They have been announced, and I thought in light of some recent controversies it would be interesting to look at how they penned out.
NO AWARD was chosen for five categories: novella, short story, related work, editor sort form, editor long form.
Personally I'm pretty sure using NO AWARD in this way was not the intentional spirit of the law when the option was included in the process, but then neither were voting slates, so there's that.
In the categories that weren't bombed, it still seemed like the slate didn't really get anyone through, with best novel going to a Chinese author best novelette to a Dutch, and best graphic story going to a comic about a woman. Speaking of which, two female writers walk away with a hugo this year, G. Willow Wilson for the graphic novel about Wonderwoman and Laura J. Mixon for fan writer.
On a personal note, I have to highlight Orphan Black taking a hugo for dramatic representation. The show may be somewhat confused (or at times downright unintelligible) when it comes to the overarching plot, but dammit it deserves recognition somewhere for the unbelievably good delivery on the premise of a single actress convincingly playing half the cast of characters. I think that in this day and age it is increasingly silly that Doctor Who is such a consistent winner with barely any cimpetition when in reality many SFF shows outperform it in every meaningful way. Happy to see Orphan black getting a nod.
On the other hand I am equally sad seeing Guardians of the Galaxy winning the movie category. The movie was good times and fun to watch, but it beat Interstellar, which I consider to be maybe the finest SF film of the 21st century (so far...) and I can't help but viewing it as a serious missed opportunity.
Lord Snow wrote: They have been announced, and I thought in light of some recent controversies it would be interesting to look at how they penned out.
NO AWARD was chosen for five categories: novella, short story, related work, editor sort form, editor long form.
Personally I'm pretty sure using NO AWARD in this way was not the intentional spirit of the law when the option was included in the process, but then neither were voting slates, so there's that.
In the categories that weren't bombed, it still seemed like the slate didn't really get anyone through, with best novel going to a Chinese author best novelette to a Dutch, and best graphic story going to a comic about a woman. Speaking of which, two female writers walk away with a hugo this year, G. Willow Wilson for the graphic novel about Wonderwoman and Laura J. Mixon for fan writer.
On a personal note, I have to highlight Orphan Black taking a hugo for dramatic representation. The show may be somewhat confused (or at times downright unintelligible) when it comes to the overarching plot, but dammit it deserves recognition somewhere for the unbelievably good delivery on the premise of a single actress convincingly playing half the cast of characters. I think that in this day and age it is increasingly silly that Doctor Who is such a consistent winner with barely any cimpetition when in reality many SFF shows outperform it in every meaningful way. Happy to see Orphan black getting a nod.
On the other hand I am equally sad seeing Guardians of the Galaxy winning the movie category. The movie was good times and fun to watch, but it beat Interstellar, which I consider to be maybe the finest SF film of the 21st century (so far...) and I can't help but viewing it as a serious missed opportunity.
Yeah...looking at the slates, the categories that were almost entirely composed of Puppy slate candidates were pretty much No Awarded. I am fine with that and not entirely surprised.
Glad to see Orphan Black win and not Doctor Who. I am really really behind on Orphan Black, but yeah...the acting from the series lead is amazing and worthy of the show getting the vote based on that alone. Doctor Who is a bit better with Capaldi, and season 4 of GoT was pretty solid..so had they won I wouldn't have been too put out I think. Mostly my angst again Who is based off of how many they have won, to the point where any show really doesn't stand a chance. Now if Grim had won, I would have done some table-flipping
Interstellar for whatever reason earned a lot of science fiction fan angst, I think largely because people totally interpreted some scenes in that movie. So I think it was doomed from the start. As far as the other movies go, I think Winter Soldier is a better movie than Guardians, but only by a margin.
Lord Snow wrote:
On the other hand I am equally sad seeing Guardians of the Galaxy winning the movie category. The movie was good times and fun to watch, but it beat Interstellar, which I consider to be maybe the finest SF film of the 21st century (so far...) and I can't help but viewing it as a serious missed opportunity.
In my view, Interstellar is 2/3 Good SF, 1/3 third 'What were the writers thinking?'. I went in expecting a fairly hard SF, but got... Living Ghosts from Space? The third act diminished the movie so much, I haven't even thought about buying the DVD.
by the way, if anyone wants the raw data on the Hugo nominations, you can see it here
It's aggravating to see who would have made it on had the slate not been rigged. The big "Hydra reveal" episode of Agents of Shield for instance would have been nominated had the slate not forced Grim on. and there are some pretty good writers that also got bumped off in the short fiction categories, like Patrick Rothfuss and Elizabeth Bear.
Orphan Black wouldn't have even made it to the nominations if the slates hadn't screwed up and put a 2013 episode of Supernatural on their list. Although on the other hand, I am not sure the absence of the puppy slate would have even changed the movies which were nominated, looking at the full roster of nominations.
Nice to see that "Rat Queens" got some votes in the graphic novel category! :-)
Looks like even the WSJ has an article. Listen to Vox and Scalzi go at it! Youch! btw, I <3 the headline.
Lord Snow wrote: They have been announced, and I thought in light of some recent controversies it would be interesting to look at how they penned out.
NO AWARD was chosen for five categories: novella, short story, related work, editor sort form, editor long form.
Personally I'm pretty sure using NO AWARD in this way was not the intentional spirit of the law when the option was included in the process, but then neither were voting slates, so there's that.
In the categories that weren't bombed, it still seemed like the slate didn't really get anyone through, with best novel going to a Chinese author best novelette to a Dutch, and best graphic story going to a comic about a woman. Speaking of which, two female writers walk away with a hugo this year, G. Willow Wilson for the graphic novel about Wonderwoman and Laura J. Mixon for fan writer.
On a personal note, I have to highlight Orphan Black taking a hugo for dramatic representation. The show may be somewhat confused (or at times downright unintelligible) when it comes to the overarching plot, but dammit it deserves recognition somewhere for the unbelievably good delivery on the premise of a single actress convincingly playing half the cast of characters. I think that in this day and age it is increasingly silly that Doctor Who is such a consistent winner with barely any cimpetition when in reality many SFF shows outperform it in every meaningful way. Happy to see Orphan black getting a nod.
On the other hand I am equally sad seeing Guardians of the Galaxy winning the movie category. The movie was good times and fun to watch, but it beat Interstellar, which I consider to be maybe the finest SF film of the 21st century (so far...) and I can't help but viewing it as a serious missed opportunity.
None of the puppy slate nominations won, except for Guardians of the Galaxy and that was pretty clearly mainstream and popular enough to be nominated anyway. Near as I can tell, they had much less effect on movies than elsewhere - there were few possible candidates and less spreading of the rest of the vote, so a slate would have less effect.
