Too busy to spend much time on any one thing, so here are some quick updates.
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Don’t forget, tomorrow is the Book Bomb for Steve Diamond’s debut novel, Residue. Mark your calender and tell your friends.
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The creative writing class I’m teaching at Weber State starts next week.
http://continue.weber.edu/communityed/fictionwriter.aspx
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The second batch of MHI challenge coins are coming soon. There will be a another Kickstarter. This time we are adding some Grimnoir stuff too. Details to follow.
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Speaking of merchandise, Jack Wylder is the MHI merchandise guy. He wanted me to put up a note that we got patches back in stock, he shipped most of the orders, but is running behind on the last of them. There was a family crisis he had to help with last week. He’ll be caught back up next week.
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Sad Puppies Round Up
Same old, same old. Bunch of new anti-Puppies articles and blogs this week. I could either A. Write books and be paid large sums of money. or B. Repeat myself over and over to every dipshit on Twitter… Hmmm… Tough one.
From what I’ve seen the people who disagree with us now mostly fall into a couple of camps. 1. People repeating the already discredited anti-diversity slate narrative and other lies. BORING. 2. People who agree the Hugos were screwed up, but who didn’t see any political bias. Insular, cliquish, wannabe-literati, yes, but not political. Great. You guys run with that. 3. People who benefit from the status quo dismissing a bunch of fans because of guilt by association. Weak.
You can still join and get a supporting membership to Sasquan here. You’ll be able to vote this year, and nominate for next year. The cost is $40. You will be sent a packet of nominated works to read and then vote accordingly. https://sasquan.swoc.us/sasquan/reg.php
There were some fun articles last week though. Some of my fans have taken up the Path of the Fisk.
Here a Redneck makes some dude with a literature PhD look like a doofus. https://marsascendant.wordpress.com/2015/04/23/in-which-this-ignorant-ass-redneck-attempts-to-fisk-one-of-them-genius-professorial-types/
In this Fisk an author takes on somebody with 7 Hugo noms who thinks the system is fine. http://tlknighton.com/?p=7070
And we even get political cartoons now. http://freebeacon.com/culture/the-men-who-started-the-hugo-award-controversy/
Has anyone received any info from Weber about the class? I have my receipt of payment, but nothing about how to sign in or view the lectures online when the class starts.
I asked today. You should be getting an email with info later this week.
I signed up – they only charged me $1!!! Trying to untangle this now.
I’m still waiting on info, too.
Larry links to my blog. Does this mean I have “arrived”?
yep you’re blog readership is about to spike. 😛
I’d take your “fisking” more seriously if Cat wasn’t a sextillion times more talented than you are.
Sasha? As in “Sasha Prochenko”, one of the recent aliases of Yamamanama aka Clamps? Your one-sentence insult trolling style is very distinctive.
Hmmmm … apparently “Sasha” doesn’t realize that judges view court order violations dimly, and tend to jail ‘tards that violate them.
At what, pray tell?
Talented at “shut the fuck up James May, nobody cares what you think about anything.”
That’s an odd skill set you’re claiming for her. Are you sure?
I’m gonna go with acting like a brick wall because the only time I tangled with her at 770 the experience was exactly like talking to one.
Cat is certainly talented at vastly cuckoo, insane conspiracy theories. Loved her review of ‘Tangled’, concluding that the entire film was anti-Jewish propaganda!
(Get it, ’cause the animators made the witch look like she did in the original Broadway cast of ‘Into the Woods’ as an homage to the most famous incarnation of the character. One that had dark hair. THEREFORE= They hate Jews.)
What I do know is that a fisking from the man who wrote After The Blast is incredibly petty and reeks of jealousy.
Eheh, a classic response.
When you can’t overcome the argument, attack the person instead!
I dunno. Where were you headed? Cuz we might be somewhere else. 😉
So got a notice to Vote on location for Worldcon 2017. Seriously considering writing in Indianapolis Indiana.
Have you looked at the ballot? You aren’t voting on a place, you are voting on a bid by a particular group of people to hold WorldCon at a particular place.
Note the write-in directions:
“In order to win, a Write-in bid must file the
required paperwork with Sasquan before the
close of voting”
Just writing in Indianapolis, IN is just so much graffiti unless you convince someone to put together a bid and file the paperwork. Then at Sasquan, before the voting closes, the bidders will be invited to participate in the fannish inquisition.
I’m pretty sure some of the questions will be:
Have you ever run a convention before?
Do you have tentative agreement with hotels/convention center for your proposed dates, etc.
Worldcon sites are a thing you campaign for. It’s a lot like the process for bidding for hosting the Olympic games, but instead of bribing the IOC, you have to throw a bunch of parties at other SF conventions. It’s a very involved process. Some people would rather host the parties than have a Worldcon, hence the Minneapolis in 2073 bid that has been going on for some years now.
Yeah, I’m considering that one carefully. Might be the Sad Puppies idea to send it overseas, especially if the likely anti-Puppy measure is to do away or limit supporting memberships…
I’m voting for D.C. It’s reasonably close to me (3 hours drive), and the hotel was the last in-D.C location for CPAC (2012). The rooms are nice, too.
Instead of DC, why not northern VA, like Arlington? That way we get access to infrastructure in a more 2A friendly area?
