So the Puppies don't have to give recommendations to stuff they don't like, but Hugo voters have to give Hugo to stuff they don't like?
And that's not a double standard?
The mind boggles.
Hugo voters can't be both welcoming to everyone and protective of their clique. Either they welcome new voters and what they vote for, which includes the puppies, or they stop pretending that their awards are representative of the greater population. They don't get to complain when a divergent clique within the greater population enters the fray when they say anyone can vote and nominate.
Hugo voters can't be both welcoming to everyone and protective of their clique. Either they welcome new voters and what they vote for, which includes the puppies, or they stop pretending that their awards are representative of the greater population. They don't get to complain when a divergent clique within the greater population enters the fray when they say anyone can vote and nominate.So the Puppies don't have to give recommendations to stuff they don't like, but Hugo voters have to give Hugo to stuff they don't like?
And that's not a double standard?
The mind boggles.
The Sad Puppies would be welcome, as voters and members - as noted, both Correia & Torgersen have been nominated for awards by this very clique. Vox Day is another story, but I hope we all agree on that.
It's the slate nominating that's caused the fuss. Particularly Vox's, since he was much clearer in intent. It's that intent and that success that's raised this to the level where the national media has noticed and we're talking about it.
And for all the accusations, it really isn't at all clear that others have tried anything like this before. Other than a few smaller cases that were as vehemently rejected by the community (The Scientologists, for example).
1. Slate voting has been happening for decades with reading lists. This is NOTHING NEW.
2. Statistical analysis on the nomination results shows that they didn't strictly vote for a slate. There is too much spread, so it can be shown that more than half of the puppies did not vote strictly for what was on the slate. Amusingly, No Award in the finals can be shown to have slate voting.The fact of the matter is, Correia's group is a group of active readers with similar interests that nominated things that had been passed around their entire clique. Most of the things on Sad Puppies list were from authors they had "book bombed", where the forum manipulates Amazon's best seller list to put an author they like on top. If they were instead a college club (my college had a larger sci-fi club than combined Sad and Rabid Puppies had nominators) that had decided to start participating, you would have seen exactly the same type of result, not because they wanted to rig it, but because small communities of readers base their reading lists off of recommendations of other people in the community.
They were only able to be as wildly successful as they were because the greater sci-fi community had no idea how low the participation rate actually was for the award.
So I take it, since there's nothing wrong with what they did and everyone's been doing it anyway, the best solution is for some other group on the SJW side to put together their own slate of nominees from now on and just ignore the Puppies, since they won't have the numbers to compete? Just have two parties picking winners and whichever side has the most followers wins?
That's the only way these types of vote systems work when people actually care, which is one of the reasons why they are changing the vote system to one that isn't trivial to dominate, but that will not take effect until 2017. Next year I foresee a handful of cliques actually organizing publicly and pretty much doing what Sad Puppies did. I doubt they will work together much, because the primary thing they can coalesce around is not liking another group. I'm also guessing that someone will do a get out the vote for nominations, since they traditionally have about 10% of their voters actually participate in the nomination process, and if they raise that to just 20% they could have beat the puppies, especially with the increase in membership that they got.
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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.
The only other time it was gamed was in 1987, when Scientologists bought up memberships to block-vote for L. Ron Hubbard's novel BLACK GENESIS. It was clear they were doing it, they didn't particularly deny it, but when it came to the awards themselves it got curb-stomped, came in last and the bulk of the winning votes went to Orson Scott Card's SPEAKER FOR THE DEAD (genuinely a good novel, and this was also before Card went off the deep end).
Other attempts to game the award have been minor compared to the number of votes required to actually win anything.
It's also counter-productive to spend $10K on gaming the awards when the likely financial rewards of getting the award are negligible: the Hugos used to result in a minor sales bump in the USA and absolutely nowhere else at all. Now they barely register in the USA either. Some Hugo winners from the last decade or so - most notably SPIN and RAINBOW'S END - couldn't even get a publishing deal in many countries outside of the USA, regardless of their awards.