For best novel, there's a decent argument to be made that the Rabid Puppies played kingmaker. Driving votes to the Three Body Problem over The Goblin Emperor and Ancillary Sword. Vox had promoted that with his voting recommendations.
And I didn't really like Interstellar, personally. It was admittedly more "science fiction" than the other nominees, but between the hokey set up, the weird future people manipulating from backstage of the universe thing and a lot very obvious plot beats, I just wasn't impressed. Some of it was visually spectacular.
I thought Guardians was more successful, even if it was aiming for a lower mark.
There was another thread on this topic here that got closed. (like all the threads do where people actually argue and debate)
But that nomination process is ridiculous. My take is it has been gamed for years and years, maybe by ideology on occasion, but mostly by people with a vested interest in one of the nominees (or in being nominated).
In that thread that got closed I made the point that according to historic vote totals you could have apparently won a Hugo by spending 10 to 20 thousand dollars by making up fake people and voting for yourself. Or having a lot of friends or employees who could be persuaded to vote. I think you could have done it for about 5 thousand in a number of years for certain awards as well.
Seems to me that a lot of publishers along the way would have had some kind of interest in putting "Hugo Winner for 19XX" on the dustjacket.
No way this thing wasn't gamed along the way, and fairly frequently at that.
But that is a big picture thing.
As much as publishers like to put "award winner" on their covers, AFIK the only place where it leads to noticeably higher volume of book sales is for the Newbery Award. Sci-fi is such a niche market starting out that I don't think anyone in the early days would do anything more than some light lobbying in the fanzines and trades (by early days I mean 1970s). $20k in 1970 dollars seems way too much to spend for something that won't boost sales - at most, you'd recoup your costs and hope it gets reissued in backlist/book-of-the-month club sales.
If you're in publishing to make money, you're in the wrong business (if your name isn't Rupert Murdoch).
sunbeam wrote: There was another thread on this topic here that got closed. (like all the threads do where people actually argue and debate)
But that nomination process is ridiculous. My take is it has been gamed for years and years, maybe by ideology on occasion, but mostly by people with a vested interest in one of the nominees (or in being nominated).
In that thread that got closed I made the point that according to historic vote totals you could have apparently won a Hugo by spending 10 to 20 thousand dollars by making up fake people and voting for yourself. Or having a lot of friends or employees who could be persuaded to vote. I think you could have done it for about 5 thousand in a number of years for certain awards as well.
Seems to me that a lot of publishers along the way would have had some kind of interest in putting "Hugo Winner for 19XX" on the dustjacket.
No way this thing wasn't gamed along the way, and fairly frequently at that.
But that is a big picture thing.
I'd rather not get this thread closed as well, but I'll say just a couple things towards the process - You could pretty easily get a nomination through gaming the system. That's obviously happened this year and to a lesser extent the last couple. You might even be able to do it subtly and not provoke a backlash, which is what the Puppies allege has been going on for years.
What the results have shown is that it's harder to actually win one. The thing is, fandom is a community. The people who go to these cons and vote on these awards know each other. They know what the buzz is and they know what's likely to win. Sure, theoretically a company could fake 1000 votes and win a Hugo for any novel they wanted. But people would know. And the backlash publicity would be ugly. I really doubt anything that drastic has ever happened. Even with some of the winners that really puzzle me personally. A little extra weight on the scales, word-of-mouth campaigns, PR money to generate buzz? Sure.
But if no one at WorldCon is admitting to having voted for the winner, they'd know something was wrong.
Zeugma wrote: As much as publishers like to put "award winner" on their covers, AFIK the only place where it leads to noticeably higher volume of book sales is for the Newbery Award. Sci-fi is such a niche market starting out that I don't think anyone in the early days would do anything more than some light lobbying in the fanzines and trades (by early days I mean 1970s). $20k in 1970 dollars seems way too much to spend for something that won't boost sales - at most, you'd recoup your costs and hope it gets reissued in backlist/book-of-the-month club sales.
If you're in publishing to make money, you're in the wrong business (if your name isn't Rupert Murdoch).
Well, it wouldn't have been $20k in 1970 dollars. I assume that estimate was based on the cost of a voting membership.
I'm also not sure when they started having voting-only memberships.
It's also long been traditional not to do any open campaigning for the award. Any direct attempt has been likely to backfire.
Because I actually spent a little time to look up some numbers, I want to post some things I said in the previous thread that was closed:
"I don't think this is correct either. Just reflecting on the whole thing, 184 votes is enough to get a book nominated? And this is presumably heavy voting because of the whole bloc voting and slate thing?
Look at the previous years. 41 got a book nominated for best novel? Those are ridiculously low numbers. A gregarious, popular guy might well have more friends that would vote for him without any prompting. It's not even much of a stretch to think a lot of his friends are involved with fandom and cons, and will pay $50 or whatever to be eligible to vote.
And with such small numbers needed to be nominated at least, nothing like this has happened before?
I don't have a chronoscope and can peer back through history to see what people actually did.
But common sense tells you that something so easy to compromise or game had to have been done so in the past.
Geez, aside from any organized or nefarious scheme, exactly how many people from Tor Books (or DAW or anyone else) are eligible voters?
Come on, 41 votes? It wouldn't surprise me if Tor had an appreciable fraction of that number as direct employees eligible to vote, let along authors associated with them.
Long story short, I don't think the Hugo impresses me at all anymore.
Someone above posted that people will manipulate the NY Times bestseller list for a fee. This appears to be infinitely easier to game.
So while I don't have some kind of pithy phrase that means "If it can be manipulated, it will be manipulated," I'm pretty sure it has been repeatedly over the years.
But if 41 votes was normal for years before this controversy, maybe no one cared enough to bother."
"2008
43 Best Fan Writer John Scalzi
41 Best Novel The Last Colony John Scalzi "
Assuming I can vote for myself, in 2008 for the paltry sum of $2050 dollars, I could have filled out enough ballots to give myself a nomination for best novel.
Now you couldn't know beforehand how many it would take, but either that was a bad year for voting numbers or pretty normal pre this controversy.
Come on. This is utterly stupid."
"I haven't looked at a list of Hugo winners in a long time. So I googled and found the wiki page.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Award_for_Best_Novel
Whether vote rigging (or perhaps campaigning is a better word) has been around all along, it's pretty clear based on the list they picked the wrong book as winner quite often.
Take what looks to me the most extreme example, 1983.