Your options are: Washington, Nippon, Montreal, Helsinki.
Don’t know that any one is better than any other.
The DC bid is for the Washington Marriott Wardman Park Hotel. Their address is given as Washington DC, so I assume it’s in the district. WorldCon may be a tiny convention by DragonCon standards, but it still requires more convention space than most business hotels offer. Does Arlington have facilities like that.
There are reasons to prefer one over another.
Do you want to visit the city it is in?
Can you afford to go there?
Who is running the bid? Do they have a good track record? Keep in mind that if the last con in that city was 20 years ago, the volunteers will be different.
A less good reason to prefer one is:
Did you like the food at the bid party?
Salt Lake did just have a Westercon, so there must be some core of fans who run conventions, but it frequently takes several years for the crazy to recharge enough to bid on another big event.
Ah, understood, thank you.
Welp, I have stayed at the Wardman Park Marriott several times. They are rebuilding one entire wing of the hotel there now. It is walking distance from a very fine zoo.
Decent bar, lots of options for drinks nearby too, including a decent Irish pub 100m from the back door of the hotel.
They just had the SOLIC conference there – so penty of meeting rooms.
I’m going to vote for DC for similar reasons.
Putting together a bid is quite the process, but maybe Larry, et al. should consider helping with a push to get Salt Lake City a Worldcon. They’ve never hosted, as best I can tell, which is a crying shame considering how many fans and authors there are in Utah.
I hadn’t seen the Redneck one. Hory Shit! that’s awesome!
Larry… you didn’t link my fisk of Gerrold? Why I coined our catch phrase with it?
You make me sad.
http://bloggerblaster.blogspot.com/2015/04/dear-mr-gerrold.html
I humbly suggest its one of the most effective and devastating fisks of anyone… ever.
He’s a busy man Nate. he’s a busy man. Besides do you really wanna disturb him so much he don’t get the 2 new MHI novels he talked about in his last post, written?
a fair point.
conceded.
I’ve been following the Sad Puppies for a while now, but I’m not a fan of Vox Day, so I know almost nothing about the Rabid side of this battle. Whenever someone asked me about the Hugo controversy, I’d say what I knew about the SPs, but I’d have to finish with “And there’s this other group called the Rabid Puppies, but I don’t know much about them.”
Now, after reading your response to Mr. Gerrold, I think I have a much better understanding of the Rabid Puppies and what they stand for. So thank you very much for that.
At this point, it might be the best idea to not bother nominating any more works for the Hugos in the future, but just encouraging everyone to buy supporting memberships and voting “No Award” in every category. After, say, 5 years of no Hugo awards, they should be effectively dead and we can move on to creating an award that actually represents the best (by best-received by the public) works in the genre.
1. Nooo…that would piss off Kate. Pissing off Kate is a baaad idea.
2. Nope…the idea is to make the awards for everyone again and get FUN reads in there along with the crap they’ve been nominating and awarding.
3. Nope…if the Hugo is gonna die. I’d rather watch the idiots pull a scorched earth, so for them it’s a totally Pyrrhic Victory.
I don’t think they are rehabilitatible at this point. But you may be right, that letting the SJWs destroy them themselves would be a better strategy. It’s still time to start thinking about how to set up the SFF Reader’s Choice Awards, though.
Hmmm. Replying to my own post to blue-sky how some actually REPRESENTATIVE SFF Readers Choice Awards could be structured.
At first I was thinking they should be based on number of sales, or downloads, or reads, or something of that nature. However, this would all but guarantee that heavily hyped series like Twilight or Harry Potter would win every time.
There would have to be some nominating procedure that makes it likely that quality works are recognized regardless of where they’re published or how they’re provided to the reading public. Suggestions? I’d recommend NOT tying them to any sort of fannish organization, since SFF is much more widely popular than the world-o-fens is.
How to determine the winners…clearly if it’s to be a reader’s choice, there has to be voting from readers somehow. Possibly sales/download figures could be considered also in some form.
That’s just off the top of my head; I’d love to hear what others think.
You could have the fan voted part, and include another part that had the sales figures for comparison or something like that. Or you could have sales choices and fan voted choices mixed together, say top 5 of each combined into a list of 10 choices.
Why would we do that when it looks like we are winning? George RR Martin has noted that Supporting Memberships have spiked. $40 is a lot to spend on something you plan on voting “No Award” to. I don’t think these people are necessarily on our side, but so long as they vote what they like who cares? More members dilutes the vote and makes cliques irrelevant. That includes diluting ours. And that is awesome.
It’s hard to say whose side most of them are on, but it is my hope that they are on their own side.
You never know. Some of the more fantatic SJW types would consider $40 a small price to spite us.
In the comments on this page, someone wrote:
“Thanks for the reminder, just paid my $40 to piss off the right kind of people.”
I assume that this person probably is a Larry fan and not an SJW type, but if one side has people willing to spend $40 just to piss people off, surely the other side does as well.
Best case scenario is a bunch of people who would have ignored the Hugos take notice because of the controversy, pay their $40, then just vote on whatever they like best.
Of course GRRM had to imply in that post that the SJWs would vote based on merit and the SPs would vote in lockstep per LC and BT’s orders.
At least some of them are people grateful to the Puppies for informing them of this fact.