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?
Scalzi isn't that great a writer, to be honest. He's a good blogger and critic, but REDSHIRTS (his novel that won the Hugo) was extremely mediocre. It's certainly the poorest novel to actually win a Hugo in many years, and actually spurred some of the current issues.
He's also Tolstoy, Proust and Tolkien rolled into one compared to Vox Day's excruciating writing abilities.
I'd love to see sales figures for the books mentioned in this piece.
Scalzi's sold a couple of million. He also made a bit of side-money (and won a lot of new fans) by being an advisor on STARGATE UNIVERSE and had film rights to his books sold a few times.
Time to split things up. Then everyone can be happy.
That's not really the problem. Fandom has splintered before: the David Gemmell Awards were started in 2008 at least in part due to the feeling that other awards (including the Hugos) were not rewarding the field of epic fantasy despite huge sales and tons of readers. The Nebulas, the Arthur C. Clarke and the World Fantasy Awards are all regarded as more prestigious than the Hugo because they are juried.
The issue is that Hugo is still the big one because of momentum, continuity and history. You can start another award tomorrow, but it simply won't have the prestige that 75 years of history gives to the Hugos.
You know thinking about this whole thing, the smart thing to do is just to forget about Worldcon and the Hugo. Come to think of it, leave the World Science Fiction Society too.
No matter what you do, you are essentially forking over money to the organizers of the event, no matter the point you are trying to make.
Just totally abandon the thing. Keep your money and do whatever with it. Form an alternate convention, an alternate award. Just leave it behind.
I guess that's all I have to say about this.
But in closing something is very odd about this whole Beale thing. He's an obscure figure, yet somehow manages to corral more votes than the founders of the thing he co-opted? And while neither was famous, they were surely a lot better known than him.
Something doesn't add up about this.
Eh, you get your moneys worth out of a membership. They send you copies of the works nominated, which bundles them together for cheaper than retail.
So I take it, since there's nothing wrong with what they did and everyone's been doing it anyway, the best solution is for some other group on the SJW side to put together their own slate of nominees from now on and just ignore the Puppies, since they won't have the numbers to compete? Just have two parties picking winners and whichever side has the most followers wins?That's the only way these types of vote systems work when people actually care, which is one of the reasons why they are changing the vote system to one that isn't trivial to dominate, but that will not take effect until 2017. Next year I foresee a handful of cliques actually organizing publicly and pretty much doing what Sad Puppies did. I doubt they will work together much, because the primary thing they can coalesce around is not liking another group. I'm also guessing that someone will do a get out the vote for nominations, since they traditionally have about 10% of their voters actually participate in the nomination process, and if they raise that to just 20% they could have beat the puppies, especially with the increase in membership that they got.I predict they don't organize slates publicly (or at all, beyond casual chatter) next year. I do expect a get out the vote effort of sorts.
I also expect the Rabid Puppies to dominate the nominations, possibly massively, and everything to get No Awarded again.
Also, people have cared about the Hugos since the 50s and still do. There just wasn't anyone willing to burn them down.
Please, a significant portion of the people who joined did so just to say FU to Vox Day. Next year they will try to do something to prevent him from "ruining" the awards. They will probably try to get people to rally behind an established author who normally publishes a reading list. Next year is going to be a bloody culture war.
Please, a significant portion of the people who joined did so just to say FU to Vox Day. Next year they will try to do something to prevent him from "ruining" the awards. They will probably try to get people to rally behind an established author who normally publishes a reading list. Next year is going to be a bloody culture war.
Next year the nomination process will be the same as this year. Any change requires voting at the next Hugos I believe.