Isaac Asimov* Foundation's Edge Doubleday [37]
C. J. Cherryh The Pride of Chanur DAW Books [37]
Arthur C. Clarke 2010: Odyssey Two Del Rey Books [37]
Robert A. Heinlein Friday Holt, Rinehart and Winston [37]
Donald Kingsbury Courtship Rite Timescape [37]
Gene Wolfe The Sword of the Lictor Timescape [37]
Isaac Asimov won that year."
The point I want to make is that prior to this, there just weren't that many votes cast. Heck even with the controversy and the block voting not many votes were cast.
Science Fiction is just as nichey as it ever was. Maybe moreso. Running out of time, but I imagine fantasy sales dwarf "Sci Fi" sales.
I also don't think these diversity efforts are going to work. There just aren't that many people into it period, regardless of whatever sexual orientation or gender of the protagonists. My take is ten years from now you will see the same set of neckbeards at cons, whether every effort from now on meets the Scalzi seal of approval.
Zeugma wrote: As much as publishers like to put "award winner" on their covers, AFIK the only place where it leads to noticeably higher volume of book sales is for the Newbery Award. Sci-fi is such a niche market starting out that I don't think anyone in the early days would do anything more than some light lobbying in the fanzines and trades (by early days I mean 1970s). $20k in 1970 dollars seems way too much to spend for something that won't boost sales - at most, you'd recoup your costs and hope it gets reissued in backlist/book-of-the-month club sales.
If you're in publishing to make money, you're in the wrong business (if your name isn't Rupert Murdoch).
Yeah, but looking at the historic vote numbers, if I had gone to the expense of publishing a vanity book, for a little bit more I could have had my vanity project be nominated for and actually win the Hugo.
I think your Newberry award mention is interesting. I've seen all kinds of kids reading those books over the years, some for school, and a lot for fun. And the genders are more or less equal is my impression.
So why don't they grow up into readers of SF? A lot of the Newberry winners could have been considered SF, though the usually youthful protagonists aren't that common in the genre.
And there is another thing. The Twilight books probably outsold all the Hugo winners in any given year ten times over.
I really think the genre itself just isn't that interesting to most people. But the Newberry books typically do well so...
Note that all those numbers were nominations, not votes. You could have bought yourself a nomination. Spend more money you could even buy yourself a Hugo.
And since everyone at the con would be chatting about it and realizing that almost no one voted for it, they'd know you had done it. If you were an author, that would probably hurt your future sales more than the Hugo would help. If you were a publisher, it certainly would.
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I agree with thejeff
GRRM has a great piece on his blogs about this controversy, including a history of the Hugos. There HAVE been controversies in the past a few times with voting, but mostly they were rare instances that maybe only effected a few votes
To me...I just don't see the point of faking the system to get your book nominated. There is no cash prize, and "Hugo Awarding Winning" is at least in the short run not going to cause a spike in book sales. In contrast flooding the nominations has a good shot of alienating fans, and giving you a bad reputation amongst the editors/publishers/authors in attendance. That's going to hit your bottom line because its probably going to negatively impact your ability to collaborate or sell your work.
And...honestly for those really into the Hugo...having an award you didn't earn would feel like a hollow victory, no different than a doctorate degree from a diploma mill. There wouldn't be a whole lot of pride in the win.
I am an avid birder and here in the US the ABA maintains voluntary "rankings" of birders. I (or anyone else) could enter whatever number of species seen into the rankings, and no one would check it. I could rocket myself up as a top birder in the country, pretty easily. But pretty much people don't do that, and I don't do that, because the real satisfaction of birding is seeing the bird. I would imagine the real satisfaction for an author in winning the Hugos is knowing that something they poured their hearts into was beloved by the fanbase.
MMCJawa wrote: I agree with thejeff
GRRM has a great piece on his blogs about this controversy, including a history of the Hugos. There HAVE been controversies in the past a few times with voting, but mostly they were rare instances that maybe only effected a few votes
To me...I just don't see the point of faking the system to get your book nominated. There is no cash prize, and "Hugo Awarding Winning" is at least in the short run not going to cause a spike in book sales. In contrast flooding the nominations has a good shot of alienating fans, and giving you a bad reputation amongst the editors/publishers/authors in attendance. That's going to hit your bottom line because its probably going to negatively impact your ability to collaborate or sell your work.
And...honestly for those really into the Hugo...having an award you didn't earn would feel like a hollow victory, no different than a doctorate degree from a diploma mill. There wouldn't be a whole lot of pride in the win.
I am an avid birder and here in the US the ABA maintains voluntary "rankings" of birders. I (or anyone else) could enter whatever number of species seen into the rankings, and no one would check it. I could rocket myself up as a top birder in the country, pretty easily. But pretty much people don't do that, and I don't do that, because the real satisfaction of birding is seeing the bird. I would imagine the real satisfaction for an author in winning the Hugos is knowing that something they poured their hearts into was beloved by the fanbase.
Well, it certainly isn't bad for your career. It gets you more notice, more attention. You're probably more likely to get offers and contracts. But, that's only true if there isn't a big cloud over it. If you get the award, but the community doesn't think it's deserved, even if they can't prove you cheated, that's not going to happen, as you say.
sunbeam wrote: Zeugma wrote: Wrote about awards vs. sales Yeah, but looking at the historic vote numbers, if I had gone to the expense of publishing a vanity book, for a little bit more I could have had my vanity project be nominated for and actually win the Hugo.
I think your Newberry award mention is interesting. I've seen all kinds of kids reading those books over the years, some for school, and a lot for fun. And the genders are more or less equal is my impression.
So why don't they grow up into readers of SF? A lot of the Newberry winners could have been considered SF, though the usually youthful protagonists aren't that common in the genre.
And there is another thing. The Twilight books probably outsold all the Hugo winners in any given year ten times over.
I really think the genre itself just isn't that interesting to most people. But the Newberry books typically do well so... Newbery is spelled with only 1 R. The voting structure is also very different since you need to be a member of ALA, and in the ALSC section, and then network/politic enough to become a committee member for the award. But even Newbery has its detractors; as a reference librarian there is a gulf between recommending a Newbery winner because you know it won't stink/be objectionable and recommending something you know the kid will ACTUALLY read that would never in a million years win an award (e.g. Spongebob Squarepants comic books).
Why don't kids who read SFF grow up into adult readers of SFF? I think there are lots of reasons for this, starting with social pressure as a teenager to not read "juvenile" SFF. The big exceptions of recent years (e.g. Harry Potter, The Hunger Games) are exceptional in part because they did go mainstream with the difficult-to-reach tweens/teens.
Also, the themes of Juvenile/YA SFF hew more closely to the "bildungsroman" and story structures that are also found in non-SFF for that age group (e.g. The Princess Diaries protagonist also learns secrets about the society around her and has to make a life-changing choice and decide what she'll sacrifice for family, just like Katniss does in Hunger Games).
