A response to George R. R. Martin from the author who started Sad Puppies

When one of the most successful authors on the planet takes the time to talk about something you did, I figure that deserves an in depth response. I’ve got no direct line to Mr. Martin, but I am hoping that this will get back to him.

I am going to respond to some of the things Mr. Martin said to try and explain my reasoning. His words will be in italics, mine will be in bold. The link to his original articles is provided. Since I’ve read like 4,000 posts on this topic this week and written a novel worth of responses, I’ll not be going through everything he said and just be responding to things that I think need clarification or direct response. I will provide links to each of his posts so that you may read them in their entirety.

http://grrm.livejournal.com/417521.html

Let me begin with the basics:

Who owns the Hugo Awards?

You know, looking back, I am probably partly to blame for some of the misconceptions that seem to exist on this point. For years now I have been urging people to nominate for the Hugo Awards, and saying things like “this is your award” and “this award belongs to the fans, the readers.” I felt, and still feel, that wider participation would be a good thing. Thousands of fans vote for the Hugos most years, but until recently only hundreds ever bothered to nominate.

Still my “it is your award” urgings were not entirely accurate.

Truth is, the Hugo Awards belong to worldcon. The World Science Fiction Convention.

Mr. Martin, that is exactly one of the reasons I started this campaign.

When I started this the Hugo Awards were not portrayed as the awards that belonged to WorldCon. They were portrayed as the awards that represented the best of all of fandom. After my first experience seeing how the sausage was made, I publically said the same thing you said there, that the Hugo Awards don’t represent all of fandom, they represent one tiny part of fandom.

I was called a liar.

I too was nominated for the Campbell for Best New Writer. As a young, new writer, who had grown up reading the great ones, I was super excited by this incredible honor. See, I was born around when you got your Campbell nomination. I was one of those fans who grew up believing it when great authors said things like “this is your award” and “this award belongs to the fans, the readers”.

Because I was naïve.

I was overjoyed when I found out I’d been nominated. I was even dumb enough to think that I might have a chance. I had already read works from two of the other nominees and I knew that they were remarkable story tellers. I had read Wells and Beukes and knew the quality of their work was excellent. In any fair wordsmithing contest either could kick my ass, and I hadn’t even read Ahmed or Grossman yet, but if they were as good as the other two, then there would be a lot of quality works to choose from.

But that’s the kicker… I hadn’t realized yet that for many voters it wasn’t about the quality of the work. 

Within a few days of the nominations being announced I not only knew that I was going to lose, I knew that I was going to be last place. Only it had absolutely nothing to do with my writing, but rather, who I was, and what I was. 

I know you remember when you were starting out, Mr. Martin, because you talk about it in this very post, that scrimping, saving, and sleeping on couches phase of your career, where you are desperate to get your work out there in front of people, to get any exposure at all, and I’m betting that you were always really excited to hear what readers had to say about your creations. Right?

I know I was. So I went out on the internet and started searching my name, trying to find out what the buzz was for the Campbell nominees. I started calling friends who belonged to various writer forums and organizations that I didn’t belong to, asking about what people thought of my books in there.

You know what I found? WorldCon voters angry that a right-wing Republican (actually I’m a libertarian) who owned a gun store (gasp) was nominated for the prestigious Campbell. This is terrible. Did you know he did lobbying for gun rights! It’s right there on his hateful blog of hatey hate hate! He’s awful. He’s a bad person. He’s a Mormon! What! Another damned Mormon! Oh no, there are two Mormons up for the Campbell? I bet Larry Correia hates women and gays. He’s probably a racist too. Did you know he’s part of the evil military industrial complex? What a jerk.

Meanwhile, I’m like, but did they like my books?

No. Hardly any of them had actually read my books yet. Many were proud to brag about how they wouldn’t read my books, because badthink, and you shouldn’t have to read books that you know are going to make you angry. A handful of people claimed to have my read my books, but they assured the others that they were safe to put me last, because as expected for a shit person, my words were shit, and so they were good people to treat me like shit.

At first I was shocked, then I got angry. What the hell? This is supposed to be the most prestigious awards in scifi and fantasy?

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not lumping all of the WorldCon voters in with that perpetually outraged, politically motivated clique. I know plenty of voters read my books and just didn’t think they were as good as the people I was up against. Awesome. I salute you for you being an honest person with an honest opinion, and let’s face it, people have different tastes.

But don’t tell me now that the Hugos don’t have whisper campaigns…

Though I knew I still had fans voting, and I figured there were a lot of honest people who would give my works a fair shake regardless of my politics, I also spent most of my adult life as an auditor who did statistical analysis for a living. I understood how Australian Rules voting worked, and the rankings are not most popular to least popular, but rather least disliked to most disliked, and 72 hours after the nominations came out it was pretty obvious I was going to be most disliked.

Then I went to my very first WorldCon.

Mr. Martin, you talked about your positive, joyous experiences at WorldCon. How you were welcomed as a peer, about how you had all these great, wonderful, memorable experiences.

But I’m betting before your first WorldCon a whole bunch of malignant lying bastards didn’t spread the word to thousands of complete strangers that you were a racist, sexist, homophobic warmonger who deserved to be shunned. 

Side note, I’m not racist, sexist, or homophobic, but if that crowd (I’ll talk about the derogatory label my side uses that you don’t like in a minute) decides you are the enemy, they will smear you with those labels, regardless of the evidence. If you don’t believe me, read the many, many news articles about Sad Puppies that came out a few days ago working off that same script.

I met many wonderful people at that WorldCon. I also had many people treat me like garbage. I was berated by other panelists. I had people get up and leave the room when I entered. I had belligerent drunks challenging me at room parties because “Oh, it’s that fucker”. 

A lot of people will tell you now that I bring this upon myself, because I am rude and abrasive on the internet now. Yes. Now. But back then I was still trying to play it cool, and didn’t think I could have a successful career if I made the wrong people angry. It wasn’t until after that WorldCon that I said screw it, they’re going to hate me anyway, might as well state my honest opinions.   

So I mostly hung out with the Barflies, because they were cool. But I can hang out with Barflies at fifty other cons where I’m not assumed to be the second coming of Hitler because the internet said so. And while I hung out with them, I got to hear how many of them were shunned for various reasons too. 

Then I went to the award ceremony, and the parties, and the various schmoozefests, and I discovered that the Hugo Awards were like one great big In Joke. And the cool kids told their cool stories to the other cool kids, and lorded it over those who weren’t part of the In Joke. Honestly, it reminded me of high school, and I was the poor fat kid who had inadvertently pissed off the mean girls.

Then I got to meet and hang out with a whole bunch of authors, artists, and creators who spent most of the con bitching about how broken and biased the Hugos were. Some of these were old school, and got the In Jokes. Some were so talented, so famous, so successful, that it blew my mind that here they were at dinner, pissed off and angry that they knew they would never get any sort of consideration.

After the awards were over and all the cool kids patted each other on the back about how brilliant they were, and everything shook out pretty much exactly how everybody predicted it would anyway, they released the actual numbers for nominations and votes, and I discovered just how freaking tiny the number of people involved in this supposedly most prestigious award in the world was.

The winners were those who played the game, and as I sat there with the losers, I watched the game already being played for next year. As an author, I was sad. As a fan, I was disgusted. But as an auditor, I marveled at how something so statistically insignificant could be taken so seriously.

That was my first exposure to how the process really worked.

So I went home, dejected. And when I openly spoke about my experience, and I said pretty much exactly what you just said there, Mr. Martin, that the awards don’t represent all of fandom, and that they just represent one tiny, insular, clique of fandom… I was called a liar.

I was attacked all over again. I was told it was just sour grapes from a loser, but what could you expect from a shit writer, making shit product? The Hugos represent greatness, worthiness, and all of fandom. WorldCon is inclusive. How dare you question it?

So I said I would prove it, and I did. 

Here we are, a few years later, and oh how the narrative has changed. Now we are being told that the idea that the Hugos represented all of fandom and not just the tastes of one small convention were misconceptions. Now the most successful author in the world and editors for the biggest scifi publishing house are telling us that it belonged to just WorldCon all along.

Too late.  When people like me kept getting told that it represented all of fandom, we believed you. When you told us that if we wanted the stuff we liked represented better we should get more people involved in the process, we believed you.

And we did. Now we’re the bad guys.

((Never believe anyone who states loudly and repeatedly that they don’t care about awards, especially if they don’t care about one award in particular. Aesop saw through that okey-doke centuries ago. Boy, them grapes are sour. If you don’t care about something, you don’t think about it, or talk about it, or try to change the rules so you get one. The people who keep shouting that they don’t care if they ever win a Hugo are the ones who want one the most, take that to the bank)).

 

I am many terrible things, but dishonest is not one of them.

Let me clarify something, because I have been personally attacked for this for three years now. Yes, like most authors I dreamed of winning a Hugo, because I was very naïve. In the past I did very much want to win a Hugo. Just like I was dumb enough for a couple days to think that I might actually have a shot at winning a Campbell.

However, I know that I will not ever win a Hugo. I’m way too good at statistical analysis. I had a snowball’s chance in hell before I upset the apple cart and made myself radioactive to the typical WorldCon voter.

I launched the Sad Puppies campaign with the idea that if I could get authors with the wrong politics onto the Hugo ballot, I could prove to the world that the Hugos were in fact what you are all now admitting that they are. (Mission accomplished) Plus I wanted to expose that the perpetually outraged crowd would react with vehemence, vitriol, lies, and career sabotage, so that the world could see that our genre is overrun with bitter culture warriors who have politicized everything, and that if you had the wrong politics they would do everything in their power to destroy you (mission accomplished beyond my wildest dreams).

Not only did I know going into this that I would never win a Hugo, I also knew that I was going to make myself a target, and that I would be slandered, threatened, and have my career sabotaged.

But I still did it anyway.  

The thing I’m shouting about is bigger than just the Hugos. It is about freedom of expression, and the ability of authors to say what they want to say without fear. It is about exposing the malignant, destructive bullies who live to persecute others for crossing their invisible lines.

I got a nomination for my novel Warbound last year. The people I’m trying to expose rose to the occasion, formed lynch mobs and started attacking. I got a nomination again this year, for my novel Monster Hunter Nemesis, but I refused the nomination, specifically to prove that this isn’t about me wanting a Hugo. Apparently that still isn’t enough.

Allow me to demonstrate my conviction, and state for the record that I will never accept a Hugo award nomination for myself. However, I will continue to assist other authors who I believe have been unfairly blacklisted and shunned get theirs.


You will all have noted, no doubt, a common thread here: worldcon.

The Hugos belong to worldcon.

I am glad we are on the same page now.

If important people like you had said this to the people feeling disenfranchised before, then you wouldn’t be seeing this backlash now.

But instead of telling us the truth, that we were right and the Hugos belong to just WorldCon and didn’t represent all of fandom, my people were insulted, and told we were stupid, and that we liked stupid unworthy things. When an outsider dared to complain in public about how they would never get considered, they were told it wasn’t because WorldCon was biased, it was because they just weren’t good enough.

Worldcon continued… but the steady growth that had characterized worldcon through the 60s and 70s stopped. That 1984 worldcon in LA remained the largest one in history until last year at London. Meanwhile San Diego Comicon and Gencon and Dragoncon grew bigger than worldcon… twice the size, ten times the size, twenty times the size… Dragoncon even went so far as to break with a half-century old fannish tradition by moving to Labor Day, worldcon’s traditional date, a date that had up to then been inviolate. And why not? Dragoncon’s attendees were fans, sure, they were comics fans and Star Wars fans and cosplay fans, and some were even book fans… but they were not “trufans,” as that term was commonly used, and they didn’t care when worldcon was.

 

While WorldCon complains of the shrinking and greying of fandom, Salt Lake City ComicCon has been around for 2 years and has 150,000 attendees. For some people, books might not be their primary fannish outlet, but they still read books. Just because somebody plays Dragon Age or the Witcher doesn’t mean they don’t read fantasy novels too. Heck, I believe Halo tie in novels are some of the bestselling books in scifi.

If somebody was introduced to fantasy by watching Game of Thrones on HBO, and then they bought and read all your books, discovered they liked fantasy and read other books, and they thought some are awesome and deserving of an award, are they somehow lesser fans on the scales of fandom because they don’t know WorldCon trivia?

So do you not want those fans to vote in the Hugos because they don’t share the proud traditions of WorldCon, or not? Because I do.


(The term “trufans” is an unfortunate one in this argument, since some of the Sad Puppies and their supporters take it amiss, and understandly, when told they don’t qualify. The term is a very old one, however, probably dates back to THE ENCHANTED DUPLICATOR, a parody of PILGRIM’S PROGRESS about the search for “true fandom.” Like “SMOF,” it is at least partially a joke. And if any of this paragraph makes any sense to you, you are undoubtedly a trufan… but don’t worry, you don’t need to know what a mimeograph machine is to be a real fan, I swear).

 

Yes, part of the issue of why my side is very loud right now is that people like Teresa Nielsen Hayden have been very explicit that they aren’t welcome, and that they are the wrong kind of fans.

But now that we are talking terminology, let me explain why exactly the term SJW has come into common usage. Much the same way SMOF and trufan have taken on meanings representing groups with a shared mindset to your community, SJW has taken on a meaning representing a group with a shared mindset to my community.

The term SJW is way bigger than Sad Puppies, and predates Sad Puppies, and has entered the general lexicon of easily half our nation, but probably mostly the red state tired of getting yelled at half. We use the term SJW because it is far easier than typing out Perpetually Outraged, Searching For Offense, Quick to Accuse Racism/Sexism/Homophobia/Privilege/Patriarchy, Holier Than Thou, Politics Before Fun, Unholy Cross Between Communists and Puritans, Twitter Lynch Mob Forming, Career Sabotaging, Social Justice Crusaders.

The term has stuck, and shows up everywhere in America. Comet Guy with his “offensive” shirt did more to popularize the term SJW than anything my people ever did. It is here to stay.

And to contrast SMOFs, who are mostly normal, sane, good people, Brad came up with the term CHORFs for the really snobbish elitists, because unlike SJWs, we have a sense of humor


Other conventions have other awards. Wiscon has the Tiptrees. The World Fantasy Con presents the World Fantasy Awards, or Howards. The Bram Stokers are given by the HWA, the Nebulas by SFWA. Libertarians have the Prometheus Awards, though I don’t know where they give them out. I just came back from Norwescon, where they handed out the Philip K. Dick Award. We used to have Balrogs and the Gandalfs, but they went away. The Japanese have the Seiun awards, the Spanish have the Gigameshs, the Czechs the Newts. Australians have Ditmars, Canadians Auroras. Gamers have Origins Awards, comic fans have Inkpots and Eisners.

I don’t denigrate any of these awards. I’ve won an Inkpot, I’ve handed out an Eisner. I won a Balrog too, but it was smashed before it reached me. I have a Newt and a bunch of Gigameshs and even a Seiun. Awards are cool. Awards are fun. Or should be. I don’t expect I will ever win a Tiptree or a Prometheus or a Dick, but that’s fine, I applaud them all the same. Writing is a hard gig, man. Any recognition is a plus. Big or small, any award is a pat on the back, a way of saying, “hey, you did good,” and we all need that from time to time.

The difference is that none of those awards claimed to speak for the entirety of fandom.

The barbaric outsiders shelling out their $40 to get involved now grew up being told that the Hugos were it, the Big Deal, the best of the best, and like me, they were naïve enough to believe it for a long time.

Yet, as the Hugos became increasingly politically skewed in one direction, people can now admit that is because they reflected WorldCon, not all of Fandom, only for all these years Fandom were the ones being told that they were dumb for liking the wrong things. They were wrongfan having wrongfun.

If the Sad Puppies wanted to start their own award… for Best Conservative SF, or Best Space Opera, or Best Military SF, or Best Old-Fashioned SF the Way It Used to Be… whatever it is they are actually looking for… hey, I don’t think anyone would have any objections to that. I certainly wouldn’t. More power to them.

Mr. Martin, up until a week ago, nobody in the upper echelons of fandom or publishing would say that the Hugos belongs to just one tiny convention. They kept claiming to represent the best, most worthy things in our whole genre. And we had stuff that we thought was great and worthy too, but it was ignored or shunned, so why would we go start another award when there was a perfectly good award right there already claiming to represent us too?

We started doing this 3 years ago. Maybe, if 3 years ago some VIPs had come out and said what you’re saying today, we would have done that instead. “Okay, Sad Puppies 2013 or 2014, you are right, you really are outsiders, and we’re insiders and we want to keep this our thing, so go do your own thing” would have avoided a lot of trouble.  But you guys didn’t say that then, so you can’t get mad at us for taking you at your word that you represent everyone, and then get mad at us for not knowing the insider information that you guys claimed didn’t exist until last week!


But that’s not what they are doing here, it seems to me. Instead they seem to want to take the Hugos and turn them into their own awards. Hey, anyone is welcome to join worldcon, to become part of worldcon fandom… but judging by the comments on the Torgesen and Correia sites, a lot of the Puppies seem to actively hate worldcon and the people who attend it, and want nothing to do with us. They want to determine who gets the Ditmars, but they don’t want to be Australians.

 

I told my WorldCon experience above. I know Brad had a similar experience when he first got involved with WorldCon too.

Why do the many people involved in the Sad Puppies campaign seem to hate WorldCon? Because the SJW crowd (I know you don’t like that term, but it is the appropriate one to use here) hates my kind of fan, actively and routinely attacks my kind of fan, and calls them racist, sexist, homophobes without evidence, all day, every day.

I know the SJWs are only one small clique at WorldCon, however they are the loudest and the meanest. And sadly, the moderate, rational, normal WorldCon folks rarely seem to condemn them for their antics. So from over here on the Sad Puppies side, they take your silence and lack of condemnation against the hate mongers as tacit approval, and then they tend to lump you together.    

So why then would they want to attend when they are told their kind is unwanted?

Why would they stick up for WorldCon, when in their minds they think the silent majority of WorldCon attendees are the same as the vocal minority of crusading social justice crowd who actively and openly despises them?

WorldCon claims to be inclusive, but scroll through the various comments threads on the various fan blogs on my side of the fence and get their perspective sometime. SFWA also claims to be welcoming, inclusive, and apolitical, but again, read how they are really perceived by many. Snobbish, snooty, bossy, self-righteous, etc. Don’t take my word for it—you know I’m terribly biased—but ask them yourself.

 

The prestige of the Hugo derives from its history. The worth of any award is determined in large part by the people who have won it. Would I love to win the Hugo for Best Novel some day? You’re damned right I would. But not because I need another rocket to gather dust on my mantle, as handsome as the Hugo trophies are. I want one because Robert A. Heinlein won four, because Roger Zelazny and Alfred Bester and Ursula K. Le Guin and Fritz Leiber and Walter M. Miller Jr and Isaac Asimov and Frederik Pohl and so many other giants have won the same award. That’s a club that any science fiction and fantasy writer should be thrilled to join.

Yet honestly, with the current state of the Hugos, how many of those greats that you list would win today? Sadly, I think we both know the answer depends on how well they could play the game.

My personal favorite on there is Robert Heinlein. Hypothetical question, if Robert Heinlein wrote Starship Troopers in 2014, could he get on the Hugo ballot now? Or would he be labeled a fascist with troubling ideas, and a product of the neo-colonial patriarchy?

And before you dismiss that question, maybe you should read up on what the voting clique that shall not be named says about Heinlein now.

Sadly, I suspect the only way Heinlein could get on the ballot today would be if my horde of uncouth barbarian outsiders got involved and put him on our suggested slate.

[[Once again, comments and dissent are welcome, but I expect courtesy from all parties. And yes, that means those of you who are on “my side” as well. Let’s not throw around insults, or charges of misogyny and racism, please. And Puppies, sad or happy, if any of you feel inclined to reply, please avoid the term “Social Justice Warriors” or SJWs. I am happy to call you Sad Puppies since you named yourself that, but I know of no one, be they writer or fan, who calls themselves a social justice warrior. Offending or insulting posts will be deleted. We can disagree here, but let’s try for respectfuldisagreement.]]

We do not mind being called Puppies, but for the record we are doing this on behalf of Sad Puppies, because good books being excluded over political message dreck is the leading cause of Puppy Related Sadness.

We do not however like being called racists, sexists, misogynists, homophobes, fascists, hate mongers, the KKK, or wife beaters. Especially in major media outlets like Entertainment Weekly, Salon, Slate, the Telegraph, and io9. If you would like to compare the amount and level of vitriolic lies spread in this contentious debate, it is pretty obvious which way those scales are going to go.

As for the term SJW, as I said above, that isn’t going to happen at this point. It is entrenched. You might as well tell people not to say conservative or liberal, because though often inaccurate when applied to every single individual in a movement, they are useful, handy descriptors that get the point across quickly.

http://grrm.livejournal.com/417600.html

I find the above link to be an excellent article about the tone.

Yes, I do get angry, and yes, I have said some very mean things as part of that.

I know you’re not looking for excuses, Mr. Martin, but I’m a little nobody, no name, hack author, who sells a tiny fraction as many books as you do, who had the bright idea to expose the bias in a biased system. As a result I’ve had people who know better spread the vilest lies about me you can imagine, and even when they know it is a lie, they have continued.

For five years, nobody on your side said a damned thing about tone when I was the one being labeled a hatemonger, or a “rape apologist” by disingenuous SFWA presidents, or they were using fabricated “scare quotes” to show I was a homophobic woman hater in the Guardian.  

So, yeah, I’m angry. When people who haven’t talked to my wife since high school reach out to her, worried for her safety, because they read about how her husband is a wife beater, I get angry. Right now in about 50 blogs going out to I don’t know how many hundreds of thousands of people, the narrative is that I’m an angry white man, trying to keep scifi straight and white and male.

And the fans who got involved with Sad Puppies? It turns out that one of their primary motivators to finally get involved was that they watched all this happen live. And as more of them voiced their opinions, more of them were publically attacked too, which motivated more to jump in, etc. etc.  

But once we finally succeeded in making a big splash, and everybody started paying attention, and tons of people on my side are speaking up now too, and media outlets from the both sides of the political spectrum are reporting on it, and the insults are flying back and forth…

Now we get warnings about tone.

You know the most heartening things I’ve seen this week are? Writers who are my polar political opposites finally standing up and saying things like yes, Larry Coreia is an asshole, but he’s not any of these horrible things you are accusing him of, or yes, Larry Correia is an asshole, but please quit threatening to kill him and his entire family.

That’s been nice.

But yeah, I’ve said some pretty mean things during this debate, so you’ll have to forgive me if after the 1000th post calling me a bunch of things I’m not, I come off a little testy. When you have professional culture warriors like Brianna Wu and Arthur Chu, who make their livings off of generating political controversy, saying that Brad Torgersen’s two decades of interracial marriage is just a shield to hide his true secret racism, then yes, there is a serious tone problem.

People like us have been dealing with people like that for our entire careers. One of my goals was to get your people to notice it.

So thank you for calling for civility.

Personally, I will try to remain civil to anybody who disagrees and wants to debate, but I’m way past the point where I have any mercy left for people who just want to scream in my face, or the mind readers who ignore what I actually say and do to tell everyone what I really meant, and I will treat them accordingly. 

http://grrm.livejournal.com/417812.html

Mr. Martin, on this last post of yours, there is actually very little that I disagree with, and it is actually extremely nice to see a writer of your caliber and level coming out and saying this stuff. For that, I am truly appreciative, and I’m not just blowing smoke. I’ll explain why below.

The Sad Puppies and their supporters have argued that they are not the first to campaign for awards in our (not so) little genre.

They’re right about that, of course.

I’ve been around a long time. So has campaigning, by one means or another.

(I left out several paragraphs here about campaigning for the Nebulas, just because of space, because this blog post is already huge, but I would really recommend that everyone go and read the whole thing. The Nebulas aren’t the Hugos, but the communities are intertwined)

And what about the Hugos, you ask?

Yeah, there too. In the ongoing discussion of Puppygate, numerous people have cited one instance, wherein a stack of identical nominating ballots arrived with the same postmark, paid for by consecutive money orders. Those were disallowed. In 1987, members of the Church of Scientology campaigned successfully to place L. Ron Hubbard’s BLACK GENESIS on the Best Novel ballot. That was not disallowed — the Scientologists had done nothing illegal, after all, all they’d done is buy supporting memberships to a convention that they had no intention of attending, for the sole purpose of nominating LRH for a Hugo (hmmm, why does that tactic sound familiar?) — but their campaign created a huge backlash. Hubbard’s name was booed lustily at the Hugo ceremony in Brighton, and his book finished last in the final balloting, behind No Award. (The winner that year was Orson Scott Card, with SPEAKER FOR THE DEAD, for those who are counting).

Of course, there were also recommended reading lists. That wasn’t campaigning, not strictly, but certain lists could have huge influence on the final ballot. The annual LOCUS Recommended Reading List, compiled by Charles Brown and his staff and reviewers, was the most influential. If your book or story made that list… well, it did not guarantee you a place on the ballot, but it sure improved your chances. NESFA (the New England fan club) had an annual list as well, and LASFS might have done the same, not sure. And of course the Nebulas, which came before the Hugos, carried a lot of weight too. Win a Nebula, and the chances were good that you’d be a Hugo nominee as well. Again, no guarantee, some years the shortlists diverged sharply… but more often than not, there was a lot of overlap.

One quick note, after SP2 made a little bit of a dent and I had said a bunch of things in public about the bias in the awards against people with the wrong politics, various incredulous fan bloggers started looking at it. These were people who don’t like me (which I am totally cool with) but they were honest, and figured my claims of political bias in this process would be easily disproven.

Except they ended up finding various things that indicated maybe all of us “right wingers” weren’t such liars after all. That prestigious influential LOCUS Recommended Reading List you mentioned? I think it has like 40 or 50 books but ZERO from Baen (a publishing house that gets a bad rap because it is willing to publish any author regardless of their politics, from capital L Libertarians to card carrying Communists as long as they can tell a good story).  Most of the other various lists from various pro places? The politics of the recommend authors are either unknown or overwhelmingly fell in one direction. You can guess which direction that is. 

Chaos Horizon picked two Hugo contenders to compare for 2015, one “right wing” (me, because of my showing during SP2) and one “left wing” (because this overtly political and opinionated author is a perpetual Hugo favorite) and they compared the buzz and reviews. What they found was so lopsided it surprised even me. Our books sold about the same, came out within a month of each other, and I had higher reviews on Amazon, except the left wing author had been plugged on ALL the recommendation places they checked. The right wing author was on ZERO.

So there were always these factors in play. Cliques, I can hear the Sad Puppies saying. Yeah, maybe. Thing is, they were COMPETING cliques. The NESFA list and the Nebula list were not the same, and the LOCUS list… the LOCUS list was always very long. Five spots on the Hugo ballot, and LOCUS would recommend twenty books, or thirty… sometimes more, when they started putting SF and fantasy in separate categories.

 

Yes, there were competing cliques, but the only cliques who mattered all looked virtually identical to us outsiders looking in. And hardly anything they ever nominated represented anything we liked. To most of us barbarian wrongfans, the competing cliques were indistinguishable from one another.

For example, correct me if I’m wrong but I believe with last year’s winners, every single one shared similar political viewpoints. And all but one of them was white, yet that year was hailed as a huge win for diversity.

You need to see this from Wrongfan’s perspective. You guys had competing cliques, but to us it was like an Eskimo having a thousand different words for snow, and you can tell us about your many diverse and wonderful types of snow, but all we saw was snow.

And in recent years when we looked at the ballots it was like, awesome, let’s choose between these five items of approved socially conscious message fiction. Yay! We’ve got selections from: religious people are stupid bigots, capitalists are raping the earth, capitalists are stupid bigots, bigots are stupid, and I’m not quite sure what the hell this last thing is about and I’m not even sure if it qualifies as fantasy or scifi but it has bigots in it… Oh man, tough call.

Again, now we can openly say that this all makes sense because my kind of people aren’t WorldCon regulars, and this award belongs only to WorldCon, so the stuff making the ballot wasn’t aimed at us… but sadly that wasn’t what you guys were telling us when we started this. This stuff was supposed to be the best stuff in the whole world.

So we formed our own competing clique and actually bothered to show up.


Bottom line, lots of people influenced the Hugos (or tried to), but no one ever successfully controlled the Hugos.

 

And I truly don’t want to either. I don’t want to be Hugo Pope.


That became even more true when we entered the age of the internet. Suddenly blogs and bulletin boards and listservs were everywhere, and there were DOZENS of people drawing up recommended reading lists and suggesting books and writers and stories. Sweet chaos. It was glorious. So many people talking about books, arguing about books, reading books.

That was also when the practice of writers blogging about their own eligible books and stories took root. “Say, the Hugo nominations are coming up, and I had a few things out last year. Hey, check them out.” Some people were deeply offended by this practice. (Some still are. Check out the blogs of Peter Watts and Adam Roberts on the subject, for instance). Others, especially newer writers and those hungry for attention, seized on it at once as a way of getting their name out there. Publishers and editors began to encourage it. Publicity and advertising budgets being what they were (non-existent in many cases), new writers and midlist writers soon realized that if they did not publicize their books, no one would.

And once it really got rolling, there was no stopping it. “Everyone else is doing it,” you heard writers say. “I have to do it, in self-defense.” They were not wrong. Sometimes the difference between making the Hugo ballot and falling short is a single vote. The writer who refused to self-promote and then fell a few votes short… ouch.

[And yes, I have done all this myself. Mentioned my own work, drawn up recommended reading lists, blogged passionately about people I thought deserved a nomination. I am not condemning the practice, just reporting on it. It always made me feel awkward, but like many of my friends, I knew that if I refrained and then missed the ballot by a few votes, I would be kicking myself. I’d sooner see the practice die out. But until it does, you have to play the game.]

Of course, not everyone was equally good at self-promotion. Certain subfandoms were better organized than others (the DOCTOR WHO fans, for instance). Certain writers were more skilled at social media than others, and built up huge personal followings on Twitter and Facebook, or through their blogs… numbers that soon translated to multiple Hugo nominations.

 

You have no idea how incredibly glad I am that you wrote all of that, Mr. Martin. After the week I’ve had… Holy moly.


And that was pretty much where we stood, until the Sad Puppies came along.

Last year I didn’t do anything different than what was listed above. I talked about it on my blog. I tried to motivate and rally people to get involved. I plugged stuff I liked. And all of a sudden there was a little clique of Wrongfan nominating for LonCon, just big enough to get one item into every category. We were no different than the other above mentioned subfandoms.

Yet, somehow, when I did that, I was a filthy villain, breaking all the rules, with no respect for tradition. Just as I predicted, there was a wrathful terrible public backlash from the clique which shall not be named, and even though I went into it knowing that none of us would actually win, once the final results came in, the leaders of the clique which shall not be named out of respect for Mr. Martin, moved the goal posts, and danced in our blood. Articles were written about how these horrible racist hate mongers were soundly driven from the sainted halls of WorldCon. Back beneath your rock, foul barbarians! And anyone who supported Sad Puppies was motivated by racism! Booooooo!

That reaction did more to cause the avalanche that was Sad Puppies 3 than anything I could have ever done. It proved exactly what I’d been saying all along. I was joined by a whole bunch of other people, authors, creators, artist, and fans, who said enough of the lies and BS and slander, now we’re in this too. We’re tired of the Hugo awards being a circle jerk of like-minded people telling each other how brilliant they are.

To be perfectly frank, some things changed between LonCon and SasQuan. I’d proved my point about the bias and attacks, and was ready to hang it up. They poked the bear, the bear mauled them, and now the bear just wanted to go back to his cave and be left alone. But Brad Torgersen is an idealist, Mr. Martin, I can’t accentuate this enough. He would be dead in Westeros in fifteen minutes. Brad is TruFan. That man waves his nerd flag high. He looks at the Hugo with adoration like it is some sort of religious icon with a halo around it. He prays to his altar of Saint Heinlein 3 times a day and lights candles for Frank Herbert.

If I was naïve at first, Brad makes me look… hell… I don’t even have a good comparison. So when he grew up hearing that the Hugos represented the Best of the Best, bright shining light on the hill, he incorporated that into the very fiber of his being.

And Brad figured that with my insane stunt of SP2 actually working, let’s make the Hugos represent more of fandom, fans like him and his friends. So instead of a thousand words for snow, we might actually  have some dirt, or grass, maybe even some trees, and no doubt some bullshit will show up once in a while, but damn it, our side is sick of freaking snow!

At that point Sad Puppies was no longer just about proving a point. It was about giving a voice to a whole mess of fans who didn’t think they would ever have one again. The mission changed, and it became about getting deserving worthy creators who would normally be shunned or ignored some freaking recognition for once in their lives.  It was time to stand up to the clique that shall not be named and their lectures about how we were having wrongfun.

Unlike the existing cliques, Sad Puppies 3 didn’t give a damn about politics, race, religion, or orientation. All we cared about was could they tell us a damned good story. The big game you describe, the campaigning, the favors, all that, our suggested slate was made up of the people who didn’t, wouldn’t, or couldn’t play that game. 

I have very mixed feelings about campaigning for awards. Part of me agrees with my friend Lisa Tuttle. Wouldn’t it be great if each reader could make his own nominations, without being influenced by slates or lists or mass mailings? It would also be great if all the children of the world could get together and sing in perfect harmony, but that’s not going to happen either. Like it or not, campaigning is here to stay.

I can see where this is going. I am a Worldcon member and a SFWA member, but I am also a member of the Writer’s Guild of America and the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, which means I vote on the WGA awards and the Emmys… and so the flood comes in, DVDs and Blu-Rays and screeners and links to lockboxes, all full of TV shows and movies “for my consideration.” Way too many to watch. Way too many to count. Are there studios and directors and networks that don’t play the game, that don’t send out screeners and run ads in VARIETY and THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER. Sure there are. They are easy to recognize. They’re the studios and directors and networks who don’t win any awards.

Once you let the genie out of the bottle, he doesn’t go back in.

The Sad Puppies did not invent Hugo campaigning, by any means. But they escalated it, just as that magazine/publisher partnership did way back when. They turned it up to eleven.

If the people attacking us don’t chill out, more of my people are going to get pissed off, and it might hit a 12 or 13 next year. 🙂

 

Their slate was more effective that anyone could ever have dreamed, so effective that they drowned out pretty much all the other voices. They ran the best organized, most focused, and most effective awards campaign in the history of our genre, and showed everyone else how it’s done.

I used to be an accountant. We are monotonously efficient.

Truthfully, we never dreamed that we would block out whole categories with our suggestions. I underestimated how motivated my people became after seeing the childish, petulant, entitled reaction from the clique that shall not be named last year.

I’ve had a bunch of well-meaning SMOFs telling me that they nobody would be upset if we’d only gotten one or two things into each category, but that’s exactly what we accomplished last year, and they still freaked out at us.


The lesson will be learned. The Sad Puppies have already announced that they intend to do it again next year. Which means that other factions in fandom will have to do it as well. Just as happened with the “let me tell you about my eligible works,” the rest of the field is going to need to field slates of their own in self-defense.

 

Mr. Martin, we didn’t start this. We are the inevitable backlash that occurs when the pendulum swings too far in one direction.


I don’t look forward to that. It cheapens the Hugos. Will future winners actually be the best books or stories? Or only the books and stories that ran the best campaigns?

As far as we could tell, it was already like that.

Can all the king’s horses and all the king’s men put the Hugos back together again?

I don’t see how. And that makes me sadder than all those puppies put together.

My honest opinion is that to a gigantic chunk of disenfranchised fandom, we felt like Humpty Dumpty fell off that wall a long time ago.

If you want to talk about going forward, from here, I don’t know what to tell you about your campaigning cliques. They were already there long before we showed up.

But you really want to “fix it” and make sure my people don’t screw it up anymore, and keep the Hugos sacred? Well, right now the ball is in your court.

You’ve got people out there who supposedly love the award so much that they are organizing block votes for No Award against absurdly deserving yet consistently overlooked people like Jim Butcher, Toni Weisskopf, and Kevin J. Anderson, all to burn the whole thing down, just because my people violated your secret gentleman’s agreement and plugged them on a slate. As Brad Torgersen pointed out already, that sounds suspiciously like the story with Solomon offering to cut the baby in half.  And one mother saying, screw it, I’d rather the baby die than that bitch get him. (paraphrasing, obviously).

No matter how you change the rules, Sad Puppies will still obey the rules.  

First and foremost, you guys need to decide, once and for all, what the Hugo Awards really are. There are two choices.

  1. It is the most prestigious award which represents the best works in all of fandom.
  2. It is a little award, for one little group of people, at one convention.

You can’t have both. Pick one, stake your flag on it, and we will proceed from there.

If it is just WorldCon’s little clubhouse award, and some of us aren’t welcome in the clubhouse, then fine. Duly noted, and Sad Puppies next move will be predicated upon that.

But if it is the most prestigious award that represents the best of all of fandom, then that means that all of fandom, including us, gets to participate.

You can’t have both.

I think you will find that the people who are involved with Sad Puppies are willing to talk about the future, but we are very tired of being yelled at and lied about.

No matter what happens, whether you like the term for them or not, you guys need to calm your SJWs down, and tell them to quit forming angry twitter mobs, and scaring the hell out of authors who cross their invisible lines. Most of us aren’t big and successful enough to be immune to their inquisition. I’m fine. You’re doing, holy crap, like mega bucks piles of gold bars fine. But many regular authors are being intimidated by these bullies, having their careers damaged, and it isn’t right.

Anyways, I hope you actually read this, and if so, I appreciate you taking the time.

Sincerely,

-Larry Correia

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1,046 thoughts on “A response to George R. R. Martin from the author who started Sad Puppies”

    1. The Puppy Buddha Correia, having renounced the Hugo, sat down beneath the bodhi tree and began to meditate upon the Middle Way of Science Fiction and Fantasy.

      And the demons and concern trolls of social Mara began to dance and posture, trying desperately to distract him…. 🙂

      Seriously, though, I give you all my respect for relinquishing the Hugo Award. May your award be great in Heaven, or at least pretty darned cool.

      1. Larry will have to settle for his Legion of Loyal Fans and dry his tears with huge royalties checks I suppose.

    2. Hmmm… how about this? Perhaps the Sad Puppies should start a meme that anyone voting “No Award” is actually voting for Mr. Correia. After all, he has already publicly and clearly stated that he will accept “no award” or nomination in the Hugo voting.

      They could even have a nice celebration if “No Award” wins!

      🙂

    3. Nobody also finds this ironc. A white man bitching about finally facing an ounce of “discrimination” in his life. Whining that he didn’t win anything because a couple people that he had to search really hard for thought he was a racist joke? This is a joke. Let’s screw over people who are exactly like you were in your younger days because you didn’t get your way. Grow the fuck up.

        1.         But Mr. Martin is employing his white man’s privilege to live life on the lowest difficulty setting.  While we shouldn’t be too hard on him, let’s not let him off too easily either.

                  And he does need to learn not to whine when he loses a fair fight.

      1. In a novella sized blog post, I spent a couple of paragraphs talking about my personal experiences, because GRRM asked me about them… And then dismiss the whole thing as personal whining. Check. 🙂

      2. Oh,wait, I get it now. The real irony is the fanboi coming over here talking about “White” and “Discrimination” when Larry is Latino and grew up damned near a sharecropper.

        But right, he’s FINALLY facing discrimination.

        So, Hammy, exactly what ethnicity and class are you, son?

        1. As if you didn’t already now.

          He is white, upper-middle class, and riddled with guilt over not having struggled ever in his life.

        2. I hope then that his wiki page is wrong because if it isn’t, this is the kind of misleading bullshit fit for a politician. Characterizing someone as being a Latino who grew up damned near a sharecropper in refutation of someone that that calls him white conjures up the image of a Latin American immigrant whose family toiled in someone’s tomato fields… which is horrifically and intentionally misleading if he’s Portuguese and grew up on his father’s farm. There’s a great deal of debate on whether Portuguese even qualifies as Latino, but it sure as fuck qualifies as white. Although your post could be considered ironic, I think hypocritical is more apt.

          1. There’s no debate that Portuguese are Latino. Unless you’re a racist fuck.

            And poor is poor. Portugal is most certainly not a wealthy nation, and immigrants are immigrants.

            And Hispanics and Latinos can be of any race.

            But we see where your obsession is–if you can characterize someone as white, you can ignore everything else about their history.

            I’m waiting for the first White African American. Or is that Allen West?

  1. Hear, hear.

    I also would not want to be Hugo Pope. However, if the College of Cardinals elects me next time to the Chair of Saint Peter, I will take the name Pope Hugo. Not the same thing.

    1. Heh, I’d pay to see that one… but your wife might be unhappy about the celibacy requirement. Great library and nice rooms for the kids, though!

      “Habemus papam! Legem Magistrum et Sanctæ Romanæ Ecclesiæ laicum Johannem Wright, qui sibi nomen imposuit Hugonis.”

      1. Actually if elected Pope Hugo would still be married.

        And once enthroned he would be totally qualified to say, “That celibacy thing? It’s a discipline, not a doctrine. Not all priests, bishops, cardinals, and popes need to follow it now.”

        Whether he’d do this is a whole ‘nother question. But he certainly could.

          1. There are married priests to this day. It is, as Margaret said, a discipline, not a dogma.

          2. Yeah, but married bishops have historically been few, because historically bishops and priests were bound to abstain from sex as well as food and drink before saying Mass. And bishops were saying Mass every day in times when most priests didn’t.

            In the Eastern rites, the current rule is that married priests can’t become bishops; they take their bishops from among priest-monks or priests who did not marry.

            Back in Alexandria in antiquity, Hypatia’s student who was made a bishop against his inclination was very unhappy about the effects of his sudden be-bishoping on his family life.

          3. I was taught that the original issue was with married bishops (not priests) because in the middle ages, dioceses began to collect (retain?) real property and wealth (gold communion cups, for example) that were inadequately differentiated from the wealth that a bishop (generally a person of the upper educated classes) himself held, and which could/should be passed down to his widow and heirs. One too many screaming matches over whether the bishop’s kids got something and Mama Church said ENOUGH, done with that option.

        1. Actually, if elected Pope, my first pronouncement would be to reactivate the secular power of the Inquisition, declare a Crusade against the Mohammedans and the government of China, and appoint Skynet and Colossus (the computer, not the X-man) as archbishops.

          Worst. Pope. Ever.

          People would look back on the Borgias with nostalgia.

          And then I would be struck with a lightningbolt out of a clear blue sky, agnostics would STILL call it a coincidence. Some people are just never convinced.

          1. Data should be repeatable. I’m sure that some agnostics would be convinced something weird was going on if multiple Popes got struck by lightning when they did stupid things.
            Of course, I’m pretty sure the College of Cardinals would stop electing stupid Popes before it got repeated enough to convince most skeptics.

          2. Actually, if elected Pope, my first pronouncement would be to reactivate the secular power of the Inquisition, declare a Crusade against the Mohammedans and the government of China, and appoint Skynet and Colossus (the computer, not the X-man) as archbishops.

            Worst. Pope. Ever.

            I am reminded of the scene at the end of “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.” The main character is offered the purple. His response: “You would find me unsuitable. My first official act would be to have you all crucified.”

          3. Ah, but what color of smoke would emerge from the crater, and would that have any significance under canon law?

          4. Well no, this model agnostic would call it very weird, while acknowledging weirdness happens.

            After all, stand up comic Sam Kinison, who had a whole bit about how we have to drink and drive to get our cars and ourselves back home, and another where in he compared marriage to being in hell, was killed by a 17 year old drunk driver within days of his 3rd and hence final marriage.

            God may or may not exist, but if he/she/they/it does, Spider Robinson’s whole ‘irony’ attribute would seem to be part of it’s makeup.

            Ultimately, it would become one more datum in the life long, (or possibly eternal) quest to answer the whole god question.

      2. Pffftttt. I’m fairly sure that the number of popes who truly kept celibate has been a significant minority, and mostly in modern times where communications spread the word of infidelity faster than pie at a country fair supper.

        1. Modern times’ communications? There’s the old joke that seminaries in Rome don’t have fire alarms, because gossip spreads fast enough already.

    2. You horrible, right wing, sin hating badbeliever!

      I’m voting “NO POPE”.

      I’d rather burn the Catholic Church to the ground than have a Pope nominated by you SadSheep jerks!

    3. Then you can issue a papal bull that rocket ships ought to land on their tails, the way God and Robert Heinlein intended.

        1. Not at all…in fact the “as God and Heinlein intended” line is one I’ve been using since their first attempt although I can’t remember where I picked up.

          1. That sentiment was expressed in Steve Savitzky’s song “The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of” (copyright 1998). Whether that was where you got it from (or indeed, whether that was where it originated) I cannot say.

            http://steve.savitzky.net/Songs/stuff/

            “But the future that we lost is still someplace out there
            Orion still rides hellfire toward the blue,
            And rockets proudly land upon their tailfins,
            As God and Robert Heinlein meant them to.”

    4. All award competitions and their attendant ceremonies are, and always have been, a joke.

      They are, and always have been, a falsehood… a pretense at meaning.

      From the junior high pep-rally popularly elected MVP to the Hollywood Oscars, they are all as manipulated and rigged as last week’s pro wrasslin’ cham-peen-ship.

      Anyone who believes that they have any meaning whatsoever is precisely the type of moron who would actually buy a book or see a movie based upon its having won such an “award”.

      It is an illusion, people.

      So stop fighting over something that doesn’t exist.

      Go *write* something… ya’ lazy, procrastinating, masturbatory, adolescent fucking trolls pretending to be writers!

      Then maybe you’ll win the award of a few dollars of my hard-earned money.

      Maybe.

      1. You weren’t impressive on Torgerson’s blog.
        You aren’t impressive here.
        Seeing as Correia actually writes stuff.

  2. You know, Larry, I was once very close to the “leadership” of the “Boskone” Cons here in Boston (since renamed), and I have to tell you, if they were representative of the people who “ran” the Hugos, then yeah, a major problem existed. These characters felt that this was theirs, no one else’s. Screw the fans. They would choose what *they* wanted, because they were the only people who knew what should be lauded.

    And, frankly, seeing and hearing him in action, GRR Martin reminds me *exactly* of that ilk.

      1. They’re doing some good stuff. For instance, reprinting the works of such masters as Poul Anderson. . . they are currently on volume 6 of his short works.

    1. They renamed Boston? Crap; nobody tells me anything!

      Seriously, Boskone still exists and is still run by NESFA. Arisia also exists and is run by Arisia, Inc. and while some folks work on both cons, they are definitely separate and one wasn’t renamed into the other.

      1. Is Boskone still in “exile” is Springfield? The only time I attended it was there and not Boston but that was…not quite 30 years ago?

  3. “If the Sad Puppies wanted to start their own award… for Best Conservative SF, or Best Space Opera, or Best Military SF, or Best Old-Fashioned SF the Way It Used to Be… whatever it is they are actually looking for… hey, I don’t think anyone would have any objections to that. I certainly wouldn’t. More power to them.”

    If gays want to have their own pizzas places that cater their weddings, hey, I don’t think anyone would have any objections to that. I certainly wouldn’t. More power to them.

    If illegal immigrants want to have an improved life in their own country, hey, I don’t think anyone would have any objections to that. I certainly wouldn’t. More power to them.

    If unabashed cultural Marxists want to have their own public schools, universities and governments that are run by control freak bullies and petty bureaucratic tyrants, and start their own country somewhere else that’s not America, hey, I don’t think anyone would have any objections to that. I certainly wouldn’t. More power to them.

    I could go on like this all day.

    GRRM’s post is basically, “when my side was in control, everything was fine. As soon as we start losing, the whole thing is broken.”

    What a jerk.

    1. You’re spot-on. His might not have been the same volume of foot-stomping temper tantrum as Bradford’s screed was, but it’s still a temper tantrum. It’s the pseudo-reasoned response of someone whose grip is loosening, and he don’t like it one bit, no sir.

      Mr. Martin, as a historian, here’s a little bit of advice from the years I’ve been studying movements such as what the SJWs (and I call them that to distinguish them from actual social justice activists) represent today:

      The revolution eats its own. Today, you might be their darling for speaking power to truth, but they *will* turn on you one day. The fans you have denigrated today will remember, and they will not defend you when the movement turns its hungry gaze and bloody jaws on you. There will be no one to help you, to speak for you, or to defend you. At that point, it will be too late.

      1. The odd thing is that Martin has been attacked by these people on numerous occasions. There’s no shortage of SJW ranting about the sexism and racism in GoT/ASOIAF (because Danaerys is a blond white woman, e.g.).

        Granted, he’s big enough to be immune to such attacks, but one would think he’d have more pity for the little guys.

        1. If he were a little guy he’d be more than made aware he is an ethnic European heterosexual man, the cause of ills in the sick gender feminist ideology SJWs adopted for their own 5 years ago.

          1. James, googling “Game of Thrones racist” turns up some fine examples that you may want for your collection (assuming you don’t already have them).

          2. He’s got his own movie theater. I doubt he wastes much time Googling his name on the Internet. 🙂

          3. Yeah, I looked; “Easterlings.”

            These very odd people seem to want Chinese to tell their own stories, Arabs to tell their own stories, and me to tell those stories too. Tough, I have my own.

          4. Oh, but if you do tell their stories, you’re engaging in “cultural appropriation”, while if you don’t tell their stories, you’re “racist”.

            The only way to win that game is not to play.

    2. “Why can’t the gay rights people make their OWN boy scouts organization? Why can’t female comic book fans accept that the male super-heroes who get all the movies are just BETTER than their favorite heroines? And, seriously, isn’t it time the elderly realized that once they’re old society is right to pretend they don’t exist? If they want help and company, they just need to visit each other! Yeesh.”

      ….yeah, that part stunk.

        1. No, actually. That’s EXACTLY the context in which he meant it. He just didn’t mean it to apply to the peasants.

        2. Actually, I was trying to make the point that GRRM saying “Why can’t the unhappy people just go away and do their own thing” was kind of the very thing SJW always accuse the other sides of.

      1. What a pitiful attempt to twist a legitimate comparison. And assert all only leftists are capable of compassion and empathy for their fellow man.

        You disgust me.

        1. No, that wasn’t what I was asserting. I was agreeing with Joshua’s point that George R.R. Martin’s attitude of “If you people are unhappy, just leave us to do your own thing” very much resembles the supposed attitudes they allegedly claim to combat.

          Obviously, I did it poorly.

          1. No, you did it very well.

            Quit apologizing. Making the other side apologize is how you win this game.

          2. I kind of agree with him.

            The Hugos and the Nebulas aren’t just niches, they are too general niches.

            I would love to have a Best Military Science Fiction category, or even an individual award with subcategories like short story, graphic novel, tv series, movie, videogame, board game, best new writer, series and lifetime achievement.

            Same goes for a number of subgenres, like Hard SF, space opera, cyberpunk, and so forth.

    3. LC consistently reminds folks that he posts not to convert the entrenched liberals/SJWs but to reach the fence-sitters.

      GRRM, from what I recall, explained the gap between the SoIaF books by the fact that he was so dispirited when Bush was re-elected that it resulted in a years-long writing block for him.

      I suspect ‘moderate’ or ‘fence-sitter’ are not the terms that describe him and I suspect he is unlikely to be moved in his opinions. Still, you never know I suppose…

      1. Pshaw. Martin is no moderate. He’s just smart enough to start to realize that the histrionics that his fellow fascists have been engaged in are self defeating, so he’s striking a reasonable tone. But underneath that reasonable tone are the same fascist arguments that the hysterical have already put forward to no avail. Its just a posture. He’s not being reasonable, he’s being just a tiny bit cunning. And dishonest.

      2. But that’s the thing. This isn’t exactly trying to convince GRRM. This is one of those essays that will be passed all over the Internet, and thousands of fence-sitters will read GRRM’s casual dismissal of the wrong thinkers, and LC’s calm, logical rebuttal and correction of each point. Whether it sways GRRM or not is immaterial.

        1. Hi! Fence-sitter, here. I read GRRM’s LJ. Then I read this. I’m left-wing in my politics. I went to Loncon last year. I will never go to another Worldcon, even I, left-leaning, felt disenfranchised. I was bullied for not being a ‘trufan’ because I’d never been to a Worldcon before. Noticing how the voting worked… it’s a statistical nonsense. This article is exactly right. I don’t care what your political views are – I’ll read your books if they’re any good. I don’t appreciate people trying to tell me things are not good because they were written by someone with the ‘wrong’ views. I always wanted to be part of fandom, I thought I WAS. Nope. It’s stupid. Well done, sir, for your excellent experiment. The Hugos and that branch of fandom is now beneath my notice, I’ll carry on reading what *I* want to read.

          1. I’ll say that as a fan of sci-fi/fantasy, whether it be books, comic books, movies, TV, action figures, RPGs, video games, and whatever else I may have forgotten, I like that I can run into someone like Fence Sitter above and we can most likely have a great conversation about our mania. I don’t have to give any more of a shit about your politics than you do about mine while we’re discussing whether or not 5e is the best iteration of D&D since 2nd (it is), that it’s a fucking crime that Firefly was cancelled before we got to learn that Shepherd Book was actually the guy who ordered the attack on Serenity Valley (you know he was), how much gas Marvel Studios has left in their tank (hopefully a lot), why Games Workshop had to go so far off the fucking rails (this one may skirt dangerously close to politics depending on your attitude toward free market structures), and whether or not GRRM will actually finish ASoIaF before he gets a piece of a Milky Way the size of my big toe wedged in his ascending aorta.

            Seriously, these days being able to talk to someone rationally about something other than politics is becoming less and less common. In a time where our society is turning increasingly toward the main identifier which people apply to themselves is a political ethos, I’m glad that we can ideally have something like a shared geek-out over the fact that this next Star Wars movie *might* not suck. Being told that this shared apolitical interest can no longer be such blows camel dick. Being told that the reason we can’t have a shared apolitical interest is because I don’t believe in the right things is even worse.

          2. Welcome to the land of Enjoyment and WrongThink. We are glad to have another person whom we can share books that we find enjoyable.

          3. Holy heck, of course Shepard Book ordered the attack. Tuco, you brilliant bastard. Yup. That is absolutely the way Whedon would have (and probably did) set it up.

            You a writer yourself? Because that one insight is enough to make me buysomething you wrote.

      3. It’s true – I was following GRRM’ lj back in 2003 and when Bush won reelection he was all like ” winter has come to America.” Although I suspect his block is more about chickening out about his planned ending, whatever it is.

        1. Yeah, I don’t for one second think his writers block (any of them) have anything to so with politics. He just doesn’t want to finish his story. I think that’s why the last couple books were mostly treading water.

          The show is gonna finish it for him though.

      4. That he’s clearly left politically doesn’t mean that he’s not a “fence sitter” on the idea of inclusion in science fiction and at Cons. And while I’ve never actually talked to the guy I’ve done “fire marshal door guard duty” on his panels and “general hall monitor” for his book signing lines and from what I’ve seen he treats his fans with a great amount of respect… wait, I have spoken to him because he’s signed stuff for me… forgotten that.

        In any case!

        The thing is really… if your experience at conventions is warm and fuzzy and welcoming (even if you miss the days when you didn’t have to have an actual *staff* keeping you from getting mobbed) it’s reasonable to think that conventions are welcoming and fuzzy places.

        Various people have been explaining that to *them* going to a con might have been fun and they might have loved it, but it also would invariably involve at least one moment of silently enduring outright abuse toward you or yours… and probably more than that.

        That someone may have never realized that doesn’t mean that they think those people should just go away.

        And the same with the sort of terrified self-censorship that wanna-be authors were taught to practice, to make sure they didn’t let anyone find out they had a wrong-thought or voted the wrong way or were religiously observant in a way that wasn’t alternative.

        Just because someone is clearly left-politically doesn’t mean that they think that’s okay.

        (And it’s also one reason that the term SJW is used… because the self-appointed enforcers don’t actually include everyone that ever secretly or not-so-secretly killed off George Bush in a novel. There ARE liberals out there who are not interested in being the thought police.)

        1. Various people have been explaining that to *them* going to a con might have been fun and they might have loved it, but it also would invariably involve at least one moment of silently enduring outright abuse toward you or yours… and probably more than that.

          You mean that GRRM and his warm and fuzzy fellow travelers might have to…check their privilege? ^_^

      5. Eric Flint is quite literally a card-carrying socialist. He’s not a moderate or a fence sitter either when it comes to politics. But I believe he’s on “our side” when it comes to inclusion in sci-fi fandom. (He had a great essay some years back on why boycotting authors for their politics was a bad idea).

        Similarly, while Martin’s comments about Bush clearly indicate there’s no chance we’re making a Republican of him anytime soon, it may still be possible to convince him of the importance of being inclusive in fandom. His works at least (well, some of them) show a considerably more nuanced picture of the world than you might suspect from his political rants.

    4. This is battlespace preparation for changing the Hugo rules at Sasquan. The only question I have is if that gambit is predicated on “no award” sweeping the fields, precipitating a crisis, or if the SJW’s are able to lock us out without broader trufan support.

      1. And if they manage to change the rules, then we can point out that their little award no longer has any meaning outside of their little clique. And won’t THAT be setting the cat among the pigeons!

    5. Here’s the thing… Martin is a lot like an older Patrick Rothfuss. He’s a bleeding heart liberal who genuinely wants the world to be a better place. He’s not an SJW. He’s a man you could have a beer with while debating a point of disagreement and not have him smash you over the head with the bottle and say you deserved it.

      Martin is an idealist and I believe he sometimes mistakes today’s cries of unoppressed people for equality with the very real equality issues of the 60s. I would like to see him call out the SJW side a little more for their obscene behavior. I also believe that if their side toned down the -ist insults the backlash against them would slow down.

      However, as Vox has pointed out several times, the SJWs are always looking for a new target to attack and are seemingly immune to normal human reason. If we cannot reason with them, what other option is there but confrontation? Here’s a question I’d like to see Mr. Martin answer:

      Someone who has been slandered with the most vile names imaginable and who faces the very real possibility of having their reputation and career ruined. At what point is it okay for this person to fight back?

      1. He’s not an idealist if he’s making excuses for why his favorite people should remain in power, and have their way and continue bullying anyone else who disagrees with them, and oh, hey, as I say something so ridiculously outrageous as this, I’ll try to paper it over with a transparently insincere mask of reasonableness.

        You can’t be an idealist while spouting about you’re a soi-disant one-of-the-good-guys who’s actually simply an elitist and clinging to power for your clique. There’s a famous phrase you may have heard; “By your fruits shall ye know them,” and those ain’t the fruits of an idealist.

        For that matter, I don’t know how you can be an idealist and write such a wretched, nihilistic, amoral, and utterly joyless depiction of the human condition as his work either, but that may be neither here nor there.

        I didn’t have a lot of respect for GRRM before this, but his post on this today, especially the more I read it and the more I dig a bit into the details of it, the more I’m convinced that it is not in the least flattering to him at all.

        You’d think at least one of these guys would realize, or even at least suspect, that there are enough fans on the SP side that calling them out, calling them names, and contemptuously patronizing them is much worse career suicide than making the Nielson-Haydens and their little clique not like you.

        But no.

        1. Yep. This is the ol’ step up with a smile and talk and talk, saying nothing much, while his fellow travelers sneak up behind and plant the knife in.

          Concern trolling as a distraction. That’s all it is.

      1. It’s hard to read who this question is in response to, but on the off-chance that it’s me, absolutely. I don’t pretend to have said anything particularly brilliant or original anyway.

    6. I love this post.

      A convenient litmus test to see if someone is being a hypocrite is to simply take something he/she thinks is good and apply the same logic or circumstance that he/she is trying to push on to you.

      Quickly you will see that they are not looking for equality or acceptance, they are really after affirmation and overt repression of dissent of whatever their pet project or view happens to be.

