Will it really be Power to the People? – Amanda Green

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

Will it really be Power to the People? – Amanda Green

(Apologies for the lateness of the post. It is my fault, not Sarah’s.)

The day has come that I never thought I’d see. WorldCon is about to commence and the newest Hugo winners are about to be named. But we aren’t hearing about that. There have been very few rumblings this past week or so about what sort of outrage will be shown should people like Larry Correia win. Instead, we’ve been hearing about how Evil Amazon has been taking food out of the mouths of poor, struggling authors like James Patterson by continuing to be mean to Hatchette.

 

Could it be that the SJWs and GHH crowd have forgotten about the Hugos? Nah. How could they forget someone they feel is too white – even though he’s Portuguese which makes him Hispanic – too male, too outspoken, too much in love with personal freedom, too hetero, too proud to be a father, etc. etc. etc.?

 

So there has to be another reason for the silence. Ever your intrepid reporter (well, blogger), I went in search of the answer and I think I found it.

 

The preliminary agenda for LonCon’s business meeting has been released and there is a lot of food for thought in it. As Ruthless Culture puts it, “The agenda appears a good deal less worrying than last year’s, which included motions to dismantle the fan categories and impose severe limitations on the use of cheaper supporting memberships to encourage people to nominate and vote for the Hugo Awards.”

 

Wow. That surely ought to have the SJW/GHH crowd’s panties in a twist, especially after Sad Puppies. Before this year’s Sad Puppies campaign, the highest number of votes cast for the Hugo before had been 2,100 in 2011. This year, there were 3,587 votes cast. That is a huge increase, most of which came, imo, as a direct result of Larry encouraging folks to actually vote this year.

 

One of the first proposals that caught Ruthless Culture’s eye, and mine as well, is an amendment to WSFS’s constitution requiring “all changes to the WSFS constitution be ratified by a vote of the membership at large.” Think about it, instead of requiring only that such amendments be ratified by a majority vote of those attending the business meeting at the following WorldCon, it requires the amendment be sent out to the qualifying membership AFTER WorldCon to be voted on. That opens the process up to those who don’t have the spare coin to travel across the country or overseas to attend the convention.

 

You can see the actual language of the motion here. What it basically says is that no longer can the WSFS constitution be amended by a motion passed at the Business Meeting and ratified by a simple majority vote at the Business Meeting of the subsequent WorldCon. Instead, if a motion is passed at the Business Meeting, it is then to be sent to the membership following that WorldCon for a vote.

 

What the impact of this will be if passed is anyone’s guess. It still means those attending WorldCon have the upper hand because they are the ones who will be attending the Business Meeting and voting on whether or not to pass the proposed amendment on to the membership-at-large. There will be those, I’m sure, who will see it as a means to remove WSFS from the “American culture” that pervades it now. (Their words, not mine.) However, with the power still in the hands of those who attend WorldCon, that sort of falls flat. Of course, so does the fiction that there is some sort of white, male, heterosexual, fanboy conspiracy to keep all others out of the culture of WorldCon and science fiction in general.

 

There is another proposed amendment that Ruthless Culture points to, this time with concern (and I’ll admit here, I’m not nearly as concerned as RC seems to be). This one deals with how Hugo nominees are proposed. The current rule states that nominations come from members of the “administering” WorldCon or the immediately preceding or following WorldCons. In other words, if you’re like me and haven’t had enough coffee yet, last year’s WorldCon, this year’s and next year’s.

 

Under the proposed amendment, nominations could come from “Each member of the administering Worldcon and any member of any convention sanctioned by WSFS in Article 4 held in the immediately preceding, current, or immediately following calendar year.” In other words, NASFIC members would be able to vote as well and this, in short, is where RC has problems. After all, that sort of thing would favor American voters and WorldCon is already has an “in-built bias toward American science fiction culture.”

 

Now, I’ll admit that the way the WSFS constitution is written right now, the only folks who could vote under this proposed amendment would be WorldCon and NASFIC members because those are the only cons sanctioned under Article 4. However, if RC were to actually read not only the introduction to the proposed amendment but the commentary below it, the purpose would become clear. It is to “extend the right to nominate for the Hugo Awards to members of all WSFS-sanctioned conventions, including NASFiC.” So the solution to the “problem” is simple — sanction more conventions from around the world.

 

Do I expect either of these proposed amendments to pass? No, especially not the one to send proposed amendments to the entire membership. Why? Because despite all they say about wanting equality and such, the SJWs and GHHers are like everyone else: they want to control and if you give the right to vote to the general masses, well, the rabble will rouse and you lose control. After all, look what happened with Sad Puppies and do they really want to risk that sort of rabble having a real say in what goes on with WSFS?