“Why would we do that when it looks like we are winning? George RR Martin has noted that Supporting Memberships have spiked. $40 is a lot to spend on something you plan on voting “No Award” to. I don’t think these people are necessarily on our side, but so long as they vote what they like who cares? More members dilutes the vote and makes cliques irrelevant. That includes diluting ours. And that is awesome.”
because that’s not what this is really about. You haven’t figured that out yet? This is about poking a stick in the eye of “those” people whom you don’t like.
How about choosing 3 “marginalized” identities at random and getting them a Hugo nom? That’s pretty much what SJWs do anyway.
Let’s roll on the random identity table and see what we get…
Our first nominee will be a gay Hispanic Muslim.
Our second nominee will be a female quadriplegic Black schizophrenic.
Our third nominee will be a two-spirit immigrant from Liberia who identifies as an asexual Wedigo (that’s what happens when you roll three 10s on the random identity table).
Plus make sure none are actually SF or F.
Dice protocol fail. You need a D20.
Hello puppies,
I am a true believing SJW. Puppygate is a fascinating spectacle (sad and rabid) and I do enjoy a good spectacle.
If you guys can get the vote signed up and out you can win your slate. Hop to it. It won’t mean anything but it is a good spectacle. It’s just culture wars come to the Hugos.
Doug, there is an award that is much broader already. It is the Goodreads Choice Awards. Larry was nominated although not in Science Fiction but in Horror. MHI is a bit about killing monsters. I know – I read two of them.
You guys might try to “Freep” that contest. You will be just a few in a much bigger pool but it can’t hurt. Vote what you like. Slate it if you want. Go to it.
For the Hugos, Larry contends that it would be better if people just voted what they want. That’s not really killing the Hugos. That seems to be how it worked pre-puppy.
And also contends this isn’t a slate. So one of the “Fixes” for the problem you claim isn’t a problem is to limit nominations to say 3 but allow ballots of say 6. No group – puppy or non-puppy could slate. And if everyone just voted what that liked, that should take care of it.
I am curious what the puppies (rabid and sad) think about that proposal as opposed to the kill the Hugos proposal? How do you bark? Is this an idea that deserves a nudge of the cold nose or one that deserves the hike of the rear leg?
Best regards,
SJW75201
PS – you guys carry on. I will not be forking over $40 to oppose you.
Will there be Grimnoir Knight Rings included in the kickstarter? Maybe as a stretch goal?
Much as I’d love a ring too, those are tough to do in a limited run because one size doesn’t fit all. Somebody needs to invent a ring that can be bought in different sizes but that can have custom sets or emblems attached, maybe with a magnet.
During the last MHI coin Kickstarter I suggested a little mirror and a packet of salt as a stretch goal. Jack seemed to like the idea.
What happened to adjustable rings like used to come in Crackerjax? Surely you can do as well as a Crackerjax package! 😉
I can’t wait to read your reviews on ratemyprofessor.com. Heh.
How can I find the MHI merch guys?
At the top of the page is the Buy Stuff tab. It has a link to our Shopify page.
Huh. Opening my eyes would be helpful. Thanks! I need an MHI fix, lol.
My favorite bit of nonsense last week was about how we Puppy Cheerers want that good ol’ fashioned pulp like Heinlein used to write. Yeah, Heinlein was the king of mindless adventure, writing two-fisted action about an on-call pilot trying to hold his marriage together, a businessman raising money to promote lunar colonization, a man with fear of heights trying to save the life of a kitten, an old man whose brain is in the body of a young woman exploring what it means to love … can’t get enough of them shoot ’em ups, can we?
Holeeee Shiiiiiii
Uh sorry, forgot this was a fambly friendly blog.
Larry likes my writing? Larry likes my writing?!?
LARRY LIKES MY WRITING!!!!!!!!!!!
I feel like Melvin after he upgraded from dial-up to DSL. No I feel like Milo after SHOT. No I feel like Owen after Julie kissed him!
LARRY LIKES MY WRITING!!! Wooo hooooooooo!
Damn, now this means I really have to work on my books, I might not be the no-talent hack I thought I was.
Crap. Fisking is fun, writing something creative is really hard. DAMN you Correia you have taken away my last excuse!
In all seriousness though I’m really honored and flattered that you not only enjoyed, but that you enjoyed it enough to link to it. You’re all class for a portagee cow puncher.
For you, it was the most exciting day of your life.
For Larry it was . . . Monday.
Ya sorry. I can’t be chun-li. There is no way I can pull off that look.
Sometimes all one can do is laugh at the absurdity… And the redneck fisk is a WINNAH!!!
Thanks for the reminder, just paid my $40 to piss off the right kind of people.
Bookburners afraid of matches: http://tinyurl.com/p78proq
I like how the Free Beacon Worked in the HK “You suck and we hate you:
Every time I read an anti-SP or anti-Larry blog or article, I am reminded of another author who bucked his genre so hard, that he too became a household name.
This guy wasn’t interested in ‘high literature’, he just wanted to write stories people would read and so he could get paid and feed his family. Eventually, he became one of the best-selling authors of the 20th century and his works are still published and read around the world.
I am of course referring to Mickey Spillane.
Keep writing Larry, we’ll keep reading.
Would it trouble you much to announce when the package (s) arrive from WSFS?
