Burning Down The Field in Order to Save It

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

So, I thought I didn’t care about the result of the Hugos, because in making the establishment lose their collective sh*t at the “non approved” nominations, we’d proven our point: that there is a political color bar in SF/F; that the self-proclaimed elites of sf view what fans like as problematic and therefore view the supposed “fan” award as the toy of the glitterati; and that NATIONAL PUBLICATIONS marched in lockstep with the narrative of a tiny clique over an award that in the past has sometimes been given with hundreds of votes (after which display it’s pretty hard to claim that the left doesn’t have a death lock on the media. And btw nothing was weirder than being told by the National Media we were the ones wanting to drive people off the field, while nominee after nominee was hounded off the ballot by leftist who — since WE have no political color bar — were often their co-believers.)

Turned out I did.  Yesterday was even more of a victory to the Sad Puppies than I expected.  And I wish it hadn’t been.  And I’m absolutely serious about this.

I don’t mean I wish a different set of books/stories had won.  That is only to the extent that the DELIBERATE and PARTISAN slighting of such unexceptionable luminaries as Kevin J. Anderson and Jim Butcher (Yes, yes Three Body Problem.  Well, I didn’t find it worth it, but I bet you half the people who voted for it voted either under the illusion they were favoring Chicoms OR as a slam against the puppies.But quite beyond that the block voting for the clumsy Ancillary “but pronouns” would have won first place if it weren’t Australian Rules) is a blot on the face of our genre and makes me sigh and roll my eyes.

No, I mean that the display of naked bias and, more importantly, of infantile foot-stomping and the clever-dumb insults only toddlers could think brilliant BEFORE and during the presenting of the awards makes me, today, embarrassed to call myself a science fiction and fantasy writer and, for the first time in my life, wondering if it’s time we came up with another word.

I’m just going to put it out there, without further elaboration, that adults don’t put on a panel on a subject that presents only ONE SIDE of that subject and that blatantly lies (“against diversity; mostly male” etc.) in front of a national audience.  Adults, at least ones who haven’t crossed over the line of senility, don’t create an asterisk to assign to this year’s awards.  (And for the person who played so dumb in the comments as to pretend they don’t know why an asterisk is offensive — yes, that’s why you weren’t approved — that is the mark used before/after dubious sports wins.) Adults don’t create little skits about defending the Hugos from death (particularly given what they’ve done to the Hugos’ prestige) and adults DO NOT say you shouldn’t boo no-award.

Another thing adults don’t do — or at least not adults in any definition I personally know — is slate: that is blindly vote for a list provided to them.  And that’s exactly what the Puppy Kickers did.  They voted, blindly and without reading the works (remember they bragged about that all over twitter) for the PK slate, including “no award.”  All this supposedly “opposing” a slate that we told them WASN’T a slate but a barely followed list of suggestion.  (And all you have to do is look at the vote totals to see that proven.)

Another thing (and this has me giggling this morning) adults don’t do is go to a blog that has nothing to do with Vox day and start crowing in the comments how they defeated Beale.  (No, I’m not approving you either, you clever fools.  I’m shocked you have the brainpower to push buttons on a keyboard.) You know what? I have my disagreements with Beale, as in most of the things we think are diametrical opposites and I often disagree with everything he writes, including the and a.

Until today I viewed him as a mirror of the SJW posturing.  I retract that and I give him full measure of applause.  Yes, his views are still repulsive and he still makes my skin crawl as often as the Marxists do, but you know what?  At least he has a brain and uses it.  Those of you celebrating might want to take a deep breath and wonder — for just a minute — if you did anything more than what Theodore Beale wanted.  Because from where I’m sitting, the man that set out to destroy the field and prove that everyone calling themselves its leadership were mannerless and brainless children not only won last night, he won walking away. He won without DOING anything.  He won by convincing yourselves to hit yourselves repeatedly with the obvious hammers of partisanship, lack of care for quality and INTEREST in the health of the field.  And before you died, you gloated you had won.  The mind boggles.

Well done, Vox Day.  My laughter is tinged with tears because I don’t know if the field I loved will ever recover from stupidity displayed in such an open manner. I think today I prove the Valentine Michael Smith adage that sometimes you laugh because it hurts too much to cry.

NO ONE can look at those results and think the puppies supporters vote in unison for some imagined agenda.  Not even the rabid puppies supporters. I think KJA and Butcher suffered from “most beautiful girl who doesn’t get invited to prom” syndrome (I was there, once upon a time, where guys self-shot-down because “surely she’ll laugh at me.”  Yeah, I ended up having a date, but there was a reason I thought badly of myself.) I think most people thought “Oh, they’ll sweep it in a minute.  Let me lend my support to the small but deserving Three Body Problem, so the field doesn’t look like ignorant asses. And I think that’s a shame because two men with such following would have lent their luster to the award and helped rinse it from at least a decade of mostly forgettable work that toted the right party line.

That is my only lament as far as the Hugos go.

Oh, sure, my editor, Toni Weisskopf, who has done more to keep this field alive than the rest of the field combined, deserved an award.  But I don’t think she deserved the award that was preceded by the classless and infantile display we watched last night.  Also, she knows she has not only the heart and respect of the fans, but the heart and respect of every author who’s ever worked with her.  Unlike past Hugo award winners in that category, about whom former editees trade horror stories on line and out.  So, I think in a way she already has the award of being the best-loved editor/publisher in the field. No, on consideration, I’m glad that Toni wasn’t besmirched with “the asterisk Hugo” awarded by people who if they were not too old would certainly be toddlers. (Only toddlers at least lack the experience of the world to know that with their “clever digs” they’re actually making fools of themselves.)

So while I am not upset at the results (except insofar as it proves a large number of my field is running the Marxist malware to such an extent that it will vote a slate to avoid an imaginary slate) I am upset at the display of infantility or senility or perhaps roboticity in my field yesterday (Though who would program robots that way?)  No one watching that live stream — and there was a lot of it captured and it will be replayed — can imagine that those who proclaim themselves the “intellectuals” of our field have an IQ above room temperature.  And certainly no one can imagine they have an emotional maturity above that of a toddler displaying to one and all the magnificence of the turd just deposited in the middle of the floor.

Before the pre-Hugo show was done a good number of you, by email, by PM, in private groups and on the phone were yelling that next year we No Award everything and BURN IT ALL DOWN.

The temptation is great, and I know it’s what Beale wants, and OF COURSE can manipulate the SJWs into doing.

However…  However… if we burn it all down, what we’ll be doing is destroying forever the reputation and the history of the award Heinlein (among others) won.  And while the last few years have gone a long way towards doing just that, I — like my comrade at arms and brother-of-the-heart Brad Torgersen — would prefer if we could save it.

I confess that job is going to be ten times as hard now, as people in the public at large aren’t likely to understand when leadership changes and that we aren’t the same idiots on display last night.

On the other hand, did you think it would be easy?  Did you think it was just a game? The effort to bring dignity and meritocracy to science fiction is like any other battle in the cold civil war: they will bring unreasonable force to bear on it, seeing it as part of a greater battle.  They’re not afraid of destroying that particular portion of the culture in order to “save” it.  Meanwhile we’re hampered by actually wanting to save the thing we’re fighting for.  And regardless of what else happens we can be sure that people like Beale are all for setting it on fire from the other side.

Impossible, you say?  Nah.  It’s a million to one chance.  We can’t lose.  But it might take years and years and we need to keep that in mind.  We need to commit and stay strong.  Anything worth doing is going to take years of fighting.

I’m not going to cry out for “No Award” because politics is downstream from culture, and if you guys want decent governance for your grandchildren, we need to take beachhead after beachhead and restore it to health NOT allow the other side to burn it down because if they can’t have it no one can.  I couldn’t much care about the Hugo, but I care about western civilization and it’s time we started fighting for it.

So, for next year, I give you Kate Paulk running the platform of bringing in more and more voters.  MOAR.  Sad Puppies IV the Embiggenning.  (Though none of us will do more than snicker if, since Amanda and I are helping Kate, you call it “Sad Puppies IV, the Embitchening.” We know the other side is going to call it that anyway, and we say “Yeah, and how” in advance.)  We’re here, we’re not giving up and we’re prepared to fight like girls.  May G-d have mercy on their souls.

And to every one of you, my friends, This One Is For You.

1,614 thoughts on “Burning Down The Field in Order to Save It”

  1. Panic grass and feverfew. That’s the title of the chapter in “Hiroshima Diary” about how plants started growing, and really growing, in the aftermath of the 6 August 1945 bombing, never mind the claims nothing would or could grow there again for a very long time. Sure, some fools can try to burn the Hugo down. But… panic grass and feverfew, folks. Panic grass and feverfew.

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    1. I wouldn’t even call it ‘political’, sir. The behavior of the parties in question, pushing “No Award” ahead of capable, worthy candidates for each award is little more than childish and temperamental.

      Disgusting, isn’t it?

      As was said previously, they’d rather burn it all to the ground then ‘salt the earth’ so that if THEY cannot use it, no-one can. Just like a child told by an adult or teacher to ‘share’ a toy with another child who breaks/ruins the toy rather than let ANY other child have it.

      If the child doesn’t get to play with it exclusively, then nobody gets to play with it.

      Just like these folk referred to as SJWs. Someone told me that when fans started “boo”ing at the No Award ‘wins’ that one of the SJWs started telling the fans “Cheering is acceptable. Booing is not.”

      Pardon me, but this isn’t Stalinist Russia, and you’ve got NO place telling those people how to express their feelings/opinions.

      Then again, this IS a bunch of Leftists… and observation says that as far as they’re concerned, the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution only applies when they want it to.

      Disgusting.

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  2. I was public about how I didn’t care. Well, it turns out I do. They can write what they want to write, and read what they want to read, that’s always been the case.

    But I care that someone like Toni Weisskopf, who has the respect of everyone at Baen apparently, lost to No Award. That’s how I know it was political, not merit. Some have tried to say that everything we nominated was shite, but that’s bull. It was all about “putting us in our place”.

    This is your house, so I won’t say what I really want to say, but they’re just reminding me why they are absolute scum. Not because they like books I think suck, but because they will destroy anyone who thinks those books suck too, and that’s unconscionable.

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          1. Hence my restraint.

            I might blog about it a little later, in which case I’ll need to give a parental warning or something, because I can’t talk about it that much without blowing my damn top.

            And since I’m doing a podcast later today to talk about the Hugos, I probably need to calm down a bit before I get on the air.

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            1. Write a short screed, profanity laced and all. Then delete it, or ‘save’ it for later posting. Perhaps it will calm you down before your on the air appearance. It has worked for me.

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                    3. Knit some mail instead? Generally helps me on those really thorny ones when an anvil is not at hand / need to preserve my hearing for whatever is coming up “immediately”…

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                    1. It’s just time to work harder. To write more and better stories. And to prepare for next year.

                      SP3 was considerably larger than SP2. SP4 can be bigger yet. This was just a minor bump in the road. Think like Dave Freer, be a battler, a grinder. This is just the start.

                      But a key here is to not go overboard in responding to the SJB gloating. The best response is to get better, sell well, and grow our markets and fan base.

                      Let’s continue to celebrate the true diversity of SF&F. Let’s not let them win by getting bogged down again in counter-volleys. That keeps us from working and improving.

                      Just a beat up Auld Dawg’s view on this.

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                    2. Since I was “challenged” to write a story based on a comment I made on Facebook, that’s where I’m focusing my attention.

                      Our side produces good stuff. Some of it is great stuff. But the more we put out, the harder it will be to ignore.

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                    4. The award I want is steel engraving portraits of dead historical figures. Franklin and Jackson by preference, but I will not turn up my nose at those of Washington. (Yes, that’s an allusion.)

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            1. We do have some unique words. The look on women’s faces when I tell them we have multiple words that make the c-word sound flattering (although the female president of the University of Colorado did testify under oath that the c-word could be a compliment) is priceless.

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            2. I’m fluent in the dialect “snipe” and having working knowledge of the dialect “bosun’s mate”.

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    2. For me, that was the straw. Admittedly long form editor is a bit inside baseball (Short form has examples in anthologies that are a bit more explicit), but after the Grauniad libel and everything I have heard about Toni it just seems nuts. And the likely recipient barring puppies is one that called us all Nazis…ya. Class act. Torrible

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      1. At least one publisher contacted Brad apparently and asked that he NEVER put any of their editors on a public list of his again.

        I advised that he pass along that this individual have a Coke and a smile and shut the f*** up.

        Especially since this individual was knee deep in the puppy kicking.

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          2. Sounds to me like the publisher’s name should be released with an explanation that the request needs to come from the individuals themselves.

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            1. I won’t issue names, since this is second hand. If Brad stops by and wishes to fill everyone else in, he’s welcome. Or if he grants me permission to fill in the blank.

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              1. If I was Brad, if that contact was in some form of text, I would have copied it, and forwarded it (by snail mail, if in actual print) to all their editors…..

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          2. Don’t know. Don’t care.

            Just like I don’t give a flying fig what the hell this publisher wants from any of us. I’ll nominate anyone I damn well want to nominate, for any reason I want to nominate them, and if this publisher doesn’t like it then…well, this is a family blog, so fill in the blank according to your preferred finish that equates to “go away with extreme prejudice”.

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        5. Since the mere idea that anyone has to have permission to recommend someone for an award is so obscene, I’m tempted to push for an official policy of.. “no we will not ask that you be willing, we will nominate who we prefer with no warning or request. If you are nominated and wish to refuse it, that’s on you. If your friends punish you for it, that’s on them. We WILL nominate authors and editors with politics we find horrible. Get used to the idea. “

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              1. I’m sure she will.

                Brad reached out to make sure folks were OK with what was coming. He wasn’t obligated, but he’s Brad. He’s a nice guy.

                The backlash because he didn’t specifically ask each and every person if it was OK to include them on the Sad Puppies slate and a detailed discussion of what would follow the nominations disgusted me. Who he hell else gets pissed because someone nominated them?

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                    1. I’ve been playing too much of an MMORPG since I found myself wondering if you needed a healer and DPS support. ;-)

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                2. Yep. Brad tried to contact people, missed a few, the SJWs acted like rabid hyenas towards the Puppy nominees and that’s somehow Brad’s fault?

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                  1. There’s a reason I compared them to abusive spouses previously.

                    They hit and then blame someone else for their actions…just like an abusive husband does.

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    3. I know Toni Weisskopf. Or did when I was young. She tried to give me a job on the fringe of publishing (slush pile reading) and I was too immature then to take advantage of it.

      She’s a really excellent person. And a giant of an editor.

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        3. Y’all just don’t understand. To tradpub and the puppy kickers Toni is pandering to the great unwashed. She produces non literary trash, military SF, garbage that no TRUFAN would ever deign to lay eyes upon. And she has committed the ultimate sin, Baen makes money hand over fist while the tradpub and their stable of correct authors are faced with shrinking sales and the inevitable cutbacks.
          Was not there myself, but I take it that Toni did one of her most excellent Baen Traveling Road Show presentations, so Toni won. She won by exposing the audience to a different choice, stuff that today’s Hugo committee simply would not consider. They by their actions driven by their progressive socialist attitudes are doing a fine job of destroying themselves so I say let’s let them do just that.

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          3. “…Baen makes money hand over fist while the tradpub and their stable of correct authors are faced with shrinking sales and the inevitable cutbacks.”

            That’s why the SJW hijacking of the Hugos is largely a self-correcting problem. A clique composed of Big 5 publishing insiders used to dictate the nominees and winners. We just put a stop to that. They can still play “If the ayatollah can’t have it, no one can!”, but what happens when there ARE NO Big 5 publishers?

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            1. They will always exist. Marvel comics exists as a placeholder for IP of all their characters, which Disney can mine and turn into movies. Marvel could lose $100M a year on Marvel and that’d still be a rounding error. The existing large publishers are in the same boat. They might get “marvelized” but they’d still be there, which means it is not a self-correcting problem, at least not from that angle.

              It *might* correct itself if WorldCon itself runs out of money. I don’t think Tor has the resources to keep WorldCon afloat (I could be wrong here, I don’t know their finances). The WorldCon fans are dedicated, however, so even as it grows smaller they’d probably find a way. Of course this year they are bigger than ever, so I don’t think this is a self-correcting route either.

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              1. Marvel owns the IP for it’s characters. Traditional publishers do not own the IP, because tradition. I expect that some corporate idiot has, or will try to change that in new contracts. Good luck with that.

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                1. Problem is that a lot of the IP in TradPub is *boring*. That which isn’t are the folks like OS Card who are tolerated (mostly) because they’re on the correct side of the line if barely.

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                  1. OS Card on the “correct side”? Did you forget the broughaha from the LGBT crowd over “Ender’s Game”, simply because of Card’s less than fawning obeisance toward non-heterosexuals in some of his books and blog posts?

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              2. So the long-term answer is to evolve the WorldCon supporting fanbase to be prepared to support good stories even as the SF imprints of tradpub fade into status-only loss centers for their owners.

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              3. Look at the developments in NY publishing over the last few years. The Big 6 recently became the Big 5. Sales are in a nosedive. Profits are up, but that’s not due to increased readership. It’s because legacy publishers fleece their authors on eBook royalties.

                There are major differences between outfits like Marvel and Tor. I won’t even get into their IPs’ relative popularity or their parent companies’ net worth. Tor’s business model runs on razor thin margins and depends on 2 things: a lock on paper distribution and a steady influx of new writers.

                Unlike Marvel, Tor et al. rely on a single retailer for most of their sales. Barnes and Noble is in serious trouble. What happens when they fold? Not if. When.

                Tor could focus on Amazon, where indie authors already dominate the field. But that brings us to point 2. There is no reason for an author to sign an eBook only deal with a NY publisher. Amazon pays 5.6x more, lets you keep all your rights, and gives you total creative control. To survive there, the Big 5 would have to change their archaic draconian contracts, and that would only be a good thing.

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          4. I was there, she gave a great road show. One of the first things she did was show a cover with a chainmail-bikini barbarian babe and told the audience, “If you are offended by this, you are probably in the wrong place.” The entire standing-room-only audience erupted with laughter.

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          5. I was there at the Baen Traveling Road Show. When I made the comment that Ringo’s “Graveyard Skies” series was a coming of age saga, she gave me a free book.

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            1. Oh, now I want to go leave a review calling it a “wonderful coming of age tale” :-)

              It even has a rock star in there, and touches on social media… and drugs! And the vaccine issues!

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          6. This is why I think that the Tor Clique will ultimately restrict the voting pool to keep the Hugos. They have access to less fans, and they are pissing off some of their few popular writers who actually have access to fans. They truly may not grasp that if they restrict the pool enough, the award will become obviously meaningless.

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            1. It will last from inertia for a while.

              Though the best thing to do might be for Dragoncon or some such to start an award for its membership. That is, a pre-existing con.

              Though one can hardly blame them if they don’t think the grief worth it.

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            2. Sadly, I think that you are correct. They will limit the voting pool, and the pool of acceptable authors will become smaller and smaller, as those writers of an independent nature and the means of going indy do so. The Hugo will mean less and less to readers who just want ripping good stories.

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              1. The Hugo will mean less and less to readers who just want ripping good stories.

                Given it means about zero now how can it mean less?

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    4. It’s interesting that the winner of Best Novel has, near the end, the aliens’ AI protons taking the time and effort to tell the humans “You are vermin.”

      When I’m dealing with actual vermin, I don’t bother telling them they’re vermin, I just deal with them as expeditiously as possible.

      The fact that the AI stops to hurl insults at humans tells me it doesn’t quite believe that insult.

      So….

      Maybe the Trisolarians are (unintentionally) an analogy for the Hugo elites, doing everything they can to block progress until they’re in a position to achieve victory.

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      2. That’s because your vermin don’t get psychological warfare. You might if you thought it might demoralize them.

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    5. Kind of impossible to claim that “everything you like sucks!” when they had sites dedicated to voting “puppy-free slates.” NoAward.com is an actual thing. SEVERAL prominent puppy kickers promoted those lists.

      Remember, these people lie. They are never not lying. They will accuse you of doing EXACTLY what they do.

      Every time.

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      1. Best way to figure out what a Progressive is thinking is to look at what they accuse their opponents of thinking.

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    6. I am or was a Barfly of a sort. The one trait common to all Barflies might be appreciation for Baen’s stories.

      I liked Jim’s taste in stories, and his business choices. When Toni took over, I was uncertain. Everyone agreed that she was a good choice, and Jim picked her, but I was not privy to all the inside baseball.

      Her taste in stories agrees with mine at least as much as Jim’s did. Furthermore, I think I’ve seen some pretty solid business decisions.

      It is one thing to hear that there are people who so strongly hate Jim and Toni, it is another to come across this evidence.

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    7. I purchased a Hugo membership to get the reading material, as I’ve done for the past couple of years. As was true for the past couple of years, I didn’t get around to reading the vast majority of it, and I don’t watch many movies or follow any artists, so I didn’t vote.

      But – Skin Game lost to no award? One Bright Star to Guide Them lost to no award? The Parliament of Birds and Beasts lost to no award? Why Science is Never Settled lost to no award?

      I’m not even including the pieces which I think were worthy but which had aspects (e.g. traditionalist take on gender / anti-feminism in Wright’s Transhuman) which I understand could have ruined them for people who feel so strongly about issue X that it ruins a work for them when the work either assumes or argues Not X.

      Okay, clearly the awards are controlled by people who are either dishonorable or utterly lack taste.

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        1. Skin Game lost to No Award. Three Body Problem won the Novels category, but No Award still beat Skin Game.

          WTF? I’m not saying that Skin Game was necessarily better than Goblin Emperor or Three Body Problem, and it had the handicap of being part of a LONG series, but in no way was it unworthy of a Hugo Award.

          Some of the works which were No Awarded stated or simply assumed viewpoints such that I can see where people who were passionately devoted to an opposing viewpoint wouldn’t enjoy them. I don’t approve – one should at least attempt to distinguish between one’s personal taste and objective quality – but I think it’s possible to, sincerely No Award such works, e.g. Wright’s Transhuman. I listed only those a handful of works which I had knew well enough to believe it was impossible to sincerely No Award them, e.g. Wright’s One Bright Star.

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      3. Hmm – I hadn’t yet checked the award list (busy week & weekend). Good stuff lost to “No Award”? Most SF fans who don’t spend time worrying about inside baseball are going to be puzzled about this “No Award” story, where to get it, etc. :-)

        I’m thinking, if it’s presented as it sounds, we should be listing “No Award(*)” and showing the 2nd place winner as the real winner of the category. I.e. just ignore the tantrums, they mean nothing so far as selecting a book to buy.

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        1. Good *uncontroversial* stuff lost to No Award because of ~2500 people voting in two heavily overlapping slates: people voting No Award for everything, and people voting No Award above anything recommended by either Puppy Campaign. It’s not just that people penalized actively non-PC works, or even penalized known non-PC authors. No; they had to vote against everything the non-PC campaigns recommended as nominees.

          And, irony of ironies, they supposedly did this as a protest against slate voting, er, nominating.

          And to cap it all off, the business meeting changed the nominating process (for 2017 or later, or perhaps it will only take effect if confirmed in 2016) to make things MORE susceptible to slate voting. (Instead of five nominees, you will / would have five votes: use them on five different works, or spend them all on one work to support your friend / relative / purchaser of your supporting membership.)

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    8. Same thought here. Nothing had attracted me enough in any of the short categories to care one way or the other, but when the Editor Long Form category got nuked, I knew it was spite.

      And consider the inherent contradiction of voting for anything at all in the Best Novel category, yet dumping the Best Editor category. Hello, who the hell do you think edited most of the novels being voted upon??

      If Best Novel had also been nuked from orbit, IMO that would have been the end of the Hugos. You don’t recover from sinking your own flagship.

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      1. Which is one reason they pushed people to decline nominations until a couple of non-puppy works were on the ballot.

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    9. And they cheered. They hooted and hollered and whooped it up as they No Awarded Ms Weisskopf. I was so disappointed in my fellow fen. Connie Willis. Connie-she-should-know-better-Willis smirking about killing rabid puppies. Bob-everyone-I-know-opposed-the-Vietnam-war-at-Berkeley ( except for my mom, the Latina cleaning your toilets) mocking the Hare Krishnas; and way to many of the fen sheep joining in to piss on someone elses’ faith.

      Faugh.

      We who are builders up need to find something to support. Like, maybe the Award for Excellence in SF & F given at one of the real popular cons (Dragon, ECC, Salt Lake City) which has a poll tax to vote (Hugos) but the money goes to the winning writers.

      We get all the SF greats prior to the Hugo name change.

      And we hold the gasoline and torches for the gents burning down the current abomination.

      I was never so ashamed of my fellow fen. Words fail me.

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      1. I’m right there with you.

        I can accept they didn’t like the same books we do. I’m fine with that. But that’s not what happened. They made it clear they didn’t like PEOPLE because we liked them. They set out to snub people out of politically motivated SPITE.

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      2. In re creating a new award, do it an award it retroactively to everyone who received a Hugo between 1953-1993, or 1953-2003, or 1953-2000, whatever makes sense and makes our point. We keeps our tradition and makes it new.

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    11. Some have tried to say that everything we nominated was shite, but that’s bull.

      Especially since a few nominees pulled their nominations (to not be associated with Vox Day; see the Wired article) … but at least one [Annie Bellet, see same article] would have been on the ballot anyway.

      Either not everything was shite, or shite would have gotten nominated even without the Puppies.

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        1. As her publicly declared honorary uncle I sometimes take unfair advantage of the relationship to tease. I intend to use the flung carp to enrich my blueberry patch.

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            1. Fish meal makes a very good plant fertilizer. And though the soil does have a bit of an aroma it doesn’t seem to affect the berries themselves.

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            2. Only if you soak them in it. (We won’t mention what organically grown produce should smell like based on that theory.)

              Seriously, you can buy fish emulsion in gardening stores for use as fertilizer.

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                1. Cow and horse manure make pretty good fertilizer. But the meticulously designed, carefully (with soil samples and a weather eye to what’s expected year ’round) administered, artificial stuff beats the pants off organic. By a loooong shot. Take it from this farmer’s boy.

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  4. George Martin showed up at Ace’s promising a 30,000 word essay later today. Now I don’t know about anyone here, but I couldn’t write that much in one day if my life depended on it. So, yeah, just a leeetle pre-planning.

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    1. You have fallen prey to AoSHQ fallacy number one: Never believe the names that people post under. One of the favorite hobbies over there is sockpuppeting. That is where you write something outrageous, and then have it posted by a name that makes it even funnier. For example, let’s say that someone were to show up here and calmly explain why the Puppies had a great idea, and then the post was signed by a noted Puppy Kicker. That is Ace’s place in action. I think the person in question was mocking the enormous amount of blathering that GRRM has wasted defending the indefensible. Anyway, it is not something you see a lot of on other sites, but it is probably the number one source of amusement there.

      It is incredibly sad how the Hugo’s turned out and we should all mourn the current status quo.

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      3. That’s why you’ll see the alphanumeric string after a commenter’s name, it’s a unique hash value generated out of the poster’s IP address. It’s supposed to prevent posting under another person’s usual handle.

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    2. 30,000 words is five hours of nonstop typing for a fast typist, with no breaks for thinking about what to say or anything else. So, yeah, that’s not a reaction but a preaction (totally a word).

      Like

      3. Well having read his piece, it appears to have been mostly prewritten. He just had to tweak it here and there to get it to specific reactions.

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  5. To be honest, in last few years at least I hold the awards just like Oscars as signs I would dislike the piece. However even if we get slated for future, the puppy list is award and recommendation enough for me. I got enough of conceit pieces when I was in hs

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    1. yes. I’ve looked on best picture as a mark that I probably won’t like a film. Once upon a time it wasn’t so bad but since the mid 90’s it has gone more and more into uninteresting films

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      1. Ah, the Oscars…
        The only ones that tend to actually be accurate are the technical ones- less studio politics involved. Otherwise, you get:
        1) Pretentious, overacted, over directed and painfully slow but critically loved wannabe artfilms that nobody saw, but the hip kids said they loved to prove they are ahartist, and not the Big Hollywood whores they actually are.
        2) The “Oops” award that goes to the director who’s film should have won, but lost to #1 a year or so before. See also Scorsese, Martin.
        And, almost by accident, you get #3- a win for an movie that actually deserves it.

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        1. If the Academy were interested in bolstering its,reputation, they would arrange a five year gap between elibability and voting. That would give the occasional nal i ternational embarassment like THE LAST EMPEROR (a historical film about the last Chinese Emperor done with the Communist Chinese having script approval? Why not simply give that year’s award to TRIUMPH OF THE WILL) tim eto self-destruct.

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          1. I like the idea of a five-year wait before eligibility. Not only does it give fads five years to die down, it also gives an unpublicized work five years to be noticed, and it means that five years after a series starts you can nominate book one (which should decrease the difficulty of nominating books in series, though certainly it’ll remain a complication.)

            If something isn’t still memorable in five years, it probably shouldn’t get a Hugo, so the only downside I see is the difficulty in implementation.

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            1. Won’t work on the Hugo until we recapture it. Could work on a new award. Kinda like the idea of a new one, but my Lady has many health problems, so it won’t be on me.

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            2. Falls in between the Hugo and the Retro Hugo — though I will note that with the Retro Hugo the problem can be that later work can overshadow the question of whether Joe Author or Jack Artist really was the best of that year.

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              1. That overall is an idea I have liked. Even if you just have a 6 month period so fans actually can read books. For example 3BP was published late in cycle so less read, plus the peroliod would be coolng off for hyped stuff.

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                    5. Shucks, why not just use a pressure sensitive target to light concentric LED rings? Set it so the pressure determines number of rings lighting, intensity and duration of lighting.

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          2. I used to occasionally use my ships to spell out “Hi”.

            I’d lose, but it was an easy way to maintain my reputation of making bad jokes.

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  7. Looking at the sheer number of SJW arsonists who swept in at the last minute to burn down everything they couldn’t take with them, and compared to the nominee numbers, I’m not sure anyone can pull it off next year. I don’t think we can grow that fast. There are a LOT more barbarians inside the walls of fandom than we were counting on.

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    2. The thing that will hurt is the unspoken rule regarding purchase of membership for others has been breached. Never mind GG being brought in. It may burn for time to come

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        1. Pull the Gamer Gate people in. It would be a good thing if more gamers read more written science fiction, anyway. I bet you that they’d gravitate to military sf and new space opera — that’s what a heck of a lot of science fiction games are about (oddly enough, there is a paucity of games about getting beaten up by gin-soaked blue-collar Americans, go fig!).

          Liked by 1 person

          1. Well, look at the heavy hitter of WoW. Valid fantasy. And while it may not be the giant of literature, it is better than the midgets winning ATM. There really should be a video game story genre

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            1. IMO in the longest of long runs, science fiction and fantasy (like books in general) will go interactive. There’ll be a text-only version but then there will also be versions where you get to (say) join the Galactic Patrol or be one of Honor Harrington’s bridge bunnies or defend Minas Tirith against the forces of Sauron (already half -true because of the Middle Earth online computer games) or whatever. The main reason this can’t happen yet is that the AI isn’t yet near enough sophisticated to allow full and free character interaction. Books and games will merge.

              So why not draw in the Gamer Gaters? The very fact that the Tor Clique made the accusation tells me that they are terrified at the possibility, and with good reason — if most gamers read science fiction and fantasy (and most probably already do to some extent) they would utterly swamp the Tor Clique (and all the Puppies of all persuasions, too, but then we ALREADY write stuff they’d like, so we have less to fear).

              This would leave the Tor Clique with two options: either accept defeat or turn the Hugos into the Tor Books Upturned Nose Award by changing the voting rules. Either one is a win, ultimately, because in the second case we create new awards which gain status because they’re given to genuinely good and fun books.

              And we get a leg up on the future.

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              1. We’re actually already there, in small ways. There’s an app called “Zombies, Run!” which ties a tracker of your running pace to a storyline, and only lets you know what’s happening as you walk/run. (With occasional zombie attacks that you have to physically outrun, in real life. Not random, either, but tied to the storyline.)

                It was funded by kickstarter, and if it’s successful enough, I wonder what else enterprising writers and coders will come up with?

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                2. That’s almost enough to make me want to get a smart phone. Holy crap if that had been around when I was a kid my parents would never have seen me because I’d be running through the woods all day, even more than I already was.

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                3. That…almost makes me *want* to run, and my usual response to the idea is “Only if chased, and then it depends on what’s chasing me”…

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                  1. I get enough exercise at work (job #1 and job #2, not so much #3). If it’s audio, I could see going about with one earbud in, listening and working…

                    Come to think of it, that might not be a bad way to pass the time. Have to slack off on it some on job #2 though, as that requires actual brainpower.

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              2. Game stories and book stories are very different in many respects. In a novel “railroading” is known as good plotting. Allowing minor characters (alias NPCs) to save the day a few times can be fun, or even giving them entire scenes and plotlines where the main characters appear not at all. Not to mention that players identify with their characters much more readily than they do with a novel’s characters, which both requires more characterization in the novel and allows it to range farther.

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                1. In books one goes whither the author has blazed the trail, except for those choose your own adventure books that were popular in the 1980’s.

                  In video games that’s a rail shooter, where your path is locked in. Some rail shooters allow some movement off the axis of the path, some only allow rotating around to fire at enemies that are placed in fixed positions or follow their own rails. In all variants of the type, where there are pauses in the path, you only have a fixed time to take whatever actions are available before you’re booted down the rail to the next location, or you get killed and the game ends – or you shove in more money to continue.

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                  1. But if you read a novel and the character wanders around aimlessly, you would probably object that it’s pointless.

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            2. “There really should be a video game story genre”

              Amen to that! The storyline for the Mass Effect trilogy was an amazing piece of milscifi/space opera, and something I consider in my top five favorite science fiction pieces, hands down…

              And many of the WoW tie-in novels are quite good fantasy novels.

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              1. Especially if the award is for the story. Part of why I think it makes more sense to further split Hugo’s. Too many niches

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          3. Gamers are a strange lot, remember, GG is a lot like you all, a response to the massive unfairness they see in their hobby. Too many gamers out there think it ways that line up with the puppy kickers and GG is a just a small, but motivated group of individuals. They’re small, but they make a lot of noise and most of the time they’re right. Also, the gaming industry is in just as ugly a state as the publishing industry. For example after they fired Hideo Kojima someone at Konami thought it would be a good idea to remove his name from the cover of the latest installment of the Metal Gear series.

            It’s really two sides of the same coin.

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            1. GG is not small, at least not in comparison to “publishing world.” Let us say “publishing world” has 5000 people in it, from all sides. I’ve seen estimates of GG at 400k+.

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        2. IIRC, It was more like the Puppy-Kickers screeched at how it was all a GG plot and GG went “bwa?” and looked a bit closer at it all.

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          1. That was my impression as well. The Gamersgate folks weren’t involved apart from a couple of overlapping members, but some of them noticed the yelling and screaming.

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          2. Exactly. After the nominations came out, the (Former) Toad of Tor screeched on Twitter that the only reason the SP/RP nominations swept several categories was because of #GamerGate…and that attracted the attention of the last people in the world they wanted engaged with this/

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            2. Similar to Streisand Effect – a real-world phenomenon, therefore one the SJWs simply CANNOT deal with.

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            3. Even got an amusing bit of fanart depicting the GG mascot looking at a puppy and wondering why everyone says it belongs to her. :-)

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      2. Gamergate was not brought in. That was one of the “big lies” that Puppy opponents were telling this time around. There were a few people who GG pays attention to that were pro-Puppies, but none that I know of made any great effort to bring in Gamergate as a movement to vote in the Hugos.

        That could change this year. I would urge that the subset of the Evil League of Evil running Sad Puppies 4 consider reaching out to Gamergate. But if you do, a few things to remember:

        1) Gamergate has no leaders. There are a core group of people that a fair percentage of GGers will listen to, but there is no organization, and no central control, and never will be. There are a few of those “most people in GG will listen to” people such as Total Biscuit who are already supporting Puppies. If the leaders of Sad Puppies 4 want to reach out to Gamergate, I will be happy to compile a list of such people (I’m not one).

        2) Gamergate is not right-wing. Gamergate is anti-authoritarian. It just so happens that the authoritarians we are dealing with (this time) come from the left. The majority of GGers are not going to be receptive to “win this slice of the culture war for the right to save America” (some will, of course). However, nearly all GGers will sympathize with a bunch of people being told they are having wrongfun.

        3) Gamergate does not care if their opponents call them: fuckwits, a hate mob, harassers, idiots, manchildren, misogynists, neckbeards, nazis, neo-nazis, pedophiles, racists, sexists, shits, sick fucks, stalkers, terrorists, bullies, perverts, abusive, assholes, asswipes, bigots, bullies, cowards, creepy, crooks, dumb, terrorists, homophobes, transphobes, rape-enablers, and “worse than ISIS”. No one in Gamergate is going to go clutching their pearls because someone at Tor accuses them of being “neo-nazis”. We have been hearing every one of these insults for nearly a year now. If you call Gamergate “neo-nazis” a more likely response is an avalanche of nazi-themed anime porn.

        4) Some of Gamergate is anonymous; some of us are out. People’s livelihoods are regularly threatened. So respect GGers who want to stay anonymous.

        5) Gamergate is ethical; but not polite. We don’t dox people or send death threats or rape threats (despite the constant stream of lies told about us). We will, however, trashtalk, shitpost, and mock our opponents mercilessly.

        6) Gamergate has no central forum. Gamergate is a twitter hashtag, it’s a subreddit (KotakuInAction), an 8chan forum, hundreds of bloggers, and about a dozen core sites. Again, if the people running Sad Puppies 4, are interested, I will be happy to provide all the information I can here.

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        1. One tack to take might be to let them know this is a response to the Powers That Be telling fans “You can’t do that!”

          Seriously. When has telling fans “You can’t do that!” ever made them stop doing whatever “that” may be?

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          1. Yep, Sarah is only right-wing in the anti-authoritarian aspect. She is politically conservative in that she wants to go back to the Constitution as written, which is itself fairly anti-authoritarian. She is NOT socially conservative, and while some of us Huns (like myself) are, most have a very live and let live libertarian outlook, regardless of personal beliefs.

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            1. I’d happily be live and let live. Each year they insist on making me care. If they won’t just let me live I will eventually return the favor.

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        3. 1) Great. When fighting SJWs and their Alinsky style tactics, don’t give them targets to isolate.
          2)Yes you are. Everybody is right wing unless you are vocally and loudly following the narrative of the moment as dictated by the SJW central committee.
          3)You shouldn’t care. On the other hand, the SJWs do and that can be used against them. Look, as we’ve discovered, all that talk is projection. Make note of what they say about YOU and then look at what they say. They say you are racists, I can guarantee that race is a big part of how THEY think of people. As for cowards and bullies, have you really looked at how they behave.
          4) SJWs believe in personal destruction all the time every time. Prudence is mandated. So is courage. Sometimes you have to take the bullet for the team.
          5) Yes, yes, keep doing that. The SJWs can dish it out, but they can’t take it.
          6)When dealing with the left, you never want to concentrate. Until you attack. As it says in Sun Tsu, be formless.

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        4. I meant how after noms GG was blamed. I am all for GG to join up. Wonder if a game can qual as long form.. Halo or Wow should qualify under the WoT exemption.

          I am typing from phone so Hope I am making sense and not making our evil mistress’ live more difficult than it is…

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        5. Hell, I’d just be happy to get a few more readers addict- err, introduced to some great books. So the authors of said books make more money, and write faster. Because I have series I want finished. Yes, this is a totally selfish desire, but I do not care. *grin*

          From what I’ve seen and heard of GG, that’s pretty spot on. And I will add, SP this year wasn’t ideologically pure either. There were authors, I’m told, who had politics from all over the spectrum. Personally, I don’t much care when I’m reading what the author’s personal politics are any more than I care how tall they are or if they like green olives over black.

          The other side now, *they* have requirements. Can’t be nominated by the wrong folks (us), have to be vocally supportive of their side at all times, gotta preach that social justice out loud and in their stories… And must attack anyone associated with “Puppies.”

          My take is, Sad Puppies read, nominate, and vote for ass-kicking, intriguing, all-around fun stories. We vote what we like. And we’re vilified for it. If any GG folks want a little hate on their plate, come on and join the SP folks. There’s enough for all! *chuckle*

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      3. I’ve never heard of any rule spoken or unspoken against buying memberships for others. Indeed in the past for conventions that relied on early subscriptions for seed money it was quite common to see Jane Doe followed by a guest of Jane Doe perhaps repeated. Sometimes these were family members or folks yet to be drafted to share a huckster’s tables and other times it was a triumph of hope over experience that by the time of the con the person paying would have a date. In all cases the con was grateful for the seed money.

        I have also seen abuses in political infighting in clubs. Very often in groups that were in transition from fan dominated with no money issue to fans who were equally part of an industry.

        When the Apppaloosa Horse Club was transitioning from fans of the horse who went on trail rides to a breeder’s association of folks who were in it for the money (though also fans or they would have been something else, AQHA perhaps but certainly something else) memberships were first bought for friends and family members with their concurrence and eventually taken out in the names of people who weren’t even told there was a membership in their name.

        The United States Chess Federation has gone through periods – to my knowledge starting with the Fischer boom but I don’t doubt going back to Marshall and New York City political factions – when the national association United States Chess Federation mirrored some of the Federation Internationale des Echeques politics (Kasperov against the world).

        When drag racing was transitioning from an amateur participant sport to a spectator sport the National Hot Rod Association expelled – more politely dropped – individual and car club members in favor of strip operators driven by a profit motive.

        The National Rifle Association had its member’s revolt at Cincinnati including folks given memberships to qualify for various things.

        Agreed that media is a large part, perhaps by dollars the dominant part (and a successful game brings in as much money as a blockbuster movie) of SF and so fandom these days – as has been noted Dragon Con a media con has a lock on Labor Day and the various Comic Cons bring a mega convention to every region of the country. Where the subject matter, and the money, overlaps so much the people will overlap.

        Given that my own politics are small l libertarian – and when they were large L registered in Colorado the wine and cheese was always in Boulder just as Yale was once and may still be a haven for their own Party of the Right – so too I see the puppy issues as political.

        The puppy supporters, Evil League et. al. are the good guys and the SJW are totalitarian. Political may be my bias but that’s how I see the leaders and so the movement.

        For those who see money at the root of everything the major actors are arguably all in publishing (promotion) to include self-publishing (promotion).

        Some of the loudest voices in the SJW side have a history of rational ignorance and following the pack when it sounds good.

        It’s going to be a struggle to move a lot of people – many of whom I think voted no award in a plague on both your houses meaning (confusing by making it possible the same vote came from different, perhaps multiple, motives) – to human wave.

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        2. clark e myers wrote “…whom I think voted no award in a plague on both your houses meaning…”

          I was at Sasquan for four days and talked with upwards of 20-25 people (anecdotal, I know) and saw no evidence of this. Almost every “no awarder” I talked with was convinced all the Puppy nominations were the result of a slate and slates are the most evilist evil thing ever, and the only way to get justice was to “no award” those categories. Most didn’t even read the works. Again, totally anecdotal here, just another set of eyeballs on the ground.

          Interestingly, most did NOT get this information from any pro/anti puppy website, but from “other media”, including trade journals (stuff that the ALA puts out, for example). Asking them about Locus “recommendation lists” or pointing out that by nuking a category you nuke any non-puppies in that category produced some interesting responses, including one guy who (this is second-hand info, talking with a fellow Puppy on Sunday AM) said words to the affect that, “Gee, if someone had put it that way, I would have voted differently.”

          My personal feeling after getting off the internet and actually talking with people for four days is that you are not up against 3000+ hardened SJWs, you are up against 500 or so SJWs and a lot of “moderates” who don’t do a lot of digging for information. Did I say that diplomatically enough?

          Of course, YMMV.

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          1. “a lot of “moderates” who don’t do a lot of digging for information”

            Isn’t the traditional term for that “useful idiots”

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    3. Two pronged atatck; we keep trying to rescue the Hugos and we also look around for awards that are worth winning, amd publicise them.

      The Hugos haven’t been as thoroughly tainted as, say, the Nobel prizes for Peace and Literature.

      Yet.

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      1. Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does the work. –Mark Twain

        Awards are the thunder. Lightning is the readers.

        (I think I’m ripping off Tom Simon for the applicability of Mr. Twain’s words.)

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    4. There were about 2,500 true Puppy kickers. Around 500 Rabid Puppies, 1200 Sad Puppies. I was surprised the SPs outnumbered the RPs by so much.

      Note the best they could do after all that campaigning (including the publicity campaign, the slander, the libel, the buying votes for, um, “deserving but financially disadvantaged fans”) was a little over 50%, followed by burning their own award to the ground. What are they going to do for an encore? That’s their peak unless they start manufacturing votes.*

      This was round 3, part 2. The momentum is all on the Puppy side. They gave it their best shot and had to sabotage their own awards to “win” one battle.

      ==

      * This is actually a concern of mine. The WorldCon site and process is so badly outdated that the main issue to registering a number of fake profiles would be getting a few hundred unique Visa prepaid cards to pay for the membership fee. I’d guesstimate a total cost at a little over $50 per vote, less if the vote counters are utterly clueless about validation (always possible with volunteer orgs) or give a wink and a nod (sadly possible after last night’s fiasco of a presentation show). Not within the budget of most sane people, but an OCD trust funder, person sponging off wealthy friends, or game show winner with money to blow could easily shift the balance. For one year, at least.

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      1. Or a publishing house. That could do it for a long while. Then again, all the publishing houses that would do such a thing are already at the bleeding edge of financial ruin, the tens of thousands needed to pull it off could push them over.

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        1. Yeah, it’s not a financial win under any circumstances. You’d have to be somewhat unbalanced to attempt it. But it is easily achievable if you have the money to buy the gift cards.

          Yeah, I probably qualify as unbalanced for thinking it up in the first place. However, in my defense, (a) website security is part of what I do for a living, and (b) I’m not ubalanced enough to throw thousands (or hundreds, or dozens) of dollars down that rat hole.

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          1. Of course, if a publishing house does this it is a business expense and reduces taxable income while providing a nice perq for staffers and low level employees (including interns.) Taking a week-long all expenses paid working-vacation in the Pacific NW on the company expense account isn’t the worst duty one could be assigned.

            Doing it in Kansas City in August may be less attractive.

            Whether the publishing house loses money may not even matter because it allows the corporate ownership to shield profits found elsewhere in its business model.

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            1. For a publicly held company, that’s the kind of crap that will get you put in jail.

              For a privately held one, you barely have the money for toilet paper, let alone an award that doesn’t affect sales.

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                1. Exactly — “Product Promotion” is a box into which an awful lot can be shoved.

                  I don’t think Alex has much experience with corporate accounting practices; attendance at industry trade shows is a legitimate corporate expense. while declining to attend would virtually constitute managerial malfeasance.