For some kids, being assigned Gathering Blue or The Giver in school and asked to parse out its symbolism (very difficult, abstract and symbolic thinking) doesn't translate into a love for a genre that asks its readers to do that as part of their leisure time.
Sad puppies has a point about the simpler enjoyment of more escapist SFF like Star Wars... but why read a Star Wars novel when you can watch the movies/TV shows/play the videogames instead? Less thinking is involved. So what the sad puppies slate mourns - the loss of nominations for more escapist SFF - is not something that, IMO, can be reversed: the people who want Star Wars already get Star Wars, and it doesn't come between the covers of a book.
No shade to Star Wars novels fans! I'm just saying that the majority of pre-teens who love SW won't read the books or the "harder" Military SF. (Harder in the sense of "I need to read a book" not the "It's like Stephen Hawking 'hard' SF").
MMCJawa wrote: I agree with thejeff
GRRM has a great piece on his blogs about this controversy, including a history of the Hugos. There HAVE been controversies in the past a few times with voting, but mostly they were rare instances that maybe only effected a few votes
To me...I just don't see the point of faking the system to get your book nominated. There is no cash prize, and "Hugo Awarding Winning" is at least in the short run not going to cause a spike in book sales. In contrast flooding the nominations has a good shot of alienating fans, and giving you a bad reputation amongst the editors/publishers/authors in attendance. That's going to hit your bottom line because its probably going to negatively impact your ability to collaborate or sell your work.
And...honestly for those really into the Hugo...having an award you didn't earn would feel like a hollow victory, no different than a doctorate degree from a diploma mill. There wouldn't be a whole lot of pride in the win.
I am an avid birder and here in the US the ABA maintains voluntary "rankings" of birders. I (or anyone else) could enter whatever number of species seen into the rankings, and no one would check it. I could rocket myself up as a top birder in the country, pretty easily. But pretty much people don't do that, and I don't do that, because the real satisfaction of birding is seeing the bird. I would imagine the real satisfaction for an author in winning the Hugos is knowing that something they poured their hearts into was beloved by the fanbase.
Yeah. Essentially Sunbeam is arguing that the structure of the hugos is such that they are very easy to rig, and the answer to that is, "well, people don't rig it because they care about the awards and their integrity."
I've never been to a worldcon and can't attest to the truth of that, and I won't deny that Sunbeam has a point - once people have an interest in the award that is beyond it's abstract literary value (such as ideological or economics interests) it is a bit hard to believe that everyone is playing fair.
However, it is also easy to just look at the data. In most years, the works that win the hugos are among those who had some amount of buzz going in, so people had to have read and liked them before. Additionally, unlike what the puppies say, there does not appear to be a bias against white catholic male authors or whatever, nor any other kind of ideological bias (other than that Worldcon goers are willing to read book by and about non white males) - at least not in the big picture. And if every year there's a work or two that gets the nod because it happened to hit a trend that was popular in the SF community that year (gender issues, race issues, whatever) - then that's OK and isn't a big deal. I think it should be obvious to anyone that any book that wins an award wins it in the year it was published, and maybe it if was published 5 years before or after it wouldn't have. That does not damage the integrity of the competition, it's just how such things work.
I thought this was a good write up of the current state of affairs from Wired
Who Won Science Fiction's Hugos, and why it matters.
MMCJawa wrote: I thought this was a good write up of the current state of affairs from Wired
Who Won Science Fiction's Hugos, and why it matters.
I guess I'm a stranger to this genre now. I've been doing some reading on the personalities and careers of some of the people involved.
In that article Beale/Vox Day comes across as an idiot. Might not be an unfair evaluation.
But I've done some reading about Scalzi. Eh, doesn't seem to be all that to me. I've never read him and probably never will. None of the descriptions of his works seem terribly interesting. He seems to be best known for his Old Man's War series. But reading the description... I read Starship Troopers and The Forever War back in the day. The idea of reading another one doesn't seem terribly interesting. And he's won three Hugos? He seems remarkably dull to me. Where's the big idea? Do he write like Jack Vance or Gene Wolfe? Plot out stories like Alan Moore?
I guess I could read him and make an honest evaluation, but it doesn't seem to be worth it. Of course the same applies to Beale.
I'd love to see sales figures for the books mentioned in this piece. I'm not sure it would happen, but I could imagine an alt fandom arising from this. Leave the pre-existing one to Martin and the others, and roll your own.
Beale/Vox...well lets just say he really really really doesn't help help the Puppy cause. The Sad Puppies have done a very half-hearted job I think of distancing themselves from him, which is problematic because a close examination of the slate shows its Vox's that one, not the Sad Puppies.
As for sales figures, all they say is quantity moved, not quality. Sometimes the two intersect, but a lot of time they really don't (See: Shades of Gray, Twilight, Da Vinci's code, various blockbusters movies, etc). I also don't know if they really reflect a wider readership. A lot of people who read Twilight probably didn't go on to read anything else in fantasy or horror, except for maybe a few similar series like the Vampire Diaries. A lot of people read King or Koontz without ever glancing at another Horror book. and so on and so forth.
sunbeam wrote: MMCJawa wrote: I thought this was a good write up of the current state of affairs from Wired
Who Won Science Fiction's Hugos, and why it matters.
I guess I'm a stranger to this genre now. I've been doing some reading on the personalities and careers of some of the people involved.
In that article Beale/Vox Day comes across as an idiot. Might not be an unfair evaluation.
But I've done some reading about Scalzi. Eh, doesn't seem to be all that to me. I've never read him and probably never will. None of the descriptions of his works seem terribly interesting. He seems to be best known for his Old Man's War series. But reading the description... I read Starship Troopers and The Forever War back in the day. The idea of reading another one doesn't seem terribly interesting. And he's won three Hugos? He seems remarkably dull to me. Where's the big idea? Do he write like Jack Vance or Gene Wolfe? Plot out stories like Alan Moore?
I guess I could read him and make an honest evaluation, but it doesn't seem to be worth it. Of course the same applies to Beale.
I'd love to see sales figures for the books mentioned in this piece. I'm not sure it would happen, but I could imagine an alt fandom arising from this. Leave the pre-existing one to Martin and the others, and roll your own. I haven't read Scalzi either, other than a few blog posts. He's pretty popular, by the relatively small scale of SF. I don't know if he's "all that". Only one of those Hugos was for Best Novel. The other two were Fan Writer and Best Related Work - basically commentary and blogging, not fiction.
