I wasn’t going to bother fisking the latest Article of the Week about the evils of the Sad Puppies campaign, but I figured what the hell, it’s Friday.
And when I say Article of the Week, I’m not really exaggerating. Apparently the Guardian is all worked up about Sad Puppies. A cursory Google search shows this is what the Guardian has run recently, and let me save you some time, it appears all of them run with the same racist/sexist/homophobic angry white cismale backlash narrative that’s been easily debunked since Entertainment Weekly beclowned themselves on day one.
April 6th, Are the Hugo nominees really the best sci-fi books of the year?
April 9th, George RR Martin says rightwing lobby has broken Hugo awards
April 17th, Hugo award nominees withdraw amid “Puppygate” storm
April 18th, The Hugo awards hijack is nasty and dishonest
July 20th, George RR Martin urges every true fan to rally for Hugo awards vote
July 24th, The Hugo Awards will be losers if politics take the prize.
July 27th, NK Jemisin interview (and how Sad Puppies are racist sexists blah blah blah)
Those are just the recent ones. Three years ago I set out to demonstrate that there was a left wing bias in publishing. Immediately the Guardian did their best to prove me right. Not once in three years have they spoken to anybody on my side.
And now for today’s stupid article: http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2015/jul/31/the-puppies-are-taking-science-fictions-hugo-awards-back-in-time
As usual, the original article is in italics and my responses are in bold.
The Puppies are taking science fiction’s Hugo awards back in time
That’s a really dumb title. He’s trying to say we’re dragging it back to the days when democrats were still lynching people, but it actually reads more like we’re saving the Hugos just in the nick of time (now we’re talking!).
Rightwing infiltrators unhappy at the liberal direction of modern science fiction have gamed the polling for the Hugo awards with a hateful online campaign. If they win, sci-fi loses
Funny. The only hateful online campaign I saw was the libelous smear campaign the Guardian participated in
By Adam Roberts
Never heard of the guy. Most of the Guardian’s weak ass nonsense about us usually comes from the Guardian’s Village Idiot and wannabe fiction writer, Damien Walter. But a bunch of folks sent me screen caps of Adam’s Twitter posts this morning, where he’s calling us Nazis. So you know, the usual level of professional unbiased competence we’ve come to expect from the Guardian.
The clock is ticking for the public vote in this year’s Hugo awards, which celebrate excellence in science fiction. Sixteen categories are up for grabs, from best novel to short fiction, fan writing, art and dramatic presentation, and the deadline is 31 July. But this year the prizes are not just about celebrating science-fiction – it’s political war.
It has been political war for decades. Only this time the opposition actually bothered to show up.
There’s usually a kerfuffle of one kind or another – popular authors habitually campaign for fans to vote them on to the list,
I think it is hilarious how the narrative has changed. Three years ago I said the awards were just a popularity contest with a bunch of campaigning between friends and like-minded cliques, where the author’s politics were more important than the quality of the work, and that was all sorts of outrageous. How dare I question the sanctity of the sainted Hugo process which represents the best of all fandom? How dare I openly campaign to get things nominated? How uncouth! How barbaric! But then GRRM killed that narrative when he said there’d always been campaigning. Whoops. He was also the first VIP on the other side to come out and say that the Hugos were just for one small group of people, and not all fans… Which is kind of what got me started on all this to begin with.
but 2015 has proved the biggest drama the award has ever seen. That’s because two linked online campaign groups, known as the “Sad Puppies” and their more politically extreme running mates, the “Rabid Puppies”, have been campaigning hard to register supporters and bump their preferred titles on to the shortlists.
I’m amazed that this article actually pointed out that they are two separate campaigns with different motivations. Getting something right for once, that’s like an achievement unlocked for the Guardian.
They have managed it, too: this year’s Hugos are packed with Puppies titles.
And we couldn’t have done it without all of you guys’ self-righteous gloating last time. Thanks. Seriously, Damien Walter was probably one of our best recruiting tools. And with Damien, special emphasis goes on the word tool.
There’s no avoiding the politically partisan nature of this campaign.
Well yeah, considering that it all started because I wanted to demonstrate that there was political bias in the system, duh… Sadly for you guys, we had real success when Brad took over and pushed a group of politically diverse nominees this year.
Its leading lights range from respectable rightwingers such as US authors Larry Correia
Ha! The Guardian says I’m respectable. It must be crazy upside down day! Normally Damien just fabricates scare quotes to make me sound scared of gay people.
and Brad Torgerson,
Okay, seriously. My last name has double Rs and four vowels and you can manage to spell it correctly, but none of you can spell TorgersEn?
through to those with more outlandish views such as John C Wright
By “outlandish” you mean John is a devout Catholic who actually believes Catholic doctrine and doesn’t get all mushy and apologetic about it.
and Vox Day (also known as Theodore Beale).
Who is probably disappointed you only called him outlandish.
It’s the Tea Party of contemporary US sci-fi.
Yes, because if anybody understands American conservative political movements, it is the UK’s socialist rag.
The Puppies are complaining that recent Hugo winners have been too highbrow,
Is highbrow a synonym for boring and preachy?
Curious, I searched my blog for the use of the word “highbrow”. It occurs once, in an unrelated post where a New York Times reporter uses it in an idiotic article pontificating on why Mormons haven’t produced another Shakespeare (hint, nobody has or will, because he’s Shakespeare).
and argue that winners such as Anne Leckie’s smart gender-deconstruction of space opera Ancillary Justice, or John Scalzi’s witty Star-Trek-inspired metafiction Redshirts are too experimental and literary.
The fact that instead of words like good, fun, memorable, inspiring, exciting, or imaginative you need to use terms like “gender-deconstruction” or “metafiction” to describe them might be an indicator that you’re the one out of touch with what people actually like to read.
Sure, I’ve made fun of literary, as in the sense that some books try too damned hard to be GREAT LITERACHOOR. Sad Puppies supporters are more likely to be regular readers than college English Lit guest lecturers, but I don’t know why that’s such a terrifying thing to contemplate for something that is supposed to be a fan based award.
More importantly, as Sarah Lotz says, they’re also suggesting SF has been hijacked by a conspiracy of “social justice warriors” or “SJWs”, intent on filling the genre with progressive ideological propaganda.
You guys really don’t need to keep putting Social Justice Warriors into quotes. Everybody knows the kind of folks we’re talking about. It’s mainstream. Eli Roth is making a movie where annoying SJWs get eaten by cannibals.
The Puppies’ real beef is that SF, and society as a whole, has become too feminist, too multiracial, too hospitable to gay and trans voices.
I do like how you just boldly state that’s our “real beef” despite the complete lack of evidence. I started this thing to expose left wing political bias. Brad continued it to get deserving authors (regardless of their politics) on there who weren’t part of the cliques. Yet you lazy bastards always go right back to your tired old racist/sexist/homophobic narrative.
Did you miss the part where your newspaper’s Village Idiot already crowd sourced a witch hunt to find evidence of my supposed hatemongery, and despite being a prolific political blogger for a decade they came up with nothing? Considering how we had no problem nominating people of various races, sexes, and orientations on our slate, if our secret goal is trying to keep sci-fi white and male, we must really suck at it.
Anti-SJW rhetoric, most of it proceeding from angry straight white men, has flooded online discussions.
I do like how you slip in the “most” there, totally ignoring all of the non-white/straight males who are sick of the shrieking harpies of tolerance too. Anybody with a few functioning brain cells to rub together is sick of the bitter scolds and their perpetual culture war. Whether they’re screaming at a scientist for wearing a sexist shirt, or screaming for another scientist’s job because they erroneously thought he told a sexist joke, or getting people fired for donating to the wrong political campaign, or barking at wrongfans for having wrongfun, everybody is tired of you assholes making every disagreement about sexism/racism/homophobia.
Kind of like you’re doing right here.
It’s been ugly. It’s also proving self-defeating.
Year 1, a couple of nominations. You guys flip out. More fans notice.
Year 2, several nominations. You guys have a total come apart. More fans notice.
Year 3, a sweep of the nominations. You guys run organized slander campaigns while calling every fan who thinks the awards are biased, Nazis.
Wow, yeah. That’s brilliant. Keep up the good work.
George RR Martin’s intervention, urging people to register and vote in order to defeat the plans of people he call “assholes”, has galvanised the counter-vote.
The more people involved, the better. My side isn’t the one trying to keep out any fans because they have fun wrong. I want as many fans involved as possible, because then a couple tiny little cliques can’t dominate the whole thing. The fact is the Hugo voting pool had gotten so apathetic that twenty votes could swing whole categories. No matter what happens, we’ve changed that dynamic.
We won’t find out the winners until this year’s Worldcon on 17 August, but it looks as though enough people will vote for “none of the above” over the Puppies titles, and syphon support in the direction of the non-Puppies nominees.
Don’t worry, I’m sure however it turns out you will move the goalposts so you can gloat about it and declare total victory, sort of like you guys did the last couple of years. That’s been working great for us.
What the Puppies have done is within the rules of the awards, and key figures in the movement have already declared their intention to repeat the process next year.
Yep. Kate Paulk is running it next year. I wasn’t even supposed to be involved this year until Brad dragged me back in. Arguing with an internet full of morons for months cuts into my paying writing time.
But this is larger than one set of awards. It is about the direction of science-fiction as a whole, and it poses larger cultural questions.
Note how pretentious the Guardian is about all of this. In the next few paragraphs they are going to go out of their way to demonstrate how they’ll never be content until their snooty, preachy, bossy nonsense drives off everyone who just wants to read books for the sake of reading. You can’t read for fun, you must read for SOCIAL JUSTICE. And then publishers are bewildered as fans buy fewer books and our genre shrinks, as those same consumers spend record billions on sci-fi movies and videogames.
The truth is that this year’s Hugo awards are wrecked.
The Guardian hasn’t been this upset since Hugo Chavez died.
Can you imagine anyone saying that of the Pulitzer, Man Booker, or Nobel?
Imagine? You mean like if they gave the Nobel Peace Prize to Al Gore for “weather”, Jimmy Carter for “Jews are mean”, Barack Obama for “getting elected”, and Yassir Arafat for “not killing anyone lately”? Yeah, I can’t possibly imagine how various prestigious awards could start to suck when they become dominated by politics.
Yet here we are, and if the Puppies succeed in gaming the awards again in 2016 we may as well give up on the Hugos forever.
By “gaming” I assume you mean by fans buying memberships and voting? Getting people to vote in a popularity contest… What a dastardly plot!
Now personally, when I think of “gaming the awards” I think of things like elaborate schemes to tweak the rules to keep the wrongfans out, like the various complicated systems proposed by you guys over the last few months, but those totally doesn’t count.
This is what is so frustrating about the Puppies’ campaign. Not that it has resulted in a bunch of frankly inferior works being shortlisted – although it has.
Sure, that Jim Butcher guy may be one of the most popular and successful authors on the planet, but he doesn’t write proper progressive post-colonial metafiction! However, considering you guys seem to think Damien Walter is employable as a writer, I’ll just have to take your opinion with a grain of salt.
And not that it values old-fashioned SF over more experimental, literary and progressive writing –
But what about fun? Memorable? Exciting? Thought provoking? Enjoyable? Adventurous? Compelling?
Nope. Experimental. Literary. PROGRESSIVE.
And still, the Guardian and the CHORFs can’t figure out what actually motivates the Sad Puppies supporters.
that’s a matter of taste.
Fiction is a matter of taste. Unless you disagree with the approved taste, because then it can only be because you are a racist, sexist, hatemonger neo-nazi who doesn’t want women and minorities in publishing.
What is so annoying is that it so ostentatiously turns its back on the global context out of which the best writing is happening today.
Huh? That kind of word salad nonsense may have gotten you an A on your Gender Studies thesis, but you’re writing for an (alleged) newspaper now. Tighten that shit up, dude.
There’s our favorite reporter! You know it is going to get really stupid when they’re going to the Guardian’s Village Idiot for quotes.
science fiction is currently in a golden age,
Except for that part where mainstream publishing’s sales are tanking.
“fuelled in large part by the genre’s growing diversity – to be a truly global art, it must be made by a globally diverse roster of creators”.
Just not diversity of thought, because that’s bad. Last year’s winners were like a dozen white liberals and one Asian liberal and they hailed that as a huge win for diversity. I saw a thing somewhere, can’t remember the link but somebody went through the last 20 years of the Hugo awards and of the 266 winners, 19 went to conservatives. I don’t know if those numbers are accurate, but that’s probably close.
Now the Guardian will just say that’s because conservatives are just stupid poopy heads who don’t write proper literary experimental progressive metafiction or whatever pseudo-intellectual wanker terms they’re calling it today, but half of America is like, well no wonder that award winning stuff seemed so obnoxious.
So the Guardian’s snob clique would have us believe that a fan popularity award, that’s supposed to be decided by fans, and voted on by fans, is ruined if fans vote for what fans actually purchase, enjoy, and read… And that instead the award needs to keep going to edgy progressive socially conscious LITRACHEWER that ranks somewhere in the top five million and has two and a half stars on Amazon.
Opening the genre to writers from outside the US and UK, making welcome a greater diversity of voices, has broadened and strengthened science fiction.
Except that the Hugo is an ENGLISH LANGUAGE AWARD, you pretentious dolt. The ENGLISH TRANSLATION of the Chinese novel Three Body Problem is up for best novel right now. (It ended up 3rd on my personal ballot. I believe the Villainous Vox Whom the Guardian Hates Above All put it 1st on his).
The Guardian should be careful what they wish for though. I’ve been up for best novel in France. 😀
Conversely, narrowing that pool of talent would only weaken it.
But the Guardian thinks narrowing the WorldCon voting pool is super awesome.
Compare the Man Booker prize, the longlist of which has just been announced. For its first decade, the Booker (as it then was) threw up some pretty insular, white, middle-class dominated shortlists.
Why is it that the only people who care about an author’s race are the ones who keep accusing everybody else of being motivated by race?
Then, following the win for Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children in 1981, the prize opened up: through the 1980s and 1990s and into the present century it regularly rewarded post-colonial writing and other international experiences, and the slates of shortlisted titles were richer and more enduring as a result.
So enduring that most people have never heard of any of them. Oh, wait. Skimming the list, there’s the one they made into that movie with the tiger.
The prize woke up to the reality of global literature. The Hugos are decades behind in that regard, and the Puppies want to drag it back further.
Nope. We don’t care if the book was written in China, India, or on the moon. We care if it is good or not.
Considering that the Hugo awards hadn’t even ever nominated a single work of media tie in fiction until Sad Puppies came along, I don’t know where the hell you’re getting this idea that the insular little inbred cliques were combing the whole world for worthy new talent before. Hell, I believe the first ever INDY PUBLISHED novel nomination came from Sad Puppies, and you expect that little cliquish circle jerk of friends who’ve been taking turns giving each other awards, to suddenly teach themselves Spanish in order to check out the best sci-fi from Uruguay?
This whole train of thought is just a stupid diversion. The Guardian is just being its normal snooty self. Look at us, we read MOAR GLOBALLY (no, actually, they probably don’t. From inaccuracies in previous articles about various classics we’re already pretty sure Damien skates by reading Wikipedia synopsis of books and then pretending to be well read).
Science fiction, if it is about anything, is about hospitality to otherness,
Just not conservatives or libertarians, because screw those guys.
to the alien and the unusual, about freeing one’s mind and boldly going where no one has been before. It is, centrally, about diversity. Locking out women writers, writers of colour, gay and trans writers does a violence to the heart of the genre.
That concluding paragraph is just regurgitated tripe. We’re not the ones trying to lock out anyone. Female, “writers of colour” (oh how I hate that stupid racist term), gay, trans, left handed ginger pygmy wolf-riding garden squirrels, WE DON’T CARE. Write books. Entertain people. Fans get to judge books by the content of their pages rather than the author’s bio. Then give the really good ones awards.
This isn’t exactly rocket science, not that you jackasses didn’t literally try to make actual fucking rocket science all about sexism too.
If the Puppies win, nobody wins.
No. The Puppies would win. That’s sort of what the word win means, dumbass. 🙂
YAY! At last! The cognoscenti are letting me be respectable! (chortle)
Don’t worry. We will not hold that slur (coming from where Damien is good) against you. You will be back to evil when they are not comparing you to Vox and that evil Papist. /sarc
. . . but not respectable enough to have your name spelled correctly. . .
No, Brad TorgersOn is respectable. You’re still a meany! 🙂
Brad TorgersOn is my straw-man stunt double. He’s had the stuffing (literally) beaten out of him this season. (laughter)
Brad TorgersOn makes progressives have epileptic seizures, every time he unzips his pants to use the bathroom.
Brad TorgersOn once got into a punching argument with a garbage truck, and the garbage truck lost.
Brad TorgersOn likes to hang out down by the homeless shelter and steel grocery carts from the lame and infirm.
Brad TorgersOn gave a room full of people cancer, merely by thinking about taking up smoking.
Brad TorgersOn once walked by a dormitory full of womens studies majors, and the next day they all suddenly wanted to get boyfriends, marry, and have children.
Brad TorgersOn was dropped lone-man into Syria to fight ISIS, and was declared emperor of the Levant.
Brad TorgersOn would run for President, but says it doesn’t pay enough.
Brad TorgersOn was on a cruise ship when it broke down, so he took the anchor in his teeth and swam the ship back to port.
Brad TorgersOn has so many tabs over the shoulder of his uniform, they go up his neck and across the top of his patrol cap.
Brad TorgersOn once picked up a hippo at the zoo, and used it to beat an elephant to death.
Brad TorgersOn is the reason why there isn’t world peace.
Brad TorgersOn causes polar bears to cry.
Brad TorgersOn is the man behind MSNBC’s low ratings.
Brad TorgersOn brushes his teeth with plutonium paste.
Wherever he goes, Brad TorgersOn is heralded by a chorus of howling dogs and wailing crones.
Brad TorgersOn has stopped sleeping entirely so he can spend his nights researching ways to turn himself into a peanut and poison Snickers bars.
Brad TorgersOn is prophesied to devour TNH at Ragnarok. But will he have destroyed her…or *become* her?
I may hate Brad TorgersOn, but I respect him!
Well, his surname means “Son of Thor’s Spear”, after all . . .
-If you say “Brad TorgersOn” out loud, horses will whinny.
Every night Chuck Norris checks under his bed for Brad TorgersOn
Well, damn. We need to set up a fund to send Brad TorgersOn on a walking tour by every women’s dorm in North America.
Oh, and I’m pretty sure the elephant he beat to death was actual an SJW with a Womens Studies degree.
Just places like Hillsdale.
Do we really want the ones from Columbia reproducing if we can help it?
So was the hippo.
Your name could become a verb for perseverance: Brad torgers on and on and on…
Chuck Norris takes a look at Brad TorgersOn’s accomplishments and says, “Dude! Can I buy you a cold beer?”
(O.K., I couldn’t resist temptation. Just hope I haven’t started a meme….)
I heard that TorgersOn was actually the offspring of a terminator and the female Thor, and he was sent back in time as a subversive plot to eliminate those who would promote true social equality in preparation for the rise of an anti-messiah, personified by a cybernetic Dick Cheney.
Hail Emperor TogersOn!
Question: why are the lame and infirm leaving their steel grocery carts near the homeless shelter? And what happens to their plastic ones?
(Unless the steel grocery carts belong to a homeless smelter? 😉 )
I keep trying to combine “Torg” (Sluggy Freelance) and “Ersin” (an ancestral family name).
Consider this an apology in advance…
You also Brad. Great job.
At your service, sir. (bows)
Don’t let it go to your head. You are still a meanie.
Don’t worry. Respectable people can sometimes write well too.