 

I also doubt the Hugo nominating amendment will pass and for pretty much the same reason. Heck, the SJW/GHH crowd accused Larry and others of buying memberships for people and then submitting votes in their names. Can you imagine the accusations that would follow should free supporting memberships be given to NASDFIC members?

 

Of course, if these two amendments are voted down, how are the “progressive” folks attending LonCon going to justify their stance to maintain the status quo? How many knots will they tie themselves into trying to explain why they didn’t open voting up to the membership at large? Hmm, this may just get interesting. Guess I’d better go lay in a supply of popcorn.

Of course, they may not be around to vote if Larry – or, gasp, Vox – wins a Hugo. Their enlightened brains might just explode if that happens. Then who will vote on the amendments? Oh, wait, I know the answer to that. It will be the folks who still possess not only common sense but the ability to think logically and to see more than three steps beyond the one they are currently taking.

79 thoughts on “Will it really be Power to the People? – Amanda Green”

  1. You know, I can remember a time when a Hugo meant something to me. I would at least look at the winners, and usually all of the nominees, to wish those I recognized well and for the potential to find a new author to add to my favorites list. These days not so much.
    In that regard I suspect I am typical of most readers and fans. All we want is good entertaining clever stories to take our minds off the troubles of our daily lives. If the intent of the SJWs and GHHs was to alienate the readership and marginalize their positions then congratulations they’ve succeeded quite nicely.
    As for Hatchette et al, phooie! For quite some time now my book purchases are all either Baen or Amazon. Far as I’m concerned traditional publishers can go pound sand.

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    1. Uncle Lar, I remember those days as well. I would actually buy a book if I saw it had won the Hugo AND if I recognized the author name. Nowadays, I am more likely to give the winners a wide berth because of how the system is being gamed. I guess that’s why I have no problem at all with opening the voting up to more folks. Of course, the issue would still be getting them to nominate titles in the first place. Oh well, the Hugos are going the way of traditional publishing, imo.

      As for Hatchette/Amazon, I’ve long since grown tired of it. Frankly, it is nothing more than a business negotiation and I realize that. Neither side is innocent but then I don’t expect them to be. My issue is with those who have the automatic knee-jerk reaction to condemn Amazon because, well, it’s Amazon. I saw an author today on FB being incredulous that anyone, much less a lot of anyones, would do what Amazon asked and write the head of Hatchette. That same author went on to wail and whine because Amazon has pulled the pre-order button on some Disney titles. Well guess what, Author, it is part of negotiation. It is also prudent on Amazon’s part because we don’t know when the contract runs out and when Amazon will not be able to fulfill orders because it no longer has a contract with Disney. So wail and gnash your teeth because Amazon is acting like a business. I’ll continue to buy from them and from Baen and enjoy it.

      Yeah, I’m cranky. Idiocy does that to me. Sorry.

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  2. I’m waiting for the proposed by-law that states any voter must be able to prove their possession of a hoo-hah on demand, and must be willing to submit it for inspection to ensure that it’s sufficiently glittery.

    (No, I won’t qualify under such conditions . . . but I can apply glitter elsewhere if it’ll make them happy . . . )

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    1. Peter, you are a bad, bad man and we love you for it. Of course, I’m not sure Dorothy would appreciate it if you applied glitter elsewhere. But that’s between the two of you ;-)

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  3. for years, if I picked up a book and it said Hugo Winner or Hugo Nominee, 98% of the time it was quickly put back on the shelf and I walked away. Hugo award meant it was DRECK.

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    1. Yes, I remember arguing with some guy that Bujold was fun and had action, which he did not believe because she was favored by the usual suspects and was female and lived in MN and won awards. I still don’t know if I convinced him.

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    2. That may be the worst part of it. The Hugos have gotten so grey and goopy that getting one is the kiss of death for commercial success. Which I realize is fine with the GHH and SJW crowd, but it’s not doing SFF as a whole much good, no matter who is allowed to vote for the awards or how measures are brought to the WorldCon floor for voting.

      And does “too Ameri-centric” mean too many Yanks or to many of the wrong sort in general (wrong sort being the happy puppy crowd)?

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      2. I think just having the attitude might be enough. If the characters seem to think and act as if they might be ones in some old school western or something (independent, more likely to go for action than navel gazing when facing trouble and so on), no matter what they are named or what they look like or where they live they are just Americans in disguise, and then it’s too American.