But that's all sort of beside the point, other than Scalzi being the Puppies' bete noir. Tastes differ. Bujold won 4 Best Novel Hugos, more than anyone except Heinlein, and I find her stuff fun, but basically fluff. None of that means there's any conspiracy to get bad books awards. It just means not everyone shares my tastes.
Vox Day isn't so much an idiot as a troll, near as I can tell. Probably actually a racist, misogynist homophobe as well, but definitely poking the nest to stir up trouble. And despite Corriea and Torgenson starting this, he's pretty much taken over and taken it in an even more toxic direction.
I put in the effort to read most of the nominees this year. The two Puppy novel nominations were decent works, but not outstanding in my opinion. I'd read Anderson before and it hadn't grabbed me then. This one was even more scattered and less appealing. Enough to keep me reading, but not seek out the sequel. The Dresden was was fun and I can see why they're popular. I might read more someday.
The shorter works were less interesting and seemed more representative of the Puppies' interests. I'd never heard of any of them before and several seemed to be mostly published by Vox. Wright especially was just as much "message fiction" as anything they decry - just a different message. Wright now holds and probably will keep the distinction of having the most Hugo nominations in any year.
I'm also planning to submit nominations this year. Assuming I manage to read enough new fiction to have valid candidates. :)
Doing my little part to keep things from being swamped.
MMCJawa wrote: Beale/Vox...well lets just say he really really really doesn't help help the Puppy cause. The Sad Puppies have done a very half-hearted job I think of distancing themselves from him, which is problematic because a close examination of the slate shows its Vox's that one, not the Sad Puppies.
As for sales figures, all they say is quantity moved, not quality. Sometimes the two intersect, but a lot of time they really don't (See: Shades of Gray, Twilight, Da Vinci's code, various blockbusters movies, etc). I also don't know if they really reflect a wider readership. A lot of people who read Twilight probably didn't go on to read anything else in fantasy or horror, except for maybe a few similar series like the Vampire Diaries. A lot of people read King or Koontz without ever glancing at another Horror book. and so on and so forth.
I think the Sad Puppies are pretty distant from Vox. The problem, as you suggest, is that he's dominant and they're pretty irrelevant. We'll see what next year looks like. It seems like he's bringing in voters who are motivated more by being anti-SJW than by being SF/F fans.
It'll be interesting to see how the next few Hugo's go.
If these sorts of shenanigans keep up they'll obviously become more and more irrelevant, especially compared to the Nebulas.
well it sounds like they changed the voting system to prevent someone from taking the full roster. Sad/Rabid puppies will still be able to get nominations , but maybe only 1 or 2, not 5. That won't go into effect until after the next Hugos
I am sort of predicting that Vox double down with the next Hugos, and I could totally see him rigging all the categories for failure (nominating only Sci-fi originals for movies for instance). Vox is not really "aligned" with the Sad Puppies, and wants to see the total destruction of the Hugos.
Personally...I just don't read enough right now to meaningfully contribute to the Hugos, and a lot of "new books" I do read are still a few years old. If my reading output did go up, I would totally vote for the Hugos.
thejeff wrote: [John C.] Wright now holds and probably will keep the distinction of having the most Hugo nominations in any year. As I understand it, after his one disqualification, he's tied with Mira Grant (although hers were split among pen names). So he has the record for receiving the most nominations, but is tied for works on the ballot.
Krensky wrote: It'll be interesting to see how the next few Hugo's go. The campaign brought a lot of new voters in, but based on the numbers, it looks like it was massively in favor of anti-Puppy voters. It'll be interesting to see next year's nominations: are the new voters going to nominate the same sort of stuff as the previous Worldcon crowds, or was it opened up to people who didn't like the Puppy business, but still have different tastes?
MMCJawa wrote: well it sounds like they changed the voting system to prevent someone from taking the full roster. Sad/Rabid puppies will still be able to get nominations , but maybe only 1 or 2, not 5. That won't go into effect until after the next Hugos It still has to be ratified at the next Worldcon in Kansas City, and only attending members can be part of that. Could the (presumably more conservative) middle-America crowd toss out the changes?
MMCJawa wrote: Beale/Vox...well lets just say he really really really doesn't help help the Puppy cause. The Sad Puppies have done a very half-hearted job I think of distancing themselves from him, which is problematic because a close examination of the slate shows its Vox's that one, not the Sad Puppies.
As for sales figures, all they say is quantity moved, not quality. Sometimes the two intersect, but a lot of time they really don't (See: Shades of Gray, Twilight, Da Vinci's code, various blockbusters movies, etc). I also don't know if they really reflect a wider readership. A lot of people who read Twilight probably didn't go on to read anything else in fantasy or horror, except for maybe a few similar series like the Vampire Diaries. A lot of people read King or Koontz without ever glancing at another Horror book. and so on and so forth.
Yeah but I don't want to sound quasi-mystical here, but some works stand the test of time, and some don't.
Once upon a time in the 1920's a guy called James Branch Cabell was a big deal, and wrote a bunch of stories that probably would be considered fantasy.
But 90 something years later the Warlord of Mars, Tarzan, and Conan are all still in print, as indeed they always have been. My best guess 50 years from now they will still be read in whatever medium is used, but Cabell will be in the same spot he is now, which is basically a footnote or known only to a few people.
My take is these guys are archetypes of a sort. It's not just them, some older works like HG Wells, and Verne still get read, even if they are dated now.
So what's good and what isn't? To go back to Cabell one of his Leshy Circuit books was so complicated you had to have a graduate degree in Medieval French literature to understand what he was driving at. Was that a good book? I'm sure it won awards, while whatever Tarzan book Burroughs was publishing at the time didn't.
Look I read science fiction and fantasy for big ideas and escapism. Nothing else. You could have a social issue as a big idea (and this is common).
But a kid coming out as gay? Because for some reason if you lie it starts to rain on you? Just can't see that as being a big idea. My tastes run more to "The Crime and Glory of Commander Suzdal" and the Klopts by Cordwainer Smith, or something like Glory Season by Brin if I'm into some sort of story involving sexuality for some reason.
I don't know what genre that kind of story fits into. Some kind of fantasy I guess, but it won an award? Seems so very small compared to the Cordwainer Smith story.
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Personally, I think this destroys all integrity of the Hugo awards. It pretty much says that because good works were nominated by people not in the in crowd that the in crowd gets to throw a tantrum and say those people's opinions don't matter. I can't think of a worse result.
Caineach wrote: Personally, I think this destroys all integrity of the Hugo awards. It pretty much says that because good works were nominated by people not in the in crowd that the in crowd gets to throw a tantrum and say those people's opinions don't matter. I can't think of a worse result. Well, I read them. I voted. And I didn't think they were good works. Or at least not award worthy.