    7. you forgot to add one more “if” example:

      **if black people want to have their own drinking fountains or stores that cater to their blackness, i wouldn’t have any objections to that.**

      when you leave that paragraph out, people might mistake you for reasonable.

    8. It’s funny, because it looks to me like a flipside of what is going on with GamerGate.

      Strange how when it appears to be their side that is on the outside of an entrenched fandom and trying to be heard it is an injustice beyond all human comprehension, but when someone is trying to make something they control more open and accepting to differing points of view? Oh, then it is still an injustice beyond all human comprehension.

      So it appears that the sole determination on whether an entrenched fan culture needs to make room for alternative points of view is on what side of the fence the SJWs are currently standing.

      Sounds tolerant.

    9. A very obviously flawed analogy.

      GRRM isn’t suggesting Sad Puppies shouldn’t be allowed to participate in Hugo nominations — whereas you ARE suggesting gays should be excluded from pizza places, immigrants should be excluded from the US by immigration law, “cultural Marxists” should be excluded from public schools, etc.

      GRRM is suggesting that Sad Puppies should participate in the Hugo nominations as equal participants rather than a political bloc. I’m sure GRRM would likewise believe that all the “undesirables” to whom you draw your analogy should also be able to take part in various aspects of public life as equals* — I think your perspective is actually that they SHOULDN’T.

      *Well, illegal immigrants are breaking the law by doing so, so I doubt GRRM would actively encourage that. But he’d probably advocate for some compassion for fellow human beings trying to make their lives and those of their children better. What a jerk.

      1. Sorry, who is proposing to exclude anyone from anywhere? Cite, please. Implied bigotry is obvious straw man.

        And equal participants…who pay their $40 and vote. So, you’re saying that a poll tax and a literacy test aren’t “equal” enough for you.

        “Bloc” = “the voters I disagree with.” Textbook liberalspeak. Because by definition, the ballot that wins was voted by a bloc who all voted similarly.

  4. Thank you for sharing with us, Larry. Even though it’s quite long, it’s very well worth reading it. And I agree with you. I am a new writer and a Mormon and a woman. I don’t understand why gender, religion, sexual orientation, color of skin or political ideology should be anyone’s business – especially when it comes to writing or writing awards. I don’t shout my ideas from the rooftops and then yell at people, if they don’t agree with me. I want people to read my work, comment on that said work and not about if they like the color of my hair or where I am from.

    Writing should be about writing and writing only. If the book is good, I really care less about what kind of dogs the author has and how many children, where he or she went to school and all that nonsense. Writing is not a reality show, it shouldn’t be treated as such.

    To be wide eyed newbie with no connections is never fun, even more so if you somehow don’t belong to some pre-defined mold that “the industry” approves of. Finding an audience and “making” it in this business is hard as it is, without dragging hate and social prejudices into it. Acting like cliques in high school is petty and childish ( but I bet they do it, because now they get to be the cool kids – instead of that bullied fat and pimpled kid they were back then ) – such a shame.

    I wish authors, who are already established and recognized world wide would remember how tough it was when they started out and stop making assumptions before hearing, reading and learning both sides of the fence.

  5. Excellent letter, Larry. Unfortunately, I suspect it will fall on deaf ears. After all, Mr. Martin was one of the people leading the charge to keep the wrong people out. Robert Jordan is one of his particular bete noirs – you think it a coincidence it took until A Memory of Light before there was even the thought of an award. Terry Goodkind – same reasoning. Weber, Stasheff, Correia, Flint, Ringo etc. You all have these things in common – you write good stories, sometimes, exceptional stories; you believe in the freedom of the individual and you have a sense of honour – something sorely lacking from most of the other authors – and I include GRRM in that group.
    I applaud your effort to reach out but please, don’t be surprised when your outstretched hand is gnawed off at the wrist. As an aside – I too have ponied up my money for supporting membership (even with the Canadian dollar exchange rate!) because I too have always believed that the Hugo was for all SFF fans – hell – Spider Robinson told me that in person – and if we can’t trust Spider – then we’re all shafted!

    1. This is the first I’ve ever heard of GRRM doing anything to prevent Robert Jordan, specifically, from getting a Hugo. You wouldn’t happen to have any links to back that up, do you?

      1. I’m not going to believe that one until I see some serious evidence. Martin’s fans tend to be somewhat hostile to Jordan, but as I recall, Martin himself has never said anything negative about the man; he’s given Jordan a lot of credit for ASoIaF’s success, saying that many of his fans first picked up Game of Thrones because of Jordan’s endorsement on the cover. He’s also put several little tributes to Jordan in the series: Trebor Jordayne, Lord of the Tor, and Archmaester Rigney (Jordan’s real name), who claims that time is a wheel.

        I suppose it’s possible that he says the right things in public but is a jerk about the man in private, but I’d want to see some proof before tossing that accusation around.

          1. Anecdotal evidence only, but I definitely found that when I was a serious ASoIaF fan. On the various message boards I found a lot of Jordan-hate. It tended to fall into two categories:

            1) The enthusiastic converts who believed that ASoIaF was OMG!!BEST THING EVA!!! and were determined to raise their idol at the expense of possible rivals (of which WoT was clearly the biggest). Thou shalt have no other gods before Martin.

            2) Ex-WoT fans who felt burned by the direction the series took after Book 6 and felt the need to rant about whenever someone would listen.

            Between the two groups, you could usually find at least one, more often multiple, Jordan-bashing threads at any given time.

          2. 2) Ex-WoT fans who felt burned by the direction the series took after Book 6 and felt the need to rant about whenever someone would listen.

            Man, those folks must have been pretty upset when ASoIaF started going in the same direction as early as book 4.

        1. Yeah, that’s kind of what I thought too. I’ve never seen any sign of animosity between Martin and Jordan, and hoped that anyone who would make an accusation like that would have something comcrete to back it up with. Hell, I *WAS* one of those fans who started reading ASoIaF primarily because of Jordan’s endorsement!

          Now, I SUPPOSE it could be argued that Jordan was snubbed in the Hugos because he wasn’t part of the clique, (which hopefully is all Rob Thompson meant) but even if that WERE true, it’s no more fair to blame Martin for that, simply because he is accepted by that clique, than it is to blame all white people for the racism of others. Despite everything social justice advocates say about “systemic” problems, you don’t become responsible for a problem simply by existing.

  6. It will be interesting to see if they change the rules next year. There will no doubt be enormous pressure brought to ensure This Never Happens Again.

    I guess they’ll always have the Nebulas.

    1. IIRC, to make a change for next year would require not only a change to the rules, but change about when a change in rules goes into effect. Typically it is supposed to take two years.

      1. That might be the motivation behind “no award.” Precipitate a crisis – no Hugos awarded – to drive the attending membership into drastic rule changes to respond to the emergency.

      2. The Nielsen Haydens are already down as guests of honor for the 2016 con. They, GRRM, a lot of the rest, have long-standing ties to cons (and Worldcons) in the KC area.

        I’ll put down $50 that says supporting memberships effectively won’t exist by 2017. They may up the price to basically the same as the con, they may just do away with them entirely – but there is no outcome where the unwashed, uninvited masses will continue to be allowed to decide the Hugos.

        1. Anyone who’s purchased a membership gets to show up for, and vote in, the business meeting. No rule changes can be made without being approved by business meetings in two consecutive years.

          If they cut out supporting memberships, they’ll go broke.

          1. “We had to burn the village in order to save the village.”

            They have 2 years to figure out some alternate form of financing. Big publisher sponsorships? Increase the price of an attending membership? Bump up dealer costs? GoFundMes?

            Lots of ways to get a little extra cash here and there. But, yeah, it ultimately ends in Worldcon shrinking even further and the Hugos being even less influential.

          2. I don’t consider myself a trufan, but I have attended five WorldCons. They ranged from good to fantastic. When I go, I try to read every Hugo nominee, and only vote in categories where I have read/seen at least a majority of the nominees. I probably am an outsider, although I am friends with several trufans and authors. I have spoken on several panels, mostly about gaming. My happiest moments are WorldCon were drinking with Terry Pratchett, which alas will happen no more; I also enjoyed lots of panels, especially when Worldcon was more about ideas and concepts in gaming instead of providing game rooms. But as a computer game professional, even by WorldCon standards, I am an outsider.

            I have never had anybody try to influence my Hugo ballot. That may be why I consider myself an outsider. I look at the controversy like this:

            1) Voting memberships exist for one organizational reason: they bring in more money for WorldCon. They also allow those who care, who read lots of science fiction, to participate, if they care enough to buy a voting membership.

            2) Anything the increases voting memberships is good for WorldCon. WorldCon needs money.

            3) My back of the envelope analysis of price points and vote numbers suggests that a Hugo award is fantastic as recognition, but doesn’t mean diddly for sales. Given how cheap it would be to buy a Hugo for a publisher’s title, and examples of much larger book buys to influence NY Times bestseller lists, and with the assumption that any nominated novel has a fan base, I’m pretty sure that the publishers don’t think it’s worth doing this.

            4) Thus Hugos are a very prestigious little award that means something to the community but has little outside value.

            5) If puppies of any mood are unhappy with how this is happening, they are free to organize their own slate using exactly the same rules.

            6) It does not feel good to feel disenfranchised. If, say, “Lord of Light” was blocked this year from being nominated by the concerted efforts of puppies, I would move from outsider to anti-puppy status, no matter which puppy was behind the move. And yes, I say this with knowledge that that disenfranchised feeling is a major motivator of this movement.

            7) Thus, I urge puppy nominating committees to not try to control any category. Nominate at most three out of five, or, rather, designate for nomination at most three out of five. Two would be more effective still. State you are doing so, and why. Thus, Hugo awards would not be controlled by a fraction of a fraction, those who make the nominations.

            In this way, we get a more balanced slate of nominees. You would seem more reasonable. Public opinion would swing your way. The Hugo award itself would have more meaning, since there would be nominations from more viewpoints. WorldCon would make money from all the voting memberships sold, and perhaps use that money to make for better conventions. And you would not risk the farce that a Hugo deserving author (say, Jim Butcher) who was on your slate, turn down a Hugo because he did not approve of what you were doing overall. (As an outsider, I don’t know Butcher’s feelings about puppies, but since his web site touts his nomination, I suspect that if he wins, he’ll accept).

            I also suggest that you are hurting your likelihood of winning by nominating most of a slate. Take the novella category. There were four novellas from one puppy publisher. I assume votes for them will be split. I predict the winner will be “Flow” because it is the only non-Castalia House nominee. You see this kind of thing happen all the time in baseball MVP voting. Will Andrews feel he really deserved his win? If “Flow” really did deserve the win, haven’t you diminished Andrews’ joy? And as a science fiction fan, what if history would judge some other novella, forced to the side, as being the deserving nominee from a new writer who deserved the recognition? Will I be likely to become pro or anti puppy?

            What you have done, at least in the Novella category, is proven to the science fiction community at large that their system is broken. You have made thousands of Hugo awards fans unhappy and disillusioned. That’s not really why I read science fiction. ComicCon and Game Developers Conference and GenCon are looking a lot more interesting to me than the next WorldCon. I could not persuade my wife to go this year even though she loves the Canadian Rockies, which would be a relatively short/cheap detour. None of my outsider friends are going or voting either.

            To me, as an outsider, you have tarnished the Hugos. I don’t think that was your goal. And you look unreasonable and selfish. Which I know was your point: you felt excluded and left out by a nominating process astonishingly easy to game. . I don’t think they are broken beyond repair, but then I’m by nature an optimist

            What’s done is done. If you are truly science fiction fans, I ask you to consider what I wrote. If you are more interested in vengeance, I fear for the survival of the Hugos.

          3. Man, I get tired of repeating myself… I’ve only written about this a dozen times now.

            You know you wrote a whole big bunch of stuff, most of it about how Sad Puppies shouldn’t have filled whole categories, but you miss the one basic fact that WE DID NOT. In the vast majority of categories the Sad Puppies suggested slate left gaps. In the few categories we took up all five it was because so many fans suggested them.

            In the categories that were filled, it was due to the fact that the Rabid Puppies (a separate group) took our suggestions, and then filled in the remainder of the slots with their own picks.

            And you’re missing another huge thing. We made suggestions. The fans we got involved voted for what they wanted. The SP supporters didn’t vote in lockstep. Looking at the tallies and how many of our things didn’t make it in categories like Best Novel, the SP fans didn’t vote straight ticket, they voted for whatever they personally wanted.

            So you can feel like we tarnished it all you want, because my side has felt like the award has been tarnished for a very long time.

          4. I notice you totally ignore the last 8 years of the Making Light/Tor group stuffing the ballets for their friends. Like 5 winning long form editor Hugo’s going to Tor editors from a total of 18 nominations. With Hayden himself winning 3 Hugo’s.

          5. If thousands of fans are disappointed it would be a surprise for me since there were only 1083 ballots submitted for the Novella category. Sheesh.

          6. > You have made thousands of Hugo awards fans unhappy and disillusioned.

            Richard, I don’t think you see it the other way. You have given some Hugo Award fans hope for the first time in years. I am a passionate reader and writer of SF pulp and ideas-based fiction – what Vox Day calls ‘blue’ SF. I’m a former scientist (female) and was attracted into doing a PhD by SF adventures written by real scientists like Rendezvous with Rama.

            I’ve been disillusioned by the Hugos and by short fiction, which seems to be slanting towards fantasy that prioritises emotional masturbation over ideas. I’ve never been tempted to write short fiction because ideas and adventures stories didn’t seem to get published anymore – or, at least, didn’t appear on prominent awards shortlists which I used to pick what to read.

            As a result of encountering this year’s Hugo Award nominees, I’m daring myself to write a short story for the first time. If I succeed, I will be a woman writing hard SF. The anti-puppies claim that the puppies are putting women off SF but, in my case, it’s the opposite.

            It’s worth mentioning that only 10% of submissions to Tor in SF are by women… Not acceptances, but submissions. Women aren’t being thrown out of SF by a cabal of misogynists. They’re not submitting manuscripts in the first place.

        2. That would (under the current WSFS constitution) require raising the voting fee to the same price as an attending membership. Since it takes two cycles to amend the constitution *and* the vote for 2017 takes place this year, 2017 looks extremely likely to continue to have supporting memberships.

        3. The obvious answer is to fire all the honest vote counters.

          Keep the money from the Sad & Rabid Puppies, but shuffle the votes so they get two or three nominees only, then the blessed SJW finalists win.

          1. Actual conspiracies are rare because once you expand them beyond one person, they tend to get exposed.

            Whatever they do, it will be something systematic, repeatable, and public. GRRM already laid the foundation by repeating the laughable claim that only now are the Hugos too broken. They must be “fixed.”

        4. However, on their blog, they’ve admitted it would be a real trick to change the rules to keep the wrongfans out.

          Indeed, some commenters grumbled that what was needed was a moderator.

          There is no way to fight abusive rules-lawyers by writing stricter policies. The only method that has ever worked against abusive rules-lawyers is moderators empowered to say, “You’re being an asshole, and now you are banned,” and powerful gatekeepers behind the moderators supporting them when the rules-lawyers attempt to shriek for redress.

          1. These people love moderators! It is just awful to hear words from people you don’t agree with. Ban them all.

  7. I find it utterly hilarious that the opponents of Sad Puppies have—not satisfied with poking the small sleeping bear—have decided to shove their pointy sticks at Gamegate. When I pointed out that doing this had a good chance of provoking thousands of Gamergaters into buying Worldcon Supporting Memberships next year, I was confidently told that Gamergate would not be around in a year, and that we were racists and misogynists, and “fuck off” and was blocked.

    1. I don’t think it’ll be thousands but from ehat I heard about the numbers already a small crowd can skew the whole thing.

      I am a GamerGater who recently bought a membership. Before this whole kherfuffle I wasn’t really aware of the Hugos nor of the perks of being a member despite reading quite a lot of SFF: I have read stuff from all sides of this issue. Scalzi or Butcher? An author’s nsme really didn’t make a lot of difference because all works can offer interesting perspectives.

      I will read, nominate and vote for whatever I end up enjoying most. However, I am abit disappointed by the behaviour of the likes of Scalzi. It is just the same arrogant demeanor we saw in GG from people who want to depict themselves as righteous warriors for justice telljng the unwashed masses what to do when in reality they need to be humbler.
      If they write something that deserves an award I will still give them a vote but preaching only works as long as the preacher hasn’t been found out to truly be the most sinful of all. And some of these sjws really seem to be one-trick ponies.

      Something tells me the next few Hugos will be very interesting. May the best fiction win.

    2. Funny thing about poking the Gamergaters. They spend money. That’s kind of the point. They are the end consumer of the $100 billion Videogames industry. A Worldcon membership is less than 1 game, and most of them really are SciFi fans. SciFi fans who spend.

      At what point do those operating Worldcon see the sudden surge in unexpected funding and start to rethink the whole equation? That’s kind of the thing with the SJW’s. At the end of the day these are all businesses. Money talks. And the SJW’s are typically infamous for not really having any and not spending it so freely. Whereas Gamergaters? I seem to recall the opening salvo labeling them as “Wailing Hyper-Consumers”. In other words nerds who have lots of disposable income and freely spend it. If you’re a starving writer starting out or the people running a declining and shrinking SciFi con, which group would you rather have on your side? The Shrill penniless hippie SJW’s? Or the Wailing Hyperconsumers with money to burn?

      1. Gamers spend AND they will show up – rain, snow, sub-zero temperatures be damned – to wait in line for hours to pick up a game that they will then concentrate on for anywhere from 10 to 300+ hours to finish. Gamers as a whole is the posterchild of the wrong group to lob attacks at and expect them to disappear in short order.

    3. Exactly, Mr. Henderson. Sad Puppies 4 is going to be a tsunami. They’ll be drowned.

      The will for self-destruction is amazing, isn’t it?

  8. “First and foremost, you guys need to decide, once and for all, what the Hugo Awards really are. There are two choices.

    It is the most prestigious award which represents the best works in all of fandom.
    It is a little award, for one little group of people, at one convention.

    You can’t have both. Pick one, stake your flag on it, and we will proceed from there. ”

    That is really all it would take, isn’t it? Well, that and some actual accountability for the position.

    Throughout this whole thing, there’s one side that is clearly unwilling to come to the table and talk ‘peace,’ and its clear which side that is.

    Its the side that wants to have its cake and eat it. They want to enjoy the prestige of being the most important award in all of sci-fidom, but they want to *operate* as an insular clique that passes down its decisions from on high and let everyone else just suck it up.

    That this arrangement has essentially tanked the importance of the award to anyone outside the clique is merely incidental.

    Essentially they want to ride on the longstanding reputation of an award that USED to be about the very best of the genre while not having to live up to the standards that such a reputation implies.

    And the fact that there is a group willing to TANK The award as a whole really just underlines this.

    So that is really all it comes down to. They can either announce to the world that the hugo award is the choice of a small, insular, nonrepresentative sample of the sci-fi fandom, and close the doors on everyone else (and accept the consequences that has for the award) or they can continue with the facade of it being an open process for the fandom and suck it the fuck up when the fandom doesn’t swing their way.

  9. If you can make me tear up reading a blog post – you may not ever accept another Hugo nomination but you’re on my list of “buy release day” writers. And that’s a short list.

  10. Always a pleasure to read you, Larry, from your fiction, to this. I’m just a little Fan, no shrines, and when I started out, I had no idea my flag of heartfelt affection for Baen would have me standing in the corner, rejected and confused, in most cons. Fortunately, there are others who feel like me, and want to see more diversity – true diversity – return to the Hugo Awards.

  11. My take is that George is simply sad to see something he loves/loved change and he’s trying to let people know how it changed. I didn’t get the impression he was trying to attack anyone directly. Even when he talked about forming another award.

    There are plenty of talks about how to change the Hugo voting system. It won’t happen next year because of WorldCon rules. Some I feel are really fair ideas that leave room for everyone to have a place at the Hugo Awards table. Other suggestions are rather self interested.

    A lot of authors are vowing they will decline a nomination if they end up on a slate. That might get used against them.

    The No Award campaign is going pretty strong. I can see that forming a counter No Award campaign which some have mentioned, but the more extreme crowd isn’t listening.

    I find it all kind of sad. But I’m just going to read the works and let my ballot go where it will. I kind of wish I could go back to the days of Hugo voting when I didn’t know any of the closed-door politics.

    1. I’m giving serious thought to adopting “No Award, No Buy” as a personal policy.

      If you try to “game the Hugos” by urging people to vote No Award based on politics, I won’t buy your books.

      1. You’re not alone.

        I don’t have a problem with people disagreeing with SP, politics, etc. I do have a problem with hypocrisy and loud online tantrums. I’d rather spend my time in worlds created by honorable authors who truly understand and appreciate real diversity.

        1. Honestly, I don’t even care if you’re a rabid racist sexist homophobe. I know I’m not supposed to say that, so my view doesn’t get appropriated as some SP3 viewpoint (which it isn’t, I speak for myself), but if you write good books, I don’t care what your personal politics are. That’s the point.

          OSC is certainly one example of this, and given the number of people who have read his books or watched the movie version, it just goes to show someone’s writing is what should be judged, not what they believe. That he won a Hugo almost 20 years ago points to a time when this was, in fact, the case.

          1. “but if you write good books, I don’t care what your personal politics are. That’s the point.”

            I agree with you. Where I draw the line for myself, as a reader, is when I come across authors attacking–not disagreeing, but outright attacking–others (authors, readers, people at large).

            There are a number of stories I’ve loved over the years, many written by authors who have completely different ideas, opinions, and beliefs than I do. I’m fine with that, and I enjoy it because I want to understand how different people tick. In a perfect world, an author spewing hate on the internet wouldn’t affect my enjoyment of their stories. Being only human, I have to admit that a fair number of books have been spoiled for me because their authors have gone on the attack. Not because we don’t share the same political opinions. I’m sad for that.

        2. I have no idea why I can’t reply to your other comment, but I just want to say that I read what you wrote wrong, and thanks for the clarification.

        3. I agree with you, windsong. To me SFF has always been the vehicle for exposure to new ideas. I do not say I agree with all the ideas, but at least those ideas got me to think.

          Also, SFF ideas have brought us many of the things we have today. Ideas from DiVinci (artist, not writer, I know.) got us flying. Ideas from J Verne got us submarines. Ideas from I Asimov got us robotics. What else dreamed of by SFF writers will we see tomorrow?

          Unfortunately, today’s SFF lecturing gives me only heartburn.

          1. Heck, Star Trek, soft SF as is it, got us automatic sliding doors and (arguably) cell phones.

          2. My very first cell phone was a Motorolla Star Tak. The name is no coincidence. It was an explicit callout to Star Trek. My current phone is not a flip phone, but it has voice recognition. I could set it so that when I said “Kirk to Enterprise” it would make the call. (So long as I knew the Enterprise’s number.)

          3. The Trek device is a walkie-talkie, its contribution is pretty much just the physical appearance of the device. There were walkie-talkies prior to Trek.

  12. Thank you for that Larry, as a long time Science Fiction and Fantasy reader (since the 60’s) I appreciate you saying all of this. And I appreciate SP as well.

    GRRM needs to understand, that when you keep beating the peasants, eventually they will rise up and take over. The people who are all screaming now made this bed, and now they have to lie in it. There is no defense that can be made for their actions, it is too late for that.

    Again, thank you Mr Correia.

  13. The tolerant ones are sure wasting a lot of air telling us why certain people aren’t allowed.

  14. GRRM is an example of why moderates are useless. They don’t care about the kid getting beaten up on the playground until the kid gets a good swing and topples the bully into them, spilling their juice box. At that point, suddenly fighting is a terrible thing and the kid who fought back should be ashamed of himself or something.

    Yes, he says a lot of good things, but he said them all too late, and only when those things could also work in service of the bullies.

    1. Bingo. I have no skin in this. I’m not a sci-fi reader. But it really grinds me when people start to fight back and are called nasty things because they rejected being treated like crap. As if its their fault they just didn’t die and go away.

      For true neutrals I sympathize because usually they don’t see the drama that leads to these things. The “cool set” usually don’t have to do dramatic things. They did it all in advance by whispers and back-channeling. And those oblivious don’t see the change before them or just decide it doesn’t affect them.

      And so it goes, life is all high school again… just with some of the roles switched around.

  15. It’s amazing to me that a lot of the very vocal “fans” railing against the Sad Puppies will now be patting Mr. Martin on the back; they’ve only spent several years loudly complaining about the “problematic” nature of the popular show based on his novels.

    I don’t care about politics, I care about being entertained. I don’t want a mediocre political lecture dressed up with fiction held up as “the best in the genre”.

    Just the other day, I saw someone (SJW) online attempting to explain that the “just make your own” argument is steeped in privilege, and is inherently “problematic and dismissive”. Never forget, “It’s okay when they do it!”

    I hate to admit it, but I firmly believe these people are willing to destroy the Hugos if they can’t control them.

    1. “I hate to admit it, but I firmly believe these people are willing to destroy the Hugos if they can’t control them.”

      They already *have* destroyed the Hugos for everyone else. But I agree with you that they are petty and childish enough to take up their ball and go home rather than play fair in the future.

    2. Yes, but how numerous are they really? I mean… how numerous are those people who mostly write “important” things on the internet about how much horrible bad-think is in Game of Thrones? Or who go on and on about any other particular aspect of Wrong Fun involved in a good Colonial Diaspora or First Contact novel or Alternate History?

      I mean… will they even try to bring in more and more fans who are politically left or liberal on the theory that *of course* all of those people obviously prefer a certain kind of story? Their voices would be every bit as diluted, no matter who got involved.

      1. Anything that brings more voters in isn’t a bad thing. And especially from Worldcon’s perspective, it shouldn’t be.
        Worldcon has gotten lots of extra money from the Sad Puppies campaign, probably over 10,000 dollars this year.
        It is in the interests of Worldcon (as a convention), to have more Hugo voters paying them money.

  16. Yeah, we could totally make up our own award. Hell, some groups have. But none of those awards have ever pretended to be for everyone.

    I find it hysterical that this “The Hugo’s aren’t for fandom, they’re for WorldCon” meme fires up this year, despite how well Sad Puppies 2 did. None of their arguments last year swayed anyone (at least not in the ways they wanted), so now they had to try something new, so they’re using the “it’s not for you” line. Whatever.

    This is the same award that nominated a soft core porn film for best dramatic presentation in the past. Perhaps some of the people so bent out of shape should consider that before the climb up on their high horse.

    1. Maybe the “No Award” could be the new award. For people who have been paying attention, the publisher could put that on the cover and they’d know it was a good book because it was rejected by a bunch of simpering message fic simpletons who think ignorance is a badge of honor. Take the “No Award” and turn it into something to be proud of.

  17. I want one because Robert A. Heinlein won four, because Roger Zelazny and Alfred Bester and Ursula K. Le Guin and Fritz Leiber

    Good grief. Does Martin have any idea how not only Heinlein, but also Zelazny, Bester and Leiber get viewed by SJ– *ahem*, a certain class of folks? Does he seriously think ANY of those authors would have a shot at winning a Hugo in the here and now?

    1. Him bringing up Heinlein, Zelazny, etc. seems rather disingenuous, given that the actual argument is that the SJW capture is a recent thing.

      1. “Him bringing up Heinlein, Zelazny, etc. seems rather disingenuous, given that the actual argument is that the SJW capture is a recent thing.”

        Actually, no.

        People have gotten fed up enough to start fighting back. That’s recent. The SJW have been working on doing what they’re now publicly called out on since PCism became popular.

        1. Hi, Pug!

          Something I find amusing: the other day I read a recent fb post by K. Tempest Bradford, saying that people like her have been working to make sf more “inclusive” for the past thirty years. Well, this year a whole bunch of people have included themselves.

          1. Hi, back atcha, Stephen!

            Keep in mind that with SJWs, whatever they claim they stand for, their actual intended effect is 180 degrees off.

            So, yeah, by “inclusive” she meant “only us”.

        2. Depends on where the line between “recent” and “not recent” is. Yes, the backlash against SJW capture is more recent than SJW capture. But SJW capture is more recent than Heinlein, Zelazny, etc. winning their Hugos.

          The Sad Puppies position, as I understand it, is that Heinlein, Zelazny, etc. deserved their Hugos, but that the SJW cliques recently in control of the Hugos would not have awarded them. But historically, they *did* win them, ergo SJW capture must have happened more recently than when Heinlein, Zelazny, etc. won their Hugos.

    2. “Kameron Hurley ‏@KameronHurley 6h As long as we present SFF as stuff by/for folks like Asimov, Heinlein, Bester and Ellison, this isn’t going to happen.Will be fewer readers”

      “Runy ‏@runycat 6h @KameronHurley I would be fucking thrilled if folks could get over their weird Heinlein boners and move forward.”

      “Ro Smith ‏@Rhube 5h @KateElliottSFF @KameronHurley @gderekadams @runycat I’m now happy with chucking out ‘classics’ rife with misogyny, racism etc.”

      1. The Mirror Empire by Kameron Hurley, 2014: Amazon Sales Rank: 39,000, 4 stars

        Starship Trooers by Robert A. Heinlein, 19-friggin-59: Amazon Sales Rank: 4,622, 4.4 stars

        I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you, Kameron, Runy, and Ro.

        Note that this isn’t just a bunch of “old white guys”. Old white guys bought their copies of Starship Troopers decades ago.

        1. As far as I can tell, Hurley doesn’t really have anything to say as an artist. Her main talent seems to be promoting people like herself and railing against everyone else. Her Atlantic piece shows she can’t even think. I doubt Heinlein or Bester would’ve been dumb enough to write such an article when they were 8 yrs. old. Does she think quote marks are only for dialogue?

        2. I run a comics/games store on a military base. I sell multiple copies of Starship Troopers every WEEK, to guys who are 18-19 years old.

          I don’t even bother trying to stock the SJW message-fic.

          1. They let comics/games stores on base now?

            Dang, back when I was in, both Heavy Metal and Epic magazines were banned from the PX.

          2. Peterson had a gamestore. Then the moved over to FT. Carson and farther away from me.

          3. I was in the Corps. We were under PX Kelly as CMC.

            It was the era where it came down from on high that all officers would wear their shiny insignia on both collars and their cover, regardless of garrison, field or deployment.

            And, all enlisted had to wear white t-shirts because we were the good guys.

            Oh, and no official unarmed combat training because we might hurt a civilian when on libo.

            But, the powers that be stood staunch against allowing comics to rot our brains and sap our fighting spirit!

            Bastards.

        3. Old white guys have been busy trying to MAKE Starship Troopers powered armor ever since Heinlein made it up.

          Almost 50 years later, starting to get some of the basics working. Still no decent power source, I suspect we have to wait for room temperature superconductors.

          Somebody show me an SJW author who invented something that other guys immediately set out to try and make.

          1. Star Trek doors. The Great Bird of the Galaxy was hardly a right-winger, and a guy sat up and said, dude, that would be so useful! and worked for years on proximenty sensors to make the doors work.

            One of the ST:TNG guys (JF? maybe?) was talking with some of the TOS crew, and he was “man, the thing I hated most was having a take screwed up because the doors weren’t working right. Bet you guys hated that, too, huh?”

            And the TOS actors were like, “dude. We had two crew guys pulling the doors apart on the other side. No automatic opening doors for us.”

            The dreams our stuff is made of, indeed.

  18. Personally, if the Hugo’s Powers That Be decide they want their award to toddle off into the setting of whatever triple sunset they envision on their own tiny private island, I would have a hard time caring.

    They had so damaged their brand years ago with me due to the dreck that they promoted that I had been actively avoiding buying books that had had the so-called “honor”. In fact, I had pretty much given up sci-fi and fantasy altogether letting my Asimov and Sci-Fi and Fantasy and Science Fiction Book Club subscriptions lapse and rarely bought anything from any bookstore anymore.

    What I WOULD like to see is some award that DID actually encourage and support anyone, no matter what their personal private thoughts or politics might be, who could tell a good story. Don’t care about personal lives, don’t care about politics. Do NOT want to be harangued about any of those things as part of a story either -unless there was a very good plot-based reason for it.

    I don’t care what they call this award, I don’t care who is Pope of it. I just want good stories to be honored.

    It doesn’t even have to be stories I like. Not a fan of this Martin dude’s books but I certainly wouldn’t be surprised to see him get awards as I know he is very popular and his fans are devoted. But I wouldn’t feel gypped if stories like his won over stories I personally liked better.

    He’s no If You Were a Dinosaur My Love, in other words.

    1. Oh, but that award already exists: It’s now 2 years old. It’s called the Sad Puppies Nominating Slate.

      Seriously, if we were nominated as books that help cure puppy-related sadness, I’d count that as an honor on par with classic hugos… and better than winning a hugo today.

      When I’m hunting for a good read beyond the pool of fan recommendations, I’ll buy stories off the list, even without having heard of them before, because they’re good.

      1. Which brings up a truly inspired idea for next year. For SP4 put GRRM on the Sad Puppies Slate. He’s obviously got the quality work product that the fans crave. He rights interesting characters that fans fall in love with. ( Then slaughters them in horrifying ways before their eyes. One suspects ol’ George may have a few “issues”) so put him on the Sad Puppies nominating slate next year and watch what happens. Watch how various people including George react. Much like Larry’s other tests buried into the SP concept. It would show the truth of where things lie.

        1. We’ll have to see how good it is. Me, I gave up on Game of Thrones when I saw Feast of Crows available at the library and realized I didn’t care.

          Likewise, though Pratchett’s not getting one is a disappointment, I suspect I would not support Shepherd’s Crown, because I fear I have seen the decline of his writing powers in painful evidence in earlier works.

        2. For SP4 put GRRM on the Sad Puppies Slate.

          Dude, no way WoW will be out in time at this point. I guess you could put some random short story on there…

      2. “Oh, but that award already exists: It’s now 2 years old. It’s called the Sad Puppies Nominating Slate.”

        Okay, this one make me do that snort laugh. And you’re 100% correct 😉

  19. One thing that stands out if you look at Hugo nominees and winners is that ONE publisher and it’s authors dominates far more than you would expect. Maybe more than just political, it’s the opinions of that publisher and more importantly, it’s editorial staff that’s been driving the Hugos for far too long now. Do we really want to turn the Hugos into the “best of Tor?”

    1. If the Hugos were the best of Tor, SP wouldn’t exist.

      Alas, the Hugos are actually ‘the works that make Tor’s SJW’s feel superior, yet still sell enough not to get them openly laughed at’.

  20. You keep rejecting those nominations, Mr. C. You’ll get lot’s of practice at it, in the coming years. (Well, as along as you keep putting out good stuff. You pull a C.Stross (politics over story) or LK Hamilton (pr0n before story) and , out you’ll go. Don’t do that, please.

    Until then you’ll remain on my list of “Do it this way” type authors. Never Quit! Never Surrender!

    (Note to self: find out what Mrs. C likes, bribe her. He’ll come around.) 😛

    1. I have decided that until he backs down from this ridiculous no Hugo pledge I shall refer to him as His Terrible Holiness Larry Correia, International Lord of Hate, defender of puppies, Scourge of the SJW’s, Hugo Pope.

    2. You guys are playing into WorldCon’s hands.

      They can fire the honest counters and replace them with people following a ‘higher truth’ now that Larry has vetted them.

      Then, they can take all the S/R Puppies slate votes, award them to Larry overwhelmingly, he declines as promised, and the 4 SJW’s are joined by #6 SJW, for a sweep of the category.

  21. Well. The reaction to this should be interesting.

    (Sadly, more likely the silence will be deafening)

  22. “You guys had competing cliques, but to us it was like an Eskimo having a thousand different words for snow, and you can tell us about your many diverse and wonderful types of snow, but all we saw was snow.”

    This is a wonderful way to describe this. I’m going to use this a lot to describe liberal diversity(tm), versus actual diversity.
    I’ll give you credit, though. Maybe.

    1. I personally would have thought that “but all we saw was a snow job” would have sent a more direct message, but to each his own.

      1. A very interesting set of lists.

        Really too bad we adopted a “Standardized Dictionary” and (mostly) dropped the Germanic approach of -making- new compound words.

        Because we’d be crushing the “Words for snow” count at that point.

      2. Yeah, bad list. Many of the ‘English words for snow’ refer to ice formations themselves. Or don’t apply merely to snow itself at all in the case of accretion, cornice, ablation et al. The Inuit still have many more words for snow.

  23. Thank you, Larry, for saying what needed to be said.

    I’m not really part of the adult SFF fandom. I *love* SFF, but in the kidlit sector, so the Hugos have never really been on my radar beyond some abstract award on certain books. Kind of like the Newbery.

    The reason I’m getting involved now is because I’m tired of watching people lie, spew hate-filled rhetoric, do their best to bury dissenting voices (while they claim to abhor censorship), and assassinate people’s characters while patting each other self-righteously on the back. Discrimination is bad, they say. Unless, of course, it flows from one direction.

    I’m tired of being afraid of voicing my opinions on what *should* be small, inconsequential matters for fear of backlash and twitter mobs. I’m tired of watching good people being torn down because they march to the dictates of their own consciences instead of socially approved jargon. And I’m more than a little irritated with myself for only being able to speak up now, under a screen name, because I can’t deal with all that comes from standing up and saying enough right now.

    Thank you for being willing to take a stand. I am sorry for all the hate that has come your way because of it.

    1. Hey, fellow YA fan! Glad to see you here.
      Yeah, the Hugos ignored YA except in 2009. It stinks. But the more YA fans who get involved in the Hugos, the more that will change.

      1. Hail, and well met, fellow traveler. 🙂 (Although, I must confess, I’m more of an upper MGer or young YAer.)

        I agree. One of the things I’ve appreciated about the SP campaigns is learning that we *can* vote. (Though I’m still not sure if Middle Grade qualifies or not. >.<) I'm hoping that as more and more people learn they can vote that they will. 🙂

        1. As long as it is SFF, it qualifies. In one of the two years YA was nominated, the Graveyard Book won. It also won a Newberry, which is a children’s award. There is nothing forbidding Middle Grade, as long as it’s SFF.
          Go for it.

      2. I love YA and adult both. I wonder why the Hugo has no YA category? Perhaps it just never occurred to them. Some of the best stuff I’ve seen in years is coming from the YA section.

        1. STARSHIP TROOPERS was written to be a YA novel. No one distinguished between “adult” and “young adult”, just “great” and “not great.”

        2. It is part of the regular fiction categories. It is just far from proportionally nominated, considering it sells nearly 4 times as much in print as adult SFF.
          That being said, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and the Graveyard Book, both won Hugos despite being YA (or children’s).

  24. Oh, and Mr. Martin needs to be careful, or else Kevin Standlee will arrive to tell us how there has been no cliquishness or any kind of collusion involved in the Hugo process, despite what George R.R. Martin says.

    1. “It would have been noticed!!!!”

      “We noticed it.”

      “But we would have seen a pattern!!!!!”

      “We saw a pattern.”

      “This has never happened before!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

      “Um, it’s been happening for years.”

      “….oh yeah, well….you just want to make people cry and stuff! This blog said so!”

    2. yes, this exactly. I remember Kevin first made a comment about seeing possible indications of it (Vox has the quote copied somewhere) but he quickly backed off of that one!

      I just keep thinking of Casablanca “Rick! I am shocked to discover that gambling has been going on in this establishment”.

      Everyone knows that the awards have been gamed for years, the winner’s list made that very clear. Now they’re going to have the change the rules made by all those ‘old dead white men’ if they want to keep control of something which they hijacked in the first place.

      1. At the risk of giving the CHORFs any ideas: They’ll remove the supporting memberships. Or make voting done only at Worldcon in person. May happen at this year’s, may happen at next year’s, but it will happen. Makes too much sense.

        This will, of course, financially hit the Worldcons going forward to the tune of, what, $20k or so? Maybe more? And it will make the Hugo even more irrelevant going forward, the sole property of a dwindling number of greying old timers. But, dammit, sometimes you have to burn the village to save the village, right?

        1. So then we set up an award that is nothing but supporting memberships. $25, the cost of a hardcover, buys you a vote. Let WorldCon keep the Hugo, we’ll buy the rights at the fire sale when the last Trufan dies.

          Then we can run retro Hugo awards. Start at 1990 and we nominate five pieces published that year that go on the final ballot alongside the five original nominees.

        2. I asked a similar question on Mad Mike’s FB page, and he said last year’s supporting memberships brought in 60 kilobucks.

          Dunno if that’s gross or net income, didn’t think to ask. Doesn’t sound like that much, though, even for a con that struggles to hit 10K attendees (never mind Hugo voters).

          1. Net and Gross both. WorldCon knows how to print cheaply. The biggest hit is bulk postage. A generous estimate is $3/supporting membership. Hell, call it $5 to allow for skimming.

            After that, what the heck does a supporting member cost? Nothing.

            And they’re pushing email printing, which is totally free.

          1. And this is another example where the CHORFs (which is more polite than SJWs) are contradicting themselves (more precisely each other). Because on the one hand Bradford says $50 is too much for some people (and she is not necessarily wrong) and on the other some anti-Sad Puppies writers (not Bradford to my knowledge) have specifically complained how it is too easy for the unwashed masses to fork over $40 for a supporting membership and have a say in the Hugos. So it’s too much and excludes… people. Or it’s too little and lets too many… people in.

            We should not forget Bradford attended an elite university and at one point lived off rich friends while attending writing workshops.

          2. Well, there will have to be scholarships, won’t there?

            Free (voting) memberships given out to only a deserving few who can’t afford it. And, of course, selected by only those wisest and most able to choose who is deserving.

            Nah. They’ll just kill off supporting.

          3. Can’t be done without bankrupting them. Supporting memberships are basically free money.

            They’ve got their sensitive non-gender-specific bits caught in a cleft stick, with no way out.

        3. I think in all this I remember seeing that over twice as many nominations have come in the last two years. That would make about 1,000, give or take, new memberships. If all those are just supporting memberships that’d net them $40K a year. That ain’t chump change. You’d think they would be thrilled. Even old GRRM says they struggle financially. We should be welcomed with open arms but noooo.

          1. The organizers (for Loncon, at least), were very gracious last year, according to this blog (unless I am remembering incorrectly). They do like getting $60000 dollars that doesn’t come with expenses.
            In other words, the people who actually have to pay for the con are thrilled about supporting membership money. Other fans who are involved with the con are less thrilled about the Puppies giving huge amounts of free money to Worldcon.

        4. They’ll remove the supporting memberships.

          Which makes Michael Z. Williamson either prescient or an Evil genius – he called for making Supporting Memberships $5 to increase diversity by attracting more Third World voters. SJWs hoist upon their own petard!

  25. Larry, I appreciate your tireless work trying to explain your mind and your history with these awards. I’m beginning to really understand your perspective and the goals of SP3. Your character is coming through and making an impact with me.

    If I may as a sideline observer – please try to continue to keep this as a fight on the issues. A friend of mine said “This is actually a really good lesson in “why a speaker needs to use persuasive language instead of divisive language”.

    Had the SPs made their point (the awards are the province of cliques and claques) without the ingroup snide language (“all the sjws are trufen!”) this might have gone better.” In that, we are in agreement. As one who tends Conservative (and Christian – just for further marginalization in SFandom!), that was a primary reason why I, someone who would otherwise fit nicely in the SP3 footprint, was initially troubled by what was happening. The in-group snide language looked less to me like gentle good humor and more to me like thugs rattling shields. If the SPs are really plucky but selfless freedom fighters honestly pushing back against oppressive insider trading I’d hope that could be evidenced by the excellence of the participants. The motto should not be (imo) “They shall know we are (fans) by our snark.”

    I’m interested in an award where the works are judged on their respective merit regardless of the politics / race / gender / religion / whatever of the author. I don’t know if it’s possible to get there but that’s what I’m still eager for – some kind of peace where cooler heads can work out something that represents the best of us all. I’m worried that this world may be too partisan to find that kind of common ground. If anyone would be able to find the grit and imagination to bridge that gap, I’d hope it were SF/F fans. “You may call me a dreamer…” etc.

    Anyway, I wanted to say many of us are reading this dialogue with great interest and some of us on the fence are being swayed by how you’re handling yourself. Keep fighting the good fight goodly, if that makes sense.

    Kind regards from the sidelines.

    1. You know, it was only after the libellous attacks got turned on, a few years ago, that the snark really came out.

      When people falsely call me and mine liars, racist, misogynist, fascist, homophobic, and determined to force All That Is Good And Light out of the world, I react.

      The bully who starts the fight with a sucker punch doesn’t get to claim wounded innocence nor set the rules for the conflict when he realizes his selected victim chooses not to accept the role of victim.

      No, I’ve been *personally* putting up with this sort of crap for over twenty years.

      1. Yeah. Go read about Emmett Till, a 14-year-old murdered for making a pass at a white woman in Mississippi in August of 1955. That’s evil and disgusting, but for me, it isn’t enraging. It’s what I expect from racist scum. I’d gladly climb into a time machine, go back to 1955, and murder the pair of lowlifes who killed Emmett Till, but I’d be fairly dispassionate about it.

        No, what I get enraged at in that history are the various defenses of Till’s murderers, the ones who said he had it coming, the ones who claimed it didn’t happen (till the killers admitted it), the ones who said Jim Crow existed (brace yourself, this will make you want to vomit) to protect black people! The ones I’m really angry at are the ones who said, in effect, ‘Why, some of my best friends are negroes, I’d never do that, but you have to admit, that kid Till provoked the attack.’

        The Leftists who took over the Hugos and used them for their political purposes don’t really anger me, because that’s what Leftists do with everything they can get their hands on. Power is all they think of, all they can think of. But the people who looked the other way for years, who let this happen, and who now attack us Sad Puppy voters for fighting back, they’re the ones I’m angry at. If you didn’t want this happening, you should have done something about the Leftists a long time ago.

        I’ll stop now, before I give myself a headache.

    2. “I’d like you better if if you would just accept your second class status with grace and a positive tone.”

      Check.

  26. “His words will be in italics, mine will be in bold.”

    Why do I get the same twinge running down my spine when reading those words as I do during the scene in Serenity where Mal Reynolds says “I aim to misbehave” ?

  27. I think one of the most interesting things that could come out of this is actually running the numbers. In GRRM’s thread he has this to day: http://grrm.livejournal.com/417812.html?thread=20684052#t20684052

    “That business about one clique (those dreaded SJWs, I am sure) dominating the nominations for the last ten years strikes me as pure Puppy poop. Where’s the evidence of that?”

    In your above titanic post you talk about numbers (specifically about LOCUS) and that folks investigating the various numbers–whether they were looking for confirming OR disconfirming evidence–found enough that is statistically significant.

    Has anyone compiled the various investigations into running the numbers? And is this something that can be blown out into the larger conversation?

    (I also think it would be pretty entertaining to compare the SP3 suggestion slate to last year’s winners, to contrast their diversity in relateable terms to the quota-inclinded. Has that been done?)

    1. I hadn’t seen his latest when he wrote that.

      But when he lists off some of those names, and he’s like, nope, no SJWs here! I honestly have no coherent response to that… Just wow…

      Just a complete disconnect from what everybody on my side has had to deal with for years. Total and complete disconnect. No understanding of what those people have said or done.

      1. I respect George R. Martin, irrespective of how he feels about all of this, but my impression in reading his posts and his responses to comments is that whenever there is mention of cliques dominating the Hugos he dismisses it out of hand as rubbish. I fear not even numbers will sway him, unless you provide a secret dark document filled with scheming words.

      2. I fear at some time in the future, we will have to uncap the Twitters and the blogs and shine a light onto all the comments people have been making.

        1. Talking to all the GamerGater folks who have been fighting this battle for the past 9 ish months or so- they ALL highly recommend this rule:

          Document. Document everything. Screenshot everything.

          Because the SJWs and the concern trolls will not believe you. Or they will pretend they don’t. Until you put it in their face and MAKE THEM OWN IT.

          Solid advice- I think.

          1. They’re also fond of deleting things they’ve said that can be used against them, or that go against the hivemind, so they don’t get excluded.

      3. They haven’t said or done that to *him*. Therefore, they’re good people. Maybe a little misunderstood, maybe they get carried away occasionally. But they aren’t like those fringe people attacking GoT as racist/sexist/whateverist.

        For GRRM to accept that a lot of the people in his circle of “good people” are, in fact, frothing-at-the-mouth lunatics would require too much. This is a guy who’s basically devoted his life to fandom in one way or another. These are his people. To realize they’re in some part a brood of vipers would be akin to realizing his life has been wasted on such.

        Easier to just look the other way, dismiss any unfortunate incidents as unassociated fringe types. If it is one of the “good people,” well, you just have to understand how they are. Or they were provoked. Or maybe they went a little far, but they’re not bad people. So on.

        1. Exactly. It’s how “Requires Hate” thrived for so long. They all knew exactly for certain that she was cyberbullying, but it wasn’t until years had passed that she began cyberbullying the “wrong” people.

          Similar thing happened in comics fandom recently. snarky internet fanboy columnist Chris Sims, longtime columnist for the ComicsAlliance site (self-appointed “Enlightened and Pure” site that specializes in attacking the core fandom and urging Marvel and DC to never create any super-hero with the WRONG pigmentation or sexuality ever again) recently won the plum job of writing one of the high profile X-MEN comics.

          It’d been well known for years that in the name of “pranks” he’d done some pretty intensely vicious posts and messages directed at certain pros and fans. But they were just Evil Straight White Male Christian Evil People Who Were Evil, so he was given a pass.

          Then a female pro revealed he’d treated HER this way for years.

          Suddenly, waves of condemnation!

          But none of it “Bullying is wrong, plus maybe ComicsAlliance isn’t as enlightened and pure as they depicted themselves”

          Oh, no.

          Instead it was all “He shouldn’t have done that because it was directed towards a woman! Every one knows that it’s only wrong when it’s towards someone on the Approved Victim List!”

          ….the hypocrisy actually woke some fans up.

          1. And yet they said nothing about Power Girl getting a positive representation replacement…

        2. Yeah, like ‘decent, civilized’ Southern Whites in the 1930s-’60s denying the Klan was a problem, because they weren’t discriminated against. They never lynched anyone, after all. They just stood aside and let it happen.

          1. Stephen – we might want to focus our attention to things that happened while members of the audience were old enough to walk.

            Things this century might be even more on point and relevant.

          2. What’s that they always say about the past, keranih? Something about those who don’t learn its lessons being doomed to repeat it?

            Also, it’s worth pointing out that in the aging Worldcon audience, there are quite a lot of people who WERE walking, talking, and reading sci-fi during that era.

      4. It’s like asking a fish to notice the water it’s in. They don’t see the water, they don’t believe it exists. They absolutely believe, hands on hearts, that there is only one reasonable outlook and it’s theirs.

        The phrase ‘check your privilege’ comes to mind.

    2. Someone needs to look at Chaos Horizon…
      One could argue the ‘cliques’ that run things like Locus and the Nebula are distinguishable, but they’re probably less varied in taste than SP compared to RP.

  28. Oh, and I know Larry has his reasons, great and personal, for saying he’ll never accept a Hugo nom.

    My response still can be summed up with the following.

    (For a visual bonus, imagine the scene in Dragon Age Inquisition when they find out a giant demon is nearby, when they are in the Fade.)

    Well… Shit.

  29. You know why I’m happy (yes, happy) about SP3? I’m finding authors I ENJOY, and filling my wish-list up on Amazon at a rate even I can’t keep up with – I read 3-5 books PER WEEK, usually 1-2 new ones, and re-reads make up the rest – finding new fiction that I enjoy has been somewhat problematic, but now I have Cedar Sanderson to look at, and Brad Torgersen, etc. etc. – And I’m not going down the SP3 slate, rather, I’m looking at it from a ‘had a reasonable reaction to SP3’ vs. ‘Wow. What an ass’ (Looking towards Scalded.*) Honestly? I’m all FOR a new award, one that IS open, but the sad truth is, if it’s on the internet, somebody WILL find a way to game it – so, let the revenue be the award – I read MHI after having it recommended to me by a good friend, then the rest of the MHI books as they came out – reading Larry’s blog, I discovered the Grimnoir and read all three of those (heck, I think I ordered all three at once, and for once, it took me about a week to get through them.) Some authors, despite my disappointment at their reaction, I know I’ll still read: Joe Abercrombie, for instance, is too damn good not to read, and if you haven’t read him, try “The Blade Itself.” You can blame me if, several weeks later, you’re digging in the couch for spare change to by the rest of the books. But the ones out there literally lying through their teeth, then standing on a mental high-horse bellowing about how DARE the SP3 crowd SULLY this HOLY process with their (insert every negative word Larry used above here) selves!? Those people can pony up to kiss my ass, AFTER I eat Taco Bell for a week.

      1. Don’t they have libraries for that? You don’t even have to check out the book. Hide away in the corner of the library while you’re reading it and people have less of a chance of discovering the author with one fewer of their books on the shelf while you read it.
        Best of all, you aren’t breaking any laws.

      2. You are posting a link to a pirate site on an author’s page?

        That’s kind of ridiculous, and really, offensive to both sides in the author fight.

        1. Minor point: http://www.utorrent.com/ isn’t a pirate site. It’s the homepage for a piece of software with many legitimate uses. And they specifically promote the legitimate uses & denounce piracy.

          But the context of rest of Mars’ comment does make it quite clear he’s referring to piracy, so yeah, this is an incredibly minor point.

        2. I apologize if it came off as disrespectful. It was not my intention to insult anyone. However Mr Correia when I first heard of you through this blog I downloaded the first of the Monster Hunter books from a pirate site. I loved it so much I have since bought a copy of it, and the others in the series. I have also bought some of the grimnoir books as well.
          But there have been times in the past when even though I may love an authors work, I have been unwilling to support them financially. This has included buying their books second hand, borrowing them from a friend or the library, or in some cases yes pirating their work. I can understand that you may not like the idea of people pirating your works, or that of others and I can’t speak for anyone but myself; but if not for the copy of Monster Hunter International that I pirated for free I might not have bought several other of your books.

          1. Thank you. Please feel free to delete my other comment in your newest post. I did not know if you had seen this one.

  30. Well, as a fellow Anti-woman misogynist, internet arguer, and general shitlord, all I can really say is: you have my sword. I can honestly say that I disagree fully, or at least in part, with your politics (listening to Wright on a certain podcast yesterday made me want to vomit) but on this we agree. You do not stand alone.

  31. Thank you for a most informative response to Mr. Martin’s… screed. This year will be my very first WorldCon. I wasn’t aware that I could nominate or vote until I read this, and I suspect it’s now too late. Ah, well. There’s always next year.

    1. It’s not too late to vote.

      Sasquan.org. $40. Supporting membership.

      Get’s you a vote this year, and a nomination for next year, plus whatever ends up in the E-packet.

      $3.33/month for some of the finest works presented in the last 5 years. (IMHO)

      1. Oh, I have my membership – thank God for 50% off for military – and my wife has hers. We’ll be there. But I’m still hazy on how voting and nominating works and I dislike acting from ignorance. Unfortunately, since the Queen pays my wages, I don’t have enough time in the day to get caught up on this stuff.

        1. You aren’t the only one William. I put down my $40 this year for the first time, after reading SF for the last 45-ish years (think my first was Space Cadet back in oh, ’68?). Looking very much forward to the e-packet.

        2. Mr. Underhill, how it works is that you and your wife will get Hugo packets of nominated works, and PINs, and you read the works, then vote online.

    2. You can still vote William. The information should be coming soon. 🙂

      The Hugo voting ballot will be available to members of Sasquan online and by mail later in April.

      This will be my 4th or 5th official Worldcon, I’m usually busy costuming, on panels or volunteering somewhere – I don’t attend the award ceremony, but do read a LOT of books (own somewhere around 6K, over half of which are SF&F)

      1. I’ve already had a couple of emails from people plugging particular works, or suggesting I avoid others. I dislike this in the extreme, and it really puts me off the whole process.

      1. I have to say, I’m (probably naively) shellshocked. I’ve been pro writing for @ 10 years, I’ve had my share of shit dished at me because I don’t bow down to the SJW cause of the day (even though I do agree with some elements of their arguments and say so) but this? This has staggered me. That EW piece, and all the flow on from it, leaves me stunned. The rank dishonesty floors me. And it’s the EW piece that has in fact stirred me to becoming far more visible, into making myself a real target, more than I ever have before. Because really, to stay silent in the face of this kind of dishonesty is rank cowardice. And I must hold myself to a higher standard than that.

        1. You think this is bad? Wait until they make a Law and Order SFU episode about you?

          I truly feel for the SFF fans and writers in this. At least the Gamers had spent the past 3-4 decades being the whipping boy of everyone and the media menace of the week going back to the 80’s. They long ago exhausted what they could call us and it stopped having any meaning. We had travelled through the storm. Their words no longer had any effect on us or about us. And that’s when we rose up to challenge them.

          I fear the SFF community is not quite so numbed to the heinous and hateful rhetoric that the media will be pouring their way in defense of the SJW agenda. Just please remember. You have friends and fellow travelers in this. Some often in unexpected places. (I might suggest looking up a rather unusual fellow named Milo over at Brightbart London) and please remember at the end of the day all it is is just hot air and wind. The pompous jackasses really are nobodies. You will find more true fans and more loyal friends sticking up for yourself and facing down the ideological bullies than you ever would just trying to keep your head down and appease them for just a little longer.

    1. …and, judging from the comments, will dismiss and/or ignore people pointing out the Sad Puppies side of the story.

      Typical.

  32. I have been to many WorldCons over the years, but I have quit. Originally because I wasn’t having enough fun, but now because as an unapologetic straight white male, I don’t feel welcome. So let the SJWs have at it.

    1. You know, you’re not encouraging me 🙂 This year is going to be my first Worldcon, but I’m beginning to wonder if there’s any point in going.

      1. I always enjoyed Worldcon when I attended. If you go, you’ll find plenty of nice people there, and plenty of fun stuff to do. Look for the BAEN BOOKS suite for a starter!

  33. Until last years Puppies thing i had NO IDEA, none at all, that the Hugo awards were part of some sort of Con. I thought it was just a general sci-fi/fantasy award from well… the ‘book’ community as a whole. I had always assumed that there was a small group of voters but also that the small group of voters were normal book reviewers, people like reps from news papers and sci-fi/fantasy magazines.

    When i think Hugo Award i think Golden Globe or Oscar and all those other awards. Finding out that it’s nothing like that is/was a shock.

    Sad to find out that the awards are kind of a joke now…

    1. I was relieved to discover it was just a small group.

      I had been thinking all of SF fandom had gone stupid.

      1. And once you start to realize just how small the numbers of these petty ideological tyrants are, it suddenly starts to make sense. The world hasn’t gone stupid. It’s just these handful of ideologues seeking to slowly conscript the means of communication in a few industries. SciFi fans haven’t gone SJW nuts. Gamers haven’t suddenly signed onto this narrow spiteful ideology. Comic book fans sure as hell don’t like what is actually being published these days instead of the quality stories that they remember. It’s this small cult of a few thousand have declared themselves gatekeepers in order to control what the rest of us see. And this has worked astonishingly well for them for years. But then communication got to fast. Too broad. Too many people can now talk and compare notes. The actual fans are starting to see the repetitive scripts being used in each community. They have spotted the (insert gender or species identification of your choice no matter how batshit insane) behind the curtain and know it’s no wizard. Nor is it actually what the people want. And thus we get Sad Puppies. And Gamergate. And Shirtstorm. And whatever will come along next week.

  34. Shorter GRRM:

    “It’s WorldCon’s pizza, and they can refuse to sell it to anyone whose lifestyle they disapprove of.”

      1. Ooooh!! Can we have a SP parade? That could be some very inventive CosPlay if nothing else 😉

        As a side note, has anyone noticed the difference in GRRM and Larry in this little back and forth? Yeah, Larry doesn’t “massage” his comments. And GRRM had the nerve to call Larry dishonest. He’s always straight up with us.