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                2. Speaking as a small business owner, I have plenty of experience with gaming the expensing system. “This trip to Disney World? If I started a Disney blog, featured advertising, maybe wrote a book… Tax deduction? Hmmm.”

                  What I’m saying is that creating memberships for either not-real people or people whose personal info you’ve bought in order to game an award is not the kind of activity you are going to ever want to become public. Especially if you have an owner(s) who are unaware of what you’re doing and a scintilla of ethics.

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                  1. I don’t think anyone is accusing TOR of creating memberships for either not-real people or people whose personal info they’ve bought in order to game an award; I think the claim is that TOR makes a habit of buying lots of memberships for its staffers and “reliables” (for example, by making voting memberships a premium for, oh, say, people who had been lively and welcome contributors on the TOR boards online) who could, under the prior process, go a long way to tilting the awards,

                    Given the way in which various TOR editorial staffers have slandered some of their writers and (potential) customers I doubt anybody here will argue in support of their having a scintilla of ethics, as generally understood.

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                    1. *head desk*

                      Back to what I said originally that started all this… would be incredibly easy to sign up a large number of non-existent/unaware people and vote for them. No, this is not something a company would want to expense.

                      End.

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          1. As was pointed out above you could expense it.

            That being said, for a publishing house in a given genre to pay for its employees to go to the “biggest” international gathering for that genre is a legitimate business practice.

            So, I expect all Tor employees to start coming to DragonCon each year. I mean, they want the biggest gathering of potential customers, right?

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            1. I can understand to a point, but for a fan award to be voted on by persons paid by publisher, especially when the publisher has been well represented by the award just seems wrong.

              May be allowed but so was every single puppy action

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              1. Oh, I think if you have a book from your house up recusing yourself is a reasonable expectation.

                I also think modifying policy this year to increase memberships bought shows bad intent.

                I also think for memberships to meet the business intent they need to be attending memberships and should have expensed travel, lodging, and meals. That is, they should show all the markers of genuine business trips. If they fail that test I would expect auditors, both internal and external, to have lots of questions.

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                1. Yes. I can see the business purpose and even the use of membership as fringe benefits but am hesitant about allowing voting with it. I could see a corporate membership that did not get voting pins unless individual purchased. Since we often see projection from the pk’s I was wondering since a lot of the pk’s said vd was self promoting if this was part of the previous dominance of this house, esp in categories with 40 vote margins or winners

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                  1. I’m somewhat surprised there isn’t a non-voting business membership for publishers to send staff while having books up for the awards.

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                    1. There is a cynical and Occam answer. After the last weekend I will break rules and say the cynical one that that would make stuffing votes by said house more difficult

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                    2. Considering some of the reported vote totals from “pre-puppy” Worldcons, perhaps they figured that without allowing publisher voting they wouldn’t reach a quorum?

                      If the Hugo is to truly be a “fan” award, neither publishing house employees nor other industry professionals (e.g., writers, cover artists, etc.) should be accorded a vote. This especially applies to con guests, attending on the con dime and thus not paying for their privilege of voting in the Hugo.

                      That really ought be on the agenda for the business meeting at an upcoming Worldcon.

                      The mind giggles at the idea of mandating a “fan literacy” test as a requirement for Hugo voting. I can see a list of twenty SF MCs in Column A and the works in which they appeared for Column B with a requirement to match them. Multiple choice questions requiring identification of a writer with works written (Robert Heinlein wrote: a: Childhood’s End b: Harry Potter and the Slide-rule of Doom c: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress d: 50 Shades of Grey e: all of the above) would be easy enough to grade. I think it would be cruel to require any con committee to read through and grade short answer or essay questions, but maybe a fill in the blank section for plot summaries?

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              2. “May be allowed but so was every single puppy action”

                It is a matter of great annoyance to me that I am unable to find a Youtube link for a single specific line in the movie M*A*S*H:

                Colonel Blake: [General Hammond is yelling in their direction] Radar!
                Radar: Sir?
                Colonel Blake: What’s the general trying to say?
                Radar: He’s just been informed as to the identity of our, uh, Spearchucker. His ringer spotted our ringer.
                Colonel Blake: [shouts to the general] How do ya like them apples, Charlie?

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          2. That would be a few dozen. Which, in years past, would have been sufficient to logroll. Not so much any more.

            Now you’re looking at 500-1000 minimum.

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      2. but an OCD trust funder, person sponging off wealthy friends, or game show winner with money to blow could easily shift the balance. For one year, at least.

        Or a couple of annoyed banksters.

        Ever wonder how many sci-fi fans wind up working at hedge funds. I know at least one former International Magic the Gathering Champion has: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Finkel

        It’s the kind of field run by math geeks.

        Find the right ones who remember Heinlein et al as a kid and get them on board.

        One side might have to break themselves trying to buy something as lack of financial resources is by-product of socialist thinking.

        Anyone want to take odds Vox Day knows one or more equivalents of Mr. Finkel? His is numbering his minions for a reason which he hinted at when the EHP (who uses a name that abbreviates to Evil High Priest anyway) and 4/6 came out. He’s made oblique comments about being accused of paying for memberships which the PK did.

        If the RP find the right bankster fan buying everyone at DragonCon in two weeks a WorldCon 2016 membership isn’t out of the question. I don’t think it is going on but it wouldn’t surprise me (if on a smaller scale) either.

        Like

        1. If Vox’s goal is to torpedo the awards, why would he spend his own money (especially on that scale) to do it? Seems like he did just fine getting the CHORFS to do it on their own without any investment.

          Like

          1. 1. I suspect, if he is doing it, he is spending someone else’s money.
            2. He needs to control noms tightly to get them to spend their own money.
            3. Reagan military build up…a “here bankrupt yourself before we even get started” strategy.

            Remember, I don’t know he is doing it but read my speculation. You said, “especially on that scale”.

            About 6,000 total votes were cast. That’s $300,000. I suggested he could find a hedge funder or two. For 2+ hedge funders that’s a lark.

            Like

      3. Which is why there’s a troll over at Larry’s and Brad’s who’s basically saying “Go for it next year, but in 2017 our new rules to keep wronfans out will be in place, so suck it.”

        Like

      4. “Not within the budget of most sane people, but an OCD trust funder, person sponging off wealthy friends, or game show winner with money to blow could easily shift the balance. For one year, at least.”

        We do have tweets of Arthur “Jeopardy” Chu trying to buy anti-Sad Puppy votes last year (2014).

        Like

        2. Let’s give Andrew Marston (“Yama”) the Hugos for a year! He would get some truly awful stories the award. Stuff that would make “If You Were A Dinosaur, My Love” look like Shakespeare by comparison! :D

          Liked by 1 person

          2. “Let’s give Andrew Marston (“Yama”) the Hugos for a year! He would get some truly awful stories the award. Stuff that would make “If You Were A Dinosaur, My Love” look like Shakespeare by comparison! :D”

            Mother of God, now THAT would be a horror show.

            Like

    5. Enthusiasms are fickle, media are less likely to push the LIVs, truth percolates out (though slowly) so likely there’ll be fewer last-minute barbarians.

      Like

  8. Well, in accord with the soundtrack, this result has solidified my leanings toward focusing on reading primarily indie publishing. I’ll be buying only Baen and indie SFF. I’ll read Tor and the others from the library, but I won’t lose sleep over what they don’t stock.

    Three-body problem … is it just me or did anyone else read that thing solely from determined integrity? I found myself wishing both MCs would just go away and die. And the conclusion … humans will be the new cockroaches in the universe … really, they want me to PAY for that? Really?

    Liked by 1 person

    1. So many of the recent winners and nominees are coffee table books. You buy them and show them off so that the right people think you’re one of the right people, but nobody actually READS them.

      Consider how nearly every article that praises Ancillary Noun praises the Pronoun trick, but never talks about the story, or the abysmal writing. (Character says something telling or biting or really cool, followed by an infodump giving the background necessary for someone to realize that it was telling or biting or really cool. Mid conversation, mind you.)

      Liked by 1 person

      1. It seems most of these stories base around conceits and seem like they are written trying to be dull and tedious.

        No offense to any Who Fans, but that series sits right under Tor on my ‘probably a dick’ list. The idea that Letters to Gardner was worse than those books is just insane

        Liked by 1 person

        1. I’m pretty sure Doctor Who would like to be a dick by our lights, but the stories just won’t let them sometimes. Danny Pink’s speech in the finale, for example, plus the cameo ex machina, undercut ALL the Doctor’s snark.

          Like

      2. What’s funny is that the pronoun business is old hat in science fiction. I’ve seen it done in stories from the 1950’s and 1960’s with hermaphroditic or otherwise oddly-sexual races. Just as with religious-bigotry fueled misogyny and sterility plagues in The Handmaid’s Tale, a really old idea which the genre never dropped has been “invented” by someone out of ignorance of the field, and then trumpeted by other idiots who either want to pretend that it’s new or really are just as ignorant as the author who “invented” it.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. But you see, all the old masters of SF are bigoted old white men who can’t possibly have anything worthwhile to say, besides, old books are too hard to find, so the current fandom is proud of their ignorance of their past.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. The thing is, they don’t read with any DEPTH. They recycle stuff that’s 20 years old (ten is a bit of an exaggeration) because they don’t read anything from that far back that isn’t required reading. So they keep trotting out tripe that sank like a stone two decades ago…and for excellent reason.

            Like

          2. Ten years hell. They made an award winning musical out of a 98 year old opera about living the bohemian lifestyle in which the bohemian lifestyle hadn’t changed a damn bit. The only update was AIDS replacing tuberculous.

            And it was so old that it was a stereotype when Puccini wrote it.

            Like

            1. Charles Stross, Rich Horton and Jeffrey Carver. Oh and Doug Farren, who was on a couple of self-publishing panels and did alright on them, but I don’t recall him having anything to say on the Space Opera panel. But I left about 2/3 through to go to John Wright’s reading. Which they double-booked, so he ended up giving part of it in the corner of the hall.

              Liked by 1 person

              2. JCW reading was on the con app. (Grenadine in 303 B) I arrived early to find another group setting up and a pencilled in PC Hodgell by … Tony Daniel? Keep in mind that the con got late word that JCW would be attending so I’m of two minds what really happened. The lady volunteering at info seemed genuinely certain of the Grenadine app info, and genuinely shocked when I told her about scrounging seating to do the reading in the hall.

                I am morally certain that some of the con-runners were two-faced PKs… but not all. And no innocent persomln reacts well to false accusations of duplicity.

                That said, those claiming JCW is a subpar writer created a dog character that was spot on – and it turns out he’s never owned a dog.

                Like

          1. I’d write that crossover if not for the fact it would require me to read Ancillary Noun, which would take up time I will not be able to get refunded.

            Like

        3. I don’t know, but Ancillary Noun sounds boring and passive. Maybe Ancillary Verb has some action?

          Like

      5. Sometimes someone will tell me about this great new movie they just saw. I’ll ask them what it as about. When all they can talk about is the special effects, I know it’s not anything I’d care to sit through.

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      6. That book was maddening. I could hear the screams of a good story waiting to get out if only the Author would let it. Poor little story. (Yes, I feel sorry for the story that should have been told but wasn’t. I’m Odd. The story that was told went last on my vote list.)

        Like

    2. I had pretty much the same reaction to Three Body Problem. I disliked both MCs, and the whole thing felt slow and boring to me. Some of the technical ideas were interesting. But apparently a lot of people liked it. So it’s clearly a matter of taste. Which is why having just one “best” work is kind of…not meaningful.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Absolutely true. It’s also worth mentioning that TBP was (a) interesting simply insofar as there’s a novelty to ‘Hey, I wonder what Chinese SF is like?, and (b) totally unconcerned with Western culture-war issues (I’m sure it speaks to all sorts of Chinese cultural issues that may have gone right over my head). Combine that with (c) Vox Day!, and it shouldn’t be surprising that it finished first in what I consider a fairly weak pool to pick from. No, that’s not a knock on either Skin Game or Dark Between the Stars, but I think it’s genuinely quite hard to get people to vote for a book that’s a part of a series as “Best Novel” for reasons completely unconcerned with politics.

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      2. I found it interesting partially because of the historical background and because there were some cool ideas in it. Makes me wonder how much of the plodding pace people are complaining about was a translation issue and how much of it is just the nature of Chinese fiction writers…also, I think people are misinterpreting the cop’s line about the cockroaches, but that could be just me.

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        1. Quite possible. The Chinese tends to have a lot more in the implicit than the explicit mode and that really does not translate well (and there were some very obvious translation errors so I do wonder what was lost to translation.)

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          1. Translation problems? Have you read “The Wizard-Masters of Peng-Shi Angle”? Or the Chinese title “Peng-shi Jiao di Wu Si”. Published in Pohlstars, it’s a translation back to English of the Chinese translation of Pohl’s “The Wizards of Pung’s Corners”.

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            1. No, but I’ve read similar things from in the English>Russian>English set. My advantage there is I actually read Russian so can see where they might have gone wrong in the initial translation. I’ve done translations. As linguistics go, extracting essential information from a foreign language is the base ‘easy’ stage. Translating non-fiction accurately is the next step up in ‘ouch my brain’. Translating fiction is flat out hard. Translating Poetry requires you be a linguist AND a poet of close to the skill of the original.

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            2. Yes, but that wouldn’t have “cultural translation” issues, would it? Which I think is what Wyrdbard means.
              As a translator and someone who grew up in another culture, I didn’t interpret her comment as an insult, simply an allusion to the difficulty in bridging cultures.
              Took me about ten years to stop writing Portuguese stories in English, by which I mean stories aimed at a Portuguese audience, no matter where set. It was hard. And Portugal is a Western tradition country AND I grew up reading British and English work.

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        2. Part of the reason I enjoyed it beyond some cool ideas (and I did not find the end that nihilistic – yes, the humans were insulted as cockroaches, but plenty were NOT giving up…) was the flavor – it reminded me of the roundabout way of storytelling that was part of Cordwainer Smith’s stories

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    3. I saw the results this morning and thought they probably thought they proved something. Well, as far as I can tell, all they’ve proved is that they are willing to poison the well and salt the fields. So? We knew that already.

      They have sown the wind. Let them live with the results.

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      1. That was supposed to post elsewhere.

        I read and enjoyed the Three Body Problem. I had considerably more trouble with the self interpreting code than the proton supercomputer. And I liked the fact that the environmentalists were the bad guys. Mostly well meaning bad guys, but still.

        But the Goblin Emperorgot my vote.

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        1. Yep, the Goblin Emperor got my vote also, I won’t say I liked the Three Body Problem, but I thought it was a decent read, better than anything else nominated, so it got 2nd on my ballot.

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          1. I voted it 2nd as well. However, I knew that I wouldn’t have time to do all the reading in full because of projects at work, plus some things in the package were only excerpts, so for the novels I only read the first 50 or 60 pages and voted largely on how much I wanted to keep reading.

            I’m a Hugo voting newbie, though. I’ll try to do better next year. :)

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        2. One amusing thought is that people were voting for it because they *thought* lao Liu was in favor of the Chinese Communists. 3BP starts with an extended condemnation of the Cultural Revolution — and would be a fine allegoies for the Hugos situation.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. You noticed some… similarities between the Puppy Kicker crowd and the bunch screeching at the professor in Chapter 1?

            Like

          2. I found it highly surprising that the Chinese government let that one out of the country, honestly. Perhaps, as with the “Remember June 4” thing it’s gotten to the point where they’ve so thoroughly expunged their history that they don’t recognize what they’re supposed to not be talking about anymore.

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            1. they’ve so thoroughly expunged their history that they don’t recognize what they’re supposed to not be talking about anymore.

              So, they have Totalitarian Alzheimer’s?

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              1. It would not surprise me. They don’t seem long on accurate predictions of what comes from the successful implementation of their programs. (Such as the shortage of wives for their men from the one child policy in a culture that wants SONS).

                Like

            2. My eldest mentioned some controversy involving a Taylor Swift t-shirt, of all things. It promotes one of her albums and reads, “TS 1989”. She’s set to play China in November. Shame it wasn’t June, but I hope the shirts sell well.

              How subversive would a simple t-shirt be? My daughter was concerned that someone would be hurt for wearing it, which means I’ve failed as a parent. She didn’t quite absorb the “Better to die on your feet than live on your knees” ethos I was going for.

              But then she thinks the Hugos turned out great and all puppies are Vox Day acolytes. Trying to explain to her that Beale won the Hugos fight seemed to confuse her. Frankly, she needs to get off the blogs and start reading actual books again. (I’d shut the wi-fi off, but when it shuts down accidentally the girls usually start a knife fight to amuse themselves.)

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    4. Three Body Problem presented us with a lush and verdant world full of possibilities and put us onto a track that could only have been made by a plotasaurus. After a long, long, LONG, slog we get to the end of the trail only to find a measly plotroach. I was, needless to say, disappointed.

      However, I have heard some comments that say it was the first in a series. So maybe the trail continues?

      Like

      2. Hard SF lover here. I really enjoyed 3BP, enough to recommend it to my husband and enough to want to read the sequels, though I don’t see myself reading it again because of the pacing (and the lack of a sympathetic character). That makes it a solid 4 stars for me, and third on my Hugo list.

        Yay, a 4-star book was my THIRD pick! In previous years, I considered myself lucky if I enjoyed ONE nominee.

        Like

    5. I read as far as I could because it had a decent beginning and several people I sort of trust said they liked it. But I’m not a hard SF fan and, frankly, it wasn’t that gripping, so I eventually gave up.

      I’m baffled that anyone could actually enjoy it, but that’s true of so many things.

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        1. Asking you because you’d know better than me, is it possible some of these problems are problems of translation. As I understand the original was in Chinese.

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            1. I was thinking more along the lines of “as someone who has been a translator I’ve seen this kind of issue before” without specific reference to Chinese *shrugs*

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              1. I didn’t think it was unreadable. Doubt I’d have known it was a translated work just from reading it. It was just… dull.

                Goblin Emperor, Ancillary Whatever, and (sadly) KJA’s novel were in the same category for me, though, so maybe it’s just that I’m easily bored.

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                1. I was highly disappointed in the Best Novel category (really I was disappointed in many of the nominations other than the Novella category, and the Campbells) I liked The Goblin Emperor, but it had a golden age, slower paced, tell rather than show, sort of style. Other than that, yeah I thought that 3BD was readable but fairly dull, Ancillary was bad but better than the other two.

                  I know a lot of people bragged up KJA, but this was my first taste of him, and frankly I despised ALL of the characters except for the one teenaged girl, and halfway through the LONG slog there was no apparent plot, yet. I was hoping the multitude of MC’s scattered across the galaxy would all gather up so the giant meteor of death could wipe them all out and the book could end. I finally gave up at about 60%. When I found myself looking forward to the need to get up and wash dishes rather than force myself to continue reading, I decided I would call it good and leave it off the ballot.

                  The less said about Skin Game, the better, all I’ll say is at least they only gave me an excerpt, so I didn’t feel bad at quitting at the end of it.

                  On the other hand, both of those authors are bestsellers, so obviously quite a few somebodies like them, unlike a lot of the PC nominations that the puppy kickers nominate most years.

                  Frankly, if I had been voting politically like I am accused of, I would have voted Kevin first and then either 3BD or Goblin Emperor (I have no idea about that authors politics, but suspect they are not totally leftist approved, simply because her work is apolitical) and No Awarded the other two.

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                  1. Speaks to taste. Skin Game is, IMO, the best of the Dresden series so far and I own all of them. Plus all the short stories. Could be I self-identify with the main character being a nerd and a wiseass.

                    KJA has written good stuff (Dan Shamble stuff was fun, plus of course Star Wars), but that particular one… wasn’t his best by any stretch.

                    Ancillary Noun takes an interesting idea, neuters it, spends most of its time having characters chat over tea (slight exaggeration), and slaps it in a mil-SF shell. It could have been preaching the Gospel According to Ted Cruz and I’d still have hated it.

                    Goblin Emperor is IMO best described as pleasant, dull, preachy, and forgettable.

                    Like

                2. Enjoyed Goblin Emperor – but slightly irritated that it didn’t seem to be fantasy at all, really – mentions of skin & eye color, but no cultural or psychological differences from any other pretty well written young-noble-coming-of-age tale. Just a PC throw-in to claim a category?

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                  1. Well, there were the ears. I would complain a lot less about “humans with pointy ears” if writers used the ears the way she did.

                    Like

        2. In the beginning it reads almost exactly like english language articles in chinese newspapers. It is clearly a style that his audience would have been familiar with. In others it is much more flowing and western.

          The biggest problem I had with it, other than almost non-existent character building, was the plot development. If you graphed it, it would be a gradually rising line as we learn more about the world, followed by a plateau, then a sharp spike up (or down) as the plot reveals a major development. Repeat that 3 or 4 times and you have the novel. At every spike (or drop, if your graph tends downward) the novel changed. Suddenly you have new information and the plot develops from there, until the next revelation. The revelation always comes from outside, with the characters just along for the ride.

          Some novel ideas, not a great story, no compelling characters, plot is revealed thru deus ex machina. Got a big fat pass because it was a translation and westerners don’t understand chinese culture and history well enough to judge it’s merits. IMO.

          nick

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          1. Apparently the 1/2/3/4 plot outline is common in Chinese lit (and other Asian lits influenced by Chinese lit, such as Japanese – the Durarara anime follows that pattern).

            The idea is 1 – Establish the situation and conflict/s, 2 – Work out all the implications and plot consequences, 3 – Plot twist that changes everything, 4 – Work out the implications and plot consequences. Repeat a couple more times for maximum pleasingness of structure.

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            1. Thank you…that sounds like some of the anime I’ve watched. I’ve enjoyed it but had a lot of ‘huh’ moments and then been surprised at how fast the ending was and how often it felt unresolved. I always figured there was a Japanese way of pacing that was just alien enough to me that it seemed off.

              This seems to fit my description.

              Like

            2. I may have to try that book out now. I’ve been intellectually curious about other cultures’ story structures for the last few years. Two main reasons, one being that one of my editing clients (TK Naliaka) is heavily influenced by African storytelling styles, which flow very differently than Western ones. It’s been an interesting challenge to make them accessible to American audiences without losing the character that makes them stand out. You’ll have to read the books and decide for yourselves whether we succeeded (next one should be done editing soon, I’m working on it again). The other was that a ranted some time ago at how Miyazaki’s films drove me crazy, especially Spirited Away. I loved the leisurely pace of the stories, the fascinating worldbuilding (I just roll my eyes and smile at the environmentalist tilt that slides in), but then there’s this slam bang abrupt ending. The acquaintance politely listening to my complaints explained that he was using the structure of traditional Japanese folktales. I still can’t quite enjoy that structure, but I find it fascinating how it’s effective for others.

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              1. Nothing wrong with the TK Naliaka stories, IMHO. They have almost a historical/western sort of feel to me, but that may be because they remind me very heavily of an author (I don’t remember their name, but vaguely seem to think they were female, as I suspect TK is, simply by the feel) I read a number of books by quite a few years ago. And all the books that author wrote were Christian historicals based in the West.

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              2. You might also try Cordwainer Smith’s stories, if you haven’t already. I’ve read that his stories use a number of Chinese literary tropes and conventions. I can’t verify that, because I’m not familiar with Chinese literature, but in his non-pen name existence he spent significant time in China, and his godfather was Sun Yat Sen.

                Like

                  1. E. Hoffman Price, little known today, lived and wrote from a similar background. Think either DAW or Del Rey published.

                    Like

                2. Actually, you can probably still find it even though it’s nearly 15 years old but there is an exceptional hardback collection of Smith’s stories, at least all the Instrumentality ones (did he write any others).

                  Like

            3. One I’d noted with Bleach (the 10-20 episodes in the soul society specifically) and several others is

              1) set up the situation

              2) Get all the major protagonists for this plot and tell you their backstory, with JUST enough current events to keep a sense of (some, small) progress

              3) spend 2-3 episodes looking at what happens when they all intersect.

              4) Repeat….

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            4. Thank you for that explanation. It makes a lot of sense. Perhaps more to the point, it makes Camille Paglia’s points about Western art much more pointed and accurate.

              Like

      2. Personally I bounced off the part where the “laws of nature are not invariant!” hysteria hit.

        We figured that out the first time someone realized you had to boil an egg longer in the mountains.

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        1. Evidence suggests that the laws of nature are invariant — but our understanding of them is woefully inadequate. Life’s tough for a 4D entity in a 21D universe.

          Like

          1. Thus far, whenever things have been variant, we’ve been able to fit them into a metarule where they are invariant, there are just more variables.

            Like

  9. Well, I didn’t find it worth it, but I bet you half the people who voted for it voted either under the illusion they were favoring Chicoms OR as a slam against the puppies.

    It rather boggles my mind, that over 60 years after the Korean War, 50 years after the Chinese Cultural Revolution, and 35-40 years after the Cambodian genocide, you can still find adult human beings who imagine Chinese Communism to have been a good thing, and in leadership positions in anything other than organizations devoted to torturing kittens. They do not seem to grasp that, were they in the Cultural Revolution, the chances are that they would be either beaten to death or forced to work themselves to the point of collapse on collective farms. The Chinese Communists, like the Russian Bolsheviks, wound up eating their own.

    I was shocked about 10 years ago to see in a library, a children’s book with a title along the lines of He Made a Revolution: Mao Tse-Tung. The obvious intent was to present him as a role model. For some reason, there was no similar work about that other creative revolutionary, Adolf Hitler.

    Those of you celebrating might want to take a deep breath and wonder — for just a minute — if you did anything more than what Theodore Beale wanted. Because from where I’m sitting, the man that set out to destroy the field and prove that everyone calling themselves its leadership were mannerless and brainless children not only won last night, he won walking away. He won without DOING anything. He won by convincing yourselves to hit yourselves repeatedly with the obvious hammers of partisanship, lack of care for quality and INTEREST in the health of the field.

    Beale said all along that he would regard “No Award” sweeping the categories as a victory, beacause in doing so he nullified the utiltiy of the Hugos as a reward dispensible for the Tor Clique. Which is exactly what happened. They went from a condition in which they got dreck like “If You Were An Editor” nominated and semi-dreck awarded, to one where almost nothinggot awarded, and they did so at the expense of Tor publicly insulting several of its authors and tens of thousands of its readers. Which reduces Tor’s profits and hence its attractiveness as a publisher for authors.

    Hmm, who would benefit from Tor becoming less competitive? Might it be someone who owns a rival science fiction publishing house? A house like Castalia, owned by — Theodore Beale?

    Naah. Must be entirely coincidental.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. The Chinese don’t even think that Chinese Communism is a good thing. They just can’t figure out how to get rid of it without a huge mess and civil war.

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      1. I’ve noticed that. Their economy is no longer even Communist in the important sectors — just fascist. Private enterprise produces and bribes officials not to take everything they made, and in some cases to crack down on their competitors. Utterly nasty, and ironically quite familiar to anyone who has read cyberpunk..

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        1. The Chinese have merely reproduced, in Mao jackets, the traditional Chinese pattern of warlordism. Just as the Russians replaced the Tsar with the Soviet but retained the same essential structure … and just as Europe still has its Aristos demanding they run things (now from Brussels!)

          Just because they pull out the carpet and dye the drapes does not mean things have actually changed. Culture is a bitc# that way.

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          2. i read something a long time ago about Chinese culture. ( I am paraphrasing ) china has been invaded many times in its long history, it just absorbs them and makes them chinese

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            1. And if the invaders don’t get them, then Chinese governments typically only last for a known and tracked period of time before they’re overthrown and replaced. The Communists are approaching the start of the “overthrow and replace” period, and from what I’ve heard elsewhere they’re very worried about this.

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          4. There’s a book about Tsarist Russia that I have a English, abridged version of. La Russie en 1839. My edition has a foreword by someone from the American embassy in the USSR, who said that the staff there regarded it as the best guide to the USSR.

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        2. Yep – fascist. And they’ve run it further along than the Nazis or Italiand Fascisti ever did – you didn’t have the 273rd Fallschirmjager Division Ball Bearing Works And Automotive Assembly Plant, or the 133° Divisione Corazzata Littorio Steel Mill And Consumer Pottery Factory, but you very much do have the equivalent in China, with factory towns owned and run by PLA units, with the Generals in charge.

          As an incentive to preserve the status quo all the way up to the top, you really can’t beat an equity interest.

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          1. You are correct as far as it goes, but you must add the Party structure to understand the stability of the regime. Mass parties like the post-Mao Chinese Communist Party are new to political history, and alter the understandings we developed from Machiavelli and even Burnham. Pareto had a glimmer, as did Ortega, but we don’t have a full understanding of how such things deteriorate.

            Possony more or less discovered the nomemklatura, an inner party structure in the USSR, but had a massive stroke before he could write much about the concept. Something of that sort seems to developing in the United States.

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            1. Jerry, have you seen any good stuff on the dynamics of the Nomemkaltura. We get a LOT of Soviet empire exile engineers her in CT for some reason, so I know a fair amount about the life of an average comrade, but only have inklings of how the top works.

              Like

      2. I actually really liked 3BP, it was high on my final vote list. I thought the end was a bit contrived and the bomb scene should have been cut or edited for probability, but I LOVED the beginning. I was very interested in how the Revolution in China was perceived by a Chinese author. I thought the scene involving the scientist being censored and then publicly murdered because he had Bad-Thinks was… well let’s just say that in light of SP3, it struck a cord.

        So I had it high on my list. I won’t say how high, because I think it’s important to focus on books I love, rather than the ones I didn’t care for. So yes, I’m one of the reasons 3BP won last night. And I don’t regret it.

        Because a LOT of puppy supporters did this: voted for something or someone that wasn’t on the Puppy recommended slate. AND we encouraged everyone else to do the same.

        The No-Awards? The Puppy Kickers? They made blog posts detailing how to vote “puppy free.” They made an entire website advocating it. (NoAward.com)

        And that’s what this comes down to.

        One side wants you to read books, decide if you like them, then vote accordingly. We don’t care what your politics are, who your fans are, or who your friends are. For us, it’s all about good books. And that’s it.

        The puppy kickers care VERY much who your friends are, who your fans are, and whether or not you engage in incorrect thinking. They do not care if the books are good or if the talent is deserving. For these folks, it’s all about them.

        Liked by 1 person

        2. Our theme:

          Synopsis
          Resembling a music hall production more than a book musical, the allegorical plot examines the maintenance of the status quo between the upper and lower classes of British society in the 1960s. The two main characters are Sir and Cocky. Since Sir is forever changing the rules of the game of life, downtrodden young Cocky always gets the short end of the stick. … Cocky tries to beat Sir at the game, first by getting a job, and then with love, but Sir bests him both times. … By ignoring the rules, Cocky manages to win, but neither he or Sir can function without the other. The show ends with both of them frozen in a pose arguing which way to go next.
          wikipedia[DOT]org/wiki/The_Roar_of_the_Greasepaint_The_Smell_of_the_Crowd

          Now that Cocky has won the game, he tries to switch places with Sir – he wants to be the one who gets to make up the rules (which is how Sir has managed to win all the previous times – by inventing new rules every game).

          The way this number was staged live when Newley gets to the line “Your game could lead to wars”, there is a huge crash and the lights brighten then dim, as if a bomb has gone off. Newley’s finger was pointed at Sir and he gives it a look afterwards, as if to say, I didn’t know it was loaded, which got a laugh.

          From now on, we’re gonna do things my way.
          My way, or not at all.
          We’re gonna do what I wanna to when I say
          Not when you say, but when I say.

          And I say that my way is the sure way.
          My way will work out fine;
          And if you still prefer to do things your way,
          You go your way and I’ll go mine.

          From now on we’re gonna do things my way!
          No, we’re not!
          We’re gonna do things my way
          Or not at all!
          If we leave it up to you we’re gonna rue things

          We’re gonna do what I wanna do
          When I say!
          I say!
          Not when you say!
          I say!
          But when I say!
          Now let me have my say:

          I say that my way is the sure way
          We’d be better off to do things…
          My way will work out fine
          If we leave it up to you
          You’re gonna screw things

          If you’d still prefer to do things your way
          I would
          Then you go your way
          Good.
          And I’ll go mine.
          Good, and I’ll go mine.
          Good, and I’ll go mine.

          Now, let me have my say:
          From now on we’re gonna see some changes;
          Changes – that’s what we need!
          I’m gonna play what I wanna play when I say –
          Not when you say – but when I say.

          And I say that your game is a sly game.
          Your game could lead to wars;
          And if you’re not prepared to play at my game,
          Then I’ll pay my game.
          And you play yours!
          And you play yours!
          And you play yours!
          And you play yours!
          And you play yours!
          users.bestweb[DOT]net/~foosie/gpaint.htm

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      1. More power to him, especially since he’s dislodging those two parasites. Who knows, maybe when the upper management finally gets sick of losing money because of them, they’ll get the heave-ho and Tor will once again become a postiive force in the field.

        I think that Vox is irrationally racialist and has crank notions of how international banking works, but that doesn’t mean he’s Pure Evil.

        Liked by 1 person

          1. Mind you, there are occasional situations in which international banking can work just the way he imagines (predatory lending to countries that then exhaust their economies trying to pay interest on loans on which they can never repay the principle). This usually involves corrupt Third World dictators who get kickbacks from the banks.

            What he doesn’t get is that this is impractical between First World democracies (usually because power and information are too widely distributed and the local business leaders don’t want to see their economies wrecked to benefit a politician and some foreign bankers).. Mostly because (1) he wants to see Evil Bankers everywhere (possibly as a subset or ally of Stupid Evil Jews) and (2) where it does happen in the First World is when a government realizes it can engage in deficit spending and buy votes with foreign loans (Greece, I’m looking at you), and then when the bill comes, it’s convenient to blame it on foreign bankers.

            The racialism requires a very selective reading of history — in particular, he has to avoid looking at periods (such as the Dark Ages) when his preferred superior races were doing poorly and races he doesn’t like were doing well. The truth is that pretty much every sizable racial group has had Golden Ages, and Dark Ages. We European-descended folk are both fortunate and should be proud of the fact that we carried out the Age of Exploration and the Industrial and Information Revolutions: if we just sit on our laurels and congratulate ourselves, though, we’re very likely to still be sitting when (say) the Chinese or Indians colonize the Solar System and thoroughly dominate the next millennium. People who think like Beale here are not helping matters.

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              1. I don’t read VD’s blog, because most of the time there isn’t really anything on there worth reading and my time is limited. Besides, whenever something worth reading is posted there, it is invariably quoted and/or misquoted all over the internet, I can then mosey on over and read the original. I found I quite liked his fiction, however, and that of most of the authors he publishes.

                Oh, I always thought the ENTIRE POINT of his racialism was to be the mirror image of the SJWs.

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            1. Darth sent flowers back to Tatooine every Mothers Day. He had standing orders for a platoon of stormtroopers to head out to the little valley where he slaughtered the Sand People that kidnapped his Mother and caused her death. There they place the flowers, replace the Sandpeople bait and re-set the stormtrooper equivalent of claymores.

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          3. As far as I’ve been able to determine (and for personal reasons I have been spending considerable time on this project) VD is only “pure evil” insofar as one or two of his ideas are dead wrong.

            For the life of me I have been unable to discover the evil things he’s done.

            In this I may be more libertarian-minded than our host (or just more liberal, and i’m not using it in a complimentary sense)

            I find it hard to condemn people as evil for their ideas.

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      2. According to Vox, it’s “personal” because:

        For over ten years I was repeatedly attacked, unprovoked, by various members of your weird little community. I ignored most of their repeated jabs, their libels, their false accusations, their nasty insinuations, and their insults. […] But when John Scalzi, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, N.K. Jemisin, and Steven Gould, among others, made an attempt to publicly destroy my reputation, I decided I would not ignore it any longer.

        SJWs don’t seem to be in the habit of thinking things through.

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          1. SJWs do not really believe that anyone outside their circle is really human. They think everyone else is a chess piece.

            “The man of system, on the contrary, is apt to be very wise in his own conceit; and is often so enamoured with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it. He goes on to establish it completely and in all its parts, without any regard either to the great interests, or to the strong prejudices which may oppose it.

            He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board. He does not consider that the pieces upon the chess-board have no other principle of motion besides that which the hand impresses upon them; but that, in the great chess-board of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which the legislature might chuse to impress upon it. If those two principles coincide and act in the same direction, the game of human society will go on easily and harmoniously, and is very likely to be happy and successful. If they are opposite or different, the game will go on miserably, and the society must be at all times in the highest degree of disorder.” — Adam Smith

            The proof of this is no matter how often their plans end in disaster because of the eminently predictable — but unpredicted — reaction of humans to it, they never generalize; every time they think that their plans will have the effect they intend, and no other.

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            2. SJWs do not really believe that anyone outside their circle is really human. They think everyone else is a chess piece.

              The very definition of the borderline or malignant narcissist.

              The other common description of those maladies is “emotionally stunted” – as in they never outgrew being children….

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        2. So . . . the CHORFs basically created Vox Day?

          Yeah, that sounds pretty much like all of the history that I’ve been reading nonstop the past couple of years now.

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          1. I’d never heard of him until a few years ago when SJW’s brought him and similar blogs to my attention. Even then it took me nearly a year to get he and the author of Alpha Game were the same person.

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          2. So . . . the CHORFs basically created Vox Day?

            Yeah. John Wright just learned that and goes in to more detail than I knew in this “Smeagol Nielson Hayden” essay, which starts with an incident before the awards ceremony where his wife, also a published Tor author, went to Patrick Nielsen Hayden to extend the olive branch and got viciously attacked before finishing her first sentence. Wright thinks Patrick is the most important SJW that’s brought about the current state of affairs, and then goes on to say “It seemed that the monster known as Vox Day is a creation entirely of Mr. Patrick Nielsen Hayden….” For example, sees changes in Vox Day’s prose and approach to all this which are quite understandable if one has been subject to an unprovoked campaign of vilification for a decade and counting.

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          3. So . . . the CHORFs basically created Vox Day?

            Will that drive them to muttering “It was ME…” over and over again?

            Liked by 1 person

    4. It rather boggles my mind, that over 60 years after the Korean War, 50 years after the Chinese Cultural Revolution, and 35-40 years after the Cambodian genocide, you can still find adult human beings who imagine Chinese Communism to have been a good thing, and in leadership positions in anything other than organizations devoted to torturing kittens.

      Why not? There are still people who think communism in general is a good thing, in spite of the 20-odd million deaths directly attributable to the USSR and its leadership.

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      1. … and they’ve been at it longer than the Chinese.

        (Really need to work on finishing my thoughts, or at least waiting till I’ve purged the blood from my caffeine stream. :P )

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      2. “There are still people who think communism in general is a good thing, BECAUSE of the 20-odd million deaths directly attributable to the USSR and its leadership.”

        There, I fixed it for you.

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      4. Remember the folks PJ O’Rourke took the Nation magazine cruise of Russia with. They all came to witness and testify to the superiority of the Soviet System… but they brought their own toilet paper.

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        1. Given what the publisher, editors, writers and readers of the Nation are (and have always been) full of, that seems little more than a polite gesture on their part, like a dinner guest bringing wine.

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      5. Hell, there were people still yearning for the return of the Stewarts IN THE BRITISH MILITARY when David Niven was serving. I’m sure that there are idiots in the Vatican who still think the Holy roman Empire should be revived.

        We lose sight of the fact that the Communism Fans aren’t anything new or modern. There are always discontented morons who imagine that some system, widely proven a failure, would grner them the recognition and power they deserve. Petty little idiots plotting away in corners and gumming up the works.

        The Liberal Intellectual Radical Progressives are dangerous now because they got a lot of social and political power in the 20th Century, and are only losing it slowly. Like the Social Darwinists, or the Plantation Aristocracy they are gong to kick and scream the whole way to the ash-heap of history. We can hope they aren’t stupid enough to play the Civil War card – they certainly aren’t suited to win one, but neither were the Confederates. At least the Comfederates understood military matter to a degree. I see to,evidence that the LIRPs do.

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        1. LIRPs can always be counted on to drill holes in the bottom of the boat to make it ride lower and more stably.

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    5. It rather boggles my mind, that over […] 35-40 years after the Cambodian genocide, you can still find adult human beings who imagine Chinese Communism to have been a good thing, and in leadership positions in anything other than organizations devoted to torturing kittens.

      Indeed. The eluded Korean War, and let’s not forget the Great Leap Forward, or “let a hundred flowers bloom” targeted at people like us, and most of the Cultural Revolution happened before I was alive or politically aware, but people like my family which had been cursing North Vietnam for years were all “Go, NVA!” (North Vietnamese Army) and their national guard equivalent when the former invaded Cambodia to put paid to the Khmer Rouge and the latter stomped the PRC’s punitive attack in response.

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    6. “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need”. It certainly sounds pretty, but what most naive Americans fail to realize is *who* gets to decide the ability and need. It isn’t you, it is the politburo. Progressives have already been doing this to blacks and non-elite whites in this country. They can’t be educated (ability), so ‘dumb down’ education. Start: creation of Department of Education. They ‘need’ welfare, so the Great Society. The latest, more inhumane offering is the politburo’s realization that they were breeding too much to sustain the welfare, so abortion and planned parenthood. This morphs into we have all these baby parts, can we sell them for research to let Hillary Clinton live to be 200?
      Content of their character? Too hard for the politburo to actually determine the individual ability, so lump them all together. Thus blacks especially, the ones from the rural south, where they have nuclear families and Faith can rise above the societal hardship and produce gifted children. They can, I have met some of them. Instead, the politburo lumps them in with people from single family homes in urban ghettos where neither family or Faith are present. Gangs are.
      The quote sounds humane and individually tailored, but it is too hard to establish such a system based on individual needs and skills, so they have to be lumped together into a ‘victim’ class where the same assumptions and results are applied to the group. Lowest common denominator is the result. The hopeless grey world of Socialism, where the wheels of authority grind individuality into clones. The world SJWs want to celebrate in the Hugo Awards.
      I fear for our country and our world.

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      2. Thing is, centrally-planned communism requires all humans to be omnibenevolent and the central planners to be omnibenevolent and omniscient. (Saints being led by God, if you will.)

        If you assume omnibenevolent humans – and communism breaks down if you don’t, so you might as well – you can eliminate the need for omniscience by retaining the market system and simply allowing everyone to draw as much money from the central bank, or whatever, as they wish, with only their perfect self-discipline as a limiting factor.

        So I made a salary of 100,000 utility units, for which the only benefit is the warm glow of knowing my assistance last year was worth that to him. If I need 200 UUs worth of groceries, or 2000 UUs worth of medical care, I don’t to ask myself if I have the money; I just ask myself if the goods are honestly that valuable to me, because if they’re not I should leave them where they are for someone else to whom they _are_ worth that much utility to come along.

        Next year, say my boss’s business has hard times, and he has to admit that he and his dozen employees only generated 800,000 UUs last year, of which he paid half in rent and supplies — but that I was still one of his most valuable employees — he might cut my salary down to 40,000 UUs. Depending on how much I like working there and how likely I think his business is to recover, I might look for a job where I can do more good, or I might stick it out and hope he can turn things around.

        YES, this requires simply silly amounts of honesty, self-discipline, and general willingness to strive for the good of others. Does it actually require any more of any of those than centrally-planned communism and the “They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work” setup?

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        1. “Thing is, centrally-planned communism requires all humans to be omnibenevolent and the central planners to be omnibenevolent and omniscient. (Saints being led by God, if you will.).”

          And if you read Book of Acts, 4:32 – 5:11, Ananias and Sephira, that’s exactly what the early church tried….. and still couldn’t manage to hold it together. If the 12 Apostles backed up by God couldn’t make communism work, how in the h*ll would any lesser mortals have a shot??

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          1. I’ve read that passage — not only did you have Christian fanatics (they were all fanatics in those days) being led by even more fanatic Christians (the apostles) you had God enforcing the rules. Though note that Ananias and Sephira were struck down not for keeping some for themselves but for lying about it, claiming a the fullness of a virtue they only had part of. The text is fairly clear in Sephira’s case: she was asked if the money handed over was the entire sum received, and she was struck down after she said yes. It appears to have worked at the time described in the Acts; it just didn’t last, whether because they eventually went through everyone’s savings (as it said people sold land and gave money to the apostles and there’s no textual evidence of the group making similar purchases) or because eventually the apostles died or for some other reason altogether.

            If you go back to the Old Testament, the economic structure God instructs them to use could be described as capitalism with partial resets at fifty year intervals. You couldn’t buy or sell land, you leased it and it all went back to the heirs of the people given it by God every fifty years; they weren’t allowed to pledge it past then, and the “purchase” price was explicitly supposed to take that into consideration. Debts were to be forgiven at the same time, and you *weren’t* supposed to refuse to lend because you’d lose the money when your debtor didn’t pay until the year of jubilee arrived. (I’m dubious that could happen, but it makes more sense in a static economy than it would nowadays: people borrowing would have been more likely to be doing so in order to eat until the work arrives or the harvest comes in, and less likely to be doing so because they hoped to make money with the capital they’d borrowed.) Movable property and land and houses in cities, on the other hand, could be bought and sold outright.

            So the farmers – the vast majority of the population at the time – were supposed to be allowed to start over every fifty years; your father (or even grandfather) may have lost everything he had, but when the year of jubilee arrived you’d get your chance to restart. But on the flip side, even if you were a Really Good farmer there was no way to buy a farm to leave to your son; all you could do was accumulate was goods (including animals, but without land you might be hard put to feed them after the year of jubilee) and money.

            However, if you worked at some other trade – craftsman or scholar or anything which didn’t require land – this didn’t affect you. Thus, a potter or blacksmith *could* leave his shop to his son. The specialized work (I won’t say skilled work because there’s a lot of skill involved in being a good farmer) could be passed on generationally even if the line of craftsmen had started off as farmers or in some other trade.

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    7. They do not seem to grasp that, were they in the Cultural Revolution, the chances are that they would be either beaten to death or forced to work themselves to the point of collapse on collective farms. The Chinese Communists, like the Russian Bolsheviks, wound up eating their own.

      As an old conservative I look forward to hearing the screams of, “but I supported the revolution” from the useful idiots being shot in the prison yard while I’m locked up. I’m 50/50 on getting shot with them or getting held until I’m too old to be trouble. Either way, I’ll get to enjoy their tears as their precious revolution consumes them.

      Liked by 1 person

        1. You have to remember, I’ve reached the point where I vote GOP not because they can save the country but because their “socialism tomorrow” philosophy (which is speeding up, see Walkercare) may run the clock on collapse to past my death while the Democrat’s “socialism now” philosophy insures I’ll live to see it.

          Being in spitting distance of 50 without children and a highly mixed relationship in terms of heirs with any nieces and nephews you have leave you with a very different perspective. If I didn’t have a wife several years younger and likely to outlive me by 10-20 years (my health will get me relatively young…I’m not betting on seeing 70) I wouldn’t just think maybe we should burn it down but grabbing the gasoline.