I can definitely think of a worse result. Vox Day deciding, from now on, which works are nominated for Hugos.
Have you read through the nominees? Now that the awards are out, we can make a good stab at what would have been nominated without the puppies. Take a read through that, particularly the short fiction, and tell me the nominees really were better.
thejeff wrote: Caineach wrote: Personally, I think this destroys all integrity of the Hugo awards. It pretty much says that because good works were nominated by people not in the in crowd that the in crowd gets to throw a tantrum and say those people's opinions don't matter. I can't think of a worse result. Well, I read them. I voted. And I didn't think they were good works. Or at least not award worthy.
I can definitely think of a worse result. Vox Day deciding, from now on, which works are nominated for Hugos.
Have you read through the nominees? Now that the awards are out, we can make a good stab at what would have been nominated without the puppies. Take a read through that, particularly the short fiction, and tell me the nominees really were better. I read only a few from both. What I read on the puppies list I really enjoyed. Most of what I read that failed to make it I thought was terrible and I couldn't make it through.
Personally, I think we are seeing a clash in styles of writing where one side is asking for their style to be considered and the other side is responding by calling them names.
thejeff wrote: Have you read through the nominees? Now that the awards are out, we can make a good stab at what would have been nominated without the puppies. Take a read through that, particularly the short fiction, and tell me the nominees really were better. I can only speak to the Novelette category. I read Championship B'Tok and The Day the World Turned Upside-Down. B'Tok was pretty good, but didn't blow me away. TDtWTUD was boring; a guy hyper-focuses on his inane relationship neuroses while world-changing events are happening around him.
I looked up the other stories that would have made it on otherwise, and found I had already seen "Each to Each" by Seanan McGuire when it came up on the Lightspeed Magazine podcast. I skimmed it, and I'm pretty sure I quit listening before I finished it, so it clearly didn't strike me as award-worthy (although that would have been while I was driving, so there may have been outside influences that kept me from getting into it).
Caineach wrote: thejeff wrote: Caineach wrote: Personally, I think this destroys all integrity of the Hugo awards. It pretty much says that because good works were nominated by people not in the in crowd that the in crowd gets to throw a tantrum and say those people's opinions don't matter. I can't think of a worse result. Well, I read them. I voted. And I didn't think they were good works. Or at least not award worthy.
I can definitely think of a worse result. Vox Day deciding, from now on, which works are nominated for Hugos.
Have you read through the nominees? Now that the awards are out, we can make a good stab at what would have been nominated without the puppies. Take a read through that, particularly the short fiction, and tell me the nominees really were better. I read only a few from both. What I read on the puppies list I really enjoyed. Most of what I read that failed to make it I thought was terrible and I couldn't make it through.
Personally, I think we are seeing a clash in styles of writing where one side is asking for their style to be considered and the other side is responding by calling them names. And Vox isn't calling people names? Please.
It's not a clash of writing styles. It's a determined attack on what he considers SJWs.
RainyDayNinja wrote: thejeff wrote: Have you read through the nominees? Now that the awards are out, we can make a good stab at what would have been nominated without the puppies. Take a read through that, particularly the short fiction, and tell me the nominees really were better. I can only speak to the Novelette category. I read Championship B'Tok and The Day the World Turned Upside-Down. B'Tok was pretty good, but didn't blow me away. TDtWTUD was boring; a guy hyper-focuses on his inane relationship neuroses while world-changing events are happening around him.
I looked up the other stories that would have made it on otherwise, and found I had already seen "Each to Each" by Seanan McGuire when it came up on the Lightspeed Magazine podcast. I skimmed it, and I'm pretty sure I quit listening before I finished it, so it clearly didn't strike me as award-worthy (although that would have been while I was driving, so there may have been outside influences that kept me from getting into it). I have to admit to not being at all impressed with The Day the World Turned Upside-Down. OTOH, I had to go look up Championship B'Tok to remember what it was about.
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MMCJawa wrote: I thought this was a good write up of the current state of affairs from Wired
Who Won Science Fiction's Hugos, and why it matters.
I don't think this article was that well written. Mostly a matter of tone. Calling sci-fi "one of literature's crummier neighborhoods"? It mischaracterizes what sci-fi has historically been about by describing it as just "lazers and aliens" and also denigrates the fans, unless I'm misled in thinking the term "trufan" is pejorative. And it treats the awards as if there's some dividing line between "Sci-fi then" and "Sci-fi now." You'd think a Wired culture journalist would be more nuanced and knowledgable about the history of the genre. Even the so-called Golden Age she describes and that the sad puppies have nostalgia for (the one era of sci-fi that due to pulp presses was more about "lazers and aliens" than any other) wasn't just "Forbidden Planet" with its troglodytic, 1950s Hollywood misogyny.
Mischaracterizing what sci-fi is and has been historically buys in to that: "yes, it was all about space vixens and manly white-man's lazers, all about escapist middle-class and blue-collar fun and any serious ideas weren't read or appreciated." Have I read some of the "Planet Stories"? Yes. Are they fun? Yes. Are they more deserving of awards because of how they were written and their populist appeal than "Dhalgren" or "The Left Hand of Darkness"? No. Not more deserving. Just different. Can't we have both "big idea" sci-fi and "populist" sci-fi without someone saying "no, now you've ruined it"? And the idea that today's version of Delaney or Le Guinn is a threat to today's version of H. Rider Haggard is ridiculous. That seems to me to be what the puppies are arguing. This makes me very disappointed in Wired. It makes me very disappointed in the fandom.
I guess I'm fan-ranting.
thejeff wrote: Caineach wrote: thejeff wrote: Caineach wrote: Personally, I think this destroys all integrity of the Hugo awards. It pretty much says that because good works were nominated by people not in the in crowd that the in crowd gets to throw a tantrum and say those people's opinions don't matter. I can't think of a worse result. Well, I read them. I voted. And I didn't think they were good works. Or at least not award worthy.
I can definitely think of a worse result. Vox Day deciding, from now on, which works are nominated for Hugos.
Have you read through the nominees? Now that the awards are out, we can make a good stab at what would have been nominated without the puppies. Take a read through that, particularly the short fiction, and tell me the nominees really were better. I read only a few from both. What I read on the puppies list I really enjoyed. Most of what I read that failed to make it I thought was terrible and I couldn't make it through.
Personally, I think we are seeing a clash in styles of writing where one side is asking for their style to be considered and the other side is responding by calling them names. And Vox isn't calling people names? Please.