At any rate has anyone actually seen the proposed change? The proposal I saw seemed pretty fair, in that it actually allows a lot less bias into the nominations than the current system. Basically each vote for a category counts as 1 point. You can divide that one point up 5 times if you have 5 books you want to nominate (or 3 or 4 or whatever), or you can only nominate 1 book, in which the nomination get the full vote.
Under that system, you can't stack the deck via slate voting. However that cuts both ways, and any sort of voter block with an agenda ("SJWs", puppies, Trufans, or what have you) would likely only be able to get a single work into each category.
That system really sounds like a win for the Sad Puppies, unless this is really not about representing diverse fandoms, and it is REALLY about making sure only one sort of fandom wins.
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Hugo voters can't be both welcoming to everyone and protective of their clique. Either they welcome new voters and what they vote for, which includes the puppies, or they stop pretending that their awards are representative of the greater population. They don't get to complain when a divergent clique within the greater population enters the fray when they say anyone can vote and nominate.So the Puppies don't have to give recommendations to stuff they don't like, but Hugo voters have to give Hugo to stuff they don't like?
And that's not a double standard?
The mind boggles.
The Sad Puppies would be welcome, as voters and members - as noted, both Correia & Torgersen have been nominated for awards by this very clique. Vox Day is another story, but I hope we all agree on that.
It's the slate nominating that's caused the fuss. Particularly Vox's, since he was much clearer in intent. It's that intent and that success that's raised this to the level where the national media has noticed and we're talking about it.
And for all the accusations, it really isn't at all clear that others have tried anything like this before. Other than a few smaller cases that were as vehemently rejected by the community (The Scientologists, for example).1. Slate voting has been happening for decades with reading lists. This is NOTHING NEW.
2. Statistical analysis on the nomination results shows that they didn't strictly vote for a slate. There is too much spread, so it can be shown that more than half of the puppies did not vote strictly for what was on the slate. Amusingly, No Award in the finals can be shown to have slate voting.The fact of the matter is, Correia's group is a group of active readers with similar interests that nominated things that had been passed around their entire clique. Most of the things on Sad Puppies list were from authors they had "book bombed", where the forum manipulates Amazon's best seller list to put an...
1.I am inclined to believe there have been "slate voting" occurrences in the past, simply because there are group with vested interest in the award and some of them probably did something like this some of the time. However, there is a question of style and tone. Politely suggesting a reading list while knowing you have a following that is likely to be affected by your recommendations is one thing. Trumpeting your frontal assault on the convention and the people who usually attend it, insulting them and blaming them for conspiring the rule fandom with their liberal cabals, and summoning a horde of angry friends to game the system - that's another. Consider a gentler route that the puppies could have taken - if they truly care and truly believe the numbers are at their side, they could have just encouraged more people to join the convention (It's an awesome place where you can meet authors, talk with other friends and have a good time!) and support the voting process. They could even publish a "alternate reading list" for works they think are being unfairly neglected. Funnel all that energy to somewhere constructive, as in "hey guys, we are not part of this process even though we care about it, so let's change that". If the numbers are truly at their side, they might have nominated the works they wanted anyway, or at least some of them, and could have tried to integrate into the convention. Instead, the seething rage and open hostility just made their entire movement an attack on the convention. It created a turf war against a territory that used to have open borders.
2. As I said, given the way in which the puppies went about their business, it is easy to understand why worldcon goers perceived them as a direct threat. When your home is under attack, you rise to defend it. It is no surprise, to me, that worldconrs were even more eager to rally and push back than the puppies have been to rally and push forward.
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Had the Puppies simply done that, some would have complained but by and large no one would have cared. That sort of thing has been going on since... gah... the sixties if not the begining with reading lists from various fan groups and Locus.
Like you said it seems like the major cause of the backlash was the tone and the assertion that there's some conspiracy to keep the stuff the Puppies write or like down, rather than the fact that their part of fandom just doesn't care about the Hugo's. The Rabid Puppy folks don't either, Beale just got all sorts of folks to jump on his attack on the Hugo's by involving Breitbart and the usual suspects.