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          1. Please do not misunderstand–I’m just going to do my best to hold things together for as long as possible so that the people setting up off the grid have as good a chance as possible to make it through when things crash.

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          1. The fun part is that after every revolution, you do have to sort out the revolutionaries who resorted to violence for the sake of the revolution and those who resorted to revolution for the sake of the violence. . . .

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        2. Comrade, when did you stop? All good Commies know that if the Party needs you to confess to trumped up charges for the good of the Revolution, you confess. Abjectly. With the full awareness that it will not win you clemency.

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  10. I was embarrassed by the applause for No Award. I cringed when Connie Willis, someone whose writing I enjoy and own nearly every book of, used her time at the podium to gleefully trash another writer–Stephenie Meyer–who had nothing to do with the current Hugo situation. It felt very Mean Girls and classless and epitomized the evening.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. On the other hand, having read one of the sparkly vampire books, and looked at their sales records, comparing them to the current Hugo winners. Yep, I find some truth in her sarcastic statement, they DO deserve a Hugo more than a lot of what has been winning the last quite a few years.

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      1. I’m telling you, we should make sure the 2015 Highlander novel (the time-travel romance series selling metric butt tons) is the Hugo novel next year.

        I want to see just how much the typical panty can twist.

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        1. What, Gabaldon’s writing more of those?

          ‘Cause the originals were written in the 80s or 90s

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          1. One in 2014 and an ongoing TV series unless I’m conflating things.

            No, Written in My Own Heart’s Blood (2014). So, the TV series for 2016 and the probable forthcoming book in 2017/2018.

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    2. Yes, there is private and there is public, especially that kind of officially public that was. So Meyer’s books have their faults, and some of the fans are kinda weird, but they must have struck some chord in many people because if they hadn’t they wouldn’t have sold as much, and making fun of that in that kind of venue is not mature because it also hits all of her fans. Fans who might mature into reading other things, so potentially she also insulted people who might have become, or maybe some who already are, HER fans, and that’s just not right.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. I have turned Twilight bashing into an unofficial sport in my family.

        However, has any of the Twilight books won a Hugo, I’d have dealt with it a lot better than some of the crap that’s been winning. At least it has a big enough following and enough sales that winning a fan award makes sense.

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        1. I am a stout believer in the idea that vampires should only sparkle when on fire but I could not fault the win. It did drive field to some extent

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        2. Remember how Kate was talking about the whining over that concentration camp guard romance? Not all Nazis were cannibals. Vampires are pretty much cannibals.

          There is reason to find the vampire romance genre detestable. Especially if one thinks that sex ed these days is a combination of molesting children, and teaching them to be victims.

          Complaining that someone who sells better is unwholesome looks petty. Write what you find wholesome, and work on pulling in readers.

          Liked by 1 person

          2. Except that Meyer in Twilight essentially wrote that no matter how apalling the event (turned into vampire) or compelling the urge (blooooood!) People still have moral gency, and hope for the future.

            Great Scott. When I put it that way, no woder the chattering class had a hard on for trashing Twilight. I just thought being a goopy romance with an LDS author provided enough legitimacy for them to hate. And they do seem to really get off on hating en masse.

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            1. I saw on the internet a then sixteen year old’s sig complaining that Meyer had destroyed an entire generation of feminists.

              Haven’t read Twilight. Heard a lot of complaints.

              Sexually creepy: So is a lot of romance.
              Strained adaptation of myth: So is a lot of PNR.
              Seems stupid if you aren’t a teenage girl: Folks in their twenties and thirties aren’t necessarily all that bright either. Lots of folks get pretty stupid when their buttons are pushed.

              I figured that it was a combination of popular, not enough rightthink, and maybe style.

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              1. Two thoughts on Twilight.

                First, there was a poster going around that shows one of the old movie vampire holding the torn-off head of Twilight’s Vampire with the caption “Real Vampires Don’t Sparkle”. [Evil Grin]

                Second, one of Barbara Hambly’s Vampires is shown messing in the dreams of a minor adult female character. In her dreams, the Vampire is shown as a tragic romantic Vampire (which is very far from the truth). He’s doing so do to control the female character (although he isn’t planning to kill her). The idea here is Real Vampires aren’t Tragic Romantic Characters. [Evil Grin]

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              2. I suspect one* aspect of these complaints about the success of “poorly written” books is inherent in being a popular book in these times.

                Any book that achieves a high degree of popularity (absent a TV tie-in) is very likely to have been written at a “lowest-common-denominator” level. In this era of degenerate edumacation, where an “12th-grade” reading level is actually most probably equivalent to the 8th-grade level of a half century ago, such flaws as well as stylistic and structural simplicity are simply inevitable.

                That the folks turning up their noses at such reading matter are in the main responsible for dumbing down education.

                *There are undoubtedly others, especially including insufficient rightthink.

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    3. And then Mr. Gerrold instructed the crowd that while applause for no award was OK, booing was not. Translation: either approve or shut up, take what we give you and like it or go away.
      Message received loud and clear, you self important sack of shite.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. I don’t get why he’s so obsessed with the politics and has apparently given up writing actual science fiction. He was never great, but he used to be pretty good — his War Against the Chtorr series in particular was Heinleinesque. Is it that his desire to be politically-correct shut that series down, because that series was anything but PC? And was un-PC so deeply in its internal logic that there was no way to write a “fix?”

        If so, then he’s a sad example of why you should focus on writing what you want, and worry later about what others might think.

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          1. Yeah, it was an interesting idea, and started well, but seems to have turned into a one-man “how can I trump the perversion in the last story?” contest.

            Anyone else remember the “Thieve’s World” shared universe anthologies? Great start, but some of the authors got into a race to see who could be more shocking, and the stories suffered.

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            1. Yeah, I started reading that back when I was younger. But after the first couple of volumes, there wasn’t much point. Ironically, one of the best moments from a story-telling perspective, imo, was when one of the authors wrote out the invincible (Wolverine healing factor) blood knight character… and then someone else screwed things up by writing him back in.

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            1. No, it was weirder than that. I soldiered on past that point which really was trying to say something but I suspect that it contributed to how easily I gave up on the series when it became clear I was more likely to get another Heinlein than book 5.

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        2. Maybe because he has had writer’s block on the Chtorr books so lone (20+ years) that those of us who invested in them have given up.

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          1. In retrospect it’s no wonder he got tired of writing the Chtorr books – all I had to do was read them and I gave up on them before he did.

            Gerrold’s main problem is that he doesn’t know how to write stories that go anywhere. His setups are reasonably good and his characters are well done, but given his head he just wanders aimlessly off into the weeds. And stays there.

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    4. I watched the whole thing. The Connie Willis bit, my stream kind of crapped out in there, and I didn’t actually get that she was crapping on another author’s works. Twilight and the sequels were a fantastically successful franchise. I thought it was a bit teenager romance, and the sparkly vampire thing was silly, but hey, Meyer made a ton of money, so go Stephanie.

      Having said that, Twilight, sparkly vampires and all, was a superior read to the appalling crap short story that they gave a Hugo to, “The Day The World Turned Upside Down”. That was pure spite, and it is precisely what we said they would do if they could.

      I did not read Three Body Problem, but if it has the aliens behaving like humans are cockroaches then it’s 100% in line with everything I’ve come to expect from “literary” science fiction. This is their default mode, and seeing it displayed so openly for posterity is vastly satisfying.

      Also

      I look forward to the coming year, when it will be Sad Puppies: Cry havoc, and let slip the Dogs of War!

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Welllll… while cockroaches can be very difficult to handle, I am not sure the usual approach involves psyops to try to get them to give up.

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      2. The day the world turned upside down in one sentence. “Gravity reversed, the atmosphere fell away into the universe and everyone stuck on ceilings asphyxiated like fish on a beach.”

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        1. Yeah, and I really loved how all the MASONRY buildings didn’t instantly fall into the sky.

          Its stuff like not knowing that a brick wall has pretty much zero tensile strength that makes my blood boil. That and a guy who lets a wounded neighbor fall to her death because he’s rescuing a gold fish.

          I think that story getting a Hugo (or even a nomination) speaks so much louder than Noah Ward ever could. Its hateful, and like the Water that Falls stupidity of previous years, it epitomizes why I’m a Sad Puppy. Next year we make them burn it ALL down. All of it. Then they salt their own fields with their own tears, while I drink beer and cheer them on.

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    5. Stephanie Meyer wrote terrible books that, if you follow the life philosophy contained within them, will at best lead you to much heartache and at worst to an early grave, then populated them with cardboard characters.
      I must confess that I do not see how this differentiates her from most of the anti-Puppies.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Simple, her bad philosophy spoke to people enough to get them to actually read it. It might not be healthy but at least it did the first thing writing should, communicated, and the first thing pleasure writing should, provide entertainment.

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      2. Meyer is kind of like GRRM, I don’t care for their books (actually I liked the one Meyer’s book much better than I did the GRRM I tried, but I’m not really into anxy teen girl books) but they are coherent writers who are obviously very popular, by their sales numbers. I’m not going to complain about a “fan award” going to a huge bestseller, even if I despise the book, because obviously there are a lot of fans that liked it enough to buy it.

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      3. Which philosophy is that? Straw Twilight is a real jerk, i’ll grant you, but I’m interested in the actual books. Which I’ve read. Not the popular memes parroted about them.

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        1. The one where a guy says: I’m desperately trying not to kill you right now because every fiber of my being demands it, and the girl says: oh, how romantic!

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        2. “I’m interested in the actual books. Which I’ve read. Not the popular memes parroted about them.”

          Is that even allowed?

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          1. “Is that even allowed?”

            Certainly not among the cognoscenti. However I understand those dreadful Puppies actually -read- the books. Simply ghastly!

            Liked by 1 person

    6. I think a lot of that joke depended on the knowledge that Connie Willis was hospitalized recently for a bat bite. I didn’t read her so much as bashing Stephenie Meyer as *making a joke about turning into a vampire because of the bite*.

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    7. I witnessed similar behavior from Ms. Willis at another convention some years back. I’m not surprised.

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  11. Entrenched defenders are always difficult to dislodge, and the SJWs have their political officers behind the lines to shoot any who think of retreat. So it is going to take more than a single throw of the dice to dislodge those who have dedicated themselves to making the Hugos hostage.

    A look at the vote counts suggests they have little ability to deliver an award, merely to deny it to others. It seems unlikely they can significantly grow their bloc, so wresting the awards from their [adjective deleted] grasp is merely a matter of time.

    One more thing: in awarding future Worldcons, such twaddle as that stacked panel must be counted against any bid. The bidding parties should be held to avow representative panels for discussions of any SF/F controversies, not panel discussions so lop-sided they would embarrass MSNBC or Bill Maher.

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  12. I wish I had ponied up the coin this year. I hereby resolve to find the cash, coin, whatever for a voting membership for Sad Puppies 4. If they burn it down again next year, then so be it. I guess we all must fight.

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      2. And it’s in Kansas City. We should all show up, if for no other reason than to see the looks on their faces when three thousand-plus Wrongfans show up.

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        1. I kind of wanted to cosplay at the next con I made it to, but now I’m torn between that and wearing t-shirts, pins, etc. identifying as an activist to cure puppy-related sadness, a wrongfan, a Hun… I shall have to ponder.

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          1. The old standby of “Don’t tread on me” maybe with a bisected dachshund would work. Those from Texas could opt for “Come and take it” with a rocket in place of our beloved Gonzales cannon.

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          2. Body armor, FN-FAL, kukri and a Monster Hunter International shoulder patch. It should be like a uniform.

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            1. I can actually lay hold of most of that, though I’ll be slathered in peace bondings. :D Thanks for the suggestion!

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  13. I didn’t vote or nominate at all this year, so I was just an interested viewer than in anyway a participant last night. But I remember my jaw hanging several times, and I had to keep asking myself, do they have any idea what they’re doing? Well, they’re going to find out.

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  15. I’ve spoken publicly on this topic and I do congratulate the winners.

    However, I’ll say that (since I was in attendance at the ceremony) I was hugely disappointed in the lack of professionalism for an awards ceremony.

    I’ve never witnessed a ceremony which purports to be serious denigrate other members of its retinue.

    I point specifically to the quips and denigration of a hugely successful novel like Twilight. I’ll admit I personally was indifferent to it. However, the MC and others made a point to use that as a whipping post of contrast to what “good literature” was like.

    How utterly egotistical and disgraceful.

    Even if it was written inelegantly or it didn’t meet some other unwritten measure, it IS a member of the literary archive. You don’t make fun of literature at a literary awards ceremony and expect to believe people won’t find you (Fandom) as immature clods.

    The decision to vote NO AWARD on categories which had historically worthy candidates is akin to Fandom choosing to throw away the award. It’s not a good day for the Hugos. I personally find the choice of its use as a reason to mourn.

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    1. I point specifically to the quips and denigration of a hugely successful novel like Twilight. I’ll admit I personally was indifferent to it. However, the MC and others made a point to use that as a whipping post of contrast to what “good literature” was like.

      Also,Twilight (like Harry Potter) has gotten new readers into urban fantasy, which leads to fantasy and science fiction in general. It’s not a good thing to mock those who are growing the field.

      Yes, I have problems with the Twilight series. But then I have problems with a lot of books and series, including many I generally like. And … I’ll say this … Twilight and its sequels gave Rosanna and I a lot of reading pleasure. It was corny and even stupid in places, but it was fun. Which is, ultimately, what fiction is for.

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      1. I suspect they are less interested in including new readers than they are in excluding “wrong” readers. Small fish need small ponds in order to imagine themselves big.

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    3. Reminds me. Eric Raymond has an essay on how SF is getting crappier and “not-SF” because it gets away from it’s core premises, and suffers from “Literary Status Envy”

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  16. We should change the name from “Sad Puppies” to “Angry Puppies”. [Very Very Very Pissed Off]

    Unleash The Hell-Hound Bitches!!!!!

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  17. I’ve said this elsewhere but it bears repeating: you don’t “win” a culture war by insulting and humiliating your opponents, because at the end of the day they are still there, only they’re angier and more determined and hate you more and more.

    This is a lesson the CHORFs still haven’t learned — but it’s one the Puppies need to keep in mind, too.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. It’s also a reminder what happens when people decide to walk away from something when it starts to veer in a direction they don’t like. Because isn’t that what happened with Hugos? The puppy-kickers who now have it got full control because too many others – people who think their real lives beyond fandom and other hobbies, like their jobs and their families, matter more – got tired and decided not to waste their time, and now it may be too late to get it back from them? The progressives keep at it and keep at it and keep at, take every victory, no matter how small, and always at least vote against somebody if they can’t find something they actually approve of to vote for, and so they slowly keep gaining ground.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. This is the tendency in any voluntary organization. Those who have the time and desire to focus on the organization eventually push out those who are marginally attached. The ones who remain are usually interested in personal power within the organization, and using it to their own ends.

        nick

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        1. Exactly. it’s the Iron law of Bureaucracy as applied to volunteer organizations.

          And if you notice and say something, the inevitable response is “It’s wide open, you can change it if you don’t like it.” Except when the rot has spread far enough, you can’t, not without a full house-cleaning. And those in control, as amply just demonstrated, WILL burn down the house rather than lose any small bit of it.

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          1. Oddly enough various Fans told Larry and others (me for example about 10 years ago) that if we didn’t like it we should take part more and encourage others to do likewise.

            Well we did.

            And they went full toddler and threw their toys out of the pram with extreme prejudice.

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          1. That would be historian Robert Conquest, loathed by “progressives” for documenting Soviet mass murder, who passed away very recently.

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          2. Mr. Pournelle,
            I frequently quote your Iron Law to the folks I work with (I’m in the Navy, in case you couldn’t guess). I agree wholeheartedly that it is an outstanding explanation for the behavior we’re seeing.
            Thank you!

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      2. The puppy-kickers who now have it got full control because too many others – people who think their real lives beyond fandom and other hobbies, like their jobs and their families, matter more – got tired and decided not to waste their time, and now it may be too late to get it back from them?

        So, the Hugos are the result of those having real lives beyond fandom actually having real lives while the CHORFs have nothing to claim they’ve done but wear funny costumes and party at random hotels on the weekends.

        I’m good with that assessment and, in the future, will judge Hugos and fandom accordingly.

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  18. I was pretty disgusted by the snarky jabs against the Puppies that were buried everywhere in that performance. The asterisk thing was really offensive. David Gerrold saying that it wasn’t okay to boo “No award” when it *was* okay to cheer and applaud it?? Wow.

    A big part of my reaction was sadness, that I’ve been made to feel unwelcome, disrespected, and “otherized” in the SFF “community”.

    I’m not sure what I think the best policy for next year is. Now that they’ve all slate voted “No Award”, I don’t feel much compunction any more about doing that. But like Sarah, I would prefer to actually make the Hugo meaningful. But if I can’t get that (and it certainly looks like that won’t be the case for years, if ever), I’d like to have a list of good book recommendations.

    We’re more than halfway through the year already, so I think we should be collecting lists of worthwhile books for next year, so it’s not all at the last minute. I’d like to volunteer to help with SP4, if anybody is taking names.

    Also, as a side note, I think that it would be best if we said outright that we’re *not* going to ask “permission” to put somebody on a recommendation list. That was always an incredibly stupid “rule” that was invented by the anti-puppies, and after the disgraceful performance by the anti-puppies this year, a lot of people are probably going to decline. And it would be sooo much fun to recommend some book that the anti-puppies want to recommend too.

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          1. And how many times does it take finding out that turning down the nomination doesn’t save them–after all the SP liked them so they can’t be…–before they start learning that they’ve got nothing to lose by going with it?

            Liked by 1 person

        3. Nominate Tor books, then. They can either turn down the nomination they crave or have the the puppies “give” them the Hugo.

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          1. “Nominate Tor books, then. They can either turn down the nomination they crave ”

            Like they did with Kevin J. Anderson this year? Yes, I didn’t vote for him, because I found his book so bad I couldn’t finish it, but I also didn’t vote No Award. Tor on the other hand actively campaigned to No Award one of their own authors.

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            2. Would that be some sort of contract violation? Is there not some clause requiring the publisher of a book to not bad-mouth it?

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              1. Apparently not.

                It is, however, not a best business practice especially in a field where there appears to be a growing alternative or two. Also, it especially isn’t when you’re shrinking (see the shutdown of Tor UK).

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      2. And when someone on their side is recommended and nominated via a WrongThink source, they can remove themselves for reasons and tell us all how it’s not about the politics of othering and hatred.

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    2. The asterisk thing was really offensive. David Gerrold saying that it wasn’t okay to boo “No award” when it *was* okay to cheer and applaud it?? Wow.

      Indeed, I wasn’t aware that the Chtorr ecosystem is now supposed to control fandom as well.

      Also, as a side note, I think that it would be best if we said outright that we’re *not* going to ask “permission” to put somebody on a recommendation list. That was always an incredibly stupid “rule” that was invented by the anti-puppies, and after the disgraceful performance by the anti-puppies this year, a lot of people are probably going to decline. And it would be sooo much fun to recommend some book that the anti-puppies want to recommend too.

      I totally agree with that. Why should we play by the other side’s rules? The more complex we make their voting problem, the harder it is for them to simply buy votes.

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    3. I agree with that sadness and feeling of being unwelcome. I have a friend trying to get me to come to WorldCon next year. I don’t think that’s going to happen. Not when I could spend the same time and money on something like GenCon and actually have fun.

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      1. No, come. We’ll be there, unless house doesn’t sell and I’m living under a bridge. And a LOT of huns will be there too. Come sit at the back and throw spitballs with us. Revolutions can be fun.

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        1. I lack the money to come but if I had the money I suspect that I’d want to spend more time with the Huns (male & female) & the Bar-flies than at the World-Con events.

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            1. I just went into a sincere and spontaneous evil cackle at that. Let’s do it! This is our home too.

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              1. Rumor begins of a certain person living in metro KC who may be in a position to help certain, favored individuals with lodging and perhaps transportation . . .

                This person is really, truly, royally cheesed now with the “No Awards” votes and thinks 2016 might be a good time to strike a blow for the Human Wave against the Gray Goo of the CHORFs . . .

                He has a pool in his back yard, too . . .

                Liked by 1 person

                  1. As Kipling said “The Female is the most dangerous of the species”. The individual should clear this offer with his wife. [Wink]

                    Besides, how many guests can the individual’s home house? [Grin]

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                    2. At least sixteen, without putting anybody directly on a carpet with a blanket and a pillow. (Two couples will have to make do with inflatable mattresses, though.)

                      I counted it out, once. Double-occupancy on the sofa-beds, and as many as three may be accommodated on the Big-Ass Sectional, downstairs.

                      I may be opening a can of worms, here. Or, a can of carp. Not sure.

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                    4. I’m going to be at the next LibertyCon. Perhaps I’ll take reservations for the Worldcon there, then. (or Then, there. It’s late. I’ve had beer. I should go to bed.)

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      2. Yeah, never been to a GenCon or a WorldCon. There was a time I wanted to do both. Now, I only want to get to the former.

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      1. IIRC the “asterisk thing” is a sports thing to mark votes/standings where fraud is suspected.

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          1. In their spoiled cruel childish minds the fact that by following their rules we managed to get some of our picks nominated is prima facia evidence that we cheated. Had they been cheating all along? Nothing to see here, move along, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.
            Does their argument make sense? Oh hell no! But when did the hissy fits of a bunch of immature brats have anything to do with sense?

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        3. The “asterisk thing” originated in 1962 when Roger Maris surpassed Babe Ruth’s single season home run mark but only because the season had been extended from 154 games to 162 (Maris hitting #61 in the final game.) Because of the iconic nature of Ruth’s achievement (never mind he did it in about the same number of plate appearances) there was considerable hullabaloo claiming Maris hadn’t really beat Ruth’s mark.

          Commissioner of Baseball Ford Frick tried to straddle the divide by putting an asterisk by Maris’ record, thus satisfying nobody.

          Thus the asterisk entered history as symbol of tainted achievement, emotionally invested old guards and gutless officialdom.

          So yes, it is a fine and appropriate mark for this year’s Hugos.

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    5. Permission? Utter bilge! I like what I like, and that’s that. If $PERSON likes something else, that’s fine. But when it becomes a thing where I *must* like what $PERSON likes? Said $PERSON can go… engage in a procreational act in solitude.

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      1. Many people fail to learn the distinction between “crap that is good” and “crap that I like.” There are several technical terms for such folk but they are not properly put up at a family friendly blog.

        This actually arose this afternoon at the grocer’s check-out when we briefly discussed reading and the constant carrying of books with the cashier. She admitted to having had only one book in her bag when her roommate had inquired what was making it so heavy. “A Stephen King novel.” “Is it any good?” “Wouldn’t I be a fool to read it if it weren’t? Life’s not long enough to read books I don’t enjoy.”

        Walking to the car I quipped to Beloved Spouse, “I’m reading 50 Shades of Grey; it isn’t any good — I’ve been bad and am punishing myself.”

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  19. I have the artistic talent god gave a gnat, but I can picture an editorial cartoon: Three sad puppies on one side. On the other, a smug CHORF holding a torch. Behind them, a treehouse labelled Science Fiction (Maybe with a “No Puppies Allowed” sign in front of it) totally engulfed in flames, and the caption, the CHORF saying “We win!”

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    2. Shadowdancer to the art desk, Shadowdancer to the art desk. We have a priority art request!

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  22. I may ‘pony up’ for a voting membership next year, myself, though I don’t look forward to having to read ‘dreck’ (GIGO).

    And while I hope that the Hugo can be reclaimed, in the meantime, how about starting another award so that folks who want to read good books have something they trust?

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    1. I share your revulsion, but how many bites does it take to determine an apple is mealy? I expect five paragraphs is (more than) sufficient to discard many nominees.

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      1. Not always, I have read more than a few books I liked a lot in places but which still left me feeling as it there had been a worm in there somewhere. Or found the worm with the last bite.

        But yep, more than half of the time that should work.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. Jonathan Carroll is a gifted writer incapable of writing an ending for a novel. The rest is good, but the last few pages go off the rails.

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      2. Well, it tells you if the writer is experienced and able to write a good hook. New writers are sometimes rather slow at getting a story moving, I’ve found – but also sometimes very enjoyable once they do. So I wouldn’t depend on that rule too much…

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    2. Nothing but your own sense of honor compels you to read the nominees; if you don’t feel it’s necessary to read something to vote on it, stop. I’m debating whether this year’s No Awards relieves me of the obligation to read all nominees before voting, myself.

      That said, who needs an actual award so that folks who want to read good books have something to read? Tell Amazon what you like. It’ll be happy to recommend oodles of other stuff. You don’t have to purchase it from them if you don’t want to. Or do the same on goodreads, but since Amazon owns goodreads I assume they’ll use the same engine.

      What we really need is a list of recommendations by fan and type and commentary in a database, which can then be queried depending on what you’re in the mood for at the time. “I want milfic today. I like what Drake likes; give me his recommendations.” Or “I want something really good. Give me the top ten picks from last year from my usual weighted average of fans, with the commentary from the fan who recommended it highest.”

      That’s not really a complicated technical problem, though there’d be a lot of implementation work (starting with figuring out what the categories are; it *is* technically possible to let fans add categories, but that would probably wind up with too many overlapping categories.) You’d need a host which allows for scripting and database access. The hard problem is getting enough people to fill out the forms with enough data. Since readers choose which fan recommendations to pay attention to, it doesn’t even really matter if people try to spoof the system; you just need usage caps so they can’t take it down by overusing it too easily.

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  23. I admit to mixed feelings. First, annoyance at the children who stomped their feet and brought the matches. Second, a sense of grim satisfaction that my inclination to attribute bad motives was based on solid reasoning regarding the CHORFs rather than personal animus. Sitting in on fourteen panels in two days hammered that home. What should have been lessons in craft became indoctrinations.

    Finally, sadness. This won’t be resolved in a year or two. The battle is, and will be, never-ending. Those who place politics above story understand that they must control the narrative, so they will never quit. Plan on a long, long war, one in which we must win hearts and minds while the entrenched strike matches and pine for a Pyrrhic victory to prove their worthiness to a cause.

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      1. Two examples. First, at the YA Blog/Book panel, one of the panelists specifically stated at writers must include a more diverse cast of characters for the sake of diversity, not for the sake of the story. She also patronized the sole black man at the event, stating that he was the sort that wouldn’t have been invited to her D&D games when she was a teenager, so we now have to make a special effort at inclusion. I was a little astounded, since I was her age and had my black friends come over all the time when I was young. H.M Jones on that panel had some really good input and it would have been nice to hear more of what she had to say, but the other speaker rarely yielded the floor.

        Second example, Writing Characters Smarter Than You, came with explicit statements to avoid the “magic Negro” moments and to populate the story with more smart minorities and women. And, also explicitly, do not make the smart women shrill. Neither of those directives match the panel title. One of the panelists did make an attempt to address the techniques for building brilliant characters, so the session wasn’t a total waste.

        In most of the panels, I learned more at the last five-ten minutes of question/answer when the audience got involved with specifics on technique than I did during the panel discussion.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. Real people can be (and indeed are) diverse. Making a rainbow of characters just to check all the ticky boxes? Dull.
          Some years ago I was trying to watch an episode of NOVA about a generally unknown black scientist (finally, a black scientist who was not Carver) but the show was unwatchable. It was in February (Black History Month – fine) but it was not about the science or the scientist, but his skin color and (mis)treatment. I have no doubt he had problems – but the show failed to tell me much of anything about the *science* work he supposedly did, so…. *click*. Thus goes ticky-box TV. And so goes ticky-box literature, too.

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            1. My second novel had a diverse cast of characters, but it fit the story. A Nez Perce Indian, a Kenyan, a Latina, a couple of white folks. They all ended up there because the story needed it, not because I had boxes to fill. First was white bread all the way, as fit the region the story was set in.

              Comments from readers on the second story ran along the lines of exciting, with one person going so far as to say it was like summer camp meeting the Poseidon Adventure. No one said diddly about the ‘diversity’ of the characters. If they had, I’d worry my story sucked, instead of sucking them in.

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                1. “Good to see you, in yourself Orvan.”

                  Thank you. The Recent Unpleasantness pushed $HOUSEMATE over the edge of a Decision. We are now both registered for LibertyCon 2016 and have a room at the convention hotel, so people seeing an ox about the place will likely be seeing me rather than hallucinating.

                  Liked by 1 person

              2. Not, however, the big one. Random diversity is survivable.

                It’s when you insist on diversity to the detriment of good story that we really get a problem.

                I have seen people insist that shoehorning in a scene of no relevance where a man’s mother and sister talk about embroidering just to pass the Bechdel test can not possibly be harmful to a story.

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          1. Sounds like it.

            Which is par for the course on the left. They push special rules for some groups because they don’t think those groups are capable of succeeding under the same rules the rest of us follow.

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            1. Their definition of racism is often as objective and compelling as me defining ‘white supremacism’ as ‘thinking thoughts other than Lincolnism-Shermanism Mitt Romney Thought’.

              These days people seem to use racism to mean entirely the opposite of ‘judging by blood’.

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              1. Functionally “racism” means “I cannot find an argument, however fallacious, against your position and so I will attempt to silence you by making baseless allegations against your character.” I always shorten that to “I surrender.”

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                1. Unfortunately, it does not really parse as ‘I surrender’. What it really means is, ‘The Black Knight is invincible! Come back here, I’ll bite your legs off!’

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          3. She wants you to admire her for confessing her sin and repenting. That’s the kinda religious zealotry you get when you join a godless church.

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        4. Was this ‘sole black man’ Steve Barnes, my partner with Niven on two best sellers and the not yet completed third book in the series? In what way was he patronized?

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          2. Jerry, if Steve was there, I missed him and the “sole” part of the statement becomes inoperative (I was wrong.) This was a young man in his early- to mid-twenties. He was specifically called out, by gesture and phrasing along the lines of ‘someone that looked like that young man’, as a person who would not have been invited to the woman’s teenage D&D parties, followed immediately by a statement that we need to do a better job of inclusion. I placed her age near mine.

            My experiences growing up where pretty much the opposite of hers, maybe because I played sports. We hung out, played all sorts of games, got into reasonable amounts of trouble together. Pretty much stayed that way until, one by one, we discovered girls.

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            1. “We need to do” meaning “she needed to have done”. She’s clearly not competent to generalize.

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          3. Third?
            The first two are on the good “what we show to company” bookshelf with Shakespeare, Hugo, Dante, and Dostoevsky.

            I need to go lie down now.
            (Thank you)

            Liked by 1 person

    3. “This won’t be resolved in a year or two. The battle is, and will be, never-ending.”

      Rust never sleeps and such as these will forever be the barnacles on SF’s hull. Our opponents will raze the village rather than allow others to share in it; they are the Hamas and Hezbollah of SF.

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        2. Sacrificial anodes are all well and good, but they don’t beat a needle gun and a good coat of paint.

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          1. Needle gun…. ZOMG that’s so much better than a stiff broom. As a penniless student 50 years ago I took a day labor gig scraping ship bottoms. Evidently it didn’t kill me.

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          2. Belt and suspenders. You need the anti-fouling paint, and you need sacrificial anodes. Stiff metal brushes, replacement paint, and new anodes as required.

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    4. This won’t be resolved in a year or two.

      It will never be “resolved. CHORFs gotta CHORF. It’s like I try to people in politics. There’s never a point where you’re done. The fight is forever. The instant you forget that, the SJWs/CHORFs win.

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  24. I saw the results this morning and thought they probably thought they proved something. Well, as far as I can tell, all they’ve proved is that they are willing to poison the well and salt the fields. So? We knew that already.

    They have sown the wind. Let them live with the results.

    Liked by 1 person

      1. He is gloating big time over at his blog. If they’d been half minds they’d have made sure Wright and Butcher got Hugos to spite him.

        But they aren’t even smart enough to run and drink beer.

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        1. from what I’ve seen of pictures/videos most of them couldn’t run in the first place. But running while drinking beer is tough, trust me on that. Its generally easier to drink beer before & after running

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          1. The difficulty in running and drinking beer is directly proportional to the amount of shiggy involved which goes back to how nasty the hares in your kennel are.

            Now the drinking before and after, at chalk talk and circle, those are very important.

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            1. Point taken. It also depends on whether you’re a racist FRB or not (I am).

              Also its good to drink beer at beer checks. My willingness to run while still drinking the beer from the beercheck is strongly negatively correlated with its quality because I don’t want to spill the good stuff.

              We should see if we can schedule a KC H3 trail during / through worldcon next year. Because hashers could really cause a lot of sensitive snowflakes to melt down.

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              1. True, true…the most politically incorrect running club in the history of ever. I’d happily lead circle :)

                I’m Packed Full of Seamen by the way or Packy for short. My mother hash is the Happy Valley Hash in Western Mass.

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                1. Dirty Dingus here. Depending how you look at it, mother hash is either Helsinki or Samurai (Tokyo) – first started running with Helsinki, but got named by Samurai almost a year later becasue H4 didn’t do names

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            2. Since I was a semi-accidental SCB at the Green Flash H3 trail tonight I ran backwards donw the trail to meet the FRBs with my beer

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          2. My marathon PR includes a beer stop for good measure. Portland has (had?) a beer table around mile 23 and I’d faded from Boston Qualifying pace by a couple more minutes than I could gut out, so I hit the table for a quick, quick cup of beer.

            Pretty much the best of both worlds, Never did get to Boston, but no regrets at all.

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  25. one minor quibble, it looks like Vox and the Rabid Puppies actually were a block vote of ~500 people voting exactly the same.

    I think the analysis showing that the SP ‘block’ is ~400-500 is far more suspect, because its’ far less monolithic,s o I think a lot of the people being classed as ‘neutrals’ are actually SP who read everything and voted on what they liked.

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    1. I don’t think anyone post here or at other SP sites that they put Ancillary #1, but I have seen a number of people that supported Goblin Emperor or 3-Body first instead of Skin Game or Dark.

      The RP votes are probably closer but I expect not as 100% as you portray.

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      1. Perhaps the answer is a SP4 pre-Hugo vote. Have all the novels nominated, have all the provided reading material, have everyone vote on a SP4 site for their choices.
        Winner of the pre-vote is the one and only thing all SP4 participants vote for. I concur that Goblin Emperor, Skin Game or Dark Between the Stars would have been suitable winners. If your going to be accused of ‘slate’ voting and your opponents are ‘slug’ voting no award, it would be best to optimize the strategy to overcome their scorched earth policy.

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      2. I voted for Goblin Emperor (#1) over Skin Game(#2) but it was an extremely tough decision. I admit I based it on the fact that when I started GE I couldn’t put it down until my eyes closed on their own, picked it up again as soon as I had my coffee in front of me after I woke, and didn’t put it down again until I was finished.

        However, I thought either would have been a very worthy Hugo winner. It’s hard when more than one nominee is obviously deserving of the award.

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      2. 500 is about 20% over the (numbered) membership of the group that calls himself his “Vile Faceless Minions.” ie, the ones who’ve agreed to let him call the shots. The rest of them apparently voted much the way you people did. Many of them read your blog and his, both. And decide for themselves who’s full of it at any given moment…

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  26. Sarah, I probably can add some non-overlapping languages to your swearing collection ;) [Hebrew, Dutch, some Russian, a bit of Arabic]

    But seriously, to me this is just another data point: an experiment that corroborates the outcome of the previous experiment.

    I think if we again have a sweep of “Noah Ward”s next year, it is *definitely* time to roll the ending credits for the Hugo Show.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmbursLXzpk

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  27. Not sure how to upload an image in this system, so I put it on the FB thread. If it’s needed for a web page or something, welcome to it.

    Liked by 1 person

  28. I’m surprised they had 2500-3000 trufen dedicated to burning the place down. Possibly some of VD’s faceless minions helped, but even so that number was larger than I expected by a factor of 2-3. I do however doubt they can get much more than that.

    I think the answer is to go big and aim for 20,000 voters for next year. That’s a stretch goal but I think that doubling the vote is certainly possible. However we also very much need to go and nominate stuff that is worthy and this time make sure all of us nominate the maximum number in each category so that we totally overwhelm them again at the nomination stage. Next year there must be no puppy unapproved options on the ballot – in fact we need to have the top 10 slots so that even when stuff drops out we still have our stuff ont he ballot. They can noahward them if they want but they can’t get any of their poison on the ballot and that’s going to hurt them a lot.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Considering we’d been accused of sockpuppeting the voting, it makes me wonder if the CHORFs didn’t do exactly that. As I noted irritably to someone last night who was taunting me about the outcome, “We didn’t buy any memberships for people. That would be YOUR crowd.”

      Like

      1. Um, no. Mary Robinette Kowal is not “our” crowd, to use that sort of terminology. She’s the one who coordinated all those … 100 or so, was it? … donated memberships.

        Like

        1. I see I wasn’t sufficiently clear. Let me rephrase: as far as I know, nobody in either group of Puppies bought memberships for anyone else, while as you point out, Kowal coordinated “scholarships” for the Puppy Kickers. How much you want to bet she was just the tip of the iceberg?

          Liked by 1 person

  29. The Hugos have been on life support for a good long while now. Getting the folks who put it there to admit the fact is what Sad Puppies was really all about. The system was being gamed by a tight incestuous clique who at the same time proclaimed that they represented the absolute pinnacle of the SF&F world. At the same time the readers, the true fans in the right sense of that term, were saying, “Hugos? Tried reading a few winners, but I guess I’ve just lost my taste for science fiction.”
    Last night yet again proved our point. Not only is the system corrupt, but the manipulators are spoiled and petulant children willing to destroy their toy rather than be forced to share it.
    Perhaps it’s time to issue the DNR and let the poor beast pass quietly from its current state of misery. If this is the path we choose we do need to somehow get the message out to all the fans and potential new readers that the claims of excellence made for the winners of this once prestigious award are blatant falsehood, that there is still good, exciting, entertaining SF&F out there. They just need to look in a new place to find it.
    Sarah, Amanda, Kate, if you go ahead with SP4 I will support you in any way I can, but please do not let the effort consume you. You are each and every one of you talented authors, and with indie the establishment cannot silence you, so the absolute best thing you can do is put good stuff out there for the folks to find and read. Grow new fans faithful to the spirit of the sort of stories we all grew up to love and respect. Fans who will one day say, “Hugos? Wasn’t that some award that used to matter back in the olden days?”

    Like

    1. Also, don’t pull anyone who’s story you liked but asked afterward not to be nominated, unless you mis-categorize that nomination or it is not qualified for rules reasons. If they ask to be pulled form your list tell then “Then write dreck and we won’t like your stories enough to read and nominate them.”

      Like

  31. First time Hugo voter. Did not nominate anyone.

    What the Hugo voting showed is that 2,500 voters out of a legion of SF readers decided to vote lockstep to no award anything nominated by people they dislike who voted in lockstep during nominations.

    The irony is hilarious! SJWs voted a slate to protest slate nominees! And then they pat themselves on the back for being “open-minded!” Awesome!

    Worldcon is a tiny, tiny con with a small number of voters. For the Hugos to regain any real meaning as a “fan award” the voting should be moved to a much bigger con – DragonCon or Comicon would do.

    I read everything. I “no awarded” several winners this year because I did not like the work. I guess that puts me ahead of the “slate voters” (both Puppies and SJWs) because I read and actually voted. The “no awards” I gave were based on my assessment of the work – not the political affiliation of the nominee.

    Goblin Emperor was my #2 vote behind the Jim Butcher work for novel.

    Like

  32. embarrassed to call myself a science fiction and fantasy writer and, for the first time in my life, wondering if it’s time we came up with another word.

    I was catching updates (but not watching) last night as I worked on writing a script to tidy up a modest data set. I was wondering something similar.

    Look, I get why we want to recover the Hugos. If we wanted to do it by mass vote buying, like they appear to have used, I could fund a fifth of what we’d need personally out of my annual bonus if I got the numbers right (yes, my annual bonus after taxes could buy over 1000 memberships…I’m a bankster FFS) buy why.

    After the ConCom I gave $40 to have them take sides and publicly piss on me why would I waster $1 on them much less the $40k to play their game their way.

    Let them keep nominating Scalzi until he has more Hugos than Heinlein, Clarke, and Asimov had nominations combined. He will still be a less likable person than Asimov and a less enjoyable writer than Heinlein.

    Like

    1. Accepting that there were at minimum 500 Puppy voters (probably more, but that seems a reasonable base) we need to consider boycotting Worldcons which disrespect the voice of the puppies. Maybe they don’t want that $20K in fees, especially if putting up with the likes of us becomes the price, but it might be something to put to the test after next year’s vote.

      A little more balance on the panels, a little less disrespect from the podium seems a minor step toward making fandom more inclusive and accepting.

      Like

      1. Given some puppies were in person it was more than $20K in fees.

        But yeah, I could spend the money on GenCon or DragonCon or SWLF (which I have friends on that con committee who have been trying to get me to go for years) or Cold Wars or WinterCon or GaryCon or NTRPGCon or…

        They own WorldCon and they own the Hugo which will mean squat in 10 years when WorldCon is 500 people and shrinking.

        I’m wondering if the $20K+ we gave them did more for them than their tantrum did against them. The real home of SF/F isn’t books anymore but TV, movies, and the net. The real home of Fandom isn’t WorldCon but DragonCon or ComicCon. Maybe we’re just as overly invested in WorldCon/Hugos as them while the world has passed us all by.

        Like

        1. “They own WorldCon and they own the Hugo which will mean squat in 10 years when WorldCon” is the SF equivalent of Arthur Treacher’s Fish and Chips.

          Like

          1. Holy blast from the past Batman. I haven’t even heard that name in…a long time.

            Kind of like Wenchel’s Donuts or American Motors (my first car was an AMC). Things that just went away and weren’t even classic enough to be mourned.

            Like

          2. Hmmmm, the only time I vomited while pregnant was shortly after eating at Arthur Treacher’s. Just sayin’.

            Like

      2. Also, five yard penalty, assuming facts not in evidence: specifically the desire for a more inclusive fandom.

        Like

        1. Comment on Twitter earlier was all about how SF wasn’t for us, but was supposed to be “inclusive”. Um…the hypocrisy shouldn’t be that hard to see, but apparently it’s impossible for some folks.

          Like

        2. Of course they want to be inclusive and accepting. Why, they accept both kinds of people: white rich spoilt self-entitled intersectionalist loony Leftist brats who would rather spend their lives in the circle jerk of capital-F Fandom (which is not about being a fan of science fiction, but being a Fan of Fandom Itself) than have actual lives or accomplish anything, and rich spoilt self-entitled intersectionalist loony Leftist brats who would rather spend their lives in the circle-jerk of capital-F Fandom than have actual lives or accomplish anything Of Colour. (Nobody else counts as people, of course.)

          They particularly prize the latter kind, but they haven’t yet figured out the trick used by one of P. T. Barnum’s less savoury competitors, of slathering themselves in paint and passing themselves off as R.S.S-E.I.L.L.B.W.W.R.S.T.K.I.T.C-J.O.C-F.F.T.H.A.L.O.A.A.O.C.

          Like

            1. Sure, those people have figured it out. It’s the clowns at WSFS who haven’t figured it out yet. They’re so busy congratulating themselves on their superior insight into The Future!!!111eleventy™ (being Fans and all, dontchaknow), that the present has long since overtaken them and their minds are plodding along in the distant past.

              Like

  33. Science fiction won’t have to recover from the Hugo debacle. It has been going along nicely for years now with the Hugo becoming more and more irrelevant as a signator of quality and readability. Sure, Keven J. Anderson and Jim Butcher got screwed, but realistically, how many of Jim Butcher’s readers could tell you what a Hugo — or Nebula— is or meant? As a practically matter, the Hugo has as much significance as grampa’s Croix de Guerre from WWI, a meaningless token from a forgotten struggle that no one remembers anymore. It would have been nice to save it, but should we distort the rest of the world to accomodate it? The commercial houses that favor the Hugo “worthy” are suffering, but as TOR UK gets tossed in the wastebin and the rest of the “serious” SF/fantasy houses claw at each other for shrinking shelf-space in the disappearing book stores, Baen and Castalia are doing fine.

    What IS going to die, and perhaps it’s time and past time, is WorldCon and the fan base that supports it. WorldCon is fast becoming our Congress, full of graying and out of touch 60’s holdovers playing to a crowd of entitled neurotics, but fading out of touch with mainstream of public needs and interests. Perhaps it’s time to let it go. Vale WorldCon, hello LibertyCon and DragonCon.

    Like

    1. Yep, Hugos and Nebulas — and Azimov’s and Analog — stopped being relevant to my leisure reading decades ago. There isn’t much hard science fiction written these days, what’s new is mostly fantasy of one sort or another. A cheap looking rocket award is an anachronism unsuited to the much wider world out there. Bury it and get on with life.

      Like

      1. We bury it and move on, they come after us. It’s what they do. There’s nothing we can do about the Nebulas, Asimov’s, or Analog – yet – but we can do something about the Hugos, and even if that means forcing the SJW’s to burn it down around their ears in public, that’s still worthwhile. It will make it that much harder to infiltrate the next award.

        Like

          1. Heroes don’t do what they do for medals. Awards aren’t about the recipient, they’re about the community. They’re how we say “this is what we approve of, this is the best of us.” They will always be with us, and if the SJW’s keep taking them over they will always be distorted.

            Like

            1. Make up awards faster than they can screw them up. Potemkin village awards by the dozen, or better yet, a Potemkin Sad Puppies IV – all sound and fury and then no money for and no attendance at the con.

              Like

              1. You know…if we can convince the WorldCon committee to budget for all the SPIV registrations and then not show up hilarity might ensue.

                “I’m sorry, I’m a bad person because I went away like you wanted and you’re $25K short on your budget? Explain to me again why that’s my problem but first let me get more fine champagne”.

                Like

            2. In my experience, awards are about the Leftist community. They’re how Leftists say ‘this is the Official Pabulum That Is Good For You, and this is What You Are Supposed To Read (Watch, Listen to, etc.)’ It’s about giving the sheeple their marching orders so everyone will know what is the correct culture to consume.

              Basically, it’s a way to try to short-circuit the word-of-mouth process by which the real community discovers good work. And as Our Hostess has pointed out, it’s also a way of counting coup among people who are well connected and can arrange log-rolling campaigns, but haven’t got the chops to win the only award that matters – the Benjamins.

              From this point of view, the only good thing about SP and like campaigns is that it pins the enemy down and tricks them into defending a fortified position of no strategic importance or value, instead of getting out in the country and fighting a viable campaign.

              Like

              1. No, it’s that leftists co-opt awards in order to reward their loyal minions. It’s the only form of recognition they have, and it impresses the LIV’s they depend on.

                Liked by 1 person

                1. If you look at the actual people involved in creating the major SF awards in the first place, you’ll find a Who’s Who of the radical Left in Fandom.

                  Like

                  1. Yes, but my understanding is that writers have always had more than their fair share of Leftists. Bear in mind that there are plenty of explicitly non-Left awards out there.