Eli Roth already made the SJW cannibal movie. It just hasn’t been released in the US yet. He did feature it in a theater overseas I believe two years ago.
I hope he goes all Bear Jew and the bat scene from Inglorius Basterds on them. (actually, as a horror movie nerd, I’ve liked Eli Roth since Cabin Fever. He’s got style).
I generally don’t give two shits about horror movies, and *I* want to see this one.
Of course, since SJWs are being chowed down upon by what I’m sure are misunderstood products of a capitalistic society or something, I’m in for this one. 😀
Judging bu the trailers, the SJW college students in THE GREEN INFERNO have a terrible plane crash after doing a publicity stunt to “save the rain forest”, then get mistaken for invaders by one of the indigenous uncontacted tribes in the crash area. A tribe that sees invaders as needing a special (shall we say) punishment.
No plans to see it (cannibalism flicks aren’t my thing) but reviews seem to be generally positive.
Er, ^BY the trailers, even.
it’s not a horror movie. It’s a heartwarming musical comedy.
Eli Has me at cannibals eating SJWs. 😀 Oh glorious day.
So when does Larry do an MHI story about a group of college SJWs being farmed by a University run by vampires?
Burn the little idiots for $300k each in student loans, farm them for blood, and send them to at Starbucks afterwards as recruiter-zombies.
Paging Patricia Briggs, please pick up the white courtesy phone. 🙂
Seriously, Larry, if you think the Los Alamos Team has its hands full, you don’t know enough about the cubic kilometer of high level radioactive waste left over at Hanford from plutonium production during WWII and the Cold War.
Just sayin’…..
I can see it now. The zombie villager is preparing and SJW in a boiling pot of water, and exclaims to the villagers in a Cheech voice “Dude, this chicks got balls!”
Villagers go on rampage to get all the rest of them.
Since we don’t have any Posle’en handy, this will have to do.
Can you tell the difference between the hive minders and the zombies? That’s good film making there…
SJWs don’t have a problem with cannibals. After all, all cultures are equal.
SJW’s thrive on cannibalism.
@Jonathan, not quite. After all, Christian white men are obviously the worst culture ever. Other than that, yeah, all cultures are evil.
E. M. Forester already previsioned a stand-in for Scalzi and his daffy wrong-way internet Solomon’s a hundred years ago. The stand-in character was named “Vashti.”
For next year…if you were a newspaper, my love. You could lie with impunity
I’d pay to read Larry’s riff on “If You Were a Journalist, My Love”. Then again, I’d pay to read Larry’s shopping list; you know it would have some interesting stuff on it.
Well, I don’t know about Correia’s shopping list, but if you want to read Wright’s grocery list, it’s available here: http://www.scifiwright.com/2015/04/13896/
Ganked from a private forum (with permission):
In 2013 the Guardian was saying “the Hugo science fiction awards are voted on by the public. In an often elitist genre, this has to be a good thing”
But in 2015 it’s “this year’s Hugo awards are wrecked” because the elitists didn’t control the ballot.
Um, yeah. heavy goalposts. The shifting is showing up on seismographs at the National Earthquake Information Center.
But the Hugos have NEVER been voted on by “the public.” They’re voted on by a tiny number of fee-paying members of a smallish fan convention.
What I get out of this is that the voting numbers are leaking and the Hugo folks are panicking.
More like perhaps the voting sides are leaking. The number of memberships-especially supporting- are openly indicated on the Sasquan website and people who wish to be openly listed are listed there, like myself.
I guess my days of not taking the Guardian seriously are certainly coming to a middle.
The Guardian is a serious way to wrap dead fish, clean windows, and start fires.
Dryer lint is better for starting fires.
Only red salmon, red snapper, and left-sided flatfish, though.
Hey, red snapper is yummy.
Geesh. You leave out so many other-colored snappers.
It’s better for fertilizing a garden, although it sometimes kills the plants. And the insects. I would only use it for starting fires if you like the smell of burning BS.
I think the windows would just come out messier.
Beat me to it, dang it.
As a conservative-leaning libertarian author of popular sci-fi and fantasy, you have no idea how heartening it is to realize the entire world hasn’t gone insane. Keep up the good work, Larry, Brad, et al.
At your service, Rob! (bows again)
This is why the SJW’s are completely flipping out. For decades they’ve confused the natural human tendency to not embarrass people by calling them out on their stupidity with actual agreement. Now that they’ve gone so far that normal people feel obligated to call them out, they’re wondering why suddenly nobody agrees with them. And they’ve invested so much self-esteem in being a “right-thinking” sort that they view disagreement as a personal attack.
Heh. You were the answer to a reference question today. Small world.
“Imagine? You mean like if they gave the Nobel Peace Prize to Al Gore for “weather”, Jimmy Carter for “Jews are mean”, Barack Obama for “getting elected…”
In truth, the Nobel Peace prize during those years went to individuals who were vocal in criticism of George W. Bush. Gore got it as a consolation prize for losing to Bush (and suing and loudly complaining about it for years afterward), Jimmeh Cahteh won it for Bush-bashing during the Iraq war, and Barack Obama won it for not being Bush, basically. They were going to award it to the guy who threw a shoe at Bush in Baghdad, but unfortunately the shoe missed, so no win for you, Achmed…
Not all of it was explicitly because of being anti-Bush. Remember Gorbachev getting it in 1990? You know, right before he sent all those tanks rolling over the Baltic states. Maybe his representative at Oslo hitched a ride on a military convoy along the way. 😛
I would argue that it goes back further than that. Consider Teddy Roosevelt’s prize for ending the war in Manchuria. In one fell swoop, he helped engineer a policy that weakened Russia to the point that it destabilized in less than a decade and gave Japan the momentum to become a global power.
Throw in the cases Larry cited and the fact that at one point, they were trying to get the artist formerly known as Bradley Manning nominated for it and I have to wonder if the award has ever been relevant.
The problem with the Nobel Peace Prize is that it’s hard to write off entirely because every now and then they give it to someone who really deserves it. They give it to Yassir Arafat and Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama, and you figure, “Okay, this is actually the Nobel Hating the West Prize.” But then they give it to Liu Xiaobo, and the money and prestige of the prize go to publicizing a cause that’s worthy. And you think, “Huh? How did THAT happen?”
Your argument appears to support Lotto as a better method to award peace prizes.
Insufficient opportunities for graft. To coin a phrase.
And we should not forget the Pulitzer being awarded to Walter Duranty for not reporting on the Russian famine that killed more than 5 million Ukrainians.
Which prize, it should be mentioned, The New York Times has declined to return.
If you are looking for sanity in the peace prize, you have to start by excluding all the years the committee was headed by Jagland. He started out as an old-school communist and is widely known as “the most puzzling politician in Norwegian history”. That’s an euphemism for not entirely sane methinks.
If I were to buy a supporting membership TODAY, would I be able to vote in the Hugos?
It is closed.
There’s always next year.
The Guardian (GRAUNTIHEAD!) translated: democracy is only awesome as long as its all diverse and stuffs! Because the globals and the things and the peoples and the diversity, and oh, diversying and things because progressive and other bunches of whatever, until ordinary people actually vote, at which point democracy is BAD and we HAVE TO DO SOMETHING but it’s too late because Puppies ruined everything, so we’re going to sit here at our little newspaper of shit, and sulk.
Forrrrrrrr what it’s worth,
Yes, democracy is supposed to be representative and diverse. That you fail to see how a voting block representing the will of a few over the many is problematic is your problem, not anybody else’s.
Oh good. We agree. Let’s bring in lots more voting blocks then. 🙂
I already had this discussion with GRRM. He says it was diverse before we came along. To my people it looked like an Eskimo with a thousand words for snow. It all looked like snow to us.
Only if you believe that the voting bloc is composed of meat robots executing the will of another without any volition of their own. You fail to consider that the bloc members joined and act for REASONS OF THEIR OWN.
This^ I mean it’s like the idiots really have had botched lobotomies! How hard is it to grasp that if people vote a certain way, it isn’t because they are fleshy automatons, but because they actually felt like voting that way. A bunch of people agreeing and voting similarly isn’t “cheating” for facks sake. It’s fracking *democracy* damn it! If the idjits like “SJWnumbers” and “Space Faring Kitten” and “Cat” wanted to get people to vote “their” way, all they had to do was advertise the Hugos *themselves*! Oh, wait…they kinda did! In widely read “news” providers, even. And, the result? More folks for our “side” inasmuch as it is a side. I love it when assholes’ plans backfire on them.
One of the things I pointed out on multiple sites, but that was routinely ignored, was that the book bombs for non-novel fiction likely had as distorting an effect on the vote as any consciously lockstep voting efforts did, if not more.
The book bombs sold a *lot* of copies of the novellas.
https://monsterhunternation.com/2015/02/19/book-bomb-success-behold-the-power-of-sad-puppies/
Anecdotally, a lot of people were likely in the category I was, of people who mostly read novels, so were judging not “are these the best five of the hundred novellas I read this year” but “are these novellas which I have read worthy of the award”.
Which theory explains the nomination variance for novella (145 to 338) a lot better than the lockstep theory does.
They have to ignore the huge numbers produced by my Book Bombs because it goes against their narrative that my people just do what I say and didn’t actually read any of the works.
Beautifully done, sir! But whether any of this will matter for long depends in part in “keeping up the skeer.” This year’s successes are gratifying, but they must not be our last.
Sad Puppies 4 is already in the works. 🙂
Sad Puppies 4ever?
May it be a Fantastic 4!
Sad Puppies 4 life (NWO signs)
Adam Roberts is best known in the sci-fi community as “that guy who’s unable to comprehend Greg Egan’s novels.”
http://gregegan.customer.netspace.net.au/INCANDESCENCE/Z/Hatchet.html
..and don’t forget (I wish I could) his attempt at showing everyone how SciFi SHOULD be written with his horrible nigh-unreadable (I couldn’t finish it), living in orbital communities, novel that had folks dragging mile long nano-tube hoses through the atmosphere to get oxygen…
that had folks dragging mile long nano-tube hoses through the atmosphere to get oxygen…
Wouldn’t those be called anchors? Because the drag from them will pull them out of orbit.
Yep, and that is completely ignoring the incredibly powerful pumps that would be required (but not used) to actually pull a measurable airflow through a nanotube (a molecule or two at a time). But hey, he did have them using two (good air in, bad air out). Fortunately, he checked off enough SJW boxes to win a prestigious literary award…
I’m okay with the SJW’s ruining the Hugos, because the Hugo award has become the mark of ‘Don’t buy this book, it SUCKS!’
Which means more people buy my books instead 🙂
Though I do wish I had the advertising budget of some of these places.
I can’t wait until the day the articles are all about how they need to take back Science Fiction from the Puppies….
Well, that’s the amusing part about watching progressives construct an argument. They forever own the future — it is always theirs, for all time — but the present is endlessly besieged by a clamoring horde of (insert bad people here) so the progressives have to “Fight the Man!” even though they are The Man (they run the media, much of the government, much of the education system, as well as Hollywood) and everybody who doesn’t toe the progressive party line is (by default) a nasty ist filled with ism, because the way progressives prove they are for diversity is by obsessing about ethnicity, sexuality, and gender like a Westboro Baptist on steroids. So, in a nutshell, progressivism is always awesome (even when it sucks) and the future is always getting more and more progressive (ignoring the actual tug and sway of historical ideological oscillation) because destiny is a forever-ascending ramp upward to progressive nirvana. A place the rest of us call totalitarian Marxist hell.
This, Sir.
This is argueably one of the best explanations of the Socialist Justice Weasels, and their attitudes, that I have ever read.
Magnificently well done, sir. Thank you.
P.S. Would it be too great to hope, that you might be able to attend V-Con 40, this October, in Vancouver, B.C.?
The leading Guest-of-Honour is Joe Haldeman this year, and the scheduled Master of Ceremonies is none other than Spider Robinson.
Cheers!
Thanks, Grayson! Alas, I am deployed with the U.S. military right now, enjoying a tour in the sunny Middle East. I won’t be back in the States until next year some time. I did used to live in Seattle, though. Vancouver was a hop, skip, and a jump north of us. Lovely town. Victoria too.
Oh, well. I tried. But thank you nonetheless.
Incidentally, If you are attending a Sci-Fi oriented convention anywhere, I’ll be easy to find – I’m the short guy wearing khaki Nomex coveralls with a little nametape that reads, “Hammer’s Regt.”
While I’m not Brad, I do conventions and give great panels and seminars. My October con this year has a schedule conflict. If you’re at Sasquan, look me up.
Copy all. Thank you.
Well of course. The inevitability of the course of history is straight out of Marx. I don’t think Marx would recognize their particular hell, but that part they did get.
Nope. We don’t care if the book was written in China, India, or on the moon.
Although honestly, a book written on the moon would get a second look from me.
I don’t care how good a book written on the moon is, I’m ordering it just to have the postmark on the envelope!
XD Yeah, can you imagine a Pluto Publishing house?
…There might be a humorous story there…
I think that the CHORFs would move in one to the outermost ‘real’ planet to publish their stuff.
Another Quality Publication from Uranus…
Aaaaaand, once you finish the book, you can use it for lavatory paper…;)
(sorry. I just couldn’t resist that kind of cheap shot.)
Theiranus
Yeh, but people would just say it’s not a real planetary publisher.
*is busy scribbling down ideas*
You, too?
…but then others would mention how Ceres Publishing got a promotion out of the whole fracas. 😉
They publish dark fiction. It’s good, but the cost of expedited shipping?!? Yowch.
There was a Uranus-themed imprint but it wasn’t family-friendly, if you know what I mean…
Since Pluto is no longer a planet and therefore a minority, the SJWs would love it.
Geez. “Pretentious” hardly scratches the surface to describe this strutting little prig. What a sack of ignorant, foolish, twisted lies. But then, he’s a perfect example of the perfect SJW, and above all…SJW’s ALWAYS LIE. Rabid Puppy here. Thank you for all you do Larry, and thank you for all your great books. I will continue to buy them forever! :–)
NK Jemisin is a she, Einstein.
Do “SJW’s” (sic) lie even when they say something you agree with?
But Adam Roberts, *who wrote the article being fisked*, is a he.
Kind of missed the whole point of the Leckie books, didn’t you?
If by accident a social justice whore says something that a real person agrees with, he scrapes his tongue out with a fork to ensure that it can never happen again.
Neil, you do know that if you want to call us out on not doing our research, you first need to do your research.
Yes.
Thanks for pointing that out, Sherlock.
I enjoy the idea that SJWs are supposedly “progressives” who think outside the box. Can you think of any less eccentric more conservative preppies in macrame sweaters than Scalzi, Leckie, Cory Doctorow, Hines, Hurley and Kowal? And what kind of a crass fool like Walter goes to India to ensure an internet connection and sits on Twitter all day? That’s like ordering lobster and a side dish of mashed potatoes and throwing away the lobster, or going to Guatemala for the bowling allies. I’d be surprised if this crew of Hell’s Angels literati has a traffic ticket between them or ever jaywalked. To attract writers with the stature of Roberts and Berlatsky I’m guessing The Guardian issues vouchers for stretch socks at the Odds N’ Sods pound store.
It’s the Grauniad. What else would you expect?
Love this quote: “It has been political war for decades. Only this time the opposition actually bothered to show up.”
*applause*
What a masterful display of scorn – I bow to the master.
“We won’t find out the winners until this year’s Worldcon on 17 August, but it looks as though enough people will vote for “none of the above” over the Puppies titles, and syphon support in the direction of the non-Puppies nominees.”
So… is he happy that Vox has gotten the SJWs to do his work for him, or is he just stupid?
“Science fiction, if it is about anything, is about hospitality to otherness, to the alien and the unusual, about freeing one’s mind and boldly going where no one has been before. It is, centrally, about diversity. ”
I mean, I was always under the impression that it’s fiction based on scientific concepts. One of my college professors wrote a hard sci-fi novel about a miniature black hole traveling back and forth through the Earth’s crust. I’m not sure what that has to do with diversity as a central aspect.
“One of my college professors wrote a hard sci-fi novel about a miniature black hole traveling back and forth through the Earth’s crust.”
Sounds interesting. Link?
I know I’ve read probably half a dozen books with that premise, but the two that come to mind are David Brin’s Earth, and Gregory Benford’s Eater. I believe both have been college professors, and Benford still currently is.
Greg Bear’s Forge of God also comes to mind, but I don’t think he was ever a professor.
That would be ‘Earth’. The black hole in ‘Eater’ was full-sized, intelligent, and never hit the Earth.
I think it might be Artifact by Gregory Benford. It had a microscopic black hole trapped in, well, a Artifact. been a while since I read it but I remember not really liking it that much.
Also apropos, “The Hole Man,” by Larry Niven. From a time when a Hugo award still meant something.
Sorry, I should have mentioned the title 🙂
The Krone Experiment: http://www.amazon.com/The-Krone-Experiment-Craig-Wheeler-ebook/dp/B008Y6L3VW
Thanks. The suggestions from people trying to guess what book you meant look interesting too, so your vagueness was actually pretty useful.
“I’m not sure what that has to do with diversity as a central aspect.”
Oh gee, Andy, you’re not paying attention. ‘World ends; women, minorities hit hardest.’
Sounds like “Star Bright” by Martin Caidin, except Caidin was never a professor that I know of.
I actually don’t have any gripe with that particular statement. It’s why the gawd awful stuuupid claims that ye olde science fiction was so white-insular are so frustrating and absurd. Science fiction is not just about the alien and unusual, about “hospitality to otherness”, it always has been, it always was. To supposedly bring science fiction *back* to a time that was not about “hospitality to otherness”, about the alien and unusual, is to bring science fiction back to something that by definition can’t be science fiction.
In other words, the author disproves his own claim in two sentences.
When people complain about what has seemingly been lost in science fiction they’re generally complaining of a *loss* of the sense of otherness in science fiction, the loss of “weird tales”, the loss of the sensawunder, the loss of the alien. And, of course, the loss of triumph, victory, adventure, and futurism with an actual, by golly, *future*.
And yet, despite their ‘BUT THERE IS NOTHING NEW ANYMOREEEE’ … people get excited about Pluto being seen. And the possibility that there may be subsurface tectonics and warmth in that oh so distant sphere… perhaps even life.
The ones who complain about being supposedly usurped by the return of wonder are the ones who have nothing to do with the wonder, but instead nitpick about the fact that there are mosquitoes in the new world. Y’know, like the stupid bitch who complained about the scientist’s shirt instead of the fact he landed a satellite on a FREAKING COMET.
The ones who complained about the achiever are the ones who themselves have achieved nothing.
Well done, as always! I voted, now wondering if it will count! I put Three Body Problem #1. Sorry… 🙂
You’ve joined Beale in your estimation; do you want to be accused of being in league with the Dark One? (chortle) No worries, man! Puppies is radically egalitarian. Vote your likes. That’s the first and last word in Puppydom.
personally I didn’t care much for it. the story was plodding and full of depressing history, then ‘solved’ by mcguffin after mcguffin.
I like it a lot, and made it #2. But Skin Game was great for three reads, and so was #1 on my ballot.
There was a solution?
This, in spades. Had some novel ideas, but really not a great book.
Brad,
How is SP3 “radically egalitarian” if you created a slate, exactly? Real question. You can’t tell people to vote for specific works then say “vote your likes.”
Help me out on clarifying this one.
Easy, and already answered a bunch of times. We put up suggestions. People did what they want.
If you look through the Puppy supporters online, very few of them followed the slate exactly while nominating, and for the finals people are voting for whatever they personally think is best.
I’m shocked, SHOCKED! to find a lefty’s question based on an invalid premise.