They managed to goon up my membership where it took 3 emails from me to get them to acknowledge my membership and I, at this point, expect them not to send me anything at all.
I want to vote dammit!
I am asking for a broad sheet of mailing/emailing of WSFS stuff.
v/r
Whalen
I signed up for a supporting membership on 4/17, they update the member list every couple of weeks and the new update included my name. Never received any email noting the payment. I chalked it up to overwhelmed volunteers inundated with new memberships. I’d check the current list to be sure you are there; package is supposed to go out late May IIRC.
The Hugo packet info is supposed to be delivered to the Sasquan folks by May 10.
Valente once wrote “Remember that Tolkien’s Southrons and Easterlings were pretty much Africans and Middle Easterners with the VINs filed off. That kind of shit goes down in fantasy all the time–we tell you they’re evil, so you should believe it, but somehow they magically look a lot like marginalized groups in the real world.”
Yeah, Tolkien made ’em up cuz racist.
Don’t except a lot of brainy thinking from anything that can produce that. Those “Easterlings” in fact probed, invaded, occupied, colonized and slave-raided Europe from the 7th to the 18th century. Meanwhile I’m still being held to account for stuff any white criminal ever did in history and SJWs call that “social justice.” Tolkien’s imaginary “Southrons” raided Cornwall and County Cork for slaves in the 17th century. They didn’t appear so damn “marginalized for 12 centuries.
What these folks use for brains I honestly don’t know, but their mouths are far more eager to speak than what they put into their brains. The result is a net loss in information.
Let’s ignore, too, that the Easterlings and the Southrons, were convinced to fight based on the lies of Sauron, and when the smoke cleared, they settled Mordor and became allies.
Additionally, we can ignore Tolkein’s dissatisfaction with Orcs being irredeemable. Orcs!
His orcs were pretty much the Germans, but Acceptable Targets and all.
In unrelated news, tor decided to publish an article on message fiction this week
http://www.tor.com/blogs/2015/04/message-fiction-politics-in-sci-fi-and-fantasy-literature
Totally and completely unrelated. The small swipe at libertarians was also unintended. Anyone who says otherwise at Tor.com will be deleted.
Any idea when WSFS will announce the establishment of the HUAC (Hugo Unfan Activities Committee)? Is it too late to get it on the Business Meeting agenda?
So Edmund Schubert of Card’s IGMS has withdrawn from the Hugos and writes “free speech comes with responsibilities: in this case, the responsibility to call out unproductive, mean-spirited, inflammatory, and downright hateful speech.” He means Vox Day.
Yeah, well – let us know when you find a principle in some archaeological dig I can understand and then go ahead and do that, cuz as far as I can tell a few score people are wearing some cloak of invisibility. Because here’s the thing: if people had been doing all along what you say you’re doing, there’d never have been a Sad Puppies, at least in my opinion.
Honest to god, sometimes I feel like I’ve sailed back into pre-history before men created games with rules. SFF is like a poker game where certain cards are wild but I don’t know what they are.
James, it’s just more evidence for my position, that the Hugos are beyond rehabilitation and are swiftly becoming meaningless and in fact an object of scorn.
Maybe it is more of a club actually. You know what they say about “any cub that would allow me as a member….”. You pay your money, you have your say.
Pretty good club in terms of return. If you look at the freebies, it probably is worth the money.
Are they meaningless? Martin says they are not. I can see that. It is a committed club and not the general populace. For me, meh. This is the age of the internet so finding a “club” or groups of people I trust for recommendations is pretty easy.
I just bought “The Martian”. Didn’t get that off any particular list. I just put Scalzi’s “Lock In” on my wish list. Did get that off a list (It’s second on the 2104 GoodReads Choice Awards) but I first asked people about it. I bet you guys give recommendations. I got Larry’s books from recommendations.
All of this is to say, that it is probably really meaningful only to the members of the club and to the authors who enjoy the recognition. And maybe to foreign sales because it drives translations.
Best regards,
SJW75201
I’d heard that the con administrators already closed the canon, so no one else can withdraw from the ballot. Isn’t refusing to accept the award all that Schubert can do at this point?
And in the case of Schubert and the others who have been forced to withdraw, free speech is apparently fine for the very people who harassed them and threatened their careers because the wrong people voted for them.
If they want to suck the dicks of Scalzi’s clique, let ’em. The clique will forget they exist five minutes after one of their own self-masturbatory works come out and cowards like Schubert will wilt away.
There is no need to be rude to anybody who dropped out. You’ve got no idea what their situation is, so chill the hell out.
It doesn’t bug me that he quit or why. I take him at his word. I’m just wondering where these principled stands were a few years ago when a bunch of Nebula nominees rode into town on a wave of inflammatory racial incitement. I just don’t get that; I don’t get that at all. What standard are we using as a community for “unproductive, mean-spirited, inflammatory, and downright hateful speech”?
“I’m not opposed to a code of conduct for #HugoAwards noms. Shown to be racist, misogynist, homophobic? No nom for you! #SadPuppies — Warren Justice (@demandharmony) April 24, 2015”
See what I mean? There is an adult who has used the words “racist, misogynist, homophobic” in a manner where I literally don’t know what he means. I feel like the cat whose owner uses a laser pointer: the cat chases it but will never touch it no matter what it does. The truth is this guy’s standard, if truly invoked, would wipe out many of the Nebula and Hugo nominees for the last few years, including Neb nominees this year.