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      3. And does “too Ameri-centric” mean too many Yanks

        Hmm, let’s see, apparently the true horror of the proposal is that it would “institutionalise the already objectionable American dominance of Worldcon and do absolutely nothing to address the historic marginalisation of non-American voices in both fiction and fandom.”

        So, yeah, pretty much. :)

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        1. Perhaps it’s time to institute Ameri-Con, celebrating the best of American SF&F. What would the award be called? The Baen?

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          2. I suggest a picture of a person (indeterminate sex) reading under a blanket/cover, with a flashlight. I never met Jim, but he epitomized readers to me. I suspect that he would have encouraged such an award design. :-)

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            2. Make it a golden* statuette of an (approximately) 11-year-old kid reading an e-book under the blanket, the mattress top surmounting on a launching silver rocket.

              *Because JB reportedly said that the golden age of SF was what you read when you discovered the genre around 11 – 12 years of age.

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  4. The problem I see with allowing NASFIC members to nominate (the way the motion is constructed) is that it’s a very cheap way to get nominating rights without any material reward (or commitment) to WorldCon itself, and dilutes the value of WSFS membership.

    Yes, NASFiC is a WSFS-sanctioned event. But becoming a NASFiC member does not make one a member of WSFS. Why should nominating rights be extended to NASFiC members (or members of other “sanctioned” events) who are not at least supporting members of the previous, current, or following WC? In short, to people who have no recently demonstrated commitment to supporting WSFS and WC?

    Nominating is a right of WSFS membership, which means pay to play. If you want to nominate for the Hugos you must at some point make a material contribution to the WSFS to become a member. If you want to vote the final ballot, you must be a current member. It makes no sense to me to dilute the limited rights/benefits of WSFS membership to allow Hugo nominating by non-WSFS members.

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  5. Bonus derisive laughter for Ruthless Culture’s spouting of “privilege” talk.

    You cannot give a free supporting membership to the members of the American national science fiction convention without also giving one to the members of every other national science fiction convention. Doing so would further institutionalise the already objectionable American dominance of Worldcon and do absolutely nothing to address the historic marginalisation of non-American voices in both fiction and fandom.

    This is a motion that talks the language of accessibility whilst walking the path of historic American privilege.

    Null program.

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  6. If I were a Brit, or indeed any European attending WorldCon, I would vote for the first one. Most years the Europeans are among “those who don’t have the spare coin to travel across the country or overseas to attend the convention.” So this year, while the con is in their backyard and Americans are relatively less represented than usual, might be their chance to stack the deck and grant themselves more power in the future.

    And then, on the assumption that the first proposal passes, it may become easier to sanction other conventions, maybe one per continent or something like that. So they might have good reasons to support both proposals.

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    1. They can try to stack the deck — though passed amendments have to be ratified by the following WC. Which is why the two things do kind of tie together. There is some frustration in some quarters with the difficulty of getting amendments passed, and I have heard the muttering of those unhappy because they can’t get whatever they want, and get it NOW. Personally, I like it that way. It should be difficult to diddle the rules around. It should require some effort on the parts of those who want the rules changed, to get off their butts and subject themselves to the pain required.

      Of course to vote on the items you have to take the time to attend the Business Meeting when the votes are held. Which means skipping part of WC to sit through a lot of tedious and often moronic blah blah blah at a time when there are probably much more entertaining things to do.

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  7. There’s a saying that if you see an article with a question title, you know that the answer is “No.”

    Not invariably. Alas, this is not one of the rare exceptions.

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  8. “…Their enlightened brains might explode if that happens.”

    Which is why I’m so hoping for Tom Kratman to get a Hugo nomination. So many heads will pop the Internet will look like “Scanners” with the Mad Colonel as Michael Ironside. Going online will be like sitting front-row at a Gallagher concert when he brings out the melons and the Sledge-O-Matic.

    It would be glorious, I say. Epic, even.

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    1. If you’re hoping for a Hugo nomination for any other reason than it being a Hugo-worthy story, you’re doing it wrong.

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      1. Most of the stories getting Hugo’s haven’t been worthy of them, IMHO. Many have seemed to be little more than a load of progressive gray goo.

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      3. @starfleetdude: I liked Kratman’s “Big Boys Don’t Cry” a lot better than any of the novellas that actually made the cut this year. I don’t think BBDC was published in time for this year’s Hugos, but it would be a worthy nomination for next year.

        The wailing and gnashing of teeth by the glittery hoo-ha crowd would just be sweet, sweet frosting on the cake.