                    Liked by 1 person

              2. Speaking on LIV’s, I wonder how many of the No Award slate were actual SJW’s vice those who bought the months of slander about SP.

                Like

                1. Question – what does LIV stand for?

                  To answer your question, Jeff, I spoke to more than one person who’d bought the orchestrated propaganda against Sad Puppies and when I was done they realized we are not who the rumors said we were. So I’m sure we will never know how many people bought the slander, but more and more of them may realize it was lies if we just keep on keeping on. It was really the equivalent of being told that a peanut butter sandwich was a glass of motor oil. One of the reasons we have to be there at Worldcons is to show those who’ve been lied to that we are–obviously–not what was falsely advertised.

                  Like

  34. sheesh, step out the house to do some roofing and you post, and some 124+ replies later . . .
    anyhow, I was trying to think of way to say burning it down was the wrong approach (they say we want that when they made the statement they were going to do it themselves), but you, as usual nailed it.

    And before you died, you gloated you had won. The mind boggles.
    This is the same political mindset that supports unions. and the union declares “VICTORY!” when they start a labor dispute, and the company they are striking against goes out of business and closes down, then moves to another state without unions, hiring no one who walked out on their jobs. Taxes for the city, county, and state, are gone, jobs, gone, town nearly dead, but dammit we WON! They make Baghdad Bob sound sane.

    Liked by 1 person

    2. “then moves to another state without unions, hiring no one who walked out on their jobs”

      See, this is essentially what indie publishing is. A preferential option for the little guy.

      Like

      1. Noticed that, huh? Yep.
        By the By, the town I mentioned is still mostly dead. Though Miracle Max is having trouble getting it back. Two of my cousins live around there. One works for the state.

        Like

    3. Somewhat comparable, the unions that pushed for a $15 minimum wage in Los Angeles, won, and then lobbied for a waiver permitting union labor to make a sub-minimum wage.

      People pay dues for that, although not voluntarily.

      Speaking of L.A. & unions, look at how much film & TV production has moved out of that area to escape high union wage demands. Fewer productions, fewer employed — but damn if they don’t get union wages!

      Like

      1. Union logic:
        many moons ago, TWU was thinking of striking at Southwest Airlines. Why? “We want to get the same pay as United and American workers!”
        How much profit share do they get?
        “Um … AA and UA didn’t make a profit, and I don’t think they get it when they do?”
        So, how much more a year do the UA and AA folks get compared to what you got working for SWA and getting profit sharing?
        “Um . . . well . . .”
        It was less than their yearly wage?
        “Ah, no, it wasn’t”
        So you want to make SWA as unprofitable as AA and UA so you can make more base pay but loose your profit sharing and your stocks that SWA also gave you from time to time will be worth far less … Why?
        he had to go work a flight, and never would admit how foolish he was.
        That was the Union Rep for that location btw.
        SWA gave two wage increases during negotiations, and generally made the TWU look even more foolish than they normally do. Afterward, when negotiations were over, and TWU got their asses handed back to them, they tried to raise the dues, but that got shot down.

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  35. I have 40 dollars in rolled quarters from my spare change bucket just waiting for the chance to help flesh out the embiggening. Cry Havoc and loose the bitches of war.

    Like

    2. Wrap your hand around one to punch back twice as hard, but don’t waste it buying a ticket to a rigged game.

      Like

  36. so after all the sanctimonious claims about hating slate voting the show that they really really approve of it. Or didn’t they realize that voting “No Award” in a block was slate voting?

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Standard SJW hypocrisy: “It’s okay if I do it. If you do it it’s badsickwrong.”

      That’s why I don’t think that SP4 being run by female writers (including our hostess) is going to cause them much cognitive dissonance any more than it did when they and their Fellow Travelers denigrated Palin, Thatcher, or any other “right wing” women. It doesn’t matter if they’re being hypocritical little [excrement]s, just that they “win”.

      Which is why I’m starting to wonder if I’m coming down with a case of hydrophobia. Vox Day’s “BURN IT DOWN” is starting to appeal now in a way that it didn’t before.

      Like

      1. It isn’t the SJW’s that need the cognitive dissonance it is the rest of fandom and the general public. It becomes so much harder to sell to the general public the image of old white guys when those running things are all women of various backgrounds. It won’t cause the SJW’s any mental conflict but others much more so.

        Tom

        Like

        1. The SJWs will try to spin it as women tokens doing the bidding of the dread Vox Day. Truth is never an issue, having spin that fits your world view is far more important.

          Like

        2. Their line is that women who don’t toe the line are somehow crypto-male. “Palin’s greatest hypocrisy is her pretense that she is a woman.”

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          1. I thought invalidating someone’s identified gender was bad. Or does that not apply to known cisfemale gendernormative fascists?

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            1. No they aren’t in the protected class unless they are subservient. If they are uppity they certainly are not. Why else would they have to create StrawSarah.

              Like

    2. Tom, jeeze! You totally don’t understand. See, when Puppies nominate stuff, that’s Bad, ok? When a block of ~1800 people votes for Noah Ward in every category, that’s a principled stand!

      Like

  38. What _I_suspect they will realize (eventually) is how *well* they proved _our_ point. Like the rest of their Political ilk, they cannot “reason” to a logical conclusion, no matter how much evidence is there. They see/hear/read *only* what they want to see/hear/read. IOW, they are experiencing Senile Dementia.

    Like

    1. THEIR mission is accomplished. The institution is either controlled or destroyed. If they decide the latter, they will MoveOn to the next institution. Look for SJW’s to start infiltrating LibertyCon the way they’ve co-opted the “official” Libertarian Party (the way that noted progressive Pat Buchanan did before them).

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Looking forward to that interaction, particularly the lamentations of the SJW as they are driven before us.
        There were a few issues this past year that I won’t go into in public, but given the nature of Uncle Timmy, Brandy, and company along with LC being the de facto home con for Baen any attempts at serious infiltration should prove most entertaining.

        Like

        1. I sit semi-corrected. It was the 2000 election, and the Reform Party. Pat Buchanan declared as a 3rd party candidate. His “delegates” proceeded to literally lock the doors at the convention against Paul Hagelin’s supporters, who went across the street and staged their own nominating convention. The whole mess had to be settled in court.

          By the way, Donald Trump also ran briefly for the Reform Party’s nomination in 2000, but withdrew, he said, because of the party’s infighting.

          Like

  40. I have to say I am shocked by the results. I thought we did enough to get out the vote. And I read the works before voting DESPITE knowing from reading LAST year’s nominees, that I would find them offensive and a waste of my precious life.

    As I read this post, I was struck by it’s similarity to Sarah’s post following BHO’s re-election. I was sure we’d win. I was SURE that there weren’t enough stupid people to re-elect him. And I was SURE that people could see, as plainly as I did, the horrific damage that would result.

    I was assured by many writers that we had to ‘give it one more go’; that it wasn’t too late to work the system. But it was.

    I believe the reason the Hugo controversy spilled out into the wider world is that many saw it as a microcosm of our fight in the greater political and culture war.

    And now, we’ve had our hats handed to us. Yes, I understand that we met our goals of exposing the politics, bias, etc behind the controlling junta, because of the actions they took. WE STILL DIDN’T ACTUALLY WIN ANY HUGOS.

    Just like after the elections, we exposed the media bias, we showed the vote rigging and corruption, but we STILL ENDED UP WITH BHO AS PRESIDENT.

    I didn’t vote this time to expose the clique, Larry did that last time. I voted TO WIN SOME HUGOS for things I liked.

    Just like IRL politics, we spilt our vote, by nominating a bunch of stuff we liked, leaving them just ONE thing to vote for. And they did.

    So once again, after a defeat that makes little sense to me, and comes as a surprise, there are calls to continue working within the system. If we try harder, next time for sure.

    Well, I don’t think that is going to work. We are polite, honest, conscientious, and individualists. Our enemies are rude, vicious, liars, who will act without thinking and act en masse because it furthers their goals. We can’t win against that. We keep proving it over and over.

    As long as their progressive, marxist, collectivist, anti-human culture dominates our political and national culture, we will not win.

    Our only hope is to change the macro culture. We cannot win by adopting their tactics. We cannot win by continuing to play the game by their rules. They have taken control of the levers of power. We need a ‘Kobayashi maru’ moment. As long as they own the default position, we can’t beat them. We need our own ‘long march through the institutions’ but we need it to be SHORT!

    Short, violent (physically or psychically) revolution, or long, tedious, culture change. Cultures are changed in the long run when the barbarians are subsumed into the larger culture. WE AREN’T barbarians. We are inside the culture. I don’t think we can return to our previous culture from inside over time. I’m beginning to believe that only through a short sharp extreme event can we change the culture. We need a revolution. We need a change as profound as the changes after 9-11.

    We need a way to show clearly, that OUR WAY, although harder, is the BETTER WAY. And we need to do it soon, or there won’t be enough left to do it.

    nick

    Like

    1. No no don’t think of this as a massive loss. Instead realize that they stood up there in public and shoved their assh*les at everyone. What else was those giant asterisks but that?

      More they have publicly proclaimed that they didn’t even bother reading any works that they objected to and then turned around and voted “no award”. They spent a lot of their public capital on proclaiming that they were defending against the hoards of barbarians and then turned around and razed the awards to save them.

      This means that they are not going to be able to sell this so well for Sad Puppies 4. Worse they angered a lot of people on the sidelines who didn’t bother to register and vote this year. As Sarah has noted this isn’t a simple 1 year contest it is a fight to retake the Hugo’s from an entrenched power bloc.

      Like

    2. What happened was simple. Puppies and neutrals actually read and sweated over their choices. Puppy Kickers didn’t read anything, they just clicked “No Award” where they were supposed to and called it good. And that is far easier to coordinate and maintain discipline on. You can see where they lost support when the choice was an actual person, the ballot counts dropped by half, sometimes even more.

      Libertarians, conservatives, apolitical types, they’ll all have to decide what they want to do regarding the Hugos because I think the SJWs maxed themselves this time and aren’t likely to bring 5k in next year. They will try to bring their max of 3500 to the nomination party, definitely, though. But again, they have to select one of their own for each category and justify it as “supporting diversity”. Their own infighting on this matter will be quite amusing and may provide some opportunities for the Puppies.

      Liked by 1 person

    3. The best Kobayashi maru move may be to simply walk away from the Hugos. The whole system is corrupt, and without a (probably) bloody revolution it will not change. I fully expect a black swan that will make the SJWs either dead or irrelevant. The Hugos are pretty small beer compared to lots of other stuff coming our way.
      Save your $40, buy indies and let the Toristas stew in their own poison.

      Like

      1. Nah. Publicize it. Get the word out. Bring in enough people to drown the SJW votes. It’s doable.

        For starters, the moment a Worldcon location is announced, people who live in that area should start providing it lots and lots and lots of free publicity. The targets are the people who don’t have to spend a lot of money to travel and stay overnight, and thus might be more inclined to participate. Get enough involved, and the SJW bloc becomes a tiny fish in a big pond.

        Like

        2. Yeah, but having heard some of the panel titles this time around, would you want to explain to your friends why you sent them to that turdfest? They could probably buy a cheap weekend vacation in Frisco for the same money and have the same experience. They’d certainly meet the same class of people.

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          1. Why would anyone waste time on panels at a Worldcon? You know they’re going to suck – why not hang out in the video/movie rooms, the dealer’s room, or find a nearby venue to patronize? It’s not like we’re actually there to socialize with the CHORFs, is it?

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            1. Why would I go to the dealers’ room? To buy a bunch of old books my innalekshul betters have already declared to be racist, fascist and misogynist? To buy sexist photos of Faith Domergue? To buy videos of William Shatner demeaning the womanhood of green dancing girls and naive yeomen? Spare me from such debauchery!

              Like

    4. “WE STILL DIDN’T ACTUALLY WIN ANY HUGOS.”

      You say that like its a bad thing. Look at what did win, then get back to me why Jim Butcher would be sad this morning. I read Butcher’s book, and it was a pretty nice read. Entertaining. I read “The Day The World Turned Upside Down”, and I deeply wanted to injure the main character. Guess what I’m going to pay money to read, next time.

      We won every single No Award category, and we made them admit it before the whole world. They are walking around today with the dazed look of people who participated in a riot, and then found out they torched their own house. That was the purpose of the activity. Job done.

      Next job, do it again next year. And the year after. And so forth.

      Like

      1. Well, I take your point. But that doesn’t work in the wider world. This year the intent was to get good work nominated, and we did that. I guess I assumed that once nominated, we intended to WIN.

        If that is the explicit goal next year, I will call it ‘baby steps’ and support it, BUT if we want to rehabilitate the Huge (and lots of people do) then we have to actually win some.

        nick

        BTW, I had the exact same reaction to The World let my selfish ass live while others died. That POS was offensive. “I’ll save this fish, but let kids and mothers die.” Typical anti-human BS that we HAVE to displace.

        Like

    5. At the Battle of Midway, VT-8 was completely destroyed – only one pilot survived – without inflicting any damage on the Japanese fleet. But they pulled the Japanese air cover out of position enabling the dive bombers to inflict severe damage.

      Like

  41. For a controlling plurality of World Con membership, literary merit is a product of having the right politics, the right opinions, and the right connections. In the process of demonstrating this, they have insulted everyone with merely plebian tastes in Science Fiction. They imagine yourselves to be aristocrats, but their behavior has been crass and tasteless, and so is the kind of fiction they prefer. I’m disgusted.

    Liked by 1 person

      1. I hadn’t heard of it and had to look up the reference. But, going by the description only, that seems about right.

        Like

  42. I’ve seen this ending before. In one of those “literary” works they have you read in English classes, no less. You know, the one where the usurper has taken over the kingdom, and the heir to the real king comes up with a plan to unseat him, and in the end everyone is dead and Vox Day…err, Fortinbras comes in to rule over a kingdom of skulls?

    Liked by 1 person

  43. Like a toddler who smashes his toy rather than share it with anyone.

    Yes, it will take years but few things worth having are achieved easily.

    Like

  44. Yup, Vox wins. He set it up so that whatever happened he could claim a win. I think these results sucks for the fans, because I think the next couple of years are gonna be very similar in results. Foot stomping temper tantrums with the little children taking their ball and going home because they weren’t winning. I find that sad. I also find it sad that Toni didn’t win simply because she’s good.

    Like

    1. From what I saw last night, most of the “fans” are people I wouldn’t cross the street to piss on if they were on fire. This morning the numbers strongly support my first impression.

      Like

  46. Next Year
    The reason No Award took so many categories this year is that by the time we realized what the puppies had done, it was too late to do anything but buy supporting memberships and vote against the slates. But next year we are all already eligible to nominate and we will know what SP4 is proposing. Next year the puppies will not be able to quietly stuff the nominations. Next year the Hugos won’t burn but the puppies will.

    Like

    1. WITHOUT knowing what we’ll nominate you propose to “burn” it.
      Well done, sir. You have supported Sad Puppies IV better than we could have done. You ARE why we fight.

      Like

      1. Puppyism is to literary awards as communism is to government. If you persist in puppyism our reaction to that is what I imagine yours would be if I proposed to govern by communism, only this time done right. If you choose to march under a tainted banner, you should not be surprised when people associate you with the history of that banner.

        You can talk to each other as much as you like in your echo chambers, mock my picture, and claim that I prove your point. But out here in the world, you didn’t have the votes to get your way, by overwhelming amounts. You won’t have them next year either.

        And the most ridiculous thing about the whole situation is that none of this is necessary. If you want to prepare lists of fiction that you like and think is award-worthy, everyone would be happy to consider them. Not everyone would like them, because people’s tastes vary. And then people would choose whom to nominate. If you get lots more fans to vote who like the same things you do, terrific. But if you have a primary to pick slates and then have your people nominate the slates in lockstep, that’s something we will use our votes to stop, at the nomination level if we can and in the final vote otherwise.

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        1. If you want to prepare lists of fiction that you like and think is award-worthy, everyone would be happy to consider them.

          Apparently not.

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          1. Yeah… that’s the biggest bunch of horse pucky I’ve had the pleasure to step around. Larry Correia was insulted to his face because he was nominated for an award. Anti-puppies claim he was just mad because he didn’t win. No… he was insulted to his face, in person, when he went to his first con. This is the “happy to consider them” that has been proven empirically. As in… just how unwelcome are you? Let me insult your favorite author, let me mock the unwashed fandoms of popular writers… and then let me explain that if only you’d just nominated for awards that you wouldn’t have been attacked.

            Just how freaking stupid do you think we are?

            We were actually living on this planet for Sad Puppies one and two… and we saw with our very own eyes the “welcome” that happens when ONE unapproved work gets on the ballot and we saw with our very own eyes the crowing and celebration when those works didn’t win.

            Because “classy” is what we’re dealing with here.

            Liked by 1 person

        2. You really are a freaking idiot, you know that?

          When the hell did we have a “primary”? We got together, threw suggestions at Brad, and he decided. How in the hell is that a primary?

          And we nominated in lock step? Show your work on this one. I haven’t found two Sad Puppies YET who nominated the exact same slate, so do present your evidence.

          Are you huffing paint before you come over here or what?

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        3. If you choose to march under a tainted banner, you should not be surprised when people associate you with the history of that banner.

          Liar. That you and your kind tell lies about the Sad Puppies campaigns taints not the puppies, but yourselves.

          You can talk to each other as much as you like in your echo chambers,

          Liar. You are here, posting. Thus, clearly, this is not an echo chamber. That your lies are consistently mocked doesn’t make it an echo chamber.

          “You keep using that word…”

          Banning or “disemvowling” posters for simple disagreement is your side’s tactic.

          If you want to prepare lists of fiction that you like and think is award-worthy, everyone would be happy to consider them.

          Liar. That’s exactly what we did. That you lie about it doesn’t change the reality.

          If you get lots more fans to vote who like the same things you do, terrific.

          Liar. That’s exactly what we did.

          But if you have a primary to pick slates and then have your people nominate the slates in lockstep,

          Liar. We did no such thing.

          Indeed, the only people voting in lockstep was your side, taking their marching orders from people like Scalzi, Glyer, and the Neilsen-Haydens voting “no award” rather than have Wrongfans have any of the editors or stories they like win a Hugo award.

          You lie. You lie repeatedly.

          Well, tell your lies to the Marines because the Air Force isn’t buying.

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          1. Chuckle Chuckle

            “Well, tell your lies to the Marines because the Air Force isn’t buying.”

            I remember reading about the origin of the line “Tell it to the Marines”. As I suspect you know the original phrase was “Tell it to the Marines, the Sailors won’t believe you”. [Very Very Big Grin]

            Note, at the time of the original phrase sailors were believed to believe any tall tale that they were told. So the idea was that somebody was telling a very tall tale that sailors wouldn’t believe so the person should tell the tale to marines who might believe the tale. [Wink]

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tell_It_to_the_Marines

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        5. Tell us, hyrosen, how are gas prices doing in your world?

          What is this “primary” of which you speak? When and where did it happen, other than in the fever swamps of your imaginations?

          Can you find any evidence of “a primary to pick slates and then hav[ing] your people nominate the slates in lockstep” or is that just one of those things that “all-right-thinking-people” just know? Because I don’t know of anyone who witnessed such a thing.

          BTW – it wasn’t your picture which was mocked, it was your smirk. A smirk you elected to display in this venue.

          Like

          1. Gas prices? I live in Manhattan, so you can’t go by that, but oil went under $40/barrel the other day. They’ll go even lower once the sanctions on Iran are lifted. Why?

            My picture is just my picture. It was taken for an ID shot at work. While I find the conservative viewpoint to be ridiculous when it’s not evil, I didn’t actually pick my picture to laugh at you.

            The nice thing about final votes is that they settle the debate about who has the most support. This year twice as many people voted not to award a Hugo for novella as voted for all the nominees combined. You can try to change that next year, but I would guess that demographic trends are not in your favor.

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              1. You must know how expensive Manhattan real estate is. We don’t have a lot of gas stations. I think the gas station near where I live is charging about $3.50/gal. I expect that’s way more than most places outside the city get. (Like many Manhattan residents, we don’t own a car, so I don’t follow gas prices closely. We rent from ZipCar when we need to drive and then gas is included.)

                Again, why?

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            2. Manhattan? DeBlasio-land? Where 1/4 of high school seniors are able to perform at a college entry level but 2/3 of all seniors graduated? Where the citywide pass rates at all levels were 30.4 percent in English and 35.2 percent in math?

              Where a massive explosion at John F. Kennedy High School tore out three floors, caused when a contractor lit a match in an attempt to find a gas leak?

              That explains a great deal.

              It has probably escaped your notice, living in a city where the voting is done for you, that final votes do not “settle the debate about who has the most support.” They settle the debate about who has done the best job of getting out their vote, whether by getting their supporters to actually cast ballots, manufacturing ballots by such practices as “purchasing” memberships for supporters, or by disqualifying votes that don’t support them.

              As for your picture, you chose it, on that we agree. Your smirk identifies you, as Sarah said, whether or not you intended to.

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            3. “They’ll go even lower once the sanctions on Iran are lifted.”

              Do you think the lifting of those sanctions will increase peace and security throughout the Middle East or destabilize the region?

              Please feel free to explain your answer.

              As for why, that will be clear after we’ve established some useful baselines.

              Like

              1. Oh, and while you are at it, having clearly and concisely expressed your views on conservative politics, can you please briefly describe what purpose you had in coming in here to post the comments you have made?

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                1. I wanted to let you know that you’re obnoxious and disliked, so that if you care about your cause more than your ego you should find a more palatable advocate. After all, the biggest accomplishment of the puppies was to motivate a couple of thousand people to pony up $40 just to oppose them.: “To the last, I grapple with thee; From Hell’s heart, I stab at thee; For hate’s sake, I spit my last breath at thee.”

                  And I guess feel free to draw a mustache on my picture.

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                  2. I not sure which pleases me more:

                    1. The people I’m disdained by.
                    2. That they are so self important they model themselves on Captain Ahab while having no knowledge of who Ahab was and why Melville choose that name.

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                  3. So I don’t have the respect of people who didn’t respect me prior to Sad Puppies 1 because I wasn’t one of them? I’ll live.

                    Like

                  4. Well, you’re happy that I don’t like you, and I’m happy that you’re happy, so, good, we’re all happy. But all this happiness isn’t going to help you win Hugo awards, because all those people that you’re happy to have dislike you are also going to be voting against you. If you still want to try for Hugo awards (which you apparently do, since SP4 is in the works) you’re going to need to convince people who are inclined to disdain you that you have something meaningful to say. Or I suppose you can go ahead with the alternate plan of recruiting your own multitudes. I doubt that will work, but who knows?

                    Anyway, who are these Melville and Ahab dudes? I was quoting Khan.

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                    1. Anyway, who are these Melville and Ahab dudes? I was quoting Khan.

                      For most people if that made that comment, I would assume they were joking.

                      You haven’t displayed the depth of reading for me to make that assumption. I did, in fact, assume you were quoting Star Trek II. That someone doesn’t even recognize Khan was quoting classic literature is proud of their judgment about a literary award is a better comment about the whole thing than I could ever make.

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                    2. I find it even more amusing that he seems to be forgetting the circumstances in which Khan Noonien Singh, super-genius, utters that quote: while hurtling to a fiery death, out-maneuvered and defeated by a man his physical and intellectual inferior, destroyed by his own blind, rage-fueled drive to destroy another.

                      More apt that hyrosen imagined.

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                    3. I let the “Look at me, I am Khan” attitude go:

                      1. I expect SJWs to want to be the bad guys…they admire totalitarians.
                      2. It’s probably his ego talking. He wants to believe he is the superior intellect (the picture stops his physical specimen play).

                      Really, from that quote and his picture he seems to want to embrace the stereotype of the sci-fi fan from SNL to VoxDay’s comment about going to one con and wanting nothing to do with broken people.

                      When your opponent wants to destroy himself, get out of the way.

                      Like

                    4. So proud of your ignorance of Sad Puppies and of literature. At least Clamps could be occasionally amusing. And coherent.

                      Like

                    5. You really are an idiot.

                      No, we don’t have to get people who disdain us to vote for us. That’s a waste of time, since most of them are as idiotic as you.

                      There are, however, a lot of people who despise people like YOU who didn’t even bother to vote this year.

                      And, to be frank, the only way all those voters are going to be effective in killing SPIV is to rally behind a handful of titles, otherwise we’re going to dominate the nominations yet again. That means a slate, and at that point, I’m going to enjoy blasting away at the hypocrisy of how slates are bad…but only when WE do them.

                      Like

                    6. Anyway, who are these Melville and Ahab dudes? I was quoting Khan.

                      You, sir, are a buffoon, an ignoramus, a jacakanapes, fit only for mockery and derision.

                      Good day, sir.

                      Like

                    7. You realize that your argument is essentially that the Hugo should be awarded based on the popularity of a work’s advocates rather than its own merit? That certainly does make it a worthless award.

                      As for anybody “happy that I don’t like you” … you overvalue yourself. I do not care whether or not you like me; I am utterly indifferent to the clearly ill-informed opinions of internet bigots and thugs. Your disdain is a source of neither pleasure nor pain, nor even a mild discomfort.

                      It is a matter of curiosity that you would expend time and effort on so meaningless a task, suggesting that you’ve multiple problems in personal reality which can only be assuaged by going online and deliberately attempting to provoke hostile reactions. I guess life is hard for a doorman in Manhattan.

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                    9. Why am I reminded of the “Ted Baxter Takes a Creative Writing Class” episode of the Mary Tyler Moore show?

                      Like

                    10. Anyway, who are these Melville and Ahab dudes? I was quoting Khan.

                      Ahab is a character created by Melville, whom Khan was quoting in the movie.

                      I’m laughing at your superior intellect.

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                  5. I wanted to let you know that you’re obnoxious and disliked,

                    Funny you should choose that particular phrasing. Have you ever seen the musical 1776? That phrasing was used to describe John Adams as well, so…thank you.

                    That said, I do not believe you have our best interests at heart. You lie, and have lied from your first post here. It is generally foolish to accept advice from ones enemy and you, sir, are the enemy, made so by your dishonesty in these posts.

                    I prefer to be an Adams to your Dickinson, thank you very much. That I am disliked by your peers is not a criticism, but a badge of honor.

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                  6. “I wanted to let you know that you’re obnoxious and disliked …”

                    What is the point of that? To judge by your picture, you’ve gotten out of middle school by now. You do not know me, nor Sarah nor anybody else here, nor Larry Correia or Brad Torgerson or any of the other Sad Puppy supporters. All you know about us is what you’ve been told and what you’ve provoked through your tendentious remarks.

                    Sounds like rank bigotry to me — imputing individual determinations based on presumptions of group identity.

                    “the biggest accomplishment of the puppies was to motivate a couple of thousand people to pony up $40 just to oppose them.”

                    In point of fact, it was the libelous anti-puppy campaign of vicious hate-mongering demagoguery which provided the motivation. All the puppies did was cast legal votes for works of SF that they enjoyed; allegations of slating were false, malicious and vindictive nonsense which deliberately dehumanized puppy voters.

                    As you cannot possibly imagine your comments here are conducive to dialogue you are essentially claiming that “Me ‘n some friends went out and stomped some puppies for fun las’ night.”

                    I understand that you feel entitled to the Hugo and to the right to award it to your friends, but (as a wise man recently proclaimed) “You didn’t build that.” Your attitude reminds me of the old joke about the various body parts arguing over who should be boss, so congratulations, you’re winning by being the bigger assholes.

                    And you’re destroying the Hugos to do it.

                    Like

                    1. Oh noes, we’re not popular with the cool kids like hyrosen. Whatever will we do?!

                      (Should I add HK-series droid prefaces to my comments so hyrosen has a chance to understand my meaning?)

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                    2. I dunno ’bout you but ah figgers tuh drown mah sorrow.

                      Ah reckon about a half thimble of port oughtter do it.

                      The remaining liter is just so the first bit don’t get lonesome.

                      Like

                  7. Yes, yes: You hat- oh sorry, dislike us and want us icky evil “conservatives” to know that we’re hateddisliked.

                    Yawn.

                    Liked by 1 person

                  8. “you’re obnoxious and disliked” from a representative of those who (at least recently) seem to have jumped the shark with obnoxiousness (or have you not read the postings of the most prolific of the Puppy-kickers?)

                    “palatable advocate” – curious phrase. There are a couple dozen or so advocates of the Puppy philosophy on this and other sites; a few may have stronger feelings about it than others, having been personally assaulted by your side”s “grappling” and “stab[bing]” and “spit[ting]”, but we’re pretty independent bunch; so no singular advocate exists.

                    Actually, the biggest accomplishment of the puppies was to draw the attention of several thousands of SFF readers to the liklihood recent-historic collusion and corruption in the selection of the Hugos; which was actually the stated purpose of the whole exercise. That y’all just HAD to respond to a movement (that’s right: SP is not an organization with membership, hierarchy, internal decision-making-for-all, etc., like you’re used to; it’s a movement of similarly-minded people in roughly the same direction.) with actual collusion just made the puppies more successful at their declared objective.

                    Must suck to be so predictable.

                    Like

              1. He probably isn’t even aware that an oil cartel exists or how it can manipulate crude oil prices.

                There are two kinds of folks in fandom: those that enjoy hate so very very much that no evidence, no personal relationship will turn them from a legitimate target for their fun. It’s a progressive thing, mostly because conservatives recognize the existence of human nature: a necessary first condition for rising above it. And those who love fandom and SF more than they hate.

                So this rosen chappie may be right: maybe the rot is that deep and wide. But based on my experience at Worldcon there are a lot more useful idiots than committed commisars – its just that Worldcon has gotten so small and shabby and irrelevant (At Buccaneer Whelan, Hickman and other giants sent art. At Sasquan most of the nominees didn’t bother) that their voices are amplified.

                We’ll see. It is useful to know what the haters are afraid we’ll do, btw. Until I saw his post I was waffling on SP4.

                Like

                1. Actually, that particular cartel is pretty broken. Large suppliers who are not part of it nor will conform to its production and price targets combined with most of its members and conforming NOPEC members not able to make budgets with current prices and thus unable to cut production to drive it up have rendered OPEC powerless for now.

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                2. Glad to help. The thing we’re afraid you’ll do is the same thing you did this year; get idiots to nominate garbage so that worthwhile works are kept off the ballot. To see what un unsoiled category looks like, we have the list for Best Graphic Story, where at least four of the five nominated works were excellent and the best one won.

                  BTW, John Scalzi has posted his take on the Hugos: .

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                  1. Since I’m pretty sure that you and I don’t see eye to eye on what is “worthwhile”, then I pray we can do that for the rest of time.

                    Mostly because the crap that’s been nominated is pretentious crap that I wouldn’t use as emergency toilet paper.

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                  2. The thing we’re afraid you’ll do is the same thing you did this year; get idiots to nominate garbage so that worthwhile works are kept off the ballot.

                    Because heaven forbid that a fan award go to books that people actually want to read and not the dreck that folk like, well, you think is “important” but you have got get a Hugo because you certianly aren’t getting the award of steel engravings of historic figures. I like what Michael Z. Williamson suggested: calling them the “Huggos” because they’re a hug to console folk for their lack of actual content.

                    What Theresa Nielsen-Hayden suggested was the “worst item on the ballot”:

                    Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files is “garbage”?
                    Kevin J. Anderson is “garbage”?
                    John C. Wright (published by Tor–at least he was, given PNH’s treatment of his _wife_ when she offered an olive branch, that’s unlikely to continue) is “garbage”?

                    Considering how many people bragged about not reading the stuff they planned to “No Award”, claims that it’s the quality of the work are more than a little disingenuous.

                    Which of the Puppies supported works have you read? Can you discuss plot points, characters, theme, anything that can illustrate that you actually did read them or are you dismissing them simply because your Lords and Masters over at Tor told you to?

                    Yeah, we consider your opinion on what’s “garbage” as “valid”.

                    Like

            5. You live in Manhattan? Color me shocked.

              And no, final votes don’t indicate anything about overall support. The fact that Jim Butcher only got 800 first place votes indicates that his rabid fan base didn’t vote. Either they didn’t know, or didn’t care, or whatever.

              Further, you DO realize that Puppies voted for all kinds of stuff, including 3BP?

              No, of course not, because you don’t understand anything outside of your liberal bubble.

              Like

        6. If you want to prepare lists of fiction that you like and think is award-worthy, everyone would be happy to consider them. Not everyone would like them, because people’s tastes vary. And then people would choose whom to nominate. If you get lots more fans to vote who like the same things you do, terrific.

          Please explain to me the difference between what you just said, and what Sad Puppies 3 did. Oh wait, you can’t, because that’s exactly what SP3 did: propose a list of fiction that people liked, and suggest that those be considerd for nomination. And that’s what your crowd was willing to burn the awards down over.

          So please, don’t give us this nonsense about “everyone would be happy to consider them”. We’ve seen with our own two eyes that this is false.

          Like

        7. And once again, your comment proves the Sad Puppies point, and you are too clueless – in your cult-like drum circle – to realize it.

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    2. BTW, guys, I hate personal attacks, but I invite you to look at his picture. During the cold war, all through Europe, we could always tell the communist true believers by “the smirk”. There it is. Memorize it. So it always is.

      Like

      1. Sometimes there’s only a very thin, wavering, low-contrast line between “personal attack” and “definition of character”.

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          1. “definition” is a much better pun, IMAO.
            Although “deflamation” might be useful in a flame war.

            Like

      2. Vox Day has a new Hitler video “Hitler learns of No Award”, at 2:12 he says sort of nice things about Sad Puppies. Also I saw this guy in the video! He was the second one to bail out and go to the ‘safe place’.

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    3. Next year the Hugos won’t burn but the puppies will.

      Thank you.

      You can tell a lot about someone by those who make themselves his enemies. And you, sir, have made the case for the Sad Puppies campaigns better than anyone on our side ever could have.

      Kudos.

      Liked by 1 person

    4. Oh, thank you for admitting that you’re going to do everything you can to stop us before you even know what we’re going to do.

      Do you people take stupid classes, or is this a genetic disorder you’re required to have prior to membership?

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      1. I don’t think they’d be crazy left and have that smirk of self-satisfaction about it if they hadn’t been this dumb from the beginning. OTOH a lot of history classes (based on Zinn) are indeed stupid classes

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        2. You do realize English lacks declensions, don’t you? Does “stupid” an adjective modifying the classes or a noun defining the course material (e.g., as in “math” classes, “language” classes, “science” classes?)

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      2. Incredible. After accusing the puppies of buying supporting memberships just to flood the votes, he admits they bought supporting memberships just to flood the votes. After accusing the puppies of ‘slate’ voting, they take all their newly purchased supporting memberships and vote no award.
        He didn’t mention their method of ‘coordination’. Some secret Journolist perhaps, or a special coven located at TOR HQ?

        Like

    6. “Quietly stuff the nominations”

      That reminds me of a book I saw in my local iibrary that tried to claim the religious right was a “shadow movement.” Sorry, it’s not their fault that you can’t be bothered to pay attention to anyone outside your clique.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Kind of hard to claim we’re being sneaky when it’s the third year of Sad Puppies, everything is open and above board, and people like Gerrold, Scalzi, and Martin were decrying us from the very beginning.

        Like

      2. “Quietly”? No, they didn’t take SP3 seriously and ignored it until it was too late.

        Like

    12. by the time we realized what the puppies had done, it was too late to do anything but buy supporting memberships and vote against the slates.

      Wrong. You could have read the works before voting your Hate Slate.

      Because that’s what it was… hate. You can’t wrap your heads around the fact that people you disagree with might enjoy good books, so you vote to suppress the award. How is that not bigotry?

      Like

    14. My understanding, from reading the post and the comments here (I commend this action to you) is that SP4 intends to draw in thousands of voters. The devious plot is to draw in as many as possible of those who read, watch, listen to or otherwise consume Speculative fiction. Let them all know they have the ability to nominate the material they may be reading and enjoying right now. If they find themselves thinking, “THIS is the kind of work that should be nominated for a Hugo”, for less then they spend on Starbucks in a month, they can have a voice.

      So the evil plan of SP4 will involve throwing tens of thousands of dollars into the coffers of next year’s Worldcon.

      You’re welcome to help. Recruit lovers of SF who are willing to read, view, listen to, etc. SF and nominate their favorites for the year. Maybe between the two groups (three if Vox Day decides to do his thing again), we can flood the convention with money. Heck, if some of the associate members decide to show up, Worldcon might even start to rival ComiCon.

      Are you up to that, or is that too inclusive for you?

      Like

      2. When I saw the link upthread to register for next year, I went and did so as a supporting member. I will read and vote for stories that I like, and vote against stories that are ‘not’ stories.

        Depending on finances, and family health issues, I may or may not upgrade to an attending membership. I would really like to attend and meet a lot of Huns face-to-face, but we will see.

        We will see what happens in KC. That will determine my course of action in following years.

        Like

    15. hyrosen… Puppies didn’t *quietly* do anything. Also, we’d like you to nominate authors and for the total number of nominating ballots to go way way up. Many people have said so many times. Lastly… you always had the option of getting out the vote next year and increasing participation. Burning the Hugos this year is not in any way related to that. It’s nothing but a tantrum. It changes nothing about next year whatsoever.

      Next year stories will be nominated by the Puppies. Those stories might even include work by your favorite author. Will you vote for your favorite author or your favorite book? Or will you demand that they refuse the nomination?

      Like

      1. It’s nothing but a tantrum. It changes nothing about next year whatsoever.

        That is where I’d disagree. This might have huge repercussions next year in a couple of different ways. Only time will tell.

        Liked by 1 person

    16. Ah, the usual “you MADE us vote No Award” and calling following the rules “quietly stuffing” or similar.

      How unsurprising.

      Like

      1. I’m sure Beale will be more than happy to make them do it again next year. There is already a “Hilter learns…” video where Hitler’s rant is “you idiots gave Vox Day exactly what he wanted”.

        His only lament is he screwed up in selecting noms and gave them a category he could of gotten “No Awarded”. He’s also loving his choice for novel was the winner.

        After some of the BS PK’s spread here yesterday I’ll be happy to help Beale burn it down. The memory of RAH, Herbert, McCaffrey, and Zelazny as well as respect for living winners like Cherryh, Niven, Halderman, and LeGuin deserve better than roaches.

        Given Smeagol of Tor and company don’t even rise to the level or roaches we need to burn them out.

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    17. Quietly stuff? Thats what Tor books does when it quietly buys memberships for all its employees.

      How could you have missed Torgersen’s calls, amplified across every friendly blog to check out his list, read, pay the $40 and nominate, if not the something from the list at least something of similar merit.

      So the current selfish clique couldn’t quietly stuff the ballot.

      World con: we have no institutionalized bigotry against conservatives or libertarians. We’ll happily take your $$$$$. Just know your place, stay on the back of the bus and shut up.

      Like

    18. Such a pity you don’t (apparently) read the works and vote on the works, rather than according to some non-Hugo criteria such as whether someone in your mailing list has declared the author a “Puppy”. Sad to be someone so full of hate for both people and SF.

      Like

  47. I joined the Evil Legion of Evil in order to try and save the Hugos. Since that is apparently no longer possible, I will do everything in my power to bring in enough new voters to burn it down, scatter the stones and salt the earth. I mean it. I’d much rather have the award not be given to anyone if the alternative is that it’s only awarded to bunch of hive-minded midwits whose sole purpose in life is to eradicate what they perceive as bad think.

    I have, on my bookshelves, the collections of ALL the Hugo Award winners up through Volume 6. Compare any of the works within the first 4 volumes and compare it to the dreck that the SJWs, in their finite wisdom, think they can pawn off as real science fiction/fantasy. It’s like comparing Citizen Kane to Plan 8 From Outerspace.

    So kudos, I guess, on proving our point. Next year’s should be called Sad Puppies: Nuke It From Orbit. Because that is exactly what’s going to happen.

    Like

    1. I’m with you. If all they can pull together is a Noah Ward slate, I’ll be pretty happy to watch ’em do it for the next ten years.
      $40 bucks a year to watch my enemies burn their own house down, and all I have to do is vote on the Interwebz? I like it.

      Like

      1. Yeah — that’s the thing that amazes me. The PK’s No Awarded every major text category save Best Novel and in that one they gave it to a story which could have come from an Interwar Era Pulp, except that the author was Chinese, and they consider this a victory? Are they not noticing that, before the Sad Puppies did this, they were just giving their awards to anyone they liked and ignoring the rest of fandom?

        Like

    2. “I have, on my bookshelves, the collections of ALL the Hugo Award winners up through Volume 6.”

      Hadn’t really thought of that, but that will be a pretty thin Volume this year, won’t it?

      Like

  48. I agree that the optimal solution is not burn the whole thing down, as tempting as that is following last night’s, um … “showing.” The Reconquista of Spain was achieved by tiny, shattered rump kingdoms sheltering in the Pyrenees. It took forever, but it got done. The SJWs are Moonies with a different divine guru; it will be as hard to de-program them as it was to de-program a Moonie, more, as they are more numerous.

    Liked by 1 person

  50. An offhand comment over lunch made me realize how very much the Hugo kerfuffle resembles the outrage over Bush & Gonzales attempting to politicize the DoJ by recruiting more centrist lawyers instead of the hard-Left clique currently abusing their authority.
    [N.B., see:
    FEDERAL APPEALS COURT RIPS DOJ FOR MISCONDUCT IN POLICE PROSECUTION

    [SNIP] The DOJ’s misconduct left Judge Engelhardt little choice but to reverse the convictions and blast the Department. This he did in a scathing 129-page opinion which describes the Justice Department’s conduct as “bizarre,” “appalling” and “grotesque.”

    Now, the Fifth Circuit, noting that the Justice Department lawyers stoked a “mob mentality” against police officers, has affirmed the trial court’s decision to order a new trial. In addition to blasting the DOJ’s rabble rousing blog campaign and dishonest “investigation” thereof, the court found that cooperating defendants called to testify by the government lied; that defense witnesses were intimidated from testifying; and that inexplicably gross sentencing disparities resulted from the government’s plea bargains and charging practices.
    http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2015/08/federal-appeals-court-rips-doj-for-misconduct-in-police-prosecution.php ]

    No matter the battlefield, their scorched earth tactics remain the same.

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  51. The business meeting just voted to rig the voting rules so that this year’s problem with crimethink books won’t recur in the future (assuming the change is ratified in Kansas City next year).

    Or so they think.

    Heh.

    I repeat: heh.

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    1. These are the new rules that encourage single-candidate-per-category slates? Genius. So the Puppies can get in one or two crimethink works in every category every year…. and then to reliably defeat it, either they’ll have to agree on one CHORF-approved book, or they’ll have to No Award everything again.

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      1. That’s the one. Of course, the real agenda was to make sure that the Torlocks can always get at least one of their books on the ballot. It must have been a little disconcerting for Scalzi to get shut out completely (even after Larry C. declined his nomination), right when his deal was being hammered out.

        How they think this is going to play out is that Tor will always have at least one item they can tout as “Hugo-nominated”. They think wrong.

        The “guaranteed slot” issue is far from the only loophole in that hot mess. Further deponent saith not, at least at this time. :-)

        Liked by 1 person

        1. Correction, after Correia and Kloos declined, Scalzi is still without even a nomination to justify his $3 million contract.

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          1. I was really disappointed in Kloos for declining, I’m a big fan of his trilogy and thought he was above kowtowing to the SJW’s.

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              1. Having moved in conservative and libertarian (and fannish) circles for many years now, “stay off my team” is a sentiment I completely understand. I may disagree – Marko is a very good writer, and deserving of recognition – but I’m not going to criticize his choice.

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                1. I don’t either. I wrote that at the time, actually. He wrote a great book that deserved some recognition, but that was his call.

                  I gave him the best award *I* could give him though. Cash. :D

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                  1. The only thing of his I had ever read was his declination. Reading what he wrote in it, I didn’t find anything that would inspire me to want to read anything else he wrote.

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                1. Debra Doyle is an SJW? Sad to hear that if it’s true. I loved her Mage Worlds & Peter Crossman books..

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                  1. Gould, Mixon, pnh, tnh, and Scalzi are definitely puppy-kickers. E.Bear – I’m pretty sure.
                    Doyle or Macdonald? I’m not certain. I don’t recall seeing them post one way or the other. Odd are high, though. Tolerance not being a noted SJW virtue. /sarc
                    I liked the mageworld books, also.

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            2. Maybe his withdrawal is indicative of the true importance of winning a Hugo — he didn’t need the agita to sell his books and especially didn’t need the lost sales a win would generate?

              I suspect that, for some authors, winning a Hugo is like attending the prom with your kid sister.

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    2. No problem. Any set of rules can be ‘gamed’. While I do not doubt that SP followers can discern weaknesses, we can also examine the analysis of Mr Beale. While cold analysis is possible, someone motivated by hate will find much smaller cracks and loopholes.

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      1. Vox Day is, by primary (I think) profession, a video game developer. As he points out in one of his recent blogs (forget which, offhand, and currently haven’t time to go back to check), it’s his job to look into the game rules and figure out every way that they can be gamed by sufficiently determined people.

        I’m not in his inner circle (barely even brushing against the edge of the outer one, at this point), but I wouldn’t bet against him digging into the rules and finding a method that will satisfy his wishes, and whether you agree or not with the final outcome of his chosen plan of attack the reaction process will most likely be spectacular. :P

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        1. I believe you are correct on his occupation. The other thing in his favor is that the more byzantine and complex the voting procedure becomes, the easier it is to find the hooks to game the system.

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  52. The Hugos mean that SJWs (aka CHORFs) want a segregated fandom, separate and unequal, and everyone else can STEP TO THE BACK OF THE BUS.

    Your VOTE is not wanted.

    Your BOOKS are not wanted.

    YOU are not wanted.

    Period.

    Toni is a brilliant editor, I infer this because of Baen’s insanely prolific output and insanely high quality, and deserves the respect and praise of fandom.

    She will have to settle for the respect and praise of that portion of fandom which still MATTERS.

    (Anyone who can, please pass this along.)

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      3. Well, there’s always Madame Guillotine…

        (Figuratively or literally left to personal taste. Hey, they talk about using baseball bats on the Puppies, and I originally hail from the Chicago area so I’m familiar with the Chicago Way, as discussed in “The Untouchables.”)

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    2. Devil’s Advocate: Toni is Baen’s head editor, not the only editor. So some of that is due to her ability to manage editors, which isn’t entirely a matter of editorial skill.

      Like

  53. I do congratulate the Hugos on such a high turnout, at least they’re moving away from the situation where the Hugos die off because of lack of interest and participation. (Of course, they’re trying to kill it in other ways.)

    Maybe someone should start a competing award at somewhere like Penguicon or something? Perhaps using Eric Flint’s new word count divisions to better reflect the state of modern science fiction. Perhaps you could do a science fiction heritage award for the best works 100, and 50 years ago, every year.

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    1. Based on the shelf life of many Hugos, especially recent ones, perhaps a new award should be the “Best of 10 Years Ago”.