I dunno. Do you have actual data or statistics about who were the rabid puppy voters? Because we are talking a 40$ commitment to get involved here, I think that would deter most of the "usual suspects".
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You don't think he couldn't find 150 to 200 people at various right wing haunts or troll hang outs willing to spend $40 to stick it to the SJW and such? Really?
Go to the Hugo's site and look at the nominating data for the past few years and then look at the success rate of the Sad vs Rabid Puppy slates.
I mean you seem to imply that the majority of rabid puppies were not even really SFF fans but simply others who share Vox's politics even though they don't actually care about the field. I think that's a strong claim to make without some data to back it up.
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No, I said that Beale went to places he knew that don't care about the Hugos, but do care about the culture war aspects of what he was doing. That's not even in question, what with the pieces on Breitbart and his social media activity.I mean you seem to imply that the majority of rabid puppies were not even really SFF fans but simply others who share Vox's politics even though they don't actually care about the field. I think that's a strong claim to make without some data to back it up.You don't think he couldn't find 150 to 200 people at various right wing haunts or troll hang outs willing to spend $40 to stick it to the SJW and such? Really?
Go to the Hugo's site and look at the nominating data for the past few years and then look at the success rate of the Sad vs Rabid Puppy slates.
Yes, I don't dispute the facts, just wish to draw a more distinct line between them and speculation. I assume almost all rabid puppies were actually SFF readers and not gamergaters that read a post in some blog and decided to shell 40$ to prove a point in a struggle about a hobby they don't even partake in themselves. If you were not suggesting otherwise then we are in agreement. If you are, then I think you are jumping to conclusions without sufficient evidence. Ever since the controversy started it has been covered in many liberal news sites as well, and the coverage was for the most part extremely one sided and tended to present things as more of an outright war against inclusiveness ins SFF then what it truly is, which is a complicated mass.
As Sunbeam pointed out, who is to say many of those NO AWARD voters could have been liberals willing to spend 40$ for a just cause.Until we have some sort of evidence (which I suspect we never will) I am going to assume a great majority of people involved are actual readers who actually care - from both sides of the fence.
But I have a question. Is the discrepancy between votes cast and nominators a feature of this system somehow?
It is. As far as I understand the Hugos always had more voters than nominators, because the nomination process requires more effort and also forces readers to choose from among a huge amount of options - you can nominate any work that came out this year to any of the relevant categories. I think most people just give up on trying and choose a work they like among those already nominated when the time to vote comes around.
Heck I turned around one day and found I wasn't really reading science fiction anymore, hadn't done it in years. Last series I saw I was interested in was something about Neanderthals evolving in a parallel world and a crossover, but I didn't pick it up.
Well, given this, no wonder all Hugo nominated works don't seem good to you...
Myself, I also don't like the concepts of a lot of the Hugo winners. Tell you the truth, I'd rather read about gun crazed monster slayers than about people trying to figure out their gender IN SPAAAACE, at least most of the time. And, I have some sympathy to Correia - I certainly understand what he means when he says "Social Justice Warriors" in a derogatory way - but that doesn't make what the puppies did legitimate, and it doesn't make them right about devious liberal cabals.I think if the puppies truly think the Hugos lost touch with reality they could have either tried to integrate into worldcon in a constructive way, or just started their own con with their own awards, and if their awards do a better job of representing fandoms then they will gain a respectable position of their own. Maybe they'll never topple the Hugos from their pedestal, but who cares? They'll have a way to show their appreciation of the books they love.
Beale has stated that he pulled Gamergaters into the fray, people who didn't really have any interest in the Hugos. Of course I have no idea how successful he was at that or how much of that is exaggeration. The $40 buck entry fee is probably sufficient to keep a lot of internet trolls from all political spectrums from voting for the lolz. Comparing Slates, Beale's is the definite winner, but there was overlap with the sad puppies, and Beale would have probably only needed to get 40 or so voters to only vote his slate to rig the nomination process. Given the size of Gamergate (and presumably all sorts of hate groups that Vox know doubt taps into), I don't think finding 40 people is that unreasonable.