At first glance, he appears to mean some kind of group defamation, but his definition is so severely circumscribed it itself amounts to de facto group defamation, because I know for a fact SJWs get a pass on this.
This is the silly clown show of intellect in SFF. I mean, when people like this guy read Orwell’s 1984, is it like some fucking episode of The Man from U.N.C.L.E., or what?
“Shown”? By Whom? There’s the Big Question for that tweet.
We already have harassment policies SJWs ignore because of “punching up” theory, as you can see from that guy’s weird Tweet. There’s nothing that says “harmony” like fronting a cult of entrenched doublethink.
WorldCon doesn’t need a Code of Conduct, they need a dictionary. That’s the funny thing about all this: were we to somehow put a blindfold over all this, SFF’s “racist, misogynist, queerphobic systems” would change in a flash to “racist, misandrist, and heterophobic.”
It isn’t when THEY do it.
Mr. Correia:
I think you are mistaken, and perhaps not reading enough of the writing that disagrees with you. As far as I can tell, most of the opposition to Hugo slates breaks down into:
1) Hugo slate voting is bad.
2) Hugo slate voting is very bad.
3) Hugo slate voting is very, very bad and also Vox Day is reliably unable to distinguish good writing from bad, so why are so many of his favorites on the ballot.
And yes, we get that you aren’t Vox. You’re just standing beside him, shooting in the same general direction, and helping him achieve his goals. Are you entirely comfortable with that?
It appears that you aren’t reading ANY of the writing that agrees with Larry. What you term “slates” are in fact recommendations for consideration, which anyone is capable of making. The SJW contingent has done this in the past by their own admission. The real opposition is to others also doing it, keeping them from controlling the Hugo nomination process as they did previously. As to “slate voting,” you clearly haven’t been reading what the SP supporters have been saying consistently, which is that any voter should read all the nominated works and vore for them in the order he or she thinks best. If that’s your definition of “slate voting” and you think it’s bad, then I submit that you have a serious misunderstanding of what voting in general means.
As to helping Vox Day, if he and his group decide to do things that make the goals of the SP group more achievable, great! If achieving the SP goals helps Vox, no big deal to the SPs so long as the SP goals are being approached. When people on this side say they want the process open to everyone, they don’t define “everyone” to be “everyone excepting Vox Day.”
Oh, I got bored of reading most of the writing on the other side once I saw that it was all using the same tired script.
Slate voting is bad, when people you don’t like do it. Got it. Slate voting is bad, even when the organizers repeatedly say they are just suggestions and read the work. And Vox Day burned your village.
Yes, we are shooting in the same direction. Only I was here first. And all my goals are achieved… So now you want me to go fight him instead? Naw. There are thousands willing to argue with him, but before my people came along, nobody argued with the SJWs or realized the Hugos were owned by insular cliques.
Vox Day burned a village! My god, does the man have no shame! It is bad enough that he spew these horrible badthink opinions, now he is burning villages! I think it is telling that, due to the location and demographics of most villages, when he burned it, women and minorities were hardest hit. The fiend.
…women and minorities were hardest hit.
LOL
Maybe the CHORFS will add that to their list of Vox Day atrocities. Give it a few weeks and they’ll have him saying he burned the village to save it.
Worse, he didn’t pillage before burning.
Such a waste of loot.
“For you, the day Vox Day graced your village was the most important day of your life. But for me, it was Tuesday.”
Not only are suggested lists of Hugo nominees (which is what Sad Puppies has been offering) not bad, they’re necessary.
When Worldcon first started awarding Hugos, SFF was niche enough that every fan could reasonably read every eligible work released in a given year.
In recent years, the eligible novels alone number in the thousands–and that’s not counting indie.
There’s no way that Hugo voters can read every eligible work each year. That’s why narrowing down a list of nominees based on reader suggestions (which, again, is what Sad Puppies did) turns the nomination process from a Herculean ordeal to a manageable exercise of popular consensus.
Your class is sold out :-(. Is there any way you can talk Weber into opening up more internet slots? I wouldn’t think that would cost the school much.
There shouldn’t be a cap on the online. Let me ask them. The page might be messed up.
Haha! Got an email from someone at Weber State. They agreed to let me give them money, so I am in like Flynn. Looking forward to the class.
Damn it Larry. I did it again. This stuff is addicting.
https://marsascendant.wordpress.com/2015/04/28/nuther-day-nuther-fisking/
Say, what on earth is a “Challenge Coin” FOR anyway?
They look awesome in a display.
At least, that’s the reason I told myself last time…
Doc, in the military, a “Challenge Coin” is a silver dollar or so sized coin suitable for carrying in one’s pocket. It is generally given to a member of a unit for good performance. Civilians may be awarded them. It is commonly used to determine who doesn’t have to buy their own drinks. I’m not up on the rankings, but the person in the group with the most prestigious coin “wins.”
http://howardtayler.com/2015/04/at-long-last-an-unofficial-anecdotal-history-of-challenge-coins/
Read this extraordinary exchange between Andrea Harris, Sasha Pixlee, Requires Hate and an Anonymous. It is a great insight into how the minds of the bizarre race-sex cult behind the SJW movement work. I’ll leave it to you to guess how many of them openly admit to rather severe mental health issues. It’s all in one thread here:
https://twitter.com/asymbina/status/590831340427354112
1. The Ethical Sloth @sashapixlee Apr 21 VD sits on a mountain of privilege and the “gravity” of our society helps his attacks. Makes them worse.