It’s because he carved dark runes on a ghoul-haunted tombstone carried by Sasquatch to the dread pyramid of Ichlichlichlichlichel where he said “hey guys, i’ve got some suggestions for deserving hugo nominations. Why don’t you read them and if you agree add them to your noms.”
And then we turned out in droves for spporting memberships, and all it took was at least a third to half of our noms overlapping Brad Torgersen’s and Bob’s your uncle, fanny’s your aunt, the campaign to end puppy-related sadness warms little canine hearts all the way down the ballot.
Dark One! I command you by the power of the dagger to give me more readable SF!
SJWs attack ONLY straight white males as an entire group.
100 million SWM say “What the hell’s going on?”
SJW confirmation America and SFF is a white male racist supremacy of compulsory heterosexuality.
Conclusion: SJWs are a Rainbow KKK of dullard internet shut-ins which makes millions of dollars for drug companies due to shared mass hysteria over nothing.
There’s a spot on the web where folks can play “Stormfront or SJW?” And when people legitimately can only tell you apart from honest-to-hitler white supremacists by the race and sex of your targets, you’re well and truly messed up.
That’s why I’m looking forward to the writing controversies panel at WorldCon. You can watch civilization die in microcosm that night, just like they’ve gutted SFF in only 4 years.
I nominate James as the ultimate anti-SJW paladin.
The Hugos are going to be a political chew toy forever, mostly because Worldcon is tiny and inbred.
What I’d like to see is a new award – say, the “Gernsback”, administered by an entirely different organization. Heck, make it the deviants the trufans cast out: Comicon.
The “Gerny”? Hmmm, it has a ring to it; because everyone would be unconsciously reminded of Gurney Halleck, from Dune, and Gurney is the shit. I like it.
I think we need The Puppies.
We might do that some day but be aware that IIRC the idea of a “Gernsback” was floated on a puppy kicker’s blog as a way to derail us. http://whatever.scalzi.com/2015/04/20/keeping-up-with-the-hugos-42015/
“Mood? What has mood to do with it? You fight when the necessity arises — no matter the mood! Mood’s a thing for cattle or making love or playing the baliset. It’s not for fighting”
Considering the opposition in this case operates off pure emotion, the following quote of Gurney could be extremely applicable. Especially if you substitute fighting for writing.
There actually is one – Forrest J. Ackerman created it to fill in the period between 1926 and 1953, when the Hugos were started. I don’t recall whether they got beyond the first year, though, in awarding them.
I asked this question once on another forum and never got a straight answer:
I’m a white/hetro/male/Christian. At this point why should I even bother trying to write and publish something? I’m just going to get pigeonholed into a “niche genre” like Mil-Fic, or Christian lit *if I’m lucky*.
Even if I were to write “all the right things” (post colonial, etc), then I’m still a white/etc and I’m expected to willingly submit to the “back of the bus” because there’s “too many like me” in the field.
So why should I bother?
“So why should I bother?”
Because the gatekeepers are less important in this age of self-publishing and digital distribution than they’ve ever been.
Write indie. If the Puppies are about anything, it’s how little control the pigeon ‘holes have over what is published, purchased, perused, and praised.
Those are both fair points. It is just hard for me to feel like I would be opening myself up to a whole lot of grief for very little recognition on the other end. I’d have to put up with the SJWs and CHORFs slagging me on my own page for my supposed sins (just for existing let alone for what I might write) without ever having an honest shot at winning the acclaim of my chosen industry.
Maybe it’s shallow of me, but I’d like to think that if I were good enough, I could win a Nebula or a Hugo in a honest contest.
Do you actually want to write a book? I’m getting a lot of ‘it’s not worth it’ from your comments; but no feeling that you’ve written something, are currently writing something, or are even planning to write something.
“without ever having an honest shot at winning the acclaim of my chosen industry”
Screw the “industry”, aim to win the acclaim of your readers.
I’m a finalist – Best Related Work.
Not only was I nominated on Brad’s recommendation list…
I sold work to Vox Day.
I was also on Vox’s list.
I’ve also been called, by several people on the “other side” a “refreshingly non-ideological voice” and “the only thing worth reading in Riding the Red Horse.”
If you can at least match the quality of The Hot Equations, you too can be the one mentioned with nose pinched shut. And thus, hope abounds…
I had to give you #1 on that one. Hating it all the while, you clobber so much neat stuff. (Although I did write in my notes while deciding that you missed 1) effect of distance on just how much heat signal strength you get; and 2) possible ways to hide a heat signature – like following a comet in.)
he actually did talk about these things. following a comet in takes years, and only hides you from one direction. If there are sensors around the system, they will see you from the other direction.
As for distance reducing the signature, it’s still huge compared to the background and so much closer than starts that the lower signature will still stand out.
I think you are confusing “Hot Equations” with the story “Turncoat” re: mention of “stealth” by following the comet. (My #1 pick in the shorts, by the way.)
Multiple sensors, yes. Particularly ones giving you a parallax, which is crucial to tell the position in three dimensions (and thereby size, etc., as was discussed). For current and near-term propulsion, he is spot on – no way to hide the flare from a plume of exhaust. Long-term? If the “EM Drive” pans out, that is a different animal (although I am not sanguine about the claims that it violates “current laws of physics” to obtain the observed thrust).
There are ways now to “shape” the thermal signature to direct the majority of the radiated signal in a desired direction. With a reasonably narrow emission cone, the defender will need a very dense sensor network – which is more and more difficult to achieve as you increase the volume. This is not to say that you won’t know the bad guys are there before they come screaming in on Ceres Base, but they could be detected too late to move your forces; that is quite sufficient for a successful attack to be launched.
Note that I still voted the piece #1 – because it forces the author that reads it to understand the science. No casual surprise attacks – the writer has to put some skull sweat into the scenario. (Which is precisely why the SJW beloved authors hate it. All that science stuff gets in the way of the “story” they want to tell, about injustice and victims and the end of gender…)
Write because you love to write.
No one can stop you from doing that much except you.
If you desire to write, write with everything in your heart, with the best work you can manage, then go further. That alone is worth it. Ignore the CHORFS’s complaints. THEY are some of the best press you can get, I promise. For every time they screech about how bad you are, there will be someone who will be like “? Wonder what they’re screaming about.”
Your passions should not be determined by the opinions of those who hate you,
If you want recognition, perfect cold fusion or cure cancer. Writers write.
“perfect cold fusion”
I canna change the laws of physics, Cap’n!
🙂
“But I’ll find ye a loophole!”
Interesting. I thought NASA was suppose to be providing outreach to a certain religious group.
Last week, I was considering a book. The Amazon reviews put it in my tablet. Oh, not the 5 stars, but a lonely little 1 star. The reviewer ranted that the book was not PC enough, that the main character (a 13 yo girl with an inferiority complex) worried that she would never be as pretty as her new friends. Bought it then and the sequel a couple days later. Write what you need to write. Don’t worry about the Hugo, Nebula, Christie, or anything else. If you can’t not write, then write.
If you’re doing SF/F, there are still a few venues left which won’t expect you to bow and scrape. BAEN for novels, obviously, but I also highly recommend Analog magazine, and Orson Scott Card’s InterGalactic Medicine Show. And of course, the Wild Wild West of indie publishing is always there for you. Guy named Andy Weir indie published a book about a Robinson Crusoe situation on Mars. Now Ridley Scott’s made a movie from it. Nice things can happen for a nice book in indie. (grin)
Tough love time; grow a pair. C’mon, if Larry thought the same way we wouldn’t have MHI or the Grimnoir Chronicles, or his Dead Six novels. Hell, I stumbled on to his books one day, and now I’ll buy anything and everything he writes. Not only that, I’ve found several authors that I really enjoy based on his recommendations (I’m looking at you, Brad), and I’ll buy anything THEY write.
If you have a story to tell, tell it. Heck, when it’s ready, post something here and I’ll buy it to check it out. If it’s good, it will sell. You never know, you may be the next Larry Corriea.
You should bother if you have something to say worth hearing. Do you?
White/hetro/male/Christian authors do still get publishing contracts too.
As for the rest, so long as your readers are happy, who cares what a small club of obsessive neurotics thinks of you?
Self-publishing is easy these days, and if you have a piece you wrote that you feel strongly that you want people to read, get it out there. If you don’t want to be pigeon-holed, don’t focus on your personal attributes but on your writing. You have more control over this if you self-publish. I was just listening to someone who had a deal with a big-name publisher for his non-fiction book who got set up for a book signing with SJWs who attacked him immediately. You can pick your venues and marketing better if you go indie.
I gave up years ago on the industry for a number of reasons but decided last year to jump in the fray since I now have a platform and self-publishing is easy. I dug out some old manuscripts I could polish up and put out there as I was preparing my new horror novel, which I’m now doing a marketing blitz for. Marketing is key in any case, and I found a good book by Jodee Blanco, The Complete Guide to Book Publicity. I have to agree from my own networking to get my book details out that local is the way to go and is often overlooked. I made up postcards with brief book descriptions on them to hand to people I meet when I think someone might be interested. The important thing is to think outside of the box.
Good luck to you, and don’t let anyone tell you that you shouldn’t try.
https://icepinepalace.wordpress.com/
Because Amazon. You asked the wrong question. What you are trying to ask is, “why should I bother trying to be published by a traditional publishing company?” The answer is, you shouldn’t. If the question is “why should I bother writing?” the answer is because traditional publishing companies are obsolete and don’t matter.
The hardest thing you will encounter as a writer is to actually write. Get that two thousand, one thousand or even five hundred words on the page every single day. The second hardest thing is to find a good critique group to help you polish your writing. They have to pummel you for switching POV, harass you when you ‘tell’, and restrain you when you’re infodumping. They have to praise you when offer some great metaphor , create an awesome character, or show a nice bit of background.
One time my critique group told me I was infodumping too much. Annoyance filled me. “It’s only three paragraphs. David Weber would have thirty pages.” Then another member brought a rewrite of a scene to critique group. She said, “I hated that first draft, far too much exposition.” The rewrite was awesome, totally made the scene come alive on the page. I figured ‘Anything thing she can do….’ so I tried it with the offending scenes. Same damn thing. Much better scene, more characterization, more conflict. A good critique groups not only find you’re vs your, they can push you to be a better writer. Get one ASAP.
Potential awards are your last problem as a beginning writer. In one of his essays critical to sad puppies, Eric Flint lists a whole bunch of writers who never won a hugo, including Keith Laumer, Fred Saberhagen, Jack Williamson, Andre Norton, and many others. If you can match those guys, you’re doing fine, with or without awards.
“should I even bother trying to write and publish something?”
The better question is: do you have a story to tell?
Make sure you tell it the best you can. That’s all that matters in the end.
Larry, your political rants are what compelled me to buy your paying work… so don’t stop now.
And here I thought it was the bloody message fiction that was the problem.
Two things, the first of which has been said many times by many people
a) The problem is prioritizing message over story (sometimes to the point that the story is paused for a long political rant), not ‘stories that include a message’
b) it is entirely possible to enjoy someone’s political writings, enjoy someone’s fiction writings, yet not want them to mix the two – and in context, that seems to be what S1al is referring to.
Neil is just doing a classic “Skim Until Offended”
He is talking about buying books, not voting in the Hugos. But please, go on, your powers of pulling shit out of thin air is mildly amusing.
Great job Larry. Keep it up as I love it. I would show the guardian author my “not caring face” to his points.
“Though liberals do a great deal of talking about hearing other points of view, it sometimes shocks them to learn that there are other points of view.” – William F. Buckley
This is probably my most favorite Buckley quote of all time — it’s more true now than ever before.
This^ This right here. Preach it, Buckley! 😉
“Locking out women writers, writers of colour, gay and trans writers does a violence to the heart of the genre. ”
I’d just love it if one of these morons could show us exactly where and how anyone has “locked out” these people…other than the morons who want to change the rules. That’s none of us.
And, for the record, none of disliked Leckie’s work because it was a “smart gender-deconstruction of space opera”. We disliked it for a thousand other reasons, including how the gender pronoun trick was stupid but did nothing else with gender.
I disliked it because of the ham handed handling of the gender trick. Whenever it was brought up, “I’ve traveled to a new polity where they use different pronouns for gender and I don’t know which to choose so I will guess and now I am being laughed at for choosing the wrong one…” got old after the first time. Other than that, I thought it was a pretty good story. Of course, had those sections been removed, I’m not sure anyone would have noticed the lack of he/she him/her. In any case it was off putting enough to make me not want to revisit.
I haven’t read those books, but that does sound dumb. My wife isn’t a native English speaker, so she tends to reverse those pronouns, but nobody ever laughs at her.
I’m supposed to believe in an Artificial Intelligence that can’t tell the difference between men and women? Puh-leeze! And both her novels I found too boring to finish.
This.
I’ve thought that I’d probably write aliens not being able to tell human sexes from each other any better than we can tell cats without close examination.
The true stupid is that a zombie in an incomprehensively far alien future just happens to be up on flavor of the SFF week French Queer Theory. Why not spaceships named the “Huffington Post”?
Well . . . they bullied Annie Bellot into withdrawing her Puppy-fueled Hugo nom this year, lest she be tainted with Vox Day cooties or something.
But that certainly wasn’t the *Puppies’* fault. That was the oh-so-sensitive-and-tolerant opposition sticking it to a “gay” writer.
You didn’t hear? It’s our fault because we liked her story. Had we not put it on our ballots, they wouldn’t have been forced to harass her.
“If she would just do what she’s told, I wouldn’t have to beat her.”
“Locking out women writers”, is that why we nominated about a dozen of them?
After the Puppies sweep the awards, they’ll hear the screaming on the GamerGate Mars colony.
We’d let you associate with the COGNACoscenti but since you’re deployed to a dry country we’ll just have to finish the bottle for you…
LOL!
I have it on good authority that Red Breast, and presumably other members of the whiskey family, look quite a lot like original recipe Listerine. Also, those tamper seals aren’t too hard to fake. I’ve also learned from a very trusted source that a wee dram of aforementioned Red Breast is a rather nice way to end a day in Kandahar.
Painting the large Fosters lager can OD, stenciling an item code on it and sticking them in a box full of oil cans in the back of a deuce and a half works surprising well too.
I love Larry’s fiskings, so seeing one is always a delight, especially as a way to start the weekend. If he were to write a fisking of the Salt Lake City phonebook, I’d happily read it to see what snarky comments could be made about Smith, Joe 555-7782. So nothing below should be taken as a criticism of the wonderful fisk. But that being said…
What impresses me most about the Guardian article is just how boring and repetitive it is. I haven’t read any of the articles listed in the “Sad Puppies Article of the Week” section, but I do feel like I’ve seen this entire story before. “The Puppies are far right conservatives who want to take science-fiction back to the 50s and hate the fact that there are women and Blacks and Asians and Hispanics writing now. By getting some of these works by White males nominated, they’re destroying all that is wonderful about sci-fi. Sci-fi is only good when it’s written by Thai-Kenyan wheelchair-bound lesbians, because that makes true diverse literature. Therefore, if the Puppies win it means the end of life on Earth as we know it.” Did I miss anything?
It seems that we’ve all been able to move, rent-free, into the Guardian-writers heads. Fortunately, they didn’t have anything else up there, so there’s plenty of room.
Two Guardian articles, a NAMBLA supporter in The New Yorker, and Michael Moorcock calling Tolkien a cryptofascist and announcing that putting science in science fiction is anal-retentive fanservice. It was a busy week for the boring and repetitive.
In all fairness to Michael Moorcock, who is not Tolkien’s biggest fan, he has complained that he was misquoted (http://news.ansible.uk/a337.html) in Ansible.
Michael Moorcock has always hated Tolkien. IIRC he also hates the Harry Potter books. He hates the idea of reading “to escape,” or for “entertainment,” or fun. Basically, his thing is that books are supposed to be art, and art isn’t fun dammit!
Well, in my experience he’s attained his goal. His books aren’t fun (or even all that interesting) to read.
I liked them when I was younger. But I reread the Elric books last year and he’s become such an irritating ‘hero’, doing things he knows will end badly then crying about it later. No more.
I’d never read them. My massive to be read pile, which grows by the day (physically, because I prefer actual books) will keep me greatly entertained in the meantime…
(In my imaginary oh so copious free time between commissions and writing books…)
Holden Caufield does epic fantasy–? Pass.
Ugh. Elric. In less than one chapter, he attained levels of obnoxious, whinging assholery that it took Thomas Covenant an entire novel to reach. Impressive, in a pathetic sort of way.
I like his Elric and Cor Mac books quite a bit.
Is Moorcock still wandering around Texas?
I still like to go back now and then and read old Elric stories. I would call them S&S and not science fiction, though.
That movie with the tiger was really cool in 3D.
Ha ha – when I got to the “Democrats lynching people” I figured with that kind of intellectual dishonesty, why bother. You guys are goofy.
But it does illustrate – this is all the conservative politics view of the world. The puppy uprising has zero to do with quality of books or the representativeness of awards.
But it is fun – carry on.
Which party dominated the South during segregation again?
The KKK was the terrorist wing of the Southern Democrats. You can, as they say, look it up.
Trivia question: exactly one former Klan official has been elected to the United States Senate. This man is also known for attempting to filibuster the 1964 Civil Rights Act. What party did he belong to?
Try reading some history other than Howard Zinn. You might learn something.
That’s a bit disingenuous. Those attitudes are not those of the CURRENT Democratic party. They’re Republican attitudes.
Only in your head. And the current Democratic Party isn’t disingenuous; it’s the Party where pathological dishonesty is the entrance requirement.
No, they are not. That is a lie and you are a liar.
Robert Byrd, the aforementioned Klan official, was a Democrat Senator until he died in 2010, and, far from being marginalized, had been repeatedly named to high office by his fellow Democrats. Majority Leader, Minority Leader, Majority Whip, you name it.
Who is being racist about Mexicans? Republicans. Who refuses to vote to fix the Voting Rights Act? Republicans. Where can you find the most racist anti-Obama signs, placards, and pictures? TEA Party (basically the ones who now run the Republicans. Who is working nation wide to throw millions of people off the voting roles? Republicans. Which party did KKK Leader David Duke join? Republicans.
Who is always striving to grant more rights to minorities (albeit sometimes too much so)? Democrats. Who is trying to ensure that all eligible voters (including all races) are allowed their vote? Democrats.
I may not like some of the more extreme parts of the Cultural Left, but facts are facts: it is REPUBLICANS who hold to those values to a much greater extent today.
“Who is being racist about Mexicans?”
The black democrats who have a nice little ethnic cleansing war going on with them in LA?
” Who refuses to vote to fix the Voting Rights Act?”
It’s not 1964 any more, dude.
“Where can you find the most racist anti-Obama signs, placards, and pictures? TEA Party”
Liar.
” Which party did KKK Leader David Duke join? Republicans.”
What party does Al Sharpton belong to, in which he is treated a a respected “elder statesman”, rather than being treated as a fringe embarrassment, as Duke was?
What party did Fred “God Hates Fags” Phelps belong to?
Which party has overseen the destruction of the black family? Which party is responsible for aborting a grossly disproportionate number of black fetuses? Which party controls the horrible inner city schools?
“facts are facts”
Yes, and the fact is that you are a liar. A bad one. No one here is going to cower and submit just because you start screeching “racist”. That doesn’t work any more.
He has gotten to the end of Larry’s checklist: “When all else fails, RACISM!”
Have to give Greg and AMEN.
Why do you ask questions when you’ve already decided what the answer is?
Ah yes, I know: Agitprop and assertion. To demonize the icky awful people you hate so much.