  35. This is all so much more complicated than it needs to be or is. You can see that in Martin writing in his comment section “I don’t doubt that the Sad Puppies feel slighted. (Well, some of them. Others just enjoy the idea of fucking with the ‘SJWs’).

    “Problem is, a lot of other groups feel slighted too. Minorities, women, and so on.

    “Conservatives love to dismiss the complaints of such groups and accuse them of playing the victim card… yet here we have the Puppies, loudly declaring, ‘no, no, we’re the REAL victims.'”

    It’s further symbolized here where LC quotes Martin writing “If the Sad Puppies wanted to start their own award… for Best Conservative SF, or Best Space Opera, or Best Military SF, or Best Old-Fashioned SF the Way It Used to Be… whatever it is they are actually looking for… hey, I don’t think anyone would have any objections to that.”

    First of all, there is no institutional trend in SFF where minorities, women and gays are being defamed as a group or excluded by virtue of sheer hatred, quite the contrary. Secondly, people don’t get hopping mad about a lack of military SF. So both of Martin’s points are completely empty. However there is in fact an institutional trend in SFF where men, whites and heterosexuals are being defamed as a group or excluded by virtue of sheer hatred. That is not an opinion but a matter of quotes for and against.

    Is there a conservative/liberal thing going on? Sure. But’s that’s since forever. I suspect were this only about that conservatives could live with it. They understand politics is a legitimate thing and the world’s not a fair place. Supremacy and ethnic group defamation is another thing; that’s hate speech.

    The new element that has ratcheted this up to an unprecedented level is the entry of racial gender feminism. Anyone who pushes back against that flood of defamation AUTOMATICALLY becomes – not only a conservative – but even more of a racist, transphobe, misogynist than before they pushed back. Suddenly, there’s a lot of conservatives. For my part, anyone who knows me would laugh at the idea I am right wing. Just trust me on this. However what is true is I don’t like being defamed by sick gender feminists anymore than Jews or blacks dote on neo-Nazis and the KKK. In the eyes of gender feminists, aside from my race and sex, that makes me even more of a problem. In gender feminism, the best I can ever be is an analogy to a kapo. I am impure by virtue of heterosexuality, sex and race. Within racial gender feminism, I am an inferior both by birth and conviction.

    That’s it in a nutshell; the whole nine yards. Every single issue in the SJW community is laid at the feet of heterosexuality, men and whites – not political conviction. I am not a fucking “clique.”

    We are not a political alliance. We have been declared one because of our race and sex. I don’t have to say or do a thing to be THAT kind of conservative – no more than do blacks or Jews to their enemies. SJWs love the idea of portraying this as a liberal-conservative thing – at least the worst of them, the most feral of them – do.

    As for Martin’s “tone” argument, this is not a he-said, she-said and so yes, who started it is important, because the only ones who can end it are the SJWs. I cannot stop being a straight white man, Jew or black and I don’t need a moron saying the equivalent of “will you blacks and KKK just stop?”

    I for one do not hate WorldCon, but I do hate the atmosphere of a KKK it tolerates. And there’s the single greatest Orwellian madness that sits behind all this: SJWs conspicuously claim they are compassionately against the very thing they will not stop doing. They claim we are the ones doing it but have nothing but empty scare quotes.

    I have a thousand quotes and they are not empty. Because that’s where Martin is wrong about the campaign. Our best campaigners have been SJWs quotes. SJW’s worst campaigner has been their empty scare quotes. You cannot organize people against nothing, and that works both ways for both sides.

    I have only one single argument: a strike zone – so how can I be wrong? Well, when SJWs are done wrangling that bitch with power-privilege theory and punching up, our very Constitution and law lay on the floor. They think that’s right, but it will tear apart any society it touches. Look at where we are for proof of that.

    1. Welcome to the Right Wing. Please leave your Birkenstocks in the pile in the corner. There’s a buffet table with fresh babies to eat over their.

      No seriously, I am an actual Conservative. There are a number of us out here. We like SF and games as much as anybody else. But while you are watching the Sad Puppies folks go through this barrage of being accused of racism, sexism, misogyny, etc think on this. Chances are everything you know about conservatives, comes from those same people currently lying about SP. Every single thing. Chances are every single idea you have about Conservatives has been put there by the SJW cliques in the Mainstream press. I would encourage people to stop believing them and instead actually go read some real conservative writings. Read some George Will. Some Thomas Sowell. Some Jonah Goldberg. Stop believing somone else’s word on what it is they think, believe and who they may or may not hate. Stop Listening and Believing. Start asking questions on your own. You might find that those you have been taught are evil racist hatemongers are not really that at all.

      1. yes this….
        I work in a print shop (union), we d a lot of vote for me posters. so conversations can turn to politics. and when the tea party is brought up, it is always THEY ARE RACISTS
        I have told many people that they are not, look them up. some people will not be convinced, group think.
        others however (usually younger) I say to them:
        you have a smart phone, it connects to the internet, LOOK THEM UP, find out what they stand for, not what other people, including me, say about them.
        you maybe surprised how many people (by percents/that I talked to) come back and say wow they are not who I thought they were. not all converts (I respect them, but I am not them) but it changes their mind. knowing they have been lied to, about what is truth. some of these kids (you under 40— kid) are now thinking.

    2. I’ve always hated the “conservatives/white men/gamergaters/whoever-else-is-questioning-the-social-justice-hivemind-this-week are saying ‘no, no, no, we’re the REAL victims'” argument.

      It’s the “REAL” that frames it in an entirely dishonest manner. It implies that only one group can be victims, in every area, anywhere in society. No one is saying that other people aren’t victims. They’re not even saying that other people don’t have it worse than them in many situations. They’re saying that they, personally, ARE being discriminated against. for all the social justice community’s talk about “[whatever]splaining” and denying other peoples’ personal experiences, they sure are quick about doing that to others.

      1. Good point.

        I’ve been pointing out lately how often quotes and paraphrases by Sad Puppies are taken and an “only” is added… as if the meaning stays the same when you add an “only” to it.

        It’s a way of lying.

  36. Announcement: Special Panel

    In consideration of the recent events involving the Science Fiction Achievement Awards, commonly referred to as the Hugos, it has been decided to hold a meeting at Sasquan, the 73rd World Science Fiction Convention.

    It is tentatively scheduled to begin at 10 AM on Friday, August 21, the third day of the convention, with location to be determined.

    Panel: Hugos Unacceptable Activities Committee (HUAC)

    The formal seated panel will consist of real fans, those who love SF, who attend and work on WorldCon and other conventions. The fan community, the ones the Hugos truly belong to.

    Those in attendance may be asked to participate/answer questions by the panel. To make their position clear, a suggested introduction would be to place their left hand on a copy of Queers Dig Time Lords, raise their right hand and clearly state “I am not now, nor have I ever been, a member of, affiliated with, or advocated for the Sad Puppies campaign.”

    I truly hope to see a strong, involved turnout for this very important gathering, although attendance is, naturally, on a volunteer basis.

    Seriously, of course it is.

    I mean, it’s not like we can make anyone do anything, right? There’s no negative effect we can put against your status or career.

    Anyway, hope to see you there.

    Sincerely,

    S. J. Woreeahr
    President, Socialist Fiction Writers of America

    1. Congratulations are in order for Nightwatch, who will be providing security and taking note of who attends, and who doesn’t.

      Volunteers for Nightwatch may visit MakingSpite, for badges and truncheons.

    2. Poe’s law: I read most of the way through this comment before I was sure it was parody & not a copy-paste of an actual SFWA/WorldCon announcement. And it was only the “S. J. Woreeahr” signature at the end that really made me heave a sigh of relief.

  37. This blog is hard to navigate if you are looking for historical archives and I was wondering if there are any posts from around 2011/2012 that speak to the roots of Sad Puppies ‘in situ’ as it were. The only one I could find was a general ‘had a great time’ kind of thing.

    I saw for myself the changing SJW narrative between SP2 and SP3 and how the goalposts have moved. I was curious if I could find similar pre-SP1 where the “hugo’s are for everyone’ narrative might have been more on display

    1. Strangely enough, I think this is the sort of thing that GRRM would read and may even respond to. If that happens, please let us know, Mr. Correia.

    2. You could take the Hugo Awards themselves as gospel,”The Hugo Awards, presented annually since 1955, are science fiction’s most prestigious award.”

      http://www.thehugoawards.org/about/

      They sure think they’re SF’s most prestigious award, and not just an award given by part to part.

      1. They definitely have to change that if they don’t want what has gone on here. If it is the most prestigious award, then it needs to be given out by the most prestigious Con. But how to determine that. If by numbers, Dragoncon I believe. Wouldn’t that put quite the little twist in their panties? lolz

    3. If you’re curious, I found a few posts about the start of Sad Puppies 1. It calls my message spam if I post the links, but if you search for the phrase “how to get correia nominated for a hugo” in the search bar, it should give you the four posts that initially started this thing.

    4. Jen G., and anyone else interested:
      I have a list of posts Larry made on the Hugos over the years, but WordPress won’t let me post it. They think it’s spam. But if you write me at saintonge AT hotmail.com, and put Puppy Posts in the subject, I’ll send you the list in reply. They go back to 2011.

  38. Awesome post, Larry.

    I don’t care if he’s late, Martin has brought the right tone to the opposition. And I hope his clout moves the conversation to a more productive ground.

  39. Hmm – you’re being persecuted for your ideals and pressured to abandon your heresy. Maybe you should call yourselves the Hugonots (or Hugoenots?)…

  40. This was actually a sad view into Martin’s mindset. I am afraid that he is of the elitist ilk. His “space opera, old fashioned science fiction” comments were enlightening. I actually think his mindset is what is going to sink his most popular series. If you even just casually pass by his blog on occasion you will notice he is spending a large deal of his time on other less popular of his works. I think he revealed the reason for this in his post. ASOIAF actually got wildly popular. Which means undoubtedly that it appeals to Wrongfans. I think when he arrived at this conclusion he lost his interest in the series and that is why his writing time has ballooned between books. I also think the quality of his writing on the series has gradually decreased. He used to supply threads and hints throughout his stories and in the later books he seems to just simply drop several story lines and walk away from themes that he had previously been building momentum towards. I don’t think it’s purposeful sabotage, It just takes a lot of work to keep track of all the threads and if your heart isn’t in it anymore it gets that much harder to do.

    1. The hubs and I said something similar when A Dance With Dragons came out. We both got the feeling that he’s just flat out bored with the series and is just phoning it in. Not a good book at all, imho. The other? Fabulous. I think he’s a great wordsmith. A delusional one, if these posts are any indication, but a fine author nonetheless.

  41. I can’t be the only one envisioning Martin essentially standing on his front porch, shaking his fist in the air, and telling those darn kids to get off his lawn.

    Look, Martin was big into the SMOF scene before many of us were born. He runs with the CHORFs. He has for decades. Heck, Patrick Nielsen Hayden is the editor of Wild Cards.

    If life has shown me nothing else, it’s that very few people actually have ideologies. What they have are interests and personal ties. It’s a rare person who can buck long-standing ties and their own interests to open their eyes to harsh facts.

    Hang in there, Larry and Brad.

  42. I’ve never forgiven GRRM for being a whiny git and threatening not to finish his books over Kerry losing in 2004. I am NOT surprised by anything he’s saying now.

    1. I was sort of looking forward to his not finishing them. 🙂 But then again, I came to view them as reader torture after the first two – when you start to learn that any character that you’re emotionally committed to will suffer ever more horrific fates with no sign that there will at any point, any where, be an emotional pay-off.

      1. I actually took more offense at having villains I utterly despised getting humanized into my sympathy.

        1. There is a villain and saint in a person. That’s what Martin is saying in this books. It’s all a matter of perspective.

          Careful there Sad Puppies in your effort to save the world, not to destroy it and become Rabid Dogs. Don’t forget that blacklash is violence too.

          Peace.

          1. Tikitiki –

            My jest evidently did not come through well – it is a frequently failing on the internets.

            I actually respect the heck out of GRRM’s ability to do that – to bring a hero down to earth and force the reader to acknowledge the humanity of the enemy.

            What is *really* impressive about how GRRM goes about it is that he forces the reader to re-write their assessment of the character but does NOT re-write what the character has done – their virtues and sins remain, just add complexity.

      2. Which is why I quit reading the series. When you kill every character I like I kill the book/series. 🙂

    2. Ah, no wonder he took forever.

      Maybe he needs to stop paying attention to politics. Clearly it’s interfering with his work.

    3. At this point, I’d be happy if, on the Final Page of the Final Book of “A Song of Fire and Ice”, that Ned Stark wakes up in a modern bed, aside of Catelyn, and says. . . “I was dreaming I was a Feudal Lord in a magical land. . .”

      1. Heartbroken, Martin never completed A Song of Ice and Fire before he passed away. His last fans pooled their money to buy the rights. They hired a lesser writer, who was only able to bill them for 150k words before finishing.

        Guro fans were disappointed, but still had the Doujinshi market.

  43. Well spoken Larry, pity you are collecting on word count 😉 . I do notice that you and others *still* believe the Hugo to be prestigous. Why else are you playing Worldcon’s game and trying to resuscitate it, when a perfectly viable alternative considering it’s condition is a mercy shot? Don’t misunderstand, I’ve been a SF fan for about 50 years and grew up when it was a different Hugo. But we won our independence from minority rule long ago (not so sure we’ve kept it, mind) and I for one don’t care to have it again in any venue. So consider alternative therapies to the one you’re currently about. Best wishes in any case and don’t let this interrupt your writing (books) as I greatly enjoy your fictionering as RAH would call it; just as much as I did his as a YA. Still do for that matter.

  44. Larry: Great post. Even if you and Martin both forget the forgotten author, the late great Poul Anderson, who won seven of those damned rockets.
    I recently joined SFWA as an indie author, now that they’ve opened up that path. I heard all the bad things going on over there, but thought, it was always something I wanted to do, and most of my old favorites had been involved one time or another, so why not. Plus, a friend who will remain nameless, but is a bestseller author, had told me he thought letting indies in would change the culture. After all, indies are into selling books, and, having made $260,000 in the last two years, I was the definition of a successful indie (not Hugh Howie, but doing well enough). One of the first people to welcome me was Jerry Pournelle, and, after reading many posts on the site, I realized he was firmly behind the push to bring in indies. To change the culture? Possibly. Because we indies are all about writing stuff we think people want to read. It’s hard to make a living otherwise. As far as the Hugos go, they lost their luster for me a long time ago. I used to love P. Anderson, Heinlein, Asimov and too many others to name, and they were always pulling in the award. Now I read people like you, Butcher, K. Anderson, Taylor Anderson, David Weber, John Ringo, Michael Z, Chuck Gannon, Salvatore and many others, people who were never mentioned in the Hugo nominations. If they win the award I will be very happy for them, but it will do almost nothing to change my reading habits. So keep fighting the good fight, and know that some of us, even if quietly, are behind you.

    1. One of my cherished Windycon memories is meeting Poul Anderson when he was a GoH there in the early 1980s. I still have my copy of The Avatar he autographed.

      Just checked out your titles on Amazon and I can tell there’s already a few I’m interested in. Good luck in the future!

  45. Of course, we could always ask the Hugo Awards itself…

    What are the Hugo Awards?

    The Hugo Awards, to give them their full title, are awards for excellence in the field of science fiction and fantasy. They were first awarded in 1953, and have been awarded every year since 1955. The awards are run by and voted on by fans.

    http://www.thehugoawards.org/hugo-faq/

  46. I love how the Usual Suspects trotted this GRRM post out as yet another debate-ending trump card. “If you’ve lost GRRM, you’ve lost everybody!” Considering his politics, we never really had him to begin with.

    And I agree with the other posters: considering he’s subjected to some of the same paranoid crap we are, you’d think he’d have more sympathy. Maybe he and Larry need to swap SJW attack stories and bond. 😉

    1. I think Martin is just uneducated about all this, which is no crime. If that’s true, it’s only natural he’s going to have more of a he-said, she-said attitude. Frankly, I trust my homework. It’s there in black and white. People who haven’t done their homework yet insist on addressing this issue are of no interest to me. Prosecutors don’t run out on the street and ask for opinions. They amass evidence and then present it. SJWs can’t fisk their own quotes although they can have ignorant apologists come along and try that for them based on emotion and not facts. It’s clear Martin is in possession of no facts. He is no witness to this. I’m not calling him to the stand. End of story.

  47. Awesome analysis. My brain doesn’t work like that. Maybe that’s why you’re the professional author and I’m a wrongfan of yours and a victim of your nefarious schemes to get my money via Audible and Amazon. 😉

  48. So basically GRRM’s arguments boil down to:

    –A useless plea for “civility,” because it was so much more pleasant when leftists could be as catty, nasty, vicious, libelous and violent as they want and the rest of us were just supposed to sit there and take it.

    –“Seperate but equal” fandoms where in their graciousness the lefties will allow us to call ourselves fans and have our own awards, as long as we stay cooped up in our little ghettoes like Baen and Castalia and maybe indie publishing, assuming they don’t manage to kill off Kindle. Oh, and wear distinctive clothing and insignia, and perhaps sit in the back of the bus. Because

    –Contrary to what it says on their own website, the Hugos aren’t really for all the fans, just the elites, the Quality, the aristocracy, and we proles should know our place. And use the servants’ entrance.

    Yeah, OK, whatever. The amazing thing here is how much GRRM sounds like one of those country-clubber establishment RINO Republicans lamenting how *gauche* those uncouth Tea Partiers are. and lamenting the shortness of the hem of Sarah Palin’s skirt.

  49. But back then I was still trying to play it cool, and didn’t think I could have a successful career if I made the wrong people angry.

    Sarah Hoyt tells a similar story. And I’ve got to say how grateful I am for the two of you (and others) “coming out” politically. I’m not exactly suited to “flying under the radar” so folk like you show that it can be done.

    Thank you.

  50. Oh, my god, really? REALLY? Mr. Correia, I sincerely do not understand. I have been a fan for decades, have never been to a Worldcon nor involved in one, and I have still never had any doubt or uncertainty about the link between the Hugos and that con. Ever. It wasn’t hidden.

    I have zero objection to a more diverse science fiction world with a wider range of authors to read. I’m excited to read new things as well as familiar things, fun things and serious things. I came here to read your response to GRRM’s post, because I sincerely was interested in your reply and your viewpoint.

    And what I have found to me seems like the words of someone who feels shut out, outcast, and deceived. I’m sorry for that, even while disagreeing with the Puppies’ campaign; it’s an uncomfortable feeling for anyone (which, incidentally, is part of why I disagree with the Puppies, because the campaigns do read as very exclusionary, not about developing a wider and more representative list of recognized science fiction writers).

    And then I see things like characterizing Brianna Wu as you have, and I lose respect for you. For anyone, really, who can justify abusive sexism and harrassment as you have here. That does, in fact, affect your message and poisons your work, and casts a long and unpleasant shadow on your justifications.

    At the end of the day, I wish you clarity, and that you find something better to do with your time than this.

      1. All right, I’ll engage in good faith. Looks like current numbers are around $3400 per month in support of videogame development.

        More specifically, in support of hiring assistance to deal with the onslaught of targeted harrassment, all of which takes time, attention, and resources separate and apart from the creative and technical work of game development and production.

        Do you see something wrong with investing in either of those causes?

        1. BWA HA HA HAAAAA! 😀

          Wow!

          Seriously?

          Hey, I’m getting an onslaught of targeted harassment (and unlike Wu, the media isn’t on my side) all of which takes time, attention, and resources separate from my creating and writing work of fiction development and production.

          And I know that if I went out and asked people to give me money for that, it would be total and compete bullshit. And anybody who gave me money for that would be a sucker.

          1. Oh, and at one point it was at $13,000 a month, so it is good to see that at least some folks wised up to the con.

    1. ” is part of why I disagree with the Puppies, because the campaigns do read as very exclusionary”

      Which group do you feel was excluded? Not represented by good works on the Puppy’s recommended slate?

      Or do you think the last five years of almost entirely white liberal winners is “diverse”?

      1. I perceive an orchestrated and directive campaign to promote a particular slate with the agenda of sending a sociopolitical message to be problematic in and of itself, the more so when targeting a process that’s intended to surface and recognize works largely on their own independent merit.

        The process is not perfect; iterative improvement is always possible. Is this improvement? Do I think that more diverse representation could be achieved among the many, many disparate writers of talent out there? Yes. Do I think this is the way to go about it? No.

        I think this campaign is both destructive and tainted. How does that help?

        For the record, Mr. Williamson, as it happens, I have read (and enjoyed) several of your co-written short story works in the past; I am not wholly unfamiliar with everyone involved in the Puppies’ activism.

        1. You know, I keep seeing that narrative from the moderates, about how there were problems, but this is the wrong way to do it.

          I addressed that very specifically in a prior post already. https://monsterhunternation.com/2015/04/06/a-letter-to-the-smofs-moderates-and-fence-sitters-from-the-author-who-started-sad-puppies/

          Yeah, there were problems, and you guys knew it, but you didn’t do anything. It built up until there was a backlash, and now it is too late for your perfect solution. Shoot. Sounds like you guys should have done something before there was this backlash.

        2. Sad Puppies 3 has never claimed to be about politics, merely the quality of the work and recognizing authors and works that otherwise might not be recognized. Because of a large amount of anecdotal evidence (no one has done a full statistical analysis, since it is difficult to find out authors’ positions on politics and classify them), Sad Puppies do believe that conservative authors are unlikely to be recognized in the Hugo awards.
          In previous iterations, it did have a more political bent. The purpose of the campaign has changed some. Like you say, iterative improvement is always possible.
          For the record, Larry and many of the fans here also agree that the process can be improved. We’ve actually been brainstorming ideas to try to improve the process. We’ve also been receptive to ideas put out by other fans who don’t like the Sad Puppies’ campaigns.
          For example, I’ve seen many people on this blog say they are fine with the 4/6 ratio of nominating slots to shortlisted works. Many of us want the cost of a supporting membership to go down so that people from all over the world can participate in Hugo voting. No one has opposed the idea of Single Transferable Voting for the nominating stage of the awards, though it has likely gotten less vocal support due to be slightly harder to understand.
          For the record, all of those three suggestions above were discussed and supported by some people over on Making Light. Good ideas are good ideas, regardless of who they come from (in almost all cases).
          We’ve also discussed ways to increase the diversity of slates (and reduce their power), by either having more slates of increasing the number of recommended works above the number allowed onto the short list.
          If you have suggestions for how to improve the Hugo award and nominating process (or even the slate process) that don’t amount to “Stay out, Puppies!”, you will likely find an interested ear.
          However, the slate was within the rules of the Hugos as they currently are. Criticizing groups for playing by the rules seems like a bad idea.

      1. If we shut up and sit in the back of the bus, Aspen will briefly consider allowing us to sit vaguely near the cool kids table.

        1. As if I had control (or interest in control) of any “cool kids” table or organization, or in controlling social norms? Ha! Not even remotely.

          (Advocacy is not the same thing as control.)

      2. You are certainly entitled to your opinion. I came here to engage in good faith and will probably bow out in short order, because I have limited time and energy to devote to these conversations, but I did want to acknowledge your comment.

    2. That’s true. We could create Kickstarters for racial revenge fiction and men and heterosexual-only anthologies and not review non-white women, just like our darling SJW KKK does.

    3. Being ceaselessly accused of being exclusionary is very different than actually being exclusionary.

      But you knew that.

      In any case it works:
      “I was attacked, personally, and slandered.”
      “Oh, you’re just a racist homophobe.”
      “Hey, I heard that you were a racist homophobe.”
      “Hey, what about all those racist homophobe optics, dude, what are you going to do about that?”

      When you “read” the slander, of course it “reads” like the slander.

      Also… criticizing Brianna Wu is functionally different in ALL ways from justifying abusive sexism and harassment.

      I understand why you’re confused:
      “So-and-so has an agenda… you disagree with the agenda… therefore you’re an abusive sexist homophobe.”
      “No really, I disagree with the agenda and with being attacked as a wrong-fun wrong-thinker.”
      “Well then stop being an abusive sexist homophobe.”
      “But I’m not!”
      “Well, you sure “read” like you are because that’s what everyone is saying about you, and you refuse to celebrate every single word out of so-and-so’s mouth.”
      “But she’s wrong.”
      “Racist hater, abusive sexist homophobe!”

      etc.

      1. Going point by point in an attempt to address your concerns —

        Re: exclusionary perception: please see my response to Mr. Williamson above.

        Re: how things “read”: I based my comment on remarks made in this post, not elsewhere. Do I disagree with Mr. Correira about Brianna Wu? Evidently. Do I think that Ms. Wu has been under heinous and misogynistic attack? Yes, I do. Do I then draw the conclusion that because Mr. Correira perceives Ms. Wu as someone who makes a living from generating controversy, that we disagree about the sexist nature of her experience? Yes, I do. Direct conclusion in immediate context, not extended through logical fallacy.

          1. There is actually a guy who writes free fiction on the web who writes bonus updates depending on his donated revenue from fans.
            http://www.patreon.com/Wildbow
            We’d probably donate some to you in exchange for more Christmas Noun stories.

    4. And this post, and the responses, can be summed up in the following sentence: “Talking past each other is awesome.”
      To wit: Aspen complains that the slates are “exclusionary” due to, presumably, a preponderance of white males.
      Michael Z. Williamson asks how on earth the slates are exclusionary, since (presumably) they are more ideologically diverse than previous years.
      And, there, gentlemen, is the problem.
      To wit: Aspen, and others like him, see diversity as people of many different races getting up and saying all the same things about all the same people.
      Correia and crew see diversity as a bunch of people disagreeing with each other while not breaking out the switchblades.
      The second one is the better path.

      1. If I might offer a couple of minor refinements —

        1) please see my response to Mr. Williamson about exclusion and the perception of same;

        2) I see diversity as a goal to be achieved, which has not yet been accomplished, and disagree that the Puppies campaign is a good way to do it;

        3) I’m not male.

        1. You are right. Diversity has not been achieved. I believe last year’s Hugo winners were all white liberals, with one Asian liberal. It was, and is still being hailed as a huge win for diversity, while our slate is all racist white males being racist. If you include film, then the percentage gets slightly better, since Alfonso Cuoron has similar DNA to me.

        2. “Sam J. Miller retweeted Usman Malik @usmantm · Apr 8 & no question in my mind abt this: the winner of the John W. Campbell for Best New Writer is Kai Ashante Wilson as well. So burn THAT slate.”

          Black guy writes typical anti-white racial revenge Jim Crow story only nominally fantasy cleverly titled “The Devil in America” which starts out with the word “1955 Emmett Till, and published at Tor.

          Nominated for Nebula. But Best New Writer too, huh? Gee, who saw that coming? Tough bounce. Better luck next year.

        3. And, with all due respect, you are wrong.
          1. The Sad Puppies slate sent no sociopolitical message other than “Story good!”
          2. And we have the disagreement right there.
          3. Okay, you’re a she.

    5. Wait, abusive sexism and harassment? REALLY?

      Let’s compare, shall we?

      Larry said: “When you have professional culture warriors like Brianna Wu and Arthur Chu, who make their livings off of generating political controversy, saying that Brad Torgersen’s two decades of interracial marriage is just a shield to hide his true secret racism, then yes, there is a serious tone problem.”

      I defy you to distill abuse, sexism or harassment out of that. If Larry said something so much worse, POST IT.

      Brianna Wu said: “Gamergate hijacked this year’s Hugo Awards, and loaded them with extremist homophobic authors.”

      That kinda looks like abuse and harassment right there. She said a bunch more in the same vein, I can’t be bothered to cut and paste it.

      So really Aspen… what the fuck are you talking about?

      1. She certainly should have narrowed it down, that isn’t fair to the rest of the authors, but you have read VD and John Wright, haven’t you? They are proudly and loudly full of hate for homosexuals.

        It’s not like that came out of nowhere.

        1. She certainly should have narrowed it down, that isn’t fair to the rest of the authors, but you have read VD and John Wright, haven’t you? They are proudly and loudly full of hate for homosexuals.

          And you have proof of that?

          1. I can’t tell, are you honestly not that familiar with those two, or do you know about them, but want to deflect? (Seriously, I can’t tell what tone of voice you wrote that in.)

            If you are asking in good faith, there are all kinds of posts that will answer the question. The most recent (that I am aware of) from Wright, and also the most amusing is:

            http://www.scifiwright.com/2014/12/the-perversion-of-a-legend/

            This one from VD is old, and really the first two paragraphs or so are the funniest bits, but I couldn’t bring myself to search through his writing any more than that.

            http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/938512/posts

          2. Did you read the link from before? The one where he is absolutely frothing at the mouth over the thought that two cartoon characters might be homosexual? Even in the link you posted he goes out of his way to talk about their ‘perversion’.

            Yes, he claims that he really loves them on the inside, but then writes things like the following. Now it’s possible that he believes that calling someone an abomination, etc, is speaking with love in the spirit of Jesus, but I think serious people can understand his true feelings.
            “You have earned the contempt and hatred of all decent human beings forever, and we will do all we can to smash the filthy phallic idol of sodomy you bow and serve and worship.”

            And from an earlier post from 2009 which he seems to have taken down:

            “Someone explain to me by what series of events persons with serious sexual-psychological malfunctions would somehow be awarded the status of moral arbiters, something like priests and confessors and sages…”

            Hmm… 2010:
            “Second, the argument also supposes that if society grants to the gays the legal recognition of their (let us not mince words) abomination as if it were holy matrimony”

            And this gem, implying that he believes ‘The Left’ has it wrong and homosexuality is like becropjilia, pedopilhilia, and bestiality:

            “The Left now take it as doctrine that there is no distinction between heterosexuality and homosexuality, but that homosexuality is clearly and remarkably distinct from fetishism, sadomasochism, pedophilia, necrophilia, bestiality, incest.”

          3. You know, John C. Wright’s blog is thataway. I’m sure he’ll be glad to discuss his Catholic (you know, the biggest Christian religion on Earth) beliefs with you.

          4. Thanks, I’m quite familiar with Catholic beliefs and Catholic people, I wouldn’t inquire about them on someone’s blog. I was responding to someone’s question about things that Wright has written. His beliefs will have to stay between him and God.

          5. Really? Then why do you keep talking about them here on my blog, to try and poison the well against him? If you actually care, as you have continually claimed to do, why don’t you go take it up with the source?

          6. You are doing it again. I answered that question in the very post you were responding to. If you are so certain that you are right, why do you feel the need to lie?

            Watch, I’ll do it again: “because someone asked the question and I was answering them”

            Ironically, I think it was in the comment chain where I said it wasn’t fair to attribute the comments from VD and Wright to the other authors in the puppy slates. Sort of like you said. Remember? You disavowed any support of VD? I was agreeing.

          7. Lies? Don’t I remember? No. I don’t remember. Because you are one of the five hundred demanding people I’m dealing with right fucking now.

            Dude, I’m reading these posts on the moderation page so I can approve the slew of new posters as I go. Which means they appear in the order they were posted, not under the proper sub comment. I’m doing it that way, because as you can see, I’ve gotten over 2,400 comments this week. And I don’t know how friggin’ many dozen are from you, thousands of twitter posts, thousands of FB posts, and I’ve answered your repetitive rhetoric I don’t know how many damned times while trying to remain polite, while I’ve done nothing but answer questions and respond to allegations for a week straight, wherein I’ve written a large novella worth of responses, and now I’m starting to experience argument fatigue. I don’t owe you shit, so no, I don’t fucking remember which fucking repetitive argument you’re talking about.

          8. So you went back a dozen years to find an article where Vox Day had issues with the ‘gay agenda’. Wow, some hate speech.

            As for Wright, again, you linked to an article where he disagreed with things that were being pushed, but no where did you point out anything about him attacking gays.

            I have very little respect for anonymous trolls who put up scare quotes, misread things that are written and then infer a lot from those things. Yes I understand that you’re just some lefty kid who enjoys screaming about issues that you have no commitment to, or stake in.

            You want to be taken seriously? Stop hiding behind a fake name and put up link in your real name to who you really are. I do not argue with sock puppets.

          9. I didn’t ‘have to go back ten years’ for VD. As you can see by reading what I actually wrote, there was too much, I didn’t want to spend any more time there than necessary.

            There was nothing ‘out of context’ about the quotes. They stand on their own and are quite clear. There is no manipulation required. Just ask May- quotes prove everything, yes?

            I’m not googling the Wright article again, there were several, but I believe this is the one where he claimed to not hate gays, but stated that they were like termites and should be destroyed just as termites are. This is not a quote that any amount of ‘context’ can help. I’m not sure how you can consider wiping them out to not be attacking them.

            Your last two paragraphs are pure ad-hominem and unworthy of response, except for ‘sock-puppet’? That isn’t a synonym for anonymous. If you are going to use internet terms, please look them up first.

          10. @John Van Stry
            Let’s see. Vox Day gives his support of hiring discrimination. He does not specifically mention homosexuals, so the article is not terribly good evidence of hatred of homosexuals. He just, you know, endorses breaking at least one law.
            John C. Wright calls people “disgusting, limp, soulless sacks of filth” for deciding they wanted to have homosexual characters in a relationship in THEIR TV show. Again, the article is poor evidence of him necessarily hating homosexuals, but apparently he hates people for deciding to have homosexual characters in a relationship in THEIR TV show.
            You know, hating people for not writing fiction in line with a set of beliefs is what social justice warriors do, according to this blog. Wright did the exact same thing, here. He didn’t stop at criticizing the work. Instead, he decided to insult the people who made the work for making an artistic decision.
            That excerpt doesn’t serve very well as evidence that he hates all homosexual people, but it does show he will insult creators for daring to write fiction not in line with his beliefs.
            Of course, he is perfectly free to write what he likes on his blog until it becomes libel. Just like social justice warriors are. But in that excerpt, John C. Wright acted like a social justice warrior coming from a different direction.

          11. Well, I’m glad to see you guys have gone from Wright is a Catholic Cooties Homophobe Who Wants Gays To DIE all the way to Okay, He Doesn’t Hate Gays, But Sounds Like a Social Justice Warrior, over the last few days.

            I’ll call that progress. 🙂

          12. And you, sir, are mistaken as to Mr. Wright’s reasoning behind his outrage at the matter, explained pithily in a follow-up post: http://www.scifiwright.com/2014/12/an-open-letter-to-mr-hines/

            Quote: “bad writing, cheap ending, lame out-of-nowhere romance between two female characters (neither of who previously was homosexual) being shoehorned into the last scene in the closing episode of LEGEND OF KORRA for reasons of Political Correctness.”

          13. @ 60guilders
            I work from the evidence I have. He merely attacks the show’s writing in this second post. I am not claiming that all of his posts make him sound like a SJW, I was merely claiming that his letter did. In the first post, he attacked the writers and the ideology he thinks they are a part of.
            He said: “You serve a cloud of morally-retarded mental smog called Political Correctness, which is another word for hating everything good and bright and decent and sane in life.”
            Nowhere does he say “I think you guys are bad writers” and leave it at that. No. He insults the creators because he thinks that they serve ‘Political Correctness’ when they write fiction.
            If you replace ‘Political Correctness’ with ‘cis-normative heterosexual white patriarchy’,you get something that sounds exactly like a SJW blog post. If you don’t agree with that, please tell me why.
            Note: I don’t claim to know what I don’t have evidence for. I have yet to see evidence that John C. Wright hates all homosexuals, so I’m not going to say he does. He does refer to homosexuality as a “perversion”, though, so it would seem that he doesn’t like homosexuality, though he may like some homosexuals as people.

          14. @Differently: My apologies, I was responding to Maximilian, rather than you.
            Your point I will concede.

          15. @ 60guilders
            My apologies. It gets hard to follow some of these threads. You are right that Maximillian failed to present evidence that John C. Wright hates all homosexual people. Perhaps there is evidence he does, but it wasn’t presented. I’m not interested enough to try to go searching, so I’m not going to assert anything on the matter.

        2. Seems I have heard someplace that it’s not right to judge everyone in a group by one’s perceptions of characteristics of one or two individuals. Come to think of it, I’ve even heard that if you’re using *negative* characterizations, it’s even worse.

          Can’t seem to remember where I would have heard that, though. *scratches head* What *did* they call that?

          Oh! Right! Stereotyping! That’s it!

          Now if I could just bring to mind the sort of people who were telling me that was bad…

          1. You read the part where I said it not fair to do that to the other authors, right? So, almost exactly not stereotyping?

          2. Then why are you *here* on LC’s blog talking about it, instead of being over at JCW’s place or VD?

            Look, I know people say LC is a huge mountain of whoopass, but he really has better things to do *cough*writefaster*cough* with his time than spank a couple of grown men. If you’re into that, take it up with them.

      2. A couple of things:

        1) I don’t think Ms. Wu is a “professional culture warrior” who thrives on generating controversy, which tells me that Mr. Correia (whose name I misspelled in previous comments, I see – apologies for that) and I fundamentally disagree on some core matters with regard to Gamergate;

        2) I refer you to Maximillian’s comment in response;

        3) Are you suggesting that Gamergate (as represented by persons who clearly and publicly associate themselves with that movement) was not, in fact, involved? Not welcomed by the Puppies campaign?

        This is the last comment available for me to respond to as of this posting, and I will be offline for work shortly. I think I’ve said all I originally wrote to say, anyway, and as a guest rather than a regular poster here, I’ll see myself out.

        1. 1. How much is Brianna Wu’s Patreon account worth again?
          2. Dude’s posted like a dozen times, I’ve read like 4,000 posts, and I’m too tired to care. You want to say something, say it.
          3. EVERYONE WAS WELCOMED TO THE PUPPIES CAMPAIGN. Unlike you, we don’t have political litmus tests over acceptability. I don’t give a shit if they are Gamers or Girl Scouts. Are they a fan? Do they like to read books?

          However, despite TNH’s boogieman claims to the contrary, SP3 wasn’t the work of GamerGate because most of GamerGate had no idea who the hell we were until the Breitbart article came out AFTER THE CUT OFF DATE TO BUY A MEMBERSHIP IN TIME TO NOMINATE.

          I spoke to a reporter from Breitbart. Yes. Because remember, my original public stated goal was to expose to the world the bias in the system. Duh.

          Oh, but now GamerGate is involved… Because TNH blamed it on them, and then a bunch of media outlets blamed it on them, and people they hate like Brianna Wu and Arthur Chu are blowing the war horn of social justice because they have another excuse to call a bunch of people racist, SO FUCKING DERP. You waved a red cape in front of a bull, and now you’re surprised the bull is coming for you?

          TNH’s evidence of GamerGate involvement was that Daddy Warpig is a GamerGate blogger and a fan of mine, and tweeted about Sad Puppies in time to get involved. However, his own retweets and favorites show that hardly anyone noticed. It didn’t get picked up, and HE DIDN’T EVEN PERSONALLY VOTE THE SUGGESTED SLATE.

          So if you think this year was bad, continue waving that red cape in front of thousands of Gamergaters, saying Suck it! The Hugos belong to SJWs! Racists!

          And I’ve already posted all of this on the blog before, so quit wasting my time. I’m getting really annoyed having to continually restate my opinions to people who ignore them anyway.

        2. 1. How much is Brianna Wu’s Patreon account worth again?
          2. Dude’s posted like a dozen times, I’ve read like 4,000 posts, and I’m too tired to care. You want to say something, say it.
          3. EVERYONE WAS WELCOMED TO THE PUPPIES CAMPAIGN. Unlike you, we don’t have political litmus tests over acceptability. I don’t give a shit if they are Gamers or Girl Scouts. Are they a fan? Do they like to read books?

          However, despite TNH’s boogieman claims to the contrary, SP3 wasn’t the work of GamerGate because most of GamerGate had no idea who the hell we were until the Breitbart article came out AFTER THE CUT OFF DATE TO BUY A MEMBERSHIP IN TIME TO NOMINATE.

          I spoke to a reporter from Breitbart. Yes. Because remember, my original public stated goal was to expose to the world the bias in the system. Duh.

          Oh, but now GamerGate is involved… Because TNH blamed it on them, and then a bunch of media outlets blamed it on them, and people they hate like Brianna Wu and Arthur Chu are blowing the war horn of social justice because they have another excuse to call a bunch of people racist, SO FUCKING DERP. You waved a red cape in front of a bull, and now you’re surprised the bull is coming for you?

          TNH’s evidence of GamerGate involvement was that Daddy Warpig is a GamerGate blogger and a fan of mine, and tweeted about Sad Puppies in time to get involved. However, his own retweets and favorites show that hardly anyone noticed. It didn’t get picked up, and HE DIDN’T EVEN PERSONALLY VOTE THE SUGGESTED SLATE.

          So if you think this year was bad, continue waving that red cape in front of thousands of Gamergaters, saying Suck it! The Hugos belong to SJWs! Racists!

          And I’ve already posted all of this on the blog before, so quit wasting my time. I’m getting really annoyed having to continually restate my opinions to people who ignore them anyway.

          1. I’m ignorant of the significance of a patreon account. What does Wu’s large patreon account have to do with her being or not being a SJW?

          2. A Patreon account is where people can donate money to support artists who produce works that they like and would like to see continue. It is especially useful for art that is difficult to monetize ( I understand it is a godsend for web cartoonists).

            Wu is a professional victim. Her Patreon is people giving her money for “punching up” against the evil boogieman that is GamerGate. It is basically money for nothing. Actual producers of video games get paid when the market purchases their product. She gets money for being Wu. She picks fights, calls people racists/sexists/homophobes (like me for example) and eventually somebody she attacks gets pissed off and responds. Then she screams about the trasphobic hate attack, and more people donate to her Patreon, because that makes them good people, absolved from their white guilt.

            It is a scam. At the height of GG when all the national media attention was on it, she was raking in $13k a month from people like Aspen.

          3. …wow. That’s just… wow.

            I was familiar with Patreon via several webcomics. (and there should absolutely be a webcomics section in the Hugos. They’ve gotten larger than some of the other Hugo sections out there.)

            I had no idea Patreon was used in internet trolling like that. Naive of me, I guess.

          4. It is especially useful for art that is difficult to monetize

            I know I’ve seen it from several people who run podcasts that I listen to.

            But it makes no sense for someone who is actually selling a product, like books or games. Because then someone can just buy those.

  51. “Mary Robinette Kowal retweeted
    Michael Curry @mkcurry · 28m 28 minutes ago

    “Michael Curry retweeted John Scalzi GRRM dismantles the Puppies ‘oppression’ argument with facts. https://twitter.com/scalzi/status/586299795586883586

    “Michael Curry added,
    John Scalzi @scalzi
    GRRM is doing yeoman’s work dismantling the Puppy argument that their kind of writer/writing is excluded from Hugos: http://grrm.livejournal.com/418285.html

    Considering these are writers, I find their level of sheer brainlessness and inability to understand their own participation in their own ideology captivating.

    1. I rather think grrm confirmed several points about campaigning he’s just sad about it and wishes it weren’t so.

  52. The Locus Recommended Reading List part in both your response and GRRM’s original caught my eye and so I eyeballed the Locus lists from 2004-2014.

    A total of two Baen novels, period. (And a handful of shorts from JB Universe, years ago.) Both of the novels from LMB.

    I’m a Baen fanboy since the early days of the Free Library; a fair number of my reading comes from the fact that a book has the Baen imprint.

    The fact that Locus critics have found nothing (nothing Baen) from Drake, Weber, Ringo, Correia, Kratman, etc. as worthy of being recommended over the last decade smells of bias in a nasty way.

    I’m curious if there was a similar bias trend when Jim was helming Baen, but I’m too damn tired to look it up.

      1. Anti-veteran too (at least, I presume the ‘anti-military SF’ stance means there aren’t many vets on the SJW’s lists of previous nominees.

        Anti-union for screwing Flint? 1632, excellent. There might be members of the paper-pushers unions, but I haven’t heard any support something like the United Mine Worker’s Union.

        The entire reason “One or two would have been ok” is the silent subtext “Because then we’d have been able to gin up enough hatred to out vote you the old fashioned way.”

    1. Well, Drake has written books that deserve at least a nomination (Redliners, for ex), and I personally love Weber, but c’mon, the rest of those guys?

      They compare themselves to Heinlein and say he couldn’t ein today either, but he didn’t win for shoot’em up adventures like The Door Into Summer. He won for Double Star, Troopers, Harsh Mistress, and Stranger. None of those guys are writing books like that. They aren’t writing The Mote In God’s Eye or Footfall.

      But yes, I’ll put my hand in the air and swear that Redliners and the entire RCN series are way better than Redshirts. I’m not sure how that one got a Hugo, but I think it was a fluke.

      1. Replying to myself, sorry:

        Note that I’m glad to see different names in the SP3 slate for Best Novel. Butcher certainly deserves an award for the recent Dresden books, Kloos is good, and The Goblin Emperor was excellent.

        So, thank you for those.

          1. Oh, my bad, thanks. Okay, the other two still stand. Can’t remember the third of the SP’s and the fourth is by a guy I have not read, so no comment.

    2. Or Wen Spencer. Wen Spencer rocks. Tinker is fabulous but 8 Million Gods blew me away and warmed my fan-girl heart with all it’s amazing Anime’ glory.

      Wen Spencer writes *tight* plots. I won’t say she never writes herself into a corner but dangit, 8 Million Gods was GOOD and it was very unlike anything out there anywhere. (It also had alternative lifestyles, mental illness, and enough “proper” message for anyone who happened to care about those things.)

      1. She favors some messages that I find obnoxious, but I can tell she cares more about making the story work.

        1. Watch her writing process on FB. She works REALLY hard to link the little details, even if some of it comes down to Retconning….

          Love her books too. Beginning to get antsy about her beliefs, but love her books. And unlike some of the SJW, even if I hate her beliefs, if she exercises the least bit of discretion, I’ll still buy her books.

          zuk

  53. “I’ve had a bunch of well-meaning SMOFs telling me that they nobody would be upset if we’d only gotten one or two things into each category, but that’s exactly what we accomplished last year, and they still freaked out at us. ”

    Two thoughts:
    (1) Anybody with a clue about how the politics of fandom works would know better than this.
    (2) I can think of dozens of SMOFs who would say exactly this, because they live in a damned fantasy world where real people neither do nor can live.

    Actually, one more thought: Everything that’s happened, everything that’s being said, pretty much jibes with what I saw 20 years ago, _running_ a worldcon. They were a set of aligned in-group clubs then, and they haven’t changed their ways.

    More motivation to write up/tell some of the stories from 1993 and thereabouts, that illustrate just how much shit is in the sausage.

  54. It is the most prestigious award which represents the best works in all of fandom.

    It is a little award, for one little group of people, at one convention.

    Every book which is emblazoned with a big seal that says “Hugo Winner” is banking on it being the most prestigious award that represents the best of all SF (not fandom as such). Of course the award actually belongs to the Worldcon, but the whole SF world at one time trusted the Worldcon to represent the whole SF world on their behalf. I try to take that trust seriously; so does Brad, though it may be too late. Yes, Hugo belongs to the Worldcon, and everyone who buys a supporting membership is part of Worldcon, whether or not they turn up in Spokane.

    If the Neilsen Haydens think that the Hugo is only for a small core of people to care about, will Tor stop doing Hugo vanity advertising?

    Heinlein wrote Starship Troopers in 2014, could he get on the Hugo ballot now?

    That book is of its time. Heinlein was a commercial author, who would write a different book in 2014. I think it is fair to say that if Heinlein brought out a book now that was as much at odds with TruFan thinking now as Starship Troopers was in 1959, it wouldn’t get a nomination. Quite a few fans thought that Heinlein was warmongering in 1959.

    I’ve been exposed to the Phantom Duplicator, or part of it anyway. Snooze.

  55. I can’t disagree with much of what you said. I’ve seen a lot of clicque-ish drama at and surrounding WorldCons and smaller regionals for the last 15 years. But what I haven’t seen is this translating to the Hugos, for the most part. It seems odd to take the battle there. In fact, it seems really odd to want to escalate the battle *at all*. There will be no winners here. Someone is going to have to be the bigger man eventually–why not the Sad Puppies? Don’t encourage the Rabid Puppies, appeal to the moderates (just not with a “we’re going to take WorldCon back…by force!” approach) and see if we can’t once again make the community accepting of a little more variety where possible.

    1. Why wouldn’t it translate to the Hugos? What magical process or Wham-O-Dyne transmorgrifier would prevent a group who you admit engage in cliqish behavior from maintaining that behavior in the Hugo process.

      Let’s make one thing perfectly clear: Nobody is talking about taking back the Hugos by force. For decades the Hugos have held a great deal of cache because anyone willing to pony up the money could have a say in the award. Now that those of us who have found recent winners lacking have decided to take WorldCon up on their offer the old cliques are acting as if the world is coming to an end. We’re not taking the Hugo’s back, we’re just not going to permit those bigots to bully us anymore.

      And that’s the key. There are no moderates. There are the bullies who dominated the Hugos until this year. There are the bullied, who are no longer going to agree to being marginalized. And then there are those moral degenerates who stood aside and allowed the bullies to drive out countless talented authors and devoted fans. Forgive me for not reaching out to spineless cowards.

  56. When I was younger (early 80’s) I went to several cons both SF and gaming. I felt like finally I had found my people and it was one of my favorite things in life. Then I joined the military and after that went to college and grad school. I simply didn’t have the time or money to be involved in cons anymore of either type.
    Finally my life settled down and I had money to go to cons again. Twenty some years later I felt like a pariah at every con I went to. Suddenly everyone hated all the authors I loved and it felt like I had wandered into a political rally. I was actually spit on once when I got in an argument about Heinlein not being a fascist when I admitted I had joined the military partly because of reading Starship Troopers as a kid. Literally spit on.
    I’m just a fan so I quit going after that. These places were like enemy territory and I wasn’t going to waste my vacation and my money on that.
    Well I’m going to start going again and to hell with these people. They have driven plenty of us out but I think people like me have had enough. Fandom doesn’t belong to these liars and political revolutionaries. It belongs to us just as much and I hope to hell they are ready for us to invade their sad little party and reclaim what is ours as much as anyone.
    I salute you Larry and everyone else brave enough to fight these people. I for one have hope again.

    1. Seriously? Spit upon? Oy… now I’m *really* wondering if there’s any point in going after all.

      1. I’ve met some jerks at cons, especially in the early 2000’s, but that’s worse than anything I’ve ever seen happen, even from crazy people or persons of really rabid politics. So I don’t think that’s usual.

        Everyone at a convention wears a numbered ID badge so the con staff knows you’re not sneaking in, and most people put their names or fannish nicknames on them (“Hello My Name Is” type thing).

        So if anybody does something serious like that, and you don’t get helped or apologized to, you get his name and badge number and tell the convention committee folks on duty in ops, or you tell convention security or a gofer. Any decent concom will get on the matter right away; and anybody acting ridiculously badly like that should get thrown out of the con, and put on the list of people who can’t come back.

        If it’s something illegal and seriously bad, of course you should call the police and let concom know, in whichever order you wish.

    2. I bound “early 80s” to “younger” rather than “when” the first time I read this. Duuude! Spry!

  57. RE: No Award

    I can’t remember if I voted No Award or if I just abstained from voting in a lot of the categories last year, for the simple reason that I hadn’t read any of the works (in the short fiction categories) or I had no idea who any of the editors were (in the editorial categories).

    My problem with what you’re doing here is that–and people can please correct me if I’m wrong–I don’t think most people who went with your slate actually read all of the works that they were nominating. That’s completely within the rules, but it leaves the impression that these are really Larry Correia’s nominees rather than the collective nominees of a like-minded group of individuals. And that’s pretty much a set-up for No Award in a number of categories.

    Most of the blog comments aren’t doing much to change my opinion on this. A lot of people are talking politics, but I don’t think I’ve seen a single person say anything like, “I read all five novellas that were on the slate, and they were all fantastic sci-fi!”

    1. CORRECTION TO THE ABOVE: I just realized that you posted the slate for SP2, but the slate for SP3 was posted by Brad Torgersen. I apologize for the error, but my point still stands: Is this the slate that Brad Torgersen wanted, or is it the slate that he suggested, and a group of like-minded individuals went out and read the suggested works and then nominated them?

    2. Nope. I will correct you if you are wrong.

      Check our Book Bombs. In the short fiction categories we Book Bombed all of our nominees, selling tons, and probably making them the most widely read items to show up in the smaller fiction categories in a very long time.

      In fact, Mike Glyer of File 770 reported on this, when he first saw our slate he made the same accusation, that we were trying to get people to vote without reading. I very clearly stated to the people involved that we expected them to do whatever they wanted, these were our suggestions, and we wanted them to read the works so they could vote intelligently. And when I posted that we already had the Book Bombs on the calender for each week leading up to the close of nominations.

      For example, our 3 plugged novellas? We sold over 2,000 of them that week, bumping each one to the top of its category on Amazon. If you know publishing numbers, you will realize that for novellas, that is a huge number.For many of our authors, it was the most sales they’ve ever had at one time.

      As for our novels, Kloos, Anderson, and especially Butcher are all wildly popular and my fan base has huge crossover with them already. Butcher is probably the most popular and widely read author to show up on the Hugo ballot in a long time.

      Also, the reason in these comments that you are seeing politics, is because all week long my people have been getting bombarded with politics attacking us. So talking about that is a normal human reaction. When the news is all OMG! RACISTS!!!! NO AWARD EVERYTHING, that is going to kind of suck up your attention.

      1. Thank you for this. I stand humbly corrected, then, and I would encourage you to put this information at the top of every post you make on this, because I think it’s pretty important. If a small group of people wants to nominate works that they all liked, I really don’t have a problem with it. I think you really need to (figuratively) beat people over the head with this information. Most of the short works are given in their full form to all Hugo voters. Now that I know that you were campaigning for people to read the things that they were voting for, I’m much more likely to read all of the entries for all of the categories rather than simply “No Award” them. And if I don’t get a chance to read the entries for a category, I’ll abstain from voting rather than voting for “No Award”.

        1. Frank, thanks, we have repeated it a lot, but it has been ignored. Our current problem is that everybody gloms onto different reasons to hate us, so we correct those, and then they spread a new narrative, and we respond to that one, but they’ve already started a new narrative. Correcting them becomes absolutely exhausting. And the next thing I know I’ve written like 20,000 words on it THIS WEEK, and already they are hitting with another narrative.

          The thing is, we’ve been doing this in the open the whole time. A lot of people who are angry at us, if they’d just go through and read our actual posts, and not the narratives being set by people who hate us, they’d realize that we’re trying over here.

          1. I would suggest having some sort of sidebar on your blog posts, perhaps briefly replacing your current sidebar on the left, that provides a short explanation of the situation. I know you’re getting hit from every direction right now, and by next week you’ll probably be expected to provide proof that you aren’t the anti-Christ, but there are a lot of people like me (i.e., voting members of the con) who just want to know that people read the works that they were nominating. Most of us didn’t know there was a “controversy” until this week, when it started showing up in the mainstream press.

          2. Larry: I hope I’m not telling you something you already know, but this is what Stephen Hunter (who spent 37 years working for big-city newspapers) had to say about The Narrative(tm)

            You do not fight the narrative. The narrative will destroy you. The narrative is all-powerful. The narrative rules. It rules us, it rules Washington, it rules everything.

            The narrative is the set of assumptions the press believes in, possibly without even knowing that it believes in them. It’s so powerful because it’s unconscious. It’s not like they get together every morning and decide “These are the lies we will tell today.” No, that would be too crude and honest. Rather, it’s a set of casual, nonrigorous assumptions about a reality they’ve never really experienced that’s arranged in such a way as to reinforce their best and most ideal presumptions about themselves and their importance to the system and the way they’ve chosen to live their lives. It’s a way of arranging things a certain way that they all believe in without ever really addressing carefully. It permeates their whole culture. They know, for example, that Bush is a moron and Obama is a saint. They know communism was a phony threat cooked up by right-wing cranks as a way to leverage power to the executive. They know that Saddam didn’t have weapons of mass destruction, the response to Katrina was fucked up….

            Cheney’s a devil. Biden’s a genius. Soft power good, hard power bad. Forgiveness excellent, punishment counterproductive, capital punishment a sin…

            And the narrative is the bedrock of their culture, the keystone of their faith, the altar of their church. They don’t even know they’re true believers, because in theory they despise the true believer in anything. But they will absolutely de-frackin’-stroy anybody who makes them question that….

            I, Sniper, pp 231-232

            I would add my $.02: Progress is one of the central myths of progressivism. What they want (or advocate) this week is progress, no matter how wrongheaded. Anything they don’t want or disagree with is a reactionary attempt to return to an evil, benighted past. And if they have to change their story to convince themselves they’re still winning, you’re still losing, and that Progress(tm) is still occurring, they’ll change it.

      2. Would you mind if I posted your answer to my statement over at George’s website? I think it’s a key element to the discussion, but I don’t want to post it without your permission. Thanks!

        1. As long as people use my quotes honestly and don’t take them out of context, I’m always fine being quoted.

          Thanks.

      3. Yes, it’s true. Not everyone read all the works on the suggested slate. I didn’t. I also didn’t vote in some categories, because I didn’t have time to read the works.

        The fact is, we have never known how many people who vote in a category, or nominated stories, actually read all of what they voted on/nominated. Back around 1980, I suggested that the Worldcon distribute copies of the fanzines nominated to all the Hugo finalist voters, so we could vote more intelligently. The response was, basically, ‘Can’t be done in a timely and affordable manner,’ which was probably correct then. But it’s a problem we’ve always had.

        “Sad Puppies” has really tried to get the suggested works in front of the potential nominators. I don’t see how the efforts can be improved on.

    3. I didn’t vote for nominations, because $40 was well beyond my budget.

      If I had the money, I would have, for example, bought Anderson and Kloos, IIRC the only novels on the Sad Slate that I had not already read. I ended up reading Anderson’s book anyway, but money would have made it quicker.

      I wouldn’t have voted for several categories, because I don’t read comics or watch movies much, and didn’t know that manga and videogames would have qualified.

      It was well understood here that the suggestions were suggestions, and we would be expected to read anything we nominated. The first time someone came here on this issue, we were joking for some time that ‘Larry did not tell me to look before crossing the street, so I was hit by a car’.

      1. I didn’t vote either, but I had already read Butcher (because I do that always) and seen most of the tv and movie categories. I would probably not have voted in any fanish stuff and maybe not in editor type categories. Reading a few more books would have been easy, though.

        I have no idea if people read everything, or nominated everything although I’ve always assumed the ballots would vary in many ways from each other because that’s just how people operate. But no one has any knowledge of whether the other nominators nominated things they read either. So accusations are just unfounded suppositions.

    4. Frank –

      “I don’t think most people who went with your slate actually read all of the works that they were nominating.”

      Sweetheart, darling, beloved fellow-fan-I-have-yet-to-meet-yet…

      WHY WOULD YOU THINK THAT? WHY WOULD YOU SAY THAT?

      Why would you say to *any* fan “oh, I don’t think you really like that, you’re just pretending”? Why would you believe anyone when they said that about someone else?

      I don’t know anyone who only fakes loving something – I know a lot of people with weirdly narrow interests (ie, the manga they love starts and STOPS with “Lone Wolf and Cub”, but they have the whole damn series memorized and can tell you the few places where Kioke screwed up something historically, hate most of the movies, and talk all sorts of smack about Miller’s ‘misinterpretations’.

      Yeah, they have no clue about Sailor Moon or AC, but that doesn’t mean they are ‘fake’ fans of LW&C.

      And this was voting for awards! Why vote for something you didn’t know anything about to judge for yourself?

      This whole thing of “you’re not real fans, you’re just faking it” – please, please, tell the people on your side to stop it. It’s hurtful, it’s enraging, and it only increases the perception that the other side a) thinks we’re liars and b) erases our voice as fans.