2. The Ethical Sloth @sashapixlee Apr 21 This is why “reverse racism” or “misandry” aren’t actual things. RH hating white people wouldn’t ever matter. There’s no system to back it.
3. The Ethical Sloth @sashapixlee Apr 21 Vox Day is using the fact that cis het white men have stupid amounts of power (and also petty resentments) to try and exclude and harm.
4. The Ethical Sloth @sashapixlee Apr 21 Even if RH had the blackest of misandrist, hetero-hating, white-genocide-wishing hearts, she is an anomaly. A lone actor.
5. The Ethical Sloth @sashapixlee Apr 21 VD is calling on (thankfully not as successfully as he would have 100 yrs ago) the systems of oppression and power to crush those he hates.
6. The Ethical Sloth @sashapixlee Apr 21 So stop saying Requires Hate and Vox Day are anything alike, because that just makes you look like, at best, a fool complicit in racism.
7. The Ethical Sloth @sashapixlee Apr 21 And at worst you look like a crypto-fascist white supremacist hiding behind being okay with gay people in order to destroy uppity QWoC.
8. Twisted Spinster @SpinsterAndCat Apr 22 @sashapixlee @talkinghive …that RH *really* struck a nerve, and hit more than one self-satisfied “progressive” right in their worldviews.
9. Asymptotic Binary @asymbina Apr 22 @SpinsterAndCat @sashapixlee @talkinghive There’s so much of the narrative that would be discarded as conspiracy-theory bullshit if it were
10. Asymptotic Binary @asymbina Apr 22 @SpinsterAndCat @sashapixlee @talkinghive (a) about a white person and (b) if she hadn’t hit a bunch of peole right in the white fragility.
11. Asymptotic Binary @asymbina Apr 22 @SpinsterAndCat @sashapixlee @talkinghive I know because the Canines have said very similar thing and people just laugh at them.
12. Twisted Spinster @SpinsterAndCat Apr 22 @asymbina @sashapixlee @talkinghive If she’d just gone after ludicrous people like the Pups that would have been one thing, but she went
13. Beetori Sritruslow @talkinghive Apr 22 @asymbina @SpinsterAndCat @sashapixlee Such as the ‘blacklisting’ thing.
14. Beetori Sritruslow @talkinghive Apr 22 @asymbina @SpinsterAndCat @sashapixlee Like, okay, we’re now all agreeing no ‘blacklisting’ ever happens in SFF!
15. Beetori Sritruslow @talkinghive Apr 22 @asymbina @SpinsterAndCat @sashapixlee Except somehow *I* personally alone wielded the power to make blacklisting happen… somehow…
16. Twisted Spinster @SpinsterAndCat Apr 22 @asymbina @sashapixlee @talkinghive after beloved “diverse” writers like Bacigalupi. Oh no, he’s one of us! Raise the drawbridge!
17. Twisted Spinster @SpinsterAndCat Apr 22 @talkinghive @asymbina @sashapixlee In a way the Pups are “right,” in that it’s safe to laugh at white men, because no one will really do
18. Twisted Spinster @SpinsterAndCat Apr 22 @talkinghive @asymbina @sashapixlee anything to take their basic power away. Which is why when a white man proclaims himself an “ally” he
19. Twisted Spinster @SpinsterAndCat Apr 22 @talkinghive @asymbina @sashapixlee gets ALL the awards, and he’s untouchable. You can see this by the way the Pups not-so-secretly yearn
20. Twisted Spinster @SpinsterAndCat Apr 22 @talkinghive @asymbina @sashapixlee for those kudos “leftists” get. (Their repeated claims of being non-racist, for example.) But in none of
http://gizmodo.com/why-was-carl-sagan-blackballed-from-the-national-academ-1700524296/+AnnaleeNewitz
sounds like others.
Had to share this piece of unintentionally hilarious idiocy I found on Twitter:
“Terry! on fleek @shortstack81 · 5h5 hours ago
lol at the argument that Baen doesn’t publish so called “SJWscifi/fantasy”
the last 7 honor Harrington books are about FREEING SLAVES.”
Because the other side is so close-minded they can’t even imagine that we might also be against slavery. And really, is being anti-slavery really that much of a political position? I would say it’s a moral one.
(Facepalm) Is he even aware of the evangelical right’s current involvement in antislavery work?
Dude, this is the sort of guy who probably thinks that evangelicals look back fondly on the days of slavery. And he probably thinks that Republicans were the party of slavery and segregation.
I’m a fair bit behind on the Honor Harrington books (I tend to like to binge read – being forced to wait between books makes me sad), but I’m guessing while “FREEING SLAVES” may well be a theme, even a message… as has been said repeatedly, there’s a big difference between fiction-with-a-message, and message-fic.
And on the topic of Slavery, and the SJW perspective of White Privilege:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NoWIZv96KU
That is funny. I’ve noticed that SJWs take any decent thing from history and automatically include it as part of their ideology while assuming their so-called enemies are in favor of any indecent thing from history.