Do you mean throwing people of the voting roles like in that Mississippi county that has more registered voters than population? Your Democrats have consistently kept voting role from being checked for accuracy. We all know, it’s harder for you to win elections if voters are limited to only those living people who are actually resident in the precincts.
Never confuse a tea person with facts. It angers them.
We all know that the after Civil Rights legistlation the Republicans embarked on the Southern Strategy to gain the allegiance of the Dixiecrats. We all watched the migration. We all know that these states are now Red States and largely correspond to the old confederacy. We all know that African Americans for many years voted Republican because that was the party of Lincoln. We all know that now African Americans favor the Democratic party overwhelmingly. We all know that they do so, because they know what we all know.
And we all know that Larry knows this as well and is intentionally intellectually dishonest in his commentary.
Yup. Blacks are doing just great in the Democrat-controlled Edens that are America’s cities. They aren’t kept poor and ignorant there. No sir-ee.
Honestly, Dems may or may not want to keep blacks down, but if they did, there’s precious little they would be doing differently.
Long on implication and projection, short on actual verifiable facts. On the charge of intellectual dishonesty, physician, heal thyself.
ya gotta love it when someone doubles down (“SJW’s always…) and not only throws a bit of bad history at us (Wow, the republicans decided to become racist all of a sudden out of the clear blue nowhere) but then also tries to tell us what we REALLY know but that we’re apparently too stupid or forgetful to understand, since we claim we believe otherwise.
It’s like a nasty version of that “false consciousness” thing some of my hipster friends used to talk about.
um….
You do know that the president that signed those “Civil Rights” legislation (your incorrect term, mind you) was none other than Richard NIXON. A Republican.
African american switched to Democrat when LBJ(a Democrat) created welfare plantations with his “War on poverty”. His exact quote was “Those N***ers will vote Democrat for the next two hundred years”. I DARE you to fact check that EXACT choice of words he used. Over 22 trillion spent. All we got were Detroit, Baltimore, Oakland, Saint Louis and, of course, Chicago for all that cash. Corrupt local leadership (Democrats all) pocketed it and then pimped the poverty for more.
YOU do not “Know” what we all know. Just because you feels it, doesn’t make it so. You should maybe sign up for Tea Party Patriots and get some real education.
“You do know that the president that signed those “Civil Rights” legislation (your incorrect term, mind you) was none other than Richard NIXON. A Republican.”
You are LYING. LBJ signed them in 1964. He may have said racist things, but he got the law passed and signed it.
Tell me, what do all of these well-known racists have in common:
Strom Thurmond
Trent Lott
Rick Santorum
Rick Perry
Donald Trump
Paul Ryan
Rand Paul
Newt Gingrich
Hailey Barbour
Louie Gohmert
Bill O’Reilley
Jim Demint
Jason Richwine
Cliven Bundy
Jeb Bush
Ronald Reagan
Lee Atwater
Jeff Sessions
Mark Sandford
They’re REPUBLICAN.
Which 2012 national convention featured a black CNN camera operator getting pelted with peanuts and told “this is how we feed animals”?
REPUBLICAN
Which party in Colorado defended one of their own for saying “poverty is higher among the ‘black race’ because they eat too much chicken”?
REPUBLICAN.
Which party virtually ignored the 50th anniversary of Selma?
REPUBLICAN
Which party did racist NBA owner Donald Stirling belong to for the last 18 years?
REPUBLICAN.
I could go on for many pages.
I’m not saying you can’t find a racist Democrat, but trying to portray Republicans as anything other than a racist party is just laughable.
Got it. To you, “Republican” and “racist” are synonyms.
You don’t get to make up your own definition for words, dude.
Every hell-hole ghetto in the country is controlled by Democrats. Every. Single. One. Odd, that.
Might as well give up, Doc. Yep, Republicans completely ignored the anniversary of Selma. It’s in all the pictures, not a single Republican in any of them.
Just like Stalin never, ever had any association with the Nazis. After the summer of 1941, that is – all of those pictures were very carefully doctored for publication in Pravda, just like “cropping for space” was very carefully applied by the New York Times.
Rick Perry, Paul Ryan, Jeb Bush? You’re insane.
A CNN cameraman? Of course you have a link to the video.
50th Anniversary? You mean the one that was carefully edited to remove Pres Bush? Cite
Cite for Stirling?
And I’m sure your delusions could fill the Library of Congress.
Love to know what racist stuff Rick Santorum spouted, because he neglected to spout it at the function I attended and I’m running out of original lines, er, always on the alert for that sort of thing,
Which side of this divide in SFF spends its time supporting demonization theories about all men/women such as “rape culture,” “toxic masculinity” and “patriarchy.” There is no fake academic ideological movement in SFF which casts women as historic congenital retards for not building great canals and architectural wonders. Look at the obsessive SJW Tweets about Bill Cosby. That’s because SJWs think Cosby is a typical man rather than a creepy outlier. Fraudulent self-appointed and equally creepy rape expert Jim Hines wants to do away with due process and Tweets “Could we please toss Bill Cosby in jail already?” That’s going to happen when you use fake rape statistics to incite hatred against men as an entire group. And these fucks call this “social justice.” If academics and journalists are using fake rape statistics to argue away due process, why should I believe anything they say?
We’ve been over and over this info and SJWs simply ignore it because they are infantile liars. Where is a Men’s Rights Activist at Tor who critiques all SFF through an ideological lens of male supremacy like the daffy Liz Bourke does with her stupid lesbian ideology which believes in the oppressiveness of men and “compulsory heterosexuality”? Where is a racial fuck like Sunil Patel at Lightspeed who won’t review non-white women? Where is a team of clowns with a history of racial incitement like Rose Fox and Daniel Jose Older who edit a racial revenge fantasy based on skewed historic lies like Long Hidden and get awards nominations for it? Where are segregated rooms on the SP side of this?
The “progressive” side of this has institutionalized racism, sexism and sheer hatred to a stunning degree compared to SP or the GOP.
Wow. You really are completely delusional, aren’t you?
Larval apparatchiks aren’t delusional. They are ruthlessly single minded. They don’t write, they distribute. It’s garbage in and garbage out in the service of the struggle. They don’t edit, revise, challenge, compose, or think about their message. They just deliver it, like a repeater, by rote. They don’t worry about yesterday or tomorrow. They just tell you what the party says “2+2 = ” today like it was the first time the party ever spoke, and attack or dismiss anyone who questions, challenges, or disagrees, It’s automated, robotic, reflexive, mindless, mechanical repetition of some one else’s dogma
You’re right about all that, but that doesn’t keep them from being delusional, you know. As to their behavior, I call it “chanting,” since they never actually debate anyone who challenges them, they merely reflexively repeat the same rote phrases, over and over.
I call what they do “chanting.” They pretend they’re debating, and responding to the points made by their challengers, but all they do is reflexively repeat the same dogmatic points over and over. It really is analogous to ritualized religious responses.
And probably has the same purpose as a ritualized liturgy: To drill in the basics and commit things to memory.
This an excellent technique when dealing with a population in an oral tradition or trying to get the basics into just about anyone and provide a foundation for further study. It is a very bad way to get people to think for themselves. (Which is why most oral traditions contained phases of questioning, usually for advanced students. See the end of Job as an excellent recorded example.) It is an utterly TERRIBLE when mistaken for the sum of all knowledge and used there as.
I hate to take the bloom of your ignorance, but you do need realize that Strom Thurmond started as a Democrat and was a Democrat for the first three decades of his political career.
As for the rest, it’s typical liberal ‘If you disagree with me, you are a doubleplusundoog racist!’ brand scatological material.
Jim DeMint? You mean the guy who recommended Tim Scott to serve out his term when he left the Senate?
You are so full of shit it is pouring out of your ears! Republicans ignored the anniversary of Selma?!?! You stupid lying sack of maggot-riddled moose feces! Even WIKIPEDIA has the list of Republican legislators who marched at the anniversary of Selma! The Times photoshopped them out of their pics, but they were fucking THERE! Please, stop using my air, and go hide in a deep, dark hole, that the rest of us may be spared your disgusting, brainless presence!
“We all know that the after Civil Rights legistlation the Republicans embarked on the Southern Strategy to gain the allegiance of the Dixiecrats. We all watched the migration.”
How odd that this migration consisted of exactly one marginal congressman.
So the Southern Strategy did what, again, exactly? Nixon went from being praised by Martin Luther King for his support of black civil rights and decided to suddenly become racist, and then he sent out a memo or something telling the party of Lincoln to suddenly become racists, and we did, and meanwhile the Democrat party also sent out a memo telling all their Klan members, including Al Gore’s father, to, uh, what again, exactly? Vote republican? Because the voting records show constantly more more support for Civil Rights acts from Republican than from Democrat.
No, you outrageous liar, the only thing ‘we all know’ is that Johnson promises that if the Dems addicted the blacks to the welfare state ‘I have those n…gers voting Democrat for the next two hundred years.’ And he had made more than one fourth of that promised time already.
Why would the Republicans switch places with the Dems on race issues suddenly and without warning? To gain votes? Then why would the Dems switch? To lose them?
Your lie makes no sense even on the surface. Why would the party that voted for Jim Crow laws — and those existed only in Southern one-party states — suddenly up and support the very people they spent the last hundred years oppressing? Why would the party that freed the slaves and opposed segregation suddenly agree with your pro-segregationist Franklin Delano Roosevelt?
You used to keep blacks as slaves on plantations. Now, with the welfare state, you do the same thing, only they only do work once every four years, to pull a lever in the ballot box and keep the meager rewards coming. How you racists can throw in our faces, we who want them and all peoples to be free, is an appalling hypocrisy.
Yes you keep selling that dog poop Mr. Wright. Flesh that fiction out a bit (because what LBJ said was that it would cost Democrats the South for a generation) and you might be able to get a Hugo yet.
And now…. it is August 1st. It has been grand watching the Tea Puppies in action and you guys gave me lots of new blogs to read and places to visit. At this very moment File 770 is doing a little fisking of there own.
But its over. Votes have been cast. How do you guys think you did? Where you really able to con that many people into spending $40 bucks to fight a culture war? Ah…. we wait with great anticipation.
“their” not “there” – apologies.
To tell the truth, we’ve already won. The votes don’t matter; the mask has been pulled from you SJW’s collective faces, and everyone can see you hateful harpies as you truly are.
File 770 is a shit hole where 10 idiots have decided to gather to repeatedly blather nonsense at each other and bet quatloos on the outcome of E Plebneesta.
So when I give you the historical facts, which anyone can look up, and give you a logical argument, which anyone can think about, you answer nothing and reply to nothing save to call the facts and the argument childish scatological names and change the subject and talk like a snarky yet whiny teen. I accept your cowardly and unmannerly capitulation with grace any wish you luck in your next battle of wits.
The so-called Southern Strategy is a bunch of nonsense. The South has only decided two elections in favor of the Republican party – 2000 and 2004. The South went solidly for the Dems in 1976. It went for Reagan in 1980 and 1984, but so did pretty much the entire country (Reagan carried 44 states in 1980, and a record-breaking 49 states in 1984). Bush rode on Reagan’s coat tails to get a solid majority of states in 1988. Once again, support from the South wasn’t needed. And roughly half the South went for Clinton in 1992 and 1996.
Claims that the so-called strategy exists simply don’t stand up to scrutiny. If there was any truth to the claims, then Clinton never would have made it to the White House.
As someone who’s lived in the South all my life, I can tell you that it was the mid-to-late 80s before you needed much more than a phone booth to hold a Republican Party meeting in the South.
And by that time the Dems had been so much the party of ‘Acid, amnesty and abortion’ that the socially conservative South rebelled.
http://www.270towin.com/historical-presidential-elections/
Food for thought- note how often in the past dozen presidential elections that the South going GOP coincided with more than once with the GOP tromping in the electoral college.
And do note how the ‘Solid South’ voted in 1960 and prior….
There was a reson why the 1924 Democratic National Convention was dubbed the ‘Klanbake.’
No! The parties magically switched one day! All the racist democrats suddenly turned into racist republicans! Because stuff and things!
Or, the old actually racist democrats kept dying. Younger southerners had dealt with their past and race issues, and aren’t racist. And the Democrat party had drifted off into crazy town that didn’t represent them anymore. And because they’re not racist, and the Republican party believes in actual equality, they started voting republican. And as the democrats went crazier and crazier, the south went redder and redder.
Naw… One day they all just switched! Poof!
In slight fairness to the attempted narrative, the Depp South’s vote in 1964 and 1968 were (no pun intended) colored strongly by reactions to the civil rights movement. As for 1972, well, the Dems ran McGovern. Seriously….
Actually, blacks started voting Democratic in FDR’s time, and began registering overwhelmingly Democrat in Truman’s: http://www.factcheck.org/2008/04/blacks-and-the-democratic-party/. And those were the years when Democrats in Congress blocked Civil Rights legislation.
Oh, and when the Civil Rights Act finally passed, it was with a higher percentage of Republican votes than Democratic votes.
But why let facts get in the way of a good lie?
Yes we know. Most of us know about the shift in the parties since the civil rights act. But don’t let facts get in your way.
In 2016, you will lose the African American vote again. You will lose the Hispanic vote. You will lose the gay vote. (Log cabin Republicans – who are those guys?) You will lose the women’s vote. But will you get the religious right vote and the old white guy vote. Praise Jesus. But will you get the Hugo? What do you think?
“Shift in the parties”?
So you’re saying that before 1964 the Republicans were, like, socialists?
Where do you people get this stuff?
Slept through the last Congressional election, did you?
Ah, more of the “you’re doomed surrender now” gloating of an anonymous prog troll…
…whom are you trying to convince? Us icky people who disagree… or yourself?
They are trying to derail the comments, nothing more. Just yell “racist”, and ignore facts is their only working strategy. Point and laugh at them, and continue to discuss winning the social war.
They contribute nothing but poo flinging.
But win the election. Don’t you just wonder why that is?
In the past you’ve had some interesting comments here, but you’ve degenerated into a boring troll. Just calling us racist over and over again? Yawn.
The amusing thing about your constant repetition that Southern Democrat racists suddenly became Republicans is that the NEW YORK TIMES disagrees with you:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/10/magazine/10Section2b.t-4.html
And when the* New York Times* declares your attack on the right wing false, you know you’re spewing some serious BS.
Democrats prevented blacks from voting until the 1950s when Eisenhower passed the first CRA. Since they could no longer suppress their votes, Democrats started selling blacks the same toxic blend of identity politics and socialism they’d been luring in poor whites with. This is one of the main reason black nuclear families began to disintegrate at this point (the same way poor whites’ did) : incentives matter.
Democrats tend to elide the fact that state racism, the KKK, and Jim Crow were policies particularly popular with poor Southern whites, and not very popular among Republicans. As the South industrialized and incomes rose, they started voting GOP to repudiate the legacy of racism and socialism. The same thing is happening to Asians now, and will eventually happen to blacks and Hispanics after they throw out the unprincipled tribalists like Coates, Jackson, Obama, etc.
The real divide in this country is between civilization and savagery. If you commit crimes at a high rate and believe someone owes you a living at the point of a gun (whether its held by you the government is immaterial) you are a savage — and the color of your skin is no matter, but you’re almost certainly a Democrat.
Harper Lee points out in Go Set a Watchman that the Southern poor, including blacks, began voting Democrat when it became known that they would receive no government help (regardless of paperwork or need) unless voting Democrat. Every county had a guy who handled this, including making sure that Social Security and pension mail never arrived.
Today’s social justice KKK in SFF speaks for itself. They are the only organized and institutional element in SFF which routinely engages in group defamation, racism, sex-hatred and phobia, racial and sexual literary narcissism, segregation, racial and sexual discrimination, perverts racial crime statistics, racial and sexual affirmative action literary initiatives, racial incitement and incitement to hate men. It’s not hard to figure out who their intellectual ancestors are and it’s neither equal rights feminism, human rights or civil rights. It is biological fear and hatred and the division of human beings into squabbling groups based on race and sex. Any SJW Twitter feed reads worse than a white supremacist web site, since even racists don’t throw down the concept of a happy family as some creepy norm like SJWs do.
Never confuse a tea person with facts. It angers them.
Yet you continue to lie.
And we all know that you are lying when you say these things. Do you really think no one notices?
Ignore their idiotic distraction attempts.
*Yawn*
You know, the Dems wouldn’t have lost the South (and they lost it, rather than the Repubs winning it) if they hadn’t:
A. Gone anti-military, to include embracing the proponents of the “babykiller” meme
B. Gone anti-religious (not non-religious, but actually anti)
C. Lost the KKK’s ability to get away with killing Repub organizers.
“We all know…”-> irrelevant shallow ass wikipedia capsule ignoring all the huge holes that just got poked in your dumb screed, followed by empty smack talk about “confusing” people (who you utterly failed to confuse in any meaningful way) with your lame, debunked, dogmatic assertions which you have stupidly conflated with “facts”.
It;s the typical sad crypto-totalitarian leftoid twitter-style garbage, only rendered more long-form.
Really, please do explain to me the Democratic Party attitudes towards Dr Ben Carson, Thomas Sowell, Justice Clarence Thomas, Condaleeza Rice, Michelle Malkin, Sarah Palin among others who dislike being told what to do by Racist mongers in the Democratic Party.. Hell, they are even now attacking white straight males for the crimes of being white and male .
Really, “Greg”? Other than Barack Obama, can you name any Black Democrats elected in majority white areas? The Republicans ahve several, because our voters aren’t racists. Democrats?
Name the party that runs the cities with the most black shootings by police. We’ll wait.
Clamps get a new handle?
This one doesn’t obsess over Vox Day.
Nope, ISO Standard Sophomoric Left Wing Troll. Pull the string and the standard left wing talking points come pouring out.
Clamps has been very quiet of late. Which means he might show up any moment . . .
I figured SJW75126 was “him”.
Nah, SJW75126 isn’t Clamps. Very different writing style, and there’s another fundamental difference as well. Underneath SJW’s broad ignorance of how conservatives really think, he really does have a genuine niceness and willingness, in the end, to agree to disagree. Whereas Clamps is just plain nasty to anyone who disagrees with him.
Obviously your intellect doesn’t extend to knowing which party supported slavery on the plantation, founded the Klan, enacted Jim Crow, and still supports slavery on the collective — but you keep fighting those cardboard cutouts in your head.
You might want to close your eyes tighter, press your fingers further into your ears and hum louder, little one.
Your ignorance of history is nothing to brag about.
Consider the past two years we got a spate of Puppy-bashing prior to the Hugo nomination announcements. Now, the week of the deadline, when we’ve learned that there are hundreds if not no thousands of new Hugo voters. And what do we see? A spate of Puppy-bashing. I wonder, do they know something we don’t? 😉
Who are these illiterate morons regurgitating this insanity? Not experimental? Not literate? What I write is the most experimental and literate material on the market today. I point to ‘Murder in Metachronopolis’ as an experiment in achronological narrative technique, and I point to ‘Far End of History’ as a work simply drenched in literary allusions, lyrical in worduse, and yet containing scientifically accurate settings and backgrounds.
I am not ‘progressive’ in their sense because the Progressives were vexed over the working conditions of the poor in the time of Queen Victoria. Their proposed solution was income tax, expanding the franchise, socialism, and making alcohol illegal. Their proposal these days differ somewhat, but still have socialism at the core. They are the people living in the steampunk days. They are lost in the past. To them, it is still the summer of ’68.
I mean 1868, when Marx was worried about that most recent, futuristic, and up to date problem, the use of machinery in industry (https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/iwma/documents/1868/machinery-speech.htm)
I am the one writing new and daring material dealing with literary experimental forms and highbrow material. They are poseurs pretending to be what I actually am: a learned man whose tastes were trained in the study of the classics. How dare they claim to be the defenders of what they so diligently for decades have been attempting to destroy?