  58. Hi! I’m Warren. I’m a long time reader and first time commenter. I actually might be called an up-and-coming author, having just had a short published in an anthology. Woot. Anyway…

    You know what bothers me the most about people in the SJW mold? They will have no qualms about telling you how wrong you are for liking certain authors/movies/comics/etc but get upset if you point out that the stuff they like isn’t very good.

    As a Conservative Christian, one that grew up in a Pentecostal church, I’ve dealt with this my whole life. Inside and outside of the church. I’m an Evangelical Christian genre fan that loved reading, movies and video games! I also listened to Rock (Both secular and Christian) In the mid 80’s…sheez. I’d get attacked by people in the church for liking the wrong things and I’d get attacked by people outside of the church for…liking the wrong things.

    I grew up being attacked by SJWs of all stripes and from various groups. And it’s only become worse since the rise of the intertubes. Despite my Christian faith, I often just want to flip the bird at the whole lot of them and go live on an island.

    I grew up reading Magazines that made the Hugos sound like the Holy Grail. If you were even nominated for a Hugo, it meant you were *in* as a scifi writer. But that was in the 80’s and early 90’s. As the 90’s progressed, I started seeing more and more of what is now termed “SJW” influence on the scifi genre as a whole. I seemed to not be able to get a hold of Science Fiction that didn’t have some type of message attached. I gradually stopped reading pure scifi in the early to mid aughts because of this. (And because of Personal Life Crisis (TM) but that is another story.) By that point, I lost all respect for any of the big awards in SciFi. I figured they were all just pat-yourself-on-the-back awards given to the highest bidder. I guess I wasn’t wrong on that, eh?

    It warms my heart to see this break open like it has this year. Even if WorldCon changes the rules and this type of thing can never happen again, it shows how corrupt the entire process has become. (Has become? I bet you it wasn’t exactly clean even in the grand old days of the Silver age of Scifi.)

    I’m also very glad that Self Publishing has broke the stranglehold of the so called Traditional Publishers had on the market. There is a lot of bad stuff floating around out there right now but there is also a lot of good. Cream always rises, IMHO.

    It might not seem like it to many, but this is a good time to be an up and coming author. The old ways are breaking down and new paths are being forged. It will never be easy but nothing worth its salt is. The Sad Puppies crowd are taking the bullet for us new authors and will (hopefully) make these awards valid again. If not? Well, personally,, I’d rather have fans than awards. (Call me a hack all you want but I need to make a living.) I’ve also never read a book just because it has a Hugo or Nebula award attached to it. I’ve read it because I thought it look interesting, a friend recommended it to me or I read a review I liked. Sometimes I’ve read books out of sheer boredom as well. But never because it won an award.

    I’m sure there are more like me out there. Certainly I’m not the only one.

  59. Not being a follower of the Hugo awards, despite being a (dare I say it) 50+ year SciFi and fantasy reader, I only became aware of the Hugo kerfluffle created by the SJWs. I only became aware of the SJWs pernicious influence via an article in (horrors!!) in a conservative magazine I subscribe to. Unfortunately it appears the same virus infecting our mainstream media and universities has come to infect my favorite fiction genre. Anyway, enough about.

    My taste in fantasy authors is rather narrow as I favor authors like Larry C., Jim Butcher, Rob Thurman (did she make the list), Thomas Sniegorski, and etc. whose views mirror my guns, God and America point of view. Although, I do like Chris Farnsworth’s despite what I suspect to be his liberal politics. And yes, GRRM is a whiny git, no surprise he’s on HBO with Bill Maher.

    Anyway, Hugos and other awards do not determine what books I read, the quality of the authors work does. I dislike Delaney, not because he’s gay, but because I found his work to be depressing, boring and thoroughly unsatisfying. The SciFi equivalent of Booker Prize winner.

    Some of my favorite authors have won the Hugo, Herbert, Asimov, etc., however; the Hugo has become the literary equivalent of the CMA or Grammy music awards. Just as the best and least-PC artists, AC/DC, Ozzy, Ray Wylie Hubbard, Mike McMurtry and their ilk will never see a CMA or Grammy, the best and most non-PC authors are least likely to see a Hugo.

    Please forgive my verbosity, but the SWJs seriously piss me off. This is better than therapy.

    I can’t sign off without saying something about Internet Trolls. Gotta love ’em, they are so pathetic and needy, and so much fun to play with. I know some authors and commentators fear them, but I welcome them, they are so much fun to play with. People like Vox and Yamma with their limited life experience, lack of contact with real life or people are to be pitied, not feared; recognized as puerile, adolescent and ignorant.

    1. Sir, I demand that you retract the terrible things you are saying about internet trolls. What have I ever done to you to deserve being lumped in with the sort of cretinous ilk that have appropriated and slandered the good name of agent provocateurs everywhere? If I do not receive satisfaction, it will be nerf pistols at dawn, sir.

  60. I read the comments at GRRM – 3 pages worth. what I read was sad particularly GRRM using McCarthism blacklisting as some sort of yardstick. Sheer hyperbole. As for hearing his writing block being partially attributed to political voting …. don’t have any polite words.

    1. GRRM and his use of McCarthism blacklisting is pure projection.

      He’s aware. He knows what’s been going on. His “reasonableness” was pure show and no go.

      1. Yeah, I like that he started the piece saying he had never heard or seen anything untowards and later when asked what sort of proof he’d like he gives THAT reply?
        Talk about evasive.

        1. Still, nobody has provided any sort of proof or even any details on who all of these blacklisted authors are. No names of people who were driven out of the field or prevented from getting a contract, nothing.

          Instead of complaining about one of the phrases in his question, why not try answering it?

          1. Just look at the nominees in the last ten years, count how many nominations each one has.

            Now, can you think of any authors…any authors at all…that you think should have been on there, and are well known?

            So why weren’t they?

            IIRC, 2006-2009, it took about 50 nominations for the ballot.

            And surprise! Many of the same people got approximately that number of votes each year.

            Now, this is not proof of collusion. But it’s probably proof of incest.

            This year there were 2000 nominating ballots, and the nominees are, in fact more diverse, in politics, orientation, background, ethnicity and publishing house than in those prior years.

            Unless you think more voters is a bad thing for democracy.

            WSFS is getting a crapton of money from supporting memberships, new people are getting on the ballot, and we’re all talking.

            We SHOULD be talking about the quality of the work, but all the articles (Which came out within a few hours of each other, some within minutes), are shouting, “WHITE GUY WITH A DOZEN NOMINATIONS SAYS THE SYSTEM WORKED PERFECTLY BUT IS BEING STOLEN BY RACIST RIGHTWINGERS!”

            A: we’re not all right wingers. I have no idea how many might be racist, but that’s also a judgment call and not necessarily relevant to the quality of a work–I read stuff from avowed communists without letting my distaste of their politics color the book, and

            2) doesn’t it seem selfish that someone with a dozen noms would be outraged about someone new getting one? Is that such a threat?

          2. You should read his post, don’t just believe what people here are saying about it. He isn’t outraged, he made that clear. He said he was a bit sad to see organized voting groups taking over the nominations.

            He also listed a bunch of conservative authors who have been nominated recently, going all the way up through 2012 (or so).

            All the people who are responding to that are saying that they ‘feel’ like there should have been more, or that the conspiracy only started after his list ended, or that they just don’t like him asking for proof… But nobody has offered any actual facts.

          3. I can tell the way you talk about this you don’t know what’s happening. Think of how black authors would fare in a KKK literary movement and you’ll be closer to the truth. This is an informal collusion to discriminate against straight white men. It has no hard edges to it or solid blacklists. This is about correctthink and who measures up and who doesn’t. What white men are “allies” who have confessed their privilege and which haven’t. That this gentrified KKK exists is not in dispute. This cult is obsessed with race and gender and in promoting diversity with a view that straight white men are the only thing standing in the way of that. There is a mountain of documented hate speech that goes along with that. If you haven’t read that speech, what’s that to us? I have.

          4. Sarah Hoyt was blacklisted when she got tired of biting her tongue every time libertarians were slighted.

            That’s why she changed publishing houses. She says she knows many others. Go read her blog.

          5. So your blacklist is that an author switched publishers (which they do all the time) and is still being published successfully?

            That is not what ‘blacklist’ or ‘destroyed career’ mean. Not even close.

          6. So, could you tell me what definition of ‘blacklist’ you are using? Because seriously, I have no idea what you are talking about. Wouldn’t a blacklist need to have some kind of negative effect on someone?

          7. It is evidence, certainly, but it isn’t evidence of a ‘blacklist’. The example shows that an author changed publishers and is now happily writing and publishing away.

            That isn’t what ‘blacklist’ means.

          8. @Maximillian:

            The difference between us and you is that we’ve been following this since it started.

            The evidence is there in plenty. Do your own damned work.

            Or…

            Keep pretending it’s all about nothing.

            Your choice.

          9. I have been following it since the beginning. I have not said anything about this being over nothing. You are either thinking about someone else or possibly arguing with the voices in your head.

            Also, no, it is not ‘my own work’. The way it works is when you are trying to persuade someone to support you and they ask a question, the person who is offering the argument will usually support it, with, you know, evidence. When I asked the question here I got a whole bunch of hand waving about how people feel it must be true, so therefore it is true, so no actual facts are needed. This doesn’t work for me. If you are all still claiming to be disciples of Heinlein, I think you should know that this kind of reasoning wouldn’t work for him, either.

            So far the only actual answer without hand waving and hostility was that Sarah Hoyt chose to switch publishing houses and appears to be happy with the new one. That’s not blacklisting.

          10. I don’t know how I suddenly became Wikipedia and Google for you guys.

            And then I realized that I’ve written like 20,000 words of answering stupid questions this week, trying to be diplomatic, and fifteen minutes later somebody is demanding more evidence of something else, about a complicated topic that dates back years. Fantastic.

            Mad Genius Club has had several articles on the topic of blacklisting in publishing. Here I’ve been talking about blacklisting in the awards. Related, but not the same.

            So if you are honest about learning about political blacklisting, head over to MGC and hit search. And yes, most of the stories will be anecdote, because when publishers screw with your career because they don’t like your politics, they don’t exactly put it in writing and have it notarized.

            I have found it absolutely fascinating however, how my side is supposed to know about all this inside baseball, and secret gentlemen’s agreements that we weren’t party too, and all of this ANECDOTAL information about tradition… But anything that is widely accepted, known, and talked about on my side demands presentation of hard evidence.

          11. I was replying to someone else, but thank you for the link.

            That site reminds me that I haven’t read anything by Freer for a while, it’s time to check back in. Thanks.

            Unfortunately, checking back through 2011, the posts mention fears about possibly being put on a blacklist, but not even an anecdote about someone that it happened to. There was a post where Freer suggested that statistically there should be more straight white males being published, but (anecdotally, sure) almost everything I read is already written by a SWM. Or Lois Bujold.

          12. Instead of complaining about one of the phrases in his question, why not try answering it?

            Look at all of the successful Indy authors.
            Interesting, isn’t it, that none of them could get published, yet they are selling tens of thousands of books.

            Those are your blacklist. They never made it past the editors, and if it wasn’t for Bezo letting them selfpub on Amazon, you would never have heard of any of them.

          13. Thank you, I appreciate a reply on this.

            Why do you assume that all of those people, or even many of them, were blacklisted for being conservative? I’ve read a lot of self-published stuff lately (the closest I can find to some Tom Clancy or Larry Bond), some of it is good, if a bit rough, some is okay, and a lot of it is just crap that needs spellcheck and a high-school English teacher.

            Isn’t it just as likely that these are all the people who would have been in the slush pile back in the golden days before SJWs took over?

          14. I never said they were passed over for being conservative, they were passed over for not sticking to the left wing narrative.

            There is a difference.

            As to how I know? Because I know quite a few of those people and I know why they were refused. We do talk to each other you know.

            As for the ‘quality’ of their writing, have you seen the quality of most authors before their editors go over it? Especially when they’re first starting out?

            And didn’t you notice it when ‘strong male characters’ almost completely stopped being published? That suddenly only strong female characters were allowed and male characters had to be deeply flawed and self-doubting?
            That was because the editors decided that they had to ‘help’ women become more confident by focusing on works that made women look powerful.

            While there was nothing wrong with that, the idea that strong male characters were no longer necessary and in fact should be avoided meant that if you wrote books containing them, you would not get published (unless you were already established).

            Which is why a lot of men stopped reading scifi, it was no longer being written for us.

          15. I would also like more hard data on whether conservative writers were underrepresented in the Hugo awards. It is tough to find hard data on that, though, as we don’t really have fixed definitions of conservative and liberal. We could determine based on votes for president, but we’re missing a lot of data for various authors.
            We do have quite a bit of anecdotal evidence that conservative writers are not well liked by the big new york houses.
            However, regardless of whether that specific bias is a reality, there are a number of biases in the Hugo awards that do have data supporting them. Chaos Horizon: https://chaoshorizon.wordpress.com/
            documents many of those biases well. The Puppies have successfully combated some biases, such as the bias against media tie-in fiction.
            In short, a statistical analysis of the politics of Hugo award winning and Hugo nominated authors hasn’t been done yet (possibly because we don’t actually know everyone’s politics). But there are authors who have been heavily bashed for their views when those view match those of the right. Card, for example, is not a conservative, but he supports the conservatives on a specific policy, and some people have written letters to his publisher about how awful Card is for quite a while now. Tor didn’t drop him, despite these attacks, but Card is an author who sells extremely well.
            In short, we don’t have statistical evidence of whether the Hugo nominees and winners skew right or left (as always, correct me if I’m wrong). But one can support the Puppies without evidence for that specific claim, as the Puppies have helped increase voting in the Hugo awards and increased the representation of media tie-in fiction in the Hugo awards.

          16. Maximillian and Martin cannot connect dots and understand how one makes a case. This is not like a movie where the criminal makes a confession at the end. It is a preponderance of the evidence, which is in this case is massive.

            Martin needs to read this: http://www.jamesmaystock.com/essays/Pages/SFFRacistQuotes.html

            Multiply those remarks by 10,000.

            Add in boycotts of all-white, all-male convention panels, constant requests to “de-white” a library, calls to take a year off of reading straight white men and on and on and on. It’s been daily and is now running into a years-long campaign of non-stop racial and sexual defamation.

            If Martin’s looking for a solid blacklist or thinks we need to toughen up then A.) there is no such convenient blacklist and B.) we are responding and we are not asking permission, nor are we asking for a referee. We asked for that for months on end as individuals and so-called moderators or blog owners banned and deleted us. The only way to NOT be banned at Tor is to bow your head at the regular racially defamatory posts.

            We have been documenting these remarks for months going onto years. If people want to suddenly jump in and say what the big deal is then they need to do some reading and educate themselves or butt out. Most of all they need to stop setting up straw man arguments we are NOT saying and then knocking them down.

            I am constantly amazed a community of writers doesn’t understand what this thing called “quote marks” is. For a lesson in that, read Hurley’s latest piece of propaganda at The Atlantic, multiply it by 10,000 and then fuck off and stop asking us to not say impolite things like “fuck off.”

            Plus: fuck off.

          17. @ James May:

            “Maximillian and Martin cannot connect dots and understand how one makes a case. This is not like a movie where the criminal makes a confession at the end. It is a preponderance of the evidence, which is in this case is massive.”

            I’m fair sure you’re aware of this. You’re not new to this type battleground. But, there are folks here who are so I’ma gonna use this spot for a bit o’ instruction.

            I don’t know Maximillian’s motivation, he might be a good guy, might not. But, his comments in this reply line serve a good purpose in illustration.

            The technique is called “repetitive question” in interrogation. It’s used to wear down resistance.

            The SJW and all their assorted fellow travelers love to use that technique in forum “debate” (debate in quotes because the last thing any SJW intends is legit debate).

            The same questions, or an ever evolving series of ridiculously obtuse questions, will be asked and answered over and over ad nausea. When one troll gets tired of the game, another pops up to replace it.

            This goes on until their target gets fed up and quits the field. Their goal is to inflict “argument fatigue” upon their target(s) and drive them not just from the current topic of “debate” but from the field of contest completely, through built up frustration.

          18. Good luck with that technique. Check the Top 100 Amazon and imagine who’s being driven from where. No one’s going to read these feminist asshats and racists.

          19. @James May
            Apparently I underestimated the amount of anecdotal evidence there actually was. Wow.
            (Note: I’m not saying anecdotal to mean anything bad about the evidence. It is still evidence, and can be used in support of an argument. I just used the term “anecdotal” to distinguish it from statistical analysis)

          20. @James May:

            You’re confusing short term tactical for long term strategic.

            Today, yes. You are correct. Amazon sales numbers shows that the SJW only have a beachhead established. This gives the illusion that the invasion can be contained indefinitely.

            The long term problem is that there’ll be no long term defense against the invasion. The defenders will tire and go back to living their lives.

            The invaders don’t give a damn about facts, irl cause and effect, or integrity of any sort other than to their chosen destructionist dogma. They don’t tire or quit. And, when the destructionists run up against a well defended strong point, they simply shift access of attack, by-pass the strong point and rampage through the more lightly defended areas.

            An example is the Chick Fil A event.

            The SJW took on a corporation that had the resources to defend itself successfully. What did the SJW do then? They shifted axis of attack to small businesses that don’t have the resources to defend themselves.

            And, in the process, are bringing more and more corrupt, incompetent and otherwise degenerate politicians into play in support of the acts and actions of the SJW.

            Any attempts to produce legislation to defend against the predations of the SJW are torn apart in the SJW supporting national media and through social media campaigns. And, through this, legislation will be passed, eventually, that fully supports the acts and actions of the SJW.

            I’ve been watching this play out since I became aware of the Politically Correct bullshit as it began to infest our education system in the mid ’80s.

            There has never, in the span of time I’ve been watching this shit happen, been a successful long term victory against the SJW. Not. One.

    2. Gotta love the “progressive” response here is that there is no proof of a blacklist. What is implied is that it’s just that conservatives/libertarians aren’t really good enough writers to win, so get over it stupidheads.

      1. doc wrote:
        “What is implied is that it’s just that conservatives/libertarians aren’t really good enough writers to win, so get over it stupidheads.”

        That’s become quite common on the left. There have been a couple of articles recently explaining that liberals/progressives aren’t ideologues, they’re pragmatists. One article said that if God spoke from on high, and said that the conservatives were right in all liberal vs. conservative policy disputes, the liberals would be astounded, but they’d all quickly support conservative policies. On the other hand, if God spoke from on high and said the conservatives were wrong, and the liberal policies would deliver their promised benefits in each and every case, the conservatives would continue support their present policies, because they don’t care about results.

        Then there’s _El Presidente_, who recently pontificated said we need “a new declaration of independence, not just in our nation, but in our own lives—from ideology and small thinking, prejudice and bigotry—an appeal not to our easy instincts but to our better angels.” Ideology is linked with prejudice and bigotry.

        And of course who can forget the famous speech when the TOTUS was merely candidate Empty Suit, and said: ” And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

        Or there’s this talk by Jonathan Haidt, about the need for post-partisan social psychology: https://edge.org/conversation/the-bright-future-of-post-partisan-social-psychology. Haidt notes the distribution of self-identified conservatives vs. liberals is 40% to 20% in the general population. In social psychology, it’s more like 0.5% to 99.5%. When he asks a room full of around 1000 social psychologists how many would identify themselves as conservative, three hands go up. When he surveys his colleagues for the names of conservative social psychologists, he gets two, and of the two, one says he’s not conservative.

        Consider this poignant narrative of sexual discrimination from thirty years ago:
        “Until about a year ago, I was very quiet about my sexual orientation… I often didn’t understand the sexual jokes made by my colleagues… the people making the jokes thought that we all felt the same way, and I certainly wasn’t going to reveal that I disagreed. That would have been much too awkward.

        “JB was really the first person I talked to about my sexual identity. He made me feel more comfortable and seemed to want to hear other perspectives…. Since then, taking PT’s class opened up a dialog and others have shared more as well. Before I thought that I was completely alone and was afraid to say much because of it. Now I feel both somewhat obligated to speak up (don’t want others to feel as alone as I did) and also know that I have more support than I originally realized.”

        Well, Haidt lied. That’s actually the response of a non-liberal (note: NOT conservative, just non-liberal) grad student, where he changed only five words: e.g. political became sexual.

        In a post on his web site, http://people.stern.nyu.edu/jhaidt/postpartisan.html., Haidt surveys responses to that talk, noting how often people said, effectively, ‘Oh, there’s no bias in academia. It’s just that conservatives are stupid and narrow minded, so they don’t become academics.’ He goes on to note a bunch of experiments showing that, e.g., otherwise identical studies showing that liberal programs work are evaluated more favorably than ones that show liberal programs fail, right down to judgment about the adequacy of the statistical work. And consider this abstract of a forthcoming article by other psychologists:

        “A lack of political diversity in social and personality psychology is said to lead to a number of pernicious outcomes, including biased research and active discrimination against conservatives. In two studies, we investigate the actual and perceived political ideology of a large sample (Study 1: N = 508; Study 2: N = 292) of social and personality psychologists. We find that there is more diversity of political opinion than is often assumed; conservatives are a substantial minority among social and personality psychologists. Second, we find that respondents significantly underestimate the proportion of conservatives among their colleagues. Third, we find that CONSERVATIVES FEAR NEGATIVE CONSEQUENCES of revealing their political beliefs to their colleagues. FINALLY, WE FIND THAT CONSERVATIVES ARE RIGHT TO DO SO. In decisions ranging from paper reviews to hiring, many social and personality psychologists admit that they would discriminate against openly conservative colleagues. The more liberal respondents are, the more willing they are to discriminate.” {EMPHASIS added by me.}

        Liberals have a self-image of themselves as good people who live up to liberal ideals. That’s what you’d expect from human beings. And like all humans, they’re awfully good at seeing the mote in their neighbor’s eye, while ignoring the beam in their own.

  61. A vital point that’s been overlooked in the excitement: every CHORF disqualification argument (which all of them really are) assumes a division between “Sad Puppies” and “Worldcon.”

    Buying a supporting membership makes you a member of Worldcon. Sounds like a taultology, I know. But every SP 3 voter needs to realize the full implications of that fact.

    GRRM is right. The Hugos belong to Worldcon, and this year, that includes SP. Time we start acting like it.

    The proper response to temper tantrums, fraud accusations, whining about voting blocs, appeals to tradition, passive-aggressive advice, victim blaming, and tone arguments is this:

    “We paid the same $40 you did.”

    There is now zero reasonable doubt that this is a popularity contest. The sole participation requirement is shelling out forty bucks. Whichever group has more people shelling out forty bucks (i.e. is the most popular) wins.

    SP 3 brought the most people. We won the popular vote. No one’s obligated to like it, but even if you don’t, perhaps a little decency and good sportsmanship would serve you better than sulking and whining.

    To my fellow Sad and Rabid Puppies voters–we won the keys to the kingdom fair and square, and we’re throwing the gates wide open. Let the CHORFs seethe in their irrelevant ghetto, and let’s be about the business of rewarding the year’s best SFF.

    1. Sad Puppies did not bring a strict majority (greater than 50%). With the way nominating works, works only need a minimum of 5% support (though it can be a higher minimum threshold).

      1. Winning, of course, may be another matter since they will concentrate on No Award.

        After that, of course, we can point out they nuked the award to save it.

      2. Over at Chaos Horizon, there’s a pretty good analysis showing that the Sad Puppy/Rabid Puppy voters collectively numbered about 360, up from about 180 last year.

        The analysis also shows wide variances in voting by category. Puppy ‘slate’ voters took the lists as recommendations.

  62. Valar Scribere George. All Men Must Write! Shut up and finish the Damned Books. Don’t like the term SJW? Call them what most of then really are: SWJ’s . Stupid White Jerks.

  63. Larry, consistently through this whole ordeal (from SP1 forward) you’ve demonstrated the phenomenal caliber of your character.

    It is admirable, it is outstanding, and it is to be celebrated.

    If ever you and I are in the same spot, I’ll stand you a meal and a cold beverage. And I’ll toast your character.

    Thanks. Really. It’s a good fight.

  64. Don’t expect too much from Martin, Larry. Back when he was being plagiarized blatantly by Star Trek: TNG, he may have been down with principle and decency, but now that he’s the big deal HBO star himself there’s no “get” in it for him to acknowledge any validity to your position…and a significant risk to his pocketbook if he pisses the SJW’s off.

    1. Errr, I doubt there’s any risk to him. The number of people he could offend with any comments he might make are much less than the average number of people watching GoT reruns on any given night.

        1. I read the first book when it came out, realized that there wasn’t a single character in there I liked, and didn’t touch it again until the TV series started up.

          1. I love Arya and Tyrion (and Jamie sometimes), but the last two books kind of bogged down with moping and travelogues and ironborn. I hope he can get things going again.

  65. While I appreciate you wanting to respond to George R.R. Martin, it’s way too long, I don’t have time to read all that, and I’ll bet neither does he.

    I could be wrong, but a world-famous author is probably not going to read anything that long.

    Once upon a way back when, I wanted to interview Bob Dylan, and his then manager, gave me a very useful piece of advice, which I have followed ever since. “Bobby” he said “stops reading after a page.”

    In other words, if you can’t get it down in a page, don’t bother. And you know, it’s true, people don’t like reading things that are very long. I don’t. And nor probably does a world-famous author.

    Just a thought.

    1. Yeah, he read it. Blew it off, but he read it.

      And thanks for the advice, but what I do seems to work for me. We all have our methods. 🙂

      1. To be fair, you did ignore the entire section of his post where he listed a large number of conservative authors who were getting nominations. You didn’t list any of the people who were kicked out of sf or show that he was wrong about the list. You didn’t give him anything to respond to other than asserting that he was wrong and that you were treated poorly at a con. We already know he thinks that people shouldn’t be treated poorly, so what other response should he give?

        1. No, I didn’t ignore that. The last part going through the nominees was posted after I wrote this.

          And I’m terribly sorry that this one blog post, that is already at like 6,000 words, didn’t cover every possible question in this entire debate.

          I didn’t give him anything to respond to?

          What about the direct questions?
          Does he want those kind of fans to vote, yes or no?
          Does he want the Hugos to be A or B?

          I’m so terribly sorry that I was not able to travel through time and respond to stuff that I’d not read yet. I will get right on it.

          But in brief, his list of conservatives are old, his interpretation of modern politics is questionable. When he lists of a whole bunch of people, and my people are all like, snow, snow, snow, snow, snow, and then he declares no snow there! I don’t really know if there is a common point of political reference between us at that point.

          1. Not to mention he dismissed the “being treated poorly at the con” but skipped over all whisper campaigns and malicious sabotage, based on a political philosophy that is apparently totally invisible to him.

            But hey, whatever. I tried.

          2. Well, he did answer those questions. He would prefer that the award(s) remain for the best writing, and not go to whoever organized a slate and gets a whole bunch of people to vote for them. Like a lot of people in the middle, he appears to feel that the first two slates and a lot of the shorter fiction noms on this one are the equivalent of a whole bunch of people joining the Academy and trying to vote for Transformers 4 to win the Best Picture. Sure, it’s a lot more popular than Birdman, a lot more actions and explosions, but why would you expect people who won the awards before to enjoy having it changed like that?

            And since I can read your mind, no, these slates are not the equivalent of Heinlein writing something new and trying to win a modern award. The man was a genius. If he was taking part in this analogy today he’d be making Pacific Rim, Godzilla, or at least Avengers.

          3. That wasn’t the question. A or B. No need for blah blah blah evasion, A or fucking B. Big award that represents all of fandom, or little award that represents one convention. No, you can’t have C. Best of Both Worlds, because Martin admitted that was as likely as world peace. Ship done sailed years ago. A or B.

            I didn’t say Heinlein writing Avengers or Godzilla. I said could Starship Troopers, one of the most famous works of scifi in history, get a nomination today? And if so, what would be their reaction?

          4. I answered that question. Of course Heinlein would get a nomination. In fact, I’m pretty sure those were my exact words.

            I doubt he’d write the exact same book again, it’s been more than fifty years of history and science since then, but the man was a genius, he could adapt. Hell, I would have happily kicked Redshirts off the list for a Heinlein novel. (Maybe not one of the time-traveling Lazarus Long having sex with himself ones, though)

          5. If the award is an award given by fans, and voted on by fans (which Martin is saying it shouldn’t be), then the fans get to decide what they think is best. If what fans today think is the best writing is something that would be shuddered at in the 1950s, that doesn’t matter.
            If Martin thinks the Hugos would be better off not as a fan voted award, that is his right. I hope Worldcon is unconvinced, and I think they will be because they’re getting all the money they could possibly want to run their con from Sad Puppies.

          6. Maximiilan wrote:
            “I answered that question. Of course Heinlein would get a nomination. In fact, I’m pretty sure those were my exact words.”

            I am doubtful. People like N. K. Jemisin call Heinlein racist, e.g., and a great many modern fen openly say that they won’t read his works. STARSHIP TROOPERS was highly controversial in 1959. Today, I think an anti-Heinlein slate would have been formed to stop it.

        2. Martin doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Mary Robinette Kowal did in fact announce the successful exclusion of men from last year’s Nebula’s and 100% of both the Nebula and Hugo winners were supporters of intersectional gender feminism. That’s significant because that weird cult is almost unknown in larger American society. It’s like Scientology sweeping the awards.

          Alongside that I’m talking about racial defamation, incitement, and collusion to discriminate, which is laid out in black and white for anyone who wants to read it. The idea people doing all those things in addition to their mindless addiction to diversity are not acting on their own words is more than ridiculous – it’s pathetic.

          Martin ignores the fact this is a brand new movement and gives us a list 2010 and before which is then completely irrelevant. 2012 to date has been the worst of it and last year the worst of that.

          But then Martin says okay, looks at 2012 and proceeds to misread the results, and here’s why: “look, I know Scalzi is liberal, and I know that the Puppies seem to hate him, though I can’t for the life of me understand why…”

          Well, I’ll tell you why: it’s not because he’s a liberal. It’s because he’s pushing these weird gender feminists on us and has given them a platform and credibility. No matter how insane they behave, he never says “no.” It’s him guest hosting Mary Ann Mohanraj’s two part racist idiocy about white privilege followed by his own that’s the problem; not liberalism, but racial bigotry. That’s not enough – Scalzi asks us to “bone up” on “intersectionality” and links us to a moronic PDF which talks about “the multiplicatively privileged,” the “‘white, thin, male, young, heterosexual, Christian, and financially secure'” as if it’s the Spanish Armada.

          Martin lists 5 novels, two of which have dicked women, one by a nutty gender feminist, one which is an intersectional diversity pick and anti-white Ahmed and last, intersectional circus ringleader Scalzi.

          What does Martin think Sunny Moraine means when she writes “If your writing is full of white men, it’s shitty writing” and that is bolstered by literally hundreds of comments about pushing “diverse” authors.

          Martin is seeing what he wants to see by straw-manning us with absolutes like “One of the other nominees was by Aliette de Bodard, who many Puppies seem to count as one of the despised SJWs, but if the secret cabal was working for her, they fucked it up, because she lost.” Martin doesn’t seem aware of the status in feminist-race terms of who Pat Cadigan is, or who Seanan McGuire, Valente, Ken Liu and Olde Heuvelt are and how they promote their sexual expression and oppression alongside their work.

          Liu recently Tweeted “‘authentic’ seems often to mean ‘what white people would approve'” and de Bodard is an endless font of such quotes.

          Considering all that, Martin writing “that’s twice they left de Bodard lose” show’s his own ignorance, not ours. Lose to who? Martin’s saying if intersectionalists don’t win 100% of everything the whole thing just disappears? Has David Duke ever lost an election?

          There’s more but you get the point. Martin writes “oh, look, Mike Resnick, however did the liberal cabal ever let HIM sneak in?” amid a sea of fanatic SJW names like Paul Cornell, Charlie Jane Anders, and Rachel Swirsky. If Martin were a lawyer and I could present the other side he’d lose his case and the simple reason for that is he’s not telling the whole story but cherry-picking.

          Martin sinks further by mentioning Vox Day, N. K. Jemisin and the words “poisonous screed” in a way that shows he either has no clue as to Jemisin’s obsessive hobby or no neutral definition of “poisonous screed.”

          Martin should’ve titled his post “I honestly do not know” and left the page blank.

          1. Good lord.

            You realize that this is exactly the kind of thing one of them would type out as a reason why you are horrible? All you did was change the sign from ‘pro-SJW’ to ”anti-SJW’.

            I’ll tell you what I tell them. There is no overarching conspiracy or secret cabal, and you’ll be much happier if you don’t go around pulling quotes out of context and try to understand why people might disagree with you.

          2. Tell that to TNH, who explained how all 60 of us might secretly compare notes with each other, Vox, Gamergate and the Illuminati.

            Which means she thought about it.

            And has probably done it.

          3. You don’t have a single clue as to what you’re talking about.

            I’ll say this again so you can’t claim otherwise: there is no secret cabal or conspiracy in that usual sense of the term. This cult of idiots is above board and public with their collusions to discriminate and their incitement to hate. The fact you are unaware of that means nothing to me. I have the quotes and there are literally thousands of them.

            Secondly, I didn’t quote jack shit out of context. That post is right there for all to read. Martin on the other hand – probably unknowingly – has presented events completely out of their true context by not understanding the history of the non-fiction writings of these people. Well, I do understand that history.

            I don’t give a shit whether you or anyone else thinks I’m horrible. At the end of the day no one can fisk their own quotes so there is nothing to disagree with. I have those quotes for them and they don’t for us. That’s why they lie and use scare quotes. This is not a case of anyone disagreeing with me but with actual and real quotes.

            You may have noticed the worst of these people don’t come here and debate. There’s a reason for that. And what makes you think they are not proud of their quotes. They’re doing it on Twitter right now. There’s nothing secret about it.

          4. Dude, I didn’t say that you were horrible, nor that I thought you were. I very carefully wrote that your post looks exactly like something they would write(not me) while explaining how their opponent is the worst ever.

            I try to avoid those sites, I read the moderates like GRRM and Scalzi (he doesn’t hate you guys nearly as much as you hate him), but I have seen them. If you changed some of the names and said ‘racist’ instead of SJW that post would fit right in.

          5. If you consider Scalzi a moderate you have either not paying attention, or are being dishonest. He is every bit as biased as I am, and every bit as involved.

          6. >If you consider Scalzi a moderate you have either not paying attention, or are being dishonest. He is every bit as biased as I am, and every bit as involved.

            Or, C) Disagree with you. It is possible.

            Among other things, he’s been agreeing with Martin that people shouldn’t blindly downvoted the slate, and was saying that in previous years as well. Nor has he set up an opposing slate, which he would have done if he really was your opposite number.

          7. If you chose C, then you would be incorrect, but nothing I say will sway you. He manages to get in most of the slander of the really insane hit pieces, only without as many exclamation points. He has convinced many that he’s the voice of reason in all of this, but all I can do is invite you to watch carefully.

            You don’t see it, and Martin doesn’t see it, but there is a reason that man is so universally disliked by so many people on my side.

            Of course he doesn’t want to No Award the slate, that isn’t political, that just requires not being suicidal. I don’t like Scalzi on a personal level, but he’s smart. He and Martin both realize that if the TNH crowd successfully rage NAs the awards, then it will make the Hugo into a giant joke to the rest of the world… Not to mention they know that then the really, really, pissed off Vox crowd will go full on Mutually Assured Destruction next year.

          8. Possible, I suppose, but I have read a few of those pieces (not many, they make my skin crawl, just like reading blogposts from The Author You Have Asked Me Not To Name). They really are on a whole ‘nother level of nutty.

            I probably won’t be able to change your mind on Scalzi, but consider that people really can just disagree with your opinion and still be honest, sane, and not malicious.

          9. You’re straw manning me again. We are not saying Scalzi hates us – at least I’m not. However he is promoting a hateful ideology. Obviously he thinks of it as promoting social justice.

            Radical intersectional gender feminism is a racist, sexist, supremacist cult. I cannot explain it in a comments section. There is a history to it with many iconic names. if you haven’t read Simone de Beauvoir, Monique Wittig, Kate Millet, Audre Lorde, Andrea Dworking, Susan Brownmiller, Charlotte Bunch, Shulamith Firestone and many others, it is impossible to understand what this ideology is. It’s hatred and phobia of men and whites is feral.

            For one short taste, Google The Furies and Charlotte Bunch. It’s a not very long newsletter. It is completely batty.

          10. Dude… That isn’t what straw man means. Do you seriously not understand what I mean when I say that reading your posts reminds of reading their posts? That isn’t an argument, it is a statement about an opinion and therefore cannot be a ‘straw man’.

            Or were you trying to say that you understood and disagreed with me? That calling someone a racist supremacist is merely the voice of sweet reason, unlike the way those horrible SJWs talk?

            And yes, I’ve seen his tweet feed. I believe you when you say you don’t hate him, but there are a lot of SP folks who think he is the third coming of Satan, after Obama, and remind him about it almost every day. They also will often tell people to google “obscure hing that nobody pays attention to or cares about to support this conspiracy theory”.

          11. Biggest difference? When May calls them racist, he quotes them.

            Meanwhile, my whole side, hundreds of us are called racists using “scare quotes”.

            There is one person not part of my organization, not on my slate, doing his own thing but sort of on my side (though really, Vox Day is on his own side), and the same five or six quotes from him have been flung at us over and over for years.

            The fact that May has gathered hundreds of racist quotes from the same group of people, and I’m up to like 20 media outlets calling me racist without any evidence, aren’t exactly morally equivalent.

          12. Not exactly what I was getting at, but I see your point.

            Oh, and sorry, I thought you had chosen VD for the slates you set up. That’s what people are suggesting in other blogs.

          13. I just googled it, and his slate from 2014 has VD’s name on it, clear as day.

            Did you mean that VD wasn’t on the slate that Torgerson did for this year?

          14. Vox was not on our slate this year. Vox’s nominations did not come from Sad Puppies. Vox did his own thing. I do not share Vox’s politics. I do not endorse Vox’s politics. Vox doesn’t represent me any more than Tempest Bradford represents you. I did like and plug one of his short stories in 2013, but only because Satan didn’t have any eligible works.

            Clear yet?

            People are suggesting lots of things in other blogs. I also don’t hit my wife. I support female writers. I am not racist. I don’t care if gay people get married. I’m not the one trying to keep anyone out. I’m the one trying to bring more people in.

            So there you go. That should take care of many of the suggestions on other blogs. Feel free to pass that on.

          15. “Martin should’ve titled his post “I honestly do not know” and left the page blank.”

            To be frank, it read more like “people I trust and admire told me X”.

          16. Hello Twitter:

            SFF fan and writer Sunil Patel: “Curious: how many of you refuse to watch/read something if it’s about Yet Another Straight White Man?”

            Reply from SFWA member and Nebula nominee Kate Elliott: “Same is true of books. I’m increasingly less likely to pick up a book if it is another straight white dude story.”

            Second reply from another SFF fan: “I’m taking a yearlong break from books by men, full stop, and dramatically scaling back on stories about them.”

            Last reply from SFWA member and review editor of SFF at Publisher’s Weekly Rose Fox: “Alas, my job doesn’t let me refuse.”

            Is that a blacklist? You tell me. It ain’t pretty whatever it is. Now… multiply that by 10,000.

            “White male privilege cares ONLY about white male privilege, and there is no goal except maintaining that position of power.”

            That is not me making stuff up about racial supremacy but an actual example of racial supremacy, and by a N.Y. Times best-seller and Marvel Comics author no less. Multiply it by 10,000. I’m not asking anyone’s permission to respond to that flood of garbage.

          17. >Is that a blacklist? You tell me.

            No, you are thinking ‘boycott’, not blacklist.

            Truthfully, I wasn’t taking any of that seriously, I don’t think the people talking about it have enough numbers to make any noticeable difference, but that’s just a guy feeling, no data here.

          18. I love being lectured on “white privilege” by a lawyer with a degree from an exclusive and expensive private college.

          19. There’s no more ardent foes of “white privilege” than LW persons of pallor. It’s some combination of oikophobia and fear, like the being the Jews that turn in the other Jews to the SS.

            (spot the Taranto references above! win valuable prizes!)

          20. So you don’t take words by certain people seriously even though they fill SFF’s core institutions in ways they can make it stick but you do take the words of Vox Day and John Wright seriously because by imagining each man is equal to 50 social justice warriors everything comes out right. Is that it?

            Look out! Orwell’s standing behind you. He’s about to slap you!!

            Just kidding. He’s still dead.

          21. The threading isn’t eorking right for me, but in case that was to my address-

            I don’t take seriously the people who suggested “don’t read white males for a year” because I have no idea who they are, they aren’t authors I think I would be interested in, and the most enthusiastic response I heard from an author I like was along the lines of “Interesting idea, but I’m not going to do it.”

            So, whoever Tempest Somebody is- She is not someone who has any particular authority in the field and does not have any ability to enforce her suggestion. I am and will continue to ignore it. This is not a real threat for anyone.

          22. I like how people who haven’t had their careers threatened are quick to point out what is and is not threatening.

            So, Maximillian, how many twitter mobs have tried to ruin your fledgling career? How often have one of these nonthreatening people made a slanderous, career damaging allegation against you and had it retweeted a few hundred times to other nonthreatening people who also jump in to make sure that your name will be tarnished to your potential consumers?

            Just curious, you know, so new authors can know what the acceptable level of harassment is before they have your permission to feel threatened.

          23. You are a Grade A bullshit artist. One racism is nothing and another is horrible. You do what all SJWs do: you have shifting standards that always absolve one group and pillory the other.

        3. Max, apparently you have basic reading comprehension issues.

          “correia45, on April 10, 2015 at 3:05 pm said:

          I didn’t say Heinlein writing Avengers or Godzilla. I said could Starship Troopers, one of the most famous works of scifi in history, get a nomination today? And if so, what would be their reaction?”

          and your reply:

          “Maximillian, on April 10, 2015 at 4:53 pm said:

          I answered that question. Of course Heinlein would get a nomination. In fact, I’m pretty sure those were my exact words.

          I doubt he’d write the exact same book again, it’s been more than fifty years of history and science since then, but the man was a genius, he could adapt. Hell, I would have happily kicked Redshirts off the list for a Heinlein novel. (Maybe not one of the time-traveling Lazarus Long having sex with himself ones, though)”

          Except the question wasn’t “Would Heinlein be nominated’ (because the author isn’t nominated, a WORK is nominated). The question was “Would ‘Starship Troopers’ be nominated?”

          Not “would a new book by Heinlein, were he on the green side of the grass to write it” be nominated. Don’t evade the fucking question then have the gall to lay claim to a halo for evading it.

        4. Correia45 said:
          “Not to mention he dismissed the ‘being treated poorly at the con’ but skipped over all whisper campaigns and malicious sabotage, based on a political philosophy that is apparently totally invisible to him.”

          Psychologist Jonathan Haidt, in a talk in 2011, said the number of conservatives in social psychology was so low as to be statistically impossible. In a country where 40% of adults identify as conservative, vs. 20% as liberal, the field is more like .4% conservative, 99.6% liberal. He pointed out that in any protected group like blacks, a disparity like that would lead to an automatic presumption of discrimination or hostile environment.

          The response to Haidt’s talk was, overwhelmingly, ‘Conservatives are stupid, that’s why they’re not in academia.’

          And then there’s this: “A lack of political diversity in social and personality psychology is said to lead to a number of pernicious outcomes, including biased research and active discrimination against conservatives. In two studies, we investigate the actual and perceived political ideology of a large sample (Study 1: N = 508; Study 2: N = 292) of social and personality psychologists. We find that there is more diversity of political opinion than is often assumed; conservatives are a substantial minority among social and personality psychologists. Second, we find that respondents significantly underestimate the proportion of conservatives among their colleagues. Third, we find that CONSERVATIVES FEAR NEGATIVE CONSEQUENCES of revealing their political beliefs to their colleagues. FINALLY, WE FIND THAT CONSERVATIVES ARE RIGHT TO DO SO. In decisions ranging from paper reviews to hiring, many social and personality psychologists admit that they would discriminate against openly conservative colleagues. The more liberal respondents are, the more willing they are to discriminate.” The paper of which the foregoing is an abstract is available at http://yoelinbar.net/papers/political_diversity.pdf.

          It reminds me of an old joke: A black man in Jackson, Mississippi in 1956 goes to the polls to vote. They tell him he has to pass a literacy test. To prove he can write, sign his name. To prove he can read, they hand him something in Chinese characters. He says he can’t read it word for word, but he can make out the sense of it: ‘No nigras voting in Mississippi this year.’

          Karl Popper nailed this a century ago. Pseudo-scientific ideas are distinguished by the fact that no evidence can possibly falsify them.

      1. Which is why each volume in A Song of Ice and Fire is so very short.

        Ha. My thoughts exactly.

        GRRM is not Bob Dylan. He can manage to read more than a page.

  66. Very interesting about the Locus lists.

    LASFS Recommended Reading List for Children and Young Adults
    http://www.lasfsinc.info/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=95&Itemid=260
    Last revised in 2007. I don’t recall there being one for adults. However the LASFS library tries to be completist. (Longtime attending member and former assistant LASFS librarian here.)

    An interesting article relevant to all this:
    “Where are the conservative social psychologists?”
    http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/were-only-human/74794.html

    1. Reziac: Having brought the info into this context, you should clarify that the LASFS list was never aimed at influencing awards.

      It was intended to be placed in libraries, where it would serve the dual purpose of popularizing sf and getting the club’s name in front of local sf readers.

      1. Good catch, sir. I would think that an annually updated list of a major club would have an impact, particularly if distributed among fans while nominations are in play, but…the contents of such a list would be the affair of the members of that club.

        I also would not discount the effect of libraries – a person can only read the books they find, and maintaining a respectable cross section of the field would be an important part of avoiding biases.

        However, as you say, not an awards list, and imo the contents are the responsibility of that society, of which I am not a part.

      2. Yes, you are right. I mentioned it because someone asked if a LASFS list existed.

        About the most political thing you could say about LASFS’s reading list was that it largely reflected the initial compiler’s reading experience. Suggestions were actively solicited, and I don’t recall any ever being turned down.

    1. You don’t have to wonder, he said that he wanted people to stick to talking about the Hugos and not troll.

          1. LiveJournal glitches and returns to earlier states–so it will jump back and forth between listing “50 comments” and “100 comments” but you may need to refresh on various pages to actually see all of them.

          2. Want to know the easiest job in the world? Moderator of MonsterHunterNation. Unless it’s pushing Viagra or explaining how to make $1000/wk working from home, we leave all posts intact with no moderation required. Larry is big on the whole ‘free speech being necessary for good debate’ thing

  67. > (1) some say the exclusion is political in nature, that conservative and libertarian writers are being unfairly shut out,
    > (2) others charge religious discrimination, insisting the Christian writers and “writers of Faith” are the ones being excluded,
    > (3) there’s a racial component in some comments (not from the Puppy leaders, but from their followers), wherein we are told that “straight white men” are the victims here,
    > (4) and finally, there’s the literary argument, wherein we are told that the ballots are full of bad boring crappy stories that no one really likes, placed there in some nefarious manner by the secret SJW cliques, whereas good old-fashioned SF and fantasy, the stuff the readers really love, is shut out and ignored.

    GRRM is at least trying to understand. (4) is closest to the actual reason. I would say that the stories nominated almost always:

    A. Include a “strong” woman character.
    B. Shed any/all minorities in a non-stereotypically good way.
    C. Spout liberal talking points (diversity is good! conservatives are bad and racist! guns are bad!)

    I would be interested in an analysis of nominated works/authors from 2010-2013 based on this criteria.

    1. I write the shit out of A and B. Many of us do. That has nothing to do with it. But I’d invite you to pick through them looking for C, and also add D. Putting C ahead of the story or reader enjoyment.

    2. Here is an analysis regarding last year’s Hugo winners. Intersectionalism is a self-described “radical” feminist lesbian-centric race-sex-gender ideology based on a presumed oppression by straight white men. In larger America Intersectionalism is extremely rare. In this list below you see 100%. If any of them wish to disavow their adherence to this ideology, they will have to delete a massive amount of documentation by way of their own words. Self-defined intersectionalists such as Anita Sarkeesian and the movement’s most iconic figures repeatedly say they have no interest in equality in the current patriarchal, capitalist and racist systems. The whole thing needs to come down (the cis-normative “family… its art, its churches, its laws…” [Andrea Dworkin] for example). The central tenet of this ideology is that masculinity is a fake and “toxic” (Sarkeesian) social “construct” (Judith Butler) which has served to effect “the domination of women” (Charlotte Bunch) for thousands of years. The resulting “sexism is the root of all oppression” (Bunch). For these reasons this ideology sometimes refers to itself as gender abolitionists. This is NOT an equal rights movement and generally considers equal rights “white American feminist theory” (Audre Lorde) to be “racist feminism” (Lorde). Though devoted to race, this is mostly about gender equality, thus the constant flood of remarks about homophobia, transphobia, etc. Considering this is SFF, it is a bizarre obsession in a weird place. Third Wave Intersectional Gender Feminism is the default orthodoxy of SJWs and their passionate crusade.

      BEST NOVEL Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie – a manic intersectional gender feminist
      BEST NOVELLA “Equoid” by Charles Stross – a compassionate supporter of intersectionalism
      BEST NOVELETTE “The Lady Astronaut of Mars” by Mary Robinette Kowal – an avid intersectionalist
      BEST SHORT STORY “The Water That Falls on You from Nowhere” by John Chu – a staunch intersectionalist
      BEST RELATED WORK “We Have Always Fought: Challenging the Women, Cattle and Slaves Narrative” by Kameron Hurley (A Dribble of Ink) – a manic gender intersectional feminist
      BEST SEMIPROZINE Lightspeed Magazine edited by John Joseph Adams, Rich Horton, and Stefan Rudnicki (No doubt because of their “Women Destroy Science Fiction” Issue) see Hurley – this is intersectional central
      BEST FANZINE A Dribble of Ink edited by Aidan Moher (No doubt because of Hurley’s piece) Moher is an intersectionalist
      BEST FAN WRITER Kameron Hurley – see above
      JOHN W. CAMPBELL AWARD FOR BEST NEW WRITER Sofia Samatar – a devoted intersectionalist
      BEST PROFESSIONAL ARTIST WHO PAINTS POC Julie Dillon – a staunch intersectionalist

      “One is not born a woman, but rather becomes one.” – Simone de Beauvoir

      “Strictly speaking, ‘women’ cannot be said to exist.” – Julia Kristeva

      “Woman does not have a sex.” – Luce Irigaray

      “The deployment of sexuality . . . established this notion of sex.” – Michel Foucault

      “The category of sex is the political category that founds society as heterosexual.” – Monique Wittig

      Quotes from the beginning of Gender Trouble, a critique of “French Queer Theory,” Judith Butler, 1990

      “Do we really need more men explaining feminism to women? Do we need ANY? Go explain it to other men if you’re so inclined. #OrJustListen” “Hard as it to believe, somewhere right now, a white, straight male is explaining to a woman or POC what they =really= meant.” – Steven Gould, president of the SFWA

      1. BEST NOVELLA “Equoid” by Charles Stross – a compassionate supporter of intersectionalism
        BEST NOVELETTE “The Lady Astronaut of Mars” by Mary Robinette Kowal – an avid intersectionalist

        I thought the point was that bad message fiction makes puppies sad, and that Sad Puppies stood for fiction that doesn’t put message ahead of story, though it might, in fact, have a bit of message in it. Sad Puppies makes a point that the political beliefs of the authors isn’t the point, and that while it is fine with Baen authors who are card-carrying communists but write good books, it’s the SJWs who want to exclude people on the grounds of bad think.

        So what’s in Equoid and the Lady Astronaut of Mars that offends you so?

        1. “So what’s in Equoid and the Lady Astronaut of Mars that offends you so?”

          For me, “Offends” is too strong of a word, when speaking about either of these 2 specific works. I don’t think either one was particularly great, and there were other things eligible or even nominated for the 2014 Best Novella & Novelette Hugos that I think were better, but I can & do recognize them as valid works of SF&F. And these ones aren’t even bad, they’re just not really all that great. But tastes differ, and the majority of Worldcon voters disagreed with me, so I’m OK with them winning the Hugo in their categories last year.

          What *does* offend me is the inclusion of non-SF&F works on the final Hugo ballot, that were only included because they preach .

          On last year’s final ballot, in the Short Story category we had:

          “The Ink Readers of Doi Saket” – this one, similar to “Equoid” & “The Lady Astronaut of Mars” above, I can at least recognize as legitimate SF&F. Again it wasn’t my first choice (at least, not of all eligible SF&F short stories from 2013; it was my first choice on the final ballot – but that’s the problem), but at least it was SF&F.

          “Selkie Stories Are for Losers” – Not SF&F. Preachy message-fic about run-away lesbians suffering from parental abandonment. The closest it comes to SF&F is referencing Selkie Stories in passing – and calling them “for losers”.

          “If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love” – Not SF&F. Preachy message-fic about an in a coma from a beating. The closes it comes to SF&F is referencing Dinosaurs (the person in the coma is a paleontologist).

          And the Hugo winner: “The Water That Falls on You from Nowhere” – Not SF/F. Preachy message-fic about gay marriage & homophobia. The closest it comes to SF&F is having a bizarre premise (Water falls from Nowhere when someone lies), that is never explained or explored, except to preach about gay marriage & homophobia.

          With all the anti-Puppies talking about No Awards this year, I’m reminded of discussions here on MHN last year, with other Sad Puppies 2 participants.

          On my ballot, I put “Ink Readers” above No Award, because even though I didn’t like it all that much, I at least considered it valid SF&F. I did put No Award second, because I did not feel that the others were even legitimately SF&F. Some other commentators said they had put No Award first, because while “Ink Readers” may have been valid SF&F, it wasn’t good enough to deserve a Hugo.

          I contrast that with what I see people saying now – it doesn’t matter how good a work is; if it was on the SP3 balltot, it goes below No Award. Yes, we used No Award last year (unsuccessfully, of course), but our stated criteria was “valid SF&F” (me) or “Award-worthy”. Their criteria now is “block voting bad!”.

          Which is something I never really understood, despite having heard long before Sad Puppies. What type of voting *isn’t* block voting? That’s what voting is – the biggest block wins. I guess block voting is supposed to mean uninformed voting, where the voters only know the political party (or Sad Puppy slate), and vote w/out knowing the actual positions of (or w/out reading) the candidates; and I agree that (uninformed voting) is bad. I even agree that it does happen (both w/ real politics, and the Hugos, and maybe even SP). But it’s stupid – so stupid I like to think that it only happens very rarely; I don’t like to think that many people are that stupid. And that’s not what “block voting” means in my head – in my head “block voting” is a group of voters voting as a block. Which is *all* voting, if the set of voters are divided into groups based on who/what they voted for…

          1. Looks like WordPress pulled out my use of angle-brackets… trying again w/ HTML entities…

            What *does* offend me … preach .

            Should have been:

            preach <SJW message-of-the-day>

            And

            “If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love” – Not SF&F. Preachy message-fic about an in a coma from a beating.

            Should have been:

            Preachy message-fic about an <unspecified SJW championed minority, possibly (but probably not) a gay-Arab-transgender-effeminate-Hispanic> in a coma from a <homophobic/racist/transphobic/sexist/racist> beating.

          2. Well said, and I largely agree.

            I think that uniformed voting was very rare, and I think that ‘lockstep’ voting has been grossly overstated, at least for SP. But I’m not in any one else head, just mine.

            I found the *premise* of Equoid interesting, but the execution was not.

            I cared very little for the Selkie story, but thought that ‘The Water’ was very well written, with engaging characters, and should have been an award winning coming out story in a literary field. Not SF.

          3. Beolach said:
            “If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love” – Not SF&F. Preachy message-fic about man in a coma from a beating. The closes it comes to SF&F is referencing Dinosaurs (the person in the coma is a paleontologist).”

            I may be the only person here who actually liked “IYWaDML”, as I found it emotionally effective and well written. But it certainly isn’t SF & F, and I find it hard to even call it a story.

            Note something else. This is, ultimately, a revenge fantasy: ‘If you were a dinosaur, you could have ripped those people who attacked you apart.’ To which one might respond ‘There’s no way he could be a dinosaur, but he could have carried a pistol, and probably blown away those who attacked him.’ I wonder how a ‘If You Were a Gunslinger, My Love’ would have been received?

          4. The closest it comes to SF&F is having a bizarre premise (Water falls from Nowhere when someone lies), that is never explained or explored,

            It wasn’t the greatest, but had interesting characters, was recognizably a story, and water falling from nowhere when people lie is undoubtedly a fantasy element. It was first on my ballot. The field was very weak.

          5. Well, “Secret Snow, Silent Snow” has often been put in horror/fantasy anthologies and that’s in the kid’s head. It was made into an episode of Night Gallery hosted by Rod Serling.

            We never learn if the governess in “Turn of the Screw” is nuts or not.

      2. Nothing. My beef is with non-fiction comments. I could care less what people put in their books. I often use fiction to highlight how it fits in with non-fiction hate speech but on its own I don’t care.

        No one’s going to confuse fiction with reality. However non-fiction racial incitement got two cops killed. SJWs in SFF have blood on their hands for that mess as well.

        The thing about fiction is, no one’s forcing me to read it. But you put a target on my back via obsessive Twitter feeds and blog posts and I’m not having that.

        This obsession with diversity is never presented without contrasting it with the moral failure of straight white men. Even without that latter, it is having the same effect on literature it would with architecture or baseball. Buildings are falling and the talent is being shoved aside. Still, none of that will affect me personally. The creeping conformism is bad enough, but the affirmative action stuff is killing the core genre.

  68. Mr. Correia:

    I wrote a short reply on G.R.R. Martin’s “Not a Blog” post and would like to know if I correctly summed up the Sad Puppies core issue.

    I know you are a busy man and if you do not have the time or inclination I understand you cannot read every little thing on the internet. I just thought that you, as the progenitor of Sad Puppies, should have the right to tell me if I am mistaken or not.

    http://grrm.livejournal.com/418285.html?thread=20765933#t20765933

    Regardless, thanks for the great books and I hope you continue writing as long you you can find the inspiration.

    I invite anyone else to read the comment as well, please let me know what your thoughts are.

  69. This is the least self-aware and whineyest thing I’ve ever read. If you don’t see that, I can’t really take your opinions on writing very seriously.

  70. I’m thinking someone should write a book about this whole thing so it can be submitted in the ‘Best Related Work’ category. But it wouldn’t really be fully writable until at least after this years awards, and probably not publishable until 2016. Thus eligible in 2017.Maybe slip another year or two depending on the fallout after this year….

    1. It’s the age of instant indie publishing. And for some people, non-fiction writes much faster than fiction.

      1. Non-fiction writes much, much, much faster than fiction if you make it a collection of interesting blog posts on the topic over time.

        🙂

    1. That con report does sound like a fun trip. Sounds like a lot of nominations for people from Utah! I suppose this must have been a long, long time ago before the Hugos were taken over.

      I didn’t know that the writer of “I am Not A…” Went to scifi cons. That trilogy kicked ass. No sparkly vampires or moping around. Someone high-five Wells for me, please.

    2. “So why didn’t you write about how badly you were treated at the time?”

      But back then I was still trying to play it cool, and didn’t think I could have a successful career if I made the wrong people angry.

      “This dude, he sounds like he had fun”

      There was a very distinct divide between what I’ll call the academic writers and the commercial writers. (yeah, you get one guess where I fall in that continuum). I participated in a few panels and observed a bunch of others, but that topic needs its own blog post.

      Looking at the results afterward, I got my ass handed to me. It wasn’t really a surprise, since I knew going in that my odds of winning were really low. (I’m not exactly the sort of writer most of the WorldCon voters root for, but more on that in the next blog post).

      1. Steve nailed it.

        In 2011 I was still playing it cool, under the delusion that I could/should keep my head down as much as possible. I didn’t think I could afford to piss anyone else off.

        And I still had fun. I make my own fun wherever I go.