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  55. My 2 credits about next year.

    SP needs a spokesman, someone who is willing and able to articulate and argue for the Puppies position at these events. At this year’s Worldcon there was no one of that nature to be found John C. Wright was the closest in attendance, but he was hardly to be seen (tho I have no idea if he was even asked). Thus, the anti-puppies were allowed to set the agenda and make their arguments almost unopposed. While it would not have changed this years voting, if we are in it for the long haul we need to have people who can answer the Scalzi’s and Gallo’s – who can talk to the concoms about being on discussions and panels, even show up at such discussions unannounced if not invited. It was frustrating to hear some of the distortions being said about the SP’s yesterday, and to not have anyone, ANYONE, in sight who could answer for them.

    Next year’s Worldcon is in Kansas City, MO. Many, many more of us need to be in attendance there. And someone needs to step up and make our case.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. All three of us should be there, AND if this disgraceful episode repeats, I’m more than brazen and crazy enough to storm the stage, yank the mic from their hands and say “How old are you? Do you need help dressing yourself? Behave now, the adults are in charge.” They might have me removed, but I’ll have my say.

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            1. I second the motion for Kate, Amanda & Sara = The Eumenides.

              BTW… someone (NOT in the dealers room) was evidently selling t-shirts that said “SJW Glittery Ho-Ha Brigade Member”. I wonder where they got that name… (No, I did not see the t-shirts. I only know because someone I knew said she’d seen it and wanted one for herself).

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              1. Addendum. I’ve just seen one of the shirts. It does indeed exist, although the text actually reads: “Social Justice Warrior Glittery Hoo-Ha Crowd”.

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            3. By they whose names may not be uttered no! They are authors. If no-one utters their names (as in “Do you have the latest book by Sarah Hoyt?”), they starve!

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          1. The optics of the “Social Justice” set frog-marching a woman of color (every time I see that phrase I’m reminded of Larry pointing out that it’s just colored woman backwards) out of a convention for the crime of speaking badthoughts are just fantastic.

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              2. It’s a long drive from Colorado Springs to Kansas City. If she rode on the roof that would probably do it.

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            3. Setting aside how some elsewhere are peddling “Porgtugese aren’t Hispanic”, why do you think race would stop them?

              Remember George Zimmerman, who although Hispanic was regularly identified as “white”, in spite of his steady support for the Dem party before the whole media circus flared up? Facts on the ground don’t matter, only The Narrative(tm).

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              1. It won’t stop them, but it will make some of their supporters question what they’re doing. Remember that SJW’s rely on a large group of people who go along with their agenda out of a desire to be “nice.”

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    2. Yes indeed. There needs to be a solid contingent of SPs next year. In the hundreds. And all wearing Shirtstorm shirts or other similar badthink. If there are any KC area locals involevd perhaps they could organize something similar to the Libertycon shoot on the Thursday morning (and get it well publicised). Not that the shooting per se is necessary but it will act as a pretty good way to separate the extremely hoplophohic Chorfs from the rest. And so we can ahve a place to blow things up and plan

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        1. The Dread Mathamatician needs a “Wrongfan” teashirt and our divine hostess a corresponding “Wrongfun” shirt.

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          1. Right shirts, wrong wearers. Both ought wear the “Wrongfan” shirts; their offspring should dress in the “Wrongfun” shirts.

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    3. John arrived late Friday morning and was at two signings and two readings. The whole Award prep process ran from 4:15 – the ceremonies. Except for meals he was visible otherwise on the main floor and did run into fans.

      I was running interference to make sure he and his wife were treated like the honored guests any respectable con would have perceived them as. And of course, I volunteered at the con while Quizzer went to the business meeting. Because that’s what fen do at cons. Nonetheless my busband and I made shift to find a friendly reporter and get to her – and her to John and Jagi so she would know the real authors not the strawmen the CHORFs would describe to her.

      So yes, we need more boots on the floor. Happy warriors for justice, mind. Leave the bitter shrill hatin’ to the CHORFs

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      1. Even at that, Vox is still showing *more* concern for the field and fandom than the SJWs, who last night cheerfully burned it all to the ground just to spite us . . . and showed that they just don’t give a rat’s ass – even a tiny one – period.

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        1. Well yes, but it’s not hard to show more concern for SF – or anything else for that matter – than a SJW.

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          1. I see some updates on the Wired story.
            Look what Wired has done. The bad guy in the story is Beale, identified as a wealthy white male who is racist and mysoginist. The good guy is Annie Bellet, who pulled her entry rather than be associated with the Puppies:
            “Blonde-haired, fair-skinned, and “covered in tattoos,” Bellet is from Portland, Oregon. “I’m adopted, and I have a sister who is black, a sister who’s Vietnamese. My mom is a lesbian. I grew up in a liberal, inclusive environment. Still, I broke a lot of noses [after hearing] the N-word growing up, trying to defend my little sister. So I do not understand this white persecution narrative.”

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            1. Anne Bellet who we nominated anyways, not caring about her politics.

              But who was hounded by the CHORFs until she withdrew her nomination.

              Yet, WE are the bad guys, despite none of us being Vox Day?

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              1. According to Wired, yes, you are the bad guys. The purpose of the Wired article was to make people think of Vox Day, whiteracistrichrepublican, when they hear about the Puppies and the Hugos. A narrative does not have to be true to be effective.

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                1. A technique employed by Trump during the first debate.
                  You say bad things about women…. Only Rosie O’Donnell…
                  Left unchallenged, the viewers would be thinking ‘women, like my mother, my wife’ instead, Trump immediately turned the table and had the viewers thinking ‘women like O’Donnell, ‘steel doesn’t burn’-‘Bush brought down the twin towers’ and other icons of progressive rage.

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                  1. But Trump will lose, Donald Campbell.
                    The cultural Left has been at this a very long time. They are like IT in L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time or Tolkien’s Sauron. They cannot bear to look at the world and see any will at work that is not their own. The Wired article served the purpose of showing the Left who the enemy was (Puppies) and why they were the enemy (they oppose goodthink). Do not forget that we live in a world where no one important thinks it is odd that we have an “Equal Employment Opportunity Commission” that believes that race, ethnicity, and gender are important considerations when it hires its own employees (“women and minorities are encouraged to apply” has the same meaning as “non-women and non-minorities are not encouraged to apply”).

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      1. Because Beale is easy to portray as a bad guy, so they have to weld us to him in order to discredit us.

        Alternative theory: They’re too dumb to know the difference.

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            1. Well, they wouldn’t get much sympathy for a white woman versus a Native American man, either, so they’re not mentioning that bit about Beale. He’s an odd bird, but you’d think they’d do their research.

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          1. Liars generally put more effort into their lies in order to make them believable. I think they’ve really drunk their own ink here. They think they’re standing up for the oppressed. Just like the guards at Auschwitz.

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            1. No, actually sociopaths put a surprising low amount of skill into their lies. They are just used to not being called on them.

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      2. The TL;DR version is “guilt by association.”

        Vox Day (Beale is his real name, but barring “speshul snowfwake” jackasses I try to use a person’s preferred name) is their Bogeyman, and according to their logic all the “correct” people think like they do, so obviously [/sarc] any association with him will automatically tarnish the Sad Puppies.

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    4. “You must answer for Beale’s statements.”

      Why? The fact that you are unable to tell the difference between B-E-A-L-E and H-O-Y-T is your problem, not ours.

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    5. Wired really jumped the tracks with that one! Fortunately some of the commenters are more tightly wrapped.

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      1. Many of them seemed to be, at least in the first few pages of comments that I went through. Several were obviously laughing hysterically when they weren’t looking for stones to lob through Wired’s windows at the description of the organizers of the Puppy campaign as “three white males”.

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        1. Guy in the next cubicle wound up with a sub and would leave it on the edge bookcase. I’d thumb through…meh.

          Part of that culture of geekdom and being a nerd is now cool personified by the “I love f**king science crowd” that couldn’t differentiate their way out of a paper bag.

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          2. They used to write about the CULTURE of technology, and were a technology LIFESTYLE mag. I don’t know what they are now, as I let my sub lapse over a decade ago.

            nick

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      1. I think it is the same persons who appointed Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton as the authentic voice of African-Americans.

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    8. Ah, yes, Amy who wrote that opinion piece as a freelancer for Wired. Who called David Gerrold “David” in a very familiar way. When she interviewed me as a Sad Puppy I was actually told she’d gotten the suggestion to interview me from a very prominent Puppy Kicker, so I am not surprised that is the piece she wrote supported their narrative. BTW she was shocked that I–a woman SF&F editor, who has a black second-in-command, who regularly published huge swaths of females (including authors with progressive views), who rose to the top of a tough male-dominated field as a trailblazer–would be a part of SP3. Talk about not fitting into their narrative! The only part of my interview she used was the emphasis on the Graying of Fandom, and she used it as a cheap shot against Toni Weisskopf.

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  59. As an interested observer in this. I would like to point out some things.
    One this affaire has has put more authors into the spotlight for me that I was not aware of ( I did not know how big David Weber was) , Two the ramming home of the sheer bias and corruption in sf/f media. ( the fact that this has not been talked about in the British sf/f media as far as I am aware of.) 3 How bad the state of sf/f literature is. ( my sf/f book collection once 4 or 5 shelves has shrunk down to one over years ).
    Im going to join worldcon next year to vote for the Hugo’s. More out of disgust at what has happened yesterday than anything else. And while it might be tempting no Award for everything I do want to start reading sci fi again .
    Look the Hugo’s may just be advertising but it good way of showing what people are appreciating to the industry and if you can get it working properly again it can keep the industry In touch with the fanbase as a whole
    as well as giving much deserved recognition. So in the long run it is worth keeping. But to do that you have to get people motivated into joining . And the puppies are doing very well so far by showing what else there is out there and that you can show your appreciation for it.
    As for the rest Mrs Hoyt has said it better than I can.

    Like

    2. If they’re that corrupt reporting on some trivial award nobody ever heard of, imagine the chicanery behind “news” that people have money and power invested in…

      Like

  60. I can understand them burning it down and salting the earth.
    What I can’t quite grasp is them celebrating doing so, and declaring it a famous victory.

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    1. For the Left, ideas have been abandoned. All that remains is being seen drumming out your hate of the “correct” people in the tribal drum line. They got to do that in a large crowd of like-minded drummers and so the endorphins are wonderful.

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    3. They think they are not fighting Romans. I don’t have a good historical model for who they think they are fighting. Perhaps Occupy?

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  61. Not really a long time follower, but a first time commentator. I followed the Puppy creed, vote for what you read/follow. Well, 3 out of 5 of the things I didn’t vote on received “NO AWARD”. I was too busy (I was moving, hows the house updates going?) Or had no opinion. Fool me once…..anyway when do we get to nominate for next year and where do we get supporting etc.. memberships for next year? Really digging SEVENEVES right now. By the way with the Upside down story can we call the CHORFS goldfish now, i wouldn’t even dignify it with capitals.

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  62. And in the “You can’t make this s*** up category…

    I was leaving the convention to fin some sustenance, go out a door, past the shuttle bus and walk by someone going the other way.

    I am, like solidly eighty percent sure it was Dori of twit-storm fame…

    Thought about calling her name and asking “‘Sup?” But I didn’t feel like spending an hour with con runners defending myself against charges of stalking or harassment or of having a penis…

    Hittin’ the road in an hour or two and I must say this is NOT exactly how I thought my week would go.

    Liked by 1 person

  64. I’m torn between metaphors.

    On the one hand, the entire Hugo show last night reminded me of nothing so much as the opening to Butcher’s Blood Rite (Dresden #6). You know, the one with the demon monkeys hurling their own flaming poo. The one that starts off, “The building was on fire, and it wasn’t my fault.”

    Yeah, that one.

    On the other hand, there’s also elements of The Church of God Awaiting from Weber’s Safehold. They condemn the good guys to destruction for innovation, but are all too eager to snap up and legalize the innovations to use themselves. Unfortunately, they are always a step behind.

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    1. On metaphors: You remember what a left-wing hatefest Senator Paul Wellstone’s funeral turned out to be, right?

      Well, last night was the Wellstone Funeral for the Hugo Awards. It may totter along zombie-like for a few more years before someone caps it in the brainpan, but the award is dead and stinking from here out.

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  65. I thought it was sad last night. :P And as a big Connie Willis fan, I’m hugely disappointed in her.

    But, I guess now I’d better join up. My husband voted this year, but since I don’t really think of myself as much of an SF person anymore I did not. I’m signing up now.

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    1. It was made clear to me by Ms. Willis a few years ago at Balticon, when she made her GoH speech, that she didn’t like or respect people like me, and I have honored her wishes by not wasting time or money on her books.

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  66. Sarah, I am simply going to repeat what I said to Misha on MGC the other day. Here I stand.

    *****
    Misha, I’m at the point (or perhaps just the age) when I am willing to surrender not an inch more of the language territory.

    I am a liberal. I am NOT the speech-quelling, behavior-controlling creatures that have appropriated the word.

    I am a progressive. I am NOT the people that desire nothing more than to return to the days of the oh-so-caring aristocracy and the oh-so-grateful peasantry that have appropriated the word.

    I am even gay on occasion – although less often than in my far more carefree (and far more clueless) youth. I am NOT the people that are constantly telling such tales of a woeful and oppressed life that I cannot believe they ever have, or will, experience a moment of sheer happiness at being alive (no matter how much the “self-actualization” of what should be a small part of their humanity is celebrated).

    Therefore, I have chosen my hilltop – either to proudly fly my tattered but still unfurled flag – or to be the final resting place for any hopes I have for this society. The two words “science fiction” shall not be captured, shall not be held hostage, shall not be dishonored; not while I have a single round of ammunition left. This far – and no further.

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  67. After the Union armies had been mauled on the first day of Shiloh, Sherman came upon his friend Grant sitting by a tree.

    “We’ve had the Devil’s own day, haven’t we?” Asked Sherman.

    “Yep.” replied Grant, “Lick “em tomorrow, though.”

    So that’s my battle cry for Sad Puppies 4. Lick ’em tomorrow.

    Like

    1. One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results. The whole sad puppies started, as I understand it, simply to show that the Hugos were rigged by the secret masters of fandom. Mission accomplished!
      Unless you can come up with a really clever ruse, or simply overwhelm the opposition with money and numbers, the same thing is going to happen. Why bother? If you do win, then you will be the new SMOF until the new order of puppies comes along and it repeats.

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      1. We aren’t exactly doing the same thing over again, and we’re not exactly expecting different results. If they want to burn down the Hugos to save them, let them do it. At some point the wisdom of Solomon kicks in. At the very least, we deny the CHORFs a tool to use in cementing their power.

        And yes overwhelming them with numbers is the plan. But that isn’t going to make us CHORF’s, because the entire idea is to have a large and diverse fandom selecting the best of what is available, not what best aligns with one clique’s political agenda.

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        1. Go for it, but I still think using some sort of ju-jitsu would be better than a frontal attack. War games – “the only way to win is not to play”.
          I’ve been reading SF since the sixth grade in 1954 (“Sands of Mars” Arthur C. Clarke), and I find it amusing that I’m not a proper fan because I don’t go to conventions.
          Glad to be a GDI – I mean wrongfan.

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          2. But you see, this is the ju-jitsu move. We keep expanding the fanbase, so they become more and more diluted. They lose the Hugo as a propaganda tool (“Our works have lousy sales, but they win fan awards. The public has lousy tastes”) The more they vote “No Award” the less they can claim to be true fans of SF.

            No matter what, they lose.

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            1. They’ve already lost, but you’re still playing on their terms. The Hugo is already devalued, and, far as I can tell, no longer is an indication of a good read. Why not put the energy and money into cons on American soil? How many can afford to go to Helsinki. $50 buys a lot of good reads on kindle. Yes, I’m a chauvinist and a curmudgeon – buy American!

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              1. $50 gets you supporting membership at MidAmeriCon II in Kansas City, it’s the 2017 con that is in Helsinki. The Hugo still has some value, it’s what they use to dismiss their terrible sales numbers. And there’s a degree of nostalgia involved. The Hugos used to be a sign of quality, a lot of good work carries the Hugo name, we would like to see it that way again. If we fail, it’s no great loss. Worldcon will age out and die over the next decade or so, then the names will be available for a convention that actually represents fandom.

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                1. I wonder if us buying even more membership will delay the age out and die issue. Are we expending heroic measures to save a patient who hates us in the last month of his life?

                  Like

                  1. Maybe. Or Maybe not. Alternatively we’re a blood transfusion that rejuvenates the patient. I’m aware that some of us here are on the far side of 50 and many others not too far short of that mark, but there are plenty who are younger. And we can market it to others who are younger such as the attendees of DragonCon various comic-cons etc.

                    And then Worldcon gets a bunch of new blood doing new things and something tells me those new things could well include retiring the greybeards who currently dominate.

                    And – bonus – we do precisely what various astute observers of fandom have stated needs to be done. Get some young folks involved.

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                    1. Maybe…it seems to me it is easier to get young people into fixed cons because you know when and where.

                      I think the floating WorldCon is and of itself a relic of its age. Given the traffic for DragonCon it probably has more non-North American attendees each year than LondonCon had attendees period last year. Getting from Western Europe to Atlanta is, in some ways easier than NYC to LA when WorldCon began.

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                  2. Think of it as a soul transfusion. The Hugos don’t hate us. Worldcon doesn’t hate us. The CHORFs running things hate us, but if they stop running things that won’t matter.

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          3. see, if they get some good story on their slate, and it perhaps was liked enough by our side to be included, (and they don’t hound the author with demands they remove themselves to save face for wrongfen liking it), and it out votes NoAward, we win, even if the person is an effing commie who happens to write a good story (like say Eric Flint) because the goal is for Good Story stuff to actually win for, you know, having a good story. Not because it trips certain check marks and oh by the way, has a sort of story to it but is poorly written dreck otherwise. 1 & 2 proved Larry’s point and he was willing to let it go at that, 3 reinforced that point and proved VD’s point in spades. Time to work to make it worth something again, I say. Who knows, Maybe Scalzi will return to writing a decent story and actually win on merit (wouldn’t that be hilarious? JS getting a nod from SP for writing up to or above his potential?) Can’t say I’d vote for him, I have not really liked what very little of his stuff I have read. It was older stuff(quick scans in the store, Borders in fact, well before Redshirts) and okay written, but not my liking,

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            1. “Maybe Scalzi will return to writing a decent story and actually win on merit …”

              Maybe Iran will voluntarily dismantle their nuclear production lines, having proven their point. Maybe Hamas and Hezbollah will announce a new deal with Israel, selling Tel Aviv all their rockets and guns in order to invest in shopping malls in Gaza. Maybe Putin will order Eston Kohver returned to his home Estonia with a gift basket, a letter of apology and a nice check to compensate him for being kidnapped by Russian thugs.

              Maybe a million chimps with a million typewriters will write Old Mans’ War in Esperanto.

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  68. “I often disagree with everything he writes, including the and a.”

    You mean, you mean, gasp, he’s Lillian Hellman in drag /sound of Psycho violins going screech, screech, screech

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  69. WE don’t need to vote No Award next year.

    We just need to continue to do what we have been doing and THEY will vote No Award. WE won’t be burning down anything….because the SJ Bullies will be burning it down for us.

    Vox Day goaded them into burning it down. All he has to do is get people nominated each year and they will No Award that category over and over again.

    Apparently, that is all the Sad Puppies need to do to get them to destroy their own award….and yes, I said THEIR award.

    Correia was right. This is merely a popularity contest for the WorldCon award, belonging to a certain clique.
    The Hugos no longer represent Science Fiction.

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    1. The Hugos never did represent Science Fiction. But in the days before the Internet, with limited media outlets and practically no mainstream attention paid to SF, it was possible to keep the pravda from being questioned. Just like in those days, few people questioned the pravda that CBS News was honest and unbiased.

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  71. “However… However… if we burn it all down, what we’ll be doing is destroying forever the reputation and the history of the award Heinlein (among others) won. And while the last few years have gone a long way towards doing just that, I — like my comrade at arms and brother-of-the-heart Brad Torgersen — would prefer if we could save it.”

    Mistress Sarah:

    Save what, exactly? Other than an unbroken historical lineage, how can you say that what we have now reflects in any meaningful way the award that Heinlein and others won?

    Look, I rarely comment (but I visit here daily), and I know that you are both a civil and civilized person, but sometimes civility is the wrong path to take. The way to return the Hugo to its’ past glory and prestige is to drive out the Marxist/SJW scourge, and if that means burning the whole edifice down to the extent that only the foundations are left, so be it.

    Please stop wasting your civility on people who not only don’t deserve it, but who regularly interpret it as weakness. And yes, I am both of the Ilk and the Vile Faceless Minions, so I don’t expect that you’re going to agree with me. And while I’m begging boons of thee, please don’t make what is necessary any harder than it needs to be for those of us who know that the old crop needs to be burnt away before the new crop can be planted.

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  72. Before the pre-Hugo show was done a good number of you, by email, by PM, in private groups and on the phone were yelling that next year we No Award everything and BURN IT ALL DOWN.</i.

    Except, oh hysterical one, another year of "No Awards" doesn't burn anything down. All it does is ensure that EPH passes, and from 2017 the Hugos can't be gamed by a small minority of resentful fruitcakes.

    And future generations of sf fans will simply be laughing at you and posts like this.

    Like

    1. And future generations of sf fans will simply be laughing at you and posts like this.

      What is the median age of WorldCon attendees? What is the median age of DragonCon attendees? What is the upper limit for the bottom age quintile for both groups?

      How many people have approached WorldCon asking if their kid gets a free membership for being conceived there? I know at least one for DragonCon (my former team lead) and he reported they said he wasn’t the first to ask.

      Based on answers to those questions what makes you think WorldCon, and with it the Hugos, will be the center of future fandom? The future belongs to those who show up after all.

      Note, I attend neither event so in theory have no dog in said fight but as surely as demographics is destiny the Hugo is doomed to a continued slide without change because its core, your side and Sarah’s side, is dying off. Believe it or not in 20 years I suspect the SP and RP will be seen to have extended the life of the Hugo by at least five years just by showing up.

      Like

    4. Current fans of science fiction don’t know what a Hugo is. And, please pass EPH next year. You’ll find you have given Sad Puppies and Vox Day permanent seats at the Hugo table.

      Like

      1. I was at a different con on Saturday, speaking with a couple other authors who write science fiction or fantasy. They’d heard of the Hugos, but that was about it.

        These weren’t casual fans of the genre, but authors. One of whom attends a fair number of cons, and he didn’t know anything about how the Hugos were chosen, what they allegedly meant, nothing.

        I’m going to go out on a limb and say they’re not as prestigious as some argue.

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  73. ALERT: Received message from Shadow asking for help in archiving/screenshotting things from Twitter since she’s about to collapse.

    So anyone who is good at this sort of thing/drinking from the firehose that is twitter please help. I’ll muddle around and try figuring out how to navigate Twitter as well, though I doubt I’ll get much. O_o;;

    Shadowdancer’s message:
    “can you put out the hun/ILOHminion signal forhelp in archiving,screenshotting,posting in twitter please?I desperately need sleep and won’t be up for much longer.”

    Like

      1. Hm. Might make it easier when I get blocked for my “new” account pointing out problems in some people’s Tweets. (New as in, created in 2008. I made it just before Hurricane Ike barrelled in so I could send “I’m alive” messages via mobile.)

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  74. I have a serious question for Sarah, Larry, Kate, Brad, and the other authors organizing Sad Puppies.

    Why do you consider the people who put on the Hugos and manipulate them your peers?

    Is it merely because you all like to read and write books with spaceships or elves in them? Because in theory you are in the same industry even though it seems most SP authors are Baen or Indie while the Puppy Kickers are big New York publishing. Are those really the same industry? Are they the same in an NFC versus AFC sense or an NFL versus NBA sense or a NBC vs. Sony Pictures sense?

    Because the more I think about last night and wonder why I attended so few cons in the past and have such little interest in them today I realize I’m starting to agree with Vox Day on the subject:

    I suspect last night was a lot harder for writers like Sarah and Brad, who once considered the morons blithely running around with matches their colleagues, friends, and peers, to witness their antics last night than it was for me. After my one visit to MiniCon, I never considered them anything more than psychologically damaged human wreckage, so it doesn’t surprise me in the slightest that they were dumb enough to play it that way.

    I won’t say that I consider fandom human wreckage. I know some people in fandom and consider them peers and friends. However, I also know lots of fandom, and this is the group that seems to skew more to the core of fandom, that I consider people who haven’t done much with life, who celebrate that, who denegrate those who have, and in general whose values I wouldn’t want to be associated with.

    It is a lot like how I love attending Southeast, South Plains, and Southwest Leatherfest (well, the first two…still haven’t made the third) but go to Frolicon, if at all, out of obligation. You’d think they are all kinky people events so I’d fit right in as well at one as the other. However, the former are people who consider duty, honor, faithfulness, and similar traditional values important (they also skew heavily veteran) while the later are, well, orgies for the self-indulgent. On the surface they are the same but the motivations are so different that they are two different worlds and I only belong in one.

    I think that is becoming true of SF/F.

    I consider all of your I’ve addressed above as the heirs and peers of Heinlein, Vogt, and, despite my distaste for him, Asimov among others. I don’t consider that true of Scalzi et al. That will be true if you recover the Hugo or not.

    Maybe that should be something to consider when planning SP IV and looking at options that involve saying, “forget the Hugos and let’s build something RAH and the boys would be proud of”.

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  75. If the Sad Puppies and Rabid puppies do not work together, the SJW’s will pick up some awards and no award the rest. No ward is really the only way to get them to negotiating table.

    Like

    1. Nope no need to work with the Rabid Puppies. The goal is to get good enjoyable books nominated. That just requires people to do the nominating. They don’t even have to nominate the suggestions.

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  76. Apropos of Human Waves rising, all my stuff (the entire Cat series and the Colplatschki books) are now in K-Select over at the House of Bezos. And the next Baba Yaga story draft is done. Alexi really, really needs to take lessons in how not to p*ss off the ladies. Really.

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    1. All of you stop writing so fast…not all of us are three book per hour readers you know. Some of us are more three books per month.

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        1. Or Hoyt (any of them) or Weber, or Wright, or, D. McCullough, or R. Stark, or Correia . . . I’m slow and lazy compared to a LOT of writers.

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          1. The lot of you need to win the lottery for me so I have time to buy and read all your works.

            Guess there are worst positions to be in…ten years ago I figured it was used book stores for stuff prior to 1995 or why bother.

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  77. So, can someone explain something to me? How is Jim Butcher even particularly conservative? I mean, I like his books. They’re fun reads. I snap them up as soon as they come out and stalk his page for new release dates, because he’s fun and unique and fills that “Jim Butcher Book” shaped hole in my life but……

    If I was going on the basis of writing? I’d assume he and Scalzi were politically similar…….

    So… is he actually a conservative? Or was he just slighted because “Normal people like him and enjoy reading him?”

    Like

    1. So… is he actually a conservative? Or was he just slighted because “Normal people like him and enjoy reading him?”

      Pretty much…he had to be punished for being liked by the wrong people.

      Because someone bringing readers in is bad for business or something.

      Like

    2. IIRC Jim Butcher does not talk politics so nobody knows what his politics are.

      But the Sad Puppies are only interested in Good Reads which Jim Butcher gives us.

      However, the Puppy-Kickers have made it clear that nobody supported by us “evil” Sad Puppies should be allowed to win.

      One other person nominated by the “Rabid Puppies” got harassed until she withdrew her nomination.

      Jim Butcher is likely too big of name to be harassed.

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    3. “How is Jim Butcher even particularly conservative?”
      He isn’t. He was a Sad Puppy pick, and that’s why he had to be destroyed. Lucky for Jim he sleeps on a mattress made of money, so I don’t think losing to the poor Chinese guy who got the asterisk will bother him much.

      If people were reading my books, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t give a rip.

      Like

    4. He is a graduate of the University of Oklahoma. Everyone who has ever graduated from the University of Oklahoma is a white supremacist.

      More seriously, Sooners hate Orange more than they hate any other color. They really do not care for the University of Texas, whose colors are white and orange. They also do not care for Oklahoma State University, whose colors are black and orange. (UT and OU are pretty far to the left, OSU is more towards the right.)

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    5. Jim doesn’t post anything about his politics or otherwise hint at them that I’ve ever seen. That said they slander him as a conservative because that is one of the epithets they have been throwing at the Sad Puppies.

      IE the Sad Puppies are misogynists, racists, bigots, conservative, etc. So clearly they are evil and anyone they like must be one of them. This disregards the amazingly wide and diverse group that they nominated. But hey it is the message they sent.

      So no as far as I know Jim Butcher isn’t conservative.

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      1. I don’t even know what football team he favors. I strongly suspect he is extremely careful due to a combination of privacy and business sense.

        Like

    6. Nobody knows what Jim Butcher’s beliefs are, except Jim and possibly his close circle of friends. I will say this: His “The Warrior” has probably the best answer to the Problem of Evil accessible to the layman. He routinely has sympathetic, even heroic, persons of deep personal Christian faith in his books and refuses to mock them even as he makes it clear that other of his characters don’t share those beliefs.

      I think that’s why I think he would never be considered for a Hugo absent a movement like The Puppies. He doesn’t treat disfavored groups the way that the in crowd does.

      Like

  79. The Wired article mentions the issue of social class and dismisses it, in part by noting that G.R.R. Martin’s father was a laborer or factory worker. This is typical obfuscation; social class doesn’t mean family connections any more, and it doesn’t mean money, either, at least not in the U.S. Social class in America in 2015 is about who can safely pass judgement on whom.

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    1. Martin was born in 1930, so that was good work back then.

      Wait, he’s only 66? Damn. The years have been… kind. Or not.

      Like

    2. Any else remember Johnny Edwards’ claiming his da was a factory worker in the textile mills, or is Edwards now reduced to merely a NC embarrassment?

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      1. His dad was a factory foreman with a company-provided house and vehicle. They were wealthy for small town NC at the time.

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  80. I spent a good chunk of that night pondering, asking myself if I wanted to say things about the Hugos and “fandom’s” reaction to the awards. I ultimately said nothing, because everything I had wanted to say was about how rational people had whole-heartedly embraced the immature, unprofessional, completely fucking stupid farce that was everything before and between the actual award presentation and celebrated the clique retaining the power to refuse to reward anyone they disapprove of, all under the guise of “clearly what I think is not good is objectively poor quality and undeserving of merit!”

    I, an openly gay woman, was unwilling to express my honest opinion that the anti-Puppy crowd was being absolutely fucking ridiculous and pathetic last night. I was too nervous to call out the people who claim to support diversity in SF/F while erasing and silencing all of the female/PoC/LGBT authors who supported and were supported by the Puppies. I was terrified of expressing my opinion, terrified of the very people who claim to be fighting for me, because they’ve demonstrated all too well that they don’t actually give a fuck about me if I don’t adhere to their views.

    I’m partly interested in what will happen with SP4, because having women at the helm will likely force them to demonstrate that any women who don’t hail them as saviours of their gender need to be trampled underfoot, spit on, and buried in unmarked graves. 10-to-1 odds that none of the ladies get any mention next to Vox Day’s actual idiocy or brazen libelling of Correia and Torgersen. But then again, I think the whole thing should be burned to the ground, simply because this whole thing demonstrates how utterly head-up-their-ass people can be about their self-entitled god-given right to dictate which works are and aren’t allowed to receive recognition, when the perfect celebration of SF/F should be about many worthy works instead of one specific work a cliquish bunch of twats approve of.

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    1. I wanted to quote Eris’s comment but was afraid of messing up the html, so: I’m just going to say the second paragraph resonated hard with me. I’m tired of being afraid of the judgement of others. I’m tired of keeping quiet in order to keep the peace. I’m tired of lurking at the sidelines of conversations I really want to join for fear that taking the wrong position will mean I’m sabotaging. my chance of getting published.

      I’m tired of being tired and scared. I’m not sitting on the sidelines any more. I’ve been reading Sarah’s blog for years and not commenting because of that fear. Done with that. I’m ready to start having fun again.

      Like

    2. The term Thomas Sowell coined for what “they” want you to be, will only accept you being, will only allow you to be is “mascot.”

      As such your function is to thank them for all the gifts they bestow upon you. Complaints that the gifts have nothing to do with your aspirations or needs is known as ingratitude false consciousness and will require extensive counselling sessions from you soviet’s leadership.

      You will gain the right privilege of being a fully accepted member in good standing of your cohort only so long as you keep your mind right … left … look, just avoid thinking for yourself, okay dearie? It isn’t as if your kind is any good at that, any way. Just keep your mouth shut except to say yassir boss thank-you and you’ll be taken gooood care of so long as you’re useful.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Sowell is a gentleman. I’m not a lady. My answer to their expectations of this (medium, right now) brown girl is: “May I introduce you to a complete set of my upraised middle fingers?”

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    1. Thanks for the heads up. My aspiegirl is just shy of 20, but she’s psychosocially closer to early teens, (except intellect, which is several standard deviations above norm) so this might come in very useful.

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  82. > if we burn it all down, what we’ll be doing is destroying forever the reputation and the history of the award Heinlein (among others) won.
    —
    A 2015 Hugo isn’t the same as the Hugos Heinlein won.

    I’d like to think he would have rejected one outright.

    “Worldcon” doesn’t represent science fiction readers in general. It doesn’t even represent fans. It’s an increasingly-less-relevant relic of bygone days, tottering on through inertia. For the last 20-odd years a “HUGO AWARD” printed on a book cover has been a negative, as far as I’m concerned.

    Vox has as least part of it right. “I don’t care.”

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    1. A 2015 Hugo isn’t the same as the Hugos Heinlein won.

      This is as good a place as any to mention this:

      Heinlein never won a Hugo.

      There, that got your attention, didn’t it?

      But it’s the truth. Heinlein didn’t win Hugos; the Leftist establishment in Fandom hated him nearly as much then as they hate him now. But he was so much bigger than everyone else in the field that they had to give him awards, or else the Hugo would have been too obviously ridiculous. It was not so much that Heinlein won a Hugo, as the Hugos won a Heinlein – listed him as an award winner so they could appropriate his reputation and shine in his reflected glory.

      This is a common thing with awards. The Nobel Prize for Literature did pretty much the same thing in the early days, giving an award to Kipling as a way of co-opting his stature and popularity in their never-ending quest to Nobelize the most boring and ephemeral ‘literary’ authors that human ingenuity could find. And the Motion Picture Academy made sure to give a ‘lifetime achievement’ Oscar to Charlie Chaplin, though they spat on every one of his films individually, because they knew that if Chaplin died without an Oscar it would wreck the propaganda value of the award.

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        1. Robert J. Sawyer, a thoroughly mediocre writer, but one fully on board with the SJW agenda, never gets tired of bragging about his eleven Hugo nominations (and one win). Several people have won more Hugos than Heinlein did, either by being perennial winners in fluff categories (hello, Mr. Glyer) or simply by fitting in with the ideological preoccupations of capital-F Fandom. Heinlein did it by being too big to ignore. None of Heinlein’s four Hugo-winning novels could have been passed over without making the Fans in charge look foolish.

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          2. The Hugos ignoring Heinlein would be like the Baseball Hall of Fame leaving out Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb, or the Golf Hall of Fame ignoring Arnold Palmer, Ben Hogan and Jack Nicklaus. It would be like the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame ignoring Elvis and Buddy Holly. It would be like the Hall of Fame Hall of Fame ignoring the Pro Football Hall of Fame!

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          3. I wasted $6 on a Sawyer paperback once. I forced myself to finish it and then burned it in the woodburner in the winter, as I could not in good conscience allow it to hurt anyone else. It was the one with the alternate Neanderthal universe….

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          4. Then they stopped worrying about looking foolish.
            Robert Silverberg used to have a modicum of my respect – but not after Saturday night. Perhaps it was simply dementia, but I kept expecting him to pull out his fool’s hat to jingle instead of the tambourines.

            Like

      2. Mr. Heinlein won for Starship Troopers, Stranger, Moon is a Harsh Mistress, and at least one other Hugo as I recall. He certainly won for those three. Ah. And Double Star, his first Hugo. One year he won against Gordy Dickson’s Dorsai; quite a close vote as I recall.

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  83. Over in Brad’s thread about Toni Weisskopf and Sheila Gilbert, a whole bunch of Kickers were shouting: YOU MADE US DO THIS!

    I wonder if they realize how much they sound like an abusive spouse?

    STOP MAKING ME HIT YOU!

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      1. I didn’t catch that at first either. That it was Brad deciding that if they wanted to shout that he would make their message clear. I rather think he wasn’t amused at their swarming his post about Toni.

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        1. He definitely wasn’t. [Frown] I saw the originals of those “TrueFan” comments before he edited them. Their comments seriously annoyed me as well.

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          1. Oh yes the one that I caught before Brad edited it was very immature in tone. It seems that the lame 770 crowd wanted to do a victory lap over his post about Toni.

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      1. Well, to be fair, we don’t know what each of the members of this very pale and apparently wealthy assembly actually identifies as.

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        1. I am Gundam… of Dalek heritage… with a degree in Mass Murderification from a historically Necron University.

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          1. “THERE’S A GUNDAM DOWN HERE!!!”

            *cough*

            Sorry, the Cartoon Network dub of Gundam Wing was a bit silly at times.

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            1. I got into Gundam Wing by way of rare mostly-non-yaoi fanfic. I saw the ending, skipped past a lot of the political ranting, and felt ‘WTF’. Endless Waltz seemed to have a lot of the same issues.

              My favorite Gundam is Build Fighters, because I can take it seriously. Fewer contrived wars and peaces, and little of the political ranting. In fairness, my dislike of the political ranting may partly be a translation issue. Okay, I like the ‘ad copy for bits of plastic and cardboard’ anime genre.

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        2. True. This is the age of Caucasian African-Americans. They could be very diverse . . . in their own minds.

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            1. There is also the white man who claims he’s a woman (posed on the cover of Vanity Fair to prove you can do wonders with lenses, lighting, cosmetic cement and make-up it) yet (reportedly) still has a willie and is out-of-the-closet conservative so cannot possibly be deemed a woman.

              Like

      2. And as I tweeted, It’s jaw-droppingly funny that the Asian guy who won was the one whose work was nominated by VOX DAY!

        Like

  85. Here’s Empress Theresa tweeting to Michael Z Williamson last night:

    “tnielsenhayden ‏@tnielsenhayden · 6h6 hours ago
    @mzmadmike Your book sucks. It was the worst thing on the ballot.”

    Pure class.

    Like

      1. As I said up the thread: Saturday night was the Wellstone Funeral for the Hugos. And in MZW’s place, I’d be tempted to invite Saint Teresa to self-fornicate with a chainsaw.

        ;)

        Like

    2. She’s entitled to her opinion. One opinion. And the further she gets from the tastes of the SFF buying public, the lonelier that opinion will seem.

      Like

    1. O.o Wait, we caught the attention of the milblogs?! This could get… interesting. I mean, the International Lord of Hate was the bestselling author on the USS Ronald Reagan, after all.

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        1. Actually, based on blogs we’ve long had people who either do or have previously fought for a living already.

          How many vets are regular posters here for example.

          It’s making me wish I’d just run over the little sh!ts when they blocked my driveway which was the entrance to Sub Base Groton given I lived in the barracks.

          Believe me, my first response to a lot of this horseshit is to want to round us all up and take direct action.

          Like

  88. I can tell you what the MO of the SJW’s is when they decide to take new territory.
    First they politicize everything. If you mention Burroughs or R.E. Howard, they will respond by commenting about how racist or homophobic their stories are. You will then have to either agree with them, or attempt to defend Burroughs or Howard against the charge of racism (hard to do). The point is you will be made to take a stand. This stand will either put on the correct side of history, or with the “others.” Soon you will find yourself either parenthetically making a mention of the racist attitudes of Burroughs and Howard every time you write or talk about them, or you will not mention their names at all. Either way, they win.

    Like

    1. The defense seems very easy to me. First, check and see if Burroughs and Howard were Democrats. I already know Lovecraft was, and what I know of Howard makes me suspect he was. ‘Sure, as a Democrat he was racist, but no more so than most Democrats.’

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      1. That won’t work, bobtheregisteredfool. The response is that the old Democrats are the new Republicans.Or conservatives. Or traditionalists (I am registered as an independent, myself).
        What happened after 1968 was that the Dems switched from promising to protect the poor and working class whites from the blacks, to promising to protect the blacks from the poor and working class whites. The one constant is the pitting of privileging of one ethnic/racial group at the expense of another.

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        1. How old do Democrats have to be to become Old Democrats? I assume Woodrow Wilson’s resegregation of the FedGov, Bull Connor and his buddies, FDR rounding up the Issei and Nisei and putting them in freezing cold tar paper walled camps, and similar 30’s and 40’s fun count as Old Democrat things – How about LBJ and all his follies? The eternal re-elected Junior Senator from Chappaqua? Democratic Senator Robert “Grand Kleagle” Byrd’s fine history of local community group participation? Billy Jeff’s non-consensual habits and office relaxation techniques, and status as only the second President of the US to have articles of Impeachment passed against him? Huma’s Congressman spouse’s electronic communication habits and generous photo sharing? How about our fine California Senator Yee and his outreach to underrepresented asian community organizations offering help running guns and buying his votes?

          Clearly, the question answers itself: All as yet unindicted Dems are “New” Democrats; once indicted, they become “Old” Democrats and can be dismissed as Really Just Republicans in all but actual, you know, party affiliation, old news, no longer relevant, nothing to see here, move along.

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          1. FlyingMike, you and I could have a very interesting conversation about modern history. Almost everyone who mattered in literature before World War Two was openly racist, even the people who believed that they stood for racial equality.

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            1. That is merely appearance, one which demonstrates the evils of Capitalism. The writers were not racist, they had to emulate the racism of the nation in order to get their books sold.

              [rolls eyes]

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              1. RES, I know that was sarcasm – but it unfortunately hits quite close to the truth.

                John W. Campbell was the market for anyone who wanted to actually be successful in the field during the 1930s – and he was a completely unabashed racist. (Look up sometime how Heinlein’s “Sixth Column” came to be written – from an original story called “All” by JWC – and the notes on how much of the racism he took out of its progenitor.)

                Which makes it quite ironic that the Chu creature won the John W. Campbell Award Saturday. Same ideology, just a mirror image…

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                1. The best sarcasm usually does contain a significant amount of truth — that is what gives it bite.

                  The fallacy is anyone thinking that any other system employs a better standard. Shakespeare hewed almighty close to the Tudor line on history and that wasn’t because his editor or audiences demanded it. Art from Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union was similarly unaffected by commercial tastes.

                  Or heck, ask anyone currently trying to sell a publisher a Mystery, Romance, Thriller or similar genre work without an explicit sex scene. Or imagine selling TOR a SF adventure novel with a white male protagonist and a “person of color” as the antagonist. (Sarah — better let your testimony on that go for another day’s post; this one is already choking browsers across the world.)

                  Like

                  1. Well, JWC wasn’t really to blame for his power – there was room in the market at that time for only one big fish, and a few minnows that would come and go. For the times, he was actually rather “liberal” in his thinking (remember, these were the days when eugenicists were being openly lionized by the “progressive” and “forward-thinking” people).

                    John would certainly not have thrown a childish temper tantrum at a lady – his own author or not – as the PNH creature did this last weekend. He also did not run around trying his best to destroy everyone else in the field when his control inevitably began to slip away from him as the field grew in popularity (one epicenter of Amazon Derangement Syndrome is definitely located in the offices of TOR and their brethren at Macmillan).

                    Like

        2. That argument is false. They say it is so, but it is not.

          Take https://xkcd.com/1127/ Voting factions have continuity in the Federal legislature.

          Secondly, there are over fifty Democratic Parties. The sixties discontinuity supporters must show discontinuity in each Party. If I know of continuity in at least one state, it weakens the argument. Especially if said continuity is related to corruption, racism, or murder.

          Thirdly, Baltimore this year. Either it was an excuse to burn down minority neighborhoods, or Mosby is an incompetent hack and the Democrats covered for her. (This last is plausible, she seems to have been elected last year, and this happened right away.) The autopsy says that there was an impact of great force to the front of Gray’s head. For this to happen, the most plausible explanations involve Gray putting himself in a position likely to cause it. Such as by standing, kneeling, or flipping to his front, and then attempting to stand. Which means that either Mosby’s case is weak, or police are responsible for suicides to the point that they should be routinely physically restraining suspects to the point of being unable to talk.

          Whether Mosby is incompetent or the Democrats needed to burn some minority neighborhoods, all the Democrats and Left who purport to believe cause me to suspect that the modern leftist Democrats and old racist Democrats are essentially the same.

          Like

          1. Want proof of the continuity, which road to freedom is more likely:

            1. A black slave running away to the North.
            2. A black slave running away from the welfare state.

            Also, of the two, which is more likely to be attacked by Democrats?

            Like

          2. Bob, the truth doesn’t matter. All that matters is power. Whatever happened to Gray is no more important than what really happened to Mike Brown in Ferguson or what really happened to Trayvon Martin in Florida.

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            1. Nuts!

              There is something that the power of this world can only take when it is given.

              Like

      2. Howard was born and raised in Texas in the early 20th century. In that time it was extremely rare to find a Republican outside of Dallas and Midland.

        Like

    2. Burroughs was racist — just look at how his Tarzan books depicted Germans and Arabs! He apparently had nothing against African-Americans er, Blacks ummm, Coloreds ah — indigenous, melanin-endowed peoples of the African sub-continent, frequently describing the Waziri tribespeople as handsomely formed and intelligent.

      About Howard … no telling. Conan didn’t much care what color skin a foe had, nor what race they belonged to, whether human, serpentine or other. Bran mak Morn was, IIRC, a pict, a member of a dusky-hued race, “the small dark Mediterranean aborigines of Britain.” As I recall, Bran mac Morn was a uniter of of various British tribes against Roman imperialism (as we all know, Romans were white and thus symbolic/representative of modern American culture.

      Howard was a Texan at a time when that state was solidly Democrat, so yeah, likely racist.

      Both told really good stories, though, and respected the reader to observe such details without having them writ on giant billboards.

      Like

  89. More Empress Teresa:

    “tnielsenhayden ‏@tnielsenhayden · 5h5 hours ago
    My earliest nominations for 2016: Mike Glyer for Best Fanwriter, File 770 for Best Fanzine.”

    Like

    1. It gets better:

      “tnielsenhayden retweeted

      Arthur Chu ‏@arthur_affect · 20h20 hours ago
      John C Wright has just become a five-time Hugo loser all at once! #HugoAwards”

      Isn’t JCW a Tor author?

      Like

      1. Yes, she will trash her own product in the service of the narrative. So much for Tom Doherty’s statement dealing with his offensive staff.

        Like

        1. Does she still work there? I keep hearing that she doesn’t, then that she does, then that she doesn’t.

          I swear, I have an easier time keeping up with Taylor Swift’s boyfriends than this crap.