It's not a clash of writing styles. It's a determined attack on what he considers SJWs. Except it has been going on for 2 years before he even got into the ring, so you can't blame it on him.
thejeff wrote: RainyDayNinja wrote: thejeff wrote: Have you read through the nominees? Now that the awards are out, we can make a good stab at what would have been nominated without the puppies. Take a read through that, particularly the short fiction, and tell me the nominees really were better. I can only speak to the Novelette category. I read Championship B'Tok and The Day the World Turned Upside-Down. B'Tok was pretty good, but didn't blow me away. TDtWTUD was boring; a guy hyper-focuses on his inane relationship neuroses while world-changing events are happening around him.
I looked up the other stories that would have made it on otherwise, and found I had already seen "Each to Each" by Seanan McGuire when it came up on the Lightspeed Magazine podcast. I skimmed it, and I'm pretty sure I quit listening before I finished it, so it clearly didn't strike me as award-worthy (although that would have been while I was driving, so there may have been outside influences that kept me from getting into it). I have to admit to not being at all impressed with The Day the World Turned Upside-Down. OTOH, I had to go look up Championship B'Tok to remember what it was about. When The Day the World Turned Upside-down got nominated because something dropped off the list, I realized that the people who were complaining about good works being excluded because of the puppies slates were talking b**@!*%*. That that piece of dretch got any votes astounds me.
Caineach wrote: thejeff wrote: Caineach wrote: thejeff wrote: Caineach wrote: Personally, I think this destroys all integrity of the Hugo awards. It pretty much says that because good works were nominated by people not in the in crowd that the in crowd gets to throw a tantrum and say those people's opinions don't matter. I can't think of a worse result. Well, I read them. I voted. And I didn't think they were good works. Or at least not award worthy.
I can definitely think of a worse result. Vox Day deciding, from now on, which works are nominated for Hugos.
Have you read through the nominees? Now that the awards are out, we can make a good stab at what would have been nominated without the puppies. Take a read through that, particularly the short fiction, and tell me the nominees really were better. I read only a few from both. What I read on the puppies list I really enjoyed. Most of what I read that failed to make it I thought was terrible and I couldn't make it through.
Personally, I think we are seeing a clash in styles of writing where one side is asking for their style to be considered and the other side is responding by calling them names. And Vox isn't calling people names? Please.
It's not a clash of writing styles. It's a determined attack on what he considers SJWs. Except it has been going on for 2 years before he even got into the ring, so you can't blame it on him. But he's taken over. Whatever Correia and Torgersen say, all the evidence suggests the Rabid Puppies were the key to taking over the nominations this year. Unlike last year, where they only managed to get a couple of nominations and got ignored with little fanfare.
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thejeff wrote: Caineach wrote: thejeff wrote: Caineach wrote: thejeff wrote: Caineach wrote: Personally, I think this destroys all integrity of the Hugo awards. It pretty much says that because good works were nominated by people not in the in crowd that the in crowd gets to throw a tantrum and say those people's opinions don't matter. I can't think of a worse result. Well, I read them. I voted. And I didn't think they were good works. Or at least not award worthy.
I can definitely think of a worse result. Vox Day deciding, from now on, which works are nominated for Hugos.
Have you read through the nominees? Now that the awards are out, we can make a good stab at what would have been nominated without the puppies. Take a read through that, particularly the short fiction, and tell me the nominees really were better. I read only a few from both. What I read on the puppies list I really enjoyed. Most of what I read that failed to make it I thought was terrible and I couldn't make it through.
Personally, I think we are seeing a clash in styles of writing where one side is asking for their style to be considered and the other side is responding by calling them names. And Vox isn't calling people names? Please.
It's not a clash of writing styles. It's a determined attack on what he considers SJWs. Except it has been going on for 2 years before he even got into the ring, so you can't blame it on him. But he's taken over. Whatever Correia and Torgersen say, all the evidence suggests the Rabid Puppies were the key to taking over the nominations this year. Unlike last year, where they only managed to get a couple of nominations and got ignored with little fanfare. Except they didn't get ignored with little fanfare. There were dozens of articles about how they were sexist/misogynists/racist/homophobes last year as well. Of course I have yet to see any actual supporting evidence for calling either man that.
thejeff wrote: And Vox isn't calling people names? Please.
It's not a clash of writing styles. It's a determined attack on what he considers SJWs.
That Vox guy is screwed up I'll give you that. But I've been skimming through a lot of author blogs about this whole thing. (Jim Hines is a pompous ass, BTW)
Seems to me that the name calling isn't confined to the side you seem to think it is.
I think this is one of those unbridgeable gaps. Look if I thought your personal viewpoint is correct (and I'm doing a bit of assuming about what that is) I'd already see things the way you do. But I don't; and while it's beyond the scope of this thread I strongly doubt you could present any argument that would change my mind about any position of substance.
And I'm pretty sure you feel the same way. Though I doubt you could pigeonhole my politics too well. I do not care if anyone smokes weed, or has gay sex in every bathhouse (they still got those?) from here to San Francisco. And no, I am not keen on Libertarianism and Ayn Rand.
That said I dunno about modern SF. Just looking at the stories these guys are putting out I have to wonder how often anyone in the field has a new idea anymore.
Now I haven't read the Chinese story. But another alien invasion story? I've read literally hundreds of these, and I'm not exaggerating. What was there about this that was new or noteworthy? Did they give it the award because it was a Chinese book?
And Ancillary Sword. Just reading the premise makes me wonder what the author was thinking. I mean the kind of technology postulated and she has people running around with physical bodies. At least Dune had a reason, stupid as it was, for people to use swords. Maybe she covers it in book, but the blurb wouldn't interest me at all. With the technology that allows her to have her story, physical existence let along gender is irrelevant. And colonialism and empire with that kind of tech level? Face it by that point you are looking at infinity in a grain of sand as it were. Notions like "colonies" and empires are pretty much gone when you have real AI's, with all they imply.
It was a good friend for a long time, but maybe I've moved past this genre or something. What bugs me is they think so very small.
sunbeam wrote: thejeff wrote: And Vox isn't calling people names? Please.
It's not a clash of writing styles. It's a determined attack on what he considers SJWs.
That Vox guy is screwed up I'll give you that. But I've been skimming through a lot of author blogs about this whole thing. (Jim Hines is a pompous ass, BTW)
Seems to me that the name calling isn't confined to the side you seem to think it is.
I think this is one of those unbridgeable gaps. Look if I thought your personal viewpoint is correct (and I'm doing a bit of assuming about what that is) I'd already see things the way you do. But I don't; and while it's beyond the scope of this thread I strongly doubt you could present any argument that would change my mind about any position of substance.
And I'm pretty sure you feel the same way. Though I doubt you could pigeonhole my politics too well. I do not care if anyone smokes weed, or has gay sex in every bathhouse (they still got those?) from here to San Francisco. And no, I am not keen on Libertarianism and Ayn Rand.