If I were to guess the extra votes this year during the actual voting for the Hugos mostly came from more casual fans who are either sad puppies or dislike said group, but in prior years didn't have enough interest to vote.
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Beale has stated that he pulled Gamergaters into the fray, people who didn't really have any interest in the Hugos. Of course I have no idea how successful he was at that or how much of that is exaggeration. The $40 buck entry fee is probably sufficient to keep a lot of internet trolls from all political spectrums from voting for the lolz. Comparing Slates, Beale's is the definite winner, but there was overlap with the sad puppies, and Beale would have probably only needed to get 40 or so voters to only vote his slate to rig the nomination process. Given the size of Gamergate (and presumably all sorts of hate groups that Vox know doubt taps into), I don't think finding 40 people is that unreasonable.
If I were to guess the extra votes this year during the actual voting for the Hugos mostly came from more casual fans who are either sad puppies or dislike said group, but in prior years didn't have enough interest to vote.
Yeah, I'm with you. Just seems more plausible to me.
Thing is, that possibly could work. Most of the time when someone does that they have an issue they want to crank on. But it is possible that it might be something they've put a lot of thought into.
Sure, and a book about hunting monsters could also certainly work. It might even have something interesting to say about gun rights. Thing is, aspirations to say something aren't always the same as having something real to say. What the sad puppies are saying is that works have been nominated not because they are good but simply because they contain enough liberal buzz words. And, I wouldn't be surprised if some of the voters nominated some of the books for such reasons. I almost don't doubt that some not so good books got very far by simply being about issues that interest worldcon goers. I just don't see anything inherently wrong with that, and I don't think it's nearly as total and intentional as the puppies claim it to be.
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1.I am inclined to believe there have been "slate voting" occurrences in the past, simply because there are group with vested interest in the award and some of them probably did something like this some of the time. However, there is a question of style and tone. Politely suggesting a reading list while knowing you have a following that is likely to be affected by your recommendations is one thing. Trumpeting your frontal assault on the convention and the people who usually attend it, insulting them and blaming them for conspiring the rule fandom with their liberal cabals, and summoning a horde of angry friends to game the system - that's another. Consider a gentler route that the puppies could have taken - if they truly care and truly believe the numbers are at their side, they could have just encouraged more people to join the convention (It's an awesome place where you can meet authors, talk with other friends and have a good time!) and support the voting process. They could even publish a "alternate reading list" for works they think are being unfairly neglected. Funnel all that energy to somewhere constructive, as in "hey guys, we are not part of this process even though we care about it, so let's change that". If the numbers are truly at their side, they might have nominated the works they wanted anyway, or at least some of them, and could have tried to integrate into the convention. Instead, the seething rage and open hostility just made their entire movement an attack on the convention. It created a turf war against a territory that used to have open borders.
2. As I said, given the way in which the puppies went about their business, it is easy to understand why worldcon goers perceived them as a direct threat. When your home is under attack, you rise to defend it. It is no surprise, to me, that worldconrs were even more eager to rally and push back than the puppies have been to rally and push forward.
Sad Puppies took that gentler route 2 years in a row. They got lambasted, insulted, and had the exact same insults thrown at them when they got a handful things total nominated as they did this year when the slates dominated. The only difference was that it didn't hit mainstream as much because there was still other stuff to vote for. You don't actually get any change by being nice and playing in their box. Pretty much any protest movement ever can tell you that.
Seems like the influx of new voters this year is an all-around win for the Hugos in general.
The more voters there are the harder it will be to game the system in the future.
So regardless of the political b#~!*$%! involved this year, the only thing the slate voters really accomplished is to make the whole system all around more fair.
