademon at 7:49 AM on May 4, 2015 [11 favorites]

Oh, 2015 looks great. I haven't read Ken Liu's book, but I bought it. V.E. Schwab wrote a great book called A Darker Shade of Magic. There's a new Max Gladstone out, Ursula Vernon is publishing a lot, Rosamund Hodge has her second novel out (the first was very promising but lacked focus), Shadow Scale which I haven't read yet came out, new Naomi Novik (I'm bored with Temeraire because stupid amnesia plot), the second Tearling book, maybe the next Gentleman Bastard book, the Austin Grossman Nixon/Lovecraft book, the new Cat Valente, Kate Elliott's YA, Zen Cho's first book, Ancillary Mercy -- lots more I can't think of offhand.
posted by jeather at 8:06 AM on May 4, 2015 [2 favorites]

Just for the record, World of Trouble is the end of a trilogy as well, and all three are fantastically good.
posted by Etrigan at 8:07 AM on May 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

Game of Thrones will NEVER WIN ANYTHING EVER AGAIN.

There are a small number of people who freak out whenever GRRM writes anything that isn't GoT.

You will also note that they are not currently laying into him for writing those massive missives about this whole situation. They recognize that this is something completely different.

And, I'll be honest. I expect he won't win for GoT novel again unless he finishes and finishes well -- in which case, he may well get an award for the entire series, much like Wheel of Time did, but I suspect part of that reason is a lot of people were very fond of Jim Rigney, myself included.

Jim Butcher is the only puppy nominee who might have stood a chance some day in the future

He's done something very interesting, which is...nothing at all, as far as I can tell. Which is probably the best thing possible.
posted by eriko at 8:10 AM on May 4, 2015 [2 favorites]

Heh. Great comment by Brad DeLong in the Scalzi thread on Torgerson's homophobic taunt:

I must say, the universe seems to have handed John Scalzi self-appointed adversaries who are both remarkably and ineffectually villainous and remarkably and ridiculously clown-like.

The only hypothesis consistent with the evidence is that John Scalzi is actually a Mary Sue…

posted by Zed at 8:24 AM on May 4, 2015 [9 favorites]

Oh, and Kate Atkinson's companion novel to Life After Life (which is like the Claire North book except better -- it's such a great book). I forget what it's called, and I don't know if it's going to be speculative fictional, but it comes out this week.
posted by jeather at 8:29 AM on May 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

Some 2015 books I am particularly excited about:

The Boy Who Lost Fairyland, Catherynne M. Valente
A Darker Shade of Magic, V. E. Schwab
The Fifth Season, N. K. Jemisin
A God in Ruins, Kate Atkinson
Half the World, Joe Abercrombie
The Just City, Jo Walton
Last First Snow, Max Gladstone
The Lie Tree, Frances Hardinge
Persona, Genevieve Valentine
The Philosopher Kings, Jo Walton
Razorhurst, Justine Larbalestier
Shadow Scale, Rachel Hartman
Stories of the Raksura: The Dead City & the Dark Earth Below, Martha Wells
posted by kyrademon at 8:47 AM on May 4, 2015 [3 favorites]

As the event horizon for this thread approaches, I just want to say that this has been an awesome thread and I am sorry to see it drawing to a close. On the other hand, I`m thrilled to be part of such a community that could have such a wonderful discussion about the situation and the various perspectives and about fandom as a whole.
On the gripping hand, my reading list is now massive and and I will be coming back to this thread again and again for more titles to add.
posted by nubs at 8:50 AM on May 4, 2015 [5 favorites]

And how do you judge the translation, unless you can read the original work and the translated work? We're really not the right group to judge this.

Well, some of us are. I can read SF in Spanish and read it in English and judge how well the spirit of the words are translating. I'm sure I'm not the only one. To assume that because Worldcon is largely English speaking, that they don't speak (or read) other languages as well is to err.
posted by corb at 9:00 AM on May 4, 2015

I'm proud to have been a part of this thread, and I hope the good guys (aka No Award) win!
posted by languagehat at 9:57 AM on May 4, 2015

I've really enjoyed everyone's comments in this thread, even when it got heated. This is why I loves me some Metafilter. If anyone's going to be at Sasquan, I hope you can make the proposed meetup. If you can't, but you'll be at Sasquan, drop me a line and we can get a social beverage.

My last thoughts: the Hugos are important to a lot of people. If you want to win one, you ought to earn it with your work, not by being a dick. Being a dick is no way to go through life.
posted by RakDaddy at 10:42 AM on May 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

eriko on Butcher: He's done something very interesting, which is...nothing at all, as far as I can tell. Which is probably the best thing possible.

He's not as dumb as Torgesen to talk about it publicly, but I had a talk with someone who was in our shared former circle and who is much more au courant with Butcher than I am, and depressingly, it's not that Butcher doesn't care, it's that he agrees with the Puppies and apparently sees this as the best way to reap the benefits without getting the blowback.
posted by tavella at 10:42 AM on May 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

To add to the list of 2014 books that may or may not have been mentioned in this thread:
Monica Byrne The Girl in the Road (Yes, she's my friend. It's also an amazing book.)
Andy Weir The Martian (was likely eligible this year as noted above and I just got around to reading it and it's amazing)
posted by hydropsyche at 10:43 AM on May 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

Is this still on? :D

A Darker Shade of Magic is pretty good portal fantasy that falls nearly on YA, but not quite. I've also been reading Harry Connolly's The Great Way books, which have their problems with pacing but the guy looks promising. Also, there was the fourth book in the Johannes Cabal series by Jonathan L. Howard, which is snarky steampunkish adventure with demons and vampires and Lovecraftian entities.
posted by sukeban at 11:03 AM on May 4, 2015 [2 favorites]

Well, some of us are. I can read SF in Spanish and read it in English and judge how well the spirit of the words are translating. I'm sure I'm not the only one.