        If you want to scroll through the years of posts, you’ll find that the more I got attacked (and my career remained standing) the less I gave a shit what negative things people like Daveon and Maximillian could dig up about me to report back to the assholes, in the hope that the gatekeepers would pat their tender little heads and speak great blessings onto them. 🙂

        1. Another thought… Thinking back, note how I said I would talk about it in my next blog post, but then I didn’t?

          That’s because I got scared. I’ll admit it. I chickened out then. I was nice, professional, only talked about positive stuff. I was a new guy, and I didn’t want any more people angry at me. I already had people angry at me and I hadn’t even done anything yet, and my friends and peers all warned me to be nice. So I was chicken, and I think in 2011, part of me thought that if I was nice, maybe I’d eventually get accepted too.

          If you were honest people, you could scroll through the blog and watch the evolution of me not giving a shit. I know all these regular readers certainly have.

          1. “”But it turned out that Saladin [Ahmed] is a super nice guy, which kind of sucked, because all of the nominees were like that. It would have been so much easier if they had all been big mean jerks because then I could have just hated them, but they had to go and be all friendly and stuff.””

            So that was all a lie was it?

          2. The evolution of somebody not giving a shit would be ‘I wasn’t nominated for a Hugo because they’re crap… I’m going to go and roll around in my pile of money from my best selling novels and say ‘screw you to the lot of them’.

            Money is really the only validation that bloody matters isn’t it? Well, it pretty much is to me. I might be shallow.

            Evolving is not doing this. This is throwing a tantrum. That’s it. I’ll be off. My view of you stands. You’re a tit. You deserve all that you get from here on it and if it’s hurting your ego, as this post suggests, then good.

          3. Duly noted. Luckily I have lots of money now, which is why I can speak freely without having SJWs ruin my career. It is pretty awesome.

          4. For the gentleman calling Mr Corriea a tit and saying he’s making it all up: My own experience, as a left-leaning person in SF, mirrors Mr Corrieas, so I’m inclined to believe him. And yes, you do cover it up, you try to put a brave face on things can carry on.

          5. Thanks for mentioning there was no follow-up report, I was going a little crazy trying to find it (your blog is REALLY hard to navigate past a month or two BTW, maybe I’m missing a navigation widget somewhere)

            I was looking for the historical evolution of this and that was the first report I found. My take on it was that it was a “don’t want to sound like a sore loser so I’ll be very positive” kind of post with hints of more interesting details in the follow-up that never came.

          6. When has Larry ever said anything negative about Saladin Ahmed? Perhaps a lot of OTHER Sad Puppy supporters have, (and even when they do, they’re not saying he isn’t a nice person they’re saying that he a) has bought into a fundamentally racist narrative, or b) was nominated primarily via affirmative action rather than the quality of his work. [Note: I haven’t read enough of his work to comment on B. Just pointing out that is what is being said, not that he isn’t nice.]) but I have never heard Larry say ANY of those things about him.

        2. ‘Negative’ ? You wrote it mate, I just saw it and noticed your position and recollection of events is different now.

          Funny thing, you go on and on and on about how tough you are and how you make your own fun and such, but that’s now how you’re behaving and that’s all that matters.

          As for gatekeepers – sure that’s what I live for. Yes indeedy.

          Tit.

          1. I explained my reasoning. You can find very similar stories from many conservative writers in the field.

            Now, go return and report. Maybe Teresa will give you a cookie. 🙂

          2. This is pure liberal mindset projection right here. They absolutely would make up a story or load of BS if it served their current narrative. And if caught then you would hear how objective facts don’t matter, because truthiness.

          3. You do on about tits.

            Now live up to your statement, go away, and never return, m’kay?

        3. I actually haven’t said anything negative about you, and the only time I’ve ever quoted you, here or anywhere, is in the post below where you were lying about my religious beliefs.

          1. I’ve read through this entire comment section, and Larry never lied about your religious beliefs. Your claim that he did so is in itself a lie.

    3. I rarely comment but I actually have read this entire blog, and if you skip forward a few posts from that one there’s an account of a different con which is much more enthusiastic, way different from the highly subdued account in that post.

  71. So I’ve been thinking about these block vote complaints that have been coming up.
    Best I can think of right now to avoid trouble in the future, say next year, might be to either create several voting blocks for SP4, still all for best book but with political/gender/racial differences of the authors to make the different blocks. Not sure if that would bother the SJW’s or not though, or be too much of a step towards them.
    Rather I think it might be better to go with several voting blocks of more than five books, say 10 each. Making it all the more obvious that you are just pointing out good writings, and gives those claiming block voting less ground if any since people would be obviously shown a larger base of books to choose from. These blocks would of course also be filled by fan suggestion like this year, it would just be more obvious to the completely dense who keep making claims of bias.
    Anyway, just some thoughts on my part that I hope will help with SP4’s direction next year.

    1. Anything along these lines would help. After all, the ‘Best Novel’ list is pretty solid this year- I think if it didn’t have all the Vox Day and Wright cooties on it from the shorter fiction sections (or the history from SP 1 & 2) a lot of people wouldn’t have realized that it was from the slate and would have just assumed that they were good books.

      1. Naw, they’d still malign us and hate us.

        Vox ran his own slate. If you think anyone has any control over what Vox Day does, I’ve got a bridge to sell you.

        SP nominated Wright in short story, novella, and related. He picked up additional noms, but those weren’t on the slate. And his work on those 3 items is absolutely incredible. So really, I don’t give a shit if you don’t like Catholic cooties all over your fiction. They’re damned good works.

        It is kind of funny how he was considered such a super good author back when he was just at Tor and he kept his religious beliefs in the closet, but now he has Catholic cooties.

        Why do you hate Catholics, Maximillian?

        1. >Why do you hate Catholics, Maximillian?

          See, it’s when you start lying about things like this that people wonder if they should really take your statements about invisible blacklists on faith. You are perfectly well aware that I have made no statements against the Catholic faith here but you are willing to pretend that I have in order to try to make a point.

          If you are trying to claim that Wright speaks for the majority of American Catholics (or, you know, the Pope?) in his rants against gay people, I’m willing to sell that bridge back to you.

          1. I was being absurd. Sort of like how I tried to get ignored authors onto the Hugos, and the response is why do I hate women/homosexuals/minorities? Get it now?

            Sheesh.

            Wright is a devout Catholic. I’m sure he’d love to educate you on Pope Francis and his church’s philosophy. But I’m not Wright, so it doesn’t do you any good to complain about his supposed homophobia here, other than try to set the narrative of Wright=Homophobe, by posting about it over and over and over again. You want to discuss Wright’s beliefs, as I suggested I don’t know how many times, take it up with Wright.

          2. As I pointed out, I was answering someone else’s question. Then, you lied, and I was pointing that out. if you want to stop going down that road, feel free to not lie, and I won’t need to correct anything.

            Also, I promise that of anyone else asks, I won’t answer them.

          3. I’d be willing to bet that Wright, does, in fact, hold pretty close to Catholic doctrine in his writings on gays, and therefore is consistent with (not “speaks for”) the Pope.
            http://www.scifiwright.com/2015/04/chastity-is-thoughtcrime/

            As for the rest, my views on LGBTWXYZ people are shocking, and the dunderbrains are well advised to steer clear of conversation with me, lest any man discover what my views are, and be shocked when he finds shattered the childish narrative needed for maintaining the your proper air and tone of smug, petty, and sneering yet invincible ignorance.

            I believe, profess, and unambiguously support the view that homosexuals must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity.
            I believe, profess, and unambiguously support the view that every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided.
            I believe, profess, and unambiguously support the view that These persons are called to fulfill God’s will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.
            I believe everything the one, true, holy, catholic and apostolic Church teaches.
            I also believe homosexuals who get baptized and live their lives in imitation of Christ receive His abundant grace and dwell after this life with Him in paradise, there to be arrayed in more splendor than any crowned king, transfigured in shining glory unimaginable to human eyes, and made beautiful and fair with the radiance of divine love, exalting in infinite joy forever.

            I think lust is a sin and that pride is a worse sin. Any man who demeans a homosexual for being afflicted with same-sex sexual attraction is guilty of pride. Look to your own sins, Pharisee. It is akin to mocking a drunk afflicted with alcoholism.

            OOOh, what a hater.

          4. Great, he knows what he is supposed to say, then forgets the part about ‘being guilty of pride’ and say things like:

            “You have earned the contempt and hatred of all decent human beings forever, and we will do all we can to smash the filthy phallic idol of sodomy you bow and serve and worship.”

            So yes, a hater.

          5. Dude, if you can’t tell the difference between “absurd, exaggerated strawman rhetorical question” and “lie”, then you probably aren’t capable of correcting anything that wasn’t written in crayon.

          6. Maximillian said:
            “As I pointed out, I was answering someone else’s question. Then, you lied, and I was pointing that out.”

            Except that Larry didn’t lie, he used sarcasm. And when Larry pointed that out, Max just repeated the claim about lying.

            Thanks, Max, I now know you’re dishonest, and won’t bother reading any more of your posts.

        1. Yes. I mean, I don’t think help will fix much, but tell me, do you think a woman who has “The Impaler” as her middle name *doesn’t* need help?

          More seriously – my bet is yes, but you’ll have to ask her.

    2. Warning: it does not matter how you organize the vote. Any organization of any kind will be accused of being a bloc vote.

      That is because the core people who are opposing Sad Puppies have no interest in fairness or inclusivity; you are the enemy to them. As Scientologists used to put it, you are Fair Game.

      1. On “bloc voting,” the implication is that we all just copy down whatever’s on the slate, without reading it or exercising any judgment.

        In future I’ll probably do that, since I’m going to be accused of it anyway. But over at Chaos Horizon, https://chaoshorizon.wordpress.com/2015/02/16/modeling-hugo-voting-campaigns/ and https://chaoshorizon.wordpress.com/2015/04/06/how-many-puppy-votes-breaking-down-the-hugo-math/ show that that is not what happened.

      1. I did a list! I got up to 40 sub-lists without (I think) being stupid or insanely specialist.

        If I was Queen of the Universe, there would be fans collecting around each sublist and combing through All The Things Of Fandom for each category, pimping out all the best ones and posting a master list in January of each year.

        Alas, I am not Queen of the Universe, nor ever will be.

          1. Have you checked out Sarah Hoyt’s Goodreads lot? I’m not as active there as I would like, but they would be a good place to start from.

          1. I was, actually, just getting on a real roll, but decided against pounding the dead horse through the aquifer.

            Hard to say how it would work out – I could see SP, ML, and Scalzi all having different lists next year, with Krautman fans breaking off early to form a MilSF list, and a couple of sublists spinning off from ML in the first couple of years. But after that I have no clue.

            These things will grow (and prosper, and die) organically, and vary with the whims of fans.

    3. I think as long as SP4 keeps the core idea of using it to bring a spotlight on works and authors that might otherwise be overlooked it will continue to gain traction regardless of the exact format of the final list.

      I was unconvinced for SP2 – it seemed like just another variation on self-promotions and ‘check out my friend’ stuff. What won me for SP3 was the evident thought that went behind the suggestions (e.g. this one because it is indie-published, this one because it is a strong book from a popular series, etc.)

  72. I don’t read books so have no idea about this controversy. What I’m not clear about is what it is that you want.

    You indicate that the advertised definition for the Hugo awards did not match with their execution.

    Do you want them to change their policies to be more in line with what they were advertising? Do you have a reasonable set of changes they could make to get there?

    Do you want them to change how they were advertising? That seems like a harder sell: why would they want to make more money?

    Are there awards that you feel are more in line with the philosophy that you think is important for awards? Is there an action plan for promoting those awards as important?

    If the alternative produces better recommendations for the consumers relying on it for purchasing decisions and the process is better then a pr battle could very well have a chance of success.

    1. I am going to give you the benefit of the doubt, and assume that you aren’t just trying to waste my time for demanding answers to things that me and Brad have already written about, in depth, repeatedly.

      Do you want them to change their policies to be more in line with what they were advertising?
      – First they need to decide once and for all what they are. A. Little tiny award for one little con. Or B. Most important award that represents the best in fandom. They have been A, claiming to B. If they are A, say they are A, and that we aren’t welcome. If they are B. then they need to act like it.

      Do you have a reasonable set of changes they could make to get there?
      -See above. Ball is now in their court. Will they actually read the books and vote based upon the quality? Or will the No Award everything to blow up the award and show the world that they are exactly what I said they are.

      Do you want them to change how they were advertising?
      – See above. The paths are before them. They must choose. My side will respond accordingly.

      That seems like a harder sell: why would they want to make more money?
      – That question makes absolutely no sense.

      Are there awards that you feel are more in line with the philosophy that you think is important for awards?
      – Irrelevant. Those awards didn’t claim to represent the best of all of fandom.

      Is there an action plan for promoting those awards as important?
      – Irrelevant. See above.

      If the alternative produces better recommendations for the consumers relying on it for purchasing decisions and the process is better then a pr battle could very well have a chance of success.
      – I literally have no idea what you are saying there.

      1. Sorry for the typos, it was late when I wrote that. I am curious. I came via a link in hackernews and literally have no context or knowledge.

        I don’t want to overwhelm you with questions that I have because I’m too lazy to invest the time to understand. But I do like to understand, so please forgive my stupid questions.

        If the Hugo award came out and said that they represent the view of one little convention, what would you do? Is your endgame having an award that more accurately represents the “best in fandom” or are you satisfied with having no awards that inaccurately claim to be the best?

        I guess what interests me is what is the motivation for focusing on getting this entity to change as opposed to taking action to build something new that solves the problems you’ve identified directly to compete with the original.

        1. I’m not sure if I can answer this properly but I will try.

          So basically the Hugo’s have long been claimed to represent the best choices of all of fandom, but Larry has over the years, found that it is actually more representative of those he refers to as Social Justice Warriors, they are utter jerks and nutcases from what little I see of them.
          So Larry started sad puppies to throw a wrench in the works in a sense, and the SJW’s responded as expected.
          Now some are claiming the Hugo’s really only represent their small click of fandom, but that is a fairly new tactic they are trying, likely because their lies weren’t holding up to the light all that well.

          So Larry is calling them on it and trying to get more fans involved so that either the Hugo’s actually represent the original claim that they represent all fandom, or else if they the in group comes clean and sticks with changing the claim to that it is just for their group, then I suspect there will be a push to then create an actual award that not only claims to represent all of fandom as well as possible, but actually does that by not being discriminatory to fans regardless of their religious/political beliefs, gender, race, sexual orientation and so on.

          So I guess the motivation is to call the lies out and get the truth of the matter in the open, is it a click award, or all of fandom as it has long claimed to be. Future actions will be based off of the response given, among other things. Another purpose of sad puppies that has come about with its success in calling the lies, is to also get authors the SJW’s discriminate against an actual chance to win a Hugo award. Larry has taken himself out of that equation by refusing any nomination of his works, because his stake in this is a war against the lies, not for the Hugo’s. At least that is how I am understanding the scene so far.
          Hope that helps None.

        2. > If the Hugo award came out and said that they represent the view of one little convention, what would you do?

          If that were to happen, and they were to show that they were serious about it. The Hugo would no longer mean anything, and publishers would stop putting “hugo winner” on covers, and Woldcon supporting membership would plummet (people who pay to vote on the Hugos wouldn’t bother if they’re just a small con award)

          and Larry et al would not care about it either.

          1. Guess we’d need to make a new award then to take the Hugo’s place only that actually lives up to the claim of representing all fandom.

            As it stands, If the Hugo award was gone, it wouldn’t really make a difference to me personally, I buy books based on if they look like something I would be interested in, not on what awards they have won. Partly because with only a small group really picking the winners for a while now, the award is meaningless right now.
            I would say in some ways that the award is already destroyed, and what Larry, Brad and others are attempting to do is bring the award back to life by injecting a diverse number of fans into the mix to make it more likely that the award actually means something in the future.

            So either it becomes what it long claimed to be and means something again, or else it becomes the click’s award for all to see and probably dies for good, no real loss in my opinion at that point as it was already dead in many ways, the click option just means the revitalization attempt failed.

  73. There were 17,000+ new releases in SFF in the last 90 days in the Kindle Store on Amazon. How in heck am I supposed to choose what to read next? There is NO WAY I can ever hope to read enough to have an informed opinion on what the best works were from last year. All I can say is of all the books and stories I read last year, these were my favourites That’s it.

    I could read all the nominees for the Hugo award and decide what were my favourite but I couldn’t say they were ‘the best’ — whatever that means. Who picked the works that were nominated? What was their criteria? How did they pick? What are my criteria?

    Not even SFF editors can really say what was the best from the previous year and they come across a lot more work than I ever will. Even they can only comment on what they have read. It’s still only a fraction of what is out there in any given year.

    When you actually sit down and think about it, it’s a pretty meaningless award, despite how prestigious it is. It’s really about the favourite works of a small group of readers who take part in voting.

    Frankly, I’m disgusted after reading about the whole business.

    I’ll be ignoring the Hugos from now on because as far as I can see, they are and have been mere opinion of a small group of people whose personal tastes are masquerading as judgement of quality and worth.

    1. The Hugos were once quite meaningful. Efforts were made to reach fans all over. The Worldcon was one of the biggest sf & f conventions in the world, perhaps THE biggest. And the field itself was much smaller.

      So the result was that the worldcon nominators covered the field pretty well.

      That could probably be true again.

  74. A House Divided Against Itself, Cannot Stand. – A. Lincoln

    I would have to agree with the Sad Puppies. I think Larry’s personal politics suck but I really enjoy his stories (Grimnoir more then MHI but I like Jake Sullivan more then anyone he writes about except Franks). Having read the blog above, I find that the egregious offences appear to be on the WorldCon side.

    When books are the target of an exclusion campaign without even being read, you have reached Bob Dole and Newt Gingrich levels of hypocrisy.

    The Hugo is touted as being inclusive and it is simply not true. The solution, which is simple in concept but extremely painful in execution would be to follow 1 of the 2 options laid out in Larry Corriea’s response to Mr. Martin.
    Shrink the Hugo to reflect WorldCon or be more inclusive.

    Given that America won the Civil War over 160 years ago but we still have to deal with Confederacy nonsense today, with no sign that the losers of that war are going to grow up and acknowledge that loss any time soon. I have doubts about the SJW faction being able to see their own hypocrisy while the ‘WrongFan’ faction, which has been the target of hatred, not for the actual stories being told but the personal politics of the authors, are going to become even more entrenched in the fight to be included and treated fairly.

    I cannot blame them for that. Can anyone reasonably say that they can? Would you not resist any efforts to not only marginalize your work but to attack you and your family personally?

    So while I would enjoy living in the Libertarian world described in Michael Z. Williamson’s Freehold, I would prefer that the polarization of our society was met with an overwhelming response of pulling together in order to achieve the common good.

    The Separation of Church and State is the reason a pluralistic society such as ours here in America actually is able to function. I submit that for the sake of our Fandoms that we separate the Personal politics of the author from the stories they tell.

    After all Mel Gibson may be a an anti-semite with some really screwed up beliefs but he knows how to tell a great, entertaining story. I didn’t stop watching his movies because he is an asshole. I just won’t invite him to dinner.

    My parents always told me to fight for what is right but to pick my battles carefully. What is important in this context is to treat each other with respect and civility. If it is not possible to say something nice then don’t say anything at all works until you are being attacked. Then it’s all bets are off and the devil take the hindmost.

    We, as fans, don’t need that kind of aggravation or long-lasting feuds. Life is too short and i would rather be reading a good story than fight over politics.

    That’s it for my time on the soapbox.

    1. Just for the record, and this is something that Larry and Brad have stated repeatedly, but it sometimes get lost in the noise: IT IS NOT THE WORLDCON PEOPLE THAT THEY HAVE AN ISSUE WITH! IT IS CERTAIN GROUPS ASSOCIATED WITH WORLDCON THAT ARE CAUSING THE PROBLEMS.

      To wit: Larry and Brad have averred many times that the actual organizers and people who run the Hugo Awards have never acted in anything but a completely professional manner. There is not a smidgen of blame that attaches to them. The problem comes from certain Hugo “camp followers,” people who have long been associated with the awards as volunteers or some other ancillary position, but who do not have any actual official connection with the Hugos.

      I don’t want to belabor the point, but we are seeing a lot of “WorldCon” being thrown around here by people referring to the other side, and I just want to make sure that everyone understands we are not talking about the actual awards folks.

      1. Well, had “WorldCon” said “see ya” when Farah Mendlesohn resigned over the Ross affair and smacked down the Twitter antics of McGuire and Stross with another “see ya” they wouldn’t be seeing us. I’m trying to imagine me shutting up if some daffy morons had tried to do the same thing to gay actor and comedian Stephen Fry as a proposed host with “gay dude parade” and I know I would’ve said “see ya.”

        “Farah Mendlesohn ‏@effjayem Mar 5 Just read Afrofuturism by Ytasha L Womack. Not sure it’s a good book but it is an important one. On my #HugoList it goes.”

        “Retweeted by Farah Mendlesohn Shelina Janmohamed ‏@loveinheadscarf 17h White feminist privilege is just the feminist wing of white superiority @renireni #WOWLDN @WOWtweetUK”

        “Retweeted by Aliette de Bodard Cheryl Morgan ‏@CherylMorgan Mar 6 That @clarkesworld reader poll top five? Four women of color, one white man. So proud.”

        “Vee are not Racialists” – SJW motto

        It’s all about the spaceships ‘n’ shit.

        Now imagine me writing “Why Do Transgender and Asians Never Shut the Fuck Up?,” which is a common blog post title of SJWs about whites but NOT us and then imagine me not giving a fuck about these people.

        If one can look at all this and not have the guts or brains to at least write a mission statement about group defamation then I’ll write it for you.

  75. I must confess to finding myself more than slightly disgusted with Mr. Martin’s piece.

    Mainly because, while describing all the greats who have won a Hugo and all its fine traditions, and how IMPORTANT they are in terms of that history and tradition… no, wait, nope, they’re just a tempest in a teapot no one should be overly concerned about.

    Nevermind that the Hugos drive sales — though not as much as in years agone, because the SJW grip on them has resulted in victory-by-networking rather than -merit. I have heard more than one person say the stamp of the Hugo on a cover is now their advisory that the material inside has likely not been vetted or read, but the author schmoozes with the right people. Its net value and basic function has already been undermined.

    To reverse that trend, the way is clear: diversity the field. Which is what those whose cause sad puppies to exist claim they’re all about: make the next Doctor a pre-op lesbian transexual!

    But that’s no more “diversification” than it would be for the Mormon Church to open up a new tabernacle, only this one with lace on the curtains. It is merely going to a further extreme of a particular viewpoint, which would be just fine — IF those who are pushing such extremes did not become more and more extreme in their distaste for anything outside their preferred bailiwick.

    Frankly, at this point Republican National Conventions are more open and welcoming to persons of different views than is the “TruFan” voting body of WorldCon.

  76. I would like *any* award to focus on finding the *BEST* science fiction. I’m lucky these days to read two or three SF books a year, as I am too busy doing a little science.

    A “small” payment of $40 to vote or nominate is a reasonable way to ask the voters and nominators “are you serious”?

    But there’s a much larger problem: “Back in the day” (perhaps 1975?) there were 500 or so SF novels published in a year. Probably more than anyone could actually read. Since then, the number of authors and works published has exploded, meaning noone with more than a very narrow taste can read everything available.

    So how do we winnow the wheat from the chaff?? My suggestion is that to form these lists, the inevitable biases are listed, because I promise you, I am biased towards certain types of work. Everyone else is, too. We won’t all share an idea of “best”!

    Acknowledging these differences, and making sure, dear auditor, that everything has been looked at by at least a few people is the key to a “great” award that finds the classics and influences readers.

    Will it stand the test of time?? That’s another issue that needs consideration.

  77. GRRM says he has read it, and that he will respond. I liked his last post about reading all the nominees and voting accordingly.

    1. Weirdly, that’s what Scalzi said to do as well. That and don’t just vote No Award without looking.

      1. Indeed, they are both smart enough to realize that thus far, their side has exactly proven the point the Sad Puppies have asserted.

        1. It’s also possible, just theoretically you know, it’s also possible that they are somewhat fair and decent human beings trying to see that people do the right thing.

  78. Sad puppies, sad puppies,
    sad puppies aren’t much fun

    When Corriea came to call,
    Worldcon said, not at all,
    Sad puppies aren’t much fun

    Social justice wins it all,
    For the bad fan, not at all,
    Sad puppies aren’t much fun, no, no, no

    Second time Larry, came around,
    He brought with him, quite the crowd,
    Sad puppies aren’t much fun

    Martin says puppy’s days are through
    but the movement just grew and grew,
    Sad puppies aren’t much fun

    Sad puppies, sad, sad, sad, sad puppies,
    Sad puppies aren’t much fun
    Come on everybody out there, sing along, okay

    Sad, sad, sad, sad puppies
    Sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad puppies
    Sad puppies aren’t much fun

    One more time for twenty fifteen,
    Sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad puppies
    Sad puppies aren’t much fun

    Original Dead Puppies song: https://youtu.be/pjFTubAdXP8

    Only my second filk/parody, suggestions welcome. Spread and enjoy.

        1. Been done twice already, right? (Although one kinda unfairly slanders Tor as having unfairly manipulated the NYT Bestseller List for JS, which strikes me as a bit OTT.)

          1. Just came across the above as well. Was about to link, glad you got this done quick.

            I’m glad I have an office now so that people didnt see or hear me snickering over the cube wall.

            I love these videos like this, first came across from a World of Tanks version years ago.

            Kudos to whoever created this one as well!

    1. MUCH better than the shorter “Dead Puppies” parody I posted on FB. My hat’s off to you, fabbersmith!

  79. Hey since you responded to one giant set of posts from Martin, how do you feel about replying to this one as well? 😉

    http://www.blackgate.com/2015/04/04/a-detailed-explanation/

    Not sure if it has been in the mix of everything else, but it feels like something that you and Torgesen and others can use as a better conversation launchpad.

    Certainly I think if more people replied in such a manner instead of assumption-laden pablum, insults and blatant lying, we would be in a better place.

    1. Apparently SJWs don’t exist. Go figure. Half of America can’t stand them, but they’re like unicorns.

      1. Maybe we can do an Opera, “Cosi fan Hugo?” The first aria will have Don Fernando mansplaining that SJWs are like the Arabian Phoenix: everyone has heard of it, but no one has seen it.

    2. “This genre is not the property of Angry White Men.” – Keri Sperring

      Oh, well… good. I missed that press release. What about Jews? Have all 14 zillion issued some kind of statement, or are they part of your benign color-coding system of literature?

      1. That’s especially amusing given the exited squees of “NO MALE WINNERS!” from fans of the 2013 Nebula Awards.

          1. And they sincerely believe that, too. To the left-wing mind, “good” and “evil” are descriptions of people, not of actions. And so the question ‘Is it evil to arrest people for their race, or politics, and kill them for said race/politics?’ is quite literally meaningless. It all depends on whether the arrests and killing are being done by the good people or the evil people.

          2. Today in alternate history:

            “When Larry and Brad say things about how SJWs only vote for the color/sex/orientation and not the story, they are talking about stories that I love. It’s insulting my taste and my preferences in fiction. It’s not about checkboxes for me. But I can see why it looks that way. After the award, I comment on the unusual. ‘OH! This ballot wasn’t all men.’ The fact that the story was good, I take as a given. OF COURSE I thought it was good. That’s why I voted for it. So when someone dimishes my choices to a political agenda, and tells me that something I loved was crap… I get angry. – Mary Robinette Kowal

            OH! How did all those white men not get in there? Isn’t that unusual. I should remark on that. Must’ve been one of those… oh, whatchamacallit… those… ummmmmm… those time tornadoes. Oh, no… I mean… an ablabation… yeah, that’s it. An ablabation.

            “Mary Robinette Kowal @MaryRobinette · 12h In the SF section of the airport bookstore and there are literally no titles by women. #SFFisNotAllMen”

            Well, not if you engineer it that way it’s not. Sorry we insulted you. And that we’re men…

            …and white.

  80. I read every word of this and have been following George RR Martin on LJ. I’m sorry you had to go through sjw bullying. We need people like you fighting them everywhere they are found. 😀 I’m saddened Martin seems to act as if they don’t exist when they are everywhere lately.

  81. I’m someone who leans to the left, I support gay marriage and I financially support Refuge and all-out.org, charities that deal with gay and women’s issues. However, I too have found ‘left leaning’ fandom a very unfriendly, and even threatening place to be, if you’re white and male. Actually, the whole requires_hate episode shows that it’s an unfriendly and threatening place to be if your any colour, any gender, any sexuality, anything. The incumbent culture has utterly failed to deliver diversity, safety, or community. Then again, I must admit that I’m not convinced you guys would do any better, sorry, but that’s the way it is.

    Still, I agree, Mr Corriea, with a lot of the things you say about the current state of fandom. I too have ‘dropped off the wall’ after receiving death-threats from the person who everyone seems to have forgotten about in this discussion, requires_hate. I’m unhappy about the way that fandom has been taken over by people who claim to be supporting women and minorities, but who are often just preaching hate towards white men. Applauding requires_hate while she attacked people from a social justice platform did nothing to help divisity in the genre, not least because she was attacking women and writers-of-color too (and attacking them preportionately more).

    Truth is that the Hugos, and all of fandom, has effectively been gamed for years. By tolerating and supporting the likes of requires_hate, and by leading wi
    tchhunts like Rossgate, the incumbent culture has, however unintentionally, sent a clear message to very many people that they are not welcome in fandom. Th
    ose people have left, and that has tended to shape who wins awards (though a lot of those winning awards are deserving winners, it’s just that other potenti
    al deserving winners are effectively blocked from consideration). However, I think a lot of you are missing the fact that many left-leaning people in SF are
    very pissed off about that. GRRM and many people on the left have supported the requires_hate takedown, and it frankly wouldn’t have happened if there were
    n’t people on the left who are livid about some of the more egregious things that have been going on in fandom recently.

    I guess the situation is such a mess that there’s no hope of building bridges. Still, I do not think it helps your cause to throw accusations at the other s
    ide in the same way that they have done so to you. Mr May, I see your comments, and you are broadly right in your perception of what 3rd-wave feminism seems
    to have become, but your tendency to list various names currently active in SF and imply that they’re all members of a secret white-hating cabal does your
    cause no good. I think you are particularly off the mark with Mr Liu, and Ms Bodard. While Ms Bodard has certainly been naieve about some things (but then h
    aven’t we all) these people are not the anti-white haters that you make them out to be (you’ll have to take my word for it that I’m in a position to know).
    If you cherry pick things they’ve said and weave a narrative around them, then you’re no better than those on the ‘other side’ who do the same to you. As fo
    r Mr Ahmed, I cannot speak to him, I don’t know the dude, but I suspect you’re as wrong about him as you are about Mr Liu and Ms Bodard. Yes, all these peop
    le post angry things on twitter. Is there anyone in here who can truly claim they never post angry, unwise things on twitter? (And if, like me, you’re not o
    n twitter, then that doesn’t count).

    I agree with a great deal of what you say Mr May, but I ask you to consider how you might most usefully say it. Who is your target audience? If you target y
    our insights towards whites and men who’ve already experienced the hateful attitudes of the SF left, then you are preaching to the choir, and you might as w
    ell not speak at all. The people who most need to hear your message are the very ones who your manner of delivery turns away. If you are against anti-white
    racism, then you might usefully call out requires_hate for writing ‘kill the whites’ genocidal wank-fiction. But what are you against when you say, “Martin
    lists 5 novels, two of which have dicked women”? What do those two characters have to do with anything? I fear you are falling into the trap of thinking tha
    t anything that’s pro-women, pro-trans, pro-gay or pro-people-of-color must be anti-men, anti-cis, anti-straight and anti-white, and that’s exactly what the
    other side wants everyone to think. If you want to do something about the situation that, rightly, makes you so angry, then you need to learn to speak to t
    he very people whom you currently denounce.

    Currently the Sad Puppies have won a little precarious moral high-ground. The apology from Entertainment Weekly for an article that portrayed your slate as
    being all white men, when it had women and people-of-color on it, was a major victory. Things would have been even better if you’d had a few gay and trans p
    eople on your slate, (are there any?) but many of the comments that I see under-the-line here are going to scare those groups away. You need to decide what
    you stand for: are you against the tide of hatred and racism towards whites and men that has permeated the genre, or are you, as your detractors say, agains
    t women, people-of-color, gays and trans people? The two are not the same thing, but a lot of the language in the comments seems to lean towards the latter
    position. If that is not your true position, then you need to address your language and do more to reach out to those groups and show them that you’re being
    mis-characterized by your opponents (Mr Corriea, I think you are doing better at this than some of your followers).

    One thing GRR Martin suggests is actually good advice. You’ve been largely successful in getting people to admit that actually the Hugo awards are a falsehood that claims to speak for fandom, when it really speaks for a con-going elite, who like to characterize themselves as fandom. However, continuing to fight on this ground is likely to get you embroiled in a quagmire. Sooner or later some angry poster is going to say something that’s a gift to the other side. I would suggest that instead of planning SP4, you should think bigger. GRRM suggests that you start your own awards. I suggest you go large, and start your own fandom. I suggest you start your own cons, your own awards, your own equivalent of the SWFA, your own everything. Create a new fandom with a written constitution that defines what it is and what it isn’t. As most of you are seemingly American then this call to go off and create a new _res publica_ should stir something in your blood. If you are right, and there’s a vast body of untapped fandom out there that is not being served by the current system, then I suggest you create your own system to tap into it. In a few years you could be bigger than worldcon, bigger than the Hugos. Even if you’re not, it would be an adventure, it would be a positive act of construction rather than a futile act of tit-for-tat conflict. Let the SF left have their pissing Hugo awards back, show some moral maturity, and walk away from Omelas, and go an build Jerusalem someplace else.

    1. What a load of shit. Where have I ever maintained there is a secret cabal? I am not IMPLYING jack shit. I am putting up quotes. What does this sound like to you: “‘authentic’ seems often to mean ‘what black people would approve'” Does sticking the word “white” in there suddenly flip-flop it to mean something else? Black Americans are 40 million fucking people, and whites over 200 million! You can’t say shit like that about them and you especially can’t say shit like that while maintaining you are against racism.

      Furthermore, the entire SJW SFF community acts as if it is under siege from a cabal that must actually be secret, since such attitudes as that quote are said to exist but don’t other than from a couple outliers. What’s 2 or 3 outliers compared to the entire core institutions of SJWs in SFF which either support this shit or ignore it? Here’s an amazing epiphany for you: institution and anomaly are 2 different things, and 150 is more than 3. Institution is Jim Crow. Anomaly is an idiot down the block. Guess where you don’t find racist outliers and instead find institutions.

      There are no quotes that reflect an anti-PoC/women/gay set of institutions in SFF. So what you are in essence saying is that no quotes equals quotes and quotes can be dismissed as if they meant something else. I’m not sure what you find so mesmerizingly mysterious about the word “white” used as a pejorative a million times; or the word “black” or “Jew” for that matter. So if SJWs maintain mistaken identity is “institutional racism” and “racial micro-aggressions” as have Alaya Dawn Johnson and John Chu, what the hell would it be if I wrote “‘authentic’ seems often to mean ‘what Asian people would approve'” What in 18 hells are you using for a standard here, because as far as I can tell it does the exact weather-vane-spinning SJWs do so that only straight white men are ever at fault. Mistaken identity is racism and racism is naive. Convenient.

      And “naive”? Somehow I’ve managed to go my entire life without lighting up and defaming Asians, blacks, women, and all other ethnic and sexual groupings. However what I have experienced is being called a “racist” over and over again merely for quoting racially defamatory remarks. “Naive”? Just stop fucking doing it. What are these people – 7 years old? How in the world can one claim some special sensitivity to racism that therefore is stating right out one is NOT naive and then make racist remarks and have you come along and call our race-experts naive? It’s nuts.

      “I think you are particularly off the mark with Mr Liu, and Ms Bodard. While Ms Bodard has certainly been naieve about some things (but then haven’t we all) these people are not the anti-white haters that you make them out to be (you’ll have to take my word for it that I’m in a position to know). If you cherry pick things they’ve said and weave a narrative around them, then you’re no better than those on the ‘other side’ who do the same to you. As for Mr Ahmed, I cannot speak to him, I don’t know the dude, but I suspect you’re as wrong about him as you are about Mr Liu and Ms Bodard.”

      That is pure, unadulterated bullshit. I know a supremacist when I see one and I’ve read enough of these folks remarks to know one. I am not weaving “a narrative” and there is no other side that exists outside of scare quotes. I am using the exact standards of the people in question, which when it comes to racism are paper-thin. It’s a double-edged sword. One does not get a pass just because. Why am I even writing this stuff to an adult? Do you know what equal protection is? Do you believe in it?

      “Yes, all these people post angry things on twitter. Is there anyone in here who can truly claim they never post angry, unwise things on twitter?”

      “Angry”? Is that what we call racial bigotry now? “Unwise”? Yeah, if by “unwise” you mean racist remarks I can make the claim I am not a one-man KKK on the internet.

      Am I “against women, people-of-color, gays and trans people?” You don’t have any business directing smug remarks like that to me. As for a choir, a surge of outsiders are reading these posts and unlike morons, they understand the difference between scare quotes and real quotes. I don’t need to reach out to anybody. I am not guilty until proven innocent… about anything. Your posts are the problem. Try playing softball with your attitudes and see how fast you’re disinvited. I am doing so now.

      I am not enrolling anyone in anything. White privilege is a very specific theory from a equally specific ideology. This is not guilt by association but guilt by membership. I know that cuz if an imaginary white supremacy isn’t handing out I.D.s then neither is a very real cult of intersectional gender feminism which SJWs consistently self-identify as, right down to the word “intersectional.” That’s your I.D. On the other hand the only ideological sign of white supremacy in America is being white and a majority. That is not an ideology; that is a demography. Learn the difference.

        1. Yeah, but that wasn’t my intent. He’s not understood what I was saying. Things are so heated in SF now that it’s pretty impossible to say anything to anyone.

          1. Listen – this isn’t rocket science. It is painfully easy.

            A person obsessively singles out human beings according to their race and sex.

            Next, they profile that group negatively 100% of the time. What in the world is so hard to figure out there?

    2. I had a response written to you but it was eaten. Of course, in the meantime May jumped in. Collecting these quotes is his hobby I guess, but it doesn’t it’s the sole purpose of this endeavor. The actual stated purpose is to nominate things people enjoy and think are good, regardless of any kind of idealogical purity. The racial and gender complaints are a smear campaign, not an agenda.

      I guess the situation is such a mess that there’s no hope of building bridges.

      I don’t agree. What needs to happen is for the majority to stand up to the rude, loud bullies. To be kind to all, not just the clique. Stuff we should have learned in kindergarten. If you ignore these rude mean people in your own group because they haven’t targeted you, you empower them. I’m not as up on all the RH stuff, but it sounds like you were targeted as well so you understand this. A few people standing up won’t work if the vast majority lets it pass or accept their smears as gospel. I don’t know how to convince everyone on your side to do that, but it’s not coming from the SP side. I think they would be happy to work with anyone from any stripe as long as they are a decent person.

      1. They are both a smear campaign and an ideological agenda with clear goals which are stated over and over again. The smear part comes in because the ideology is reacting to a thing which doesn’t exist.

      2. # Collecting these quotes is his hobby I guess,
        # but it doesnt its the sole purpose of this endeavor.

        I wasn’t saying it’s the purpose, I was saying that the quotes don’t mean so much. People on both sides gather quotes like this, and…. let’s just say it’s not a good look.

        # The actual stated purpose is to nominate
        # things people enjoy and think are good,
        # regardless of any kind of idealogical purity.

        I think there’s more involved than just that here. There’s a feeling of being a victim group, and I think there’s some truth to that, but to make people hear you on this, you have to really have your tone right, and collectively I feel you don’t.

        # I dont agree. What needs to happen is for the
        # majority to stand up to the rude, loud bullies.
        # To be kind to all, not just the clique. Stuff we
        # should have learned in kindergarten.

        But it’s not that simple, a *lot* of people are reacting to a portrayal they’ve swallowed of other people. It’s not that they’re inherently mean… it’s more complex than that.

        #I’m not as up on all the RH stuff, but it sounds
        #like you were targeted as well so you understand #this. A few people standing up wont work if the
        #vast majority lets it pass or accept their smears as #gospel.

        This is exactly the point I was making elsewhere, this is why it took so long to take RH down. People stood up: they got chewed up.

        # I dont know how to convince everyone on your
        # side to do that,

        Honestly, I’m not on one of the sides. I likely wouldn’t be commenting here if I was.

        # but its not coming from the SP side. I think
        # they would be happy to work with anyone
        # from any stripe as long as they are a decent
        # person.

        I think some would, some wouldn’t, and that’s true on the other side too. My post was more about how the SP group sounds in its comments, and how that isn’t going to connect with the ‘other side’. But at the time I posted I thought that dialogue with the ‘other side’ was the intention, but the more I read the more it seems to me that we’re beyond that.

        1. “There’s a feeling of being a victim group, and I think there’s some truth to that, but to make people hear you on this, you have to really have your tone right, and collectively I feel you don’t.”

          This is a key distinction.

          The SP Side thinks the proper response to attempted victimization is to pop the bully in the nose, as opposed to forming support groups for the survivors.

          It isn’t “male/female” or “Alpha/Beta” or “Right/Left” in alignment – (although probably plenty of statistics on this would -weight- one way or another).

          But popping the bully in the nose isn’t the “Socially acceptable response”. It’s hardly surprising that the ‘tone isn’t right’.

        2. In fact SJWs do NOT gather quotes. Other than the same two people they flog at us there is nothing for them to gather.

          It’s a lot easier to call us all a bunch of racists. The funny part there is they were doing that long before Sad Puppies. The reaction to SP hasn’t been any worse than the Malzberg/Resnick affair. In fact the SJW hysteria never goes away. That’s because straight white men never go away. That’s as close as SJWs get to a quote: “straight,” “white,” “male.”

          It’s self-explanatory from there, just like a KKK.

        3. Lea said:

          I’m not as up on all the RH stuff, but it sounds like you were targeted as well so you understand this. A few people standing up won’t work if the vast majority lets it pass or accept their smears as gospel.

          Colum Paget said:

          This is exactly the point I was making elsewhere, this is why it took so long to take RH down. People stood up: they got chewed up.

          Mr. Paget, suppose I went on any site and said people should be hated because of their blood type, or because of their astrological sign. Can you think of any group that would take that seriously? Requires_hate flourished because the people she was among shared her basic premise: if you have the wrong political/religious/social views, you should be hated.

          Again: there is no compromise possible with that group, no bridges can be built, no accommodation can be reached. They can only be opposed till they surrender, shut up or go away.

    3. Mr. Paget:
      It’s a pity that the situation has become so inflamed, so charged with negative emotion, that people are screaming at each other. But there are reasons for this.

      “I guess the situation is such a mess that there’s no hope of building bridges.” (Btw, per your complaint/invitation, I’ve corrected typos you made.) The problem with bridges is that they can be used to enable hostile forces to attack. That’s why, in warfare, they so frequently get blown up. And what we have here is a small theatre of a war that’s been going on for centuries.

      I won’t make any comments about Mr. Liu, Ms. Bodard, and Mr. Ahmed. I’m not familiar with the. But I have seen the kinds of quotes Mr. May collects, and I recognize them. Such quotes are examples of something that endemic in the “left”: hatred, and a desire to harm.

      As a historian, I’ve researched the origins of “left-wing” thought. And from the beginning there’s been a desire for democide. Go look up the concept of the “general will.” Expressed in plain language, it can be summarized as ‘I’m real and human, but anyone who disagrees with me isn’t. Only my beliefs and emotions are real, true, and morally permissible. I have the right to enslave, persecute, and murder those who disagree with me.’ Of course, such things never are expressed in plain language, but when the people who hold them get a chance, they act on them. See, e.g., “The Reign of Terror,” the Soviet Union under Stalin, China under Mao, or the Cambodian Killing Fields.

      The “Social Justice” Warriors aren’t in a position to kill, but they do defame, lie about, and attack those who aren’t them to the best of their abilities. There’s no compromise with possible with such people. They can only be resisted or surrendered to.

      In respect to that last, look at the history of the Cold War. It started the moment the Bolsheviks took over Russia, with the intention to go on from there and impose Communism on the world by force. It ended when the USSR conceded that other nations had a right to be non-Communist, and that it was wrong for the Soviet Union to impose its system on other countries. (Of course, two years after the Soviet Union did make that concession, it ceased to exist.) Similarly, there can be no peace between us conservatives and the SJWs until and unless they concede that we have a right not to believe as they do, a right to live and believe as we wish.

      “Currently the Sad Puppies have won a little precarious moral high-ground. The apology from Entertainment Weekly for an article that portrayed your slate as being all white men, when it had women and people-of-color on it, was a major victory. Things would have been even better if you’d had a few gay and trans people on your slate, (are there any?) but many of the comments that I see under-the-line here are going to scare those groups away.”

      No, you’re wrong. Our position is that it doesn’t matter who you are, or what your genitalia, skin color, sexual preference, religious belief, or political position is. What matters is whether you produce good, entertaining speculative fiction. We can identify race and sex in many cases by name and photograph, and political and other personal characteristics in some cases because the people on the “slate” have announced them, but that’s not why they’re there. Recommending people for any reason other than ‘Wow, that’s great work they did there’ is precisely what we oppose.

      And btw, that EW story? You got it wrong, and in a telling manner. The accusation was that we wanted people to “nominate only white males for the science fiction book awards.” What we want is for gender and color not to matter in Hugo nominations and awards.

      “You need to decide what you stand for: are you against the tide of hatred and racism towards whites and men that has permeated the genre, or are you, as your detractors say, against women, people-of-color, gays and trans people? The two are not the same thing, but a lot of the language in the comments seems to lean towards the latter position. If that is not your true position, then you need to address your language and do more to reach out to those groups and show them that you’re being mischaracterized by your opponents (Mr. Correia, I think you are doing better at this than some of your followers).”

      There, I agree completely. But there is a problem in doing what you recommend. Consider John C. Wright. I know little of him, but he has posted statements in which he professes to be a Roman Catholic, and to believe about homosexuality and homosexual activity what the Church teaches. For that, he is labeled a “hater” by many.

      This is first of all a category error: beliefs are not emotional states, and one can’t use one as a marker for the other unless you’ve first established they invariably go together, or that there’s at least an overwhelming statistical correlation. More importantly, it’s the central issue, disguised. People who hold the position that the Catholic Church teaches are labeled as evil because they hold it, and are subject to attacks because they hold it. We can’t reach out to anyone who does that, precisely because we believe that Mr. Wright is morally entitled to hold his opinion, and further entitled to have his fiction judged on the basis of the words in it and nothing else.

      “One thing GRR Martin suggests is actually good advice. You’ve been largely successful in getting people to admit that actually the Hugo awards are a falsehood that claims to speak for fandom, when it really speaks for a con-going elite, who like to characterize themselves as fandom. … GRRM suggests that you start your own awards. I suggest you go large, and start your own fandom.”

      No. Hell, no. FUCK NO. There’s a reason why we can’t do this. Look at Mr. Martin’s post, where he says:

      The prestige of the Hugo derives from its history. The worth of any award is determined in large part by the people who have won it. Would I love to win the Hugo for Best Novel some day? You’re damned right I would. But not because I need another rocket to gather dust on my mantle, as handsome as the Hugo trophies are. I want one because Robert A. Heinlein won four, because Roger Zelazny and Alfred Bester and Ursula K. Le Guin and Fritz Leiber and Walter M. Miller Jr and Isaac Asimov and Frederik Pohl and so many other giants have won the same award. That’s a club that any science fiction and fantasy writer should be thrilled to join.

      The prestige of the Hugos is also determined by the people who award it, and the way they award it. Heinlein’s four Hugos are all for political novels (though that isn’t as evident in Stranger as in the other three). They are all similar at a deep level. Note that three out of four are first person novels, and that in all four, the central plot element is people taking responsibility to protect and improve the society they live in. In the case of Double Star and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, most Hugo voters agreed with the particular political positions of the protagonists. With Stranger in a Strange Land and Starship Troopers, the particular political positions were wildly unpopular with many, but the novels won anyway. Those Hugo voters were fairly representative of sf as a whole, and when they said Starship Troopers was the best novel published that year, they made a defensible claim about literary merit and entertainment value.

      Martin can’t actually join that¬ Hugo club, because it doesn’t exist anymore. The people who have dominated Worldcon and Hugo voting for the last few decades regard Heinlein as a racist, and would organize against him getting a Hugo or any other award if he were alive and publishing today. Let them walk away from the Worldcon and create their own awards for ‘best fiction that left-wingers approve of that was written by people who left-wingers approve of.’ Or let them change the name of the award, and the constitution of the World Science Fiction Society to make it explicit that they renounce Heinlein and everyone like him, and are giving out awards that aren’t the one Heinlein won. But we ain’t letting them change things behind the scenes, and then pretend that things have stayed the same. They require hate. We’re going to require honesty.

  82. I currently own a copy of all your works to date. After reading this I will no longer buy anymore as you seem to think that most people not voting for you because they hadn’t read your works means they are biased against you. I haven’t read every Hugo nominated work, therefore I wouldn’t have voted for them all. Coming up with conspiracy theories about why you lost puts you in the same league as the Flat Earth Society and the Alternative Medicine crowd. Facts are immaterial when they disagree with your feelings and prejudices.

    1. I’ve got to ask, do you guys actually read the blog posts before commenting? I mean, I’ve got a few parts in there where I very specifically addressed what you said there.

      Seriously, if you are going to Concern Troll, you need to step up your game.

      1. Why would they let little things like what you actually wrote get in the way of Teh Narrative!!! ?

      1. For some reason, when I read the post by JohnMcC I find myself reading it as though it were a machine speaking it, as though his post was simply copy pasted from some other place and put here because they didn’t bother to read the actual article but wanted to say something to state their disagreement with Larry, as though he cares about losing one possible costumer that doesn’t like him.

        1. JohnMcC sounds like the talk radio callers who say “I’ve been a lifelong X, but now I’m supporting the other party because policy Y or person Z”. I don’t put much stock in his claim.

          1. It’s called a Moby, after the techno singer made a “helpful” suggestion in 2004 of going onto “right-wing” boards and claiming to be a “conservative Christian” or similar and, IIRC, spread the sad tale of how disappointed in GW Bush for paying to get an abortion for a girlfriend way back when.

            Cue tons of people claiming to be “lifelong Republican” and so on making a bunch of statements that sounded like they came from the Democrats and somehow expecting people to believe them.

      2. In manner reminiscent of the joke whose punch line is “what do you know? Dead people DO bleed!”, some lefties are now saying Larry withdrew his nomination because he knew he wouldn’t win, and he couldn’t stand the embarrassment of such a public defeat.

        1. Wow they are that desperate to hold onto being utter idiots. Wow. Also I don’t think I would call them lefties, more likely it is the more insular and lynch mobby, Social Justice Warrior types mixed in with those of a more left political leaning.

  83. # And that’s the key. There are no
    #moderates. There are the bullies who
    #dominated the Hugos until this year.
    # There are the bullied, who are no longer #going to agree to being marginalized. And
    #then there are those
    # moral degenerates who stood aside and
    #allowed the bullies to drive out countless
    #talented authors and devoted
    # fans. Forgive me for not reaching out to
    #spineless cowards.

    As someone who felt the requires_hate lash, (she being the most extreme of the ideological bullies) and who has been ‘driven out’, I want to speak to this. There are moderates, and it’s dangerous talk to say there aren’t. If fandom divides, as it pretty much has, into two warring tribes who only view each other as demonized stereotypes, then the result is going to look something like the current state of Syria.

    It is true that the dominant culture of SF let requires_hate flourish, and supports viewpoints and attitudes that drive many people out of the genre, but there’s a lot of people in the dominant culture who are angry about what’s happening, they just can’t get traction to push back effectively against it. Unfortunately, the likes of requires_hate are fantastically good at appropriating these people’s language, and using their ideology against them, and I agree that in large part this is because their ideology is broken. I often agree with their stated aims, but I do not agree with their methods or with the narrative they promote about how things got to be the way they are. One can be right for all the wrong reasons, and this is the current situation of much of the SF left.

    Not everyone who wins a Hugo award is on the side of the bullies (who undeniably exist) or even stands aside and lets them rule. First off, a lot of people struggle to believe that some of the more extreme crimes of SF are real. If anyone had *told* me about requires_hate, I wouldn’t have believed them. I had to run smack into her in order to accept that something like that existed. Secondly, because they swim in a certain ideological pond, a lot of people are ready to believe explanations of what’s happening that gel with their existing ideology (as are all of you). Thirdly, a lot of people tried to stand up to requires_hate, and tried to critique some of the more extremist ideology of the SF left, and they quickly paid a heavy price for that. In the end it took a lot of people working in concert over time to bring the hate queen down. But those people existed and exist, and though I’m afraid many of them do not like you lot (sorry, but that’s how it is), they do have a working moral compass. Unfortunately they’ve had to fight a long, strategic campaign, which quite often did look like inaction, but they won in the end. At least, they’ve won until Ms Hate finds some way to return like the demonic antagonist of a fantasy saga, which I’m sure she will.

    1. This ideological divide will look like Syria? You mean look like America. Look around, man. 🙂

      On Requires Hate, I would be far more inclined to believe you if this coalition of moderates with moral compasses had done something to take her down earlier, but they waited until she transgressed against them, and then it became a problem. When she was going after the right kind of people, it was “punching up” and good, and hey, she’s got a blog, let’s give her a Campbell!

      And now RH is already back in the good graces of other various SJWs who you guys have never condemned, like Tempest. So you’ve got to admit that from our perspective, that’s not super convincing.

      1. # This ideological divide will look like Syria?
        # You mean look like America. Look around, man.

        I’ve got no idea of the state of America, except what I read from all this fighting online. I’m in the UK, and Britain ain’t that bad. People, of all races, genders, and sexualities, are kinda getting along together. Yeah, we’ve got a few crazies, we’ve got some bombs going off. When I grew up, it was the IRA, and I grew up catholic in a city bombed by the IRA, which would be a bit like growing up muslim after 9/11. But, somehow, people in the UK tend to just… get along, you know?

        Might change if you americans manage to get your culture war to us.

        # On Requires Hate, I would be far more inclined to
        # believe you if this coalition of moderates with moral
        # compasses had done something to take her down
        # earlier, but they waited until she transgressed
        # against them, and then it became a problem.

        First people out of the gate got creamed. I was one of them. I blew the whistle on her when I first encountered her in 2012. I said she was pushing a radical racist agenda that she was a tar baby that people were going to get stuck to and who was going to explode and get them all burned. What did it achieve? Have you even heard of me before? Do you know the events I’m referring to? Oh, but I was small fry, I guess, so I didn’t make much of a splash.

        Peter Watts tried. He had a big profile. Do you know how it went for him?

        Lots of people tried to do something about her, but it couldn’t be done. And yes, they generally tried after being attacked, because that’s how most of them found out she existed. If you’d have told me she existed before I encounted her, I wouldn’t have believed you.

        People tried, and they all failed. Ms Hate had wicked skills, she knew how to work the ideology. I meet people at cons now who say “If I’d have known, I’d have said something.” They’re brave after the event. Ms Hate would have made goulash out of them and not even broken a sweat.

        A lot of people were angry for a long time, but the smart people waited until a window opened. They played smart, I played dumb, I failed, they succeeded. You can believe that, or not, that’s how it was.

        And yes, she suckered a lot of people through the use of ideology. And if I were to send a troll into your ranks, who spoke your language, and was funny and full of smart ideas and god-knows-what, are you sure they couldn’t lead you into trouble? I mean, that’s what I thought RH’s agenda was when first I met her, I thought she was leading people to ever more extreme views, so they could be discredited and destroyed, and many times I saw her doing stuff and thought “This is it! This is where she drops the bomb!” And she could have, with the things she got people to do and say, all she’d have needed was a contact in the media to run the story when she’d sprung her trap, and boom. You condemn the other lot for falling for it, but are you so sure these tactics couldn’t be used against you?

        This is what I was trying to get through to Mr May, but he’s not understood one word I wrote. People seek to discredit you, and if you are all so angry, and say the wrong things, then they can do it. And yes, there’s an imbalance, because the ‘other side’ can get away with saying much more.

        # And now RH is already back in the good graces
        # of other various SJWs who you guys

        who is this ‘you guys’? Do you think I’m on one side or the other of the SF divide? Do you think I’d even be talking to you if I was? Think what it would do for my reputation! I’m not someone who uses language like ‘punching up’, or who cleaves to that ideology. There’s all kinds of people about, it’s not two camps, which is another point I was trying to get across to Mr May.

        I’m not one of them, and I’m not one of you, I’m one of me.

        # have never condemned, like Tempest.

        Well, she’s not yet called for anyone’s murder, that I know of, but then nor has Vox Day. I agree with you she tends to be on the wrong side of a lot of stuff, and so is Ms Hurley. So what? What do you expect me to do about it? What’s the point of poking Ms Bradford’s cage, nothing’s going to get through to her. But some of the people Mr May was listing are different, I think they can be reached through dialogue. I’ve met them, they’re not bad people, it’s that simple. Maybe they’ve said/believed bad things about some of you. So what’s your reaction to that: hit back?

        You have all fallen into seeing the ‘other side’ as a monolithic block, and they see you the same way. Who gains from that?

        # So you’ve got to admit that from our perspective,
        # thats not super convincing.

        That’s a matter for you, convinced or not, it’s all the same to me, really. You might see me in the comments on Mr RR Martin’s blog, speaking about how your experience resonates with me, Mr Corriea. I know why you’re angry, and I’ve had a similar experience. But I don’t see the dominant SF culture as all being in cahoots, the way you see them and they see you.

        My original post was based around the idea that you were trying to get a message through to the ‘other side’ (which makes it sound like a seance, and it might as well be). But it seems to me that’s not your intention, because if you believe there’s no moderates, as that other poster said, then there’s no hope of conversation. So, what’s the plan, actually? I mean, they’re going to escalate, you’re going to escalate, and it’s all going to get nastier and nastier.

        Look, my previous post didn’t go down well, and I guess some of you don’t like me telling you to ‘go and build Jerusalem someplace else’, but I’m not saying the things that Mr May thinks I’m saying, and I do think it’s a good idea for you to found a second fandom. The way the social justice crowd are going, sooner or later there is going to be a major fuckup in the SF community, something that brings in serious outside attention. Maybe RH will come back and do it. In a year’s time she could come back in under a different persona, and start playing pied piper again, and who knows what kindof things she could get people to do/say? Maybe she can pursuade a bunch of people to bully someone to suicide, maybe she can do something else that I can’t even think of. What happens then? Might be useful to have a second stream of SF that will survive the fallout.

        1. Most people in the us get along fine, at least thatsmy experience. The exceptions are really loud though.

          I do think there are moderates, but they are more likely to go along to get along, rather than fight back. Especially if no one is attacking them. And I can’t say I necessarily blame them, because most people don’t want to get into it with random people all the time. But when someone else has finally had enough and comes out and actually rocks the boat and then it is their tone that get criticised? Well I don’t blame them for being irritated.

          And I think the thing most liberals don’t understand is that conservatives get bashed in popular culture rather incessantly. There is no ‘safe space’. You are just watching your cheesy tv show, movie, the mtv video music awards, anything and someone will sneak in a dig at conservatives. And you can take it but it gets ridiculously annoying and tiresome.

          1. # But when someone else has finally had enough
            # and comes out and actually rocks the boat and
            # then it is their tone that get criticised? Well I don’t
            # blame them for being irritated.