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Sad Puppies took that gentler route 2 years in a row. They got lambasted, insulted, and had the exact same insults thrown at them when they got a handful things total nominated as they did this year when the slates dominated. The only difference was that it didn't hit mainstream as much because there was still other stuff to vote for. You don't actually get any change by being nice and playing in their box. Pretty much any protest movement ever can tell you that.
Couple things.
First, the puppies always had an insulting rhetoric, and the fact that some people didn't have the maturity not to insult them back doesn't exempt them from that. They've never said anything like "we care about worldcon and think we should be better represented there so let's figure out how we can integrate despite our differences," they just called Hugo voters names, said they nominate and award bad novels, and tried their "book bombing" techniques from the Amazon Bestseller list in the Hugos. That's not the gentle approach, that's just a slightly less effective aggressive approach from what they did this year.
Second, if the puppies only managed to get a couple of works nominated but not won any awards... have you considered that the numbers of people among the puppy crowd who care enough to nominate and vote are in all likelihood a minority compared to the bulk of worldcon goers? It makes *sense* they'll have a hard time getting anything to win. Unless they either increase their number in a civil way or game the system, of course. They chose to game the system (not saying the other approach had a high probability of working, but this one is not legitimate in my opinion).
Plus, as Krensky already expressed, the puppies are not some social movement that needs to get down and dirty with the cops, they are book fans who feel under-appreciated. Some ends justify some means, but you can only take the sentiment that far, and what the puppies did was invasive and aggressive. Misguided, I would say.
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Paizo forums are the best.
I think this is the only place I have found with a civilised discussion about this year's Hugos and the Sad/Rabid Puppies.
There has actually been some (relatively) civil back and forth debating between Martin and Correia, too. Also, prboably the reason this debate remains civil is that most people here lean towards supporting one side or the other but don't outright belong in either involved camp.
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Some ends justify some meansI take it you would be the one to decide that?
"Some ends justify some means" is such a general statement that I can't see how one can disagree with it.
Meaning that you are probably referring to it in context of something I said, but I'm not sure what, so I'd like you to elaborate what you mean more precisely. If you mean that I shouldn't be the one to say if the puppie's goals justify what they did - agreed. I thought it obvious that I was expressing an opinion. I make no claim to universal truth.
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Seems like the influx of new voters this year is an all-around win for the Hugos in general.
The more voters there are the harder it will be to game the system in the future.
So regardless of the political b!#@#~~! involved this year, the only thing the slate voters really accomplished is to make the whole system all around more fair.
It's not fair. It never has been fair. It never will be fair.
For the Hugo's to be 'fair' it would look like a writing contest, not a literary award.
Note that I said more fair.
The larger the voting numbers the harder it will be for any faction to rig the voting. That's all I meant.
I think it's a good thing that after this year it will be a lot harder to game the system.
Sad Puppies took that gentler route 2 years in a row. They got lambasted, insulted, and had the exact same insults thrown at them when they got a handful things total nominated as they did this year when the slates dominated. The only difference was that it didn't hit mainstream as much because there was still other stuff to vote for. You don't actually get any change by being nice and playing in their box. Pretty much any protest movement ever can tell you that.Couple things.
First, the puppies always had an insulting rhetoric, and the fact that some people didn't have the maturity not to insult them back doesn't exempt them from that. They've never said anything like "we care about worldcon and think we should be better represented there so let's figure out how we can integrate despite our differences," they just called Hugo voters names, said they nominate and award bad novels, and tried their "book bombing" techniques from the Amazon Bestseller list in the Hugos. That's not the gentle approach, that's just a slightly less effective aggressive approach from what they did this year.
Second, if the puppies only managed to get a couple of works nominated but not won any awards... have you considered that the numbers of people among the puppy crowd who care enough to nominate and vote are in all likelihood a minority compared to the bulk of worldcon goers? It makes *sense* they'll have a hard time getting anything to win. Unless they either increase their number in a civil way or game the system, of course. They chose to game the system (not saying the other approach had a high probability of working, but this one is not legitimate in my opinion).