Dude, if “Terry!” wants to consider freeing slaves and fighting slavery to be right-wing ‘message fiction’… let ’em. Rub his tiny nose in it. After all, if it’s the reich-wingers who are hunting down the slavers and releasing the enslaved, who does that identify the slavers as?
The goofball WorldCon and SFWA handing out awards to racists only adds frosting to their stupid cake. They are the most idea-challenged folks I’ve ever encountered; not a thing beneficial to SF.
I am challenging the SF fan community to turn this year of contention upside down. I have seen firestorms tear through the blogosphere, culminating in movements and actions that may further polarize the fanbase and permanently harm the credibility of the Hugo Awards (or further harm its credibility, depending upon your viewpoint). As much as this year has been filled with missteps, in my starry-eyed idealism of SF writing and writers, I believe this hostage crisis could be turned into an engaging turning point.
I am challenging George R. R. Martin and Larry Correia to stand behind your claims that you want the Hugos to be about the writing, not the writer’s politics or history. However this kooky situation happened, move forward in a way that’s constructive for the whole community. I challenge you to agree on a specific mutual schedule to release your reviews of each of the Hugo nominees in turn. Announce the schedule in advance so fans can have read each one as the discussion comes up. The Hugo ballots allow each member to change their vote until July 31. Ask fans to hold their voting until and unless they have read the full slate of nominees, and suggest they read more than one reviews of each before casting their ballots.
I challenge the rest of the SF blogging community to join in the schedule. I chose the name of Martin and Correia above because a specific challenge has more impact than some vague generic suggestion. Take the schedule agreed upon by Martin and Correia and turn it into a one-by-one celebration of the better SF released this past year. I’m looking at you Mr. Day, Ms. Hate, Mr. Torgerson, and the whole SF community – join the scheduled discussions and post your review of each work in turn. I challenge the online community to formulate a simple clearinghouse webpage where readers can find links to reviews with a simple set of ratings for reviews (perhaps: “I agree; useful,” “I disagree; useful,” “I agree; not useful,” “I disagree; not useful”) so that readers and writers can find discussion to enrich their understanding and reviews to challenge their preconceptions without having to wade through dozens of derivative re-interpretations, attacks on reviewers, attacks based on how something got nominated, and trolling reviews.
I challenge SF fans to join in and make this a celebration of Science Fiction writing. It can be a big expenditure, but set aside the money to buy or borrow each novel and join in the discussions as each one gets considered in turn. Buy a voting or attending membership in Worldcon and cast a ballot based on your own conclusions about each work. If you think one or more nominees fall below the quality where it deserves a Hugo, cast a “No Award” vote in your ranking. Make a commitment to consider each work carefully, no matter how the ballot was formulated this year or who nominated each work, using the “No Award” vote carefully, not as a protest.
I challenge the nominees who withdrew from the Hugo ballot to reinstate yourself and let your works get discussed in the open air. If your work falls below the “No Award” voting line, accept it, read some of the non-trolling reviews, and turn out some kick-ass fiction in the future. If your work wins, then accept that a flawed process happened to shine a light on you and be happy for it.
If you nominated a slate of candidates, I challenge you to urge your own fans to read every nominee and vote by the same criteria. Then, trust this process and accept a “No Award” vote wherever it may fall without punitive threats ahead of time or actions afterwards. The Hugo process is flawed and ultimately operates on the same model as the fee-per-vote American Idol TV show. You’ve demonstrated that, with a few instructions to its massive fanbase, the Twilight vampire novel franchise could dominate the Hugos utterly. Instead of tearing everything down to nothing to continue proving your point, I challenge you to participate and help the Hugo nominations and awards to honor the best in the field.
I challenge Connie Willis to reinstate herself in the event and be part of a Worldcon that could symbolize a new inclusiveness. This year’s process may be flawed, but maybe it was better for a fan group to exploit the flaw than for an entity with a commercial interest in the result.
Worldcon, I challenge you to embrace a new tide of members and funnel the flow into a positive, dynamic process. If you don’t want the Hugo process to become hostage to voting blocks and whims, you could limit the nominating process (and even the voting) to people who have been members for three years or more, which would reduce the probability that a small group railroads the process and ensures high-quality nominees and winners. But that is also a retreat and entrenchment. Or, you could have a wider base of fans join and participate, which does risk the Hugos becoming a list of the year’s bestsellers. I challenge you to rejuvenate the process and prepare for the future of SF by taking the more risky second path, mitigating the risks by assisting engaged fans to find a spectrum of carefully-considered reviews and discussions of new SF with less immersion in mudslinging and rants.
If you all join in, then I will challenge myself to become an engaged SF fan as I have never been in the past. I will read each of the nominated works by the designated discussion date. I’ll read a range of reviews by people with various viewpoints. I will get a Worldcon membership, and I will vote responsibly. Heck, I’ll get an attending membership and watch the awards handed out. And I will remain engaged in future years, and get involved at the nominating stage for Hugos, with my nominations based on the writing, not the writer. And I bet that many other fans will do the same. After nominations are set, I bet that fans will look forward to and prepare for an annual set of Hugo Award nominee review/discussion dates like Oprah fans prepared for and watched Oprah Book Club. Now, wouldn’t that be cool?