            Problem is, I’ve had exactly that argument with the ‘other side’. “Don’t give me the tone argument”, they say. People actually tried to tell me that my complaints about RH were ‘tone argument’, because all that threatening stuff was just satire, just tone, and really there was a real message underneath. But I think that if one speaks with a threatening tone, then it doesn’t matter what you say, the tone is the real argument. Equally, if you want to communicate something to anyone, then you have to have your tone right. Perhaps I didn’t have my tone right in speaking to Mr May, but it’s tougher when you don’t know the other person.

            # And I think the thing most liberals don’t
            # understand is that conservatives get bashed in
            # popular culture rather incessantly. There is no
            # safe space.

            Yeah, I see that. I also have some people on the other side telling me “we get bashed in the street.” Everyone’s got a pile of grievances, and they’re all real.

            This is why I still think a second fandom is a good idea. Quite a bit of what’s wrong in SF is never going to go away, because it’s human nature to band into warring tribes. These days I’ve started to think that good fences make good neighbors.

          2. Good fences made good neighbors because they were built out of stones and people worked together to create them.

        2. Requires Hate is U.K., baby. You’re U.K.

          And what SJWs tried to do something about her? What were 3 Tor bloggers doing leaving sympathetic comments at her site, along with other SJW authors, many of those not even Americans. And Tor is U.K., baby.

          Speaking only for myself, saying I see the other side as a monolithic block is Orwellian semantic gibberish. Exactly how do I put an “other side” into a “block?” They self-define. I do not pluck people out of nowhere and declare them a “block” or an ideology. I use words – words people speak. They enroll themselves. On the other hand that “block” enrolls me into an ideology using nothing more than – No. 1 – my skin and sex – and – No. 2 – not agreeing with their goofy ideology which attacks my skin and sex. That’s photo shit, not words or politics.

          They have declared me a right wing conservative, something I have never been. On the other hand my summation of SJW ideological beliefs is based entirely of things these folks actually say. What the hell am I supposed to do when people self-define as “intersectionalists”? They’re intersectionalists! I don’t self-define as a conservative nor engage in ethnic group defamation yet to SJWs I am both a conservative and a racist and I have quotes where they say that. Any light bulbs going off about now, Colum?

          Larry is right on: until RH went feral and started going after SJWs it was all “privilege piggies” (SJW Jenny Gadget) and fun.

          And Athena Andreadis (now crying she is anti-RH) left this comment on a racist post RH wrote about “white man’s tears” about fantasy author R. Scott Bakker: “‘…what we have here are people so embedded in their privilege that pointing it out to them instantly strips away the progressive veneer and elicits poop-flinging that would make a baboon blush. Women and other Others are still furniture – and though furniture is useful and can be decorative, it’s not supposed to move, dammit!'”

          Oh, dear. White male privilege, plus I’m a bigot along with 100 million others and I want to take away Andreadis’s Joanna Russ pencil box. Charming. Yeah, Andreadis and the SJWs are SO against the concept of white privilege – no bloc there. So Andreadis stripped away my “veneer,” the one I am too unconscious, stupid, privileged, male and white to examine and understand. Fuck Athena Andreadis.

          Words, buddy. Anyone who goes on about “white privilege” is an intersectionalist. That is intersectional theory 101. You want to call that a bloc, it’s a bloc. I don’t force people into blocs. They do quite nicely on their own, and then I record it. If they’d do the same for me, I’d not be a racist or a conservative. Fuck SJWs – every last one of them. I stand up against my own ethnic defamation and I’m the “unibomber” and an “internet racist.” Tell me how they’re all RILLY NICE, though.

          1. # Requires Hate is U.K., baby. You’re U.K.

            Some of her may be UK (though even that isn’t completely proven, but I know who you’re referring to), but she’s international. You know that, right? She’s not one person. What do you think all the ‘talking hive’ stuff is about?

            And her ideology isn’t UK. All this privilege stuff isn’t coming out of our culture and our universities, is it? Most UK people are still pretty ignorant about it.

            # And what SJWs tried to do something about her?

            SJWs, I couldn’t say. I wasn’t talking about SJWs, I was talking about moderates. If you go back and actually read my post, you’ll see that. Now, as I’ve told you, I tried to do something about her. If you bothered to do any actual research instead of just ranting at me, you’d see that. To be fair to you, a lot of her stuff has been deleted, but you can see one of my interactions with her here:

            http://mjstarling.tumblr.com/post/28321952473/finished-reading-interzone-241-tta-press

            I also pointed out to you that Peter Watts tried to do something about her. He’s not one of you, I don’t know if he’d call himself an SJW, I suspect not, but he would call himself a moderate, I think.

            James Worrad is another name, ( And he’s UK, Baby!) he was against both RH and VD, and he made a video skit of RH, which you can see here:

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1B4mEH-rKk

            And if you want to see mischaracterisation, you can read her subsequent attack on him (some years later) here:

            https://medium.com/@talkinghive/james-worrad-a-history-of-harassment-f80c4eba5688

            When did you go up against her, actually, mate? Did you engage with her on twitter?

            # What were 3 Tor bloggers doing leaving
            # sympathetic comments at her site,

            I think you’d have to ask them, and I agree, what the hell are they thinking? Is this a big bunch of Tor’s bloggers? How many do they have? What does it mean to be a ‘tor blogger’?

            # along with
            # other SJW authors, many of those not even
            # Americans. And Tor is U.K., baby.

            Wikipeida disagrees:

            Tor Books is the primary imprint of Tom Doherty Associates LLC publishing company, based in New York City, Baby.

            And if you’re trying to tell me that the UK is in the grip of a ‘culture war’, then I can tell you that I live there, and it isn’t.

            # Speaking only for myself, saying I see the other
            # side as a monolithic block is Orwellian semantic # gibberish.

            No, I think it’s english, the words all have well-known meanings and appear in the standard dictionary, they’re not neologisms, and I’m deploying them according to standard rules.

            # Exactly how do I put an “other side” into a “block?”

            By collecting quotes from them, and saying “See, they’re all racists!” which is the same they do to you. You say yourself that they’ve put you in a block that you feel you don’t belong to, and I bet they did cut-and-paste some things you wrote. It’s the same approach.

            # They self-define. I do not pluck people out of
            # nowhere and declare them a ?block? or an
            # ideology. I use words ? words people speak.

            requires_hate would say the same of the job she did on me. And literally, it was true, I had written the words that she cut-and-pasted into her narrative (oh, and on your claim elsewhere that SJWs don’t use quotes, and let’s at least agree that requires_hate is an SJW, almost every interaction I had with her she used my words against me. So we can dismiss that claim.)

            # They have declared me a right wing
            # conservative, something I have never been.

            I really must go onto wayback machine and look up the stuff that requires_hate called me, ‘cos I think it was worse than ‘right wing conservative’. But yeah, I get it, I know what it’s like to be called names and mischaracterized. I’ve been there.

            # On the other hand my summation of SJW
            # ideological beliefs is based entirely of things
            # these folks actually say.

            They would characterize you on the things you’ve actually said, that’s exactly the point I was trying to make to you. They would go through all these angry posts of yours, cut and paste the most interesting sentences, and use them of ‘proof’ of your ideological alignment. Perhaps you’ve never had requires_hate do a job on you? If you had, you would know the drill.

            # Any light bulbs going off about now, Colum?

            Yeah, the major one is that “Angry man is angry” and that I shouldn’t have tried talking tactics with him. Just carry on as you are dude, and good luck.

            # Larry is right on: until RH went feral and started
            # going after SJWs it was all ?privilege piggies?

            As the links I’ve posted above show, this statement, whoever said it, is provably false. People were trying to deal with requires_hate as far back as 2011/2012. I was, Peter Watts was, and others were. If you’re telling me I don’t exist, I’m inclined to think you’re mistaken.

            # (SJW Jenny Gadget) and fun.

            Who?

            # And Athena Andreadis (now crying she is
            # anti-RH) left this comment on a racist post
            # RH wrote about ?white man?s tears

            Yeah, some people have changed sides, and I applaud them for that. I never changed sides, I was solidly against RH from the day I met her.

            # Yeah, Andreadis and the SJWs are SO against
            # the concept of white privilege ? no bloc there.

            I imagine that most people reading this, with the possible exception of Mr Beale, are for universal sufferage. Does it make you a block?

            # Words, buddy. Anyone who goes on about
            # ?white privilege? is an intersectionalist.

            No, believe it or not some of them are just parrotting the things others say. Quite a lot of them don’t know the theory in any depth at all, they’ve just picked up a few lines by osmosis. I know, because I’ve done the thing that you haven’t done: I’ve talked to these people.

            # If they?d do the same for me, I?d not be a
            # racist or a conservative.

            They do do the same to you, and you make it easy for them.

            # Fuck SJWs ? every last one of them.

            Okay, so you’re not trying to get a message through to them, I get that now. So yeah, if you’re intention is ‘rage performance’, you don’t need to worry about your tone. I get that now.

            # Tell me how they’re all RILLY NICE, though.

            Some of them are really nice. Some of them are evil. Some of them are smart. Some of them are dumb. Some of them are just playing the game to further their careers. Some of them are deeply committed to the things they believe. Much like you guys in here, I suspect.

          2. Hmm… my reply to this post is still awaiting moderation, clearly I’ve said something alarming. So I’ll just clip out the important bits, and leave the rest, and see if that gets through.

            # And what SJWs tried to do something about her?

            SJWs, I couldn’t say. I wasn’t talking about SJWs, I was talking about moderates. For all those of you who deny that anyone tried to do anything about RH, (and it must be said, a lot of the evidence has been deleted by RH herself) you can see one of my interactions with her here:

            http://mjstarling.tumblr.com/post/28321952473/finished-reading-interzone-241-tta-press

            I also pointed out to you that Peter Watts tried to do something about her, you can look that up too. He’s not one of you, I don’t know if he’d call himself an SJW, I suspect not, but he would call himself a moderate, I think.

            James Worrad is another name, ( And he’s UK, Baby!) he was against both RH and VD, and he made a video skit of RH, which you can see here:

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1B4mEH-rKk

            And if you want to see mischaracterisation, you can read her subsequent attack on him (some years later) here:

            https://medium.com/@talkinghive/james-worrad-a-history-of-harassment-f80c4eba5688

            So, for all the people asking where are these so-called moderates, and saying she was only taken down when she started eating her own, I hope you will now accept that this isn’t so.

            And how many people in here can produce evidence of going up against her on twitter three years ago?

            Her support was not as widespread as you think it is. Even people who did support her now think they were wrong to do so. The current culture of SF isn’t as signed up to the party line as some of you think it is.

          3. Alarming? It is an automated system. WordPress sees multiple links in a post and thinks it is spam. Holy shit, will you people calm down? I don’t live on the fucking internet.

        3. I believe that we see things differently, but I believe you are being totally honest about the subject.

          I do appreciate that.

          In America, we are in the midst of a culture war. It isn’t really right vs. left, as much as Freedom vs. I’m Offended. For the last few years we’ve had controversy after controversy about SJWs getting outraged about something. It is in media, academia, entertainment, even scientists shirts are sexist. Now, apparently people like Mr. Martin don’t see this happening, but about half of America does. And it has even become something of a running joke to red state America.

          On Requires Hate, you’ve got to understand one reason my side finds that whole thing so amusing. While she was steamrolling you guys, and people started to freak out, we were all like “welcome to the party, pal!” Because we’d been on the receiving end of those kinds of tactics for years. Only we didn’t have one attacker, we had a slew.

          So understanding that, you can perhaps understand why some of the people May lists are hated by my side, and why those we see who don’t condemn their antics get tossed in with them in our perception?

          And now, I want you to think about how you personally felt when Requires Hate maligned you. Now I want you to imagine that instead of Requires Hate spreading vile lies about you and trying to destroy your career, it was 20 media outlets with a thousand times her reach. Because that’s been my week.

          1. # I believe that we see things differently,

            This wouldn’t be unusual. I pretty much see things differently to everyone.

            # In America, we are in the midst of a culture war.

            In the UK we are not. Science-fiction is one of the ‘entry points’ for all this stuff into the UK. Most people you meet on the street have absolutely no idea what ‘privilege’ is, and people-of-color I know, when I say something like “Well, as a person of color, what do you think about that?” look at me bemused and say “a what of what?” (btw, don’t get paranoid about my spelling of color, I am UK, but I’m a programmer, so I lean towards US spellings).

            # Offended. For the last few years we?ve had
            # controversy after controversy about SJWs getting # outraged about something.

            Yah. I’ve been paying attention.

            # It is in media, academia, entertainment, even
            # scientists shirts are sexist.

            Yeah, my problem is less whether his shirt is sexist, and more whether it’s appropriate to bully him into tears over it, and then crow about that.

            # Now, apparently people like Mr. Martin don’t see
            # this happening, but about half of America does.

            If you swim in the water, it’s tough to see it. And the thing is, there’s a lot of bad stuff going down in America on both sides, so there’s plenty of material to keep anyone on either side in a state of high moral dudgeon permanently.

            # On Requires Hate, you’ve got to understand
            # one reason my side finds that whole thing so
            # amusing. While she was steamrolling you guys,

            you keep assuming I’m one of ‘them’. I’m not. This is the problem I was talking to Mr May about. It’s not two monolithic sides, it’s much, much messier than that.

            And you shouldn’t find RH amusing, you should find her instructive. What she did to the ‘other side’, someone could do to you.

            # and people started to freak out, we were all like
            # “welcome to the party, pal!”

            Well, I got to say, that’s not a very neighborly attitude, but I guess I understand where it comes from.

            # Because we?d been on the receiving end of
            # those kinds of tactics for years. Only we didn’t
            # have one attacker, we had a slew.

            Yah, I suspect the other side would say the same thing, I saw some stuff like that from the UK right in my youth, during the 80’s.

            # So understanding that, you can perhaps
            # understand why some of the people May lists
            # are hated by my side,

            Well, _All that is Required is that you hate._ That’s how the system works, isn’t it?

            # and why those we see who don’t condemn their
            # antics get tossed in with them in our perception?

            Again, yes, this is standard human behavior. That’s what makes you predictable, and thus controllable. If you’re running any kind of political campaign, you need to reach beyond that.

            # And now, I want you to think about how you
            # personally felt when Requires Hate maligned
            # you. Now I want you to imagine that instead of
            # Requires Hate spreading vile lies about you
            # and trying to destroy your career, it was 20 media
            # outlets with a thousand times her reach.
            # Because that’s been my week.

            But at least the reach of those media outlets is mostly to people you don’t know. It’s not to the people you have around you. Who would you rather have turned against you, a million strangers, or your family?

          2. # Who would you rather have turned against you,
            # a million strangers, or your family?

            I should clarify here that I’m not playing ‘victim olympics’ or something. I’m just saying that your thought-experiment doesn’t give me anything, because I already passed the line of maximum reaction. There’s a point where you can’t imagine a bigger thing, it all just becomes more of the same.

        4. Since you at least tried, thank you for trying to warn people about Requires Hate. You were not stupid for trying to do so; you were doing what needed doing.

          There’s a giant difference between thinking to yourself, “Needed better plan and better execution of my plan” and thinking, “Doing anything was foolish.”

          1. # There?s a giant difference between thinking to
            # yourself, “Needed better plan and better execution
            # of my plan” and thinking, “Doing anything was
            # foolish.”

            True, but planning and execution take time. That’s the point I was trying to make. People saying ‘no one did anything’ are saying ‘no one had a fully worked out plan of operation already in place and put it into action straight away’. They’re right about that, but most people involved didn’t ever imagine that they’d see something like requires_hate: you can’t plan for something you’ve never seen before.

            So, a bunch of people tried without much plan, just by standing up and talking. And it went badly. So then people had to watch, learn, understand what they were dealing with, and act when “qi had shifted” That does not happen overnight.

        5. “I’m in the UK, and Britain ain’t that bad. People, of all races, genders, and sexualities, are kinda getting along together. Yeah, we’ve got a few crazies, we’ve got some bombs going off. ”

          You also have the appalling levels of PC ‘anti-racism’ ‘sensitivity’ that led to Rotherham.

          1. Achillea wrote:

            You also have the appalling levels of PC ‘anti-racism’ ‘sensitivity’ that led to Rotherham.

            Yeah, that gets to the nub of it. Rotherham didn’t happen because most people there were in favor of turning young girls into sex slaves. It happened because almost everyone stood aside and let it happen.

            And to prevent such things from happening, you have to make clear that the people who stand aside are morally culpable for what they allowed to happen.

            Mr. Paget keeps saying he’s not ‘one of them’, but he does say he leans left. When people like requires_hate start to operate, they need to be resisted, instantly and uncompromisingly, and those who defend the haters need to be resisted just as fiercely and thoroughly.

            I think Mr. Paget’s heart is in the right place, but I think he’s wrong.

    2. Yeah, they’re against RH now, but only some. Skiffy and Fanty regularly Tweet with her, among others, because white cisheteronormative patriarchy. Take note 3 current Tor bloggers left supportive comments on RH’s racist posts. Other SFF authors too. Fortunately for them that has been walked over by text robots at the Wayback Machine. Unfortunately for them someone may have screen-shotted the entire outhouse.

      “Fortunately I keep my feathers numbered for just such an occasion.” – Foghorn Leghorn

  84. The term “SJW” – it’s dihydrogen monoxide for George.

    I am writer and a currently-unpublished novelist. That’s going to change in the year ahead as I am working on several manuscripts at the moment. I was introduced to this controversy due to listening to a few podcasts during my daily commute.

    My staples included “Writing Excuses”, “Escape Pod”, “Pod Castle”, “Pseudopod” and “I should be writing”.

    I am incredibly grateful to the people behind these podcasts because without this dust-up I would not have discovered Larry, John C Wright, Brad, Sarah, Vox and the Sad Puppies / Rabid Puppies authors until much later.

    I simply can no longer bear listening to Mur’s podcast.

    I have also recently unsubscribed from the three Escape Artists podcasts because of having narrative forced down my throat. Alisdair was great – witty, incredibly clever and FUN. But now he owns the company – he’s decided to try to force message over story. “Artemis Rising” was the last straw. Newsflash – if I wanted feminist propaganda, I’d have subscribed to it. I want STORIES. Smarty, witty, clever STORIES that make my smile, make me laugh; that shock me with the unexpected. PLEASE no more lectures in feminism.

    Finally, I have unsubscribed from “Writing Excuses”. It has been going downhill since MRK joined the team. She barely hides her venom any more and she is the reason that I just unsubscribed. Listen to her input on most conversations. She scarcely adds anything worthwhile anymore. I still haven’t forgiven the attitude she gave Larry on the Writing Excuses panel he was on.

    Has anyone else noticed that MRK no longer says the “we’re not that smart” at the end of the intro ????? That H A S to be mixed up into a SJW anthem – MRK saying “We’re not that smart” over some kickin’ beats.

    So I’d like to thank the SJW’s from the bottom of my heart. I will be ever-grateful to them for proving that its NOT ME – It’s THEM. I’ve enjoyed every moment of this saga.

    1. I think you’re being a bit hard on the Writing Excuses group.

      The biggest change in Mary’s contributions is that she has gained more confidence as a full member of the team. You could tell she was a little star struck and “awe shucks” at the beginning of things, as she was barely published.

      I disagree with Mary completely on almost everything politically — but I don’t think it’s too hard to argue that she’s the smartest person on that podcast, for all that I’m a bigger fan of the other guys’ work.

      1. Hey, Mary extended me an olive branch, and in this giant mess she is one of a small handful of people on the other side of the political divide who did a public post telling people to knock it off with the asinine allegations, that she disagreed with what we’d done, but specifically to quit threatening to kill me and Brad.

        For that, she has my sincere thanks.

  85. Larry Correia should organize a booklist for readers like me, an old fart lost in the miasma of today’s fantasy and scifi novels, and rereading the likes of Poul Anderson, Robert Heinlein, and other old school writers.

    And, for the record, Ancillary Justice was the absolute worst Hugo winner I’ve ever read.

    1. Mr. Smith,

      Other than the now-probably-too-famous pronoun gimmick, what made AJ a bad read for you?

    2. Eh, Ancillary Justice was merely highly derivative of prior work and not that exciting with the central ‘point’ being much ado about nothing. Redshirts was clearly the worst Hugo. It was at best mediocre fanfiction masquerading as a professional novel. I’m serious, I’ve read plenty of fanfiction that, while obviously not as polished, was light years better than Redshirts.

  86. Sir,
    I caught your shameless act when you brought the road show to MetroParkCentralis. I was deeply impressed. I only know a handful of real authors but your illuminating talk to us at the B&N was wonderful,

    When I look out the window at my garden I see the two croquet fields I’ve set up. On the left, the wickets are 15 feet across. On the right, they’re regulation 6 inches. [I just made up that regulation].

    I have a girl [12] who lives with her mother in Portland. The happiest thing about this dismal state of affairs is that she’s pretty much like you and me which drives her mother crazier.

    Frankly, I don’t see how you or Sara Hoyt can write for profit when you spend this much time engaging the enemy more closely. You know the line… pull back to orbit and nuke them. FYI, they live in NYC, Seattle, Portland (stay within the city limits please don’t nuke Beaverton), San Francisco…

    Seriously, you were the very first author in full cavalcade that I ever saw outside of the Washington DC book shows on the Mall, other than my sister.

    There was a series of books I misremember where the protagonist was always offered a farewell parting of “Go with God and the answer was, Abide with God.” I remember liking it.

    Go, Abide or Remain. You are a wonderful read on any rainy day.

          1. # That?s terrific.
            # What time’s it start?

            Hey, I gave you one, now you’ve got to give me one.

            What kinda pizza have they got on this parade?

  87. Larry,
    I am a sci-fi/fantasy reader who has been upset at the SP campaign last year, and especially with the slate this year. That said, thank you for this post. It helped me understand where the SP are coming from. I am sorry for all the rancor against you, especially as you started out as a writer. That is incredibly hypocritical, and never okay.

    I was a LonCon supporting member last year, and I did faithfully read all of the nominated works (for at least the literature fiction categories). While I did not vote for Warbound in the top slot, I did find it quite enjoyable, even for someone who had not read the first 2 books in the series. Your books are not misogynistic, racist, homophobic, or anything of the sort. I have no beef with you as an author or a person. While this is not your fault, the SP movement has been associated with authors and viewpoints that are misogynistic and racist. Unfortunately, that association has tainted SP slate as a whole for many people. It’s not necessarily fair, but some of the distaste by many is that association.

    Slate voting blocks still upsets me, though. I do see that there is a fanbase that has felt incredibly neglected by the recent Hugos, and by fandom as a whole. But a specific slate that is associated with the SP ideaology becomes much more than “these books are good and are recommended”. I don’t know what the solution is. I very much want diversity (of all kinds) to persist in SF/F. Did I love “Ancillary Justice”? No, but I am very glad that it exists and brings a different voice and perspective. I just listened to “Starship Troopers” and I am also incredibly glad that exists as well, since it challenged my viewpoint and made me think. I truly hope that more books (of both ilks) will continue to come out. I know that it’s a little bit of false equivalency since Starship Troopers came out many years ago and the SF/F climate is different now. But still, that is my hope. For me, it’s the slate itself that bothers me. Ideally, I would like to see an actual representation of fandom nominate and vote. That may be unrealistic, but that is what I would like to see. I agree that the SP aspect of fandom has been shouted down, but I also feel that this Hugo shortlist is not representative in the opposite direction.

    Anyway, thanks for listening to a non-Sad Puppy SF/F reader who hopes for a community that expands, continues to show a diverse range of opinions, viewpoints, and characters and can exist without rancor or hate. SF/F would be a smaller and poorer place without the fans and authors who are here and elsewhere.

    Sincerely,
    Silver

    1. Silver –

      Awesome to meet a fellow fan.

      I appreciate your concern over voting manipulation and favor trading that goes along with it. Please believe us when we say that what we want is *more* fannish participation, not less.

      Agree with you that we need to increase the numbers and types of people who are involved in the process.

      I find this, however, deeply problematic:

      “the SP movement has been associated with authors and viewpoints that are misogynistic and racist. Unfortunately, that association has tainted SP slate as a whole for many people. It’s not necessarily fair, but some of the distaste by many is that association.”

      1) when we start throwing people out because they don’t agree with us, we start failing as SFF fans.

      2) I’ve said this before and I’ll keep saying it: stereotyping a whole group on the basis of one or two people is WRONG, it is inaccurate, and people need to cut it out. Particularly if the sin that those people are accused of is any sort of racism/sexism/ect. It really makes people look like they’re completely NOT about treating people “fairly”, but just controlling other folks.

      3) I’m completely NOT going into the distasteful activities of people on ‘that other side’ – but someone went out of their way to forward press releases smearing the leaders of the SP campaign as the vilest sorts of humans. MULTIPLE mainstream media outlets carried those pieces. There is not one thing that anyone ever associated with SP or RP has done which approaches this sort of hateful escalation of the culture war.

      4) None of us is perfect. No writer is their work. It is not correct to upvote someone’s novel because they’re your friend, and it’s not correct to down vote someone’s novel because they’re your enemy. Just judge the work. You don’t even have to like it! Just judge it for what it is – and not for what you may think of the author.

      1. keranih,
        Oh, believe me, I find that aspect problematic too. I was just attempting to explain why many fans instantly recoil against SP. Since I’m just dancing around it, I’ll just say it. I find what Vox Day has said about N.K. Jemisin absolutely reprehensible, including how he did it. During SP2, when he was one of the finalists, that absolutely colored how I viewed the entirety of the SP campaign. To me, it said, “we support his work and him as an author”. I did do my due diligence and still read the work, but it did color my perspective of the campaign. His perspective that he has chosen to portray to the public at large leaves many people excluded from fandom. If that viewpoint is given perceived protection within a group, people outside that group believe that that is an encouraged viewpoint within the group. So, it makes it difficult to accept that the group is not about exclusion, unless you fit inside the group. I found it hard to believe that a group would talk about tolerance and also promote his work. At that point, since the SP campaign is in part, about tolerating different viewpoints, doesn’t including one that purposely shuts down others defeat the point? I am genuinely asking, because that’s how it seemed to me. In that extremely specific point, it isn’t about me disagreeing with Beale, it’s about saying someone is worth less than another human being. Which I do not believe, and I think that is toxic to fandom, and how genre fiction is perceived as a whole.

        As for your points:
        1) 100% agree.
        2) This is true as well. But I point to the above paragraph as to why people may believe that an entire group holds those viewpoints when someone who is vociferous on those viewpoints is perceived to be protected by that group.
        3) *sigh* Yes, that was ill-done. There is legitimate hurt on both sides and everyone is lashing out.
        4) This is definitely true as well. I read Vox Day’s work last year, evaluated it, and voted on it accordingly. I love Lovecraft’s work, but I strongly wish that he was not as rascist as he was, and that that view holds back and limits fandom as a whole.

        Thanks for taking the time to read my comment and reply.

        Respectfully,
        Silver

        1. You are missing the point about Beale. You are invoking a standard and rejecting it at the same time. By your own standard, Beale has done nothing N.K. Jemisin hasn’t done. Either they both go or they both stay. This is called a “strike zone” – principle. Choose your rules: identity or principle. Try and have it both ways and WorldCon gets the pizzas. I consider this inalienable.

        2. Silver –

          (I appreciate your agreeable tone, and I hope to reply in kind. If I fail, I beg your pardon.)

          “since the SP campaign is in part, about tolerating different viewpoints, doesn’t including one that purposely shuts down others defeat the point?”

          I am not sure if I can say this politely, but let me try:

          If you hold that we can not throw people out because of what they think, then we can not support throwing people out for what they think, NO MATTER WHAT IT IS THEY THINK.

          Once we start identifying RightThink, that slope just keeps getting steeper and steeper, and that’s how we end up with people struggling to articulate how it’s not rational to accuse a man in an interracial marriage IN UTAH of racism.

          SP has a big tent. AT THIS POINT IT DOES NOT INCLUDE VOX DAY. (Sorry for shouting, but the point keeps coming up, and it appears people didn’t hear it the last five times.)

          We think that there is enough room in SFF fandom and writing for all kinds of thought and expression, and that it’s really against the spirit of our field to start outcasting people.

          This includes people who think it’s okay to call for deep-sixing the careers of n00b writers, because they happen to be publishing their first works in a year when a call for not reading heterosexual caucasian men. (I have a brother. He’s trying to write. I do NK Jemism the courtesy of assuming she means what she says.)

          So even though NKJ has called upon her listeners and allies to destroy the writing careers of complete strangers, I think she should have the right to voice her opinion and to be a voice in SFWA.

          If you’re going to invoke VD as justification for the knee-jerk reactions of people – in a way that you would not allow people to use third hand gossip as reasons to despise or fear racial groups – I encourage you to dig into the history of the interactions between Vox and NKJ. That way you’ll have the facts, and know what he said, to who, and in what context.

          Bring your boots, your slicker, and your hat, because the crap incoming from both sides gets really deep, really fast.

          Me, I personally (not having any sort of scat fetish) prefer to stay out of that particular mess. And try my dangest to not assume that anyone who comes to the defense of NKJ (or even fails to disown her every third breath) automatically endorses her ant–male and anti-caucasian bigotry. (I mentioned I have a brother, yes?)

          (And NKJ is just the most visible person-I-would-vote-off-the-island on that side. There are others.)

          The logical arguments – such as they were – of this week’s public media accusations against perfectly decent people in SP rest on the anti-Vox obsession of some people. Vox didn’t send out those mailers, and he didn’t pen that article in Atlantic. That was other people – who claim to be on the anti-Puppy side.

          THERE IS NO LEGIT HURT THAT JUSTIFIES THAT. The Hugos are an award FOR WRITING. ABOUT ELVES. And spaceships and martians and unicorns and all that. Those mailings, those articles? NOT lashing out. That was malice aforethought.

          So. *deep breath* Sorry. Thanks for letting me get that off my chest.

          Yes, fandom has vile people in it that we would rather not associate with. (But I repeat myself – I already said it had people in it.) The ones who make you insane are not the ones most likely who make me insane. How about we agree to mutually ignore the other side’s assholes? I don’t have to swear that there are no KKK robes in my closet, and you don’t have to dig out and burn those Animal Liberation fliers from your old college roommate.

          I don’t like VD, even on the few points that I agree with him on, and I’ve never spoken with him online or off. But if you’re asking for a public denouncing of him and all his evil wicked ways, nope. I’m sick of getting tarred with his idiot antics, but I’m even less happy about the bigotry of those who won’t bother to get to know other people, and just say VOX VOX VOX all day like it’s some sort of anti-cootie mantra.

          I have the feeling that this is going to come off far more peeved than you’d hoped, and I do appreciate you venturing into “Indian Territory” in the effort to build bridges. Please keep coming back. I’m only chucking rocks to make a base for the support pillars for the bridge, I swear.

          1. keranih,

            I understand what you are saying. And thank you for being willing to have a discussion with me.

            I don’t want to dig too deep on this, but when I hear someone saying they’re just going to read fiction by female authors, I believe with all my heart that they are not calling male authors evil, or that they should be destroyed, but that person wants to specifically seek out a viewpoint that they feel is underrepresented in the marketplace. I certainly wish your brother success in his venture. He is a much braver soul than I.

            I don’t think that any of the SP should be tarred by the actions of one, and one who is not associated closely. I was just saying the perception of it is there. Especially when both groups have Puppies in the name (Sad and Rabid). Both groups are about provocation and reaction. And I believe that is where the conflation comes from with people outside both groups.

            Mainly, I hope that more people join the ranks of SF/F fandom and everyone nominates and votes as they wish. The thing that makes me sad about the whole deal is those days are likely done. I won’t blame the SP for that, but I have a feeling slates are here to stay.

          2. when I hear someone saying they’re just going to read fiction by female authors, I believe with all my heart that they are not calling male authors evil, or that they should be destroyed, but that person wants to specifically seek out a viewpoint that they feel is underrepresented in the marketplace.

            I think this really depends on the person. Look at what else they have said, and you can probably see what their meaning is overall.

            My issue with saying ‘only read this’ is that it’s exclusionary (hey, I think I’ve heard someone else accused of being exclusionary!). I would much rather see someone promote good things (books, new authors, authors of whatever background so long as they wrote something interesting) than try to get me to stop reading something else. I would respond more positively to someone saying ‘here are three fantastic books by black authors. Check one of them out and see what you think’. Then I’d be all in.

            And I think there are so many female authors selling a boatload of books that it doesn’t seem like a particularly important thing to promote.

          3. @Silver

            The call wasn’t to read More Female Writers, it was to read No Male Writers

            If a significant number of people actually do this (who would otherwise have purchased a male authors work), they will destroy the carrers of those male authors who are starting out, and could destroy even established male authors.

            now, if you can somehow read “only read female authors” in a way that doesn’t hurt the sale of male authors, it won’t hurt them. But I don’t see how you get that meaning from the words on the page.

          4. “when I hear someone saying they’re just going to read fiction by female authors, I believe with all my heart that they are not calling male authors evil, or that they should be destroyed, but that person wants to specifically seek out a viewpoint that they feel is underrepresented in the marketplace.”

            People have said “I’m going to try to read more written by women.” They’ve said “I’m going to try to read more translated works” or “I’m going to try to read more by minorities.” (As Will Shetterly pointed out, they hardly never say “I’m going to read more by low income writers.”)

            However, that wasn’t what NKJ said. Furthermore, she didn’t want to read more “not men, not straight, not white” writers because that “expanded her view” – it was because it *narrowed* her view to things that didn’t make her mad. (“RAGEQUIT” was the word she used.)

            So yes, I would be willing to give people benefit of the doubt. NKJ left no doubt what she meant.

            I do appreciate your candor and letting me go on at this length. I hope you would work to correct people on the false preception that you have reported floating about, when ever you come across it.

            “Mainly, I hope that more people join the ranks of SF/F fandom and everyone nominates and votes as they wish. ”

            TRIPLE YES! I don’t know about you or the fans you hang with, but for me and the ones I hang with, yes, we vote for what we like. No lock step here, no whisper campaigns, just a bunch of cats grousing and squabbling outloud.

            If we look all alike you’re standing too far back.

          5. Thanks May, just realized it and came back to acknowledge that. Appreciate the correction.

        3. Gotta go with James here. Either no one can do it, or anyone can do it. The consensus (right or not) seems to be that VD’s comments on race were badthink.

          Ok. I can live with that. But…

          I can’t accept that J gets a pass, for screeds that are similar in content, and far, far more frequent. As long as she gets a pass, so does VD.

          1. What I love is SJWs constantly ask us about one or two guys while they openly support 20 morons who never shut up about how shitty white people are. Go clean your own back yard. It’s a lot dirtier than mine.

        4. Silver –

          I made an error (typing too hard whilst annoyed) and conflated NK Jemisin with K Tempest Bradford. It was KTB who called for not reading straight white males, not NKJ. (Which I knew.)

          Mixing up their names/actions was a foolish error to make and I should not have done so.

          1. 10 CALL RAGEQUIT (KNICKERTWIST, BUTTHURT, ADHOMINEMATTACK, ARGUMENTLOSS, BLOODPRESSUREHIGH, WORDLOSS, OUTRAGEHIGH, AUDIENCELOSS, IRRATIONALITYHIGH, REALITYLOSS, IRRELEVANCEHIGH)

            20 END

            ***** compiler file failure, subrountine *RAGEQUIT* not logical, cannot be processed; subargs not real

            ***** run abandoned due to logic failure ; do not resubmit without changes

        5. “we support his work and him as an author”

          No. In SP2 we supported his work. This year he’s not on our slate.

          One of my original goals was to expose that the Hugos were biased, and would judge works based upon the author’s beliefs, and not bother to even read them, and Satan didn’t have any eligible works that year. Yes, he has said ridiculous things, but many people also enjoyed his story. NK Jemisin also said many ridiculous things, and many people enjoy her books, but if you nominated her book does that mean you also endorse all of her views? If you voted for a piece of Harlan Ellison’s work, does that implicitly mean that you support everything he has ever said, because he’s said some things that makes Vox Day look like a choir boy.

          Or are you saying that bad people can’t make art? Because the entire history of art disagrees with you and Roman Polanski needs to give all his Oscars back.

          But hey, hatemonger for hatemonger, we’re even, because you guys nominated Requires Hate.

          1. # and Satan didn’t have any eligible works that year.

            Yeah, talk about keeping the public waiting, when’s his “Apocalypse” coming out? We’ve been waiting longer for that than for ‘Dangerous visions 3’.

            # But hey, hatemonger for hatemonger, we’re
            # even, because you guys nominated
            # Requires Hate.

            “You guys” again. I bet the speaker here didn’t nom RH. I know I didn’t. But the thing is, if they’d nommed RH, and you hadn’t nommed VD, you wouldn’t be even, you’d be ahead. Imagine how much stronger your position would be now!

    2. Silver:

      In reference to ‘voting blocs’, I think whether they are good or bad depends on the size of the field.

      Consider democracy. Athens could rule itself by having all the citizens get together for a big meeting. But when it turned itself into an Empire, its institutions didn’t meet its needs. Thus the modern democratic republic, with elected legislatures and parties and pressure groups. Whatever criticisms one makes of them, they do function. Having all the citizens show up in the capital to vote directly is a non-starter in modern countries.

      The whole Hugo situation needs rethinking. The awards were framed at a time when short fiction in magazines was the heart of the field, when novels were typically much shorter than they are now, when series works like Weber’s Honor Harrington or Safehold sagas really didn’t exist. The awards need to be reconfigured from top to bottom.

      Chaos Horizon discussed this in posts on the fifth and seventh instant, How Many Puppy Votes and Margin of Victory, plus one from February, Modeling Hugo Voting Campaigns. What he shows is that the voting in the shorter fiction category has been so low, and the votes divided among so many stories, that almost any effort to get specific works nominated is likely to work. Even in the novel category, a little over 14% of the votes was enough for nomination this year, and last year it was a little over 6% required. Last year, there were approximately 180 puppy voters, and they got five of eight works nominated. This year there were about 360, and they swept whole categories.

      Given these facts, I’m pretty sure unpublicized slates have been dominating the nomination process for a while. Though hardly anyone has mentioned it, the fanzine/semiprozine The Book Smugglers had a list of suggestions by its two editors, and it probably would have provided the margin of victory for one or more works on the ballot if the number nominating was as low as previous years.

      With the size of the field being what it is now, some sort of intermediaries are required.

      1. Well Tad Williams posted this on FB. Tad Williams Actually, maybe you SHOULD have to pass a test to be an SF fan, at least to join fandom as we know it. Maybe we need a different term to distinguish between people who like SF&F and people who have joined traditional fandom. Because they really are two different animals. One is a kind of club, and they have every right to want people to understand their history.

        1. A test? OK. Sample questions include:

          1) What is the meaning of “21MM392”? What major series was inspired as a result?
          2) Who are Arcot, Wade and Morey?
          3) How did Asimov fix a major blunder in his novelization of “Fantastic Voyage”?
          4) What was the national origin of food traditionally eaten at early Star Trek conventions?

          1. So I won’t get 100% on the test? I was thinking of the location of the crushed ship at the end.

          2. Well, we know where the location would be if Scalzi had written it. They’d have flown out on a current of farts like they were thrown up a volcanic shaft in Journey to the Center of the Earth.

        2. One is a kind of club, and they have every right to want people to understand their history.

          What about ‘history’ of fandom should you have to understand before joining up?

          This is what I don’t get. If you are a 15 year old and you are brought into SFF by stuff like the Hunger Games, Twilight, Avengers, or whatever new stuff you want to mention, and you go to join ‘fandom’ and are greated by a scowling 60 year old who wants you to learn the ‘history’ of the last 30-40 years before you can have fun at a con, how likely are you to take that deal?

          Not very. Is that really what these folks want?

          1. They would be be perfectly happy if the entire institution of fandommdi.died with them.

          2. In the movie LadyHawke the Bishop swore if he couldn’t have the girl “then no man shall.”

            In one of Mercedes Lackey’s “Arrows” books, a character tries to explain “evil” as “a hunger that can’t look at anything worthwhile without wanting to possess it and would rather destroy it than see someone else have it.”

            The SJW’s in “fandom” would rather see the Hugo destroyed than see “wrongfans” awarding it to “wrongthink”.

            Thre’s a pattern here.

        3. I’ve read hundreds of books and written 13, but I’m pretty sure I’d fail any test that Tad Williams made up. 🙂

  88. Has anyone done a comparison between the names on these anti-Puppies articles and compared them to lists of Hugo winners past? I’ve seen two already. Is there an ethical wall that has been breached?

    1. Ethical wall? HA HA HA HA HA HA!

      Sorry.

      Hey, Slate did research, they phoned Scalzi and asked his opinion. Salon’s writer is on Twitter calling Brad racist for having a black wife. The EW writer told me she’d be glad to take my statement after she’d already published the article about how I was a white supremacist. And forgot which one, is actually having last year’s Hugo winning feminist write an article about how we’re bad and last year was a huge win for diversity (being 92% white liberals, with one Asian liberal, but the percentage gets a little bitter if you include film, where Alfonso Cuoron shows up). And another Hugo winning feminist explained how we scare her in io9.

      So yeah, going out on a limb and saying there might be a teensy crack in the ethical wall. 🙂

      1. is actually having last year’s Hugo winning feminist write an article about how we’re bad

        The atlantic.

        last year was a huge win for diversity

        One of the (many) things that has irritated me from these news articles is that they act as if this year is a response to a ‘diverse’ slate last year. It clear is not. At all. Since it started two years before that.

  89. As someone who has been reading your blog since before you were published…

    I think that Sad Puppies suffers in that way that most partisan issues suffer — rants, terms, and generalizations that seem obvious from “inside”, end up sounding entirely off-putting from “outside” the subculture.

    Much as in the same way all of us have felt excluded from the WorldCon culture, talk about Political Correctness, Social Justice Warriors, etc excludes people who might be sympathetic to your *genre* or *rudeness* complaints, but not to your worldview.

    I don’t know if Sad Puppies would have gotten a big enough response to be effective without it… but now that we’re here, I really hope we can bring the focus onto the core *literary* problem, that being:

    1) Getting people who like more military/adventure sci fi to go vote and nominate stuff they like.

    No slates, no anti-SJW type buzzwords, no culture war (even if they started it). Just a get out the vote campaign among people who want to see more sci fi in the vein of Starship Troopers.

    For every SJW calling you a racist, there’s a Vox Day who actually says things that are misogynist. Yeah, we can talk about whether and how much those people suck, and who has more than “their” side. But that shouldn’t matter for the Hugos, if the point of the Hugos is simply to vote for the best Sci Fi.

    Get the people you agree with you vote, and let them vote for what they want, and you’ll get similar results without (hopefully) the backlash.

    There’s a rule in negotiations — never start by appealing to “Fairness.” Fairness puts things in terms of “you” and “me”, and now “you’re” on the defensive because I just insulted you.

    Sad Puppies started because you were mistreated, and so you opened by insulting the people who mistreated you. And anyone else who might be vaguely ideologically aligned. Whether they deserved it or not, this a poor bargaining tactic.

    So I would suggest, especially for Torgersen and the others who want to continue this idea — that we (and I do mean we – I bought a Hugo voting packet this year because of Sad Puppies) step back from the political side of things, don’t try to change or demonize SJW as a movement. Not because they don’t deserve it — but because making this a culture war *hurts* our position.

    And instead take a more positive path — buy voter packets because you want your type of fiction represented, *not* to screw it to the SJW types who have been holding your fiction down. I think we’d get similar enough results, without maybe as much vitriol… and a better claim on the high group.

    1. Addendum — I guess, my point is, you can’t win this by telling “them” that they shouldn’t care about whether Vox Day is a racist asshole, and should vote for his fiction based on its merits. You’re making a fairness appeal to someone with a different set of moral values.

      So if the only way to make a racist asshole’s (or anyone else’s) work be judged on its merits is to pony up and go join the panel of judges… then just do that and don’t piss off the rest of the panel by calling them unfair and biased first.

      1. “Get the people you agree with you vote, and let them vote for what they want, and you’ll get similar results without (hopefully) the backlash.”

        Dude, pardon my language, but what the fuck rock having you been living under the past two years of Hugo nominations and awards?

        ” buy voter packets because you want your type of fiction represented, *not* to screw it to the SJW types who have been holding your fiction down”

        You do realize that those stories are the same, yes?

    2. I kind of agree with you, and kind of don’t, and let me explain why.

      “For every SJW calling you a racist, there’s a Vox Day who actually says things that are misogynist.”
      No, actually, there isn’t. Vox isn’t even on our slate, and did his own thing, but his same five or six ugly quotes keep getting thrown in our face because that is all they have.

      Meanwhile, on the SJW side (and the term fits) not counting hundreds of tweets, FB comments, blog postings, we’ve got major newspapers, media outlets, political pages, and big entertainment pages all working off the same script, making this all about demonization and social justice.

      And because there is such a blatant, obvious, biased, concentrated effort, thousands of people are waking up and saying holy crap, that’s stunning! Learning about, and getting involved in the process.

      Martin says SJWs don’t exist, but my half of the country sees them everyday, inserting the same set of talking points into every facet of our lives, until everything is an outrage, including what games you play, what kind of fried chicken you eat, what books you read, and what kind of shirt a rocket scientist wears.

      So they’ve made it all about politics for a long time, and by pointing out that they are making it about politics here too, we actually did some good and shook things up… So now you want me to quit using the term SJW in the hopes of appeasing people who already don’t like us, or did nothing before, while the SJWs continue to run a gigantic coordianted media campaign against us?

      I’m not making this a culture war. We’re all in a culture war already. We just started one tiny battle.

      As for vitriol, dude, read my last few posts from this week. Seriously. Now imagine the ration of shit that I have been receiving after being labeled as an angry white supremacist across the entire internet, and how many thousands of snooty, angry, messages I’ve read, and consider that for how annoyed I am right now, I’m being pretty freaking polite, or at least attempting to be.

      1. It is also good to keep in mind that the issues far exceed the Hugos.

        Every aspect of our lives is now under constant threat from SJW mindset.

        It is also good to keep in mind that being nice and reasonable has always been the go-to strategy in facing off the SJW predations, and it has failed every. single. time.

        There has never been a successful, long term, push back against the SJW mindset.

      2. I’d be pretty angry if I was accused of being a terrible person without being given the chance to prove them right. 🙂

        Nobody likes to be the loser at the party. As a woman and a writer, I have to admit that I like the direction scifi and fantasty have taken because it makes it easier for the things that I write to be taken seriously and it makes it easier for me to find things that I like to read. It did get tiring that every story featured Strong Man with Needs to be Rescued Woman (who invariably had nothing interesting to say or do) so when Nancy Kress and Connie Willis and Ann McCathery broke onto the scene I embraced them fully. Plus, you know, they told a rollicking tale which was requirement #1 as far as I was concerned.

        Just because I am a woman, a feminist, and a liberal (oh, and an atheist too) don’t imagine that I read only feminist durges or dry, “messaged” fiction. I love Jim Butcher’s work, I read some historical military fiction (Simon Scarrow’s work, mainly, but I have read others), I thought World War Z was a great read and despite disagreeing with his personal views I think Orson Scott Card did fabulous work with Ender’s Game and Ender’s Shadow. I think Herbert’s Dune is as close to perfect as you can get and I watch Starship Troopers every chance I get (and laugh through it all). It’s just that my tastes also include women-as-heroes fiction and I’m OK with bisexuals and gays in literature…I don’t share those leanings but I don’t mind reading about people who do.

        If the work is good, vote for it. If the work fits your “message” but that’s it then how does voting for that help anything? And that’s the question I really have: are all of these works truly the best or are they just ones you’ve selected to represent “your side”…in a battle I was naive enough not to realize had sides (I don’t follow the voting, etc, just look at the winners as suggested reading since they have been deemed worthy of high praise).

        Personally, I don’t want to know much about authors. I prefer to hear about the work and read it because it’s good.

        1. I have to take strong disagreement and I am terribly offended by something you said. There is no Starship Troopers movie!

          🙂

          Okay, toward the end you talk about good books vs. representing our side. Take a look at the books we nominated, and tell me what possible side they could be representing? Marko Kloos, indy success, excellent mil-SF, German immigrant, libertarian. Kevin J. Anderson, 125th book, 3+ decades of being a pro, helped many fans and writers, democrat. And Jim Butcher, one of the most popular writers in the world for a reason, his politics are a question mark.

          Somebody took a look at the Amazon ratings of all the books nominated for the Hugo going back to the 80s. This year is the highest the average rating has ever been by a huge margin, and the first time in decades that every single nominated novel averaged over 4 stars…

          So yeah, good, worthy books that fandom, not just FANDOM like.

        2. Hey xServer –

          Everyone has different tastes and if we all liked the same things, there would be a heck of a shortage of beet cabbage soup.

          ‘are all of these works truly the best or are they just ones you’ve selected to represent “your side”’

          I think if you go over to Brad Torgersen’s place and back track to the comments where the SP ‘slate’ was being formed, you see people making suggestions and talking back and forth about what was great stuff and what wasn’t. It’s also interesting to look at the ones which were initially chosen but then taken off because the writers/people involved said, ‘uh, no, after all, I would really rather you didn’t come stand next to me.’

          I think that each work got onto the SP slate because it had multiple people saying OMG THIS IS THE BEST THIS YEAR. And then there were bookbombs to get people to buy them, so those who hadn’t read the books (and short fiction esp) could get ahold of it and judge for themselves.

          Some people didn’t agree – the nomination stats show that there was not a uniform level of support for each nominee, or even each category, so (to me) it is really clear that people made up their own minds.

          “I thought World War Z was a great read”

          I have that book. I’ve read it three or four times. I think it was a great innovation into how we tell stories (well, it popularized a little-technique) and was rather disappointed that they didn’t make a tv series out of it instead of a movie (esp a movie nothing like the book). I really like that book.

          And it’s message fiction with multiple instances of errors from short-sighted povs, both in plot and world building, and – even more obviously – a huge anti-conservative chip on the author’s shoulder.

          All this, in a nice, well done, innovative, and deservedly-acclaimed bit of SFF, that will likely fit into the canon a decade or so from now.

          I’m not sure if you saw those things in that book or not. It’s okay if you didn’t, and it’s okay if you saw them and agreed with the ‘message’.

          What I want – what I hear a lot of SP want – is the change to tell stories of that or better quality, and have the bias be pro-conservative or pro-libertarian, and have those works get a shot at the awards as well. And of people who write those works – or who are not-left but don’t put any messages in their work – being judged on the basis of the work, and not on their views.

          “It’s just that my tastes also include women-as-heroes fiction and I’m OK with bisexuals and gays in literature…I don’t share those leanings but I don’t mind reading about people who do.”

          Welcome to the dark side. We have cookies and a pretty cool logo and we tell lots of jokes. You’ll find tons of people who share your taste in books, along with a few who don’t, but it’s all good.

      3. FWIW, I’ve learned that with Vox Day it pays to investigate the more outrageous claims, as they generally turn out to be cow poop. The “he advocates throwing acid in the faces of women” is one I just checked out, and it’s clear from his comments in the original entry that he was applying/parodying “atheist utilitarian” principles.

      4. Larry — I should preface this by saying that I’m actually completely on your side on this issue, personally. I even *agree* with you about SJW and the threat they pose to intelligent conversation and varied opinions on the internet and in academia.

        I think that this most recent post to Martin is *awesome* — I think it’s the best writing you’ve done on the subject. It’s from the heart, and it’s incredibly honest, and it’s trying to convince someone from the other side.

        But of course, no one whom we consider a SJW considers him/herself a SJW.

        I honestly don’t know if we get the momentum to make anyone listen to our position without your initial rallying cry.

        My post here was more about what I am reading from people whom I at least somewhat respect as professionals in the industry, who aren’t getting the message we want to send out of this. They’re getting “conservative culture war” messages. And yes, that’s because they get their news from the people slandering you — I’m just saying that from some of your choice of language, you’re leaving yourself open to that.

        And yeah, hell if I know how to solve the Vox Day problem. I know he wasn’t on your slate this year. I know all he’s *really* done was say a few things that were the wrong type of insult to someone who was insulting him, too. And I know that in *this* fight, the internet hate mob has been pretty one-sided (although in the culture wars in general, there has been plenty of that nastiness on all sides).

        But then, if the honest liberals have to own the SJW a-holes among them, we’re going to be stuck with the conservative ones, too. And I agree, at least Vox isn’t threatening anybody.

        I guess my point was to suggest ways to think about the problem from a strategic standpoint, not really to argue with you. Hope you enjoy your internet break.

        1. Concerning the “Vox Day problem”, I wonder how many of those concerned about it have responded to something he’s said by asking him, politely, what he means, and what is the evidence for his assertion?

          Ah well, we fen have always tended to take ourselves too seriously.

    3. I am not appealing to fairness but insisting on it. This is not something I ask anyone for; I take it.

      Without fairness, any society will descend into chaos. The more fairness is institutionalized into a society, the more ordered it is.

      Nature is unfair. There is no reason to add to our burdens.

  90. I am also a moderate, fence sitter (or moral degenerate and spineless coward, whatever). I knew almost nothing of fandom and my first clue something was going on was when I saw the Hugo Awards and didn’t recognize most of what was on it. I have been following the brouhaha since and have learned a lot. But the thing that stands out to me is the end result: the Hugo ballot was dictated by a small subset of fans. so the question I have is: how does Vox Day and Castalia House dictating most of the content of the Hugo ballot differ from the Nielsen Hardens and Tor doing so? How is a ballot that has 6 nominations for one author, including 60% of a single category and 9 nominations from a single publishing house that just so happened to sponsor a slate more diverse? These Hugo Awards do not seem to be an improvement but the same thing from a different direction. If that was the intent, then congratulations are in order, I guess. And FYI on where I fit in this debate, I am a 50 year old white guy who is politically moderate, socially liberal and most importantly likes both the output of Baen Books and the output of Tor. I have all the 1632 books, a complete set of Astounding/Analog, I like both rivets in my SF and experimental fiction (must be comprehensible though – the New Wave stuff in the 60s and early 70s was rough going). Like a lot of people have said, I just want to read good books but I do not begin to imagine I am a worthy arbiter to choose what’s good. I did not have much problem with the Sad Puppies slate but the Rabid Puppies slate decided for everyone what was going to be on the Hugo ballot this year and will end up placing a giant asterisk on this year’s results most likely. If this is going to be fixed, some way needs to be found so that no slate (from anybody) is able to dominate a ballot and keep other candidates off. And for those of you trying to woo the undecided, calling them moral degenerates is not going to be a terribly effective tactic.

    1. As an addendum, assuming my previous post gets posted at some point – it seems to be stuck in limbo pending moderation, I hope this war does not devolve into competing slates of stories. Hopefully, this will spur a lot more people to participate so that it becomes difficult for any one group or entity to control what is on the ballot. That is the point I was trying to make in my previous post that did not survive the journey across the Internet apparently. No one set of fans or single entities (i.e publishing houses) should control what is on the ballot. If they do so, then the process is still broken. I have no idea how to prevent this but hopefully somebody does. I don’t want Castalia House setting the ballot any more than I want Tor doing so, or John Scalzi doing so, or Vox Day doing so. But hey maybe that is just the way it has to be, That would suck. And I like Baen Books and Tor both, but it would still suck.

      1. WordPress is set so that first time comments and multiple links are held up for approval. I actually stepped away from the internet for the afternoon. Sheesh.

        But I approve all comments here, whether I agree with them or not. The only thing I block is spam and death threats. Also, I don’t “disemvowel”, “massage”, or “kitten” posts I disagree with. I’ve only ever banned 20 IPs, and that represents 4 crazy people.

        1. That’s cool. I figured it was something like that. I hope I added something to the conversation. It was all I needed to get off my chest. I really don’t want any one group choosing what gets considered for the Hugos. And it wasn’t your slate that did that. I have found links to everything though and I plan to read it all (even the Castalia House stuff). I already subscribe to Analog so I had those already and you guys made some excellent choices there. Thanks for taking the time to listen and I do hope things get more civil. You guys do not deserve the treatment you are getting.

        2. Then why did someone just erase one of mine?
          Not worth reposting, probably, but one of mine that was not spam, death threat, or slander of the innocent (or guilty).
          Just curious; maybe it didn’t reach some standard I know nothing about, but it’s gone.

          1. DAMN, it’s back – the comment I thought had crossed an invisible line and been erased, it’s back!
            Now I’m starting to wonder if there’s a time-lapse charged-vacuum-emboitment problem in my PC, or just an ultra-high-vacuum between my ears kind of problem…..

          2. What the hell are you talking about? I haven’t deleted any of your comments. New posters are hung up in moderation, and right at the top of the blog I said was not going to be on the internet all weekend. Holy shit, get off your cross.

          3. It turned out to be the difference between JtW and jtw; didn’t notice until the first one was posted, and said it was back in the second one.
            Thanks; now both will probably show up promptly, and I can quit worrying which I use here. No cross involved, just honest confusion.
            We now return to your regularly scheduled confusion ….

      2. I think the more slates the better for these reasons. There is no way anyone can read every book, story, or magazine, watch every TV show or movie, or peruse all the artwork available. While many of us enjoy a number of sub-genres, we also tend to gravitate to certain styles or authors we really love. Via the internet and recommendations by others who share our tastes, we discover more hidden treasures.

        A slate is simply a list of recomendations. The demonization on this issue is ridiculous. How is anybody supposed to wade through all the available material and find the best? And who better to find the best in the sub-genres and specialties than the people most interested in them, sort of like crowd sourcing?

        It would be fantastic to be presented with multiple slates listing the best of the best, according to topic. We are more likely to sample something different if presented with a few excellent choices than being expected to wade through hundreds. Multiple slates will inform and excite interest and create more competition. I think it would result in the most diverse collection of excellence ever seen on a Hugo ballot.

    2. Again, for the 100th time, I don’t control Vox. He did his own thing. He was not on our slate.

      Do you think that him doing his own thing has made my life somehow easier this week? 🙂

      But, I’m not the thought police trying to keep anyone out. I’m not the gatekeeper declaring who is and is not a fan, and who can and cannot participate. When I started this, like most of us, was still under the impression that the Hugos represented all of fandom, and RP is part of fandom even if you don’t like them. So they showed up and participated in the process.

      You sound honestly upset that one clique dominated the awards. Welcome to our world.

    3. # I am also a moderate, fence sitter (or moral
      # degenerate and spineless coward, whatever).

      No, I am the only a moral, degenerate spineless coward here! I denouce you as being the wrong kind of moral degenerate, spineless coward, and a fake!

      # And for those of you trying to woo the
      # undecided, calling them moral degenerates
      # is not going to be a terribly effective tactic.

      Yah, that’s what I was trying to say too. But I think we’ve gone past the point where anyone realizes there’s a load of people in the middle.

  91. What is more offensive and dangerous?

    Vox Day being mouthy?

    Or Harlan Ellison being handsy, as part of a tradition of supposedly feminist sf writers with long histories of casual sexual assault?

    I can talk back to VD or ignore him completely with ease, but it requires good reflexes and a certain amount of leverage to deal with a groper or worse. I will take open trash talk any day, especially since half of it is just messing with people’s heads.

    1. Ellison was considered a feminist? I had no idea. That’s disturbing. I’m not plugged into the con world, but even I’ve heard all kinds of stories about how women shouldn’t be alone with/near him.

      1. Sort of like Bob Packwood and Bill Clinton are feminists.

        In other words, if you’re powerful and connected, they’ll forgive your bad behavior, because you’re more useful to their agenda in place than in disgrace.

        Stray of the reservation (like Packwood) and they turn on you.

        1. I was in the audience and saw Harlan Ellison grope Connie Willis’ breasts on the stage with an audience of maybe 2-3 thousand people. At a Worldcon. Just…I was just stunned into silence. I had not heard any stories about him. But such a reputation would not surprise me.

    2. I’d love to hear that story. I knew from friends who had to deal with him at the local con many years ago that he was a rude and difficult guest, but not that he was grabby.