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        1. I liked BBDC also, I think the only novella nominated (to my knowledge, haven’t looked at the list) that I have read is Vox’s, which was a good fantasy story, but really hard to compare. It was an intellectually oriented story which managed to avoid too much navel gazing whereas the Colonel’s was action oriented, where navel gazing is generally only present after a character has been gut-shot.

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  9. The only proper non-hypocritical thing to do is hold WorldCon in the third world hell-holes they admire. Of course it may be difficult to find one that will allow those of glittery hoo-hahs to congregate without being escorted by male relatives and suitably covered.
    It all reminds me very much of a country club in 1905 being in a tizzy because somebody tried to nominate a Joo or an Eye-talion. I don’t have time for all the drama.

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    1. As the token non-english person here with European experience: Guys, cons are an American phenomenon. the rest of the anglosphere took to it, but in immitation. The rest of the world/ Oh, there’s the sporadic con, but it’s NOT like here. (Though an acquaintance’s story of losing his IDF patrol (“only I and the Brit spoke English, and I was supposed to command them”) at the local SF con was roll on the floor funny. He’s the guy who mans our favorite Farmer’s market stall.)

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        1. Well, there were barely dressed girls and strong liquors involved, and every time he rounded up one of them, another two disappeared in pursuit of a or b. I don’t remember if they were on duty and doing a check over of the hotel for some reason OR if they were on leave. I think the first, though.

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    2. Could be worse. In the late 1980s there was a WorldCon bid for Sarajevo, initiated when everyone thought Yugoslavia was stable. Between the time the bid was to be voted on and the date of the convention, Sarajevo went from jewel to warzone.

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  10. Hi Amanda, thanks for the link.

    I agree with you that neither proposal is likely to pass but I don’t think the wishes of the social justice mob really enter into it.

    The votes will be held at the WSFS business meeting and hardly anyone goes to those. In fact, the people who do go to the WSFS business meeting are such a tiny clique that they even have their own nickname — SMOFs. Last year, a lot of social justice people got annoyed about the lack of a Young Adult Hugo, descended on the business meeting and had it kicked into the long grass by SMOFs who knew the procedural rules.

    The SMOFs have their own identity and their own agenda but it has absolutely nothing to do with that of the SJWs.

    In fact, the SMOFs and SJWs butted heads in the wake of the Readercon sexual harassment thing and the results were incredibly messy. The SJWs continued to butt heads with the con-running community after this year’s WisCon when a similar failure to ban a sexual harasser lead some SJWs (people with no ties whatsoever to the con) to suggest that the world’s only feminist science fiction convention be burned to the ground because it failed to meet their own personal moral standards.

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    1. And that is why they will never have nice things. Nobody can live up to the impossible standards of PC, especially not the people spouting it.

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      1. Well, if victory were possible, the SJWs might have to try to get their moral egoboo by doing good stuff, which might cost time, money, and effort, instead of doing fun things like arrogant bullying.

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  11. I voted in this year’s Hugos. There were a couple of stories there that didn’t really fit the categorization of SF/F in my opinion; one of them was very well-written but it still fell to the bottom of my list because, well, it’s not science fiction, is it?

    I’m annoyed that there are people who publicly stated that they would not be *reading* certain pieces because they disagreed with the authors; I’m very much of the opinion that a piece should be judged on its own merits. For me, that includes engaging writing (no slogs), interesting concepts, and a certain feeling of completion—there was more than one entry that felt like part of a larger story (which was in fact the case), and while I want to read more, that incomplete feeling makes for a lower ranking in my score.

    For this year, honestly, the Campbell Award nominees were far better than the Hugo Best Novel. If those two awards were combined, I’d put pretty much all of the former category ahead of the latter. And the short story section pretty much bombed.

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  12. I am wondering if there is the right mix of sad puppies and SJWs that in one of the lit categories that “No Award” might rear its ugly head.

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  13. Speaking of the Worldcon, Neil Gaiman’s friend, the comedian Jonathan Ross, that the SJW/GHH crowd ran off from hosting the Hugo award ceremony, can currently be seen as M/C of Penn & Teller’s TV show “Fool Us” on the CW network.

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  14. Loncon attending member here. As I type this, I’m sitting in a hotel room in Cambridge, getting ready to go to London tomorrow and Worldcon on Thurs.