How dare they pretend to be on the side of good taste, refinement, artistic elevation, or intellectual endeavors? They are the mere opposite of all these things: crude, awkward, vulgar, stupid.
“The Puppies are complaining that the awards have become too highbrow . . .”
. . . which is why John C. Wright, the single most erudite author currently writing in SF/F, got something like six nominations and all but swept one entire category of the Hugo noms.
Oh wait: He’s that scary Catholic guy. That explains it.
*facepalm*
I just can’t stop laughing that he thought it was a good idea to include “Redshirts” in his two title list of highbrow, ‘too experimental and literary’ works.
Yeah, because *that’s* why people complain about Redshirts winning.
I wonder if the Tea-puppies had not freeped the Hugo nominations if “Lock In” would have been nominated. It’s getting lots of buzz and fans seem to really like it. Compare how Scalzi did in the 2014 Goodreads Choice Awards. For Sci-Fi he came in 2nd but that is because “The Martian” placed 1st. “The Martian” was not eligible for a Hugo this year so….
Hey… if you don’t do anything else, you can always say there is a good chance you screwed Scalzi out of an award he could have won. That should keep you warm at night, yes?
“It’s getting lots of buzz and fans seem to really like it”
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #60,703
I don’t dislike Scalzi so much as that (though, for Fuzzy Nation, I shall buy nothing of his, ever). But be honest, 75126 – if *you* has to list the highbrow, literary writers of SF, how many would you list before you got to Scalzi?
I wonder what you’d write if you possessed self-awareness.
Print filename.exe
“if the Tea-puppies had not freeped”
Seriously? you couldn’t shoehorn in a ‘Faux News’ reference for the trifecta?
You already shoehorned Faux News. I can Shoehorn in FauxFan, FauxChristian, Obamacare and LBJCare if it makes you happy?
At this point, you’re just babbling.
Scalzi and I already had this discussion on Twitter. I don’t think it went the way he hoped. 🙂
You know it is interesting that as you speak, Scalzi is promoting John Ringo and Baen books on his website. Along with your website, I found his during your protest movement. Clearly, Scalzi is the adult in the room.
As I am not drawn normally to military SF (I thought of MHI as more urban fantasy), I probably wouldn’t have read Scalzi. But after the Kerfuffle, I asked the SFF guys at Goodreads and got high praise for “Lock In”. It now sits on my TBL (to be listened) shelf. Thanks puppies.
That’s what we intended. Read what you want.
I’ll have to admit that it’s entertaining to watch you unwittingly demonstrate what Sad Puppies is really trying to accomplish.
They really can’t help themselves. 🙂
“Clearly, Scalzi is the adult in the room.”
WOW! Well, that made quite a mess.
Larry, sorry, but we’re gonna have to order a new irony meter for the site, yours was only rated for the kiloton range. I just hope the explosion didn’t damage the shelves.
You’re welcome. If you wish any more redneckery I can recommend CDs of people playing wineglasses, how to make macrame beer can hats and 50 interesting things to do with salt licks.
Not in this to screw Scalzi, in this to get awards for good books. I have Fuzzy Nation on my desk now, actually, since I’ve had Scalzi recommended to me more than once, and that one was at the library. I’ll judge his books by his writing , not his twitter, thank you very much.
Still, if more of his fans had nominated it, maybe he could have still gotten the award. This is a big award, no harm in getting more people involved.
Hmmm. If you know and love the “Fuzzy” series – skip the Scalzi, it’s junk.
For a far, far better book, get hold of “Golden Dream: A Fuzzy Odyssey” by Ardath Mayhar. (Yes, a FEMALE, and not entirely WHITE. Sadly no longer with us.)
I’d say Gene Wolfe is more erudite, but that’ just me. Read them both, though.
Gene Wolfe is the most erudite, most subtle, most profound and perhaps the most dangerous author writing today in any genre. We should praise the nine muses that he sees fit to write in ours.
Good ol’ gene. One of the very few authors whose pages can’t ever be skimmed lest one chance missing a vital clue in an otherwise “throw-away” phrase.
And the fact that Gene Wolfe has never won a Hugo (in spite of several nominations, wins for Nebulas, Campbells, and Locus) just proves the point of the Puppies over and over. The Hugos are not about what’s great, literary, and pushing the boundaries of SF.
“Why is it that the only people who care about an author’s race are the ones who keep accusing everybody else of being motivated by race?”
No fooling. When I was growing there were a bunch of historical novels by Frank Yerby around the house. Good stuff — exciting stories, good research, good writing, a fair number of racy bits (racy for the age I was then, anyway)…
Until just a couple of years ago, I had no idea that Yerby was African-American, and wouldn’t have given a crap if I had.
Wikipedia tells me that he was the first AA author with a million-selling novel. Naturally, all of his stuff is out of print.
It was years before I learned that a writer I really like was black. Didn’t make a difference in my buying her books after learning her race. This would be Octavia E Butler. Nothing about that name screamed black woman to me. Then there is another author on my shelves who I have lots of his books. Steven Barnes who is another great writer. Frankly I don’t look up the race of the person writing any book I buy.
I just want a book I enjoy reading the race of the person who wrote it is completely irrelevant to my enjoyment of the book.
Octavia E. Butler apparently graduated from my high school, and the school brought her back to speak to us. She had some minor un-PC things to say regarding black males, and why (as a result of that un-PC) one of her protagonists was a black female.
I find it telling that for SJWs, the end result of stories must be “diversity” and “visibility” and “representation”. Nothing about good characters or interesting plots. No wonder they rarely create anything of lasting value. It’s like declaring that the entire reason an automobile exists is the chrome finish.
It fits with their mission statement, “Diversity of appearance, Unity of thought, or else”.
As usual, there’s nothing funnier than seeing heterosexual middle class white men take up the cause of anti-white lesbian sexual theory without the least hint of awareness they’re doing so while essentially embracing Bell Curve racial theory and supremacy. “Diversity,” the way the word is used by SJWs, supports racial classification and fundamental innate differences, not only between ethnic groups, but the sexes. SJW ideology is the only institutional expression of what lies behind Aryan and S. African apartheid race theory in the history of SFF. This is why I find these Wrong-Way Corrigans so laughably stupid. The entire movement could be a PhD paper on how hate speech is mainstreamed into the public arena as something noble.
“Science fiction, if it is about anything, is about […] freeing ones mind and boldly going where no one has been before.” Yep, like homosexuality (since Adam, not me, keeps bringing up that oh so important aspect). Because nobody has ever been there before, in five or six millennia of recorded history. Nope.
Because I’ve got to ask the question before I forget while laughing my way through this wonderful fisk: what’s the movie where SJWs get eaten by cannibals called?
And for some reason I remembered a scene in High School of the Dead where a SJW gets eaten by the zombies that she was trying to ‘protect’.
The Green Inferno
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2403021/
Thank you!
Hmmm, I may have to re-watch HSotD, and not just for the Naked Apron Cooking, or the boobs as sniper rest scenes….
Pounced on the color omnibus hardcovers. Waiting to see if it’ll be continued, and I hope so. It’s entertaining, and immersive as a story.
Yet another one for me check out. Dang it, why can’t Netflix just get on with it and establish a horrible monopoly position like Amazon?
Was going to comment elsewhere (Sarah’s place?) that I grew up getting up super-early to watch Saturday morning cartoons before the SJWs of yore destroyed American animation. I did, really, try to interest my kids in that tradition – instead, they hooked me on Japanese anime, because they could not stand the constant drivel of “justice” and “green” and “no hope” coming over network television. (Yes, I have bright kids – they could recognize drooling idiocy by the time they were four.)
There’s something similar in Michael Crichton’s book “State of Fear” where the Michael Sheen-analogue starts off glad-handing the barbaric cannibal tribesmen and ends up getting eaten by them. It’s a pretty groovy thing.
Gods below, the poor bloody zombies really will eat things that would gag a maggot, won’t they 😀
Well, they’re zombies. I rather expect the tastebuds have rotted. ^^
Also worth relinking to this as it’s related to the whole Sad Puppies thing: http://tlknighton.com/?p=7049
As a sci-fi fan who fell out of obsession with the genre after my local bookstore’s SF section had more vampire, it’s been interesting to be pulled back in. I had heard of Sad Puppies before the sweep (Thanks to Daddy Warpig, but doesn’t seem like many others cared). At the time I was sympathetic, but didn’t really have the $40 at the time, and wasn’t sure if I should get involved.
After listening to Brian Niemeir on Geek Gab talk about the possible danger of a No Award sweep, I decided to bite the bullet, and shell out for the chance to vote.
I’m glad I did. I found myself enjoying myself. It was particularly hard trying to decide on the top pick for best novel. I’ve been a fan of Kevin J Anderson’s Saga of the Seven Suns (though the series kind of fell apart for me after metal swarm) as silly as it was, so it was good coming back to that universe. The biggest tug of war for me was between Skin Game, and Three Body Problem. Never was a Urban Fantasy fan, and while I had heard of the Dresden Files, I never was interested in reading them. Boy, was blown away by how much fun I had. This is the 15th book in the series, yet I had no problems picking it up and getting a feel for the characters. The excerpt flew by too quickly, and now the great internal debate for me is to pick up Skin Game to read the whole thing, or start at the beginning. With Three Body Problem, the book suffers from bland characters, insufficient characterization and some plodding pacing. But all the high concept science fiction ideas drew me in (the loving references to Isaac Asimov didn’t hurt either). Despite the problems the book had, it was these sort of big ideas that made me fall in love with the genre in the first place. Skin Game was a very enjoyable meat and potatoes book that anyone can fall in love with, while Three Body Problem seems a very niche sort of thing for those more deeply immersed in SF. It was a hard choice for me, and if I was recommending a book to a friend, it would definitely be Skin Game. But my love of SF and the golden age esque ideas in 3 Body made me put it as my number 1. It’s these sort of books that I would love to see more of (and I hope that in Liu Cixin’s future work he learns to flesh out his characters more.)
The other categories were a bit easier. This was my first time encountering John C. Wright’s work, and I enjoyed his poetic style (though I was a bit put off with A One Bright Star to Guide Them relying so much on conversational exposition, and would have loved to see some of those scenes that the characters quickly described. With Graphic Novel, if it wasn’t for Saga, I’d probably have just given it no award. The other entries just read to similarly for my liking, and the books seemed more interested in “witty” banter than telling their stories.
Sorry about my misplaced blog, but I wanted to thank Brad and Larry for their work. This wild ride has pulled me back into a genre I had given up on and reminded why I loved SF so much in the first place. The whole sad puppies incident has inspired me to get to my own writing, and I’m now trying to pound out my own Science Fiction novel.
My friend, I started in the middle, because that’s what they had available at the bookstore. Finished the book in the two hour ride back home, got back on the jeep and rode back to buy the rest that they had, and went scouring other stores to see what I could find. That’s the nice thing about the Dresden Files; you can pick up any of the books and not feel lost.
Butcher really hits his stride around book four, to me, but I’ll reread the whole series again and again, every time a new book is about to come out, and after it comes out.
Of course, with all the Zen of Spider Man that Harry tends to do, naturally Jim has a Spider Man book as well. His Codex Alera series is also very good, spun out of a dare that Jim Butcher couldn’t write a story with an impossible /ridiculous premise. Jim said “Give me two” and the answer was “The Lost Roman Legion and Pokemon.”
I’m eagerly waiting to pounce on the first of Jim’s Cinder Spires series as well.
Neat. Sounds like I have a very pleasant rabbit hole awaiting for me to go down.
I think I told the friend who recommended Dresden Files to me I wasn’t sure if I should tell him I love him for recommending the series, or say “Damnit, BG this is all your fault,” for the week of very little sleep I got bingeing. His response? “You’re welcome.”
So, uhm, yeah. That’s sort of a warning there from someone who plowed through the fifth Harry Potter book in five hours. I read fast.
Yeah, if you want to get in at the ground floor of one of Jim Butcher’s series, then check out his upcoming Cinder Spires series that Shadowdancer mentions. IIRC, the first book will be released next month.
And you should read all of Skin Game. There are bits and parts that reference earlier events in the series. But there’s nothing that will leave you confused if you haven’t read any of the earlier books.
Heh. We (family of five) went to the release party at Borders for that one. Got home about 2 AM. For the next seven hours or so (guess we aren’t as fast as you), the house was dead silent. Except for the occasional “ow” as two of us ran into each other…
Your love for science fiction bleeds through every word you wrote. Be proud that you’ve taken decisive, positive action on behalf of your beloved genre.
To the anti-Puppies:
Are these the fans you spoke of? Know your betters and crouch, CHORFs!
Incidentally, I agree with most of your opinions on the nominated works. Our experiences reading Skin Game were identical. Jim Butcher and KJA have been overlooked for far too long.
I’m honored to have sounded the alarm that called you (and others) to action. As a member of my audience, it’s a solemn obligation–and a joy–to serve you hand and foot.
Good luck with your novel. I look forward to reading it.
Thanks! It means a lot.
I also look forward to the day that Daddy Warpig can work out the kinks with the network of hamster wheels he has for a computer, and the can with bailing twine that is his microphone, so Geek Gab can come back.
Completely agree with you on Three Body Problem and big ideas, and that’s why I put it first as well.
Welcome back. Except for Baen, it was pretty thin gruel for me, too. Then I discovered many more writers when SP blew up.
I didn’t put it at #1 – but still loved Three Body Problem for the same reasons that you posted. Some of the issues were translation – which is extremely hard to do well. Others, though, were more cultural – it was written for a Chinese audience, not a Western one. Individuals just aren’t the focal point as much as they are in Western writing.
“The fact that instead of words like good, fun, memorable, inspiring, exciting, or imaginative you need to use terms like “gender-deconstruction” or “metafiction” to describe them might be an indicator that you’re the one out of touch with what people actually like to read.”
But Larry, *some of us actually like to read this stuff*. Sorry, man, if I wanted a book as shallow as a puddle and *actually* about robots beating each other up, I’d play a video game. Or, you know, maybe read pulp.
Variety is interesting. It’s bizarre how something that’s disinteresting to you is somehow…wrong.
What the hell does “good” even mean in this context?
What does “good” mean? Well, that’s beyond the scope of this blog post. But if you’re trying to say we’re shallow or anti-literary, why the hell did I nominate John C. Wright? 😀 (oh, and by the way, I think the most talented living sci-fi author is Dan Simmons). Or are you going to tell me that Wright is pulp and Red Shirts was deep? Come on.
Red Shirts had exactly one joke. And it repeated that joke relentlessly, all the while the author patted himself on the back for BRILLIANTLY mocking, um, a commercial TV show that was intended to amuse some people, sell the sponsored products, then vanish into obscurity. It wasn’t until decades later that fans turned it into something that meant SOMETHING MORE.
I find it interesting that, looking at this, the creators of GALAXY QUEST came to the conclusion that “Yeah, this sort of show is cheesy as heck, but ultimately the devoted fans turned it into a positive thing that improved their lives and meant something,”
While all Scalzi can do is go “LOL, so shoddy! LOL, this is just so shoddy! Do you get that it’s shoddy? LOL, so shoddy!”
Douglas Adams he ain’t. Heck, he’s not even RED DWARF.
“Red Shirts” isn’t even on the level of a late era “Mad” magazine parody.
Shatner’s SNL “You People Get a Life” skit had more depth.
Then, he tries to ape PKD, and fails.
Red Shirts central idea was a premise that can only be considered “original” if you’ve never read fanfiction in your entire life. In fact, its so common in fanfic that it’s become a cliche; one of the old Marshak & Culbreath Star Trek New Voyages anthologies even used the concept, and those came out about 1977.
I will say, however, that Red Shirts does work much better as an audio book than as a written work. The humor works as an extended comedy sketch. But I wouldn’t say it was ground breaking literature.
Do. Not. Diss. Red. Dwarf!
Lemme explain something.
“You foolish proles don’t understand my brilliance!!” has been the cry of pretty much every talent free hack in pretty much every artistic field since ever.
In times past, this talentless crap was pretty much mocked and left behind.
However, for some strange reason, it has become the mark of the pseudo intellectual to pretend to like this rubbish- provided some authority tells you that it is the hip thing to do. Usually because the “artist” is connected, and is part of some hip, politically correct theoretic school.
But the result isn’t art, but rather unpleasantness meant to show one’s hipness.
Ironically, their desire to show their intellectual non-conformity to the taste of the lumpen proletariat, they tend to be even bigger conformist to maintain their facade.
David Eddings made a point of making the talent free artist-wannabe hack the most hilarious ineffectual villain he came up with. The fact that the book it features in came in the nineties makes me now wonder if that was a not-so-veiled shot at the self-declared intelligentisia who are now ‘the man’ of today.
Just reread the Elenium and now on Belgarath the Sorcerer. Which villain are you referencing?
In case there are some folks reading this who haven’t read the Tamuli; a certain Zoro-wannabe who goes around ‘oppressing the oppressed, wronging rights and generally making an ass of himself.’ Complete with the epic fail trumpeting fanfare and theatrics that nearly have Stragen laughing himself off his horse.
I clearly need to re-read the Tamuli.
Adding Tamuli to my reread pile…
Dennis Moore, Dennis Moore,
Dum dum dum de nye,
Dennis Moore, Dennis Moore,
Dum dum dum de nye!
He robs from the poor,
And gives to the rich,
Silly bitch…!
I believe you speak of the self named “Sabre” and his abysmal poetry he considered forward thinking.
Oh, that’s a pretty usual thing. If one has “culture” it means that one has refined tastes beyond those of the common man. Thus, if something is popular it is by definition less worthy. The exception to this “popular means it’s not culture” are those things that are yummy-pretty-entertaining but extremely expensive so the common man can’t afford them even if the common man would agree on the “taste”.
Neil, I think you’re missing the point, which is a bit odd, since you brought it up. “Variety is interesting.” I’d agree. I think most of the people around here would agree. However, when you look at the recent Hugos, you’ll see a lack of variety. If everything is deconstruction, that’s not variety. If everything is from a particular point of view or presents the same system of thinking, that’s not variety.
It’s not that anyone thinks you’re wrong to like whatever you like. I doubt they really care much. However, when they look at sales figures…the number of people actually reading a book, presumably because it’s found to be “good” or “enjoyable”, those numbers aren’t even vaguely reflected in the Hugos.
Among people that read (those sales figures), their views of what is “good” aren’t reflected in the Hugos at all. There are legions of people who look at the little rocket and see an anti-recommendation, and that’s because they’ve been able to depend on the Hugo going to a particular sort of viewpoint. The Hugo has represented a single point of view, and people who believed in variety among writing viewpoints have objected to that.
I feel like you have missed the point. The very point of the entire Sad Puppy push is to change the books that get Hugos into things that WE want to read. But that we isn’t just the SP, it’s all the sci-fi fans. You are perfectly free to like what you like, for whatever reason you like, and define “good” however you like, and thus vote however you like, and encourage whoever else in the world you want to vote with you. In fact, I encourage you to do just that.
Don’t like a nominated book? Awesome, couldn’t care less. Do like one? Doesn’t matter to me, as long as you are voting on the quality of the book, HOWEVER YOU JUDGE IT, not on the politics or cause of the author.
So, if all of fandom gets involved, and the majority love gender-deconstructionist metafiction, I will have won, because the fans will have chosen the book they love best, regardless of whether I like it, and that’s what I want: an inclusive community of fans arguing about what they like best, not a closed club that accuses me of racism because my standards of “good” don’t match theirs.