      1. I have never personally had a problem with Ellison, but he famously groped Connie Willis at the Hugo ceremonies, on camera. He did apologize later, but geez, it happened.

        And yes, during the Fifties and Sixties and Seventies and Eighties and Nineties and up until today, Harlan Ellison certainly considered himself a feminist, just like he supported other progressive causes. Sometimes he was in favor with fannish feminists, sometimes not.

        A lot of progressive types from the Fifties and Sixties regarded feminism as mostly another facet of increased freedom to have sex, whereas freedom to not have sex was not so clearcut.

        So just as Marion Zimmer Bradley regarded herself as feminist while torturing and raping a little girl at home, and terrorists like Ayers regarded treating female comrades as sex slaves as part of the revolution, a lot of sf writers on the liberal side used to think that both men and women attendees were showing up for free sex and groping as well as other convention activities. (And some of them did show up for this stuff, of course, and did consent. Just not everybody.)

        Not all of these folks unlearned this when the Sixties and Seventies went out of style, and you see some resurgence of the attitude in certain younger fan circles. (Not manosphere types, but progressives.)

        1. HE did pro-civil rights work, back in the day. (Trying to remember if his physical disability resulted from that or not.)

          The sixties were a very weird time among some groups. I agree with the assessment that he was a product of his time, and that he was more difficult to change than the average human.

        2. Thanks for helping me out. My patience with Ellison ended due to something he wrote, not something he did (“like omigawd maaan, that Reagan person is sooo much a murderer because this guy who is like all peaceful n stuff threatened to blow up the Washington Monument and the DC police ten-ringed him”…and yeah, it was on about that level of maturity) but I was really shocked to hear he had done something so low-class. I hope dearly that Ms. Willis clocked him.

          1. Connie Willis handled herself with dignity and aplomb, and they had it out with words about Harlan Ellison’s (non) apology with more dignified words from her.

  92. OK, I DEMAND a “Best of Larry Correia comments” post, ASAP. I will help with two entries from today:

    In response to Larry’s post where he said, “Not only did I know going into this that I would never win a Hugo, I also knew that I was going to make myself a target, and that I would be slandered, threatened, and have my career sabotaged. But I still did it anyway.”

    Johnny Coe-something said:

    “But I still did it anyway.” Wow. Much brave. So principle.

    to which Larry replied:

    Wow. Much ass. Go kiss it.

    Number 2. Someone named “jesus” blathered

    This is the least self-aware and whineyest thing I’ve ever read. If you don’t see that, I can’t really take your opinions on writing very seriously.

    to which Larry replied:

    Jesus? Is that you?

    There, I’ve got it started.

  93. I guess I am a social justice warrior. I actively work to make the world a better place for everyone. Although I am sure I don’t fit perfectly into that puzzle piece. I am complicated. People are complicated. I don’t agree with what Sad Puppies did. I wrote about on my blog. I have been posting in many places about my concerns.

    I think it is okay to agree to disagree on this. I am sorry that you or Brad has received crap treatment far and above what you should. I wish those idiots would stop. Death threats, violence, threats of any kind weaken the conversation. Turn it into a battlefield. This accomplishes nothing.

    I do have to loudly disagree with you on one point though. I have a sense of humor. I am frakking hilarious. You take that back!

    1. I think it is okay to agree to disagree on this.

      If you are okay with disagreement you are not who anybody is talking about when they say sjw.

  94. Major media needs to be called out repeatedly, again and again, over specific libels and made to issue retractions.

    Libel is publishing falsehood in an effort to defame. Libel is illegal.

    Of course it is libel to print that there are only white males represented.

    But It is also libel to say this is an effort to keep the award away from women and minorities when that is manifestly false, as evidenced by the slates themselves.

    That is against the law also.

    Attack them for illegally publishing provable falsehoods, thereby committing libel. Do this repeatedly. It forced a retraction from Entertainment Weekly, but this direct and specific charge needs to go against multiple other media outlets making this claim.

    Defamation and libel are specific legal terms for something that is against the law, and those terms need to be invoked specifically with support, repeatedly.

  95. Wow. Just….wow. this thread looks just like something between Rs and Ds. Glad that whatever awards make NO difference to what I read. I could not tell you where when or who ANY ‘con’ is. I just like to read good stories.

    I don’t care about politics of the author, who he or she knows or blows…..just what difference does it make. I suspect that ANY award really don’t make a whole lot of difference in sales….and I look at sales as a gauge of how many people like a story, and therefore how good the story is.

    How good a critic thinks a story is, really, is just irrelevant. I have NEVER made a purchase or other read decision based on what a critic says…other than to do the opposite…..RARELY have I been disappointed by this approach. In point of fact the two things that guide me are: a) fan reviews and b) Amazons ‘because you liked such and such’ recommendations.

    I mean, where do these guys come from to say what some book means or how good or badly it was written…frankly I have ZERO respect for a critic who hasn’t written a ‘succesful’ (based on sales…as noted the only usable metric for measuring ‘success’) book in the genre he critiques.

    Why bring up critics? They are to books what Rush Limaugh et al, are to politicians. And the cons that appear to be the locus of this kurfluffle, are kind of like Fox news opinion shows (think ‘the five’ or ‘the Oreilly Factor’) that’s just my opinion though. Whatever.

    To be honest there isn’t a Hugo or Nebula winning story/author that stands out in my mind as one I enjoyed reading since Heinlein and a FEW others from that time frame. Im not a big fan of Mr Heinlein’s later works…but I’ve read them BECAUSE they are by Heinlein, and he was, IMHO, A GREAT STORY TELLER.

    Not knocking fans, gamers, cosplayers. Just shaking my head at what goes on with these truly, now at least, irrelevant and meaningless awards.

    If all this politics about awards is bugging you, then to take a line from Wargames ‘ curious game…the only way to win is not to play”

    God the flamespray I’ll likely get will be entertaining.

  96. “They started this whole thing by saying the Hugo Awards were rigged to exclude them. That is completely untrue, as I believe I demonstrated conclusively in my last post.” – GRRM

    That is false, as I conclusively proved. What’s higher than 100%? That was a stinking feminist lake last year, and one with a gigantic expertise in group defamation by the buckets. I am glad I will not have to see some of the same stupid faces telling me I woke up in the wrong skin and “gender” and acting like they’re storming the Bastille. Get a grip you trigger warning assholes and write some entertaining stories that are not plugged with “Hey, did you see this gay Asian woman. What a wonderfully new diverse view she has!!!”

    Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

    Can she write, cuz at this point, that would be wonderfully diverse.

    “I hate what Puppies did. It was based on false premises…” – GRRM

    Wrong again. It was based on 18 zillion quotes. You not having read those does not equate to “false.”

    “I do not believe in Guilt by Association…” – GRRM

    I agree. But I do believe in guilt by ideology. When this entire group believes in and promotes “white privilege,” that’s guilt, not a casual association. See: KKK and white supremacy. I mean REAL white supremacy – ideological – institutional – not this fuckwad bullshit SJWs pass off where if I mistake Ken Liu for Gordon Liu I get “institutional racism” thrown at me.

    I have a far easier solution – a mission statement for every institution in SFF, every blog out there: “Group defamation is always wrong. No exceptions. We take the dimmest possible view of such rhetoric.”

    Would that kill anybody? Well, I know how mental case racist feminists react when anything gets between them and their prey. Normal people will have no problem with doing it or ostracizing such people, no more than I would ostracizing KKK or neo-Nazis from SFF were they to become institutionalized and start whining about “diabolical” Jews every day – EVERY SINGLE FUCKING DAY – rather than ringworlds and string theory. Instead we get “queer theory.”

    “Ah… have you actually read Vox Day’s piece about N.K. Jemisin?

    “If that is not a white supremacist screed, then there’s never been one.” – GRRM

    Ah, compared to what? Have you actually read hundreds of screeds by SJWs? George likes football I hear. Imagine it with different rules for each team. Have you actually ever read Jemisin? What does “diabolical” mean in your dictionary? “Respect?” What rules are you using – throwing leaves into the air?

    Unless George can make a case for SFF being the antebellum South with homophobic and women-hating masters, I think it’s possible George isn’t exactly a logic-train. You don’t know the rules but the rules know you, buddy.

    1. James May,

      “That is false, as I conclusively proved.”

      I’ve read your posts and seen your webpage where you have various anti-white quotes from the Sci-Fi community. You followed up by attaching names to some of them.

      What I haven’t seen yet is a conclusive linking of past winners of the Hugo to a political bent. Would you please link some of your quotes to past winners?

      GRRM focused his comments specifically on the Hugos. You, Correia, Torgerson and others have shown that there is a political bias in the SFF community, but I’ve not yet seen that Hugo winners are proponents of a certain agenda.

      1. This weird feminist thing is a brand new trend in SFF so there’s not yet a lot of history. But elsewhere in this thread I show 100% adherence from the main winners last year and it was also 100% at last year’s Nebulas. In America as a whole that % is probably close to zero, so this is a Scientology-like weird thing that deserves the name of a cult. It’s gender studies SFF. There is no doubt of that, nor that we short-circuited it this year.

    2. From what I have been able to gather about the Vox Day/ N.K. Jemisin spat is that N.K. Jemisin is even more guilty of blatant racism than Vox Day. Yet N.K. Jemisin gets a pass for making unbelievably racist statements like:

      “Right now there are laws in places like Florida and Texas which are intended to make it essentially legal for white people to just shoot people like me, without consequence, as long as they feel threatened by my presence.”

      To any fair observer this is racist demagoguing at it’s worst.

    3. Considering that most of the sf world, for the last forty years, has been constantly watching anime sf/f written by Japanese women and men, reading manga written all over Asia by Korean and Chinese and Japanese women and men, and going to a lot of trouble to read light novels written by Asian women and men, I’m not really sure that Asian people from Asian countries count as diverse enough.

      They have a whole industry, after all. And it’s in the dirty, dirty mainstream. Which brings me to an interesting point.

      I don’t want to be snarky about the Hugo category of Best Graphic Work, because it’s usually full of good stuff. But as long as manga are always going to be closed out by their difference in publication date between Japanese and English publication, Best Graphic Work will never really count as an award representing the world’s best sf/f comic of the year.

      1. I think Naruto should have a pretty good chance if we make a push to contact anime fans in a year when the final volume comes out in englsih.

        1. I love Naruto (although I’m dubious about its qualifications for the Hugo due to massive pacing issues; 700 chapters and the ending still feels rushed). Still, that would be hilarious to have all 70-80+ volumes up for the vote. And nobody would be able to complain that there was something wrong with the author!
          Fullmetal Alchemist would have been a great candidate for a Hugo. (The anime did get the Japanese equivalent in 2012.)

          1. Sure they could complain about the author.

            It absolutely qualifies for the Hugo’s. I looked carefully at the rules.

          2. Sorry, meant worthiness, not qualifications. Totally within the rules, I’m sure. It just, as with almost all shonen manga, out-scales what the author can handle at the end. (One that doesn’t is O-Parts Hunter/666 Satan, by Kishimoto’s twin brother).
            I doubt there’s much anyone could dig up on Kishimoto since Japan usually doesn’t care much about that kind of politics. Mangaka also usually don’t talk as much about themselves. The author of Fullmetal Alchemist you can barely find a picture of.
            (Putting this comment here since the thread doesn’t narrow down that far)

        2. Sounds like a great idea. Any fandom with members obsessive enough to pay $40 to vote is a group that should be voting.

          1. Naruto (and other manga) fans are INTENSE. If they’re paying ~700 dollars to buy the whole series ($10 a volume, at least 70 volumes), a bunch of them will pay to get it an award.
            Regarding other good SF anime, If another Tiger and Bunny movie comes out it absolutely would be Hugo-worthy. An SF-ish anime running this year that I’ve heard people praising is Death Parade. And then there’s your usual giant robot stuff, which seems to have some good offerings recently.

      2. I’m not sure how things are on the SFF side of the SJW Kingdom, but on the gaming side SJWs seemingly flat out loathe anything and everything that comes from Japan. Up to and including this whopper from Anita Sarkeesian…

        “The US bombed them back to traditional values – feminism does not exist in Japan. While I don’t like judging an entire culture…that does not excuse them.”

        1. But Japan has a mother goddess at the head of its pantheon! How can it possibly be militaristic and patriarchal!!

        2. Japan has powerful women. They’re just not powerful the way some people want them to be.

          OTOH, I will say that Japan could use more than a teensy bit of sexual equality, but then, Japanese women are busy being sexist too.

          1. Also, in a democratic society with universal sufferage…the levels of equality and racism in their society are their problem to fix.

            Not that I don’t think that turning into the USA would not be an improvement on most societies in the world, but that’s not my call to make for them. And that might not be the best solution for that group.

            They’re grown-ups, they can manage themselves.

        3. Up to and including this whopper from Anita Sarkeesian…
          “The US bombed them back to traditional values – feminism does not exist in Japan. While I don’t like judging an entire culture…that does not excuse them.”

            Wrong.  The Japanese were even more sexist than they are now, before the we bombed them, defeated them in war, and occupied their country.

          1. Actually, they did, but not strictly for “pleasure” reasons, but for population expansion reasons..

            Every “properly Aryan” woman was required to marry and pop out as many “properly Aryan” children as she could for the Reich.

      3. Actually, They’re eligible for both first publishing and first English publishing

        Are non-American works eligible?

        Yes. Any work is eligible, regardless of its place or language of publication. Works first published in languages other than English are also eligible in their first year of publication in English translation.
        http://www.thehugoawards.org/hugo-faq/

      4. Just thought of a great one: Akatsuki no Yona/Yona of the Dawn. Strong female protagonist (although I’m sure she’s strong in the ‘wrong’ ways to SJWs…), written by a woman, good worldbuilding, good fantasy system, good art, no pacing issues. The only thing is it’s probably not going to end for a while since it’s actually popular.
        (I read this blog all the time but only comment when I feel I really have something to contribute. Now that we’re talking about manga I’m going to be all over here.)

  97. Larry, any chance of responding to this post?

    http://grrm.livejournal.com/418285.html

    George R. R. Martin says there’s no evidence of bias in the Hugo nominees/voters, having gone through them all.

    Ignoring the obvious ‘Redshirts was a popularity vote by John Scalzi fans’* and the excruciating dinosaur story, which nominations/winners are you complaining about? You did get a Hugo nomination in 2014 and books published by Baen have also been regularly nominated.

    I’ve had some run-ins with identity politics extremists, so I know how objectionable/nasty/irrational/shouty/malicious/irritating they can be, but it’s not clear to me that they’ve taken over the Hugos. They tend to be disproportionately noisy (in real life and online) so it’s unclear there’s enough of them to affect voting outcomes.

    So far, I’ve only ID’d three individuals in the English-speaking SF community who are definitely identity-politics extremists. One has been nominated for a lot of prizes given my opinion on the technical quality of their work, but I’d expect that a mouthy minority can get one or two people onto a ballot. If it’s just those three people, SP seems a disproportionate reaction.

    *Yes, Redshirts is a fun read, but it’s not fit to shine the shoes of Green Mars, Rendezvous with Rama or Dune…

    1. I’ve tried this whole time to personally not name any authors by name or talk trash about their books directly. I’ve ended up losing my temper and breaking that a few times now (in fact, both of your examples above, + advanced AIs that can’t tell the difference between male and female humans), but I’m sure some others here will have no problem giving you their opinions. I know there’s already been some discussion by fans in this post about stuff they feel got in because it had the right message more than being a good story.

      I’ll be going off line for the weekend. I’ve hit argument fatigue. (I’ve written 30k words of responses in various posts, letters, and emails this week, and read I don’t know how many thousand) I’ll try to respond to GRRM more next week.

      1. Thanks Larry. Have a good weekend.

        James, I started reading your essay, but it was hard to find the information I wanted. I’ll go through again and name-check.

        The problem works seem to be divided into three categories:

        A) Message fiction. Fiction that prioritises making a political point with the aim of ‘changing minds through fiction’. Technical quality, story and character are usually compromised. Very hard to do well and headbangingly irritating if done badly, especially when the message is a trite rerun of ‘discrimination is bad’ (We get it. Can you say something more intelligent and nuanced about the human condition now, please?) As people have pointed out, message fiction has always existed as part of SF, e.g. Left Hand of Darkness. The question is whether it’s becoming unduly prominent because of control of publishing houses by identity politics extremists.

        Modern example: Kameron Hurley’s God’s War (shortlisted for a Nebula). I felt I’d been whisked back to a dark age of underarm hair and bra burning… With the occasional minaret and beetle as background scenery.

        [Ancillary Justice? Can’t comment – on my ‘to read’ pile]

        Any other Hugo examples?

        B) Literary fiction. A fiction genre that prioritises human relations and narrative experimentation over story, setting, etc. Increasingly disappeared down a rabbit hole due to postmodernism and the growth of creative writing academia in America, although you can find good work among the dreck.

        Recent SF example: ‘If you were a dinosaur, my love’. At least 50% of the positive reviews focused on the prose-poem lullaby structure, which they contrasted with the violence of the later paragraphs. These are compliments about the experimental narrative construction, of interest to literary writers, but not pulp SF readers.

        C) Fans swaying the ballot.

        SF example: Redshirts. Yes, it’s a fun homage to Star Trek. Is it in the same league as Hugo-winners Rendezvous to Rama or Green Mars? Nope.

        Any other examples? I need to know if these are one-offs or this is a systemic problem. Please don’t include works that simply include a female or gay character – the world is not 100% occupied by straight white men and we women often find it easier to write female characters (surprise!)

        1. P.S. Which year does everyone think the Hugos changed? 2010? 2012? Or earlier?

          I’ve been avoiding fan happenings while I completed an MFA, and am trying to get a handle on the situation.

          1. Racefail was the year in which it became necessary in the genre to express lock-step agreement with a SJW agenda or else get harassed until you issued a public apology. If all actions have to have one focus and no one is allowed to be neutral (or face the consequences) then it’s going to affect the biggest most public action that the genre takes as a genre.

            Before that, if you kept your head down, you were probably okay.

        2. Part of the problem in talking about this is a question of research and definitions. This specific type of SFF literature in question is actually a brand new thing, only 2 or 3 years old. Others see it differently and lump it all in as “leftist” and say it’s been around for ages. That’s true but this is something different. This is a type of group defamation literature. I sometimes call it racial revenge fiction, though that also includes men.

          This literature is based on queer theory radical feminism. That’s been around for 50 years and more and with the new racial “intersectional” element for half that time. But it has only come to prominence in the last few years, and overwhelmingly. People call it “Marxist” and “liberal” but in fact there is a sharp distinction. This feminist SF has been at the WisCon/Tiptree Awards for some time, but even that has never been quite as defamatory as it is now. Tiptree (Alice Sheldon) herself never wrote such overwrought and hostile feminist work. Tiptree was cynical but also clever and searching, never hating.

          This is a sub-genre that has only just emerged and is still evolving and finding its themes. Sometimes it’s non-group defamation fiction such as Ancillary Justice (though the author herself is very politically hostile towards white men). Read Alex Dally MacFarlane’s pieces at TorCom about AJ. She immediately saw what I did: Judith Butler French Queer Theory. Probably only a handful of people did see that; it is obscure stuff.

          Two recent examples of intersectional racial revenge fiction are the anthology We See a Different Frontier edited by Djibril al-Ayad (a U.K. alias) and Fabio Fernandes (Brazil). After that came Long Hidden – more colonialist payback fiction – edited by Daniel Jose Older and Rose Fox, both almost mindlessly hostile towards straight white men in their non-fiction comments, which are also obsessive and daily.

          Nebula winners from last year which are each racial revenge fiction are “The Weight of the Sunrise” by Vylar Kaftan and “If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love.”

          Three Hugos were handed out for Kameron Hurley’s non-fiction bit of revenge writing, “We Have Always Fought.” It is nothing more than defamation against men on trumped up charges. Lightspeed Magazine’s Women, Queers, etc. Destroy… series is more of the same. It is not an alternate or diverse view but one of endemic sexual hostility and gripe.

          If so-called “leftist” SFF has been around for years, why Sad Puppies now? To me the obvious answer is the new radical feminist element. It is almost unbelievably hostile and hysterical. The utter flood of group defamation that has emerged in only the last few years was not going to stand unchallenged. You just can’t write all that stuff without people pushing back. Liberalism is one thing, sheer hatred another. These people are not liberals – they hide in liberalism. They are relentless bigots who use words like “feminism,” “diversity” and “social justice” as a shield – a Trojan Horse. They are a pitch perfect example of how hate speech is mainstreamed into a gullible public.

          As I say, this is a brand new thing, and so there is not a giant supply of examples. However, look at two Nebula nominees for this year: “The Devil in America” by Kai Ashante Wilson, and “The Fisher Queen” by Alyssa Wong. That is not political fiction, it is payback against a race and sex. I haven’t read all the nominated shorts. There may be more. But of the 9 names I recognized, all 9 routinely write non-fiction racist or sexually bigoted remarks about straight white men.

          It is a disturbing and persistent new strain of fiction I regard as no different than anti-Semitic fiction or what a white supremacist group might create. The atmosphere at both last year’s Nebulas and Hugos is what I would expect of a Klan rally, not a literary movement. It is a disgrace to the genre.

          So, we sent WorldCon 10,000 pizzas. They don’t like it. I don’t care. Ditch your racists or get used to pizza.

          1. Thanks, James. I was going to blog about this and I’m going to go away and look at these pieces.

            I’ve been fighting this hateful malevolent political tendency for years. In fact, I left the British Labour movement after encountering them as an undergraduate at Oxford University. I encountered them when I stood for the UK’s National Union of Students and again during my creative writing MFA.

            I’m now a keen reader of Spiked (www.spiked-online.com), which is writing attack pieces against them on UK campuses. If they are now entering SF, this is a VERY bad thing. They are a genuinely hateful malicious hysterical group of authoritarian extremists who don’t limit their attacks to the people they claim they’re trying to seek justice for. They are one of the worst thing that could happen to good fiction and the representation of traditionally underrepresented groups I can imagine.

            I will investigate further.

            Yours,

            A British Marxist liberal

          2. The thing is, I don’t even care about Marxists and liberals. Live and let live I say. I have my voice, others have theirs. But this sheer hatred for my very skin and sex masquerading as “politics”? Forget that. How do I fight their circular black hole arguments they’ve been perfecting for years? Lesbian radicals like Charlotte Bunch and Audre Lorde have been perfecting this punching up privilege theory bullshit since the ’70s. “White privilege” theory itself is a cleverly constructed demonization theory made famous by Peggy McIntosh’s “Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” and often quoted by SJWs.

            Push back against any of this and suddenly I’m “anti-lesbian” or anti-PoC. That’s exactly how these fools hide. That’s why we’ve all been declared right wing homophobic supremacists. All of us. But only in IngSoc is there no such thing as a heterophobe or misandrist.

            Radical feminists claim to speak for all lesbians while in truth probably statistical zero of all lesbians are on board with this insane ideology. There is nothing inherently hateful about being a lesbian. Radical feminism is no more a reflection on lesbians than the KKK means whites are hateful.

            The number one icon I see listed by SFF SJWs is Audre Lorde. She is mentioned in Mary Ann Mohanraj’s racist two part guest piece on Scalzi’s blog and also quoted in the PDF Scalzi links us to when he asks us to “bone up” on intersectionality.

            Google “‘Nazi Gods’ and ‘Jewish Devils’: The Dehumanizing Rhetoric of Nazi Propaganda” and visit Charlotte Bunch’s Wikipedia page.

          3. # Two recent examples of intersectional racial
            # revenge fiction are the anthology We See a
            # Different Frontier edited by Djibril al-Ayad (a U.K.
            # alias) and Fabio Fernandes (Brazil).

            Yeah, I supported that at the time, because I’d not met RH yet, and from the pitch they put out for it, I thought it was going to be something other than it proved to be. Maybe it did prove to be something other, I don’t know, by the time I got it, I couldn’t bring myself to read it.

            But then Mr May, you can add me to your list of people who’ve done/said something that demonstrates they’re in the ‘intersectional bloc’, after all, financing something can be considered speech, right? But at the time that I supported that, I didn’t know all this SJW stuff even existed, and I wouldn’t have believed it if you told me so.

            The Hurely piece I didn’t read quite the way you did. She’s on the wrong side of issues like Rossgate and requires_hate, but I didn’t see it as being strongly anti-man. My reaction was more: “Really? We need to be told this now? In the 21st century we need to be told that women have always fought?” But then a load of people appeared in the comments who did need to be told that, so it would appear that her piece has a point to make, to some people. Whether it’s telling the majority of fandom something they didn’t already know decades ago, and whether it’s really signficant enough for a Hugo, I wouldn’t like to say.

            30+ years ago, yes I think the Hurely piece would have been revelatory. When I was growing up, claiming that women have ever fought in all the wars down the ages would have been considered complete nonsense. But that was a long, long time ago.

            But, re-reading it now, I still don’t see that it’s an accusation against men. It mostly seems to be an accusation against writers for not including female characters (I can be smug about that, I’ve always written more female characters than male. It gives me a sense of authorial distance. If I wrote a male character doing some of the shit my women get up to, I’d worry people would think it was me). I do think the piece is a bit odd in the age of Katniss and Hermione, but I’m not convinced it’s man-hating as a stand-alone work. If you lined all the stuff up that she’s written, you could maybe draw that arc through it.

          4. # So, we sent WorldCon 10,000 pizzas. They don’t
            # like it. I don’t care. Ditch your racists or get used
            # to pizza.

            Who-Who-Whoa. Is this really a thing? Do I have this right, if I go full social-justice-warrior, you’ll send me pizza?

            What kind of pizza?

          5. # What kind do you like?

            #I like mine with privilege and male gaze.

            Hmm, no, I’ll pass, that doesn’t sound very appetizing. I’m easily bought, but I do have standards.

            So now the question is what kind of pizza would I get sent by the other side?

          6. The klonopin, prozac, lorzepam and trazodone super supreme pizza.

            And Mr. Paget, please don’t put words in my mouth. People who are intersectional feminists aren’t cagey about it; they say it right out. I don’t have to put you or them anywhere nor am I looking for technical knock-outs.

            In SFF terms, to qualify you have to obsessively write about straight white men in a manner that is 100% negative profiling. That is a pretty high bar and no one “accidentally” falls into that area by my shoving them into it. Hate speech is hate speech, and that is the expertise of intersectional gender feminists in SFF. My standard for hate speech is high enough that no normal human being could ever come remotely close to it. It is a thing you normally find in the KKK or with neo-Nazis, since it is the sole reason for their existence.

            In SFF you have two parties: the first cannot stop creating this speech. Without it they would have nothing to do and would either have no profile within SFF at all or one that is severely lower. They are the Bradbury character in “Way in the Middle of the Air.”

            The second type are the naive supporters gulled by the anti-oppression bullshit.

            Hurley’s piece claims there has been a tacit movement by men to downplay the role of women in military history. That is pure bullshit and typical of supremacists who puff up their own identity at the expense of another. Hurley is a dyed-in-the-wool intersectional feminist and makes no secret of it. I did not ram her into any ideology. Her rhetoric stinks of it. Anyone who’s read military history knows this is a supremacist trying to ram themselves into a place they have no right to. Tell me all the pie-charts these feminists make of Vet’s Hospitals which even during Iraq and Afghanistan have had 2.3% women in them, an historic high from 5,000 years of 0%. Any cries for diversity there? Ever see any of these feminists mention how I MUST sign up for the draft at age 18 by LAW? Ever see any of these feminist fiercely call for occupying draft offices and insisting on bearing their fair share? No, it’s equal pay. So writers like Hurley want women in SF but never themselves demonstrate how a 50% female military comes into existence in their own real world. Over 1 million men have died for America against virtually 0% women who even today have 0% military obligations and for that we get these feminists whining about men.

            You can tell as much about an intersectionalist by what they never discuss as by what they do. They are expert liars and propagandists and that’s what they spend most of their time doing when it comes to non-fiction writing.

          7. @James May
            Does Leckie portray white men with entirely negative profiling in Ancillary Justice and Ancillary Sword?
            I mean, how would you even tell?
            (Disclaimer: I rather liked those books. The whole ‘she’ thing didn’t really annoy me. I just took it as a piece of characterization. Then again, I also have a high tolerance for message fiction. I rather liked the fountainhead as well, for its descriptive language much more than its philosophy.)

          8. # And Mr. Paget, please dont put words in my
            # mouth. People who are intersectional feminists
            # arent cagey about it; they say it right out. I dont
            # have to put you or them anywhere nor am I
            # looking for technical knock-outs.

            I’m not putting words in your mouth, I’m trying to tell you that the things you say make you a force-multiplier for your enemies. But you’ve not understood much of what I’ve said. At least I see you’ve excepted that some people follow this stuff because they’re naieve.

            I sent you two posts to show that people tried to stand up to requires_hate back in 2011 (me being one of them). But funny, those two posts are still awaiting moderation. Maybe there’s more ‘reality control’ here than I’d thought. Maybe this one won’t get through either.

            You’re very angry. I had RH tear me to shred and drive me out of writing, but I’m not as angry as yo. This makes you vulnerable. If someone, and I can think of someone with the appropriate skills, were to come in here and stoke your anger up, I think they could get a result out of you that could kick things up to the next level. And you already know that it only takes one person saying or doing the wrong thing, for your whole movement to be characterized on the basis of that one.

            I was trying to talk tactics to you, mate. And I tell you, the people you list are not all alike. Some of them could be reached. But as you’ve implied they’re “not normal human beings” (see how easy it is? But you’ve made it easy) I doubt you’ll ever accept that.

          9. Holy shit, again with the censorship charges. It is right there on the fucking top of the fucking blog that I was going to fucking be offline for 48 fucking hours. And then I come back Monday morning to 1,000 new posts, and WordPress stuck a bunch in moderation, so out comes the allegations of thought control, because I have a life outside of babysitting my blog.

            Holy shit.

            Meanwhile, the champions of free speech are out there disemvowling, blocking, and massaging, and I’m the bad guy? Give me a fucking minute. You know how long it takes to read through this many blog posts?

          10. I sympathize. I made the “mistake” of clicking the notify button the first time I posted on this thread. Every morning since, and every day when Ive come home from work, my inbox has had at least 100 emails notifying me of comments on just this thread. Hope you had a good weekend though.

          11. No Mr. Paget, you said I could add you to a list, implying I put the cart before the horse. That has nothing to do with some gibberish about a “force multiplier.” What does that even mean?

            As for being angry, you are sensing emotion where there is none. You were driven out of writing by some daffy anonymous nobody. That is fear. I on the other hand returned to Tahrir Square day after day during the Egyptian Revolution – risking stiff penalities for violating curfew – after being sniped at and arrested by the secret police. When the embasssy called for Americans to evacuate Egypt and the press left I stayed, stuck it out and was in Tahrir Square when Mubarak stepped down.

            Please don’t tell me about being driven by emotion. I was never angry at anyone during all that time. I am certainly not angry in any real sense of the term at idiotic shut-ins who sit on Twitter in a haze of prescription medications crying about the Patriarchy in one of the safest most human-rights oriented countries in the world. They are the ones angry – at nothing.

            It is not a question of stoking my anger up but in violating my god-given rights to equal protection from senseless racial and sexual defamation. That is an intellectual realization, not one based on the senseless fear and emotions of clowns like RH and your own irrational fear of her.

            No one is normal who fears applause or calls for white gay men to stop appropriating black women. That is insanity. Yes, that is an easy call for me to make.

            This is a really, really easy thing to understand – it’s called “rules” – rules that all can benefit from, not just a self-selected few.

          12. Colum Paget wrote:

            The Hurely piece I didn’t read quite the way you did. She’s on the wrong side of issues like Rossgate and requires_hate, but I didn’t see it as being strongly anti-man. My reaction was more: “Really? We need to be told this now? In the 21st century we need to be told that women have always fought?”

                    Mr. Paget, did you know that Elizabeth the First was a great, globe-trotting explorer?  Well she was!  After all, she ordered Sir Francis Drake and a whole bunch of men on a round-the-world trip, so that makes her the first woman to circumnavigate the planet.

                    If you find that less than convincing, well, that’s the logic that Ms. Hurley used in “We Have Always Fought.” Or rather, that’s the kind of logic used by the person she refers you to for actual evidence of her incredible assertions.  ‘There was a man who was “king” of an Irish clan, ruling a territory that makes up a portion of one modern Irish county, and he owned a company that did merchant shipping, and the company was rumored to be involved in piracy.  And the “king” died, and his daughter became “queen” and head of the company, so that shows that women are just as good as being pirates as men.’  Welcome to fact-free history class.

                    In truth, women have almost never fought.  Throughout history, violence has been overwhelmingly carried out by men.  That’s actual history.  The fact that Hurley’s sustained propaganda falsehood won a Hugo is something I find far more disturbing than the nomination and victory of a non-sff non-story.

          13. In truth, women have almost never fought

            I think in history you will find examples of women fighting in defensive wars. Because if you’re going to be killed, raped, enslaved or watch your family be all of those things, you’ve got nothing to lose. You will find offensive fighting less often, because of pesky little physiological things no one wants to mention like women being mostly not as strong as men and having to birth and take of children.

            I’m sure you can find exceptions to these rules at various points. Modern warfare with guns and tanks is much more forgiving of strength variations. (I’m fascinated by the russian snipers for instance, but those too were defensive actions.)

          14. Here’s one of my favorite exchanges of cluelessness by our intersectionalist high-wire act. It followed the discovery of some bones or something; i forget:

            “Saladin Ahmed ‏@saladinahmed 20h The Woman In The Green Mantle, erased by Crusader historians, immortalized by her impressed Muslim enemies. pic.twitter.com/2Mmey7lR0j 17 Aug 13” 

            “Kate Elliott ‏@KateElliottSFF 16h @saladinahmed didn’t you get the memo? Women never did anything back then !!!” 

            “Chia Evers ‏@ChiaLynn 16h @KateElliottSFF @saladinahmed They certainly never stepped outside the bounds of culturally-proscribed femininity. That’s unpossible.” 

            “Kate Elliott ‏@KateElliottSFF 16h @ChiaLynn @saladinahmed And our projections of what was proscribed/allowed back then must be accurate!”

            And that’s the straw man these these PC-nauts dive onto the floor and drag out from under a bed like a syphilitic whore (which by the way were more common during the Crusades than warriors by about a million per cent): the word “never,” as if there are hordes of Western scholars who use the word themselves. White supremacists hid women-warriors and noble Muslims who are ERA advocates ferreted out the truth. One-in-a-million morphs into Amazon armies like a rabbit out of a hat. The words “never” and “always” magically exchange positions under the spell a feminist bicycle tire pump which inflates women to the size of a blimp while confirming the immorality of the white West compared to Islam. I love reading these people – I really do. If they were any more biased they’d paint feminist tunnels on the sides of walls and then try and walk into them.

          15. The Woman In The Green Mantle

            So she was an archer. Which is also a distance weapon like a gun and forgiving of size and strength differences.

          16. Yeah, no. The historical Welsh, Norse and English bows were over 100 lbs draw weight (recovered examples average 120 lbs, some to 170). Almost no women can come close. Most on the range struggle with or cannot draw the mere 68# I’m drawing.

            That’s the point some people are making.

            There were a HANDFUL of Norse shield maidens, and most were mentioned in the sagas. And most of them were at the far end of the female physical curve, and still didn’t exceed most men.

            If you look at women’s Olympic and world record scores in sports, they are on close par with BOYS high school records.

            It is not sexist to observe a fact.

            And that you think a bow is “Forgiving” of size and strength differences tells me you’re utterly unqualified to have this debate.

          17. Long Bow also almost requires a lifelong amount of constant training to be any good at it. There’s a reason why when crossbow first got introduced, one of the pope tried to banned it as it was the firearm of its day where some upstar can quickly raise a whole bunch of crossbowman without spending the amount of time and money to train them.

          18. Stephen St. Onge, on April 12, 2015 at 6:57 pm said:

                    In truth, women have almost never fought.

            Lea, on April 13, 2015 at 3:04 pm said:

            I think in history you will find examples of women fighting in defensive wars. Because if you’re going to be killed, raped, enslaved or watch your family be all of those things, you’ve got nothing to lose. You will find offensive fighting less often, because of pesky little physiological things no one wants to mention like women being mostly not as strong as men and having to birth and take of children.

            I’m sure you can find exceptions to these rules at various points. Modern warfare with guns and tanks is much more forgiving of strength variations. (I’m fascinated by the russian snipers for instance, but those too were defensive actions.)

                    Yes, you’re right, but that isn’t the claim Hurley is making.  I had a post full of links, but WordPress thinks it’s spam, so I’ll have to leave them out.  But go to her essay, and it’s about women warriors, serving beside men.

                    The truth, as far as I can determine by actual research, is that for every woman warrior, historically, there have been tens of thousands of men fighting.  Hurley is angry because authors’ have depicted war without women in it, and that is overwhelmingly accurate.

                    There are lots of science fiction stories now with female soldiers.  That may happen in the future, though I wouldn’t be big on it.  But Hurley’s essay is basically a temper tantrum at really, and one that contains the following remarkable assertion:

            As somebody with more than a passing knowledge of history (All the Thing That Came Before Me), I’m passionately interested in truth: truth is something that happens whether or not we see it, or believe it, or write about. Truth just is. We can call it something else, or pretend it didn’t happen, but its repercussions live with us, whether we choose to remember and acknowledge it or not.

                    The interesting thing about that quote is that I think she’s sincere.  Hurley blinds herself to the large historical reality that women have almost never fought, and “sees” something that isn’t there.  This is at the root of the entire Sad Puppy issue.  Desires become “reality” in the minds of those who don’t like actual reality.

                    It’s important to stop that, to insist on the truth.  Evil invariably springs from lies.

  98. Larry

    Add in a little bit of genetic engineering to this essay and you might have a good short story. It certainly would be a vastly more engaging story than “If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love” (low bar, I know).

      1. That’s bad. It’s substandard literary fiction posing as SF/fantasy. It wouldn’t get a second look at a decent literary magazine.

        SF is not a dumping ground for bad literary writing. No wonder some literary writers have contempt for genre. Grrrr…

        1. Yeah, Literary Fiction has it good. They get to claim that anything that is really good is ‘Literary Fiction’, not genre fiction, and get to claim that all poorly done Literary Fiction is ‘Genre Fiction’.
          You know, Frankenstein is Literary Fiction. It can’t possibly be Genre Fiction, despite giving birth to SFF & Horror. /sarcasm.

  99. A long time ago, my dad sat me down and talked to me about Good and Evil, and he told me that there’s not a lot of orcs running across the battlefield charging at a bunch of shining paladins anywhere on earth. Good and Evil isn’t where your battles happen. What happens if you’ve got a lot of different Goods fighting, who disagree on what Good means or which Good is more important, and often they think the battle they’re fighting is different from the battle the other people think they’re fighting.

    Correia, please correct me, but i think you’re either asking Hugo awards to be all about the fans or be all about Worldcon but not be one and claim to be the other.

    Martin seems to think that your fight is to turn the Hugos into a culture-war battleground.

    Neither of you is an orc, nor shining paladin. But i think there’s something I’d like to see the response here.

    Everyone, everywhere, around nomination time, scream for people to sign up for Worldcon. Explain that they can nominate and vote for the hugos. Have a big wall on every post with a list of the works that can be nominated in every category, if something like that CAN be made, hell, i’ll host it if someone could tell me how to compile it. We’ve got the world’s attention, and if people know they can play, they will!

    Wanna know why i’m voting this year? I just found out i fracking COULD! From Larry Correia! And then i read a lot of books! And then i was like, wow, these books are awesome, i want them to win things, and I nominated some of them! And if i could’ve found a bigger list of books to read, i’d have read more! And i want that. For everyone. I didn’t vote straight Puppies, but i voted a few. I put butcher up because he makes good work. I put up Nemesis because I had faith it was as good as the start of the series…. if i was wrong to believe that, then shoot me, i’m only one man, and i refuse to read series out of order. But i know one thing.

    If there was a bigger list, i’d have read more books.

    If there were more options, i’d be more keen to find out.

    May i suggest something, if there is puppies next year?

    Put up twice as many items as there are nomination slots, where possible. Then, people can read and decide, you’d be promoting your recommendations, but it wouldn’t look like a “Don’t read these and just submit these numbers”

    1. I have been reading SF/F voraciously for decades. For many years while wasting valuable time at the bookstore I would immediately gravitate to Nebula and Hugo award winners. I didn’t read fan magazines. I barely knew who was a new author and who had been around for a few years. Finding a new genre for me was like discovering a new continent (and still is). But finding authors that I loved and reading them until their creative spark sputtered (which does make me feel a little like a spiritual vampire sometimes) was a private treat for me.

      Yet despite all that I didn’t know that I could be one of those (self) chosen ones who picked both the nominees as well as the winners. My God! I could have voted for Neuromancer! Or Spellbound! Heck, maybe I could have just read them a year earlier!

      So now I will get to vote for my favorite book and novella (never have cared that much for short stories). That, more than anything else, makes this spirited disagreement worth it all for me. And for a measly $40 I become a SMOF…lol

        1. uh-oh. Just did a search on Amazon for SF/F published in 2015. In only 3+ months there have been only 27,026 published.

          Better get reading 🙂

    2. Wow! What great advice your dad gave you. I wish good people on both side (which are the vast majority) would not resort to insults so quickly, and treat each other like human beings.

    3. Sad Puppies 4 will be run by Kate Paulk over at Mad Genius Club. I would recommend bringing all helpful comments over there.

      I can assure you that people here well understood that we were not being asked to vote for anything we have not read.

      As for people who make up their mind before coming here without paying attention to things that have often been discussed here, very little that could be done would have any practical effect.

    4. Yes. One hundred times this. I do think that we should break it up into different slates, though. If each one of us reaches out to a new group of fans and asks them to vote in the Hugos and post their suggestions, that would be awesome.

  100. Hi, everyone. I’m an unpublished author, white, female, with feminist leanings and “social justice druid” notices posted as warnings outside my cubicle at work. And here’s the thing that bothers me about this slate:

    1) Do you really think that the books and people you have put forward are the best and most deserving; and.
    2) Has everyone who voted read everything on the slate.

    The system can be gamed and if you think that deserving items have been overlooked then (like it or lump it) that’s fine. Nominate away. Just please keep it to people and works that you have read and which you truly believe deserve the nomination. Anything else is dishonest.

    1. 1. Yes, though you should add “normally ignored or shunned” to your criteria.
      2. I can’t answer for everyone, but considering that in the weeks leading up to the nominations we Book Bombed all the short fiction categories, selling thousands of copies, making our suggested works the most widely read short fiction to show up on the ballot in probably a very long time, I’m betting they’ve been read a whole lot more than most regular nominees.

      If you don’t believe me, we did one Book Bomb per week leading up to the close of the nominations here on this blog, and on each one we documented the opening and closing Amazon stats to show the sales bump. We managed to get most of them to the top of their respective Amazon categories. The information is still there.

    2. The fact we see so many people begin by listing their race and sex tells you where the problem is. To me it is unimaginable that we have come to such a pass. That truly is an inquisition. One must list one’s street cred and bona fides.

    3. I wonder how many people avoid you and/or watch their language, thus making them uncomfortable around you, because of your cubical “warning”.

      Maybe everyone should have ideology warnings posted at their cubicle like “Observant Jew” or “Evangelical Catholic” or “NRA member” or “I eat meat.” I suppose I could go for that as a normal sort of social signaling, if “warnings” are what people expect.

      As for the rest…

      1) No, the books put forward are not the best (the *people* being best means… what?) but they are the best that Brad could pull together that he personally read and could endorse. Excellent books get overlooked. Excellent books DID get overlooked. Are you demanding perfection?

      2) No, not everyone who voted read everything on the slate. There is no way that there wasn’t *someone* who decided they didn’t have time to read it all but would vote the list anyway. Human nature. But you’re also talking to a group of people made up of constitutional and contrary individualists… as in, being a contrary sort and refusing to *follow* very well at all is part of their constitution and their default is going to be “you’re not the boss of me.”

      That said… all the suggestions were book bombed and all the conversation was always firmly in the “read it and vote if you agree” realm. Anyone who’s said anything has said they read the books and stories (they certainly *bought* crap tons of them, if electrons actually can be thought of in terms of crap tons) and then voted for some of the suggestions and put their own choices in the other slots.

      Consistently.

      And consistently, if you bother to read what people are saying, they are saying… read ALL the nominated works and vote for what you think is best.

      The only people suggesting voting without reading are on the other side telling people they ought to vote No Award.

    4.         There were something like 145-360 Puppy voters, both Sad and Rabid.  (See How many puppy votes).  The book bombs sold thousands of stories.  It’s possible that there’s little or no overlap in the story-buyers and Hugo nominators category, but I wouldn’t bet on it.

  101. “For five years, nobody on your side said a damned thing about tone when I was the one being labeled a hatemonger, or a “rape apologist” by disingenuous SFWA presidents, or they were using fabricated “scare quotes” to show I was a homophobic woman hater in the Guardian.”

    For the record, I don’t think its GRRM’s job to be constantly warning every idiot on the Internet about their tone. And I hope it doesn’t become his job, he has a couple of books he needs to finish. So you can’t really complain that he’s only now complaining about tone during this debate that has unfortunately impacted him, and not in prior Internet trollings in which he was in no way shape or form involved in.

    The bad news is, the Internet is a crazy place with a lot of crazy people in it who will say nasty things about people they don’t like. The good news is, those people probably make up a tiny percentage of the population as a whole. The Internet just amplifies them. Its probably safe to just ignore them.

    1. I don’t think I meant GRRM personally as much as SMOFdom. I too would like to see the series finished. 🙂

  102. Listened to you on the Ace of Spades HQ podcast- excellent interview. In it you said that you one time listed every stupid liberal meme you could think of and then saw that many of the books that had recently won a Hugo was filled with these memes. It occurred to me that you could write a story filled with these memes and publish it under a pseudonym and see if it gets nominated for a Hugo. Can you imagine the looks on their faces if it won and you show up to get the award?

  103. Hi Larry, have you heard from Breitbart again since the article on the 5th?

    I would love to see their ongoing coverage get linked on Drudge just for the laughs and to get the message out even more.

    A good Brietbart article linked there would be so much fun. Could point out the massive bias, yet again.

    Though I admit that sound of the screaming up to now might get even louder. And more fun. Somehow like the sound of your enemies in World of Tanks, when you go out and harvest the tears in your Luchs for 6-8 or more kills in a match.

    And to crush the arguments of the enemy and hear the lamentations of the SJW.

    If none of the above made sense, it’s a gaming reference, I freely admit to being a long time SciFi reader as well has a gamer. Though I haven’t played much World of Tanks for quite a while now. Larry taunts me/us others with his victory screens occasionally on Facebook.

    1. I talk to Allum and Milo on Twitter still, but have no idea what further plans they have.

      Aw, World of Tanks. I’ve been so busy responding to posts this week that I’ve not played. And I just got a BatChat!

  104. Dear Mr. Correia,
    My politics skew so far left, that I’m not sure we can even see each other from our respective positions, but I just wanted to take a second and tell you that I think you’re a terrific author and I absolutely love your books.
    I’m sad and disappointed in the mess that the Hugos have become, but I respect you for taking a stand.
    Have a nice life!!!
    (And please keep writing!)

  105. yes, larry, you were naïve, thinking the hugo award is about how good you are, and not how well you play the game. sure, it’s also about how good you are, but if you’re unwilling to play the game, that doesn’t matter (unless you’re happy with the possibility of being rediscovered and worshipped poshumously).

    but the thing is – it’s not the hugo award.

    it’s every award ever and every business you do in any art-profession. it’s not who you are, it’s who you know, or how well you sell yourself or if you are willing to play “the game” or not.

    you got to skip that at first, because of self-publishing. but self-publishing is a short-term development that will be swallowed by “the game” in a few years – like every other new thing that has been claimed by the ones who could over the history of mankind.

    just have a look at any successful author/artist/musician/.… ever. they were all good at selling themselves (even the supposedly quiet/shy ones – if someone tells you in an interview, that he’s shy, he usually isn’t – the real shy people won’t even give you – or being asked for – an interview).

    that’s fundamentally unfair, but that’s the way the world works. we’d have to train our senses to ignore anything that tries to get our attention, before we could even begin by judging something for what it is and not for what it pretends to be.

    hell, even you are promoting yourself by being a loudmouth about that hugo-thing. if you’d not announced that you’ll never accept a nomination (let’s see about that again in 40 years) , i’d bet, you would have very much increased your chances of getting one someday. just by attracting attention right now.

    having said that: i’d love things to be different, and maybe the flow of information the internet provides, will finally be a tipping point to a lot of things. but unfortunately, things usually get worse, before they get better.

    also, maybe my grasp of the english language might not be not good enough to judge, because it’s not my mother tongue. but i enjoyed the hell out of your books especially the audiobooks of MH and the Grimnoir Chronicles. Still, I don’t think, that you are a great writer in any literary or artistic sense. At least not yet. But even George R.R. Martin’s picture should probably appear next to MEDIOCRE in Websters (i guess, he’s going to sit out his “ever teasing for something to happen” but just getting bloated – song of fire and ice books until a fatal heart attack will relieves him from writing the “final” book), and Philip K. Dick probably owned the word “hack writer” and Stephen King should be punished for his repeated, clumsy tries to write “real literature” (i hear it has gotten better over the last 10 years). or jim butcher, that walking “insert star wars reference #5000 here”.

    still, i love all those writers and their books, despite they are not “high literature”. and so do millions of other people. i’d say, you are in good company without any pretentious wordsmith-award, you won’t even need it.

    it could be much worse – you could be a bad wordsmith AND a bad storyteller. (and even that doesn’t stop people like dan brown or stephenie meyer from selling a gazillion of books and having a lot more cultural relevance than most “artists”).

    also, think of any popular artist from the past. for every mozart there were dozens others, considered greater and more sophisticated artists by the intellectuals of the time. and hundreds that were more popular with the common people. for every jesus, there were a thousand other preachers that preached more or less the same values. but it’s the stories they and others told of them, that made them the ones being remembered. once again, it’s who you know and how you sell yourself. and a metric shitton of luck.

    so, it’s not that bad. just don’t try to win an argument just because you are angry at yourself for being naïve. or by falling into “your side – my side” camps – then you’ve already started your own game of partisanship.

    p.s.: and don’t even waste a single thought on idiots who can’t discern between an artist as a person and his work. i’m probably a communist by your standards (and by mine you’re a capitalist, self-righteous american redneck, if there ever was one), but i still enjoy and recommend your books. same goes for orson scott card. he might have some controversial opinions, but who doesn’t? the ender saga is fucking genius and that’s not controversial at all.

    so, get back to writing, pronto, instead of trying to be right on the internet (and whining about sad puppies that should have been put to sleep by a nice veterinarian with a big syringe about at least a year ago)

  106. “Sam J. Miller retweeted Kameron Hurley @KameronHurley · Apr 9 Hijacking the Hugo Awards Won’t Stifle Diversity in Science Fiction…”

    We don’t want to stifle diversity. SFF virtually by definition is a severely expanded version of reality where anything can and does happen. We crave alternate versions of reality. A gay Asian woman is not by definition a sign of diverse thought unless you’re a racist, because then one can put just about any profile on a gay Asian women one wants to. Once you open that Pandora’s Box, one could argue Asians write shallow conformist literature because they lack true eccentricity. See how racializing the fuck out of everything works? It’s a double edge sword. Something SJWs are too stupid to perceive, even as they mercilessly profile straight white men in exactly that negative way, and 100% of the time. See: Charles Stross’s mention of white culture as a “monoculture.” Really? Here’s that mysterious phrase that confuses SJWs like a Gordian Knot: compared to what, to who?

    Well, okay – I declare all Asians a boring “monoculture.”

    What we want to stifle is your hate speech based on hysteric and paranoid bullshit with no quotation marks. And we did. We will not have to see so many smug faces with stupid expressions on them making racist comments about oppression this year. Mission accomplished. Go write some daring edgy racial revenge fantasy about the steampunk assassination of an East India Company bureaucrat by a transgender clockwork pigeon cuz colonialism.

    1. Loved the last line. That so completely encapsulates the SJW mentality- all of them. Kameron Hurley’s best book seems to be somewhere in the 200,000’s in Amazon sales rank, so I guess a lot of people think like I do – I would never spend a red cent on any of the pap Kameron Hurley writes.

    2. That’s from an actual story called “The Arrangement of Their Parts” by Shweta Narayan in the racist revenge fiction anthology We See a Different Frontier, except it was a clockwork bird.

      The funny (and predicatble) thing about that is it takes place 100 years before the East India Company started flexing it’s colonialist muscles and at the height of the Islamic Mugal colonialist empire. The Taj Mahal had just been built. The EIC was still just a trading company begging franchises from the Mughal Emperor. White guilt travels forward and backward in time while a PoC colonial enterprise is memory-holed.

  107. Mr Correia, let me just state that as a long standing SF fan who was brought up in 80s by librarian giving me the finest books and anthologies that I read as a child couple of years old, I am proud of you.
    The quality of the Hugos has been declining rapidly in the past decade or so, and while I don’t necessarily agree with the choices you made for nominations, I am glad that somebody finally took a stand against people like Scalzi and their sycophants.
    I will write later a longer post about what I believe was happening and my support to you.

      1. Does anyone actually buy the crap that this creature Foz Meadows produces, you know the literary output from her day job as a purported SFF writer.

  108. Larry: Look up the term “Ad Hominem.”

    Internalize its meaning.

    Then, you might write something coherent, one day.

      1. It’s obvious that today’s SJW game was boiled down to: “Post anything at all that will burn Larry Correia’s time and energy.”

    1. Yes, Larry has been subjected to a lot of Ad Hominem attacks. Thank you for noticing. 😉

  109. As always Mr. Correia, your behavior is the best defense against the SJW’s. A point I made on Mr Martin’s live journel, as well as on my own little blog. Between the EW article Newsbombing, and the comments I’ve seen on FB and other places the Chorfs are running scared. They know they have been exposed, they know they can last long in the light, and they only have one tactic. I would be willing to bet that a large number of bystanders have bought Sasquan memberships recently if only to vote against those who regularly use slander and lies in order to shut up their opponents. I for one am doing what little I can to let everyone I know know that they too can vote for the Hugo’s. https://marsascendant.wordpress.com/2015/04/11/you-can-vote-for-the-hugos/

    I wasn’t involved with SP3 except maybe as a cheerleader. I wont make the same mistake with SP4.

  110. “Rose Lemberg retweeted Amal El-Mohtar @tithenai · 19h 19 hours ago White people talking about how inclusive fandom used to be when there were fewer brown people & queers to make them uncomfortable.”

    More unsourced racist and sexual group defamation. Only a fuck would respect such people or allow them a space in this genre. That’s just hate and there is no other dimension to it.

    How does this sound:

    “Jews talking about how inclusive fandom used to be when there were fewer Aryans around to make them uncomfortable.”

    Plus: fuck off.

    1. I love the way El-Mohtar assumes she would’ve been on the right side of Jim Crow when it is so clearly evident she would not have been. Remember, these are the people who revile the straight white male Golden Age of SF, the one where Ray Bradbury wrote 3 anti-Jim Crow stories in the ’40s. That’s a thing no SJW possesses the principle to do even in 2015.

  111. And the Hugos were different from every other award in the world… how? Do the most deserving always get awards? Get real.

    The Hugos weren’t perfect but they were a darn lot better than most out there.

    And as for conservatives winning or not winng Hugos as much as liberals. **NEWSFLASH**: 90% OF ARTISTS ARE LIBERALS. Creative writing is an art. If you play the percentages, 90% of the awards will go to liberals, because 90% of writers are liberal! It’s not a conspiracy, it’s MATHEMATICS.

    Similarly, if I was giving an award to the best “banker” or “police officer,” I’d expect it to go to a conservative most of the time, because most of them are conservative.

    Maybe I should complain of a “political conspiracy” whenever police awards are not split 50/50 between liberals and conservative officers? Even though there’s probably only one liberal police officer on the planet? It’s effing ridiculous. GET A GRIP. LEARN MATH.

    1. Learn math? Well, I was an auditor for a Fortune 500 company before I ran my own business, and eventually retired as the finance manager for Utah’s small business of the year, so I’m passingly familiar with the concept of “math” and also its bastard cousin “stats”.

      The fact that you think 90% of all artists are liberals shows that you are the one with your head up your ass, not me. Authors are actually remarkably diverse once you get out of your echo chamber, and most of them don’t fit the coffeehouse, Manhattan, beret wearing stereotype.

      Oh, and while we are on the topic of this “math”, since it is a popularity contest supposedly aimed at all of fandom, do you believe that 90% of fandom is liberal? Or that 90% of genre fiction readers are liberal?

      Nope.

      So maybe I’m not the one who needs to “get a grip” there, buddy. 🙂

  112. “The SFF genre isn’t dying, because it is no longer dominated by straight white American men, it is changing and growing, because other voices are finally being heard.” – Cora Buhlert

    I love it when SJWs make Orwellian doublethink anti-racist racist comments that contradict themselves in only one sentence.

    By “other voices” she means racists? What?

    1. “The SFF genre isn’t dying, because it is no longer dominated by straight white American men, it is changing and growing, because other voices are finally being heard.” – Cora Buhlert

      That’s why panels bemoaning declining sales are so common at conventions, or panels trying to convince themselves a “renaissance” is right around the corner. That’s why advances for new writers advances for new writers are plummeting. That’s why the “death spiral” is a thing.

      All these are such strong indicators of a growing, healthy field.

      Right?

      Oh, in case anyone still needs it: (/sarc)

  113. Frankly, conservatives have no place in sci fi. Science fiction is first and foremost about science, which conservatives generally reject. One needs to have a certain level of intelligence to appreciate science fiction, which conservatives generally lack. Science fiction’s bread and butter is imagining a future far more advanced than the present while conservatives generally seem more interested in stopping progress.

    Instead of trying to dumb sci fi down to your level, you should try to use sci fi to inspire you to become something better than a conservative.

    1. Thanks for that succinct description of gender feminist SFF. “Wakulla Springs”: past. “Devil In America”: past. “Weight of the Sunrise”: past. Long Hidden: past. We See a Different Frontier: past. All revenge/payback fiction.

    2. Science fiction is first and foremost about science, which conservatives generally reject. One needs to have a certain level of intelligence to appreciate science fiction, which conservatives generally lack. Science fiction’s bread and butter is imagining a future far more advanced than the present while conservatives generally seem more interested in stopping progress.

      Ah, these old canards.

      What science, pray tell do conservatives reject to the point of justifying a blanket accusation? Anti-vax is a liberal thing. Young Earth Creationism is, frankly, a small minority. You probably mean AGW (Anthropogenic–that is human caused–Global Warming). Here’s the problem with that. Can you name three things that, if observed in nature, would lead to the conclusion that AGW was wrong? Two things? One? Because until you can then it’s not science. That’s a definition. Scientific theories and hypotheses make testable predictions. “Testable” means that failure of the prediction falsifies the theory. Oh, AGW makes lots of predictions but they’re not “testable” because failure of the predictions (and they are legion) never is taken as falsification of the theory.

      Now, I’m sure there weren’t many “conservatives” in those soft studies and agenda studies courses in college, but if you look in the _hard_ sciences, which are about actual data and aggressive checking of theories against the real world, you’ll find quite a few. Not so many conservative sociologists and agenda studies graduates where it’s all about the “feels”. Quite a few physicists and chemists and engineers.

      Funny how the single most influential SF writer of all time, for most of his career, was in the conservative to libertarian (small “l”) camp.

      As for imagining a future more advanced than the present, why do “liberals” (or “progressives”, whichever they’re calling themselves this week) keep going back to a failed 19th century ideology that has led to tyranny and millions of deaths every time it’s been tried? Marx is dead. His ideas should, by all rights, be just as dead.