I challenge the SF fan community to take the polarizing events of this past year as a wake-up call. It could be destructive or it could be an exciting opportunity to reinvigorate discussion of new SF based on its merits.
Thank you for your consideration,
Air_Dale
Larry has already encouraged people to read the nominees. All of them. Last year too. I think GRRM has said as much as well. As for reviews, well, both Larry and GRRM are very busy. I’m not sure either one has the time to do that justice (There is a reason Brad took over this year).
Now, if you can convince David Gerrold to tell people to read everything we’ll be well on our way. The Sad Puppies have been saying this all along.
You can’t move forward on a broken leg or pretend this controversy is about reading nominations.
The crew which is dedicated to turning SFF into a system of diversity hires and affirmative action while diminishing the footprint of “binary” heterosexuals, men and whites not only swept their slate at the Nebulas last year, they bragged about its lack of white men (“diversity”).
They’re still out there with their stupid pie-charts and dialogues which never took place in bullshit quotes “proving” there is a secret cabal of sexist, straight, racist, white men intent on excluding women, gays, non-whites and even the disabled from having a voice in SFF. These whites and men are formally review-censored at Tor and Lightspeed. One can only imagine the informal private collusion and discrimination since public quotes that speak to that collusion number in the hundreds if not thousands.
Nothing has changed and nor will it since WorldCon is pretending it’s not even an issue and the collusion doesn’t even exist. Not one voice in this feminist movement has backed off, quite the contrary – they are more intent than ever in applying radical feminist doctrines to every sector of core SFF they can make it stick.
When people are claiming there is a culture of straight white men who will object to receiving an award from a gay or black person but can’t show that in quotes, that’s a mental health issue of paranoia and unreasoning suspicion. When people go on public and ultimately successful rants about receiving an award from a “white dude parade” and they pretend that never happened, that’s just lying. When you can reverse that reality out, you have mental problems or problems with telling the truth.
This is not a he-said/she-said. One side is a group of mentally ill paranoiacs supported by social justice warrior do-gooders too naive to think. The other side merely wakes up and is stuffed into a non-existent oppression ideology called a white cisnormative patriarchy or wingnuts, conservatives, reactionaries and men’s rights activists.
As far as I can tell what I am being asked to do by the other side is not wake up.
And notice how no one is swarming the Hugo co-hosts in a crying fierce womanly Twitter panic though those co-hosts public remarks are far more racially and sexually hostile than the non-existant hostile remarks of Jonathan Ross. This is a insane upside-down circus from top to bottom which doesn’t know top from bottom. If anything has destroyed the Hugos it is this mad-hatter feminist movement suddenly no one can see.
James, I am not exactly sure I understand what you are saying. You seem to be equivocating a bit. Why don’t you tell us how you really feel?
David
“K Tempest Bradford retweeted Anna Hutchinson @anna_verity 23h23 hours ago White dudely authors being white and dudely and gross, get out of my life.”
“Retweeted by Kameron Hurley Mikki Kendall @Karnythia · 3h More TV, Less Self-Esteem, Except for White Boys #WeNeedDiverseMedia”
“K Tempest Bradford retweeted Jaymee Goh @jhameia · While POC are busy trying to decolonize ourselves, could white people please pull your weight and deimperialize yourselves.”
“N. K. Jemisin retweeted Anil Dash @anildash · Apr 29 Thing is, I have very sincere empathy for white people reckoning with no longer being the cultural default. You were raised on a myth.”
“Justine Larbalestier retweeted BGD @BlackGirlDanger · Here for #DiversifyAgentCarter. My partner and I love the show and it needs PoC, especially WoC, for us to keep loving and supporting it!”
“Kameron Hurley retweeted Sofia Samatar @SofiaSamatar · Dec 12 a handy how-to guide: How to Uphold White Supremacy by Focusing on Diversity and Inclusion by @kxra”
“The Book Smugglers retweeted Foz Meadows @fozmeadows · Apr 21 I am shocked that the author of Academic Exercises turns out to have been a straight white man. So shocked! Behold my shocked face.”
“Shveta Thakrar retweeted Marieke Nijkamp @mariekeyn · 1h 1 hour ago An incomplete list of things that do not actually exist in the real world: * Systematic prejudice against straight, white, cis men.”
“Twisted Spinster retweeted Joel Watson @hijinksensue · Mar 16 Someday all the straight white dudes will board the ships into the west and diminish. ‘Now begins the age of… everyone else.'”
“Cecily Kane retweeted La Di Da @lalo__stl · 20h 20 hours ago Also, men, white men, just grow the fuck up. Contrary to what everything in your life has told you so far, you’re not smarter than everyone”
Came across the Usual Suspects talking about Orson Scott Card, John C Wright, and how Tor should Do Something about them:
“Cora Buhlert @CoraBuhlert · 2m2 minutes ago
@shaunduke @eilatan I’m still surprised their editors don’t try to reign them in at least a little.”
Because censorship is the role of editors, right?
Look at the 3 SJWs involved. Were they representative of the populations around the Tigris and Euphrates in pre-history we’d still be listening to oxygen deprived hallucinating oracles telling us bits of gravel in your underclothes brings good fortune.