For the record, I wasn’t too impressed with Ancilliary Sword. Only read the excerpt, but that excerpt just… failed to grab me. Still I liked it better than Three Body Problem (which had a TERRIBLE understanding of astronomy, and the weird nihilism was horribly grating), and I was more than happen to give both a chance, given that some body of fandom had apparently loved them.
The really sad thing? SFF can embrace every PC fad around. They can Embrace Diversity all they want, they can checklist all the right talking points, they can stuff in more messages than a Chic tract… hell, they can even shoot anvils engraved with the leftist message of the moment to land on the heads of their readers.
All of that effort, and you know what? To readers of other genres, especially the Litachoour crowd they are trying to win over, all will continue to see SFF as juvenile, lightweight, pulpy nonsense for kids.
My personal theory: it’s because SF has been successful that the lefties that were always present are getting reinforcements from PC grifters from outside the field who want in on that action.
Joe, I really do think that a lot of this got a whole lot worse during the SF identity crisis of the 1990s. It’s always funny to me how many people don’t even remember that, or maybe they were on board with it and are still hanging on? Note I used “SF” instead of some other less inclusive or less high brow construction. Speculative Fiction. Otherwise known as… OhwesoarenotPulpHacks Fiction. SpaceOperaisaDirtyWord Fiction. Don’t you ever freaking dare say “Sci-Fi” Fiction. Most of the genre has gotten almost all of the way over that.
So you know… maybe it is us about fussing over the “high-brow” efforts of the hanger-ons and of those repurposing that silly identity crisis for modern times.
Gee, the votes haven’t been counted yet. How do they know what the results are likely to be?
Seen talk on the Darknet linked to open net about how the vote tallies were already leaking and how folks were being asked to revote before the final date got locked in.
Funny how those links died shortly after this came to light too.
8 chan has a few anti-sjw’s who are following this and “things” keep popping up. They are more interested in the anti-SJW movement than the SP/Hugo thing, but do keep an eye on them and have insiders working at TOR too. (which is kinda ironic as you use a TOR browser to link to those site…)
I would be very interested in the World Science Fiction Society releasing the server logs to find out who if anyone was accessing the individual private voting records of this Worldcon before the results were announced. If it happened, it was vote tampering.
Larry, you’re an accountant. What say you?
*smile* Likely the same way they were aware of who was going to be on the ballot even before the ballot was announced.
The SP argument: merit > tribalism.
The SJW argument: tribe is merit.
Merit succeeds. To deny merit success requires control.
B-but…privilege! Invisible -ism! What have you done for me lately? Micro-aggression! PRIVILEGE! Can’t you tell that just being born made me special?
*******************************************************
Yeah, I couldn’t keep a straight face.
It’s hard to try pretend to be one of them even for a few minutes. The pretzels one needs to twist one’s thoughts into hurts the brain.
I mean, look at the language of the piece: “Rightwing infiltrators”. Infiltrators, like we were agents of some hostile foreign power. No, we’re fans. Many of us have been fans all our lives. When you treat us like we don’t belong, when you try and shut us out, you get things like Sad Puppies.
I don’t think you are Fans – not capital “F” fans. I think you are conservatives that read some SFF. To you it is about being a teapupppy. To most Worldcon attendees it is about being a Fan. But carry on with the culture war. I am not a Fan either. But I do enjoy watching the Teapuppies flail about because they don’t like what the Fans appreciate.
If you were Fans, you would belong whatever your political views.
“I don’t think you are Fans”
I don’t think you get to make that determination, hoss.
You so funny. Been to more Worldcons than you have, guarandamteed.
Gee, thanks for putting me in my place, person I barely know!
Well, you’re right about one thing: you don’t think. The rest of your post is just details.
The Progressive does not think. What he calls thought is nothing more than a fetid pile of unwarranted assumptions, logical fallacies, and inchoate emoting.
I don’t think you are Fans – not capital “F” fans. I think you are conservatives that read some SFF.
Ah, we lack “purity” or something?
Oh noes, whatever will I do?
*goes back to getting a gunslinger through Quesh in SWTOR*
*goes back to fighting the Tholians and the Borg and the Iconians*
Give them time and they always come back to Wrongfan.
I think I said non Fan. Wrongfan is your creation. But then, you are the writer.
It seems as if you don’t even comprehend your own writing, let alone someone else’s.
Is it your contention that being conservative means that you never really read SF, but are simply a paid shill? A non-fan instead of a wrongfan?
So where is my check?
IOW, the thought of people you hold in such contempt sharing an interest/passion towards SFF is so horrible to you, that you deny their existence. They aren’t “real” Fans, just fakers.
Which says more about you than it does about them, and not a bit of it good.
Goes back to the Magic game I’m playing with my kids, taps manna, casts a Serra Angel.
OK, loudmouth, time to play whipout. Put your money where your mouth is, and not just your damn feet. List your fandom credentials. We can all use a good laugh before tromping over and urinating on them.
Come on, pal. Tell us what makes you the great judge of truefen?
Mastery of Parroting Stale Left Wing Talking Points, probably.
Seriously, “Not a True Fan” was what, months ago?
And look,you win! No reply from the witless troll ^^
So spending 75% of my life buying multiple SF books a month and obsessively discussing them means I’m not a fan. Right…
You know, that used to be considered the primary qualification of being a fan…
((goes back to my 8th or 10th reread of Second Foundation)
Some Fans are more equal than others?
Just start rounding up the kulaks and be done with it.
…goes back to planning an SF&F con….
“I don’t think you are Fans – not capital “F” fans”
I don’t think you grok the slans, keezy zwilnik. Rishathra my horta and Silflay your hraka.
Some of us here have been science fiction fans since before the moonshot. Do you even speak our lingo?
If you were Fans, you would belong whatever your political views.
That’s what *I* said. *YOU* – and your lot – told me to stfu and go away, you didn’t like my kind.
Your bigotry is noted.
P.S. Nice pigeon-holing and boxing from a side that claims to love ‘diversity’.
Pfft. I’ve been going to conventions since probably before you were born. Hell, I’ve been on concoms and was a department head at two different Worldcons. Right now I’m on my (meandering) way to Sasquan as we speak. I’ve read literally thousands of SF/F novels in my lifetime and my biggest regret is that my to-read pile is still longer than I expect to live. I am as much a Fan as anyone at WorldCon, and I’ll be damned before I let some pipsqueak dipshit tell me otherwise.
Now get off my fandom lawn. If you’re telling me other readers aren’t fans, then YOU’RE the effing problem.
No true Scotsman, er, Fan would nominate such a slate of books. I see your point clearly.
…. And THAT opinion is why the SP thing is happening.
Wait so the fact that I typically read 15 – 30 books a month but detest the SJW’s means I’m not a Fan? Wow. Just wow what wrong way to think.
Actually here is a list of the last few books I’ve read in the last month or so.
Ilona Andrews – Magic shifts – Actually in the last week all of the books prior to that one as well.
David Wood – Arena of Souls
Garth Nix – Lirial (reread)
Garth Nix – Abhorson (reread)
Jayne Castle – Sirens Call
Drew Hayes – The Utterly Uninteresting and Unadventurous Tales of Fred, The Vampire Accountant
Mary Catelli – The Lion and the Library
Ian Thomas Healy – Just Cause Omnibus Vol 2
Jonathan Moeller – Ghost Arts
May Catelli – Magic and Secrets
Christopher G. Nuttall – Trial by Fire
Jonathan Moeller – Ghost in the Seal
Lois McMaster Bujold – Penric’s Demon
Chrles Stross – The Annihilation Score
Jason Cordova – The Dead of Babylon
Russell Blake – Ramseey’s Gold
Viola Grace – Two Parts Demon
Lexie Dunne – Supervillains Anonymous
Mercedes Lackey – From a High Tower
Terry Mancour – Enchanter
David Weber – The Sword of the South
Garth Nix – To Hold the Bridge
Clive Cussler – Piranha
T. Kingfisher – Bryony and Roses
Robin mcKinly – Beauty
Usurla Vrnon – Castle Hangnail
Laurell K Hamilton – Dead ice
Honor Raconteur – Blackstone
So probably not talking about you TomT. TrueFans as the term is usually used is someone fairly obsessive about the subject and attends the conventions and so forth.
Most of the puppies seem to be TeaPuppies and are obsessive about wrong fans having wrong fun with SFF that is message SFF. They want to join up and vote for Wright Authors have right fiction and stick it to the SJWs. Do it for spite as Larry says. But if that’s not you, then that’s not you. It’s a different motivation.
___ always lie.
Look, we tell you over and over again what our motives and goals were, and you deny it so often that you must believe we are lying or delusional.
We ARE pretty obsessive about SF, and attend conventions “and so forth”
We don’t care if stories have a message, we just think most message stories are usually boring and more to the point, want people to stop telling us we’re bad because we don’t want message-first in our stories a la “why are [you appropriating | there not enough] {insert “minority” category}” and that we MUST write / read only women authors or must put an end to default binary gender.
You either cannot understand, or at this point live in such a bubble that you refuse to understand, and twist the truth and what we say, and what those you support say, to mean anything but what their plain words mean.
Orwell’s ministry of truth would be proud of you.
Good for you.
If that is true then you have had your vote and you are one of the TrueFans. If the other TrueFans assert you are reading the wrong thing, nominate what you want. The vote will decide the outcome. It appears that the totality of the TrueFans have voted differently in the past. And the pups think they are wrong fans having wrong fun. Some say it is a grand conspiracy. There is no wrong fun; you should have great fun discussing your differences.
I hope you continue to enjoy your devotion and your differences. Even if the rule change makes slating less effective.
At the end of the day, the Hugo only reflects the consensus opinion of the voting Worldcon Fan and that’s a pretty small number.
But if you think it is a important, this could be an exciting time for you . The membership has grown and the number of voting members is at an all time high. If enough TruePuppyFans are now members you could sweep the vote. If not, well… it’s the process that counts, yes? And still exciting.
I will be watching on the live feed. I am not a true fan.
Ah, now you’re getting just mildly nasty. Finally realizing that you don’t see the world the way everyone else does, eh? Perhaps eventually you’ll be able to see things as they are, not as you wish to force them to be (or wish to convince yourself they already are).
I think I have you figured out. You’re committing multiple category errors–you’re imputing to everyone not CHORFs the behavior and beliefs of the CHORFs, and assuming that your delusionary views are somehow deeper and more objective than reality.
Yeah. I love that. Run off people who have been there for years, and then claim they are “infiltrators”.
Considering how loud, bombastic, and in the open we were about the whole damned PUBLICITY CAMPAIGN can you really call it infiltrating? 😀
He/she/xir/it/collective-unit-null probably means ‘interloping’. Or reactionary unperson saboteur of the aims of the glorious people’s revolutionary struggle (where they use their collective might to fight for the right to go around and around and around…)
It’s telling when someone considers normal genre SFF infiltration. Making race-gender central to SFF is infiltration, not to mention lunatic.
“infiltrating”
SJWs fling words like monkeys fling poo. Any word is as good as any other; their definitions are quite flexible.
As a Democrat, liberal, AND supporter of SP, I feel less than welcome when I see “liberals” and “Democrats” used as broad brush pejorative terms. I thought such sweeping generalizations and reductionism was the province of SJWs.
Which is why I try to stick with SJW, but I do believe where I used it in this context it is perfectly accurate. The political bias within the award system was toward the left. Or to put it another way, how many recent winners do you think voted for Mitt Romney?
No TrueFan would support a Mormon. 😉
Seriously. On a world stage. Not many would support Romney. But that you think that is important tells use what is really going on with this slate business. Part of it is self promotion and if that niche marketing works for you, it is cynical but OK. Certainly that is what Vox is doing. But part of it is trying to do harm to people by nominating things not because they are good but because you think it will piss people off. And if your intent is to piss people off… you won.
Meanwhile now when your name comes up at Goodreads somebody always says – that guys is an asshole. Then someone else says – no I have met him and he is not an asshole. And that conversation now takes place that at one time didn’t. But from a marketing perspective – maybe that’s OK. Whatever helps your book bomb, Bud.
It appears as if “Romney” is just a trigger warning to you. the point was not that Romney is important, but simply that he was being used as a metric. That this basic fact escapes your comprehension tells us that it’s no wonder you can’t recognize quality work.
The rest of your nonsense is just projection. You obviously haven’t apprised yourself of the basic facts of the situation yet somehow feel qualified to determine True Motives based on your skewed “understanding”.
I could just have easily asked how many of them voted for McCain or Bush, or considering how old the average WorldCon attendee is, Lincoln. 🙂
Hey Rove promised us James Buchanan was ELECTABLE! He was gonna bring the country together, man!
The world stage doesn’t get to select US presidents, retard.
And after the disaster at home and abroad during the last eight years of Obama, there is a good chance that the party of the KKK, the Democratic Party, won’t get much of a say either.
But they do get to select Hugo winners which was Larry’s Christian. Yawn.
Should be “which was Larry’s question”. Apologies. Madcow.
Then why did you select a US election to compare to the supposedly worldly Hugos?
If you are going to use an analogy, you need to learn how to do it first.
Do you really think us Americans CARE what the rest of the world thinks about our presidential nominees? As to ascertaining the intentions of the various iterations of the Puppies movements, you struck out. Do a little research about a strawman argument, then come back when you can make a rhetorically valid argument. As to books bombing, honestly, you really can’t possibly believe the drek you write.
Talk to your fearless leader – It was his question.
But yes its nice to have a President that is well respected around the world and I think that is better than the alternative.
Book bombing in the sense of a increasing short term sales. Similar to money bombs during a campaign.
It might be nice, but it’s certainly not the determinative factor; look at Obama, after all. As to “fearless leader:” what in the world are you talking about? No fearless leader at all here. And when you say “whatever helps your book bomb,” unless you’re redefining the terms (like a good leftist; well, maybe then you are trying to do that) using “bomb” as a verb as you did here colloquially means to do badly, to “tank” in other words. Methinks you’re trying to cover your statement by changing its meaning after you’ve been called out.
Your fearless leader on this site is Larry. You say:
“And when you say “whatever helps your book bomb,” unless you’re redefining the terms (like a good leftist; well, maybe then you are trying to do that) using “bomb” as a verb as you did here colloquially means to do badly, to “tank” in other words. Methinks you’re trying to cover your statement by changing its meaning after you’ve been called out.”
When John C Wright writes “Monster Hunter Book Bomb!” on his site, what do you think it means? When he writes: “BOOK BOMB! Residue by Steve Diamond” do you think he means harm? Doubt me? Google is your friend. I would link but then the post would get held up posting.
Also google “Occam’s razor”. It will be helpful to you in the future.
So the English language isn’t your strong suit; we get it. When used separately as John C. Wright does in your quotes, Book Bomb (notice the capitalization) is clearly a compound noun. As you used it, “Whatever helps your book bomb,” you didn’t make it clear that you were using it as a compound noun (if you indeed were). The interpretation I made of your statement was the most straightforward way of understanding what you wrote. Perhaps you should learn more about the language you purportedly understand.
Popular =/= Right.
Wilson was pretty popular worldwide, until it was realized that his pious sermonizing was not backed by action.
Regan was roundly reviled as a senile warmonger… but he ended the cold war.
Stalin and Hitler were both supported by the Leftwing Intellectuals during the days of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact.
I can go on…
I think you’ve missed the point of the question. Generally, people who would choose D over R, or the reverse, think about the world in similar ways. If every time someone picked up a book that said “Hugo Winner” they knew the writer would write from the “D perspective”, that’s not variety. At one point “Hugo Winner” was synonymous with “D-perspective fiction”. People rationally believed that the Hugo simply excludes all R or L perspective fiction, while still claiming to represent the best of all fiction.
For the Hugos to be so reliable in this, while still claiming the mantle of all fans, is disingenuous. Of course, if I understand you correctly, you have drawn a line and are excluding some people who self-identify as fans from what you call, “Fans”. You seem to identify those who have an R/L cultural outlook as not being real “Fans”, and regard their attempts to gain a voice in the current Hugo process as disruptive to the desired status quo. It looks like you don’t mind the exclusionary nature of the recent Hugo nominations and awards, and would prefer the Hugo to be an award for deconstructionist and progressive fiction.
That’s fine, and I think that when most people look at your postings, they’ll appreciate that you’ve made your views clear, once they think about it. If the Hugos are to be the award for experimental, genderqueer, deconstructionist, and progressive literature in SFF, and no longer claim to speak for all who self-identify as fans, it might annoy, but people will get over it. It’s more that the Hugos are appropriating the experiences of all who identify as SFF fans, and are using their establishment position to speak on their behalf while rejecting the experiences of those fans that has bothered people.
The majority of R/L-perspective people won’t be seriously bothered by this transition you’re proposing for the Hugos, once they recognize what it means. When the Hugos embrace the new future you’re describing, focusing on the aforementioned elements, new avenues of recognition will emerge that are more oriented toward what those around here call “reading pleasure”, “broad audience” or “fun”.
I am a lot simpler than that. I don’t claim to be a Fan of SFF. I like what I like, some of which happens to be SFF and little of which is awarded. I think those that attend Worldcon are Fans that really want to celebrate the genre, engage in book talk, watch the panels and do all the things fans do.
I don’t really consider Tea Puppies fans. They are more interested in promoting a conservative agenda some which is the art of getting offended. They are engaged in the culture war.
If you were fans your focus would be on SFF and not politics.
Really, Jon Stewart nailed it in his last show:
“They purport to want to fix things, but conservatives are not looking to make education more rigorous and informative, or science more empirical or verifiable, or voting more representative, or the government more efficient or effective. They just want all those things to reinforce their partisan ideological conservative viewpoint. Because in their mind, the opposite of ‘bad’ isn’t ‘good.’ The opposite of ‘bad’ is ‘conservative.’ The opposite of ‘wrong’ isn’t ‘right’ — it’s ‘right-wing.’”
Google the show by searching for “Fox News 50 Lies in 6 seconds”.
(deadpan)Wow, a Jon Stewart quote. That. Really. Put. Us in our place, let me tell you what. Kinda like quoting Rush Limbaugh at File 770.
(even more deadpan) I bet we’re all going to go an rethink our political philosophy right now.
Note- your feeble attempts at trying to walk back your failed “Not True Fans” comment is just making you look more of an idiot.
Not to mention more than a bit of projection. But that’s standard for progressives.
Not trying to walk back what I wrote. I don’t think you are a “True Fan” as you put or a Fan with a capital “F” as I put it. This blog demonstrates that very well. You are a culture warrior doing what culture warriors do. And sometimes you read SFF of some people.
No I don’t expect you to rethink your political philosophy. You are who you are.
My interest is how many are you? I guess we will know that pretty soon. The other thing we will know pretty soon is if Worldcon members will continue to tolerate the disruption or if they will fix their voting system to minimize the effects of freeping. Obviously, awards like the Goodreads Choice Awards are not concerned about freeping because your numbers are too small.
You are a good example of why I disable the edit function for comments. 🙂
Yes, yes, you are TRUFAN who is right and pure, and we are WRONGFAN who insist on having dastardly wrongfun. You enjoy fiction correctly, and we enjoy it wrong… Which I suppose demonstrates the mindset that causes a culture war to begin with.
How many of us are there? Lots. But for decades most of us haven’t paid any attention to awards. And the more guys like you bleat and freak out, the more of us notice and show up. So please, do continue.
You are a good fiction writer. Your last post is all fiction. I said none of that. I am glad you disabled the edit function. Because we can see exactly what I did say.
Your puppy snit is about politics. It isn’t about SFF. That’s not freaking out. That’s just pointing out the obvious. If your followers are legion, go after the Goodreads Choice Awards next. See how you do. That won’t be so easy to freep.