          Like

      4. I beat JCW still outsells Chu.

        Oh, wait – Chu don’t sell $hit. Chu is a pet at Salon.

        I win the bet.

        That JCW is a “five-time Hugo loser” is more a statement about the Hugos than Wright … which makes it also a statement about Chu.

        Like

  90. I can’t say anything about the Hugo (having never really been affected by its presence or absence on a book.)

    But, if you put out another Darkship book, then I’d be perfectly willing to give it the “My $8-10 award” based on loving the previous novels in the series. Why worry about ‘winning’ an award from cliquey people who don’t like you? The Sad Puppies campaign revealed the cliquey bias and intolerance, but what will continuing the campaign do exactly?

    Like

    1. PS – not to imply the Sad Puppy campaign has been about winning awards for any particular author. I understand it’s about nominating authors that people like to read, and exposing virulent bias against the people nominating them by an entrenched group of taste-makers.

      Still, is it worth it to keep messing with the Hugos if it is owned and run by these people? Apparently they are gaming the rules to make it more difficult to nominate outside their clique next time. You might launch some other award run by more transparent principles, for instance. If it were a battle over some limited resource, it might make more sense. Since it is over awards, and there are no limits to how many awards can be created/awarded, why waste time/energy over “fossil significance” that is a byproduct of some previous, less corrupt fandom?

      Like

      1. Less ‘fossil significance’ than if we don’t pick a place to oppose them they’ll keep grabbing territory. If another award is made popular, do you think they’ll just leave it alone? Or do you think they’ll go ‘we can game this system while they’re all busy’ and grab it off the same way they did the Hugos?

        Liked by 1 person

  91. Re-reading Leigh Brackett’s The Hounds of Skaith last week, I found a quote that seems appropriate.

    Basically, Eric John Stark (sort of a Conan-Tarzan of space) goes to the dying planet Skaith to find his friend, Simon Ashton. Skaith is ruled by the Lords Protector and their Wandsmen. Since Skaith only recently discovered the existence of other worlds, the Wandsmen have been managing the planet’s decline. They were originally supposed to protect the weak, but the Wandsmen have since become tyrannical. Vast mobs of “Farers” roam the world, living lives of hedonistic abandon since the rest of Skaith’s population is forced to take care of their needs. Anyhow, the city of Tregad has overthrown their Wandsmen, and that’s where this quote comes from:

    “They pushed us too far, you see. We might have never gone over. We might have sat debating and havering until Old Sun fell out of the sky. But they pushed us too far.”

    Like

      1. You do understand that Leigh Brackett was Mrs. Edmund Hamilton, and a very highly regarded book and screen writer? She and Ed also wrote several rousing good stories in collaboration.

        Her best known screen work was on Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back.

        Like

        1. It seems possible that you missed richard mcenroe’s “/sarc” (sarcasm) tag.

          It seems to be a repeated theme of the SJWs that there were no women writing science fiction at all, until the blessed year that they themselves came along. But to get away with this, they need to ignore all the women who were writing SF before the SJW incrudescence.

          Like

        2. For my money Rio Bravo is the best movie qua movie Leigh Brackett was associated with.

          Though her love for the field, to include space opera is remarkable. Apparently George Lucas called her because she was a “pulp science fiction writer” in ignorance of say The Big Sleep or The Long Goodbye

          In today’s fennish ( a fen is a kind of mire) world her words bear repeating

          I’m interested mainly in never trying to mold [science fiction] into one particular thing. I think it should be free to have every type of thinking, every type of story. I think you should have the ecological stories, the political stories, the Big Think type of story. I mean, what anybody wants to write. What I hate to see are the occasional attempts that are made, periodically, none of them ever last very long, to mold the field into one particular thing, and say science fiction has to be such and such and so. In other words, just what I happen to think science fiction should be.

          On the other hand I’m hard pressed to think of collaborations with her husband. Collaboration with William Faulkner yes but not with her husband.

          Twenty-six-and-a-half years ago, when we got married, we thought collaboration would be an easy and delightful thing. We could, we thought, begin now to turn out twice as many stories with half the effort.
          We tried it.
          Once.
          Hamilton had to know the whole plot right to the last line before he began. Brackett was only interested in the opening. In short, our methods of working were diametrically opposed, and in order to keep peace in the family we made a firm decision that each one should stick to his/her own typewriter.

          Over the years we find our working methods have changed. Hamilton no longer has to have a complete outline on paper. Brackett generally has one in her head. Ideas and style have changed as well. So we decided to try it again and see what happened, being in general agreement on basic concepts, and utilizing our own favorite characters.

          So here is our first, one and only, true, authentic collaboration.
          —Leigh Brackett
          Edmond Hamilton

          Stark and the Starkings

          Like

          1. I expect you’re right; it’s been a long time since I knew them, and they were very senior to me at the time; I expect I am confusing the collaborations of Catherine and her first husband with the Hamiltons. I knew Catherine well, them only more casually.
            As to her best work, I said nothing; but I expect her best known remains the Star Wars contributions. Such is Hollywood. Whether her scripts for John Wayne were better than those of Colonel Bellah would be an interesting debate. I miss them both.

            Like

  92. Michael Z Williamson is reporting on his FB account that there were 1000 “spoiled ballots” for failure to enumerate every candidate in a category.

    He didn’t provide a source, so I cannot confirm but, if true, I wonder how those people voted.

    Like

    1. Curious…

      Remember Florida in 2000? There were many over-votes, where people voted twice for president. There was some speculation that the over-votes were created by shoving a spike through a stack of punch-card ballots, through the Gore hole. Instantly converts no-votes into Gore votes, Bush votes into over-votes, and preserves Gore votes.

      I wonder if the “spoiled ballots” in this case show a similar motive. “Spoiled” because they were “wrong”.

      Liked by 1 person

    2. One of those ballots would have been mine. I didn’t vote at all in the video and anime categories, and there were a couple of stories I left off the ballot, because I didn’t like them at all, but didn’t feel so strongly that I thought I should vote No Award above them.

      Like

      2. Mine too. My understanding was that each of the categories did not have to be completely filled out. Possibly I should have done more careful reading, but I did not think the instructions stated that a category had to be fully ordered to be valid.

        If this report is accurate, I’m very disappointed.

        Like

        1. Same here. If it was a requirement, shouldn’t the website have required each box to be filled?

          I’m thinking/ hoping this is incorrect.

          Like

        2. That was certainly my understanding from reading the instructions. Admittedly, I’m not as sharp as I once was, but I don’t think I would have been that far off.

          Like

      4. Oh carp. Both my husband and I did the same. I decided that if I was asking folks not to no award titles I loved that, I couldn’t decently do that to works that annoyed me (like “I was an emo goldfish killer”). So I just left the slot blank.

        Like

    3. there has never been any requirement to list every candidate. The result numbers clearly show that most people didn’t. In fact, ~3000 people only made one entry in each category ‘no award’ and if you look at the results, you will see that once it won, the number of ‘no preference’ votes jumps to ~3000.

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  93. CFC – for past and future word play notice that the Gulfstream was also a C4 with multiple variations including IIRC a C4-C in government service as was the Ford Tripower -not so much in a mood for play on this particular topic for a while.

    Like

  94. I’m in. Things will change, and change for the better.

    I propose a new formation, to be hereby formed:

    Hoyt’s Hounds: Sad Puppies No More! The Convivial Canines! The Mirthful Mutts! The Party Animals Y’all Want To Be With (’cause we’re likely to buy the next round!)

    Happy Warriors in the service of the Human Wave!

    (In the process of buying my Attending membership to MidAmericaCon II right now . . . I live in the KC metro . . .)

    Like

  95. Longtime lurker here. I was appalled to hear what happened with the Hugos this weekend. Perhaps I’m naive, but I never expected them to burn down the awards, so to speak. I’ve already signed up as a supporting member for next year’s con.

    Liked by 1 person

      1. “Why is it,” Terekhov asked conversationally, “that people like you always think you’re more ruthless than people like me?”

        That quote sort of just popped into my head while reading some of the gloating and pious claims SJWs were making of how they “had” to do the No Awarding. I must be more ticked off than I will admit.

        (Be glad it wasn’t the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.)

        Like

      2. It suggests that any Hun would nominate anything else.

        Hmmm. Unless you’re thinking of how we read The Black Book of Communism, but then, the Hugo brigade would not approve of it, either, for a suitable award.

        Like

  97. Interesting. Hopefully it’s someone reporting something incorrectly, but if the rumor is correct, I’m pissed. I didn’t rank anything I hadn’t read, the system let me do that, and according to a commenter there, the rules specifically allow for incomplete ballots.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. I really, really want to write that off as paranoid fantasy.

      However, we know how the ConCom behaved this weekend both in the flyer and ribbon thing and the kind of awards ceremony the put on. That makes it more believable and I do not like that.

      Like

      1. I would like to be able to write it off too. But as you say, sadly more and more one finds oneself to be correct if one takes the cynic’s position.

        I wonder if the PKs and SJWs in general realize that many of us out there are as angry with them about their destruction of our ability to trust as we are with the rest of their PC sch…..e.

        Liked by 1 person

      2. If I understand correctly, there is a distinction between the admins (who are responsible for the vote counting) and the Sasquan con committee (tweeters of the infamous tweet thanking someone for “policing” the freebie tabel by removing puppy ribbons from it, also planners of the award ceremony, and authors of whatever screwup caused John C. Wright to have to hold his scheduled reading in the hall because the room was double-booked).

        The misbehavior of the latter doesn’t necessarily say anything about the integrity of the former.

        Like

        2. I hadn’t heard about the badge ribbon embarrassment. Now I wonder if the TiaT postcards and ELoE buttons I left at the table were actually picked up by attendees or just thrown away by the Social Justice Puritans.

          Like

        3. We’ll just have to post a guard–who will be polite but VERY FIRM– at the table so nothing is stolen. I’ve had to do that at political functions where the other side would just take our literature and put them in the trash.

          Liked by 1 person

      2. Just do a page refresh and it will load. Been seeing that a lot the past few days. No need for paranoia.

        Like

              1. I’ve got a Jekyll blog (on GitHub). But once you import a commenting widget—and they’re all awful, with Disqus being merely bad—you’re subject to the same troubles no matter what blog engine you’re on.

                Those who cannot remember Usenet are forever condemned to re-create it, poorly.

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                1. That all depends…for now I’m using vanilla forums but the goal is to do comments via a simple submit script that runs it through a spam filter initially built on my email one and appending to a comments file parallel to the post file which jekyll then puts after the post.

                  Like

                    1. Hmmm…let me think about that one.

                      There have always been jekyll people using emails for comment with manual approval. I wanted to avoid the manual step but keep the advantage of their email system doing the spam filtering. Hence my idea to wedge into my email spam list which matches the desire to build a naive Baysian filter as a Python learning project.

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                    2. When it comes to comment threads, or discussion forums, always remember Joel’s Law: “Those who do not understand Usenet are forever condemned to reimplement it, badly.”

                      Like

                    3. Perhaps, but…who uses Usenet anymore. alt.gothic barely has traffic and that was my biggest haunt.

                      Forums and blogs have displaced it and email lists. LJ killed Boston Netgoth and not for the better.

                      Besides, since relaunching my blog I have zero comment so, for now, my implementation is perfect. :)

                      Liked by 1 person

                    5. Damnit, now you’ve got me thinking…could you build a gem that provides blog comments via a private nntp server:

                      1. Jekyll could self update when receiving the message from the server.
                      2. It takes care of the subscription issue, maybe (how to insure you only subscribe to certain threads)
                      3. Provides a back end depending on the server.

                      Hmmm…

                      Damnit, I don’t have time to learn that much Ruby and now I have to do it.

                      Like

      3. It runs through a database. Get connections all tied up to that, and it doesn’t matter whether you have network connection slots free.

        Persistent headache for developers.

        Like

        1. Oh, yeah. I wonder if he has enough control over the host to increase the size of the connection pool?

          Like

      1. It’s been under pretty heavy load since early yesterday. I’ve been able to get on after refreshing a few times. Even had a bit of a “conversation” with SJW 90210. I would rather be talking to my cats.

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        1. It’s not just one or two days, the instability has been a running issue for a while now, with no apparent relief in sight (or at least not my sight, which admittedly doesn’t see very far).

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  99. Pingback: SJW Nuts Go Scorched Earth in Hugo Awards - starbasegeek

  100. I’m not happy about this at all, Sarah. But what you wrote makes sense…can I say I wish you hadn’t had to write it?

    I wrote about the editing awards, specifically, on my own blog. I am disgusted that “No Award” swept the two editing categories, because that is just totally nonsensical. (Especially as “legacy media” prides themselves on being better than self-published books, editors are absolutely essential. Mind, they’re essential for good small-press or self-published books, too, but the twerps do not yet seem to realize this.)

    And the reported behavior of those running this year’s Hugos…disgraceful. A thirteen-year-old child would behave better than that.

    It has to stop.

    Yes, disagree. But disagree with refinement. Don’t disagree with the hilarity of a two-year-old getting what he wants by breaking everything in sight.

    That’s why I’m disgusted today. (And it’s obviously not with the Sad Puppies. It’s by the in-crowd lunatics among the SF&F long-term cognoscenti who allowed themselves to be manipulated, easy as pawns, by Vox Day.)

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  101. I feel that what we are witnessing regarding the Hugos and other areas of science fiction and fantasy is a symptom that reflects what is going on with the rest of the western civilization, which has now spread to speculative fiction as well. It’s an infection called political correctness which is using the same procedure as in Orwell’s 1984; all areas of the genre that are not regarded as sufficient PC are being redefined as racist, sexist and whatever. When combined with a certain amount of literary snobbery and pseudo-intellectualism, we get situations as what has been witnessed lately.

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  102. I cannot beleeve there are apparently no Talking Heads fans here…

    Mind you, I never fully understood the attraction of a vocalizing commode.

    Like

  103. Pingback: Instapundit » Blog Archive » IT’S NOT THE RESULTS, IT’S THE SMUG:Burning Down The Field in Order to Save It.  And You Cheered….

  104. I wonder if it will ever occur to the CHORFs that by voting all of those “No Awards” this year, they pretty much automatically put an asterisk beside all the people who actually did manage to win an award this year?

    Like

    1. Hugo Award results for 2015:

      Best Novel – “Three Body Problem”* *Legitimate winner – “Dark Between the Stars”
      Best Novella – No Award* *Legitimate winner – “Flow”
      Best Novelette – “The Day the World Turned Upside Down”* * Legitimate winner – “The Triple Sun: A Golden Age Tale”
      Best Short Story – No Award* *Legitimate winner – “Totaled”
      Best Related Work – No Award* *Legitimate winner – “The Hot Equations”
      Best Graphic Story – “Ms. Marvel”* *Legitimate winner – “Rat Queens, Volume 1”
      Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form – “Guardians of the Galaxy”
      Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form – “Orphan Black: By Means Which Have Never Been Tried”
      Best Editor, Short Form – No Award* *Legitimate winner – Mike Resnick
      Best Editor, Long Form – No Award* *Legitimate winner – Toni Weisskopf
      Professional Artist – Julie Dillon* *Legitimate winner – Nick Dillon
      Semiprozine – “Lightspeed Magazine”* *Legitimate winner – “Andromeda Spaceways In-Flight Magazine”
      Fanzine – “Journey Planet”* *Legitimate winner – “Black Gate” (withdrawn, award goes to “Tangent Online”
      Fancast – “Galactic Suburbia Podcast”* *Legitimate winner – “The Sci Phi Show”
      Fan Writer – Laura J. Mixon* *Legitimate winner – Jeffro Johnson
      Fan Artist – Elizabeth Leggett* *Legitimate winner – Ninni Aalto
      John W. Campbell Award – Wesley Chu* *Legitimate winner – Kary English

      My congratulations to the legitimate winners of the 2015 Hugo Awards (and the John W. Campbell). Even where I did not agree with the final results, you are all deserving of the trophy.

      The remainder of you are asterisks, now and forever.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. While I get your legitimate winner argument I think it only really applies to the “No Award”. In the other cases clearly people voted and a result was chosen. To pretend otherwise is to adopt the standards of the PKs.

        Like

  105. Sarah I am so frustrated with this post, and the others from you I’ve read about this situation. You’re all inside baseball, and I don’t own a playbook!. Or a program. I come here as a life-long SF fan, from the odd Instapundit link, trying to get a clear picture of what’s happening in the SF community, and again – your post is full of allusions to events I wasn’t there for – groups I’m not familiar with – names and awards I don’t keep up with – etc. It’s annoying as hell.

    As a young adult, I checked out literally EVERY sci-fi novel and anthology my library offered. I still tremendously admire the genre and the steely-eyed authors who dedicate themselves to it. But I’m out of touch, and nothing I’ve read here has helped me to reconnect.

    Apparently there’s a group of PC lefties – neurotic little bullies, naturally – who can’t stand normal human beings and want to pasteurize the SF genre. But where can I find someone who covers the big picture with some clarity?

    Can you point me to a blog post or an article aimed at us dummies and outsiders, even if it’s not one of your own?

    I’d like to understand. It seems you are too wrapped up in the details of the events to notice – or write for – people in my humble position. Send help – please?

    Thanks!

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      1. I recommend this article from The Federalist website:

        The Hugo Awards: Why The #WaronNerds Is A War on Art
        The utter destruction of the Hugo Awards is a warning not just to nerds, but to Western Civilization that social justice cannot be tolerated.
        By Mytheos Holt
        What’s the difference between ISIS and social justice warriors? Well, one recruits its members from the most pathetic, disaffected, pathological members of society, claims to stand against shadowy conspiracies and bullying by the West, and destroys revered cultural institutions in fits of fanaticism.

        The other fights with real weapons.

        Over the past year, the social justice movement, which at one point had set itself up as an insurmountable cultural juggernaut, bent on remaking every art form or subculture in its own image, has degenerated into a farce. That farce reached new heights this past Saturday night, when the voters of the prestigious Hugo Awards, in a fit of ideologically-motivated pique, refused to give any awards at all in no less than five different categories – including Best Short Story and Best Novella. As context, the Hugos had only refused to offer an award in any category five times in the award’s 60 year history.

        RTWT

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        1. “In the interest of evenhandedness, I should note that the Sad Puppies employed controversial tactics in trying to force consideration of authors and works they saw as underappreciated. ”

          Considering he put up that bilge without any quotes from any actual people, like Larry or Brad or Sarah, you might want to reconsider.

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          1. I don’t dispute the tactics were controversial, as controversial as a black man drinking from the wrong fountain in 1930 Dixie.

            The only question is where the fault for the controversy lies.

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      1. I feel compelled to note the overwhelming tongue-in-cheek tone of Larry’s post, because some people seem to have absolutely no sense of humor whatsoever . . . at least, when it comes to things that don’t make *them* laugh.

        These people, those are the SJW’s/CHORFs.

        Like

    3. Sorry, I can’t help much. I was in your position (or worse) when I discovered Baen’s Bar, and still not much advanced from that when I wandered over here. At that time there was considerably less “inside baseball” on the blog because Sarah was while not still politically “in the closet” but she was still attempting to keep politics off the blog. Still whenever it came up I wandered around clueless for the first year or so until I started to absorb enough of the knowledge through osmosis to understand the “inside baseball.”

      Like

    4. Let’s see if I’m too tired too summarize what I used to get this off my back earlier this evening. I will just use letters for names, especially surnames whose spelling I am uncertain of.

      The Hugo award is essentially administered WorldCon, a small literary convention that partners with a different convention each year. This has been going on for a very long time. Recently worldcon membership, especially Hugo voting membership, has been fairly low.

      Jim Baen and later Toni Weisskopf ran Baen books, a publishing company which attracted a number of loyal fans. These are called Barflies. Some of the loyalty was from publishing a certain flavor of story, and some was how the fans were treated. (Hearsay claimed that other publishers thought Baen published trash.) My understanding is that Baen is not a major publisher.

      Tor is another publisher for the Science Fiction market. It was founded by Tom Doherty, a cohort and reputed friend of Jim Baen. Currently, it is said to be run by a committee of Senior Editors who each answer to the company that own Tor. Patrick NH is one such, and his wife TNH also used to work there. There are four other major publishers; Tor is associated with an interesting number of Hugo awards these past few decades.

      Castalia House is a new, small publisher. My understanding is that its business model is heavily based on ebooks, and serving the unmet needs of people ticked off at the status quo of science fiction publishing. Vox Day is a major figure behind Castalia House, comes from outside the publishing industry, and had a very great deal of bad blood with PNH, TNH, and others before getting into publishing.

      Recent matters seem to have been precipitated by the impression that anyone with rightwing politics cannot get a Hugo award. This particularly irritated particularly loyal Baen authors and some Barflies, as they tend to think that Jim and Toni have not been well recognized. Official party line apparently was that the awards are totally fair, Jim, Toni, and many Baen authors just aren’t that good.

      Larry Correia is a Baen author who started in indy, has a deep background in accounting, good showmanship, an aggressive temperament, and apparently a good heart. He saw that he could use his blog readership to test assertions about the fairness of the award. Over two years he demonstrated that the customary voter were very few compared to his fans and blog traffic, and that the counts were apparently fair. Second year he pulled in more voters, because many people didn’t know you just needed a supporting membership to vote*, and because some were really ticked at the fuss. It was very ugly the second year, and Larry decided to quit.

      This is speculation: PNH seems to have been managing a logrolling scheme which used a few voters to collect Hugo awards for himself, for hardcore leftwing Tor authors, and maybe for other lefties.

      ‘If You Were A Dinosaur, My Love’ alone getting a Hugo has been cited as a reason to think the awards are crooked or debased.

      Larry’s friend, fellow Baen author, and I gather near neighbor** Brad Torgersen insisted on running Sad Puppies 3. He seems to have had ideas along the lines of increasing the number of voters, bringing in more anime/manga/game/comic/movie fans, and not having any particular ideological test.

      Vox Day started Rabid Puppies with different goals in mind. He has expressed very strong opinions about what is and what is not sci fi. He also had disputes with a number of people who seemed to be profiting from the Hugo status quo.

      One extra issue is the Evil League of Evil. There were a bunch of internet arguments about writing advice. As part of this, certain advocates were described by their opponents as Evil. John Wright declared himself, Larry Correia, Sarah Hoyt, and Vox Day member of the Evil League of Evil.*** Many others demanded membership, which was granted. My read is that this is a different organization entirely from Puppies, that the members are largely too uncooperative to coordinate on much, and their statements about such are trustworthy.

      Kate Paulk has been in line for Sad Puppies 4 since, I think, around Sad Puppies 3 being announced. She was a Barfly, indy published, and a writer at madgeniusclub.com, which has a lot of other puppy related columnists.

      Pete Grant is another MGC writer, he and Vox Day are organizing slightly different boycotts of Tor books over social media remarks made by Tor employees. PNH is, IIRC, implicated in these, which apparently are in violation of the parent company’s social media policy. Rumors are that Tor is run badly, financially speaking, and the boycott might impact them significantly.

      The opponents of Puppies managed to get together 2500 ‘No Award’ voters. This is more than ten times the number usually used for logrolling. I have no conclusions whether this is a different population, or more effort stemming from a sense of urgency.

      *50$ There are links in the comments somewhere this post. Tends to be a bargin due to the now customary Hugo voter packet full of books.

      **IIRC, he played in the L5R campaign Larry ran pretty recently.

      ***You can find links to their websites on voxday.blogspot.com I’m vastly simplifying the ELoE joking and writing advice fights.

      Like

        1. My error. I will try to make sure that is fixed in any further versions.

          When I left, I thought I hit the important points, but had a nagging suspicion I’d left something out. What came to mind didn’t improve things, so I quit.

          You know how Steve Jackson is thankful for his competitor that makes Magic and Dungeons and Dragons? Despite whatever complaints, the popularity of those two keeps the retail market alive for his products. When I have time, I’ll expand on this, and the apparent difference between Baen and Castalia on this matter.

          Like

            1. The possible places a publisher might sell fiction are retail, mail order, electronic distribution, third party mail order, third party electronic distribution, and Amazon, which does the latter two but merits its own category. Except for Amazon, mail order seems pretty negligible. It is essentially the Sears catalog of our day.

              Tor does retail and Amazon. It is big in retail. It seems captivated by the idea that Amazon must be destroyed, that Tor and Amazon cannot coexist. (It is owned by one of the companies that got busted for colluding with Apple to fix prices.) In these, it is a fairly typical publisher. I do not predict its business plans well, and have trouble estimating how much it relies on Patrick Hayden’s apparent fixing of the Hugo awards.

              Baen does retail, Amazon, and has run its own electronic distribution for fifteen years. Baen values its partnership with Amazon. Baen may be competing on flavor and quality, but there is some overlap with what the big publishers produce. Look at the science fiction and fantasy section in a bookstore, and look how many have rockets on the spine. Baen cannot produce enough to fill the whole section, if the other imprints go away, the section shrinks. Maybe the big SFF publishers are shrinking the market by publishing poor quality stuff, or stuff that isn’t SFF, but not as fast as they would shrink the retail market if they got out entirely. Directly attacking the other imprints doesn’t profit Toni, she puts her efforts towards money, so she doesn’t go after the imprints.

              Castalia does Amazon, their own electronic distribution, and are working on some sort of videogame based fiction market****. They don’t use retail, so have no incentive to preserve it. They don’t use cons for marketing, so have no incentives for the con scene either. Their marketing focus seems a combination of ‘the common stuff is trash’ and ‘stick it to the man’. This goes well with Vox Day’s feuds with various sorts.

              There are some very shrewd businessman in writing and publishing, who pay close attention to what other people are doing.

              ****Not fiction about a videogame. IIRC, it is an arena combat game that somehow monetizes third party fiction.

              Like

    5. There is no way to make sense of the events of the past few days in this controversy.

      For a fairly complete discussion late enough in the process to show which way the wind was blowing – not so early as to be incomplete nor so recent as to be more heat than light I suggest this from Eric Flint’s website to include Brad Torgersen’s writings. After that it’s catch as catch can bearing in mind there are at least three sides (and I suggest more) in this fight.

      http://www.ericflint.net/index.php/2015/06/09/a-response-to-brad-torgersen/

      Like

  106. I thought a remark over on the Evil Lord of Evil’s blog was interesting. The question was where did the money go? If the numbers are correct – ~4000 people voting X $40.00 each = $160,000. Perhaps an accounting should be requested?
    And the other question of course is who verifies the votes?

    Like

    1. look at the registration vs voting numbers last year, they actually had a higher number of people registered that didn’t vote than this year, In spite of being a couple thousand people lower in overall registration.

      I know they are out to get us, but try to not be too paranoid, this is and has been a very messed up awards process. don’t attribute things to malice quite so quickly

      Like

    2. Sasquan rented a pretty sizeable convention center, a theater, and hotel space. Not to mention accrued a myriad of other charges in the process of running a convention of its kind. A lot more than $160,000 was spent running this WorldCon.

      Like

      1. I suspect the thrust of that question was directed at the fact that Sasquan “enjoyed” a sizable influx of money because the Puppies promoted associate memberships, an additional sum which likely was not anticipated in their con’s budget.

        Given the multiple ways* in which their Concom disrespected the Puppy members it seems not unreasonable to inquire about their basic financial statements.

        *Surely this can be stipulated, but examples are available.

        Like

  107. I’m pretty sure that the anti-Puppy’s next line of attack is going to be that SP represents people who are somehow “jealous” of the Hugos and want to steal one for themselves. One of the people on the pre-Hugo Awards panel (Scalzi?) was using this line of attack. When SP4 moves to an all-female group running it, you can bet we’ll be hearing this more often.

    Like

    1. Oh, they’ve been doing that from the start. Scalzi being one of the chief offenders in that regard.

      Like

      1. Of course not! They’ll come up with some sort of reason why the women running SP4 aren’t real women, the same way the press demonized Sarah Palin, because everyone knows that all real women have the exact same needs, desires, and tastes. They’ll also find a way to accuse everyone who is involved in SP4, however peripherally, of being
        a) racist and/or xenophobic
        b) homophobic
        c) transphobic
        d) whatever the then current SJW phobia accusation is
        e) some or all of the above.

        Like

  108. I am sorry to hear that Toni did not get an editing Hugo. Of course I am biased, since Jim Baen was one of the five closest friends I have ever had, and we were friends until he died. Toni has been a worthy successor as editor. I would think that those voting for No Award would be ashamed of themselves.

    Charles Sheffield famously said that the Hugos were the Special Olympics of science fiction writing, but Charlie was always politically incorrect in many ways. I used to campaign for Hugos — I suppose you could call writing to friends and asking them for their vote campaigning; but it was a lot of work in those days as I had to write a separate letter to each, affix a stamp, set the letter out for the post — and I found that it was boring work, but necessary; those who didn’t campaign usually didn’t win. I only wrote to those who I thopught would like the work; if no one asked them for a vote they might not bother. But it was a lot of work.
    I found it easier to get on the Today Show, Tonight Show, Long John Knebel Show, etc., and talk about the space program, and let the show hosts mention my latest book — and a great deal better investment of my time as well. Many of the books that beat my works for Hugos are no longer in print. Most of mine still are.

    Sour grapes, I suppose, but there it is.

    I no longer involve myself in fan politics, and I never advise professional writers to do so. Had I known I would be so far recovered from my stroke by August, I would have gone to this year’s Worldcon; apparently I would not have missed so very much. I will try to get to the repeat of MidAmericon next year. I go to see my colleagues, my publishers, my agents, and to have fun with whatever fans might still remember me, but I don’t much bother with the award ceremonies. I’d advise all writers to do the same. World SF Conventions aren’t the best use of your time for flogging books. There for some business — all the publishers and editors and your colleagues are generally there — but mostly for fun.

    Like

    2. “I suppose you could call writing to friends and asking them for their vote campaigning; but it was a lot of work in those days as I had to write a separate letter to each, affix a stamp, set the letter out for the post — ”

      Uphill, both ways, in a blizzard, barefoot, no coat… (with apologies to Monty Python) *g*

      Like

    4. Sigh. Another reason to see about hitch-hiking to KC, and doing some research on stairwells to sleep in…

      Jerry, I am afraid you have not actually kept up with things. “Fan politics” used to be just that – politics between different groups of fans that made up the whole. While this was all there was, which is inevitable for even such a small group, it was annoying but irrelevant.

      Unfortunately, the “fan” politics are no longer “fans” – they are the embodiment of the politicization of everything in the culture that the Left can manage to attach itself to. It extends to who can be published (Baen has a very limited number of slots), it extends to personal attacks on anyone who does not toe the Party line in all ways, it even extends to illegality such as “SWATting” and bomb threats. It would not have surprised me in the least to have had a bomb threat evacuate this year’s Awards – although I thought it less likely after the chief advocate of them was given his award (which I am sure had John W. Campbell spinning furiously).

      This is not a fight over “politics” or a “nice, but irrelevant award” any longer – it is over the survival of a piece of Western culture. A small piece, yes – but “small pieces” is how the Polish people woke up some years ago without a Polish nation.

      Like

  109. Strange marketplace you have here, strange marketplace. I’ve been reading and buying SF & F books since I was 14 years old, one of those crazy fans who had over 1,000 SF/F books on my shelves by age 20. (I know, books and shelves are passe’, but hopefully you get the idea.)

    I’ve seen the change in the product, and you the providers have suffered as I stopped buying…from 10 books a month to 5 to 1 to a few a year. So as your customer, one of those key consumers who makes the difference in whether you make a profit or not (you know the kind that recommend a great read to 20 friends, and goes through enough books to find those great reads), let me ask an important question: are you writing to be read and make money or not?

    I am not interested in your stories for their sex scenes, whether the sentients have one set of genitals, multiple sets, the same sets or different sets. If I want to read romance, I’ll pick a book from that category. And if I wanted to read soft porn, I wouldn’t be coming to SF/F authors.

    While I like good character development, again I’m won’t be coming to SF/F to delve into serious relationship angst, and certainly not gender identity angst or genitalia confusion. I’m sure there’s a category of books out there somewhere dealing with these things, and if I was interested in them I’d search them out…INSTEAD of SF/F.

    When I was a teen, scifi opened up a vision of the skies and the future. It created excitement about science, and delved into possibilities of where science could take us. Thoughtful, interesting, exciting.

    Much of today’s scifi should have an R rating and seems focused on opening doors to things best kept private in the bedroom – and has various abbreviations attached that are of no interest to me OR TO THE VAST VAST MAJORITY of the reading audience. And I certainly won’t let my teenagers read it! And if they did, they won’t be getting inspired about the future, will they?

    Once again, how are those profits going? Enjoy your awards, or avoiding giving them or whatever. There was a day when I would pay attention to such, but that was 30 years ago.

    Provide inspiration, science possibilities, and the future, and I will be your customer and advertise you everywhere.

    Continue to indulge in your drive to push your narrow edge issues down everyone’s throat via scifi…and you won’t be earning profits from me. I thank G-d for Amazon and the Kindle marketplace, where authors can independently publish and I can find material that interests and inspires. So little of it via traditional publishing houses.

    Like

  110. “At the reception just before the Awards Ceremony itself, my lovely and talented wife, who writes for Tor books under her maiden name of L Jagi Lamplighter, and who had been consistently a voice of reason and moderation during the whole silly kerfluffle, approached Mr. Patrick Nielsen Hayden at the party to extent to him the olive branch of peace and reconciliation.

    Before she could finish her sentence, however, Mr. Hayden erupted into a swearing and cursing, and he shouted and bellowed at the tiny and cheerful woman I married.”

    http://www.scifiwright.com/2015/08/in-memoriam-of-the-hugo-awards/

    Like

    1. I did not know L Jagi Lamplighter was Mr. Wright’s wife (tells you how much I pay attention to that stuff!). *adding her to my to-buy list*.

      This was just boorish behaviour, but somehow I am not surprised. I am saddened by the path fandom is currently taking.

      Like

      1. I do not advocate for anyone else, but if I had an editor who behaved like that to my wife, who is also one of his authors, I’d a) spend a night in jail and b) be actively shopping for a new publisher.

        And if I was ANY author working with that editor, with the slightest political differences, I’d be looking for a new publisher, since there was no way I could trust him not to backstab my career for his own petty political prejudices.

        Like

      2. Jagi’s stuff is really good. Her novella in sci phi #5 made me cry. Her novel, Prospero’s Daughter hits the sweet spot of humor, thorough world-building, action, mystery and romance (but not the sloppy emo variety). The book is nothing like the cover, which though pretty , is misleading.

        Like

    2. She was going over to make peace. Considering that Mr Nielsen knew what lay ahead for the Wright’s that was astonishingly churlish of the man.

      They really don’t understand us at all.

      Like

      1. I think the real problem is not that they don’t understand us, but that they think they do, and are completely wrong. A variant on Reagan’s “It isn’t so much that liberals are ignorant. It’s just that they know so many things that aren’t so.”

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        1. See Jonathan Haidt, psychologist, who despite being liberal was honest enough with himself to recognize the biases in the profession, determined the liberal stereotype of conservatives being “simple” was not so. While I quibble with his definitions of axes, he discovered that conservatives tend to incorporate more moral decision factors than liberals. More importanly, “conservatives” were far more likely to correctly predict a liberal’s answer on a topic than vice versa.

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  111. Toni has clarified her ‘walking out’

    quote:

    To clarify, I did not walk out of the ceremony, but of the reception before it in honor of the nominees, at which they were presented, gratis, an
    asterisk wooden coaster. At that point I didn’t feel I could continue to be part of the proceedings. I did not walk out in anger, but in sadness,
    went to my party and had a perfectly pleasant evening conversing with old friends and new until 4am.

    –Toni

    Like

    2. The hosts of the con deliberately and with malice aforethought attempted public humiliation of guests?

      Well golly, that at least two-thirds of class.

      Like

        1. That is a the source of a lot of my anger. I gave them $40 only to be pissed on.

          The voting is the voting and I can’t call them to account on that. The behavior they both engaged in and encourage, is another thing.

          What we need is a SP WorldCon bid and run one.

          Like

                1. The Ft. Worth bid is currently unopposed for 2021. I happen to know a number of the principals, and they’re reasonably competent. I haven’t seen any of their bid materials, so I don’t know where they are proposing, but I’d expect them to go into the convention center. The group is, in fact, a kind of an offshoot from the group that did LoneStarCon 3. Some people involved with that bid were not happy with the choice of San Antonio and they split to do their own thing.

                  Note also, that the same group has got the SMOFCon this year. Running a SMOFCon is often considered to be part of the WorldCon bid process, but it will not be at the same venue that a WorldCon would be for obvious reasons.

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                  1. My experience with San Antonio to date is that it is a neat place to be able to leave. Yeah, it’s got the Alamo, and the neat Alamo movie theatre chain, and some nice restaurants, and more craft shops than even my gal can visit, but still… a city, and it’s got Democrats all over it, even though even they were smart enough to vote down their party’s hand-picked candidate for mayor.

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          2. I like the idea, but it’s a big undertaking. Conrunning is intense, stressful, and usually done at a financial loss (which offends my mercenary principles). I have some people among my kith and kin who are experienced conrunners, but other than some of the Huns they’ve mostly gafiated. I have some… smaller ideas on the back burner that would do as “practice runs”. I’ll run them by Our Beloved Hostess and maybe some of the Raiding Party when I have a little time this week. I have to get my own ducks in a row before I tackle that metaphorical flock.

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              1. WSFS is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, so there’s no true profit. If a Worldcon does have a surplus, the usual practice it to pass along those funds to future Worldcons, or devote it to some other charity. The 2017 Helsinki Worldcon received $23,000 (US) from the 2001 Philadelphia Worldcon, at Sasquan this year, for example.

                FYI, there have been years where Worldcons have lost a LOT of money, most recently in 2007 when the Worldcon was in Japan. The deficit that year was over $100,000, no small change.

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                1. Yes, it can happen. My sister was working at a Worldcon in Baltimore, and the last Worldcon in Baltimore had lost money. They were paranoid about budget.

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                2. WSFS has nothing to do with the finances of WorldCons. Each WorldCon is, financially, their own thing. Generally, what happens is a bid is sponsored by a different 501(c)(3) group and that group is responsible if the WorldCon fails financially. Note that LonCon revenues fell well short of expenses as well, and has asked for donations to cover their shortfall.

                  As for what happens with a surplus, well, it depends on whether or not they accept what is called “pass-along funds.” If the bid accepts pass-along funds, which is normal practice for bids that aren’t from New York, Boston, Los Angeles, or Chicago, and sometimes even from bids for those places, then the committee divides any surplus into sixths. Three of those sixths go to the next three WorldCons. The other three are to be used by the WorldCon committee for the benefit of “world fandom.” That money must be reported on during the WorldCon business meeting until it is all gone.

                  If pass-along funds aren’t accepted, then the WorldCon committee gets all the money, which is to be used for the benefit of “world fandom,” and the money must be reported on until it’s gone.

                  What normally happens is that once the reimbursements are all awarded, the convention committee is dissolved and the sponsoring group takes charge of the WorldCon’s share of the surplus and they do the reporting to WSFS because they’re set up for the long term while the convention committee itself is only set up to operate for three years or so.

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                  1. Couldn’t money meant for the benefit of “world fandom” be used on WorldCons? Say because of all of this WorldCon 2015 more than makes budget. Could they use the non-along funds to help LondonCon, for example, retire their debts?

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                    1. You are correct. That is one of the things that you can use a surplus for, and there are advantages in doing that.

                      I suppose I just as well admit that I am an officer and board member of ALAMO, the parent organization behind LoneStarCon 3. We have had a number of votes concerning the donation of surplus funds to LonCon and to WSFS, which we have chosen to grant. We are also using some of our share of the surplus to do things like bring special guests to conventions in Texas and to send someone to SMOFCon. Also, I expect that we’ll start up doing our con-running convention again, now that most of the board isn’t off trying to run a WorldCon, and that we’ll use some of the surplus funds for that.

                      For what it’s worth, and for the curious, I believe that LonCon has now received donations to recover its entire shortfall.

                      If you really have an interest, the business meetings are recorded and all of the records including the WSFS constitution, which specifies how the financial stuff is to be done, are publicly available. If you’re curious how it works for real, wsfs.org would be the place to go and find out.

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      3. Hm. Do you think they found the coasters retail, or did they have to get them custom-made?

        How stunningly petty. And to put themselves so obviously on one side of the fight…unprofessional.

        Like

    4. The “asterisk” coaster is actually akin to the Hugo Award base that was used this year. Since the design was chosen in a competition that ended back in February of this year, it’s clear no slight was ever planned on Sasquan’s part with respect to the commemorative coaster. That Weisskopf felt otherwise is completely understandable though, given the circumstances. You can see the Hugo base here:

      http://www.thehugoawards.org/hugo-history/2015-hugo-awards/

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        1. You really insist on showing your level of moronicity here?

          (Yes, it is so a word! Ask Sarah.)

          Cite something that mentions the coaster, if you will?

          And designed or not by February – this was a deliberate attack on the people that they wanted to humiliate. Which tells me that the ConCom WAS IN ON IT! The Spokane organization has much to answer for – they will certainly get no vote from me for any future WorldCons, and I will actively campaign against their EVER being recognized again.

          Liked by 1 person

      2. You know might have some validity if Gerrold hadn’t brought the designer of the thing onto the stage and explained what the asterisk was all about right there on the stream where we all saw. It was the classless thing I have ever seen. Especially tying it to Pterry. Try again.

        Liked by 1 person

      3. That the base design’s resemblance to an asterisk is coincidental is plausible. That the coasters were intended to resemble the base rather than make a rather insulting statement about the worthiness of this year nominees—that’s a lie so blatant I wonder why you even bothered.

        I mean, switching narratives between “No Award was a principled reaction to slating” and “No Award means the Puppies nominees were uniformly bad”—OK, it’s usually not the same person making both arguments, at least not in close proximity. The myth about the extreme-right-wing white-supremacist male-chauvinist misogynist Sad Puppies trying to keep women, ethnic minorities, liberals, etc. out of the genre—was usually made to an audience that would be to incensed at the accusation to question whether it bore any resemblance to the truth. (Some resemblance, as it happens: there was indeed a group called the Sad Puppies.)

        But this? This lie is so pathetic, shows such lack of effort, that it’s just insulting.

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      4. How do you square that from this posting on FB by David Gerald, you know the host who encouraging applauding “no award” and demanding it not be booed.

        This year — this stuff, this little turd in the punch bowl — the community will survive it. Whatever happens, the Hugo will survive. With an asterisk, perhaps. (Maybe we’ll hand out official asterisks with the trophies this year.)

        Would the witness like to reconsider his testimony about the asterisks being presented?

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  112. ll Sarah, I feel your pain. You have skin in the game, you care about what you do…but with the exception of Vox I think you are losing sight of the forest for the trees.

    In a nutshell, you are fighting with retards. There is no nice way to say it. Even if you had won you would have lost; there is no pride or satisfaction to be taken in picking on retards or defeating them.

    I know how depressing it is. In the early 90’s one in every three new SF novels was an SJW stinker. Then it was every second one. Then it seemed I couldn’t buy a good SF for love or money without getting an SJW lecture on the righteousness of sodomy, militant feminism, socialism and a few seemed to be tentatively pushing pedophilia. I walked away in disgust, never to return. It seemed like a big deal at the time too…I grew up on SF and suddenly – it was gone.

    Until about a week ago when I discovered Brad Torgerson and tried ‘The Chaplin’s War’. It seems to be SJW Lite – but he still manages to make it into a fairly decent read. There are still sparks of life in the genre.

    You need your own publishing companies. You need your own awards. It’s doable too: nobody with a triple digit IQ trusts the media anymore, everyone in the fan base knows the Hugos are being gamed; and that most books published by Hugo winners are still going to be dreck.

    Vox put a publishing company together – surely a bunch of you could do the same? Rather than fighting with morons that will never learn or smarten up no matter how hard you beat them – take your ball, start up a new game somewhere else – and start rebuilding the genre as you feel it should be.

    Just my two bits, your mileage may vary. Good luck to you and your friends, Sarah, in whatever you decide to do.

    Like

      1. They’re failing because of the toy/gift/coffee sections. I can’t find anything I’m looking for and they’ve devoted half their floor space to garbage.

        My test of a new book store is whether or not they have John Steakley’s ‘Armor’ in stock. If not I don’t take them least bit seriously.

        Like

        1. Relevant to the discussion here is what fraction of Hugo winning novels can you find in the typical brick and mortar bookstore?

          I can usually find Dune, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Starship Troopers, Stranger in a Strange Land, The Left Hand of Darkness, Foundation’s Edge, and Ender’s Game.

          There is a recent reprint of Lord of Light but it has mostly disappeared which saddens me. I loved that book and I barely expected to like it going in. Forever War is hit and miss as are Downbelow Station and Cyteen. I haven’t seen most in a while and even the recent Redshirts is rare.

          My local B&N has more copies of the latest Moorcock reprints (Titan is doing Corum now) than Ancillary Justice. In fact, when I bought the latest Corum reprint they had three of each volume compared to two Ancillary Sword copies and one Ancillary Justice (I’ve picked up the former a few times wondering if I should try it hence noticing the count).

          Hugo politics aside there is very little pre-2000 that I wouldn’t read again on the Hugo winner’s list (and very little I’ve read post-2000…as in precisely two and one only because of SP3). How can you have a science fiction section without most of them? Of sixty-one winners I’m used to seeing what, seven, and three of those are from one author (who has one of the books missing).

          Even if you assume the last three years plus my regulars plus twice my hit and misses that’s 18 of 61.

          Add in to that the common, “hey, here are books two and three, can you get me book 1?”, “No” phenomena and it is no wonder they are dying.

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  113. Much of the writing on this subject seems to be inside baseball to those of us who are casual observers. Nevertheless, it seems like these were the results of 2500 or so people acting in concert. That is not an enormous number. What does it take to participate in voting?

    I used to read a lot of science fiction but in recent years, real life obligations and the need to read technical material to stay current at work has cut into my recreational reading. Not to mention that my last few purchases of science fiction books at the brick and mortar store have left me, shall we say, disappointed with political cant rather than optimistic speculative stories or just good old space opera adventure.

    If it does not cost too much, or take an inordinate amount of time, I could probably participate in an effort to pry the fingers of these noxious harpies off the once prestigious Hugo Awards. What would I have to do?

    Like

    1. $50 for a MidAmericon supporting membership. Linked a couple places here by Jeff Gauch. I attempted to do an executive summary, still incomplete.

      Like

    2. Depends on what you call “cost too much” – $50 gets you a supporting membership that (at least still this coming year) lets you nominate and vote on the 2016 Hugos. (Also lets you nominate – again as it is right now – but not vote on the following year awards.)

      Time – well, this honest voter took quite a bit of time reading everything. Not so much the time that hurt there, though – it was getting through the absolute dreck that the CHORFs thought was “worthy.” (You have to have a pretty good tolerance for pornography these days, too, if you are going to honestly evaluate their choices.)