    While I do agree that the Sad Puppy campaign did help with the record Hugo vote, I don’t think it was the primary reason for the vote total jump. The fact is Loncon 3 is also on track to have the largest turnout ever for a WorldCon; 6k-7k attending almost certainly, with 10k not outside the realm of possibility. That’s a big jump from the 3k-4k of the last several conventions. Interest in this particular WorldCon has been huge, so it’s no surprise to me that the response to the Hugo vote has been correspondingly large.

    But having said this… I’m still rooting for the Sad Puppies. :-)

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    1. Imagine if Warbound “lost” by higher numbers than recent winners have gotten. ;-)

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      1. I’m really hoping that Warbound wins; I enjoyed WoT, but packaging the whole series (two authors, 20+ years, more than a dozen books) as a “novel” seemed more like rules-lawyering by Tor than a valid contender.

        Not to disparage Brandon Sanderson – he’s both a fine writer and, by all accounts, an all-right guy. I just wish they’d have a permanent category for cases like this (“Best Series That Ended This Year?”) or that Tor just entered the LAST, Brandon Sanderson, WoT book for an apples-to-apples comparison.

        Though from what I’ve read, I think a Jordon/Sanderson WoT Hugo would annoy the shiny hoo-ha brigade almost as much as Warbound. So if Warbound doesn’t win I’m rooting for WoT.

        I’ll admit that Hachette’s “we’ll only give you a few chapters in the Hugo packet” strategy didn’t help. Especially since the excerpts they gave us so failed to grab my interest I didn’t feel the urge to buy the full versions. If any of them short pieces had grabbed my interest enough I’d planned ot spring for the full version, but none did. And – thanks to my disgust with things Hachette – I hated to give them any additional money since I’d already read enough of the works in question to know that they wouldn’t get my vote.

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        1. Went to a couple of Sanderson panels at a convention over the weekend. He is a great guy, and extremely knowledgeable about the writery thing.

          And a WoT win would annoy the GHHs. Trust me, I’ve read their Twitter feeds. *shudder*

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      2. I strongly suspect that if any of the Sad Puppies place anywhere other than last, the SJWs will throw a tantrum. If any of them place higher than one of their darlings, then they’ll start foaming at the mouth.

        As for WoT, I think most voters are pretty much resigned to the idea that it’s probably going to win (and frankly, I expect it to). The Lit crowd is heavily pushing for Ancillary Justice, so even if WoT wins having Warbound score higher than Ancillary Justice would be a pretty big win for our side.

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  15. Ive been reading this blog for a little over a month after having seen it mentioned on MHI. Great blog, consistantly.

    I know SJW but… what is a GHH? I’ve never seen it explained.

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    1. oh. That’s Kate Paulk’s gift to the world. “Feminist Glittery Hoo-Haa” shortened to Glittery Hoo Ha. Hence Peter Grant’s very evil offer to put glitter SOMEWHERE.

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      1. Secret Masters of Fandom — A self-ironising title adopted by fans who are involved in not just con-running but the con-running community. Genre fandom has no professional convention runners and so they pool their expertise on a variety of mailing lists and their own special convention. Somewhat unsurprisingly, this has lead to con-runners acquiring their own little clique with its own values and ideas.

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  17. I think when you wrote “even though he’s Portuguese which makes him Hispanic” you meant to say Latin. Telling a Portuguese he is some sort of Spaniard is like telling a Scot that he is English. :0)

    Regards,
    Rui Jorge

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    2. Oh, and the first time someone called me that, back in 1986, I went over the desk at her — or would have gone, if Dan hadn’t anticipated it and grabbed me by the back of my shirt first.

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      1. Hehehe! An understandable reaction! :0) Using “Hispanic” as ethnic/racial category is really dumb, since there are Hispanics and Latinos of all colors. A “Mixed-something” category would be far more precise, and less insulting.

        Regards,
        Rui Jorge

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  18. In the US parlance, there was a three way battle between Chicano, Hispanic, and Latino. Nobody born in the US could remember the difference, so Hispanic sorta won. For a while Latino won– but that was the 90’s. I suspect Chicano is too close to Chica, which makes people angry. My theory is that Law and Order killed the latter.

    I grew up in Las Cruces as a white- appearing minority. (The truth is FAR more complicated, but never mind.) In an RPG I used to play in, we used to call the ability to recognize people and where they come from, as well as the politics of what to call people, as “dots in racism”. It did not imply the person hated others by race– unless you scored 4 and above (out of a possible 5). This has colored my view of the whole foofera.

    The US terminology has NOTHING to do with geography or common sense– but the inane little battles fought in groupthink.

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    1. The Chicano and Latino options got hung up over gender battles about the “o vs a” ending. Hispanic covers both male & female without such quibbling.

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