That said I dunno about modern SF. Just looking at the stories these guys are putting out I have to wonder how often anyone in the field has a new idea anymore.
Now I haven't read the Chinese story. But another alien invasion story? I've read literally hundreds of these, and I'm not exaggerating. What was there about this that was new or noteworthy? Did they give it the award because it was a Chinese book?
And Ancillary Sword. Just reading the premise makes me wonder what the author was thinking. I mean the kind of technology postulated and she has people running around with physical bodies. At least Dune had a reason, stupid as it was, for people to use swords. Maybe she covers it in book, but the blurb wouldn't interest me at all. With the technology that allows her to have her story, physical existence let along gender is irrelevant. And colonialism and empire with that kind of tech level? Face it by that point you are looking at infinity in a... Think too big and you lose any connection to us. In the end, science fiction, like fantasy, is about us.
Ancillary Justice (and Sword) are both very good. Much better and different than I expected from the advance press. Maybe you shouldn't judge books (and an entire genre?) just from blurbs and basic premises?
I didn't much like The Three Body Problem personally, but it's far from "just another alien invasion story". I'd really read very little like it.
Caineach wrote: thejeff wrote: Caineach wrote: thejeff wrote: Caineach wrote: thejeff wrote: I can definitely think of a worse result. Vox Day deciding, from now on, which works are nominated for Hugos. Personally, I think we are seeing a clash in styles of writing where one side is asking for their style to be considered and the other side is responding by calling them names. And Vox isn't calling people names? Please.
It's not a clash of writing styles. It's a determined attack on what he considers SJWs. Except it has been going on for 2 years before he even got into the ring, so you can't blame it on him. But he's taken over. Whatever Correia and Torgersen say, all the evidence suggests the Rabid Puppies were the key to taking over the nominations this year. Unlike last year, where they only managed to get a couple of nominations and got ignored with little fanfare. Except they didn't get ignored with little fanfare. There were dozens of articles about how they were sexist/misogynists/racist/homophobes last year as well. Of course I have yet to see any actual supporting evidence for calling either man that. Well, little fanfare compared with this year.
I wouldn't call either Correia or Torgersen "sexist/misogynists/racist/homophobes". Not without doing a lot more digging anyway. Correia at least seems to walk the line of denouncing anyone talking about those things as SJWs or bashing any sci-fi that deals with them as "message fiction". Not bigoted himself, but strongly opposed to any current efforts to fight bigotry, probably because he thinks it's mostly gone. Torgersen I know less of, but he seems to be along the same lines.
Both with a huge dose of "I want SF to be like it was in my youth, when it was just adventure without any of those annoying social issues. Like Star Trek."
Beale/Vox, OTOH, is poison. If you're saying you haven't seen any supporting evidence for that, you haven't been looking.
thejeff wrote: Beale/Vox, OTOH, is poison. If you're saying you haven't seen any supporting evidence for that, you haven't been looking. On this I will agree.
I'm really curious what insults will be thrown at the organizers of sad puppies next year, when it is run by 3 women.
I read the thread and I think I missed something somewhere. What is the controversy going on... if someone has the time to sum it up quickly.
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I was just glad to see someone aside from myself mention Dhalgren. :)
Talonhawke wrote: I read the thread and I think I missed something somewhere. What is the controversy going on... if someone has the time to sum it up quickly. A group, Sad Puppies and a spinnoff Rabid Puppies, that doesn't like 3rd wave feminism protested the awards by putting together a slate for nominations. Their big complaint is that a single culture has taken over the fan awards. Because it takes ridiculously few people working in concert to take over the nomination process (300 people could own almost any category entirely), their nominations dominated some of the categories. This led to left wing blogs totally flipping out, and the final votes "No Award" was nominated over anything on the Sad Puppies slate, regardless of how good it is.
Talonhawke wrote: I read the thread and I think I missed something somewhere. What is the controversy going on... if someone has the time to sum it up quickly. The Hugo nominations and to some degree awards are determined by a small group of dedicated fans, ie those who buy WorldCon memberships. It used to be those who attended WorldCon, but they started offering... contributing(?) memberships as of late. These allow you to nominate and vote and get hundreds (well, maybe not hundreds) of dollars of e-books as part of the Hugo process.
There has always been a certain amount of campaigning and self promotion in the process, but (other than the Locus Awards) it's never really risen above "This is what I wrote that is eligible, please nominate me if you liked it." or "Here's what I read this year that I think deserves consideration, read it and see if you agree."
For the past few years the Hugos have been dominated by some flakey, borderline stuff (which comes in cycles), often written by people of color or queer folks that deals with issues and speculative questionsrelevant to those communities and less lasers and rocketships. The lowered emphasis on adventure and such also comes in waves, and there's been a handful of phases where 'others' spike in the awards.
Some authors decided to put forward a slate of works to try and counter the most recent expression of this trend and stick it to the secret masters of fandom who are snubbing them. They called it Sad Puppies. It was basically a slightly more organized and widely promoted version of the "Here's what I read this year that I think deserves consideration, read it and see if you agree." style promotion but coming flat out and calling it a slate rather than a reading list. This is actually similar to what the Locus Awards are. Some people deep in fandom called this bad because it's gaming the system, some called it racist and misogynistic. Largely no one noticed or cared and it had no real effect on things.
This year, a guy who is either a internet troll or a festering ball of hate and rage (it's a fine line, I know) put forward a slate made up almost entirely of his and his small press publishing house's works and promoting it to the usual suspects as a way to strike a blow against those filthy social justice warriors and to destroy the Hugos because lulz. He called it Rabid Puppies. It, and not the Sad Puppies list, swept the nominations
Insert internet fandom drama here.
The WorldCon membership voted No Award rather than give it to the Rabid Puppies slate nominees.
Talonhawke wrote: I read the thread and I think I missed something somewhere. What is the controversy going on... if someone has the time to sum it up quickly. SF/F culture clash with more drama than you'll find on the TNT network and more strawman arguments than you'll find in the Paizo rules thread in a month, flavored with tidbits of libel, accusations of lies, and the scent of elitism.
-TimD
Krensky wrote:
This year, a guy who is either a internet troll or a festering ball of hate and rage (it's a fine line, I know)
In Beale's case, I think that's more of an "and" than an "or".
thejeff wrote: Krensky wrote:
This year, a guy who is either a internet troll or a festering ball of hate and rage (it's a fine line, I know)
In Beale's case, I think that's more of an "and" than an "or". 'Or' can be inclusive in natural language.
Which, ironically, would make Beale angier.
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