      Like

  116. “Burning it to the ground” would be an act of despair, and as Sarah likes to remind us, despair is a sin. It may be easier to destroy than to build, but building is much more satisfying and enduring. The Hugos have already been destroyed, and not by us. Let’s rebuild from the ashes. It can’t be worse than what we have now.

    Like

    1. To rebuild one must cart off the rubble and regrade the ground.

      It might a few years of ‘no award’ to do that.

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        1. Having been told it is my fault, as a puppy, that the only work I wanted to nominate and was told by con people (not other puppies) it was not eligible was not nominated has put me firmly in the Rabid camp.

          Like

    2. I wonder – if y’all let it burn, and wait until the likely demise of most of the tradpub paper SFF imprints / replacement by indy and modtradpub ebooks, would it be possible to mount a “Hugos 2 – the Restoration” movement? Would the WorldCon org have to actually die to reuse the award name, even in modified form, w/o legal challenge? Maybe if sufficiently financially challenged, they’d sell the IP rights to the name?

      Like

      1. The imp in me wants to see an Oguh award established but the saner element says not. (Actually, it says “back away slowly.”)

        We’ve previously discussed naming a new award for Heinlein, Andre Norton and other authors but it occurs to me that a different tack might appeal. Establish two (2) awards, each recognizing a distinct segment of the SF roots: the Verne and the Wells.

        Give the Wells to the kind of stuff currently reaping Hugo love: tendentious preachy politically correct stories. Give the Verne to SF adventure & romance (old meaning — no commingling of reproductive organs required.)

        Such an award structure would enable simultaneous recognition of excellence and truth in labeling.

        Like

        1. I find your ideas interesting and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

          First question, how to stop the CHORFs from turning the Verne into the Wells 1.5?

          Liked by 1 person

    1. I’ve had a picture waiting in moderation since 8:40 this morning. Of course with the message load, and probably all the trolls that are spitting venom being held in moderation, all y’all may never see it.
      If your typing skills are up to it:
      htt ps colon slash slash twitter dot com slash thehiredmind slash status slash 635502152027279360

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  119. Tl;Dr, but WOW! 1037 comments! As I said yesterday: In the immortal words of Bugs Bunny, “This. Means. War.” The SJWs will find themselves the SJLosers.

    Like

  120. I went looking through the Sasquan page and found a link to a PowerPoint presentation showing how EPH is supposed to work.
    It’s rather more calculation-intensive than the previous balloting process, and it does have the effect of concentrating all the support for a slate into support for one nominee of the slate (except in the case of perfect slate discipline, where the entire slate winds up being eliminated).
    I don’t find a whole lot to object to in the proposed process, and it really won’t have any impact on SP4, as near as I can tell.

    Like

    2. I’d love to find a list of the nominations on each ballot, with the nominator’s info redacted. I think it might be interesting to see how the EPH method would have worked on a real set of nominating ballots.

      As it stands, it looks like it will eliminate the ability of any single slate to “fill the tree” and crowd out all other nominations. In order to crowd out the non-slate nominations, you would need five separate non-overlapping slates. (If two slates have any nominations in common, the “points” will be concentrated into the overlap, and the effect will be to turn two slates into one.) Now, next year, I suspect Vox Day will propose another slate, and have the following to implement it. The Cruella de Ville voters will produce a slate of their own, besides this year’s “No Award” slate. If Sad Puppies 4 has a recommended list, that may become a de facto slate, and the milbloggers may produce a slate of their own.
      One more slate, and the tree is full.
      Two more, and there’s a chance the CHORF slate gets knocked out — but only if the size of their slate is much smaller than the “No Award” slate they mobilized this year. (Maybe not unreasonable — the “No Award” slate was mobilized after the ballot was finalized. Mobilizing before takes a lot more organization.)

      I’d also like to investigate the possibility of what I’ll call “functional slates”. These are nominated works that are correlated with each other in the absence of visible outside influence. On Amazon, it’s common to see “people who bought this book also bought …” A functional slate is what we have when “people who liked this book also liked …” If these correlations form a tight enough group, then a cluster of books that were enjoyed by the same people will form a functional slate and wind up competing against each other under the EPH rules.

      If the purpose of EPH is to detect the influence of constructed slates, the tendency to detect functional slates may be considered a bug.
      However, by concentrating the nominations of such a cluster of works down to one single work in that cluster, EPH might wind up filling the tree with works that reflect the tastes of a diverse types of fandom, and that might turn out to be a feature.

      Like

      1. Vox is numbering minions for a reason. I haven’t bothered but it shouldn’t be hard to create mathematical models of EPH and then create combat slate teams each devoted to a single slate. The design would be such that the overlaps would take other “recommendations” and both concentrate them while each combat slate team (of five) alone pushed it’s core nomination.

        Actually, that’s an interesting problem. Is the exact math of EPH out there?

        Like

        2. All I’ve seen is the FAQ and am doing up an excel spread sheet to formalize my tests. It’s going slower than I thought it would. I had to start over. My original was too much of a mess. :(

          Right now I’m JUST doing the flat ‘simple’ 1 point divisible 5 times. If I get this working I may try and add layers of complexity but that will probably require macros I probably won’t have time to write. Hopefully someone more macro/code savvy can take it from the base.

          Like

              1. Or, at the very least, get a nice bowl of pasta (come to think of it, I could really go for some lo mein just now. I know a place that makes a terrific spicy beef version.)

                Like

                1. Yummmm. Well, actually I fail at spicy (ow) but lo mein still sounds good.

                  So does mac&cheese. Um… probably I should pick just one for dinner, though.

                  Like

          2. Does the FAQ give detailed formulae/rules? I have only half a brain today (stupid virii), but that should be enough to code up some simulations for that. That way I can be coding at least, even if I can’t manage the work I was supposed to be doing today. I’ll run the code by any Huns so inclined for sanity checks.

            Like

            1. It gives some, and there’s supposed to be a power point out there that may have more numbers, but I haven’t found it. Shadowdancer has done more digging and may have links.

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        3. The powerpoint presentation tries to strongly imply that splitting your vote doesn’t hurt you, but it seems very likely by looking at it that the only thing that gets you into consideration for being eliminated is having a low point total, and thus you need to do something to get a wide spread of point totals so that none of your ballot items go up against each other early on while maintaining your high nomination counts. Having some people nominate fewer works increases the point total of those works while hurting the total nominations of other works. Spread them far enough out in point totals and just maybe… If you have more people doing the full slate minus the higher point work, perhaps plus some unrelated work to keep the total nominations roughly the same…

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  121. Given that both putative sides of this culture kerfluffle got their game on this year, it’s probably going to be more of the same in Kansas City next year. I fully expect more fans will remember to vote in the nominations phase next spring and that if there are slates of nominees, as there were this year, that some of them will get enough votes to make it on the Hugo short-list again. Maybe not as many as this year though, but more than one or two. That’s because bloc voting as a tactic does work, obviously. But I think this year shows conclusively that there just isn’t the level of support out there to burn it all to the ground, at least not yet.

    By 2017 in the happy city of Helsinki, if EPH passes in 2016 I suspect it will all be over but the grumbling. Hopefully.

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    1. Well, the games got on were different games: SP wanted to get works nominated; RP basically did the same at nomination, with discipline on slate voting for their favorites. The Kickers game, on the other hand, was to kill all the puppy nominated works.

      Killing all the wronfen nominated works is a lot easier to coordinate, especially if one were to have the inside track on disallowing ballots as the rumor mill grapevine is reporting.

      So how does that kickers game work when their “success” in killing the noms they dislike convinces the various flavors of puppies to kill all the nominees?

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      1. To be explicitly clear, the last line should read:

        So how does that kickers game work when their “success” in killing the noms they dislike convinces the various flavors of puppies to kill all the nominees works across the board?

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      2. Both the Sad and Rabid Puppies ran slates of nominees, and both together achieved almost total domination of the Hugo short-list. Understandably, a lot of fans were upset over how a minority of nominating voters shut out many candidates who they felt deserved a nomination. Like Andy Weir of The Martian fame, who missed being on the Campbell Award for Best New Writer by one slot. This is precisely why so many voters chose No Award over the Puppy noms.

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        1. Uhm you realized Andy Weir was denied due to publication date or at the very least several people were told he was not eligible for nomination?

          The very first thing I wanted to do on buying my membership was nominate The Martian. In fact, you could easily say nominating it was what pushed me from watching to participating this year.

          And I was informed it didn’t qualify.

          So take any “but you denied Andy Weir a shot” and shove it up your ass because I know as a god damned fact one puppy was going to nominate him, me.

          You want to be a group of jackasses then at least own it. Excuses make you look pathetic.

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          1. Actually, Weir is eligible as the Campbell Award differs from the Hugos in that the clock for eligibility is based on the first date of *professional* publication, not the author’s own self-publishing date. So he’ll also be eligible next year, thankfully. But it would have been nice for him to get a Hugo this year, for obvious reasons. So you’ll have a chance next year to nominate him.

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              1. Not bloody likely, given that the film will definitely be up for a Hugo next year. I suspect that Weir might not concern himself with the issue of being on a slate, but that most fans would give him a pass if he didn’t care if he was on one. Considering that Kary English came close to winning a Hugo this year, I don’t think Weir would lose out to No Award.

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                  1. So why didn’t the Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form go to Guardians of the Galaxy get No Awarded, even though every choice was on a slate? The reason is that they were all obviously decent choices, period. A lot of the tripe the Puppies put up was, to put it bluntly, terrible, or at best, mediocre. Which Andy Weir’s The Martian most definitely isn’t.

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                    1. ” A lot of the tripe the Puppies put up was, to put it bluntly, terrible, or at best, mediocre.”

                      Annnnnnd that’s the point that I stopped caring about your opinion.

                      Liked by 1 person

                    2. Thank you so much for calling the books and stories we all love “terrible, or at best, mediocre”.

                      We do so love being told our taste is suspect by people trying to convince us of how wrong we are on other things.

                      Liked by 1 person

                    3. A lot of the tripe the Puppies put up was, to put it bluntly, terrible, or at best, mediocre.

                      So they missed one.

                      A lot of the tripe the Puppies put up was, to put it bluntly, terrible, or at best, mediocre.

                      To put it bluntly, you’re wrong.

                      They “No Awarded” Toni. Toni got more votes than the last several “best editor, long form” _combined_ and they “No Awarded” her.

                      Last year, it was explicitly said that she could win if she’d just disavow Larry Correia–only Tony doesn’t muzzle or “disavow” writers who make her and her company lots of money.

                      So tell me again how quality of the work is the relevant factor. I could use another laugh.

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                    4. Sorry, but nominees like Wisdom From My Internets, Vox Day for two editor slots (what vanity!), initially SIX nominations for Wright (isn’t vanity a sin?), Kevin J Anderson’s slight work, Butcher’s serviceable but otherwise unremarkable story, etc. etc. etc. is wholly in the 90% of what Ted Sturgeon called crap. That’s not what the Hugo Awards are about. Sure, some years something undeserving wins, but the Puppy slates stacked the deck with jokers this year and it wasn’t hard to tell.

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                    5. First, we’re not Rabid Puppies here, on the whole, so if you have a problem with Vox, man up and go over there and take it up with him.

                      Second, I maintain that if you’re going to insult the books that WE FREAKING LOVE, then you probably aren’t going to get us on the same page with you. Now, do go run along if that’s the best you can offer.

                      Liked by 1 person

                    6. Sorry, but nominees like Wisdom From My Internets

                      You mean the one that was #1 in Political Humor on Amazon recently? (See screencap uptopic.)

                      ox Day for two editor slots (what vanity!), initially SIX nominations for Wright (isn’t vanity a sin?),

                      Vanity? That’s your argument?

                      Kevin J Anderson’s slight work, Butcher’s serviceable but otherwise unremarkable story,

                      As opposed to things like that remarkably banal Ancilliary Noun? (And, yes, the pronoun thing is banal.) Or the dinosaur revenge fantasy that has _no_ SF or fantasy elements?

                      So, yeah, the “Huggos”: to console people for being unable to win at the “steel engravings of historical persons” award.

                      That’s not what the Hugo Awards are about.

                      Apparently it’s supposed to be about rewarding the proper political positions, either in the story or in “real life”.

                      Liked by 1 person

                    7. It seems to escape the comprehension of starfleet dude and other No Award Slaters that the Hugo is a fan voted award. It does not signify the “best work of SF according to the privately held opinions of some secret cabal” nor does it represent the “face of fandom that a clique of special interests want to represent them.” Heck, it isn’t even an award for “work which best represents the pretentious drivel which certain elitist fans like.”

                      “Butcher’s serviceable but otherwise unremarkable story …” is a) a matter of a few fans opinion and not an absolute, objective standard and b) sold a bunchatona copies.

                      Just looking at Amazon’s info:

                      Amazon Author Rank
                      #93 Overall (See top 100 authors)
                      #6 in Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Fantasy
                      #11 in Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy
                      #12 in Kindle eBooks > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Fantasy
                      #21 in Kindle eBooks > Science Fiction & Fantasy
                      #93 in Books

                      For a book which has been out over a year, that looks better than “serviceable.”

                      Nearly 3,200 people were sufficiently moved to write reviews of the book, 86% 5-star, 97% 4-star and above; 0.00% 1-star reviews.

                      Have you even read the book? Can you offer any evidence, such as a plot summary not available in on-line review, or identification of a minor character?

                      You will understand, I am sure, that nobody expects you to have read that book.

                      Liked by 1 person

                    8. “SIX nominations for Wright (isn’t vanity a sin?)”

                      I don’t think you know the meaning of the word vanity. Wright wasn’t one of the primary folks promoting Sad Puppies and had little to do with the selection process.

                      Do you even know what process was used to select the Sad Puppy recommendations?

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                    10. He’s just re-inflated by the smoke of burning Hugo awards, puffed up and full of self-importance.

                      It won’t last; he still can’t tell a fact from a factoid.

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                    11. Consider, for a moment, the ludicrousness of anybody identifying as a Trekkie presuming to lecture anybody about “garbage” SF.

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                    13. Weisskopf *did* almost win a Hugo, but her flirtation with Puppies undercut her. She’d have been better off to decline her nomination and hope for another chance next year.

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                    14. You do realize that despite years in the industry, the ONLY nominations she’s gotten has been because of the Puppies?

                      Please pull the other one next. It’s getting lonely.

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                    15. Weisskopf *did* almost win a Hugo, but her flirtation with Puppies undercut her.

                      So you admit that it’s not about the quality of the work. How dare she have the wrong people like her work.

                      Wrongfans, having wrongfun.

                      Liked by 1 person

                    16. You are all missing the fact that THE MARTIAN was disqualified, because Weir had self-published it online before 2014. I guess those time-travellilng Puppies made him do it.

                      Liked by 1 person

                    19. Well, that’s just, like, your opinion, man. But I’m pleased you’ve found writing that brings you joy. Thanks for coming over and proving destruction is easier than creation. May the force be with you.

                      Liked by 1 person

                    20. “A lot of the tripe the Puppies put up was, to put it bluntly, terrible, or at best, mediocre.”

                      Since the Puppy Kickers bragged about not reading any Sad Puppy nominees, we know that this is a lie. Not to mention the crap like If You Were A Dinosaur, that the SJW swoon for.

                      Liked by 1 person

                    21. also Ancillary Thingy which won and which is okay for a first book, but shouldn’t be in same room with a Hugo nom.
                      Oh, yeah, I know “But pronouns.” Yeah. That.

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                    22. I thought you’d kicked him behind the fridge months ago.

                      Wait, you mean this chew toy is a used chew toy?

                      Ack Pht Pbbbbt Ptuiy!!

                      Liked by 1 person

                    23. So why didn’t the Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form go to Guardians of the Galaxy get No Awarded, even though every choice was on a slate?

                      Because not even SJWs can be 100% a d*ck?

                      (Though they certainly try.)

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                    27. You might have a point (ref. your comment below). Only to those who didn’t bother to actually read the “good” stuff that was nominated by your fellow CHORFs, however.

                      Pornography (and not even good pornography) about “finding an alternate world through self pleasuring.”

                      A book all about pronouns from someone who apparently failed every English class she ever took (until she found an understanding professor of Marxist dialectic, that is).

                      A story written by a Chicago Public School third-grader mentality that had no idea of actually getting people into the story by making it at least marginally believable.

                      An apologia and propaganda piece from our little brown head-chopping and female-child-sex-enslaving Muslim “brothers.”

                      A John W. Campbell Award to the most racist, misogynist, Western culture hating person they could scrape off the bottom of the shoe of a San Francisco Elite. (Which makes a weird kind of Bizarro World sense, actually, considering the attitudes of JWC. I don’t know where the man is interred, but there was undoubtedly at least a minor earth tremor reported there Saturday night.)

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                    28. A book all about pronouns from someone who apparently failed every English class she ever took (until she found an understanding professor of Marxist dialectic, that is).

                      Good god that was a slog. Goblin EMperor was actually sortof fun, even if the story was not one I’d generally read, and very light on uniquely fantasy or SF&F concepts.

                      But Ancillary? Geez, I felt like I was reading a wanna-be Jane Austen dressing up in Sci Fi drag. Complete with discussions of appropriate china.

                      And lest we forget the utterly loathsome “Day the world turned upside down”

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                2. I wish I could believe that.

                  However, I saw too many people lamenting entries on our lists because they wanted to vote for them, but couldn’t because we liked them and had nominated them.

                  So no, I’m not holding my breath that Weir wouldn’t get No Awarded if he was on our “slate”.

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            2. Gee that is exactly the opposite of the position in Frebruary. More proof the lot of you are lying sacks of…well not sh!t as sh!t is more useful.

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            3. You do know that nobody is guaranteed a nomination, don’t you? Sometimes stuff that should have gotten in didn’t. Unless of course the game is fixed. Are you saying that the game should be fixed, that only the “right fans,” those associated with the industry, should be allowed to nominate? The stuff you wanted didn’t get in. I’ve been disappointed that way for decades. I didn’t cry and kick puppies when it happened. I just moved on.

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          2. Heck, if I knew Weir was eligible I might have actually signed up this year. I didn’t because I was mostly in the “pox on both of their houses” mode when nominations were happening and there wasn’t any books I had read that I wanted to nominate other than The Martian. If I had bothered to sign up, I’d have probably voted for the puppies books because I enjoy that style way more and the other side’s nominations make me want to delete them and give them 1 star ratings.

            I’ll probably actually sign up this year now that the establishment side has disrespected so many people I like. That and the slander that they used in the mainstream press to drum up so many votes irks me. The more they do those sorts of low tactics the more they push me over to the other side. Of course, this probably puts me into opposition with some of my other favorite authors, like Howard Tayler.

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        2. Aren’t you concerned that so few could have such an affect? What does that imply about the previous ballots? Personally, I don’t understand why Sarah and others have such a thing for the Hugos. Worldcon is a tiny event where a small number of old white people people vote to award tacky rockets to people who probably deserve better.

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            1. Well, if the rocket were mounted on a Rocket 88 coupe it would be worth something. BTW, I agree with you that many of the nominated works weren’t that great and JC Wright was over represented. Reading some of the works was a chore. I suspect part of that is that no one expected the slates to sweep the ballots and the selection process was very informal. OTOH, the non-slate selections weren’t fabulous either. My own sense is that 2014 was not a great year for science fiction and fantasy, with nothing really standing out. I’m exploring different genres myself, hopefully there is something better out there. That said, the awards ceremony was a disgrace and the anti puppies were reliably ignorant and dishonest. That alone is good reason to go elsewhere.

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            2. News break: that your father thought something was cool is an almost certain sign that it isn’t.

              Just a handy rule of thumb.

              BTW: if Oldsmobiles had been cool they might still be in production.

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        3. I would submit that “a lot of fans” were upset by previous years Hugo nomination and award results, leading to the various puppies campaigns, resulting in more votes this year than the total votes that yielded previous years winners. Even if you don;t like Vox’s politics or his effort, that effort to increase participation is a good thing.

          The problem is, as stated by the kickers, is that these new participants were not the approved in-group of fandom that had dominated the short lists for the previous many years – these were the wrong fans, so the in-group that had run things for so long decided to fight to protect their privilege of determining who would be on the short list.

          These new participants had to be excluded.

          I am sorry Andy Weir did not get nominated. I read and really like his book. It would have been on my nomination list for both Campbell and Best Novel if I’d read it before the noms were due. But that’s exactly the same thing that the folks who’ve supported the Sad Puppies effort have dealt with these awards for forever, with nomination votes never resulting in nominations, thus the nomination list being a “don’t care” choice.

          I suppose the folks who originally organized the puppies campaigns could have just jumped to the kickers final conclusion and swamped the vote with no awards two years ago – but they didn’t, instead working to get nominees they liked onto the nomination lists so they could vote for what they admired.

          The kickers were the ones who went to the no award route, burning the awards down and then holding their pathetic parallel “If only all those wrongfen were locked up in camps with Vox where they belong so they couldn’t vote this year” ceremony.

          Yet the people who just want to participate, even after the fandom cleansing vote effort this year, are still working to build wide-definition fan participation, and are still trying to be positive in the face of insult and injury.

          I know which side is the side of light in this – I know which I support.

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          1. “I would submit that “a lot of fans” were upset by previous years Hugo nomination and award results …”

            If that were true then being able to put “Hugo Winner” or “Hugo Nominated” on the cover of a book wouldn’t be boosting sales into the stratosphere.

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        4. You are aware that your opening salvo —

          “Both the Sad and Rabid Puppies ran slates of nominees …”

          — is based on a false premise, aren’t you?

          The Sad Puppies “slate” was naught more than a “for your consideration” list, with, as I recall, with the explicit suggestion that people read and consider the recommended works and consider voting for them. When you claim the Sad Puppy voters “slated” you are actually insulting them. The accusation is equivalent to historical claims that “Jews use the bread of Christian infants to make their unleavened bread.” (Just in case you believe that, the red is from the horse radish.)

          Further, you commit a fundamental ontological error when you correlate “stuff I don’t enjoy” with “garbage.” Unless you can point to some absolute inarguable measure of quality, what constitutes good and bad reading is purely a matter of taste and to assert your taste as automatically superior requires a remarkable level of arrogance.

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          1. Baloney. Given the SP slate was modeled to exactly match a Hugo nominations ballot, it wasn’t a long list of recommendations. It was a slate. It wasn’t just a garbage scow of recommendations either. No, the slate itself WAS garbage. I trust you get the reference. It has something to do with why this year’s Worldcon GoH was worth his salt, while this year’s Puppy noms aren’t.

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            1. Reiterating a false statement, only more emphatically, does not make it true. Try providing a higher standard of support for your slate claim than Ipse Dixit. I read Correia’s and Torgerson’s initial posts promoting Hugo associate memberships and neither of them, IIRC, said “Vote FOR These.” They were suggested in a manner consistent with the Hugo ballot, nothing more, and nobody has proffered evidence (not even requiring proof, you notice, merely asking for evidence outside the hothouse confines of elitist snobs tantrumming because somebody else got to play in their sandbox) that people paying the fee and voting their ballots were not exercising independent judgement.

              I tire of having to remind you of this, but the evaluation of the nominees as “garbage” is purely subjective and your opinion carries no weight absent your contributing an objective level of standard.

              You declare it garbage — explain yourself, sirrah! most here declare your preferences bland tendentious schlock — who is to be right, who is to decide?

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            2. BTW – when did Vonda McIntyre go trans?

              Or are you referring to David Gerrold, a man who hasn’t written a significant (or even particularly readable) work of SF in decades, a man who disgraced Worldcon by his behaviour at the Hugo Awards banquet, deliberately inciting partisan response to the voting results?

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            3. Please, do continue.

              I love it when someone tries to tell me the error of my ways while also insulting my taste in stories.

              See, this is why I don’t really feel any obligation to actually give a damn what you have to say about, well, anything.

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            4. “Given the SP slate was modeled to exactly match a Hugo nominations ballot, it wasn’t a long list of recommendations.”

              A Hugo nominations ballot has five slots. I’ll call them candidate slots to differentiate from the nominees actually on the final ballot.

              Let’s check the Sad Puppies recommendation list:

              https://bradrtorgersen.wordpress.com/2015/02/01/sad-puppies-3-the-2015-hugo-slate/

              Best Novella – 3 candidates
              Best Novellette – 4 candidates
              Best Graphic Novel – 1 candidate
              Best Dramatic Presentation – Long – 4 candidates
              Best Dramatic Presentation – Short – 4 candidates
              Best Editor Long Form – 4 candidates
              Best Editor Short Form – 4 candidates
              Best Professional Artist – 4 candidates
              Best Semiprozine – 3 candidates
              Best Fanzine – 3 candidates
              Best Fancat – 3 candidates
              Campbell Award – 3 candidates

              Only four categories listed five candidates which is the maximum on a Hugo ballot.

              You are either lying or criminally negligent in doing the necessary research to make an informed decision.

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              1. “You are either lying or criminally negligent in doing the necessary research to make an informed decision.”

                Astoundingly, I find myself rising in defense of starfleet dud against your unfair accusation.

                He could be delusional.

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                  1. Um. I have met such, and SFD seems to fit the pattern, of “all of the above.”

                    He is criminally negligent in doing research, which allows him to lie in any way he wishes, and is delusional in his belief that he is therefore proven to be not stupid.

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                2. Remember that Sad Puppies II did not put out five candidates, and people expressed a wish we should die in a fire. Whatever they say, they are lying. They want us non-existent.

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          2. One thing that seems to have happened with art in recent decades has been a denigration of enjoyability.
            If the common people even understand a creative work, it can’t be Great Art.
            If the common people actually like a creative work, it can’t be any good.
            And so we get displayed in museums “art” that a three-year-old child could create if you can keep it from eating the watercolors.

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            1. Some of those can only be created by a three year old that has eaten the watercolors. They obviously need that special touch that only regurgitation provides…

              For a literary analog, see “If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love,” or “Sex Criminals”.

              Liked by 1 person

        5. Upset, or incited. I found it amazing the level of slime you puppy kickers put out. I mean seriously, do you folks buy it by the tank car load? Or maybe even the tanker load? You guys achieved saturation in the lie department before anybody had a real chance to judge anything for themselves and kept the heat on right up until, well today, if all the new stories I linked to on my blog are correct.

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  122. I was only cursing in two languages (though one of the two was Polish, so at least I was a little different than most of the cursing probably was).

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  123. Is there a simple analysis anywhere which can demonstrate that:
    1. The SPs did not promote a “slate” (maybe whatever was actually circulated to SP supports)?
    2. The PKs did in fact support a “slate” (again, the material they actually circulated might be best)?

    I have seen the chaos horizon analysis, but it is not obvious to me how to refute an interpretation that a large number of voters magically and spontaneously responded to the existence of SP/RP actions to “defend SF.”

    I am talking with dummies, who might need to be led by the hand to objective reality.

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      1. Why so hostile? I am arguing against an SJW-supporter and looking for ammo. I can do lots of math; it doesn’t follow that I am following the logic.

        Note that I did not say, “show me that the SP didn’t VOTE a slate.”

        If have found Brad’s original post in which he announced SP3. If there is a later one that summaries the SP recommendations, I have not found it.

        I have also found Deirdre Moen’s post announcing a “how to vote agains the Puppies” slate. Are there more?

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          1. I’m wonder if everybody here is too tired.

            I seemed to remember seeing this fuzzyface73 saying that he couldn’t believe that anti-Sad Puppy votes “just happened”. IE the “No Awards” was a “Slate”.

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          2. Sarah, tia querida, you’ve got a blue on blue situation here. I know you’re stressed out and tired, and I’m sure fuzzy can see that too. Let the Horde handle things for a bit. You go snuggle your cute mathematician. Save your energy. (Okay, so maybe those are mutually exclusive; you get my point)

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        2. Click on my name and go to my page. Search for Steve Davidson (or something like that, but that string should pull it up). Follow the links. Davidson looks like the first to call for No Award.

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    2. You have inverted the burdens of proof. you demand the SPs prove their innocence of slate voting, but there is no evidence they did.

      You exonerate the PKs of slate voting for No Award in spite of ample evidence of their intention to do so and mulitple admissions of same (some right here on this blog post.)

      What is obscure to you has more to do with your obtuseness than any other factor. Popular bloggers, authors of a style of SF not currently popular with the pecksniffian guardians of Hugo virtue, simply put up blog posts saying:

      “Hey Kids! Comics!”
      Hey! Did you know that you can vote for the Hugo Awards? Not only that, but for the low low price of a mere $40 you get this really keen package of all nominated works, a value far in excess of your purchase price! AND you get to vote for the Hugos not only this year</i., but NEXT YEAR too! I know a lot of you haven't been thinking about the Hugos, that most of you think the Hugos are the private reserve of elitist a-holes, but you can vote for the kinds of SF you like! Here’s a few things I really liked, check ’em out and vote for them if you like ’em too, or vote for whatever you liked in last year’s SF! Tell your friends!

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      1. Where exactly did I accuse the SPs of slate voting??? Please quote my exact words.

        I am, as I say, arguing with an SJW-supporter who is making such an accusation and looking for evidence that I can use to prove him wrong.

        It makes me sad that I came in here as a supporter of the SP effort and was promptly attacked. I’m used to that on leftist blogs; I had hoped for better, here.

        (I am still a supporter, but I think as I am not welcome, I must leave).

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        1. 1: Sorry if I came across testy — there have been more than a few tendentious puppy kickers coming in on this discussion and I (and others) are getting a bit bored by them.

          2: re-read my earlier comment. You have the burdens of proof backward. it is requisite for those accusing SPs of voting a slate to provide evidence, not simply dark allegations of “you know that’s what they did.”

          There are copious examples elsewhere this post of people (try CTRL-F for hyrosen and/or starfleet dude) asserting that “it was necessary to vote a slate for No Award because [reasons].” With the only reason being that they didn’t personally like what the Puppies nominated — as if the Puppies didn’t vote in opposition to the “same old tired stuff” nominations preferred by the PKs.

          If you are arguing with an SJW-supporter who is making such an accusation there can be no evidence that will prove him wrong because it is virtually impossible to prove innocence and he clearly assumes guilt (sorta the way his antecedents used to assume the guilt of a negro accused of molesting a white woman) and isn’t going to acknowledge evidence contrary to his prejudices. As Jonny Swift said, “You cannot reason a man out of what he never reasoned himself into.”

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        2. Fuzzy, please do stick around. Most of us are a little ragged-nerved at the moment, and we’re often a sharp-elbowed crowd to begin with. Your first comment was a little ambiguous, and some of us jumped to conclusions. On behalf of Hoyt’s Horde of Huns, I extend a hand, er, foot – What? It’s closest thing my species has to a limb! – of welcome. If I’ve understood correctly and you’re supporting the efforts to end puppy-related sadness, we wish you godspeed and good hunting.

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        3. Sorry, FF – we’re more than a bit tired, and – for good reason – rather wary of new faces; there have been all too many SJW sock puppets attacking all of the blogs throughout this. Please (assuming you are not more of the same, I am perfectly happy to take your word for it) accept my apologies – they are only mine, though, as we are not the Borg Collective whatever the SJWs may believe.

          I’m sorry I have no cites for you, although I do know that several have started analyzing the numbers (which were actually only release yesterday). You can access those yourself; search “Hugo Vote Results.”

          There are the nomination numbers, which actually track all over the place. There is a “core” of nominators that were apparently energized by Vox Day – that much is true. But even those are not a monolithic group; they have a fairly high variance.

          In the voting – it is painfully obvious that the “No Award Slate” was mobilized and ran in just about perfect lock step (one or two vote differences in nearly 3,000 votes between different categories stands out rather starkly).

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    3. Brad and Larry wrote their lists of suggestions on their websites. You can find several posts, and look through them and their comments. I think this is simple, but is not a source of evidence that would be compelling to everyone. Some people are stupid, dishonest, or delusional in ways that make them difficult to persuade.

      As for PK, first go get a grounding in statistics. Try spending a few years doing Statistical Process Control as an Industrial Engineer, or something. Look at the variation between categories for ‘no award’ votes. A PK response with no organization would not have consensus on which categories to ‘no award’. Some of them would have known about Vox’s post about how 3BP was the best, and voted ‘No Award’ for novels. Some of them would have voted ‘No Award’ for Guardians of the Galaxy. Probably some of the categories with 2500+ ‘No Award’ votes would have had much fewer.

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  124. “Even if you don;t like Vox’s politics or his effort, that effort to increase participation is a good thing.”

    I guess that makes Hitler’s effort to conquer Europe a good thing, because it led to greater Allied cooperation. Sheesh. (Yeah, Godwin.)

    As for the in-group of fans, I recall Hugo winners like Vernor Vinge in recent years, so I find that claim to be so much hot air.

    I’m unhappy that Andy Weir didn’t get a nomination this year too, but you’re barking up the wrong tree as to why that happened, because it was the slates that counted, not anyone’s actual feelings about their favorite new author. That’s why slates are wrong.

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    1. Yeah, you don’t get it. Vox is not here, dude. You can go argue with him over there if you have the stones. Or the ovaries. Whatever works.

      I’m saying “More Fan Participation, Both In Nominations And Awards, Is A Good Thing For The Hugos.”

      You are saying “Only If They Know Their Place.”

      And nominees who objectively are qualified for and deserve awards have to “repudiate” their fans and customers in order to not be disqualified for the Most Holy Hugo.

      Litmus test much?

      Liked by 1 person

    3. Actually, as one of the Puppies that initially pushed Weir, the reason Weir didn’t get nominated was that we thought he was ineligible as he self-published in a previous year. Otherwise he would have been on the Sad Puppies list and No Awarded by a 3000 person revenge slate because wrongfans.

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    4. “That’s why slates are wrong.”

      Are you truly so blinded by self-righteousness to imagine that your preferences represent some universal moral principle? Godwin, indeed.

      It would have been easy enough to vote only for works you considered award-worthy and ignore the rest. Everyone would have seen the vote count disparity and understood. Instead you elected to set yourself up as Lord Grand high Inquisitor, judge of all that is good and worthy.

      If slating is wrong, slate voting No Award is at least as wrong.

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    5. You are talking to the wrong people here. If slates are wrong, go talk to the Noah Ward slate guys. They’re a bunch of bastiges.

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    6. The funny part about Vox is that you puppy kickers invoke him, but don’t understand him. Vox doesn’t want little rocketships. He wants the figurative heads of Scalzi, Jemsin, The Toad, Feder, PNH and the rest on his mantelpiece as cups:
      http://voxday.blogspot.com/2015/08/negotiation.html
      That’s what he wants and if he has to destroy the Hugos, he doesn’t care. If he can deny them to the kickers, that’s a win for him and the kickers have amply demonstrated that they are willing cut off their own noses out of spite.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Vox has a great and longstanding dislike for figures behind the puppy kickers.

        He can show them as the freakshow he says they are by provoking a childish or simply unhinged reaction. This is also advertising for his business. ‘Hey, do you want to buy the book of a guy who bites the heads off chickens, or someone more normal, like me?’

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            1. If what I’ve seen over the last few days is any indication, they’ve made a bigger splash than they know with their little show Saturday night. When I see blogs that I read, that have NEVER had anything about SFF on them talking about us positively, that’s a HUGE change.

              Liked by 1 person

          2. That’s a problem with tar babies — they can be hard to let go of, and once you’ve set hand to it you live in dire fear of somebody with chickens getting involved.

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            1. I doubt that the puppy kickers have ever heard those stories. And if they had they would label them as racist. Which misses the point of the stories.

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        2. He can show them as the freakshow he says they are by pointing out the covering for Breen, the covering for MZB (which has tainted several authors I like who probably didn’t know), by supporting Kramer’s delay of his trial for two decades, and by making Delaney the only Grandmaster with a NAMBLA page.

          Brad made a joke a couple of post back about the real truth about TrueFen and WorldCon including childporn distribution being a major activity. It was clearly a joke.

          Yet when I pointed to the above and said it would be an easily sell he admitted it might be.

          Perhaps I’m paranoid but I can’t help but wonder if one of Vox’s next moves involve another reveal on this front.

          Liked by 1 person

        3. As somebody pointed out, the freakshow is more or less deliberate. And a bunch of stuff taken out of context. a lot of what Vox says is stuff that people like Charles Murray and others have said, but Vox adds that nasty tinge to it just to piss the puppy kickers off.

          Liked by 1 person

  125. Pingback: The Real Problem In SFF | The Arts Mechanical

  126. I’m unhappy that Andy Weir didn’t get a nomination this year too, but you’re barking up the wrong tree as to why that happened, because it was the slates that counted, not anyone’s actual feelings about their favorite new author. That’s why slates are wrong.

    1. I don’t believe you…that’s just your current excuse to justify your actions.
    2. The reason he didn’t get nominated is ConCom lied when queried about eligibility. But hey, lying in the service of narrative is all good, right.

    Vox Day is right…I didn’t want to believe it but being told it is my fault for the one person I really, really wanted to nominated didn’t get nominated because I believed WorldCon/Hugo people when I was told he wasn’t eligible is it.

    Your side has decided if they can’t run the Hugos as their little fiefdom they’ll burn them down. Well, I’d rather see the House that Heinlein, Herbert, LeGuin, Asimov, ect built burn than let cockroaches like you infest it.

    Hugos delenda est.

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        1. If the Hugos are to be burned to the ground, the way to do it is to not join the CHORFs in “No Awarding” everything. The way to do it is to keep nominating and supporting good books and editors and let the CHORFs do the No Awarding.

          Let them pour the accelerants and strike the matches. It’s win-win, a Thanatos Gambit for us. Either they start letting good books and editors go through or the Hugos are utterly and thoroughly destroyed. And we don’t have to do anything but put forward good books and editors to make it happen.

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      2. Not to mention that the -o ending might match a particular gender of noun the best. The -nd- (to be) has to agree with the noun. Wait, cartago is female, so that is defensible. Remaining issues: I’d don’t know how cartago becomes plural. The -a ending is singular, and probably needs to be -ae to agree with sunt.

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  127. Am I the only one who thinks the comments have been going on too long? [Smile]

    Have to take care of my Beagle Lilly and my email box is full. [Polite Smile]

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  128. A few telling notes on this fiasco..

    1) A very liberal friend of mine who attended Sasquan, while no friend of the SP movement has repeatedly said that the Hugos were broken and in dire need of reform and rescue from the SMOF crowd.

    2) I was having a chat with several friends (all male) when the talk, as its wont, turned risque. We were razzing on each other with naughty jokes. One of my friends declaed that this conversation would not be allowed at Arisia. (For those not in the know Arisia is a Boston con- and a good one). Now this is a person who volunteers at Arisia so he can attend without buying a membership now because of the PC crap, he is considering not bothering in the future. (FWIW, this person is South Asian).

    3) After that, I described what happened when the PC crowd took over Readercon, a literary con in the Boston area. One of the first things they did was to eliminate the Kirk Poland Bad Prose competition, usually the highlight of the con. The numbers have plummeted.

    4) Back when Boston was to host Worldcon, I was a regular at NESFA (New England Science Fiction Association). I suggested to the membership that NESFA get a table at Anime Boston to hand out literature for the Worldcon. Those were the days of inevitable ‘greying of fandom panels.’ But at AB the crowd was big, young and enthusiastic. They were the potential future of fandom.

    At NESFA, there was hemming and hawing and other reactionary noises. I volunteered to man the table. They said ‘No.’ Finally I just grabbed fliers and left them around AB. This was when AB was still small enough to be held at the Park Plaza (though there was a portion held offsite).

    That was 2004, the last time Anime Boston had a smaller attendance than Worldcon. In 2014, AB had over ten times the attendence of Worldcon.

    And Pax East blows them both out of the water.

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  129. Sarah,
    don’t try to start something different, don’t give sci-fi a new name and hope that those leftist, PC totalitarians won’t show up. They will and they will try to take over whatever free-thinking people set up. They are totalitarians, and the core part of the word is total. They will not stop until they control everything. You must do your part to DRIVE THEM OUT. Hound them out, push them out, boycott them, boycott the authors, explain to their fans why they’re stupid and naive. Drive them out, or you’ll just keep on losing.

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    1. Oh, I know that. I can consider giving it a new name, but I know it wouldn’t work, and I have been one of the resolute voices for “no changing to a new award” as anyone here can tell you.

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      1. You’ve already won the Prometheus Award for _Darkship Thieves_ a few years ago from the Libertarian Futurist Society, and the awards ceremony for that is held at Worldcon. Why not work with the LFS to extend that award to other categories? Since this a specifically targeted award, no one would be surprised about having only certain sorts of story get nominated. You don’t have to give up your mission to have the “right kind” of stories win Hugo awards, but having Prometheus awards for short fiction would at least establish a feeder system of authors who have achieved merited recognition, not just approbation from racist morons.

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        1. Because that would split our forces.

          Besides, since they are not admitting the Hugo is the Leftist SF award, that would accept the segregation on their terms.

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          2. You don’t have forces. The work involved would be getting the LFS to agree and then setting up an infrastructure to handle the process. It’s not nothing, but it also isn’t something that lots of groups don’t already do.

            There are already tons of overlapping awards – Hugo, Nebula, Stoker, World Fantasy, Prometheus, Writers of the Future, Locus, and more. I doubt that any writer objects to the frisson of fame that comes from winning any of them, or that they would object to the possibility of being eligible for another one. I don’t think that the multiplicity of awards makes writers feel that they have to split their energies. They write what they want, and if they can win some award for it, so much the better.

            The Hugo awards are general, the Prometheus award is specific. If Prometheus-eligible fiction is the sort of fiction you like, then the sort of fiction you like stands a much greater chance of winning the specific award than the general one, for which it must compete with other tastes. And as I said, it could serve as a way to get mainstream recognition for the “right kind” of writers. The list of past novel winners at lfs.org is chock full of excellent writers – it’s clear that whoever is picking them is not using being a racist, misogynistic hack as the driving influence.

            (BTW, Sarah Hoyt was one of them. I read and enjoyed the Magical British Empire series, and I liked the first Shifters book. I think it might have been in the second one when I got that “uh oh” sensation that the writer’s right-wing politics or other hobby horses were being baldly preached, which generally puts me off an author. It seems to happen a bunch – just off the top of my head, Faye Kellerman, Dan Simmons, James Hogan, John Varley, even Stephen King.)

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            1. Yes, because we tend to be libertarians, we simply MUST love the Prometheus Award winners.

              I hate to break it to you, but most of us dislike message fiction (as opposed to fiction with a message, which IS a different thing), even if we agree with the message. Many of the Prometheus winning books suck. Sarah’s win was an exception, and a couple others, but most of them are about as entertaining as…well, your contributions here, now that I think about it.

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              1. That’s not fair…I find his contributions very entertaining…sometimes utter lack of self-awareness is just damn funny.

                After all, RAH’s greatest gift, in my mind, was teaching me to laugh at the human comedy.

                Liked by 1 person

                2. You might try reading some James Branch Cabell, given that he was a major influence on Heinlein in that area. His work requires some adjustment to the styles of an earlier, more leisurely readership, but anybody who is counted a major influence on Heinlein and Gaiman should be investigated before you decide he isn’t for you.

                  Figures of Earth and Jurgen are each good entry works.

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            3. And as I said, it could serve as a way to get mainstream recognition for the “right kind” of writers.

              And your internal political bias is showing again…right kind of writer not right kind of story.

              Because the actual written work doesn’t matter it matters what kind of person wrote it.

              And despite your “the Hugo awards are general” the rest of your comment is “You guys have the Promethean so it’s separate but equal and thus all good”.

              Liked by 1 person

            4. “You don’t have forces”

              Doesn’t that statement contradict your earlier allegations of slating?

              It seems possible to have forces and not slate, but impossible to slate and not have forces.

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              1. I get the feeling he really isn’t keeping track of what he says. He insults and mocks us and then expects a “kind” bit of “advice” on his part to be happily accepted?

                Liked by 1 person

        2. Even when you’re trying to be decent, you manage to trip over yourself and be an imbecile.

          We’re for fun, enjoyable stories winning. Not ideologically driven stories, for crying out loud.

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            1. Yep, yours is.

              Of course, it’s kind of telling that he seems to think that “fun fiction” equals libertarian fiction. He may need to denounce himself before the alter of the Holy Left.

              Liked by 1 person

              1. “Altar”

                I’ve read and enjoyed a ton of Cory Doctorow. Way back in the day I read lots of L. Neil Smith’s books in _The Probability Broach_ series. I still reread Hogan’s _Voyage from Yesteryear_ every so often. I just love how the villains keep losing people at the periphery to the light side until there’s only a hard core remaining, who then get obliterated by particle-beam weapons. Libertarian fiction can be a ton of fun, because it’s just a variety of the Trickster tale, and in fiction, the author can make things work out right at the end.

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                    2. If the pastor is proud of his sermons, does that mean he has an altar ego?

                      1054 comments!?!! I’m still working my way through all the emails.

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                2. Given that you appear to be one of those types who likes to barge in on a community and lecture them about not meeting your high standards I suspect you haven’t noticed that ‘roun heah, podner, we don’ bother kee-recting typos ‘lessen we can make a joke of it.

                  It tends to mark the corrector as a tight-sphinctered ponce.

                  Autocorrect delenda est.

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              2. It’s more like he thinks us icky others believe “fun fiction” equals libertarian fiction.

                I guess he hasn’t figured out we are not obligated to be what he wants us to be. We’re not the caricatures his tiny overheated little head came up with so he can feel smug.

                Liked by 2 people

        3. I love the implied shift of the “Larry is only doing this to get a Hugo” to Sarah in your post.

          Can you please tell me all the other feeder awards to the Hugo? Is this a formalized system such as International Master/slave competition where the six regions provide feeds and you have to win one of them to be a contestant (and by definition are a contestant)? Is it multi-tier like Southwest Leatherfest Master/slave, at least in some of the more active areas like, “stories about how white people are bad”, “stories about how Christians are bad”, and, this year’s Hugo winner, “stories about how humans are vermin”?

          Liked by 1 person

          1. Well, there’s the Campbell award. To pick a homophobic example, Orson Scott Card won it in 1978 and then won the Hugo in 1983. Cory Doctorow won the Campbell and the Prometheus and had a book nominated for a Hugo. Same for mil-sf writer Naomi Novik.

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            2. Can you name the book Card had published in 1978? Can you also give a plot summary?

              If you can then can you explain to me the homophobia in it?

              Given that accusation is based on his opposition to gay marriage well afterwards I love your inclusion of “homophobic example.”

              I realize you think we’re all homophobes here but I want you to spend one weekend socializing with me in my normal haunts. After that we’ll see who is the homophobe.

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                  1. Also, given the fact that the protagonist of the relevant Card book, A Planet Called Treason has effectively become transgender as an adult (biological transgenderism is the norm for his country while in puberty) is what sets the plot in motion calling it homophobic is a pretty hard sell.

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            3. Card actually leans left politically, though his thoughts on gay marriage were aligned with his church.