Plus, as Krensky already expressed, the puppies are not some social movement that needs to get down and dirty with the cops, they are book fans who feel under-appreciated. Some ends justify some means, but you can only take the sentiment that far, and what the puppies did was invasive and aggressive. Misguided, I would say.
You and I have totally different ideas of what qualifies aggressive. Aggressive would require them to go out and actively advertise their position and slate. Sad Puppies hasn't been aggressive any year. Usually they have been pretty passive, with them putting together a list of things they liked on their own message board and rarely leaving it. Basically all they have been doing is inviting Sci Fi fans to participate in an award for fans of sci fi. It wasn't until the blowback after the nominations that they became aggressive, but that was mostly defensive or counterattacking. Rabid Puppies has been aggressive, but they just appeared this year.
stuff
We must be interpreting tone far differently in the same articles. I have to say I have been paying attention to this since the situation first blew up this past spring, but read older articles by the major folks in Sad Puppies. I still pick up a ton of aggression and martyrdom tactics in those earlier posts.
After the nomination, when the controversy hit the media, I think a lot of casual fans got more serious about it. I suspect, but can't prove, that vote went mostly anti-Puppy. I know it prompted me to become a supporting member and vote. It will be interesting to see if that carries over to nominations next year. There's more awareness of how important they are.Joking aside, I guess this isn't my fight anymore. I go to the bookstore a lot, and always check out the fantasy and sf sections when I do. Just picking up books and reading the blurb they usually seem like a bunch of dreck. So the idea of reading through this stuff to find things I want to nominate isn't very appealing.
So I guess you win this minor battle in the overall culture war. Because I don't think this is me anymore, and I'm not going to pick a fight just to pick one (that is a metaphor).
Besides the culture war is kind of binary in nature, and I can tell you I do not like a lot of things about both sides.
Well...and this is absolutely not meant to be mean or snarky at all, but if you are not reading brand new science fiction or fantasy (or only picking up a book or something a year), than you shouldn't be voting or nominating Hugo works. I don't vote or nominate because while I read a lot, its often older books or collected anthologies. I can't provide any sort of meaningful sense on what should win.
After the nomination, when the controversy hit the media, I think a lot of casual fans got more serious about it. I suspect, but can't prove, that vote went mostly anti-Puppy. I know it prompted me to become a supporting member and vote. It will be interesting to see if that carries over to nominations next year. There's more awareness of how important they are.Joking aside, I guess this isn't my fight anymore. I go to the bookstore a lot, and always check out the fantasy and sf sections when I do. Just picking up books and reading the blurb they usually seem like a bunch of dreck. So the idea of reading through this stuff to find things I want to nominate isn't very appealing.
So I guess you win this minor battle in the overall culture war. Because I don't think this is me anymore, and I'm not going to pick a fight just to pick one (that is a metaphor).
Besides the culture war is kind of binary in nature, and I can tell you I do not like a lot of things about both sides.
Well...and this is absolutely not meant to be mean or snarky at all, but if you are not reading brand new science fiction or fantasy (or only picking up a book or something a year), than you shouldn't be voting or nominating Hugo works. I don't vote or nominate because while I read a lot, its often older books or collected anthologies. I can't provide any sort of meaningful sense on what should win.
Well, you could always sign up, skip nominating, then read the free stuff they send you that other people nominated. I get the feeling that a lot of people did this in the past, which is why they have such low numbers in their nominating pool.
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You and I have totally different ideas of what qualifies aggressive. Aggressive would require them to go out and actively advertise their position and slate. Sad Puppies hasn't been aggressive any year. Usually they have been pretty passive, with them putting together a list of things they liked on their own message board and rarely leaving it. Basically all they have been doing is inviting Sci Fi fans to participate in an award for fans of sci fi. It wasn't until the blowback after the nominations that they became aggressive, but that was mostly defensive or counterattacking. Rabid Puppies has been aggressive, but they just appeared this year.