Goodreads isn’t a Rainbow KKK.
No, you said you’re not a “Fan”, just a fan, but that SP’s aren’t “Fans”. You also seem to regard the additional memberships and input of people you regard as “not real Fans” to be disruptive instead of valuable. The implication is that Worldcon should adopt policies that exclude SP’s that self identify as fans.
Not at all. I think I said more than once that I don’t consider myself a TrueFan. Join up and vote. Go vote in the Goodreads Chocie Awards – it cost you nothing and it is a more meaningful award. I just realize that the posters here are more interested in politics than SFF. Read their post.
I do think the Worldcon should adopt nominating procedures that mitigate freeping. And there is a proposal to do that. But Puppy Love can still be expressed in proportion to puppy representation. You can still nominate whomever.
By your own admission, you really aren’t part of this conflict. You’re only here to stir up trouble. Which you’re signally bad at, to tell the truth. All you’ve managed to do is to demonstrate the paucity of your evidence and the vacuity of your positions.
“Your puppy snit is about politics. It isn’t about SFF. That’s not freaking out. That’s just pointing out the obvious. ”
SJWs always lie. The question of why is one a psychopathologist might have trouble answering. Why they lie even in the face of clear and convincing evidence is one a priest might have trouble answering. Who they think they are convincing, no one can answer.
But they all think that they can read minds. None of them, no, not one, feels even slightly embarrassed at telling you what your true motive is, even though you know your own motive and he does not. They have no shame, no sense of reason, no love of truth, no courtesy, no honestly, no civility.
They gave all that up. In return, they have a make believe world where they are already right, always saints and heroes and martyrs, and everyone else is always wrong, bad, evil, and stupid.
It is a neurosis called Narcissism. They really think that have mind reading powers, and they they know your thoughts before you do.
John, the problem is you can’t exactly build a civil society on any level with insane people in it.
John, I believe they do these things as a simple smoke screen to obfuscate the issues as much as possible.
And when he triumphantly writes that “… if Worldcon members will continue to tolerate the disruption or if they will fix their voting system….”
he is completely oblivious to the TRUTH that WE PAID OUR MONEY and now WE are Worldcon members. (Well some of us.)
We paid our money and our votes are EXACTLY as valid as “theirs”.
And having exercised our vote, we find that we LIKE it, and we’re sticking around.
nick
I’m a new generation in the fandom and I havn’t read all the classics. But I have already broken 100 books this year in SF/F, and that doesn’t even include the webfiction and beta reading I do. Many of the people that I know that talk about SF/F books and read the literary books that the Hugo’s normally puts up, are people that I know for a fact don’t often read SF/F. While all my friends that fall in the 50+ books a year category havn’t read most of these big winners. I actually had to go out and convince one to get Goblin Emperor because I thought he would really like it….and he still hasn’t picked it up yet *grrrrr*. But no the rest of us are too busy waiting for the next Sanderson or Butcher book. Or maybe talking about some new VN or webnovel that came out.
One of the things I always see with these awards is that the books people nominate feel like books that only older people are reading. People from my generation don’t know what Lock-In is for the most part, they havn’t heard of The Three Body Problem. Just like many people in the older generation don’t know jack shit about the communities that formed around Japan/Korean scenes. But I can tell you among fans my age basically everyone has read or at least knows about Fate/Zero, a story in which Berserker Sir Lancelot used his ability to turn a fighter jet into a legendary weapon and is having a dog fight with Gilgamesh over a huge battlefield. While almost none of them have heard of Ancillary Justice, a story in which an AI was split into multiple fragments and is on a quest for revenge but gets stalled by talking about tea and how bad imperialism is for 200-300 pages.
A.Nagy said: “People from my generation don’t know what Lock-In is for the most part…”
I think Goodreads skews younger. “Lockin” is 2nd in SF for the Goodreads Choice Awards with over 3M votes. It is behind “The Martian”. You are probably like me and don’t pay much attention to awards. And you probably just read what you like and what people you trust recommend. That’s what I do.
What we “have all heard of” are things that don’t make the puppy slates and don’t win Hugos and sells lots and lots of books. “The Hunger Games” comes to mind.
This kerfuffle is basically because Larry was up for an award and didn’t win it. So now there is this big conspiracy.
This kerfuffle is basically because Larry was up for an award and didn’t win it. So now there is this big conspiracy.
So you are claiming to know someone’s thoughts are different that what they said. What is your Telepath’s License number? Because it needs to be revoked for gross incompetence. Larry’s actions match his words, not your libel.
The moron probably doesn’t even realize that Larry turned down his nomination and Scalzi still didn’t get in. Not only that, Larry’s recused himself from the Hugos for good; but the drooling idiots still believe that it’s supposed to be ‘all about Larry not winning the award’ when it’s never been about him winning.
Some time back, someone on file770 tried to claim that Larry only turned down the nomination because he didn’t want to give away copies of MHN…..
There were way, way too many posters there that would rather invent elaborate explanations for why clear statements had to be lies than accept that someone could disagree with them yet not be entirely meritless as a person.
I guess they missed the posts where Larry talked about signing piles and piles of copies to give away at conventions as part of the Baen swag bags. Or the Baen philosophy of getting people hooked on books by having the Baen free library…
When I was nominated last time, for book 3 of a trilogy, we gave away the entire trilogy in the voter packet. At NYC ComicCon, I gave away over 1,000 paperbacks in two days. And my first book is free on the Baen store and on Amazon. In fact, last year there was a big news article about how a recent Hugo winner was the FUTURE OF SCI-FI and her award winning debut novel had sold an astounding 30,000 total copies! And my first thought was that I think I’ve given away more books than that.
But you know, they just keep throwing out nonsense to see what sticks.
It was the free short stories (http://www.baenebooks.com/p-1387-free-short-stories-2011.aspx), both good, that got me started… that led to “he’s a nice bonus in that bundle with others”, which was better (Hard magic) and there to now. So a couple of free stories I might never have bought on their own has me at ten-twelve books purchased so far (depending on how you count collections). Not a bad ROI.
What it’s about is that things have gotten so bad in the last two years that stories are nothing more than an afterthought to reward the most neurotic sociopaths who light out after men, whites and heterosexuals.
“This kerfuffle is basically because Larry was up for an award and didn’t win it. So now there is this big conspiracy.”
And this is, of course, a lie.
“This kerfuffle is basically because Larry was up for an award and didn’t win it. So now there is this big conspiracy”
Scalzi said something similar on April 8. This was Larry’s response:
“@monsterhunter45
I turned down my Hugo nomination and you still didn’t make the ballot.”
Heh, you suck at this. 😀
Sadly, you get so much wrong crammed into a single post that refuting everything would take a giant post. And you post a lot. You’re one of those attrition progs.
So I’ll make this brief.
You keep bringing up GoodReads award showings. Apples and oranges since we’re talking about the Hugos. Goodreads required no voter involvement beyond clicking a link. So of course a dude with 70k Twitter followers is going to do well. There isn’t much commitment required. But apparently that didn’t translate over to number of fans caring enough to pony up actual cash money to vote. So interesting, but ultimately irrelevant.
(side note, if I’d realized it would later be sooooooo very important to arguing with anonymous progtrolls, I should have posted about this contest more!) 🙂
Though personally I would love to see Goodreads kind of numbers voting for the Hugos. Since I’m not a gatekeeper, I’d love to see tens of thousands of fans voting for the sainted Hugos. That would sure suck for the dreck writing message fic, take turns giving your friends awards crowd.
If the Hunger Games fans wanted to get involved, unlike you, I’d encourage them.
Your last sentence is just idiotic, but it demonstrates why there aren’t enough hours in the day to respond to all the nonsense you toss out.
1. I never expected to win. (hell, you can ask the other Campbell nominees. I thought Dan Wells was the most skilled). I’ve repeatedly said I didn’t expect to win.
2. However, it bugged me not to be judged on the quality of my work, but rather by my political beliefs. I saw that there was political bias in the system.
3. So I demonstrated there was political bias. If you’re going to deny that there is political bias in the system–despite the reactions, slander, and media campaigns we’ve seen–then you’re just further demonstrating that you’re full of shit. But luckily, this is a spectator sport.
4a. The only time the word “conspiracy” has been used by me in any of my many blog posts related to this topic, have been replying to assholes like you trying to dismiss people as conspiracy theorists. You keep using that word, but it isn’t necessary or accurate. It was an entrenched dominate culture rewarding its friends and blocking its enemies. It wasn’t particularly secret or very well hidden. It was a running joke. People have been talking about it for years, and it was one of the reasons the Hugos had lost its luster to so many aware fans.
4b. In fact, I’ve shown that this is the opposite of conspiracy, in that before SP1 and 2, many authors and fans believed the awards were actually rigged, and that there was cheating involved. We secretly tracked the numbers of SP nominators and compared those to the released tally at the end. I saw no evidence of conspiracy or dishonesty from the committee and said so in public. Members of the ConCom who disagree with the overall mission of Sad Puppies have thanked me for putting those charges to bed.
4c. What you are dismissing as conspiracy now, is what GRRM came out and confirmed as accurate, after three years of you guys trying to dismiss it as a crazy conspiracy. That there was campaigning. That the Hugos only represented one small group and not all of fandom. Done.
5. I was the one who did this because I was in a position to show how biased and flawed the system was to a wider part of fandom, and still get away with it. As we’ve seen, they will try to libel you, damage your name, and hurt your career.
6. To demonstrate that it isn’t about me personally wanting an award, I refused my nomination this year, and have stated that I will never accept a Hugo nomination ever.
There you go attritionprog You’re like an Occupy Democrats meme. So much bullshit crammed so efficiently into such a tiny space, that it takes too much effort to shoot it down.
Larry Said:
“You keep bringing up GoodReads award showings. Apples and oranges since we’re talking about the Hugos. Goodreads required no voter involvement beyond clicking a link. So of course a dude with 70k Twitter followers is going to do well. There isn’t much commitment required. But apparently that didn’t translate over to number of fans caring enough to pony up actual cash money to vote. So interesting, but ultimately irrelevant. ”
In other words, you think they are wrong fans having wrong fun. Got it.
“2. However, it bugged me not to be judged on the quality of my work, but rather by my political beliefs. I saw that there was political bias in the system.”
That’s what you do; that’s what your whole movement is about.
“That would sure suck for the dreck writing message fic, take turns giving your friends awards crowd. ”
The Hugo is a fan award. It is fans voting for whom they like. In this case they are true fans who have a high interest and they might have different taste than you or me who are not True Fans. I have been saying that.
” If you’re going to deny that there is political bias in the system … you’re full of shit. … The only time the word “conspiracy” has been used by me in any of my many blog posts related to this topic, have been replying to assholes like you…”
And you wonder why people don’t want to hang around you at conventions. This is a fan award. If there is a bias it is a fan bias and that ‘s the whole purpose of awards. You comment here of “political bias in the system” and above ” dreck writing message fic, take turns giving your friends awards crowd ” is a conspiracy argument. In this case drecs conspire to give out awards in turn to their friends. It is also drivel.
“That the Hugos only represented one small group and not all of fandom. Done.”
Exactly. And my conversation with GRRM was that the Hugo was less broad based than the Goodreads Award and therefore to me not as prestigious. To which he replied it was more of an informed crowd like the Oscars and we disagreed without animosity. Note you make the same argument as GRRM where you say the Goodreads fans are not as motivated.
This is Worldcon. It is world based. They go to conventions. Sometimes the votes to where to hold the convention is greater than the awards vote. The membership is tiny and the voters a tiny fraction of the tiny membership. It isn’t the final arbitrator of anything.
“I was the one who did this because I was in a position to show how biased and flawed the system was to a wider part of fandom, and still get away with it. As we’ve seen, they will try to libel you, damage your name, and hurt your career.”
I will just deal with the last part. Your movement takeover by Vox Day was to sell books. He is promoting a marketing niche and getting you guys to do the work for him. I assume you are doing this for niche marketing as well. You had a broader base though because you were riding a wave of popular urban fantasy. If you damaged that, you only have yourself to blame. If you didn’t , congrats on your marketing. If you can get teapuppies to fork over $40 to help you in your effort good for you.
“To demonstrate that it isn’t about me personally wanting an award, I refused my nomination this year, and have stated that I will never accept a Hugo nomination ever. ”
Why would you ever get a Hugo? Assuming you wrote something good enough to win, why would a convention where you freeped the nomination process, insulted the existing Worldcon fan, teemed up with Vox Day, invited in Gamergate, and filled your rationalizations with political BS every want to honor you with an award? You gave up something you would never have.
“So I’ll make this brief.”
Ah.
Holy crap…..
What a staggering amount of clueless, demonstrable, gibberish. You really don’t know a thing about what you pontificate on, and then try to cover it up with (poorly done) snarky insult and dismissal.
“And you wonder why people don’t want to hang around you at conventions”. Just how many Cons have you attended where Larry was there? I have personally been to them. I saw the largest lines around his booth. I sat in on his panels that were packed, because he was there. I’ve watched the guy mingle with us “little people” in the halls, in the restaurants, in the audience with us for events, speeches, ceremonies, auctions and just general bull sessions. Dude is a class act.
You however, are not. You accuse the guy of sour grapes for not getting an award, lie. You drop Liberal Elitist trigger warnings like “Gamergate” ‘ Vox day”, and “conspiracy” Like any of those were a bad thing (to anyone not allergic to the truth).
You think referring to us as not real fans, so we can be discounted, is some kind of master stroke. Its not and you beclown yourself every time you try it. If being a TruFan means being an idiot like you, then thank God I’m not one. Here, let me make you feel a bit more relevant and important. Here are some well earned labels you can hang on me due to associations. NRA, VFW, FOP and yeah, Tea Party. If there are any sour grapes running around on this blog, they are yours. All the snark in the universe can’t change that one fact that burns your ass so bad. There are more of us than you. Our opinion matters more than yours. We have fun and don’t care a fig what you think about it. You rage, we laugh. You lose, we win.
Says David MacKinnon:
” If being a TruFan means being an idiot like you, then thank God I’m not one. Here, let me make you feel a bit more relevant and important. Here are some well earned labels you can hang on me due to associations. NRA, VFW, FOP and yeah, Tea Party… You lose, we win. ”
There is a definition of TrueFan. It isn’t you as pertains to SFF. It isn’t me either. Perhaps you are a truefan of the TeaParty movement. My assertion is that what the TeaPuppy movement is about. And that’s what the responses here indicate. That’s is what Larry’s conspiracy theories indicate. And that’s why he was pissed off.
“So the Sad Puppies Hugo stacking campaing was a success for almost everybody else I pushed, but me, as we didn’t get enough to break MHL into best novel.
Considering how many of the Monster Hunter Nation picks made it, that’s pretty cool, since my fans aren’t exactly the WorldCon type. Oh, but we will be back… Just out of spite.
And for those of you that follow this stuff, it is pretty much what you expect, as in a big SMOF popularity contest where various people with lots of WorldCon factions politicking for them are insta-noms, and everybody else is shut out. Luckily, only one of the nominees for best novel is a dying polar bear story of global warming sadness and evil capitalism, which would normally win, but it will surely lose to Scalzi, who is liberal blogger who happens to write books too….”
Well there you have it from the head puppy. Pups are stacking votes (freeping) out of spite to stick it to the liberals and the TrueFan votes don’t really count because they just like message fiction about dying polar bears and stuff. They are wrong fans having wrong fun according to Larry.
You guys are engaged in a culture war. The current battle is scheduled for August 22nd. Will the Pups win the battle? Anythings possible.
” I have personally been to them. I saw the largest lines around his booth.”
Good for Larry. I was referring to his exchange with GRRM where he claims to have been treated poorly.
Wow. Are you really this unaware of what’s happening here, or just completely incapable of telling the truth about anything? It pretty much has to be one or the other.
Yes, lots of people like to hang out with me, but they are WRONGFAN! If they were Truefan, they would be douchebags to people who don’t fit in. 🙂
Again, you lying sack, the side that coined “The personal is political” has not a single leg to stand on complaining about politics in ANYTHING.
blah blah blah blah blah
Nope, dumb ass. I’ve got absolutely nothing against the Goodreads award. I think it is great. We’re here talking about the Hugos and you keep trying to obfuscate the issue. Of course the level of motivation is different. $40 is a significantly higher barrier to entry than free. Duh.
I remember we had another troll like you years ago using the Audies the same way, until I started winning a bunch of those.
That was brief. Because you cram so many lies, half truths, and obfuscations into one post that it would take a giant essay to go through them all. If I went through this one here I wouldn’t get any paying writing done today.
Why would I ever win a Hugo after (insert political things here)? Wait… Are you admitting that politics and identity are more important than the quality of the work? 😀 So theoretically, somebody (not me, obviously, because I’m not a *real* writer) could write the best book ever, but it would get ignored because they’d done something to offend a WorldCon clique?
GASP!
That’s kind of the point, fuckwit. (yeah, I’m just done being nice with this long winded moron) If you think I’m the only author out there who has somehow offended the perpetually offended so that I’ll never get an award, you’re a sucker. There are plenty of authors who’ve offended them by existing, thinking the wrong thing, or simply not sucking up with the in crowd.
“That’s kind of the point, fuckwit…. (yeah, I’m just done being nice with this long winded moron)”
And still doesn’t change anything. Your conspiracy is drivel. The awards are chosen by fans. They didn’t choose you and you got mad about it. You think they are wrong fans having wrong fun. And you try to be destructive. As you say you were done being nice.
See you on August 22nd. Will you declare victory no matter how it turns out?
I already declared victory last year when I got them to expose their bias. Anything else is just gravy. 🙂
“I think Goodreads skews younger. “Lockin” is 2nd in SF for the Goodreads Choice Awards with over 3M votes. It is behind “The Martian”.” -SJW75126
Yes they do skew younger and I saw lots of people read Lockin on my feed what is weird is that zero of them were from my group of 10ish friends that are heavy SF/F consumers, instead they were people who read literary works and think reading 10 books a year is a lot. Basically it’s the exact same people that all read To set a Watchmen the moment it came out.
Yeah sorry I brought up a foreign non-official translated work, I’m well aware it’s not up for a Hugo and shouldn’t be. I think I was trying to kind of highlight that the young hardcore SF/F fandom tends to have a dramatically different reading list. I was quickly writing an edit to mention I realize the scene is divided even in my generation with generally the YA faction/Graphic novel faction/Asia stuff faction (everyone I know from all 3 factions reads webserials, or fanfiction as well.).
*smile* Since translated works are valid for the year of their translated publication, the following books would qualify for the next year’s Hugo Awards:
Log Horizon (Novel, Graphic Novel) (Sci-Fi, surprise, not fantasy)
Sword Art Online Progressive would also qualify for novel and graphic novel categories
Matthew Reilly’s Troll Mountain would probably qualify for novella (I really would have liked to be able to nominate his Great Zoo of China for the sci-fi category)
UQ Holder (Sci-fi? Fantasy?) Graphic Novel category.
Fate Zero will qualify for the 2017 Hugo Awards: http://www.amazon.com/Fate-Zero-1-Gen-Urpbuchi/dp/1616559195/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1438760514&sr=8-2&keywords=Fate+Zero+novel
…
Excuse me, I stumbled on a Makoto Shinkai artbook. *rushes away*
” I think I was trying to kind of highlight that the young hardcore SF/F fandom tends to have a dramatically different reading list. I was quickly writing an edit to mention I realize the scene is divided even in my generation with generally the YA faction/Graphic novel faction/Asia stuff faction (everyone I know from all 3 factions reads webserials, or fanfiction as well.).”
Got it. Good point.