              Doctorow isn’t particularly right wing either. Little Brother was written during the Bush Administration, apparently in response to the rise of the Department of Homeland Security and the growing surveillance state during the GOP’s control of the White House.

              As for Naomi Novik, I don’t see where she was ever nominated for a Prometheus.

              Also, keep in mind that the Prometheus awards the ideology in the text, not the ideology of the author. Jo Walton also won in 2008, a year before Doctorow, but she’s about as libertarian as Mao was.

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            4. Just for bench-marking purposes, hyrosen, can you define “homophobic” in a way that does not equate to “full support for the radical homosexual agenda”?

              And what, other than OSC’s opposition of same-sex-marriage, qualifies him as homophobic?

              You seem very careless about what words you sling about. You might want to contemplate whether insisting that all homosexuals must share the same ideology doesn’t constitute its own form of bigotry.

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                1. One of the people around here – it was a while back so I forget names and details – used to work for Gay rights/etc. organizations in the northern central states, or somewhere east of California.

                  “Advisors” came in from the west coast, who made no bones about their goal being to eventually sue anyone and everyone, including the churches, silly.

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                3. Niven’s Law: There is no cause so right that it won’t attract fuggheads.
                  Burkhead’s Corollary: If you don’t think there are fuggheads in your cause, that’s because you are the fugghead.

                  If you don’t think there are radical extremists who have an agenda, I’ve got some bad news for you….

                  Liked by 1 person

                4. That is only half an answer. What is your evidence of Orson Scott Card’s homophobia belief that there is a radical homosexual agenda?

                  Or do you simply think it ingratiating to hurl unfounded accusations against people you know next to nothing about?

                  BTW, I expect such semantic distinctions to be too subtle for you but others might note that the belief there are radical homosexuals who have an agenda does not equate to “belief that there is a radical homosexual agenda.”

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                  1. That I know Card’s only comment on Homosexuality was that he didn’t think gays should be mormons because the culture of mormonism was all-pervading and so was gay social life. Now I think he was wrong and that this was based on his observations in the sixties. BUT it had nothing to do with a radical agenda, in any case.

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                    2. Good grief, Hy — do you not know how to paste a link, or were you deliberately making your referenced article difficult to reach?

                      Perhaps you missed that this had already been noted and dismissed as not evidence of homophobia?

                      Perhaps you missed Card’s own introductory comment:

                      Those who now use this essay to attack me as a “homophobe” deceptively ignore the context and treat the essay as if I had written it yesterday afternoon.

                      Emphasis added.

                      Card has lived in and experienced more cultures than you’ve read of, and this essay is simply noting the inherent conflicts between the LDS and Gay cultures. Or is it your thesis that to simply acknowledge the existence of a “Gay Culture” is rampant homophobia? If so, I got some sad news for you about your home town, which is apparently rampant with homophobic homosexuals.

                      It should be needless to note, but having seen sufficient of Hy’s comments I will make explicit what anyone not an idiot would have implicitly grasped: recognition of a “Gay Culture” is not, repeat, not to be confused with an assertion that all gays must belong to and participate in that subculture (merely the “authentic” ones, heh) any more than recognizing existence of, for example, a Jewish culture requires one to believe all Jews share that culture.

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                    3. See this. From 1990.

                      FYI, the software will let you get away with one link per post. Just like this one.
                      As to the content of the article you wish to cite:

                      This essay was published in February of 1990, in the following context: The Supreme Court had declared in 1986 (Bowers v. Hardwick) that a Georgia law prohibiting sodomy even in the privacy of one’s own home was constitutional. I was also writing this essay to a conservative Mormon audience that at the time would have felt no interest in decriminalizing homosexual acts. In that context, my call to “leave the laws on the books” was simply recognizing the law at that time, and my call to not enforce it except in flagrant cases was actually, within that context, a liberal and tolerant view — for which I was roundly criticized in conservative Mormon circles as being “pro-gay.” Those who now use this essay to attack me as a “homophobe” deceptively ignore the context and treat the essay as if I had written it yesterday afternoon. That is absurd — now that the law has changed (the decision was overturned in 2003) I have no interest in criminalizing homosexual acts and would never call for such a thing, any more than I wanted such laws enforced back when they were still on the books. But I stand by the main points of this essay, which concerns matters internal to the Mormon Church.

                      Well, well, well. We have a statement that Card advocated not prosecuting sodomy unless it was “flagrant” — by which I assume he means something like the joke where the couple was afraid they’d be thrown out of the Church like they were thrown out of Sears.

                      As to the essay itself, Card basically says:

                      Homosexuals are just as worthy as heterosexuals.

                      Mormonism is not compatible with homosexuality. (I think he means the practice as opposed to the orientation.)

                      People are subject to all kinds of natural urges that are not compatible with Mormon practice, and are expected to overcome those; homosexuality is no different.

                      This absolutely does not justify mistreatment of gays.

                      But do read the rest of it.

                      Now, I don’t know exactly what points Hyrosen disagrees with. Maybe he’s a scholar of Mormonism, and takes issue with Card’s position on the compatibility of Morminism and homosexuality.

                      Or maybe he disagrees with some of the other points.

                      Liked by 1 person

                    5. RES asked “What is your evidence of Orson Scott Card’s belief that there is a radical homosexual agenda?”

                      From the referenced article: “I suppose I can take some comfort from the fact that over the years I have been savaged both for showing too much sympathy for the “abomination” of homosexuality and for showing too much “homophobic” opposition to the political agenda of the radical homosexual community.”

                      I think “radical homosexual community” is sufficiently close to “radical homosexual agenda”, no?

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                    7. I’m not sure about others, Sarah, but I am using this opportunity to fine tune some new approaches I’ve been developing.

                      I admit I am approaching the point of replying :
                      We’re sorry, your submission does not meet any of our current needs. We thank you for your interest and hope that you will improve your craftsmanship and submit another comment once you know what you’re trying to talk about.

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                    8. “I think ‘radical homosexual community’ is sufficiently close to ‘radical homosexual agenda’, no?”

                      I am not sure what you believe you are doing, but it is not thinking. The two are quite distinctly different.

                      Using Google we can find::
                      Community – “a group of people … having a particular characteristic in common,” “a unified body of individuals”

                      Agenda – (Latin, plural of agendum that which is to be done) “a plan or list of matters to be acted upon” and “an underlying often ideological plan or program”

                      Please don’t tell us the distinction is too subtle for you — we have people here who make their livings from much finer nuances.

                      Liked by 1 person

                    9. So he references a subset and you take that as attributing their beliefs to the entire population?

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                  2. I think we’re supposed to sputter and walk into the kafkatrap where every answer we provide “proves” our guilt.

                    I’d rather just say he’s full of crap and lying.

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                5. So, if someone hates gays, but doesn’t believe they are a single monolithic block of people with identical goals and means of achieving them, then they’re not homophoblic?

                  If someone despises the gays with a radical agenda, but does not despise the gays with a conservative or libertarian agenda, are they homophobic? What if they’re gay themselves?

                  That word does not mean what you think it means.

                  By the way, what word would you use for a hairdresser going off the rails at a client because “There is no such thing as bi! Stop stealing the boys from me, and date your own kind!”? Hmmm? Did you honestly think our “community” is all lovey-dovey and hand-holding and kumbaya, and votes as a monolithic block in everything? Honey, only 13 year old girls have a patch on our drama.

                  Liked by 1 person

                6. So homosexuals who complain about the radicals in the gay rights movement are, in your mind, homophobic?

                  Honest question, do you actually know any gay people? If so, how well? How often do you associate with them?

                  No, I’m not getting ready to accuse you of homophobia I’m getting ready to accuse you of being ignorant of gay people and their political opinions with regards to the gay rights movement. I can introduce you to people across the political spectrum including two broad groups opposed to gay marriage for very different reasons: it is pushing the straights to a backlash for no gain and it is a way for the straights to domesticate homosexuals and steal much of what makes being gay fun.

                  I’ve watched gay people fight over who makes gays look worse, leathermen or NAMBLA, and been distressed when, for Boston Pride, the former lost the fight.

                  You people are rutting amazing in championing people you CLEARLY. DON’T. KNOW. A. THING. ABOUT.

                  Liked by 1 person

                  1. And before you ask, no I don’t consider myself an expert on gay people or their agendas but what I do know is this, just like every group supposedly championed by SJWs where I know more than one or two people in the group they are broadly varied from what the SJWs claim are their interests and agendas. Some parts overlap with what the SJWs claim but much doesn’t. It is rare I find two gays, women, lesbians, femsubs, blacks, Asians, or teachers (to select a few such groups) that are in complete agreement even on issues specific to their group.

                    That’s because they’re human beings and not this perfect little pets for jackasses like you to champion because they have no agency or mind of their own.

                    As for radical agendas all groups have people with radical agendas. I can introduce you to people with radical agendas about bowling FFS.

                    Take your strawman before I piss on it before burning it in your front yard just to make it stink up your place more.

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                  2. In some ways this will sound like the oft-mocked “I have friends who..”

                    My brother is gay.

                    A housemate I had for well over a year was gay. Even hung out at gay bars with him sometimes. He played at my wedding.

                    And I don’t care.

                    But I look around and there are a lot of activists pushing, pushing, and pushing, who don’t seem to consider what impact they are having, and who they hurt. Who’s livelihoods they destroy.

                    So is it a monolithic “Con” spiracy? Some parts of it, likely. But hardly a central driving force controlling all others, and hardly representative of everyone ( Aside from Log Cabin Republicans, there’s also a frequent commenter at Vox’s : “Big Gay Steve”)

                    Mostly, what ESR would call a “pro” spiracy

                    But some of them are very determined to wipe out not just actual intolerance, but any disapproval at all, for any reason, even of individuals for individual failings

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                  3. “You people are rutting amazing in championing people you CLEARLY. DON’T. KNOW. A. THING. ABOUT.”

                    You have fallen prey to a common misconception, here. Such people as hyrosen care about the [gay] people in their heads. Any resemblance between those and actual [gay] people is purely coincidental. Any [gay] people failing to conform to the hyrosen stereotype are demonstrably inauthentic and may be disregarded.

                    It should be acknowledged that hyrosen, living in Manhattan, is ordinarily sheltered from such harsh realities of life (this is especially so if he gets his news from the nation’s most expensive fish-wrapper, the NY Times) and thus is prone to a higher than normal level of provincialism. This condition is treatable, most commonly with high doses of John Ringo, but there are often severe allergic reactions. medication with Kratman is generally considered too strong and may cause heads to explode. Some patients respond well to low doses of Hoyt but the therapy is often ineffective due to an absence of neural receptors for the therapy.

                    N.B., the reason for presenting gay as [gay] should be obvious: it facilitates substitution of any other category of people in the above statement. This is possible because it accommodates the proclivity of SJWs to assemble people into arbitrary groups based on superficial characteristics rather than philosophical, cultural or meaningful common traits.

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                    1. Addendum: Baen Therapy can be effective, but only when administered by trained therapists. Please do not try this at home, especially as sufferers have been known to have extreme adverse reactions, especially to medicinal doses of Correia, Williamson, Drake or Flint (although in certain cases Flint has proven effective in placebo therapies.)

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                  4. From Card’s article: “Rather they are seeking to enforce acceptance of their sexual liaisons as having equal validity with heterosexual marriages, to the point of having legal rights as spouses, the right to adopt children, and the right to insist that their behavior be taught to children in public schools as a completely acceptable “alternative lifestyle.” It does not take a homophobe to recognize how destructive such a program will be in a society already reeling from the terrible consequences of “no-fault” divorce, social tolerance of extramarital promiscuity, and failing to protect our adolescents until they can channel their sexual passions in a socially productive way.”

                    Over the years I have worked with at least a half-dozen openly gay men and one transgender person. One of those coworkers was able to marry his husband only shortly before he passed away from a brain tumor. One of my high-school classmates (from an Orthodox Jewish high-school) is an openly gay man who was recently able to marry his now-husband. So, Card is a homophobe. And yes, it absolutely takes a homophobe to recognize that people getting married is destructive to society. And that’s why people who see homophobe Wright nominated for five Hugo awards in one year think that the people who organized the nominations are homophobes too.

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                    1. Amazing — you managed to read a paragraph of Card’s argument and completely misunderstand it.

                      I suspect your problem is that you have defined “homophobe” improperly, and use it without regard to the true meaning of the word. It is entirely possible to have no objection to actions of people as individuals (e.g., sexual promiscuity, drug use) while still seeing that policies encouraging those actions create problems destructive of the larger society as a whole.

                      Take, to use one of Card’s examples, No-Fault Divorce. While this is certainly seen by the divorcing couple as personally beneficial, the larger societal effects of less stable families, greater number of children being raised in single-parent households with attendant higher rates of household poverty, alienation of fathers from their children and many other factors.

                      You have confused policy judgments with personal ones, a common mistake generally encouraged by those seeking to profit from societal problems.

                      You have also erred in generalizing from an insignificant sample, reaching a statistically unsupported conclusion.

                      Like

                    2. The original meaning of “homophobia” appears to be “fear of being considered homosexual”.

                      It was only later that gay activists started the usage of “fear of homosexuals” which in turn has lead to “homophobia” meaning whatever the speaker “dislikes” about another person’s position.

                      The PC meaning ranges from “killing gays because they’re gays” to the belief that “homosexual sex is sinful” to “just being uncomfortable” around gays.

                      Thus “homophobia” is IMO a worthless word as it (like racism) is just saying “I hate you for holding beliefs different than I want you to hold”.

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                    3. Excellent summary. I had been contemplating that “homophobia” has joined “Fascist” as a term devoid of any meaning related to its political/economic origins and now merely means “Somebody I don’t like!”

                      I suppose we should be thankful they’ve expanded their vocabularies to include multiple terms meaning poopy-head.

                      Like

                    4. So the gay bloggers at gaypatriot, who believe same-sex marriage will harm society, are homophobes?

                      Like

                    5. So we get to Scalzi’s final point:
                      “It was about small group of people acting like jerks, and another, rather larger group, expressing their displeasure at them acting so.

                      Mind you, I don’t expect the core Puppies to recognize this; indeed I expect them to say they haven’t done a single thing that has been other than forthright and noble and correct. Well, and here’s the thing about that: acting like an jerk and then asserting that no, it’s everyone else that’s been acting like a jerk, is the biggest jerk maneuver of all.”

                      That’s why you play the game. See you next year.

                      Like

                    7. You are being willfully ignorant.

                      Conservatives have been treated like the red-headed stepchild for a long time (watching the irony of “look, conservatives CAN win hugos”, when only 2 out of 6+ examples were post 1999, and the others in the 80’s or earlier).

                      We’ve watched stalwart liberals suddenly be subjected to two minutes (and more) of hate because what is politically correct and “tolerant” has changed.

                      We’ve corralled more people with different tastes to nominate books they’ve liked, and provided Locus-style “suggested” lists, which the math shows were NOT voted on in a block vote, and been accused of block voting, ballot stuffing, etc.

                      We’ve seen in previous years the utter meltdown when even a few “right wing” works get on the ballot, and the vitriol Larry was subjected to – to the point concerned friends of his wife were calling to see if she was OK living with such an abusive and angry person.

                      We’ve seen lies and libel this year, again, trivially falsifiable.

                      We’ve seen people change their cheers for their favorite authors to “I can’t vote for that if the puppies nominated it” and “he must really be a conservative then”.

                      We’ve seen people outright state they wouldn’t even try to read the works.

                      It may be a matter of taste in some circles, but having cut my teeth on the classics, and literary authors like Vance and Wolfe, as well as suffered through postmodern literary crap with nice words like Gabriel Garcia Marquez, a lot of the Puppy stuff was quite good, with solid prose, and interesting ideas, with interesting questions of morality, and what does it mean to be human?

                      Hot Equations was especially worthy, and intensely relevant to SF – yet people were mocking it as pointless…. people who don’t even WISH to understand orbital mechanics and thermodynamics and how they influence technology and space travel – but claim to love SF?

                      I watched a woman I’ve met, and respect highly, thrown under the bus to make a point about fighting the supposed misogynists who nominated her. Some of those “misogynists” and “men” were genetically female, and identify as such. Some of these whites are genetically no such thing. And all of them – even Vox – nominated a slate including men, women, and people of different sexualities and outlooks.

                      Didn’t Anita Sarkeesidwhatever say that we should believe women? Why are the you silencing, discounting, and disbelieving these women?

                      We’ve seen prominent PKickers outright state that politics is a measure of quality, period, and having the wrong politics was thus a valid reason to vote against something.

                      Odd, isn’t that what the puppies have claimed from day one? And been told we’re delusional?

                      I’ve seen over and over again behavior akin to gaslighting and reality-bending, things I’m all too familiar with in my life from having dealt with narcissists and borderlines.

                      I insist on believing my lying eyes.

                      Liked by 1 person

                    10. acting like jerks

                      Obeying the rules, to the letter, and recommending books, editors, et al that we like! Horrors!

                      Telling folk “here are some books editors and so forth that we like. They are eligible for the Hugo. If you like them too you can vote for them.” Horrors!

                      Buying memberships at Worldcon and actually nominating, and then voting for, books, editors, they liked. Horrors!

                      When accused of orchestrating it all because “Larry Correia just wants a Hugo” Larry turns down his nomination. Horrors!

                      Doing nothing that folk like the Nielsen Haydens, Glier, and Scalzi have been doing for years only doing it out in the open rather than behind closed doors. Well, I supposed exposing their own practices to the light of day can be considered a “jerk” move in the same manner that criminals complain about the police.

                      It’s not the Puppies that lied unremittingly about their opposition. That would be the CHORFs.
                      It’s not the Puppies that hounded people into turning down their nominations. That would be the CHORFs.
                      It’s not the Puppies that hurled invective at an inoffensive woman attempting to extend an olive branch. That would be the CHORF in cheif–Patrick Nielsen Hayden.

                      The rest of the “jerk move” claims are pure fabrication by folk like, well, Scalzi.

                      asserting that no, it’s everyone else that’s been acting like a jerk, is the biggest jerk maneuver of all.

                      Clumsy attempted kafkatrap, noted, laughed at, and mocked.

                      You’re actually not very good at this. You need to learn to hide your attempted kafkatraps better.

                      Like

                    11. “It was about small group of people acting like jerks …”

                      Disagreeing with your taste is acting like a jerk? Everything has to be defined in reference to you? Kind of arrogant, aren’t you?

                      Everything the SPs and RPs did was open and aboveboard, it was the PKs who attacked and slandered the Puppies. Scalzi had been flogging his own work for Hugo attention for a decade without any complaints, so it seems a mite self-serving for him to toss a hissy over other fans advocating for Hugo attention for work they liked.

                      That you are unable to make fundamental distinctions has already been amply demonstrated. That you insist that a slate was run when all evidence contradicts that suggests PKs are the jerks, privileged snobs who project your own flaws onto any who don’t kowtow to your prejudices.

                      Like

                    13. I’ll also note that this isn’t just about puppies. That “two minutes of hate?” – the most prominent recent example was the chainmail bikini kerfluffle.

                      I’ve also seen many of the prominent puppy kickers make snide remarks about many of the outstanding senior authors of our time who built the field, including referring to lists of “rabid weasels of SF” that it would be just GREAT if they’d hurry up and die already.

                      I’d seen the same people express oh-so-much concern about inclusivity and not hurting people’s feelings.

                      Liked by 1 person

                    14. You’re actually not very good at this. You need to learn to hide your attempted kafkatraps better.

                      Wonder if he even knows what a Kafkatrap is… and how utterly intellectually dishonest and worthless of further argument that makes him.

                      Liked by 1 person

                    15. Over the past two years, I’ve been held hostage at gunpoint with a busload of Angelenos outside Universal Studios while a tranny with a gun declared he/she/they was/were Diana Ross and demanded his/her/their husband Barry Gordy be brought to her. I always worked with a 61 year old tranny who was going full op because “it would help his/her/their non-existent pop singing career.” Does thinking that was unreasonable make me a gender bigot?

                      Like

                7. @Hyrosen .. so you believe homosexuals are a lesser sort of folk – all homogeneous, no individuals among ’em – who can’t have radicals with an agenda?
                  Or were you just being flip without thinking about your answer?

                  Liked by 1 person

                    4. @tlknighton
                      Don’t worry, I’ll have it figured out by the time we reach the Frontier.
                      *beeping*
                      Oh look, the Frontier.

                      Like

                1. Can’t be “Real” Gays if they aren’t Shouting about their gay-ness. [Evil Grin]

                  Of course, “Real” Gay won’t even lurk on this gay-hating site. [Big Evil Grin]

                  Oh, do I need to say that the above is Sarcasm? [Smile]

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                2. Yeah, but my presence alone negates that, and more.

                  In support of that, I suppose the gentlemen can accurately describe my views, in detail, with citations.

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                4. What??!? Gays??? Here? Well, I have to leave, then. It might rub off, you know.

                  Ow, apparently that level of sarcasm should not be attempted by amateurs. I think I pulled something.

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                  1. And now they’ll quote the first part on their blogs, Wayne.
                    You know, I still haven’t told one of my three closest friends if I’m going to fry him in canola or peanut oil Clearly I’m homophobic.

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                    1. Crap. Never thought of that. Ah, well, if they use that to criticize YOU, then I’ll pull out my secret weapon. Otherwise, screw ’em.

                      Liked by 1 person

        4. Who are these “racist morons” of whom you speak?

          The only morons I’ve seen of late have been those coming in here to kick Puppies, demonstrating a marked inability to distinguish between their arbitrary, subjective biases and objective fact.

          Like

          1. We do have a number of trolls come by that seem to be white supremacist, and are not banned as a matter of course. Glyer, hyrosen, similar sorts, maybe speaks with plants.

            Like

  130. Pingback: Chicago Boyz » Blog Archive » On the Outside of the Hugos, Looking In

  131. The BIG picture however is this: the powers that be want people to stop reading. The social justice warriors (SJW) are their shock troops. The low information voters (LIV) are their army. The Hugo awards within the science fiction genre was a battle that took place within a targeted battleground. The goal is to promote books that are poorly written, uninteresting, and boring. The SJWs however don’t care about those 3 aspects — they just want to promote their agenda.

    Goal of the powers that be — an ignorant public that does not read and has the attention span of a gnat. Their current war has been going on for the past 100 years.

    So far they are succeeding.

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      3. What is the basis of this belief?

        I suspect Isaac Newton, Louis Pasteur, Max Born, Werner Heisenberg, and Albert Einstein might not share your view.

        Not to mention René Descartes.

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    2. Love it – military humor is sly and dry and basically puts a large pinch of pepper down the shirtfronts of the establishment …
      Reminds me vividly of an application put about for a group of deviants at my first duty station, which included a request for the particulars of how one had fallen off a barstool at the NCO club while cold stone sober, and asked for your anti-social insecurity yes …
      Nothing like beating a joke into the ground …

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    3. Er… under Disclosures, a clarification please: does the phrase “wall to wall counseling” have anything in common with “walling a book”?

      Like

  134. Torgersen and his consultants picked some women and minority authors for their slates. So what? The Hugos are supposed to be awarded for specific works of excellence. The “balanced” slate was an attack on the stated Hugo selection criteria and an attempt to shame supposedly SJW voters into staying quiet about it. Gosh that didn’t work. Big surprise.

    But forget gender and ethnicity. What about “real diversity” as a goal. The puppies didn’t try to put one or two or even three candidates on the ballot in any category, they tried to pack all 5 slots for every category except one (fan artist which was apparently beneath their notice). Vox Day used the puppy technique to even more effect than Torgersen and put himself and his own press’s work on the ballot dominating even more categories. John Wright ended up on the ballot four times occupying three slots in one category.

    Diversity of whatever type was clearly not the result.

    Did it enhance excellence by providing good choices?

    When I reviewed the nominated works I attempted to look at all of the individual works without reference to puppyhood. Objectivity is always difficult in an atmosphere filled with insults and bad behavior, but that problem is on the puppies not the rest of the voters. In some categories my decision was that none of the presented works deserved an award. As it happens the puppy dominated categories had a high correlation with that level of mediocrity. Many voters, however, indeed simply voted anti-puppy.

    Both of those problems may have been more Vox Day than Brad Torgersen. But it really does not matter. Excellence is not served by making choices based on political correctness of whatever stripe, and persuading people while insulting them hardly ever works.

    I can think of few better examples of whiny “poor me” PC based special appeal tactics than that of the puppies themselves. And now, frustrated, you plan to do it again. Very CHORF indeed.

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    1. I’m sorry. It’s late, and I’m tired. FUCK OFF WITH BRAD PICKED SOME THIS OR THAT. They were fan-suggested. BRAD took over for ME because I was ill and last I checked I’m a woman.
      You unthinking morcona. Sua merda. Va a puta que a pariu with your often disproved lies and your insanity. Va meter of Hugo na cona, seu filho duma grandessissima puta.

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        2. I shouldn’t lose my temper like this, not out of respect for the filho duma grandessissima puta, but for you my readers, who don’t deserve to read that. So, sorry to you guys. Him? He can go foder-se de alto.

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            1. *sigh* Need to sleep since I forgot to give the required warning:

              “FIRE IN THE HOLE!!!!”

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            2. My only problem with what Sarah said is that I don’t know the meanings of those words.

              I’ve gotten in trouble for repeating words that I didn’t know the meaning of. [Wink]

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          3. No need to apologize to us, Sarah; we’re too busy cheering you and taking notes to be offended. 8-)

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        1. True, but you have to admit that this one’s effort was worthy of praise. Never before had such a long comment missed on pretty much every single point.

          I mean, that takes skill.

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    3. “Torgersen and his consultants picked some women and minority authors for their slates. So what? The Hugos are supposed to be awarded for specific works of excellence. The “balanced” slate was an attack on the stated Hugo selection criteria and an attempt to shame supposedly SJW voters into staying quiet about it.”

      Assumption of facts not in evidence makes an argument very weak. Assumptions of facts contrary to evidence makes the arguer appear very weak in the head.

      This twaddle isn’t worth the bother of refuting; those here know the claims to be invalid, those who make such claims are demonstrated impervious to logic and evidence.

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    4. “Torgersen and his consultants”. What consultants? Oh, you mean the fans who responded to his request for suggestions for works to be nominated? And where did Brad at any point say to only nominate people of a certain political ilk? I don’t remember that and the nominees from the Sad Puppies sure didn’t reflect it. Perhaps before making assertions, you ought to check your facts.

      As for the “whiny poor me” tactics your refer to? What planet are you on? I will take the Puppies wanting readable and fun works over something that has no plot but is heavy on message any day of the week. But then, I guess it’s okay for the other side to accuse Brad and the rest of us of being homophobic, misogynistic, neo-nazi and more. It is all right to paint every nominee, Sad or Rabid, with the same brush and go into the voting process already thinking they aren’t worthy of even considered for the Hugo. I guess it is all right for one of the anti-Puppy authors to crow oh so gleefully the day after the Hugos that we, and those who support us, aren’t real fans.

      Perhaps it might be time to take that tree out of your eye and consider the actions of the side you so happily support before condemning the Puppies.

      Like

    5. Hoooooooeeeyyyyy!
      Boy did this idiot concern troll ever step on his own crank. As small as it probably is, that takes talent…..

      Liked by 1 person

    6. they tried to pack all 5 slots for every category except one

      Demonstrably incorrect fact render your whole argument moot.

      1. More categories than not had less than 5 recommended works.
      2. The reactions were the same to SP2 which generally had no more than 3 recommended works per category.

      Given the past few months I refuse to assume ignorance on your part. Unless evidence is supplied I consider your incorrect facts intentional lies born out of malice.

      Good day, Sir.

      Liked by 1 person

    7. Wow, did you type that up yourself or did the hive mind download a file you could cut and paste into the comments section?

      Like

    8. Objective reality disagrees with you.

      I await your explanation how 3 and 4, or even 1 in the case of graphic novels, equals five.

      I await how you would call me one of Brad’s consultants, as I got three of my suggestions on the recommended list, when I have never met him and his only awareness of me, if any, is that I occasionally deface his blog to beat up on Clamps, a known cyberstalker.

      But I won’t hold my breath.

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    9. “The puppies didn’t try to put one or two or even three candidates on the ballot in any category, they tried to pack all 5 slots for every category except one ”

      They put up one or two or three candidates for Sad Puppies 2. Whereupon people publicly wished that the Puppies would die in a fire.

      No, your ilk minds any recommendations at all. Not “packing”.

      Like

  135. So, what next? I have a few thoughts

    1) Repeat Sad Puppies 3, but call it something other than Sad Puppies. It needs a more dignified name now that people are taking it seriously.

    2) Don’t call your opponents Social Justice Warrior (gives them too much credit) or any other “cute” acronym. Call them for what they are, bigots. Bigots are persons who are intolerant toward those holding different opinions. Call out their bigotry often and put it on display at every opportunity.

    3) Continue to increase participation in the Hugo Award process. Nothing counters bigotry more than sheer force of numbers.

    4) Be prepared for the bigots to throw another “No Award” temper tantrum. It’s fine if the bigots make the Hugos irrelevant in order to “protect” them, but don’t do anything yourself that would contribute.

    5) Get involved in the organization and planning of your local sci-fi conventions. I honestly don’t that people are less interested in sci-fi, but the real problem is that they don’t feel they are welcomed at most sci-fi conventions. Back in the early days, sci-fi fandom grew because it welcomed all types of different people, now has become an exclusionary an insular group. It’s high time that is changed. There is a reason that anime conventions, gaming conventions, and media conventions are growing at such large rates. That is because people truly feel welcomed there, even if they are “casual fans”.

    6) Be prepared to set up an alternative to the WSFS and its WorldCon. It may be that the WSFS is too far gone off the rails to be salvageable. But at this time, there is not feasible alternative. This really depends on how successful you are at points 4 and 5.

    7) Never give in to the bigots or their bigotry. This is exactly how they win. They will continue to wear you down until you are no longer willing to fight anymore.

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      1. The terms you use to describe your recommendations and your opponents are very important. Instead of calling it “Sad Puppies 4”, instead, call it something like the Open Ballot, People’s Ballot, or similar. The bigots on the other side have thoroughly associated anything with “Puppies” in the name as intolerant and non-inclusive (even if the SP recommendations was anything but).

        Calling a bigot a bigot is also very important. No mater what “cute” name you use to call your opposition: Social Justice Warrior, TrueFan, RightFan, RealFan, etc., the bigots will simply adopt the terms and turn it into a positive. But there is no way you can turn “bigot” into a positive term, and it accurate describes them for what they are, unwilling to tolerant those whom they disagree with.

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        1. “Calling a bigot a bigot is also very important. No mater what “cute” name you use to call your opposition: Social Justice Warrior, TrueFan, RightFan, RealFan, etc., the bigots will simply adopt the terms and turn it into a positive.”

          Which is why so many of them bitched about the term. I mean, it started out as a positive, we took it and mocked them with it, and now it’s an insult that they despise. In fact, ALL of those are things we took FROM THEM and made into the insults they currently are.

          Before you lecture us on tactics, you may want to understand the history a bit better.

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            1. Comes in, expresses some kind of half-hearted support with goals, then expresses “concern” about how we’re going about it, with advice that basically waters things down.

              I’m going with option E, all of the above.

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            2. These days when it comes to this topic I don’t give benefit of the doubt so, barring evidence otherwise, concern troll.

              However, as the designated false flag leftist of Huns (*evil grin*) I will say he is not a false flagger…he can’t hold his cover identity well enough :)

              Liked by 1 person

            3. I’m going with clueless. He didn’t admonish us to soften our tone or anything, so he’s probably someone who is really on our side.

              He just doesn’t understand a few things.

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        2. Farix, anything we call it, they’ll attack us for and then say we were too scared to call it Sad Puppies. Look how quickly the tea party — a truly grass roots movement — was demonized. They’re the SAME people. As for SJW, nah, I intend to show they were glorying in the name till we started using it.
          Sorry for the Ahahahaha. We’ve covered this before.

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        3. 1) Changing the Name IMO won’t do a bit of good as the “PK” will point to the name change as meaning that we’re ashamed of the Sad Puppy name so any possible good in the name change would be outweighed by giving them a “victory” (in their mind).

          2) Referring to the Puppy Kickers as “Bigots” may be counter productive as our victory depends on getting other SF/F fans to join the battle and they might be turned off by our “name-calling”. Showing that the Puppy Kickers are Bigots is IMO a valid tactic but just calling them bigots might back-fire. Especially when it appears that their tactic of name-calling appears to be starting to back-fire on them.

          Note, I started calling the Puppy-Kickers “Haters” but when/if I get involved in Sad Puppy 4, I will be stopping that as it won’t be a valid tactic to win additional support.

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        4. Maybe something like “Semper Pluribus Hugo” or “SP Hugo” to keep the initials from Sad Puppy?
          Also emphasizes that it is intended to make the Hugos a popular fan award rather than one reserved to a particular clique.
          (That it might infringe on the EPH label is gravy.)

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    2. Re: #2: You are aware that although they’ve taken to denying it since just before GG the kinds of people in question coined the term Social Justice Warrior and the abbreviation SJW themselves for themselves? We are merely respecting their wishes.

      Personally, I hate the acronym as I have to clarify when discussing the event I run which has also long been know as SJW.

      Re: #5: Why…having seen what a couple of Cons attract I’m not sure I want to associate with them. That said, I also run my own event (see above) which is admitted a retreat and not a con. I’m also head of staffing for Andocon (andocon.org) the local gaming con.

      Re: 6: I see more people wanting to do that but it’ll take some more convincing for most. I suspect it won’t happen until WorldCon grays itself out of viability. Even with SP/RP supporting membership cash attendance can fall low enough to make it not worthwhile. I think John Wright is correct that a couple of more rounds of ‘No Awards’ would hasten this process by killing the joy of the ceremony for the people who go.

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      1. I had been under the impression that SJW stood for Snobbish Jerk Wad? How is “bigot” a more effective epithet?

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        1. *sigh*.

          I’m not suggesting changing it. I just wish it didn’t abbreviate the way it does because it causes me grief on confusion in many places.

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      1. Part of the proof he’s a concern troll…after all, only TrueFen help run cons and are part of Fandom (as GRRM puts it) and given Sad Puppies are, by definition, not TrueFen they cannot be helping at cons.

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        1. And, frankly, we’ve been dealing with people who we’ve never heard of, who have been no part of this battle so far as we know, showing up to tell us how to run things.

          This one might be friendly fire, but like Sarah said, Farix didn’t exactly read up on the situation before his comment. I’m not partial to taking advice from people who don’t even understand this particular field of battle.

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        2. Strange that I didn’t see the comments until I registered there. Of course, they might have been there but I missed them. [Embarrassed Smile]

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        3. Yes, clearly so. And I don’t think any of the replies were worth getting upset about – I was surprised at how mild it all was when I came back here and read what he was referring to.

          What I found interesting was that he concern-trolled this post, and then went to complain about the predictable results on another site – you know, instead of responding here as part of the conversation.

          Liked by 1 person

            1. Well, I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, offered an explanation for possible blue on blue, and offered an olive branch and suggestion he return with a little more decorum. Haven’t been back over these since so don’t know what effect it might have had.

              Like

      2. It occurs to me that the people who organized the “No Award” slate could be referred to as “Manger Puppies” in a nod to Aesop.

        Like

  136. Pingback: For Your Reading Pleasure | John C. Wright's Journal

  137. sarah… your optimism is endearing… but alas… it is far past time for you and brad to face reality.

    You’re pining over a stinking rotten zombie corpse. Yes.. it may be the shambling remains of someone you once loved… but its still a stinging rotting zombie corpse… and it has to put down.

    Now either shoot it yourself… or get out of the way.

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      1. Sarah, part of building anything is clearing the site of the rubble of what was there before, including any vermin, snakes, etc. that infest it. Only then can building begin. And “Creative Destruction” is an essential component of capitalism.

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            1. We don’t need to demolish the structure of the Hugos. Sure, there’s some dry rot under the eaves, crumbling mortar in the foundations, vermin in the basement and bats in the belfry but there’s still a chance the structure can be overhauled. The joists are still strong, there’s some lovely wood-work in the wainscoting, and you just can’t get plaster frescoes like that any more.

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          2. “No. We don’t destroy.”

            I get that, I really do. I didn’t go into this whole thing with the intention of watching the bigoted, shriveled-amygdala SJWs burn down the awards so no one else could have them, but that’s what’s happened. I don’t see any other way that it’s going to go in the future, either. If I’m wrong, please tell me how.

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              1. As much as I get annoyed when people treat others as something other than adults with agency from foreign policy wonks who talk in terms of “if we do X then will do Y” as though other countries were automatons (which is where this first started to really irk me) to saying “all X support Y”.

                However, I’m starting to wonder if the average SJW has agency or if they are so conditioned that if we hand them the torch they can’t help but burn things down. The screams of “raciss, sexiss, homophobe” are almost Pavlovian.

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    2. If you want to burn it to the ground you’re welcome to try, but what will you burn next? It’s hard to turn from destruction to building. It’s hard to fight for something worthwhile. It’s hard to go “We may loose but the fight is worth it.” It’s EASY to go “shoot it, it’s dying anyway.” It’s EASY to go “A Pox on you and all your house” and walk away. It’s EASY to let the village burn and go somewhere else. It’s Hard to fight off the barbarians and watch them burn 90% or 100% of the village to the ground and then come back with your hammer and your saw, or make a new hammer and saw and get to the slow work of rebuilding.

      In short, it’s easy to destroy, but once you start destroying it’s very hard to STOP. And when you’re standing in nothing but a pile of smoldering ash what are you going to do then? Who are you going to turn to? What are you going to do when the disease you shot the comes in to where ever you went when you left the ashpile? Don’t say “Oh, we’ll be ready”. No you won’t. The first generation of barbarians is ALWAYS sneaky. It’s only when they are entrenched that they get stupid. So, you’ll just have a new ashpile because you don’t know how to fight back to BUILD something rather than destroy it. I’d rather side with those who build than those that destroy any day. I’d rather fight the fire then rebuild the village even if all of it burned.

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        1. Once a month??!!! Lucky dog! It is a rare day when I don’t have Firefox crash a half dozen times and Chrome lock up a score or more.

          I don’t think I am running that many add-ons! NoScript, ABP and that’s about it.

          Liked by 1 person

          2. I’ll have to remember what you said about those browsers the next time somebody tells me that I shouldn’t be using IE11. [Wink]

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          3. I hate Firefox with the intensity of a thousand suns, and not just because of the bigots running Mozilla. Unfortunately the latest update of Opera keeps hanging my windows manager when I try to open a new tab, so I’m stuck with it until an update comes out.

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  139. Imaginary slate?

    The rational and polite responses to my (now deleted) post have shamed me into reviewing the data and I must issue a mea culpa.

    Torgersen’s suggestions (I will use that term although he himself called it a slate) were for 60 items in 16 categories across 80 slots. This included 5 nominations each in 6 categories. Day’s were for 68 items across the same range. Day provided 5 nominations each in 9 categories.

    https://bradrtorgersen.wordpress.com/2015/02/01/sad-puppies-3-the-2015-hugo-slate/

    http://voxday.blogspot.com/2015/02/rabid-puppies-2015.html?m=1

    The result was four categories with some 8 slots uncontested by puppy suggested candidates.

    So, clearly there was no chance of a puppy candidate taking all 5 slots in every category they went for.

    Just 72 of 80.

    Altogether the combined puppy suggestions were successful in taking 61 of the 72 slots targeted. Torgersen’s list got 51 slots and Day’s 58. Several more would have been made it but the nominated work had been published and/or broadcast in 2013 rather than the eligible year of 2014. Day was more successful despite having been more sloppy.

    Several authors declined the honor of nomination in such circumstances which resulted in another reduction in that count. None of the editors so declined, but that may well have been a business decision and one not left up to them.

    Oddly enough having seen the nomination process and having been subject to numerous insults and scurrilous attacks (similar to what I read here), the majority of Worldcon members declined to drink from the punch bowl that had been so thoughtfully prepared for them.

    Some deserving candidates undoubtedly lost awards as a result of being caught in the crossfire. Would those awards, if received, have been deserving of an asterisk? It certainly changed the field they were competing against. Most of the voters seem to have concluded that No Award was better than one with an asterisk. It is their award, so it is their choice.

    The puppies now seem to be madder than before.

    Sad indeed.

    Feel free to CHORF some more.

    Cause, believe me, I think you deserve an award of some sort.

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    1. Are you insane? You’ve called us Racist, Sexist and Homophobes, and burned your own awards to keep us out. AND you’re amazed we’re angrier. Good Lord. And the “establishment” was subjected to insults? Yes. They started it. CHORF is not an insult. As we SAW it’s a description. Have an asterisk and grow up.

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      1. I’ve read comments and blog posts by people who were insulted to their face at Worldcon. After reading Cedar Sanderson’s “I can never again go to a ‘literary’ con and feel safe” post, I got to thinking about something.

        A fad that has swept the fannish community in the past decade or so has been that of “harassment policies”. Conventions have started drafting and posting anti-harassment policies, and some authors have declared they will boycott conventions that fail to implement such policies. So now every convention has some sort of policy aimed at defining and addressing harassment. The LASFS Board of Directors has been wrestling with developing a code of conduct for the club. (Canned worms, anyone?)

        Personally, I’ve had bad feelings about the whole harassment policy movement since its inception. While I don’t support harassment, I have deep suspicions that (a) these policies will be abused by people with abnormally thin skins or weaponized by people with conveniently thin skins; and (b) these policies are not intended to be applied in anything like a fair and impartial manner — some groups will be defined as not subject to harassment no matter how they’re treated. However, I could be wrong, and I see a test case that could put my suspicions to rest.

        I think a case can be made that Cedar has been harassed. As a supporting member, I have half a mind to point this out to the Sasquan concom. Maybe there is some action that can be taken even at this late date to address the issue. Certainly, next year, any Puppies of any stripe — even the Manger Puppies — should consider calling people on name-calling and other forms of harassment, and taking what steps are needed to report it. Maybe the Worldcon will enforce its harassment policy.

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        1. A problem with harassment policies is that they often only go one way. The special snowflakes can do what they like but if someone like you or I even raises an objection, or, fate forfend, respond in kind we are banned, banned, banned.

          I’ve seen it happen.

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          1. It’s the old “who will watch the watchman” problem. How do you keep the judge honest and impartial? Until you figure that one out, any policy with a punitive outcome can and, given human nature and the implications of the Iron Law, WILL be abused.

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        2. Karl, I was not physically present at Sasquan. The safety evaluation was less for any physical concerns (I can handle myself, if it came to blows) but the much more subtle and potentially damaging slurs against my career and reputation. I’ve withdrawn from the battlefield not for fears for myself, but because I’m engaged on another, more personal front and splitting my forces could lead to me being flanked, which I cannot risk – nor can I be more specific.

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          1. OK, I understand that.
            However, I’m sure there were others who were physically present and wound up in the line of fire.

            Moreover, your statement that you’ve withdrawn from the battlefield, and this includes withdrawing from conventions, screams “hostile environment”.

            The community wants a harassment policy, let’s give one to them, good and hard.

            And to thewriterinblack: Don’t want to “respond in kind”, but instead point out that harassment is in fact harassment and pound on the double standards in play until something is done. If any of the people administering the policy are fair-minded, something will be done. If the double standards remain in force, that’s something the wider community needs to know.

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            1. One other point:

              As a past Chair of Loscon, and someone working closely with this year’s and next year’s Chairs, I’m rather sensitive to the notion of people being driven away from literary conventions.

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          1. Is truth a defense? Would the knowledge that their favorite targets are wearing lapel videocams (or some of them are and the rest have good fakes), and that their harassment would be published widely, have an effect on behavior? …Just a thought.

            Liked by 1 person

    2. In Sad Puppies II, rather fewer suggestions were made.

      One public response was to wish that Correia and all this supporters die in a fire.

      It is no use telling us it’s because the suggestions would fill up a lot of the slots. Your ilk goes postal at the suggestions, not their number.

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      1. In Sad Puppies II, rather fewer suggestions were made.

        Yep. The hatred and bile from the CHORFs was the same in SP and SP2 with much smaller recommended lists. So, gotta call BS on the “it’s because you filled the categories…” claim.

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    3. Hmm … as I recall the voting, each candidate work was voted for on it’s own vs. ALL other candidates – i.e. there may have been 3 or more “slates” of recommended nominations, but there were no “slates” of voting UNLESS the individual voter chose to make it so. It’s a conflation that has been responsible for a lot of this conflagration.

      Also – I’m a reader, a fan of prose SF as my preferred source of entertainment, not a writer with a livelihood to lose; so perhaps I haven’t drilled as deeply into this as some (and perhaps I’ve drilled exactly as deeply as many other voting fans), BUT: seems to me the proper use of No Award is an individual evaluation of the worth of an individual candidate work, AS READ, from a fan’s point of view — not for some kind of juvenile protest against the (probably mis-)perceived ideology of an author, or of a group the author is associated with. Such misuse smacks of corruption.

      So far as I know, from what I’ve read here and elsewhere, there was no effort by SP (or RP, for that matter) to drive out good works written by authors because of association with Tor or other traditional publishers from either the nominations or the award; those on the other side of this argument cannot say the same. It’s the “majority” you refer to above that deserves the asterisk this year.

      Liked by 1 person

    4. “The rational and polite responses to my (now deleted) post”

      Starting with a factually false assertion is not an effective means of persuasion. Leaving aside your sarcasm, your prior post remains, undeleted: https://accordingtohoyt.com/2015/08/23/burning-down-the-field-in-order-to-save-it/#comment-299642

      Nothing in your new comment acknowledges that the Sad Puppy voters were not mindless drones obeying orders but a group of similarly-minded fans of a particular type of SF, one which the Worldcon has ignored for over a decade. Even such Puppy Dissenters as George Martin and Eric Flint have acknowledged that there has long been a distinct bias in the types of work recognized in the Hugos.

      Selective reading of Brad’s “slate” to ignore his advisory comment also somewhat undermines your pretense of fairness:

      As noted earlier in the year, the SAD PUPPIES 3 list is a recommendation. Not an absolute.

      Emphasis added.

      Sorry Worldcon’s feelings were hurt. Sorry to inundate you with all the extra money from some thousand associate memberships that would not have otherwise been bought.

      Perhaps you should examine your own conduct before lecturing others about theirs. You might even consider approaching dissident groups with a modicum of humility and respect and shucking the arrogance.

      Nyah – what would be the point of that when instead you get to play the hectoring schoolmarm?

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      1. but, but, but, we called him CHORF. Well, you guys did. I called him a pedaco de merda I wouldn’t care to get on my shoes. But that’s me. Latina. It’s cultural, you know?

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        1. That is the terrible burden of the SJW bloviator, thinking to come here from Mike Gliar’s Vile770 and give us what-for: they need a four-dimensional spreadsheet to keep track of their calumnies and MS Excel only provides two.

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  140. Pingback: Final 2015 Hugos Perspective | Mick On Everything
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