      But it’s so much easier to declare ex-cathedra that people who aren’t “liberal/progressive” (which is what’s generally meant by “conservative” when a liberal uses the term since they paint everyone not liberal as one big monolith) are “stupid” or “uneducated.” Be careful, however, of believing your own propaganda. That will turn around and bite you in the end.

      http://thewriterinblack.blogspot.com/2014/12/not-stupid.html

      1. “Progressive” is a cargo cult term. The fact that they use the name is proof that their favored policies will cause “progress”.

      2.       There aren’t all that many conservatives in the “soft” sciences, and one of the reasons is that they are actively discriminated against, by liberals.  See this source, and especially this paper.

    3. So, teabaggers, since you’re a liberal and so smart and all, perhaps you can explain these equations and their relationship to ecology. I’m sure you’re well versed in that since “ecology” is so important to liberals and, being smart and all, you wouldn’t dream of just going on “feels” and would want to look at the actual science and the math behind it.

      So here are the equations:

      x′ = ax − αxy
      y′ = −cy + γxy

      So, can you help a fellow out here?

      (Quiet in the peanut gallery. I want to hear what a smart guy, like teabaggers, has to say.)

      *Whispers as an aside*: This should be good.

  114. }}} Let’s not throw around insults, or charges of misogyny and racism, please.

    What about misandry? ‘Cause I **know** there’s gotta be a lot of misandry present…. 😉

    1. Bzzzzt! Sorry, wrong answer.

      Misandry can not exist, because women ‘don’t control the power’. To claim differently is sexist, hateful, and badthink.

      Fine yourself 5 social credits and report to the nearest re-education camp, soonest.
      (/sarc tag should be obvious)

  115. I am a self-identified Christian Progressive (cultural/social conservative, economic egalitarain/liberal). In my “political life” I am made UNwelcome by BOTH sides of the debate. I catch unholy heck from the Right/Libertarians because I am not a Free Market absolutist. I catch the same or worse from the Left/Libertarians because I do not subscribe to their “anything goes” morality when it comes to lifestyle and personal decisions. So I am either a “dirty Commie”, or a “racist/mysoginist/homophobe, or both.

    I say all that so you know where I come from when I say that I UNDERSTAND where you guys are coming from regarding disenfranchisement. I don’t fit in ANYwhere, and neither side really wants me around.

    And that’s the problem we have with 21st century society: if you are not 100% with/for me, you are against me and must be excluded and/or destroyed. But how can you have an honest conversation about ANYthing when only one side (depending on the forum) is allowed to speak? How do two opposing factions sitting around in echo chambers ever find the common ground to solve problems?

    Simple: they don’t. And that’s why everything is falling apart.

    And that’s why I get what SP is trying to do, even if I may have some doubts about how it’s trying to do it.

    That’s also why I would never (for example) call for the exile of someone like Beale, even though I find some of his expressed attitudes well-beyond the lines of acceptable, and I wouldn’t hesitate to say so to his face.

        1.         Robinette has told everyone to stay calm, drop insults, read the stories and vote on quality.  I’m not aware of her insulting anyone on our side.

          1. I guess you missed the “Dear Twelve Rabid Weasels of SFWA, please shut the fuck up.”

            She asked 12 people “not to be racist/sexist/elitist.” Well, given what we know about gender feminist definitions of those 3 words, which came first: the chicken or the egg?

            We could be seeing “Scalzi’s Squirrel Theory” in action: throw rocks at squirrels, squirrels get angry, angry squirrels confirmed. Well, just for the sake of argument, what if those 12 were in fact NOT “racist/sexits/elitest.” Almost no white male heterosexual can pass muster within feminist doctrine. That might account for Kowal receiving some blistering chittering from squirrels hanging out in a tree playing with their nuts and then having an inquisition come along and ask if they boil their nuts “Hindoostani” style or in a feminist-approved way.

            She mentions “the good old days when people could be bigoted jerks.” That is routine. I miss the days when I could oppress people unchallenged and make them look at Frank Frazetta against their will and oh, isn’t it great Frank Frazetta is now persona non grata at the SFWA and we’ve come a long way, baby and Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

    1. I don’t know, it seems like a good thing to do. The more fans involved, the better. If she refuses to buy memberships for people who won’t vote the way she likes, then we have a problem.
      Of course, we could just lower the cost of a supporting membership…

      1. She can’t require those people to vote as she likes because the vote is secret. However, paying the membership to like-minded people (presumably like-minded because they are visitors to her blog) could be seen as buying votes. Like you, I think that’s not her intention, and that her intentions are good. But it’s comes to that, doesn’t it? If a writer spent 40.000 dollars paying memberships for 1.000 members of their fan club, that writer would get a Hugo.

        Imagine for a moment what would people be saying if the SP had done something like that. Those votes would probably be annulled.

        1. They’d still have to have 1000 fans in the first place. And $40000 dollars.
          I’m fine with any tactic within the rules that brings in more voters. I understand if not everyone is.
          The only semi-permanent solution is just to get enough fans in to dilute any such attempts at vote buying.
          And yeah, I don’t think she has bad intentions. She’s not anti-slate. She probably thinks any tactic that gets more people voting is fine.

        2. Again, if the vote splits down the middle then what’s the point? It’s a circle that leads one to the same place but with less money. It is pointless if it doesn’t benefit SJWs.

          1. If she just wants to prevent Vox Day forcing a no award, that could be point enough. Her stated motivation is preventing Vox from No Awarding everything in 2016. SP supporters won’t No Award anything, so she still gets a benefit if the people she buys memberships for vote Sad Puppies. She explains her motivation, and the ‘scholarships’ would help prevent Vox No Awarding everything in 2016.
            Tl;dr: Apparently Kowal cares enough about stopping Vox Day from no awarding stuff that she’s okay if a Sad Puppy slate work wins instead. There doesn’t have to be a sinister agenda.

          2. So, if it is okay to buy memberships for people to block Vox Day from potentially No Awarding everything, do you think they would be cool if I did the same exact thing to block Teresa Nielsen Hayden from potentially No Awarding everything? That would be cool, right?

            No need to answer. That was a rhetorical question.

          3. She cannot do that by ending up where she started. It’s one thing to say these memberships are going out “blind” but given who frequents her site and Twitter feed we know virtually 100% are going to be anti-SP. It makes absolutely no sense to do that unless she is confident that will be he result. 50/50 anti/pro-SP accomplishes exactly nothing. What is actually happening is like me going to the Dem National Convention and taking “blind” voter registration.

    2. I was going to notify the Hugo committee and ask whether this behavior is acceptable under the rules and whether it would be OK for the Sad Puppies to do the same. However, when I read the whole article I saw that she talks about being inclusive, and that Sad Puppies should be welcomed and that liking different things is not bad behavior.

      She is also patronizing, talking about “educating us” (thank you very much, Ms. Kowal, but maybe your SJW friends are the ones who need to be educated, at least as far as understanding that those who don’t share their ideas are human beings too). However, all in all she seems to have a constructive attitude instead of being another hatemonger.

      I still think that buying votes is not a good idea, though.

  116. Here’s the part of Kowal’s post that blows me out of the water, since it’s the single greatest cause of this entire affair of the last 5 years. It’s this level of a lack of self-awareness that is so Orwellian with SJWs and which I find so routinely stunning.

    “Definition of Terms (You can tell that I was on the debate team in high school, yes?)”

    buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh

    “Fandom – The community of fans who regularly attend fan run conventions.”

    Wrong, Miss Mary. What about the old Qutb Shahi elite of the Deccan? Technically they occupy both sides of the Power Privilege Pyramid of Eternal Stupidity. On the one hand they were on the wrong end of Shi’a, Sunni, Muslim, PoC, non-Western, Western, whites while simultaneously on the wrong end of Aristocracy, colonialists, kinda-white, Hindu, etc.

    “fans – Anybody who enjoys a particular thing with great passion, be that SFF, anime, or the Cubs.”

    Only on Thursdays, Miss Mary. Only on Thursdays.

    “SFF community – fans, fandom, writers, editors, and anyone who is connected with science fiction and fantasy in any media.”

    Miss Mary, here you have failed to adequately account for Kronkroyd’s Deluxe Pellucid Darkness of Punching Up.

    “Sad Puppies – A group of fans, inspired by Larry Correia and Brad Torgersen, who feel that conservative writers are excluded from fandom.”

    Wrong again, Miss Mary. That is a women’s-only water fountain.

    “diversity – The inclusion of the full range of humanity in fiction.”

    There is no such setting on my microwave, Miss Mary. Therefore I deduct a full 5 Krilldars.

    NOW THAT WE HAVE AGREED ON TERMS ALL CAN BENEFIT BY, LET THE DEBATES BEGIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    “Black people are savages.” – Boxity Bay (subsequently exiled to a rusty old aircraft carrier off the coast of Madagascar).

    “White people are savages.” – Auntie Jemisin (subsequently awarded Kennedy Center honors and a stipend of eleventy billion dollars to live as far away from black people as possible).

    Myself – accused of piebald ribaldry and racism and maimed with a thunderbolt.

    REMEMBER THE MOTTO OF ATILLA THE HUN AND TAMMANY HALL: “MORE OF US MAKES RIGHT”

    So get out and vote!!! For me!!! I’ll pay the freight!!!

    1. James – I think your reply here is both ungracious and representing a quite skewed interpretation of MRK’s post.

      I have deeply disagreed with many things MRK has said and done over the last year, but I think this post of hers represents a true effort to reach out. I think you’re misrepresenting her words.

      1. My reply was smack on the money.

        And your part about “words” is funny. What words? What words are we using in 21st century SFF? They are without meaning. “Bigotry”? What the hell even IS that anymore? Who knows? It could mean almost anything.

        SJWs are the most clueless unprincipled people I have ever encountered. I shudder to think what kind of excuse note they’d make if they could re-write our Constitution. And “debate”? How do you debate when each person has their very own special language?

        The Code of Hammurabi isn’t even a gleam in SJW eyes yet. And they think they’re going to write perceptive SF?

        1. I’m with Keranih here. I think she’ll need to really, strongly reach out for that not to end up looking like a disaster, but keep in mind: even if she did e-mail Larry and ask if he’d let his fans know she’d support them too, we wouldn’t know today because he’s supposed to be painting minis or writing things he gets paid for or doing 3-gun or sleeping or whatever he needs to do.

          1. It’s vote buying. Why get more fans involved if it might be 50/50? That puts thing right back where they were and her out of pocket. Hello ACORN.

        2. @ James May: “Bigotry” means “I don’t have a rebuttal for your statement. That scares me so I’m going to paint you as a racist/whatever and that will end the argument because you’re a bad/wrongthinker…”

        3. Nah, I stand by what I said. I think MRK is trying to reach out and be fair. I think she’s under a lot of pressure from assholes on her side, and I’m not going to give them ammunition by making it seem like we’re unreasonable people who can not speak civilly, EVER.

          I don’t tolerate people being assholes to me because they confuse me with VD, so I will try to not confuse MRK with NKJ, KTB, or the other unhelpful people on that side.

          I also hold to the Christian principle of redemption, and will allow people the benefit of the doubt.

          In short, it ain’t costing me a thing to be polite back to her. I think it would do you a world of good to undertake the exercise as well, but that’s up to you.

          1. I agree with keranih. There are people insulting and pouring abuse on SPs. It’s easy to join and go with the flow. MRK is not doing so.

          2. I have quotes from that women that are staggeringly defamatory and discriminatory towards straight white men. The fact she is not using f-u-c-k today means absolutely nothing to me. Anyone who thinks this vote-buying is an outreach is nuts.

      2. I respectfully disagree with you, k.
        MRK mentions the threat of 2016 “no awards” without mentioning it is a pushback to the threat of 2015 “no awards” from the SJW’s.

        Is this honest? Is this fair? Is this equitable?

        I’ve seen posts claiming Larry was buying the vote. I’ve never seen anyone offering to buy 10 memberships – until now. And, for the record, MRK does not seem (IMHO) to be a sad puppy.

        It’s a common tactic, in SJW land, to accuse the Right of underhanded dealing, and then go ahead with it. QED.

        1. 70 memberships at last count.

          Mary Robinette Kowal @MaryRobinette
          Between me, anonymous donors, @ShimmerStories, @eklages, & @jamietr that’s SEVENTY supporting memberships.

        2. You got it Murgy. Kowal’s logic makes no sense. As for comparing her to NKJ, remember this:

          “At @SFWA’s #NebulaAwards, only one award went to a white male and that wasn’t one of the ones voted on by the membership.#diversityinSFF”

          Hoo-RAY!

          She has whiteophobia and maleophobia. I don’t really believe in such nonsense but her crew attaches phobia to anyone who even blinks funny.

          1. But we can rest easy. S. Patel (who ‘won’t review any work from a straight white male) assures us: “others buying Hugo supporting memberships are NOT telling anyone how to vote.” (wink, wink, nudge, nudge, say no more, say no more!)

            I haven’t heard anything quite so funny since the joke about the man with a wooden leg named Smith.

          2. Don’t worry Murgy. I just got almost 100 pledges from some CAIR guys. They’re Muslim Brotherhood types and they don’t think much of feminists. Crazy about Avatar though. Some of them have seen it, like, 20 times. They really like Harry Potter too. Really funny guys. For some reason they really like WWE wrestling. I helped some of their kids download some ringtones by CM Punk and The Undertaker once.

        3. 70 memberships at last count.

          Wow.

          I’m willing to give mrk the benefit of the doubt, kind of, but it takes an awful lot of Gaul to watch people spend weeks acusing one side of buying memberships and then turn around and start … Buying memberships.

          1. Lea –

            I think MKR’s offer was made with the best of intentions, but I agree it was without a certain degree of global awareness.

            More acutely, I think she’s trying to split SP from RP, with convincing her side to not taunt VD into deepsixing the Hugos as a good side effect. It’s a long game we’re playing here.

            I am…iffy about the buying for others thing, because there are so many opportunities for that to go badly.

        4. Murgy –

          Oh, I agree that MRK’s offer was made without much reflection, but it also serves to pretty much completely derail those who were accusing VD and LC of buying votes.

          Her…selective representation of the No Award suggestions is problematic, true. She does address this in the comments, but (agreed) sub-satisfactory. And her previous comments (re: cheering after last year’s awards) have been problematic, which she at least acknowledges.

          She’s not a Perfect Fan, agreed. When we find that one, we should make sure everyone knows who they are.

          1. “Perfect Fans” don’t need the help; they’re good at self-promotion. Like Teresa Nielsen Hayden, for instance…

            😉

        5. I’d agree that Kowal should also be paying for memberships to help stop the no awards this year (she could just split her offer of ten into five this year, five next year) if her motivation is trying to stop the no awards from happening. After all, no awards are more likely to happen this year than next (though she might not realize that). You’re right that she isn’t being equitable in trying to stop no awards threats from both sides. Still, it is her money to spend.
          And yeah, claims Larry was buying the vote were ridiculous. I don’t think MRK has accused him of doing that, but I could be wrong.

    2. James May, she is trying to get more people involved. Sad Puppies is trying to get more people involved. What’s the problem with the post?
      I do agree that the supporting membership buying could come off as vote buying. We’ll see. We shouldn’t judge whether she is actually trying to buy votes until we have evidence.
      However, if we get mad at people trying to get people involved who don’t like us or our fiction, how are we behaving differently than SJWs?

      1. If it’s not to SJW advantage then why do it? It would be a wash, wouldn’t it? SP wasn’t paying for frickin’ memberships so that is a false equivalence. If a slate is what SJWs say is wrong, this is 38 levels of hell more wrong. As usual, SJWs are utter hypocrites. That’s because they arrange the strike zone however they please and mangle the english language until it is unrecognizable. People who don’t speak the same language can’t talk. No rules, no game.

        1. My point is that we’re being hypocritical when we oppose SJWs bringing in more people. One of the Puppies stated goals was bringing more voters into the awards, regardless of their political orientation. Are we not about that now? Do we now think that SJWs shouldn’t be allowed to vote in the Hugo awards?
          Also, Kowal (to my knowledge) hasn’t been anti-slate. She’s said that she intends to vote for what she wants to vote for in the Hugos, regardless of whether it was on a slate or not. If she thinks any tactics to get more people involved in the Hugos are fair, both from her side and the Puppy side, then she isn’t being hypocritical.

          1. I see. So when I mention mangling “the english language until it is unrecognizable” and specifically talk about buying votes, that comes out of your universal translator as me opposing “bringing in more people.”

            bring/brɪŋ/ verb 1. take or go with (someone or something) to a place.

            pay/peɪ/ verb 1. give (someone) money that is due for work done, goods received, or a debt incurred.

            And again, if it doesn’t benefit her this year, why do it? I honestly sometimes feel like I woke up in a Bizarro world where up is now down.

            The nonsense about next year doesn’t wash. Notice how she simply says Day will no-award next year without mentioning it would be in retaliation for SJWs doing that first. Why would she leave that out? Why does she link to stupid hit pieces?

            This is pure, Grade A bullshit.

          2. I’m not sure why you included the dictionary definitions. I did not use the word ‘pay’ in my post, so I certainly couldn’t have used it incorrectly.
            As for my use of the word ‘bring’, I believe I used it correctly. If someone nominates or votes in the Hugos because of you, you have brought them to the Hugo awards. If you think my use of the word bring is invalidated because people are not brought to a physical place, I can recognize that as a valid criticism. Perhaps I am stretching the definition of the word. I can try to find a way to rephrase the concept using solely dictionary definitions of words if it bothers you that much. Please let me know if it does.
            If you are against ‘scholarship’ memberships, you are against a specific way of bringing people to the Hugo awards (using the sense of the word bring as discussed above). You may still be in favor of bringing people to the awards in other ways.
            I personally don’t have a problem with people subsidizing memberships for other people. It’s a secret ballot, they can’t be forced to vote the way the person who bought them the membership likes. I understand some people might find it unethical, regardless. Some people find slates unethical. My view is that if it’s allowed in the rules and doesn’t break any laws, I don’t have a problem with people doing it. I understand that you may feel differently, and that’s fine.
            As for your talk about SJWs mangling the English language, I wasn’t addressing that. I don’t intend to address that. I don’t feel like I have enough evidence one way or another on that point, so I’m not going to make an uninformed statement. I hope you understand that.
            On her motivations: she says she doesn’t want No Award to happen in 2016. Having more voters who won’t vote no award prevents that. That’s how it benefits her. Her stated motivations line up with her stated goals. I won’t call people liars unless I have evidence they are lying.
            I also don’t claim to know why she included the links she included. Maybe you could ask her.

          3. @ James May
            If she pays Worldcon for their memberships, and then they vote, she has helped bring them to the Hugo Awards.
            Does that statement not make sense? We might separated by a common language on this point. I’d like to figure out how to communicate more effectively if that statement still isn’t making sense.

          4. I’m totally cool with it. I will admit to finding it funny when I first saw that this morning though, because that was one of the first things they accused me of doing.

            I do want more people involved. Like thousands more. I really like Mike Williamson’s suggestion of lowering the cost of membership to $5.

      2. Ok Ive seen several folks pledging to match Mary’s offer of “hugo scholarships”…

        Guess they are all going to vet the “scholarship” recipients so that they arent all anti-sad puppies…

        And if you believe that I have a bridge to sell you.

        1. Maybe. Maybe not. We’ll see in the results. Until then, we should be happy that more people are going to be voting and nominating. That was part of the point of SP3, right?

        2. Funny how SJWs themselves are in no way under the impression this does not benefit them. That right there tells you what’s up.

          Let ’em spend their cash. The prank is already finished. They don’t get that. The outcome doesn’t matter.

          We keep saying “leave us alone” and they keep saying “no.” So, enjoy your pizzas and more are on the way with the added new rule we can now buy votes as long as we make big eyes and say we’re not.

          1. Buying memberships for other people (to my knowledge) is no more against the rules than slates. Nothing is stopping us from doing the same thing.

          2. Cute. “Us” is supposed to mean “SP”? Do you really believe someone could read your posts and not believe you want more 92% liberal results in awards?

            Let me cue that Anchorman meme here: I don’t believe you.

          3. Sorry, JM, but the software won’t allow me to reply to “Differently’s” post directly.

            Differently uses “us” to imply SadPuppies could also by supporting memberships, to increase our vote count.

            I don’t believe Differently to be a Sad Puppy sympathizer. I could be wrong. “Often in Error, Never in Doubt!” 🙂

          4. Differently reminds me of those acts in the ’40s where a guy would use doubletalk to make it seem as if he was really saying something. It was quite a skill. People really believed he was saying something and couldn’t quite get it.

          5. JM hit the nail on the head. There is no way that anybody would take that deal without being skewed to her ideology. She may have good intentions but she is forgetting that people are people and tend to not do what is right and fair.

          6. To both of you, and anyone else who is a part of Sad Puppies. I’m sorry that I’ve used terms like ‘us’ and ‘we’ to refer to myself and the Sad Puppies. If you feel that I don’t deserve to refer to myself as someone who wants to stop puppy-related sadness, fine.
            I am sympathetic to the stated goals of Sad Puppies.
            Namely, getting more people nominating and voting for the Hugos, and helping get genres of fiction that Hugo voters have ignored in the past into the Hugo shortlists.
            I think it was awesome that Sad Puppies helped Dan Well’s media tie-in fiction onto the ballot. I admire that Sad Puppies has helped Jim Butcher get a nomination.
            @ Murgy
            I do resent the insinuation that you think I care about an authors politics when talking about the quality of their work. Where have you gotten that impression? I have discussed the politics of authors here, but I have never said that their politics influences my opinion of their work. I think the MHI series is great. Brandon Sanderson is one of my favorite authors. Robert Jordan’s Fires of Heaven was a wonderful book.
            And those are just the authors where I have some inkling they are conservative. I have no clue with most authors I read, and would love their books regardless.
            @ James May
            I’m sorry I’m not good at communicating through comments. I don’t comment on things on the internet often. I know we’ve had some places where we have trouble understanding each other. I regret that I haven’t been able to make myself understood well. I’m a wordy person. Perhaps that is a part of it.

          7. Differently:
            It could be you’re requesting the level of rhetoric to be lowered. It could be you’re suggesting alternate explanations for ordinary events, that I’m all too willing to attribute to malice.

            You could be a false flag, sowing dissent for the fun of it (as I had originally thought), but it seems much more likely I was reading motives in your posts that weren’t there. That was wrong of me.

            Regardless, I apologize. I’ll try to do better in the future.

            It’s also likely I should think more and post less.
            (Highly likely!)

          8. @ Murgy
            I am reluctant to ascribe actions to malice, even for SJWs who have demonstrated malice in the past. I’d rather be in doubt about someone’s motives than falsely accuse them of having bad motives. Considering how malicious some SJWs have been, I’m probably naive to ascribe them non-malicious motivations. Still, I’d rather not assume they’re being malicious when there is a semi-plausible alternate explanation.
            “It’s also likely I should think more and post less”
            I will try to do this as well. I’ve probably failed to communicate well a few times because I’ve been staying up late, or hitting the post button too soon.

    3. People who regularly attend SF cons are part of a subculture. That subculture exists, and if you want to discussed it, you need a word for it. Fandom is frequently used for this purpose, though it also overlaps with the old fanzine and amateur press associations, and perhaps some online communities. You can object to using “fandom” for this purpose, but that doesn’t mean they the subculture doesn’t exist. It is perfectly rational at the outset of a discussion to try to agree on terminology.

      1. Everyone who is a fan is already part of that particular fandom. Fandom is the collective noun for fans.

        So yes, Kowal is being just a tad bit non-inclusive. Just a tad.

    1. I think you’re being slightly unfair to the author of that post.
      Ms. Nussbaum doesn’t seem to have a problem with the fact that the hammer got dropped on RH–her problem seems to be with someone getting an award for doing it while others who’ve revealed worse stuff–like the Marion Zimmer Bradley foulness–get nothing.
      That having been said, Nussbaum’s clearly an SJW and part of the problem. But the post is bad enough as it stands,

      1. I think there is no unfairness in it. From the article:

        <>

        In other words: Yes, RH was a vicious bully. But we should not stand against vicious bullies, just as long as they are in our side. Because that would mean standing for a moment with much worse people: those that do not think like me.

        I find it repugnant.

      2. Sorry, the quotation from Nussbaum’s article did not show. Here it is:

        ” I was sympathetic to a lot of the criticisms raised, but it also seemed clear that to stand against Requires Hate would mean standing with people I cared for even less, who would cheerfully use her behavior as a cudgel against all anti-racist, anti-sexist writing, and who would tar any angry review with the brush of “bullying.” I was dismayed to discover that the friendly Sriduangkaew persona had been a front, but in the grand scheme of things we hadn’t been friends and she hadn’t owed me anything. It did not seem obvious to me that the extent of Sriduangkaew’s deception justified its exposure.”

        1. *sigh*

          Because it was never about the behavior… it was all about the targets.

          Yes, people will use Requires Hate’s behavior as a cudgel against similar behavior even when it is targeted at people she “cared for even less.”

          Who undoubtedly deserve to be targeted that way.

          Unlike all the Good People that Requires Hate harassed and abused who didn’t deserve “angry reviews”.

          Some people deserve “angry reviews” and deserve to be bullied and harassed when it’s all for a Good Cause.

          We’ve been warned.

          1. It’s hilarious Mixon took out RH. Their views of straight white men are identical and equally insulting. I think RH broke some unwritten rule – never take out a PoC woman. So, Mixon did just that and now both sides are complaining about taking out PoC women.

            What a fantastic cult.

      1. Some people genuinely WANT an echo chamber. They generally get blindsided by reality, which is what they deserve.

        I read all the comments there, and surprisingly several women object (one threatening legal action) to her version of RH events. It’s a popcorn-eater for sure, to see that her side is not monolithic and some disagree with both her conclusions and her recommendations.

        But I doubt I’ll spend a whole lot of time on her blog – too SJW for my taste.

  117. What was the subject of the original post? Problems with the Hugo award process and selection. It seems to have descended into massive attacks on liberals, conservatives, women, men, social justice warriors, (BTW, WHAT is a SMOF?)…..seems to have strayed a LOOONNNGGG way from what Larry Correia started discussing. It appears to have descended into the very things that he is addressing, i.e. personal attacks on him.

    I was always of the mind that SCIFI/FANTASY readers and writers were a bit more….adult than that. I mean, we tend to be to the right on the bell curve of intelligence, tend to be more creative, etc etc etc. WE were supposed to be the ones that would be leading the way into the future….I mean, look at Star Trek…it was the first show to have a kiss between a white man and a black woman. (and a green one if memory serves)….

    Instead we seem to be just as bad as all the other polarized groups out there (Republicans, Democrats, Liberals, Conservatives, feminists, etc etc etc)

    Hey, we are supposed to be polarized about what the most realistic FTL drive would be, or which fantasy series has the better characters.Instead we worry about which side of the aisle an authors political beliefs are? AYFKM?

    Lets move on….screw the Hugos, Nebulas and ANY award that in any way promotes/supports discord or elitism. i mean, really, that’s supposed to be our think. Maybe I’m just naive.

  118. I think SMOF = Secret Masters of Fandom. The kind of folks who do volunteer work on conventions, and who work long hours to keep the craziness at a minimum while fixing problems that should have never arisen to begin with.

  119. “Solace Ames retweeted Foz Meadows @fozmeadows · Apr 10 #NewHugoCategories Best Use Of Elf-Orc-Human Relations As A Clumsy Metaphor For Racism In A Story With Only White Characters.”

    Third Wave Intersectional feminism is a synonym for idiotic, obsessive, racist, supremacist, ignorant, cry-baby, blame, self-pity, misandrist, heterophobic, dishonest, anti-intellectual, jealous, hateful.

      1. These people are amazingly elitist in a field where diversity of THOUGHT is (was) widely prized. I guess part of it is just jealousy; if you can’t get great sales numbers, then anyone who disagrees with your views and DOES is just wrong, and their fans are wrong, and their publishers are wrong…
        I want Heinlein and Weber, Modesitt and Drake, and everyone who can write a story that can be read aloud and understood. I read Tolkien to my kids (twice), and still treasure that moment –
        Me: “Cried ‘Fly, you fools!’, and was gone’.”
        Daughter, eight: “He’s coming back, isn’t he?”
        We also read them each Pratchett book as they came out (until they demanded to read them first, on their own) and various others. If you can’t read it aloud and enjoy it, I suggest it’s pretty poor writing.

    1. This #NewHugoCategories hashtag is fascinating from a psychiatric perspective. Another favorite:

      Foz Meadows @fozmeadows · Apr 10
      #NewHugoCategories Best Hiring Of A Straight White Male Writer To Fuck Up A Franchise That Was Doing Just Fine Without One.

      1. Feminist math: Vox Day + John C. Wright + compared-to-what = nothing squared at the speed of light.

        “Foz Meadows @fozmeadows · Apr 10 Actually, it’s about dudes who feel they’re owed a readership who neither want to denounce nor take responsibility for their radicals.”

        “Radicals?” See: feminist math. See: doublethink.

        “Foz Meadows @fozmeadows · Apr 10 I just really like the idea of a son being named for his mother, and a daughter for her father – it’s an awesome Fuck You to gender norms.

        Foz Meadows @fozmeadows · Apr 10 Thinking about how Willow and Jaden Smith are seemingly named for their opposite gender parents always makes me strangely happy.”

        Nothing strange about it – you’re a screwball Simone de Beauvoir anti-biology, anti-science cultist who thinks masculinity is a scarecrow used by patriarchy farmers.

        1. Foz Meadows @fozmeadows · Apr 10 I just really like the idea of a son being named for his mother, and a daughter for her father – it’s an awesome Fuck You to gender norms.

                  Apparently Ms./Mx./Whatever Meadows is unaware that such was the custom in Ancient Rome, among the Senatorial class.  Somehow, “gender norms” in Rome survived just fine.

    2. And where is John Scalzi,,, Oh, he is away. Pity, he could be having so much fun joining in.

      Thankfully there is Foz Meadows, who offers us this fair and balanced portrayal:

      Foz Meadows @fozmeadows · Apr 10
      Every time Correia, Torgersen and their ilk complains about the evils of diverse characterisation, they’re narrowing their audience.

      Foz Meadows @fozmeadows · Apr 10
      That’s the Sad Puppy complaint in a nutshell: resentment that people they dislike writing about are similarly disinterested in their books.

      1. Monster Hunter Nemesis by Larry Correia: #15,237
        Solace and Grief by Foz Meadows: #755,430

        I’m sure Larry will be placing major importance on her career advice.

      2. Actually they are expanding their audience through the very simple process of putting their rebuttals in quotes and by using actual definitions all can benefit by.

        What Meadows does there is assert a falsehood she cannot back up together with her own obvious prejudice.

        Cash registers ring on one side and go silent on the other. Looking for SJWs at the Top 100 SFF at Amazon tells the story. People do not like hateful inquisitions and public collusion to segregate and discriminate.

  120. Lost my taste for SF/fantasy some years ago, probably after Julian May finished up her “Milieu” stuff, mainly because I became tired of the subtle and not-so-subtle social justice messaging in much of the stuff that was coming with it. Can’t anyone just tell a damn whacking good story these days without making social commentary to show just how chi-chi enlightened they are. Appears not, if Wu et al are any indication. With these SP campaigns and your blog posts you just explicated all the reasons for why I dropped the genre. I’m glad to know just why I did so, so thanks for that.

    Keep fighting the good fight and sending rounds downrange, Combat. The haters are pogues, basically, who’ll stamp their feet and hold their collective breath until they’ve purified the hive mind, methinks. And no insult to Orson Scott Card for the hive reference hahahaha! Anyway: it’s a hill worth dying on, I’d say, so Bravo Zulu and keep the skeer on ’em. 😉

  121. I just love the fact GRRM has just written a post titled “Hate Speech.”

    I am not surprised he has no actual definition of it or that if he did it would not be one all could benefit from. About Laura Mixon GRRM writes: “I cannot overemphasize how much I admire her courage, her diligence, her compassion, her integrity.”

    Read this and then just stick a fork in the meaning of words:

    http://feralsapient.com/?p=470

    Don’t forget the comments.

    GRRM writes: “When are you going to do something about Vox Day?”

    I say, when are you going to do something about 50 to 100 SJW names I could list who just can’t shut up about the savage straight white male? What are you using as a standard here? Where is your “compared to what?” What is your definition of hate speech? Make one up. I don’t even care what it is, just one we can all benefit by rather than some goofball double standard imposed by radical feminist privilege theory ideology.

    Martin writes: “…if some respected figure from the right were to speak up, well, maybe someone would listen.”

    Great idea. If the last two presidents of the SFWA would take N. K. Jemisin (and 50 like her) in hand instead of giving her bravos when she lights up an entire continent as racist, maybe someone would listen. Instead the SFWA gives Nebulas to racial supremacists. To a writer, what is the precise difference between a “diabolical” ethnic group and one that is “half-savage”? That is splitting hairs so fine I cannot detect them, and yet SJWs maintain there is an ocean of difference between the two; the difference between accolades and expulsion. Has GRRM never read Jemisin’s WisCon Guest of Honor speech? It is delusional and hateful. Doctors, cure thyselves.

    GRRM writes: “But do we have a conservative in the house with the courage and integrity of Laura Mixon, someone honest enough and brave enough to denounce the excesses of their ‘own side?'”

    That sentence is so packed with Orwellian dipshittery I don’t even know where to start.

    To me, it is simply unbelievable a WRITER – an expert in words and their meaning – could write such a Ministry of Love post that is so unaware of itself. If you’re going to take sides, at least be honest about it rather than serving up convenient one-sided versions of what hate speech is.

    “Hate”? What the hell does that even mean? Frankly, were I a foreigner learning English from the core SFF community, I’d have no idea; a weather vane perhaps, or clouds passing over the sun. Go get some rules buddy, something like a strike zone. Then come back. We’ll talk. We can’t play right now – no rules. No rules, no game. End of story.

    1. Holy Frak! I just read “that speech”…GRRM has NO business calling ANY SPer “hateful” while that garbage goes uncommented on. Or while Teresa Neilson (spelling?) runs around bullying Torgeson and anyone who speaks in his defense. Or while writers like Correia are made to feel unwelcome if not outright unsafe even ATTENDING Worldcon.

      I am appalled, but not surprised.

      1. Oh, to clarify, I made them feel unsafe. I spent most of my life doing firearms training and playing OpFor. They could make my career unsafe, but physically? Snort. 🙂

        1. It’s the idea behind you that made them unsafe. You see, they’re not adults. They requires the state sanction groupthink to be able to feel safe. Personal responsibility is heresy and must be stamp out.

      2. And then taking that Mixon post AND the comments together with the Jemisin speech and imagining that is a clusterfuck that thinks only whites can be racist and that misandry should always have “LOL” permanently attached… it’s just mindboggling.

        These people are incapable of taking a hard look at themselves. The simple reason why is they have purposefully dismantled the mechanism of tools of self-criticism we all strive for to check our own stupidity and failures as human beings. They have essentially made their own sexual and racial identities immune from any critique of them as individuals.

        The fact that – on top of that – perceptual self-examination is the core of SF in it’s highest expressions is only more frosting on stupid cake. These people have quite literally destroyed the ability of SF to exist as a principled satirical warning literature.

        You will never see the hyper-cynical satire of Jack Vance or a thing like Fahrenheit 451 or Orwell’s 1984 emerge from feminist SF. It is incapable of the level of self-awareness. Even Edgar Rice Burroughs routinely saturated his novels with satirical comments about Western civilization.

        If you can’t even do something from 100 years ago, I think it’s safe to say core SF has become nothing more than a cargo cult. Call it SF and SF will arrive. Well… no – it won’t. You need more than a model airplane of an F-6F to win the Marianas Turkeyshoot.

    2. GRRM writes: “When are you going to do something about Vox Day?”

              Just what AREwe supposed to do?  Give him a necktie party?  Tar, feather, and ride out of the internet on a rail?

              It sure is interesting, though, that GRRM, trying to be civilized and reasonable, asks us to surpress the speech of someone he disagrees with.

  122. I don’t want to inject too much politics into this, but the same group of close-minded self-righteous Puritans in charge of the Hugos and screeching about Gamergate are the ones in charge of academia and the media, and there’s an entire swath of opinion all but banned in this country because of it. I know I’m speaking to the choir as far as Larry is concerned. But for the Sad Puppies and Gamergaters: this is what it’s like every day to be a conservative in America. What’s being done to you is what has been done to us for decades. And just as with you, the only time the calls for “civility” start coming is when we start being effective at what we do. Dick Durbin can call us Nazis and Joe Biden can say we want to put black people back in chains, but when we respond with anything other than a milquetoast my-friends-across-the-aisle-are-wrong, suddenly it’s a climate of hate and we need to tone down the rhetoric.

    GRRM might be sincere but he’s doing the exact same thing the “middle of the road independents” do in politics. “Oh, I’m sure there’s wrong on both sides, but…” It’s the opinion of one who doesn’t have time to educate themselves and doesn’t particularly want to take a side. IF GRRM has actually read any of the offensive, lying anti-sad Puppies stuff out there, he has weighed it and decided he doesn’t want to take on the SJWs. That’s his prerogative; he makes his living from writing and the SJWs would turn on him in a heartbeat and publicly crucify him.. But it should not be construed as an honest assessment of the situation or a weighing of the merits of the arguments at hand. At best GRRM voted present. Again, this is completely and utterly familiar to any conservative who follows politics; it’s what we get when a conservative gets his finger bitten off by a MoveOn supporter, or when I–as an active duty member of the military at the time–got to listen to liberals call me a baby killer or hear Democrat senators call me a Nazi and a follower of Pol Pot. “Oh, both sides are bad.” Both sides? Really? Show me a left-winger with a missing finger.

    Again, I don’t want to derail Larry’s points, but sad puppies and Gamergaters, take this experience and apply it more broadly. This thing is way bigger than just the Hugos and the video game industry.

  123. Larry,

    I just want to say that I’m very sorry about what happened to you at Worldcon. As I read your response I could feel the pain you felt in those moments and afterward. We science fiction fans are supposed to be a welcoming community and it’s clear that in that instance we failed. I understand your anger.

    -Ben

  124. GamerGater here, and despite being a constant reader of scifi and fantasy, I have never had any interaction with fandoms or any awareness of the various awards. But it’s always a pleasure to see people realize just how much they can achieve (or how big of a collective monkey wrench they can be) when they stand up to those determined to demonize them 🙂 looks like I’ll have to get myself a voting membership next year and nicely ask people to reward Mr.Butcher for his excellent books.

  125. As Martin has continued to dig himself in deeper over the weekend, I’ll come right out and say it: I called it, way up-thread! 🙂

    1. Anyone shocked the guy who created Tywin Lannister can be an oblivious, patronizing prick?

      Yeah, me, either.

      1. I don’t think he’s oblivious at all. Larry got concern-trolled, and because Martin was a bigger name that some anonymous SJW, he was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt at first.

        But at the end of the day, he’s just another SJW troll, regardless of how big his name is.

        1. The optimist in me prefers to think of him as being as oblivious to what we see on a regular basis from the SJWs as Tywin was to his kids’ affair.

          And, of course, that post has numerous errors. SPs nominated Wright six times! Larry and Brad regularly ban people from their blogs, so why not Day, too? So on. Oblivious in that, at the very least.

  126. I’ve been reading science fiction (not science fiction and _fantasy_, thank you) for 45 years now … but have never been to a convention. It just isn’t my thing. So I was surprised by Mr Martin’s contention that all the awards given in science fiction were just local cons and meant nothing global, and that included the Nebula and the Hugo.

    The reason that surprised me was that every science fiction aisle of every bookstore I’ve been in – including the scifi only bookstore in San Francisco – had little cards stuck up on the shelves promoting certain books as Nebula winners or Hugo winners. Only those two awards, none of the others ever.

    I sure thought they were awards of major global (and commercial) importance.

    BTW – as a long time reader – I noticed many years ago that it was getting harder and harder to find new authors I liked in the bookstore aisles. I thought it was because “true” science fiction was being crowded out in the marketplace by all the fantasy that was occupying the same shelves. But thanks to Amazon (and ereaders generally) I now see that there’s plenty of science fiction – you just can’t find it in bookstores anymore where sexy vampire stories rule. You have to look to Amazon recommendations “people who like this also bought” and then find blogs of authors you like who make recommendations of other authors you might like, and so on, and then you get plenty of fine reading enjoyment. So, now, for me, those little shelf labels mean much less than before.

    (BTW, I do make an exception for some of the newish genre “urban fantasy”. Monster Hunters, Grimnoir, Dresden Files, etc. They are fun.)

    (BTW, part 2: Looking at Wikipedia’s article on “Urban fantasy” I’m wondering if I’m labelling Monster Hunters, Grimnoir, and Dresden Files correctly. According to the “Adult fiction” section of that article “Many urban fantasy novels geared toward adults are told via a first-person narrative, and often feature mythological beings, romance, and various female protagonists who are involved in law enforcement or vigilantism” which doesn’t sound like the stuff I’ve been reading. It also says that “On their official Websites, certain writers recommend numerous songs (or “playlists”) which can be listened to while reading portions of their novels” which sounds like a revolting idea to me.)

    1. It does seem that they’re trying to turn their “creations” into self-induced performance art, doesn’t it?

      However, I will admit that cranking up some hard rock like AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck” while reading the battle scenes in Larry’s novels does fit…

    2.         You look into the history of the Hugo awards, and they were modeled on the Oscars and Emmys, certainly intended to be comprehensive and prestigious.  You also find out that from the first, people not attending conventions could vote on the Hugos.

              All this stuff about how the Hugos ‘belong’ to Worldcon is just wrong.  Every Worldcon is a one-off event by a particular committee.

              The Hugos really belong to …

      (“Wait for it!”)

      the WORLD SCIENCE FICTION SOCIETY. And everyone who buys a membership, attending or supporting, is a member of the WSFS.

  127. Larry, have you ever considered that this “whisper campaigns”, this grand SJW conspircacy are simply what we call a “majority” in our democracies?

    A majority of SFF fans does not share your tastes. That is all there is.

    No one owes you their support in a democracy, no one owes you a prize. What you seem to be asking for is a affirmative action prize for conservatives. The very thing, you claim to battle.

    You write you exposed some biased system, but all you exposed was that there is no one of the same ilk as yourself on the other side. The sweeping success of the puppies proved it. 90% percent of fandom might not share your tastes but they did not conspire to keep you out, or bloc vote. They simply voted for what they liked. The puppies were the only ones that came to the table with an ideological agenda instead of personal tastes.

    Are you proud that you realized that the system could be taken over by a bloc voting minority in the nominating stage? Great, so did Scientology. Yes, the system can be gamed, but you are the only ones who actually DID game it.

    While in past years, your 10% of fandom actually WAS represented proportionally on the ballots, now 90% of fandom is not represented there at all. Great. You have made clear, who you think is”wrongfan”, a term that I have only ever heard from you.

    How very freedom loving and democratic of you.

    1. Majority at WorldCon? Yep. Majority of all fandom? Not even close. So as long as they claim to be the most prestigious thing in fandom, representing all fans? Then all of fandom should get to participate.

    2. Gwendoline, have you ever considered that what people are complaining about the Sad Puppies having done is simply called “voting” in our democracies?

      How very freedom loving and democratic of them…

      Additionally, have you ever considered that discounting the personal experiences of someone who has been discriminated against and trying to dictate to them what really happened is simply called “mansplaining” in social justice circles?

      How very justice loving and tolerant of you…

  128. I very much see what you guys mean about political correctness ruining science fiction. I downloaded a file of free stories called “Some of the Best from Tor 2014” and I have to say it, they bore me to tears. The liberal bent in their chosen stories is far too obvious.

  129. GRRM just spent a blog-entry decrying uncivility while basically questioning Larry’s account of being harassed at a WorldCon:

    “Okay, these are some strong statements, and I have to ask once again, is it possible that some of this is wounded feelings and hyperbole? Were you actually called “a liar,” or did someone just claim your statement was untrue? Big difference there. Were you “attacked,” or did people just disagree with you? Did someone actually use the words “shit writer” and “shit product?” Or is this just more “wrongfan” stuff, where someone says something critical, and it gets turned all the way up to eleven on the offensiveness scale? ”

    Whatever happened to “listen and believe women”, or does that only apply to women and only on the other side? Are exact words important when telling someone their writing is shit?

    GRRM is hollow, and Larry’s complaints just thumped his shell, and made him ring with justifications.

    1.         It is amusing.  Requires Hate was fine as long as she was attacking conservatives, males, and whites, but was fiercely condemned for attacking progressives, females, and non-whites.  Vox Day was fiercely condemned for attacking progressives, females, and non-whites.  These are supposed to be contrasts?

              I guess the take-away lesson here is that conservatives dealing with liberals should wear lapel cameras at all times.

  130. I stopped reading new stf a couple decades ago, but if your stories are as much fun to read as this blog post was I may give one of them a try. I’m with you all the way, except when it comes to shelling out $40 for a Hugo vote. By the way, for some strange reason, the word “publically” is actually spelled “publicly”. (That never made sense to me either.) Also, your last name is spelled with two r’s.

  131. It’s odd that, despite his raging success across the planet, Martin thinks that SF/F is still made up of only nerds, geeks and whatever description he used. It is, in my opinion anyway, this victim mindset that let’s this particular group believe they can say whatever they want and think that there will be no blow back.

    1. Funny enough, the last fugitive recovery team I worked on had a few odd questions during the interview process. Examples are “DC vs Marvel” and “name three game systems you play and why. Given the men and women on the team were what could politely described as meat eating ass kickers who averaged almost as much gym and training time as we did playing tabletop or console/pc gaming, we did not fit the stereotype. One of the funnest moments at a convention for me was watching the crowd as the team lead (6foot 4 and about 3 feet wide) getting into a nerd rage argument on consoles with a slightly larger guy that the local physical therapist used as a muscle diagram he was so yoked

  132. If I wanted to read a novel I would buy it on amazon.

    This post is way too long and not written interestingly enough.

    At some point someday I might read it if I can work out how its relevant to my life.

  133. Dear Larry Corriea,

    I am writing this open letter to you as a longtime SF fan and BAEN customer.

    I have been poking around SF author blogs lately, mostly due to the influence of Writing Excuses, a Podcast I believe you guest starred on before. I greatly enjoyed hearing your thoughts and value your contribution to my own development as a writer. As a fan, I was shocked at the sudden vitriol that seemed to have splashed across the SF writer’s community. I do seem to have this habit of getting into communities at a bad time. But enough about me, let’s talk about you.

    I was reading up on this whole “puppygate” thing that’s dominating the google search page and making it hard for me to find the blog posts i was actually looking for, and I eventually arrived at your blog-off with GRRM, and discovered this paragraph you wrote:

    “So I went out on the internet and started searching my name, trying to find out what the buzz was for the Campbell nominees. I started calling friends who belonged to various writer forums and organizations that I didn’t belong to, asking about what people thought of my books in there. You know what I found? WorldCon voters angry that a right-wing Republican (actually I’m a libertarian) who owned a gun store (gasp) was nominated for the prestigious Campbell. This is terrible. Did you know he did lobbying for gun rights! It’s right there on his hateful blog of hatey hate hate! He’s awful. He’s a bad person. He’s a Mormon! What! Another damned Mormon! Oh no, there are two Mormons up for the Campbell? I bet Larry Correia hates women and gays. He’s probably a racist too. Did you know he’s part of the evil military industrial complex? What a jerk.”

    You later also clarified:

    “Side note, I’m not racist, sexist, or homophobic, but if that crowd (I’ll talk about the derogatory label my side uses that you don’t like in a minute[1]) decides you are the enemy, they will smear you with those labels, regardless of the evidence.”

    [1] SJW, for any people reading this Open Letter who are not familiar with this already.

    While I am only quoting a small excerpt for brevity’s sake, the full blog post is here:

    https://monsterhunternation.com/2015/04/09/a-response-to-george-r-r-martin-from-the-author-who-started-sad-puppies/

    Larry Correia, I have something really important to say to you:

    WELCOME TO THE CLUB! SO GLAD TO HAVE YOU WITH US! *HUGS*

    It’s always great to welcome new members, especially when they are also famous people! You add luster to our ranks!

    What club am I referring to? Why, the “People are stereotyping me and it totally sucks” club. I’m so happy that I get to formally welcome someone!

    Now I know that maybe my happiness is a bit grating, when you’ve just had an unpleasant experience. But I urge you to accept my welcome in the positive spirit in which it is given, and embrace the communion or your new brothers and sister is suffering. A burden of pain shared is a burden lessoned.

    I’ve been a member for quite a while now. See, I was a Straight Asian Male, living in Hawaii, which is almost like being a Straight White Male living on the US mainland. We see ourselves as being basically normal, even ‘default.’ It’s a pretty cozy existence, up until some jerk ruins it for you. For me, the moment came when I was forced to spend some months at a public school in the frozen wasteland known as Falmouth, Massachusetts. There, for the first time in my life consistently surrounded by White People rather than fellow Chinese folks., I discovered to my horror that people were Stereotyping me! They would just come right up to me, and noting my asian features, ask if my parents worked at the local Chinese Restaurant. I must admit, I am now rather ashamed of my reaction. It was apoplectic. How dare these smirking, upper middle class white folks just assume my parents must be working class stiffs just because of my Asian Heritage! Both of my parents had Ph.D’s for crying out loud! We were only in the frozen wastes because my father has accepted an invitation to collaborate with a colleague at the prestigious Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute.

    In retrospect, that was classist of me. But it cannot be denied that people made unfounded assumptions about me based on my ethnicity. They stereotyped me, and it hurt. Oh, it hurt. In truth, it still hurts, even today, so many years later. So Larry, I want you to know that I feel your pain. And I want you to know that you are not alone. Every asian immigrant moving to these shores shares that pain. Every woman who has tried to pursue a career in a field traditionally seen as a men’s preserve has suffered as you have suffered. Every Native American who has opened a high school history textbook knows the sorrow that now weighs on you. And we all stand in solidarity with you. We support you. You are our brother now.

    I make this an Open Letter, because I want to call on everyone to show Larry how much we support him in this difficult time of transition for him. I want us all to write Larry some kind words under the hashtag #WelcomeLarryCorreia . He has joined us in our fellowship of being looked upon as a stereotype rather than a human being and we must support our new brother.

    I am shocked and appalled that people are attacking Larry when he needs emotional support rather than more emotional distress. I call on everyone to stop throwing around biting sarcasm and harsh political language and angry fandom rants. Theose benefit no one. Right now, we need to focus on doing what is right, what is good. Helping someone with the unpleasant, and for him, unexpected experience of being “lumped in” with people he does not consider his own is surely a more noble cause. And I have everyone confidence that the good people who enjoy SF will do the right thing.

    Let us all welcome Larry Correia.

    #WelcomeLarryCorreia

    1. Heh… Dude, I’ve been a gun rights activist since I was in my early 20s. Being slandered by leftists isn’t a new thing to me. 😀

    2. You are absolutely correct. But why are you surprised that other groups get stereotyped? The myth that certain groups don’t is exactly the problem.

      It’s even worse when you LOOK like part of a group you’re not, which you, of Chinese ancestry, likely understand when you get confused with Japanese or Koreans.

      1. I’m a straight white male who grew up in East Tennessee, so I’ve seen my fair share of stereotyping. Of course, I must be a racist homophobic illiterate misogynist who thinks wimmen folk should be barefoot and pregnant, yada yada yada. There are times I’ll really go full redneck with the accent, because the idiots tend to underestimate me. The first and most memorable instance was when I was in high school, and some of us made it to a national computer competition in Houston. (Let that sink in for a minute.) When he heard my accent and found out we were from TN, some idiot asked if it was hard to get used to wearing shoes. In my twangiest hillbilly voice, I told him “no, the shoes were alright, since we do wear them sometimes when we go to Sunday meetin’ at the church, but having the shitter inside is the damnedest thing I’ve ever seen. ” Idiot bought it hook, line and sinker, and never even wondered how a bumbling hillbilly made it to a national computer competition.

        1. I’m from Arkansas and went to college on the east coast. So, freshman year was fun.

          Which is to say I feel ya, and think its funny that they have never seemed to pick up on this:

          There are times I’ll really go full redneck with the accent, because the idiots tend to underestimate me.

          1. It’s easy to explain. They are the least observant, most self-absorbed folks you’ll ever find. Playing to their mistaken beliefs about “the other,” even ludicrously exaggerating your portrayal to laughable extremes, will always be accepted; they literally can’t believe anyone could be smarter than them or could be making fools of them.

          2. Yeah, there’s great fun and good money to be made from other’s stupidity. When working on my MBA we had a speaker who had sold her chain of bookstores for a ton of money. She’d been incredibly successful because she had no competition; the big bookstore chains were late to open any stores in the South because “people in the South can’t read.”

          3. “people in the South can’t read.”

            What??? Crazy story.

            Because there isn’t a huge literary tradition in the south at all. Nope.

        2. On the flip side, I had similar (fun) as a Italian New Yorker who moved south. Because OF COURSE all of New York is New York City; and OF COURSE all of us are mobbed up. Jeez, some people watch too much bad t.v.

          1.         You’re NOT mobbed up?  Somebody at the Italian-American center must have screwed up your paperwork.  You’ll be contacted for induction soon.

          2. I know, right? I’ve been waiting for a callback from the Hoffa Memorial Call Center for months now, but there’s never anyone there when I check back.

    3. Isn’t the most common stereotype the one where everyone assumes that you can’t possibly understand what it’s like to be not-you.?

    4.         Grade: C.  A competent but undistinguished execution of a not very original idea.

              Definitely shows promise, though.  Keep working.

  134. http://grrm.livejournal.com/418285.html

    The thing that I enjoyed most about George RR Martin’s post (linked above) is that it is overwhelmingly full of facts, where as Larry’s has a small sprinkling, while being mostly anecdotal. I came here because I wanted to hear a reasoned response about the Sad Puppy’s gripes directly from someone that I heard was a fairly moderate Sad Puppy. Truth be told, I feel for Larry and the other Sad Puppy’s. However, I continue to be disappointed that even the most supposedly “logical” of society–accountants, engineers, computer programmers–so easily abandon all logic and resort to raw emotions when they get their feelings hurt.

    Full disclosure–I come from a different vantage point than the vast majority of people. I have Asperger’s, so logic is second nature. I’m also a minority… and I don’t mean Portuguese. When people see me on the street, they won’t mistake me for a white guy. As a black nerd, I was too nerdy to be black and too black to be fully accepted as a nerd. Larry says that “People like us have been dealing with people like that for our entire careers.” Well, I’ve been dealing with them for my entire life, so perhaps I’ve developed a thicker skin. Larry sounds like a nice guy underneath this all, so I hope that he’ll evolve to that point too.

    If you’ve been a sci-fi fan for a couple of decades, before it was cool, you have undoubtedly at some point felt like an outsider looking in at the cool kids. There has been a mantra about “taking back” the Hugos, which is strange because if this entire saga has taught me anything, its that the Hugos have never been what people thought they were. The selection process has always been deeply flawed and deserving people have always been locked out. People need to stop pretending that the dark side usurped this grand free Republic and now the forces of light need to take it back. There is no dark or light side. Its all just people. Some of them will hate you. I’m sorry if this is the first time you’ve faced that. It hurts. I know. So do the people that you call SJW. And like many of you, many of them are lashing out against the dark side they feel has treated them unfairly.

    The thing that bothers me about the Sad Puppies is that they speak as if they are the first group of people this process has been unfair to. Since time immemorial every award, from the Oscars to the Nebula (hell, even appointments to the Supreme Court) have not been based off of pure talent. However, when various groups–gays, women, and various minorities–have yelled foul, we were told that the process was fair and it just so happened that those who made the cut were not from our groups.

    Now, gays, women, and various minorities are making the cut and suddenly Sad Puppies realize the process isn’t the shining beacon of perfection they thought it was. They want to return to the good old days, when the process was pure and deserving people made it… you know, all those people from their group. The truth of the matter is that the process is just as unfair as its always been. It seems to me that Sad Puppies just want to return to a day when it was unfair in their favor.

    If I sound like I’m against the Sad Puppies in this war, its because at least the various other groups–whether they be based on gender, race, sexuality, or whatnot– at least they can accept that other groups are being unfairly treated by the system. Sad Puppies only seem to notice when the system is treating them unfairly.

  135. 10 months late, and nobody wants to know what convoluted path I followed to get here. I’m an old-time SF reader (not really part of fandom) whose life interrupted the reading for a time, and I’ve have never voted for a Hugo, not even when a friend was nominated (who notably did not campaign for votes). Currently I am reading my way through the nominees for the last 10 years, to catch up with what the field is doing, but I’ve always just considered the Hugos as a thing for con-going fans; I read widely outside. I’m also pretty sure your puppies would call me a SJW, and I would take that as much as a compliment as I’ve taken “bleeding-heart liberal” (actually socialist; but thanks). I like being a compassionate person who’s concerned about social justice.

    I don’t see the problems you see in the nominations, because I don’t feel that overall the quality has declined in the ways you claim, but maybe I haven’t gotten to the supposedly problematic period yet. They have expanded to include different material, yes, and I am pleased that more people of colour are represented, and that there are now gay and trans characters — because growing up “other”/”less” in this society creates a higher likelihood one might have different ways of looking at things, and speculative fiction at its best to me is about something diverging from the well-known, opening my eyes to different worldviews. Also it’s good if “other” people get to see themselves represented in award-winning fiction. Not at the expense of good story, mind, but in addition. My tastes have broadened over the years, expanded most by SF writers who pushed the envelope, even if they sometimes left it in tatters (I still don’t really get Delany). I don’t want to retread Heinlein — he was good for his time, but you’re right, he wouldn’t win awards now, nor should he IMO. I’ve moved on (though I did enjoy Old Man’s War and Leviathan Wakes as entertaining romps — not a whole lot of SJW agenda there). I don’t really think the Hugos are necessarily given for the best and the brightest; too much feels not progressive enough for my taste, but caters to what’s merely popular, *wry grin* (Redshirts? Really, trekkies?). But “progressive” doesn’t stand for social justice; it stands for innovative thought, original work. I think it’s clear that the Hugos probably can’t suit all fans; we have clearly vastly differing tastes. Maybe we do need more awards. I’m never really happy with pronouncements about “the best” when that culminates in exactly one work.

    But that’s not actually why I stopped by to write. This isn’t really my fight. Something personal you said touched me. I am very, very sorry you were made unwelcome when you were nominated for the Campbell. My friend was nominated for it too (not the same year as you), and I remember well how excited and honoured she felt, and how happy I was for her. I am truly sorry that rude, callous, cruel people spoiled your joy because they disapprove of your politics. I feel awful about that (bleeding heart, I told ya — I just thought about how I’d have felt if my friend had been treated like this, and I would have wanted to rip people’s stone-cold hearts out through their nostrils). I can’t do anything about it, and it makes me angry, and I can completely understand why it made you angry. It sucks that people do this kind of shit. If I could apologize for every person who has hurt you like this, I would. I likely don’t share your politics either, but I will now make a point of seeking out your nominated books, reading them, and giving them as fair an assessment as I can when I write my reviews. It’s not much, I know, and I am just some random stranger. I am just really upset at what people did to you — that’s NOT what social justice is about in my book. Not even close.

  136. I have a quick question for you, Mr. Correia. You say you were subjected to whispering campaigns before the Sad Puppies even existed. Mind giving some evidence? You seem to be implying it’s publically available.

    1. Well, this is an oddly placed question 1000 commments down in a post from last year. Hmmm…. How much of my valuable time should I spend collecting this information and restating it again somewhere where absolutely nobody will see it? I’m going with none. Search bar. Up top. Talked about this already and I’m retired from Hugoing. Unlike George, some of us have to still write books for a living.

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