I'm another, but I don't like Spanish translations or Spanish book prices (Gigamesh in particular has been extorting nerds, but the other day I wanted to buy Throne of the Crescent Moon for my sister and it costed 18 euros for a paperback). It's fun because my family has read ASOIAF in Spanish and I've done it in English, so we have translation difficulties (Westeros -> Poniente, Winterfell -> Invernalia, Littlefinger -> Meñique, and so on and on)
posted by sukeban at 11:08 AM on May 4, 2015

Awesome 2014 spec fic novels:
Elysium, by Jennifer Marie Brissett (artificial intelligence, aliens, iterations of love and iterations of grief)
Lagoon, by Nnedi Okorafor (it's a mosaical, cross-sections-of-society look at an alien invasion; there is a militant environmentalist swordfish who I loved)
Annihilation, by Jeff VanderMeer (mentioned often upthread, but I loved it and I liked the trilogy as a whole for the most part)

Not-recent spec fic novels I read this past month due to feeling re-energized / over-protective about this genre (silver lining to this cloud, but I don't feel grateful to the puppies about it):
Babel-17, by Samuel R. Delany (yessssss it is the best though I'm disappointed there is not fan art of the half-naked zero-g pilot wrestling)
Warchild, by Karin Lowachee (brutal, brutal, and then somehow bright)

And I'm reading The Goblin Emperor now!
posted by mixedmetaphors at 11:08 AM on May 4, 2015 [4 favorites]

Uh, and also the final novel in Mary Robinette Kowal's Glamourist stories, Of Noble Family. The series is Jane Austen in a world with mostly decorative magic, and while the first book is very much a rehash of Pride and Prejudice, later books have more active plots with spying on the French invading armies or conducting a heist in Venice. Verrrry recommended if you're in for comfort reading and low stakes action for a change.
posted by sukeban at 11:14 AM on May 4, 2015 [2 favorites]

Some 2015 books I am particularly excited about

I would add to that list:

Kate Elliott's Court of Fives (YA fantasy) and Black Wolves.
Fran Wilde's Updraft (which has a ridiculously beautiful cover).
The new Naomi Novik.
Voyage of the Basilisk by Marie Brennan (the new Lady Trent novel).
Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho.
Carry On by Rainbow Rowell.

And several more I am forgetting.
posted by suelac at 11:17 AM on May 4, 2015 [3 favorites]

Oh yes, Carry On. I adored Fangirl.

I read Of Noble Family this weekend and other than that the author has said it is the last book in the series, nothing about it feels particularly last book-ish.
posted by jeather at 11:45 AM on May 4, 2015

My final word for the First (and inevitably not Last) Sad Puppies Thread: I give you some Happy Puppies. (previosly mis-linked in the last 'Uptown Funk' thread)
posted by oneswellfoop at 12:09 PM on May 4, 2015

Yeah, I have to say that this thread has given a boost to my dormant fandom. I'm also not entirely pessimistic worldcon will be in Helsinki in 2017, which would be fabulous as I'll probably be living here then. I even bought an SF book today at the store today (Compass Rose, a short story collection by Ursula K. Le Guin) which doesn't happen very often these days (first one this year). Also, it was fun to draw up plot-diagrams in ASCII (though I realize I forgot at least two other love triangle permutations).
posted by Kattullus at 12:25 PM on May 4, 2015

Yeah, if nothing else, all this kerfuffle has spurred me to get back to reading actual books and stories and things (not just waste time futzing around online (*cough* MeFi, I'm looking at you *cough*)).
posted by Lexica at 12:35 PM on May 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

Oh, and because I would hate the sun to set on the debate between anotherpanacea and eriko, I want to note that they are, as far as I can tell, arguing passionately with each other, while sharing the same position. I got really confused by their debate, and had to go back to reread to make sure I wasn't completely misreading what had been said. In case others shared my readerly thickitude, I want to untangle the miscommunication.

eriko: You have no idea how long fannish memory is. Those that withdrew, tried to get off the slate, didn't accept the nomination are all forgiven, but those who didn't? They are going to have a *long* road ahead of them to ever get a rocket.

anotherpanacea: Yeah, we're going to long remember the treachery of Christopher Nolan and James Gunn, I'm sure. Game of Thrones will NEVER WIN ANYTHING EVER AGAIN.

eriko: There are a small number of people who freak out whenever GRRM writes anything that isn't GoT.

Here eriko was talking about the writing Hugos, not the dramatic presentation awards. It's generally assumed that neither Nolan, Gunn nor anyone high up in the media industry have the least inkling about this Hugo kerfuffle. And anotherpanacea was talking about the unlikeliness of the TV version of Game of Thrones, not the book series, which eriko then refers to.

See you all in the next thread!
posted by Kattullus at 12:40 PM on May 4, 2015

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