Aggressive not in the sense that they sent "physically" intruded any forum or something, but in their rhetoric and tone. You can't claim they have been pleasant. Any worldcon attendant who would look into who the Puppies are and what they want to accomplish would find blog posts and discussions where he and his friends are being continually mocked for their tastes in books and their politics, and blamed for conniving to turn SFF into an extension of Tumblr.
I can't call that a real, honest attempt to integrate has been taken by Correia and his cohorts. For the puppies, this has always been a competition. Even to the sad ones.
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Well, you could always sign up, skip nominating, then read the free stuff they send you that other people nominated. I get the feeling that a lot of people did this in the past, which is why they have such low numbers in their nominating pool.
After the nomination, when the controversy hit the media, I think a lot of casual fans got more serious about it. I suspect, but can't prove, that vote went mostly anti-Puppy. I know it prompted me to become a supporting member and vote. It will be interesting to see if that carries over to nominations next year. There's more awareness of how important they are.Joking aside, I guess this isn't my fight anymore. I go to the bookstore a lot, and always check out the fantasy and sf sections when I do. Just picking up books and reading the blurb they usually seem like a bunch of dreck. So the idea of reading through this stuff to find things I want to nominate isn't very appealing.
So I guess you win this minor battle in the overall culture war. Because I don't think this is me anymore, and I'm not going to pick a fight just to pick one (that is a metaphor).
Besides the culture war is kind of binary in nature, and I can tell you I do not like a lot of things about both sides.
Well...and this is absolutely not meant to be mean or snarky at all, but if you are not reading brand new science fiction or fantasy (or only picking up a book or something a year), than you shouldn't be voting or nominating Hugo works. I don't vote or nominate because while I read a lot, its often older books or collected anthologies. I can't provide any sort of meaningful sense on what should win.
If these are one's consideration, it is strictly better to nominate books you know you want to read in order to increase chances of them being included in the PDF bundle.
Well, you could always sign up, skip nominating, then read the free stuff they send you that other people nominated. I get the feeling that a lot of people did this in the past, which is why they have such low numbers in their nominating pool.
After the nomination, when the controversy hit the media, I think a lot of casual fans got more serious about it. I suspect, but can't prove, that vote went mostly anti-Puppy. I know it prompted me to become a supporting member and vote. It will be interesting to see if that carries over to nominations next year. There's more awareness of how important they are.Joking aside, I guess this isn't my fight anymore. I go to the bookstore a lot, and always check out the fantasy and sf sections when I do. Just picking up books and reading the blurb they usually seem like a bunch of dreck. So the idea of reading through this stuff to find things I want to nominate isn't very appealing.
So I guess you win this minor battle in the overall culture war. Because I don't think this is me anymore, and I'm not going to pick a fight just to pick one (that is a metaphor).
Besides the culture war is kind of binary in nature, and I can tell you I do not like a lot of things about both sides.
Well...and this is absolutely not meant to be mean or snarky at all, but if you are not reading brand new science fiction or fantasy (or only picking up a book or something a year), than you shouldn't be voting or nominating Hugo works. I don't vote or nominate because while I read a lot, its often older books or collected anthologies. I can't provide any sort of meaningful sense on what should win.
If these are one's consideration, it is strictly better to nominate books you know you want to read in order to increase chances of them being included in the PDF bundle.
I think more people would rather get nominations of new things to read and check out.
If these are one's consideration, it is strictly better to nominate books you know you want to read in order to increase chances of them being included in the PDF bundle.
If there is a book I really want to read, I usually do so. Although I might go ahead an enter a ballot this year and just vote without nominating any books, and read the final contestants (assuming Vox doesn't load the ballot with books like "T-rex Troubles" that is).