I have a couple of SF groups. The one I most listen to is the smaller one kind of like you. Before I bought the Lock In audible I asked them about it. Still have not listened to it.
And then I have a larger GR group that just focuses on audio books and they are all over the place. Again like you they gave me more literary works to consider. And then I have one more that is nothing other than all Dresden all the time.
The small SF group never mentions the Hugo Award. It was a big topic with the larger one (particularly with the puppy revolt) but now it has died out. Although there is a group read of one of the books.
You know, you talk about audio books and almost nothing else. Are you functionally illiterate, perhaps? That could explain a LOT.
(Please read in appropriate accent) Let me ‘splain. No… there is too much. Let me sum up.
You have come into this place where many people have read more science fiction and fantasy this year than you have read in your entire life. There are some here who have probably written more books than you have likely read in your entire life. You lecture them saying they are not ‘TrueFans’ and claim to know their deepest thoughts which have not yet been expressed. And this is how you judge them as not fans.
You keep using that word (fans). I do not think it means what you think it means. They are now mocking you. Which I do not think you understand either.
A.Nagy, these current discussions about the HUGO is for English titles. I enjoyed the Fate/Stay Night and Fate/Zero too, but those are Japanese. Maybe there is a category these things could fit in, I’m not sure. But if Three Body Problem is a translation, there probably is a way to get them in during the nomination process? Anyway, the point is that you should be able to nominate and vote on things you enjoy, without them having gone through some kind of PC filter before they even get on the ballot.
Re: Nighthawk
While on a practical level, the Hugo is for English titles (because it’s primarily voted on by English readers), the official rules imply (strongly, as I read them) that any work in any language is eligible, if it meets the criteria for the category.
From the WSFS Constitution, Article 3 – Hugo Awards:
As I read those rules, Three Body Problem was eligible to be nominated for the 2009 Hugos, after it was first published in Chinese in 2008. But as it was not on the final ballot for 2009, it was also eligible for the 2015 Hugos, after being published in English translation.
The Goblin Emperor was probably the most surprising find for me this year. Not the best novel I’ve ever read, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.
And Fate/Zero–the charge of Iskandar on the Bridge. Oh the feels.
So, what do you think would happen if some translated light novels and manga would make it into the Hugo ballot? It’d be a refreshing thing; bringing in what the 30 and younger folks read, getting new people interested as well as getting more translated novels into the ballot.
Iskandar is my favorite character in the series. I missed out on the figure, I am so sad.
http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10202298
I’d have liked to get the Waver Velvet figure with the laughing chibi Iskandar with the book simply because of the chibi, but I couldn’t justify it for the cost. *sigh*
I’m all for it. I’ve personally been pretty disappointed in the Graphic Novel ballots in the last couple years, I’d love to see SP4 include some manga & get to the final ballot. I’m usually not up-to-date w/ the latest manga, but I might put in some effort to have some candidates when Kate Paulk opens SP4.
Personally, I think it would be a good endeavor as it would encourage more translated novels to the English market (I’m still hoping that Viz or Seven Seas takes up Slayers since Tokyopop abandoned the novels/title.) The Japanese entertainment industry has some seriously good science fiction and fantasy. It would be a nice idea to get the word spread out in the respective fandoms that such work is eligible.
Would fan translators be eligible for the fan writer awards or such? *ponder*
Would the eligibility year be that of the fan translation or the official one?
Unofficial translations (scanlations/fan-subs) are of questionable copyright legality, so for eligibility I’d stick w/ the original (foreign language) year of publication (which may frequently be the same year as unofficial fan translations), or the year a work was officially published in English translation.
I also don’t think fan translators would be eligible for the other categories, at least not specifically for their unofficial translation work. Much as I value it myself, the questionable legality is just too big a problem. If they have an official, legal license to do the translation, which I know some groups now do, then that changes things – significantly enough that I would call that an official translation instead of a fan translation. But I could maybe be convinced otherwise, and there definitely are things in the more general community (articles, reviews, discussions, fan-art, podcasts, etc. – maybe fanfic) that would be eligible.
The WSFS Constitution (linked in my earlier post) defines the categories in Section 3.3. There is also a “plain English interpretation of those rules”.
Only official translations would probably be allowed, so Yen Press, Kodansha, Viz, Seven Seas, etc. thus the year of the official translation from what I remember of the eligibility rules for translated works to English.
Beolach is probably right about the fan-translations’ legality (though, from what I’ve been told the Japanese don’t care that much given that fangroups are their industry ‘growth grounds’; Comiket is a fantastic example of their thriving indie and fan-derivative industry.)
Our “culture” is called “normal.” I can’t imagine what it must be like to care about the race (or sex) of people in films, music or sporting events. The only people I’ve ever heard of who grouse about such things are neo-Nazis, KKK and intersectional gender feminists. That puts your “culture” somewhere around statistical zero while the world has fun and enjoys art for art’s sake. Enjoy your diving bell; it’s unknown in most of the world’s cultures.
Ah, SJW… to echo my comment to Neil up thread, if you are going to call us out for being a bunch of dumb, easily confused sheep, well, you really should actually be able to make a logical, reasonable argument.
Instead, you wander all over the place, displaying your appalling ignorance, presumptuous arrogance, and general sophomoric lack of awareness. And this does not make you the heroic voice of truth in the wilderness, as many have come around here and regurgitated the exact same points you attempt to parrot poorly. You trolled in the same old way, and have been shot down in the same old way.
I feel like Screwtape protesting the bland, flavorless, flaccid nature of the current crop of sinners he’s forced to dine on. Where’s the bite of a Hunter Thompson, the sizzle of a Mencken, the spice of a Wilde or Parker?
We need a better class of troll round here.
Joe, these guys are like the Black Knight in that Monty Python movie. They have no arms or legs, but they will never shut up.
I don’t really consider Tea Puppies fans.
Too bad you don’t get to decide such things.
Conservatives also wish to abolish the gender binary, smash the Patriarchy, examine privilege globally, destroy the nuclear family, end rape culture, blind the white male colonial gaze, make Malta competitive in the soccer World Cup, host the World Series in Yemen, gently ask white people to only write about white people and let everyone out of prison and start all over again.
I think it’s fair to say that SP are engaged in the “culture war”. It’s also fair to say that the prior Hugo uniformity was clearly also indicative of being engaged in the culture war. You don’t get ideological uniformity like that without some sort of structural bias.
The big difference in recent years is that the SP side has shown up for the fight. Now, there are two, or more, ideological points of view contending via their proposed nominees. Previously, there was only one point of view. The conflict comes from there being more than one view represented.
At this point, the question is,”Which view will be better for the Hugos?” Is it better to have the ideological unity of past Hugos, or is it better to have nominees that span from communist to libertarian in the mix?
“I think it’s fair to say that SP are engaged in the “culture war”. It’s also fair to say that the prior Hugo uniformity was clearly also indicative of being engaged in the culture war. You don’t get ideological uniformity like that without some sort of structural bias.”
Sure you do. It is a small group of fans from all over the US and the world. I am not be surprised that if one could survey there demographics they may poll one way or the other. My guess is that they are more liberal. That this would show up in their voting isn’t surprising either.
Even in the US the hardcore right is pretty small.
“At this point, the question is,”Which view will be better for the Hugos?” Is it better to have the ideological unity of past Hugos, or is it better to have nominees that span from communist to libertarian in the mix?”
Neither. It is better for the fans to continue to nominate, vote, and attend their convention with a focus on SPP and not US conservative politics.
Pity about that lobotomy you had…it seems to have destroyed the miniscule amount of functioning grey matter you had left. What’s it like, living without a working brain? Does it hurt having to use your anus in place of your mouth? When you have bad breath, do you brush, or use an enema? Inquiring minds want to know!
Oh, and about that “hardcore right is pretty small” stupidity: that must be why Fox News, evil bastion of the far right that it is, is the single *most popular* cable news show in the nation! Of course! It also must be why that fact has held true for past years as well, without once being knocked from its perch! All the brainless left-wing jackasses were watching Fox instead of MSNBC, because…because they obviously outnumber the right-wing era, and that’s the only possible explanation! Or, you’re a delusional idiot suffering from the side-effects of a badly performed lobotomy… Such a difficult choice!
” It is better for the fans to continue to nominate, vote, and attend their convention with a focus on SPP and not US conservative politics.”
Remind me again which side coined “The personal is political” to make EVERYTHING about politics. And if that idea holds any water, any focus on SF/F, not to mention SPP, is going to be political too. You are just butthurt because we started fighting your way.
I think that’s one of the biggest differences between the SJW and someone who happens to think the same causes are important but isn’t a SJW. The one can have other interests and share those interests with people of other ideologies. The SJW can’t. And you end up with RH and its minions conducting witch hunts to root out the wrong-thinkers and drag the guilty out of their homes and into the street for judgement… which meets approval so long as the high and lofty agree with the targets.
What’s “conservative” about not liking dumbfuck racist femnists?
“I don’t really consider Tea Puppies fans. ”
Already addressed. muggle. We have been fans since before the moonshot. You don’t speak our lingo or know our values or know what make SFF great. You think SFF is a tool to use for social engineering, so you can sneer at the great unwashed masses and talk down to them on whatever the halfbrained heartless intellectual nagging point is on the nagging his this fashion season.
The social justice warriors are the interlopers here. We are merely live and let live types who got fed up with being lectured and hectored by you hate-filled, sneering, rude, semi-illiterate poop-flinging yahoos raping our award and giving it to each other.
We are easy to get along with, but now you wake the sleeping giant. We mean to drive you and yours from the science fiction field until no one will mention you and your stupid whiny causes and stupid whinging crusades except as an after dinner joke, to be met with a round of loud guffaws.
We love science fiction. You love crap. We were until now willing to let you eat and breathe and drink your crap in peace, if in return you had been willing to let us enjoy our science fiction in peace, and stay downwind of us.
But you and yours are not civilized, and not psychologically balanced individuals. You and yours however cannot let us alone, cannot leave us in peace, but insist on wiping your crap on everything you touch.
Our goodwill is exhausted. You lying sons of perdition have worn out your welcome. Get the hell off our lawn, get out of our lives, and keep your damned and disgusting filth that you think is such fine art to yourselves. Back to asylum with you, Tom o’ Bedlam.
“We are easy to get along with, but now you wake the sleeping giant. ” That really is funny. But I will give you this Reverend Wright. Someone woke up. From File 770:
“Sasquan received a record 5,950 valid ballots for the 2015 Hugo Awards, surpassing the mark of 3,587 votes set last year at LonCon 3.
Nearly all voters cast their ballots online – only 36 were mailed in.
Sasquan had the highest level of participation in the past decade with over 57% of eligible members voting.
Most of the votes were cast in the final week before the deadline, over 3,000. (Approximately 2,900 votes had been submitted as of July 24.)
The new vote total record is a 65% increase over LonCon’s record.”
So who are these new voters? Are they TrueFans bent on turning back the politicizing of their convention? Are they TeaPuppies righting the wrong of a liberal biased system? Only the Shadow knows.
Let’s all me meet back here after the vote to cuss and discuss.
A lot more have become aware of the Hugo stuff these days because of Game of Thrones. Because of that, many are following Martin’s blog, where he was written a lot about this. And media quotes him too. But most people who read about it gets the impression that it’s about race, orientation and gender instead of the books that are being nominated and wins.
Hansen,
It’s about politics. Larry excuses his loss by saying the people don’t like conservatives. And they didn’t treat him nice. So he freeps their award and stirs up conservatives – he isn’t trying to rally SFF fans.
You are nothing but a liar.
So you’re doubling down on the proof that you have no idea of what you’re talking about, eh?
SJW claimed:
” Larry excuses his loss by saying the people don’t like conservatives.”
Oh? You missed the part where Larry declined a Hugo nomination and said he’d decline any future nominations?
Or are you deliberately ignoring it so you may continue to lie and hope it hurts Larry in some way?
After all, you can’t have your Narrative betrayed by little things like the truth…
Martin is clueless about what is going on at the Hugos. His fans seem to get all their info from him so it’s a closed system.
Sigh. How can you be so comprehensively wrong about pretty much everything and not notice (or at least not admit) it? If it weren’t for the various Puppy movements, there wouldn’t have been any increase in ballot numbers at all. Pretending otherwise only makes you look foolish. Well, MORE foolish…
Let us know when the Democrats elect a president the world actually respects. Clinton was a lying philanderer, and Obama is a bad joke.
Oh, the ROFL of the thread. “President that is well respected around the world.”
Too much, just too much.
My dear, if you think President Obama is respected around the world, you haven’t been reading foreign newspapers or talking to the locals. In the eyes of the world, Mr. Obama is every bit as much a cowboy as was his predecessor, not to mention every American president of this century.
Brian,
Just how many of these gibbering moonbats screeching at us that we are “wrong fans” having “wrong fun” do you suppose are conservative Republicans?
I’m sorry you feel offended (yeah, stole the whole classic liberal non-apology, apology thing). If by defending ourselves from the never ending “Racist / Sexist /Homophobic ” whatever charge of the day damages your very tender and oh so sensitive ideological identity, you should maybe stop blaming the victim (another classic liberal tactic) and tell your co-ideologues to maybe be a bit tolerant of others (And doesn’t that hypocrisy just sting) .
He’s right, though. While those gibbering moonbats going on about wrong fans having wrong fun and destroying their wonderful personal possession “I loves it, my precious” Hugo are almost certainly all on one side of the US political spectrum they are not the *whole* of that side of the US political spectrum by any means.
I wouldn’t say they’re on any side of the political spectrum. How often do you see SJWs go on screeds about foreign wars, abortion, and the like? Their very narrow focus is fixed on race and gender. That is because of the bizarre ideology they’ve taken under their wing like a cult.
A former friend of mine opined that “conservatives can’t be geeks”. And that’s why he’s former.
Yup, some people are just too stupid to abide.
Brian,
You see the thumbs down don’t you? Persona nongrata and not because of your SFF views. I read lots more then SFF and if you look at the brains and personalities of liberals and conservatives you find their brains are generally different. In terms of personality, liberals are more open and egalatarian while conservatives are more fearful and authoritarian. You know how to turn a liberal into a conservative? Scare them.
I try not to be angry with my right wing friends because to a large degree they really can’t help it. Just like I can’t help being who I am. Sometimes you just have to agree to disagree.
You really ought to look into some work by a man named Haidt.
I have “The Righteous Mind” as an audio book. I think Chris Mooneys stuff is better.
Just out of curiosity…are you a trucker? Like, 18-wheeler, Smokey and the Bandit-style trucker? I ask because you seem to listen to an awful lot of audio books, and that seemed a possible explanation, aside from theoretical illiteracy. Not that there’s anything wrong with audio books, or truckers. I was just curious.
Brian posts something that people disagree with, gets one thumbs down, and you suggest that that’s unhealthy. But did you notice that his post has not been censored in any way? Neither moderated, nor “disemvoweled”, nor any other form of censorship. The only person who’s been banned here has been Clamps/Yama/he-of-many-nicknames, for persistent and repeated trolling, stalking, and abusive behavior. However, someone like you who disagrees (strongly) with the majority of us here is allowed to post freely, and the worst that will happen is that your views will be mocked. They will, however, still be posted on the site and nobody will take your comments down.
Now try that at File770, or at the Tor.com blog. Try posting an opinion that says, “You know, maybe those Sad Puppies people really mean what they say.” See how long it lasts before someone makes it disappear down the memory hole.
I know which approach I would consider to be making someone “persona non grata” for disagreeing.
I have been to 770 after discovering them here. I have seen some odd post by puppies on 770. They seem fairly open. I have not been to Tor’s blog but I have been to Scalzi’s. I visit Scalzi about as much as Larry. Scalzi always tells us to play nice that the mallet is out. There is a disparaging post about Larry tonight and Scalzi issues a warning to dial it back a bit.
Scalzi did one of his Arc that had some Baen Publishing Books and I posted how odd it was that John Ringo sent him a book to promote after the rather awful things Ringo said about him. To which Scalzi replied:
“In point of fact, John Ringo didn’t send it to me, Baen Books did — along with most of the other books Baen is publishing this month, many of which you will also see in the stacks. I post up Baen Books for the same reason I try to post up all the books sent to me: Because they might be of interest to readers, regardless of any interpersonal nonsense might be going on between authors at the time.
Note well, however, that if Mr. Ringo had sent me the book, I would have been happy to post it up, too.
Shorter version: Let’s not make a big deal of it, please. ”
I suggest you go and post your puppy reasoning at Scalzi’s blog and 770. I bet it stays up. It is a good time to do it actually. 770 just did a Fisk of Larry’s Fisk.
Same thing at GRRM’s blog. Brad has been at GRRM’s blog several times and GRRM is always nice to him. GRRM always makes Brad look foolish but he isn’t mean to him.
George “rape, rape” Martin is only capable of making *himself* look like a fool. Much like you, in fact, fascinatingly enough. You believe that people who support small government, and less government involvement in citizens daily lives…are authoritarian? I’ve got some bad news for you: that dictionary you’ve been using? Whoever gave it to you was pulling an *epic* prank. That, or you have a unique form of dyslexia that makes words seem to mean the opposite of what they actually mean. Either way, it makes for great entertainment. Please, go on.
Biblio, I used to be entertained by people like this until I realized that they weren’t disturbed by someone advocating the murder of 25% of the population (see Ayers, William) in order to bring about socialist Utopia, or his protege.
The thing I love about 770 is it attracts people who have no idea what a principle is like a black hole; no light can escape. It’s amazing to me how much of this divide is over such a simple concept. Goose-gander – incomprehensible string theory at 770.
Do some searching, several people here HAVE gone over there with polite posts and no, some where deleted, others disemvoweled. I haven’t seen nor heard of a single one that was left in tact. Next straw man please.
Specifically Scalzi and 770 as well as Making Light for the ones I have actually noted blog names on. I have not heard specific reports on GRRM, but if he leaves things in tact he’s the exception by a fair margin for the puppy kickers.
Oops! And now even that piddling little solitary thumbs down is? Gone! Just because it makes you look like even more of a brainless jacka$$. You’re seriously better than a professional clown or court fool from the middle ages! You can’t buy stupid this good.
You know, you leftists NEVER “agree to disagree.” Instead, you feel you have a right to force everyone to agree with you, or to keep anyone who doesn’t from expressing himself (along with trying to make him into a social pariah for daring to disagree with you). As for your opinions about differing personality types between leftists and others, well, you’re just demonstrating your pervasive delusions again.
Re: “SJW”
It’s almost as if he can’t help himself…
“Now personally, when I think of “gaming the awards” I think of things like elaborate schemes to tweak the rules to keep the wrongfans out, like the various complicated systems proposed by you guys over the last few months, but those totally doesn’t count.”
If you’re referring to the E Pluribus Hugo proposal, I’d be interested in reading more details of your view on it.
This is the first year I’ve ever voted on the Hugos. I found out that it was possible to do so because of the Sad Puppies campaign (which I found out about while visiting your blog after reading all the currently available MHI novels). I agree that the overall quality of Hugo nominees and winners has been going down for at least the past two decades. I suspect that the cause is more the small number of voters than any conspiracy, but it’s an issue nonetheless.
That’s not to say the SJWs aren’t a problem. I’ve seen the damage they can do in the atheism/skepticism community and in the gaming community. They certainly form a significant minority of the anti-sads. Their baseless smears of misogyny, racism, and homophobia are grossly offensive.
On the other hand, I do think that much of the material that made it on the ballot this year is subpar. (If anyone wants to see my reviews, they’re on my blog: http://patrickmay.tumblr.com).
The way to make the Hugos more relevant is to increase the number of people voting and decrease the ability of slates, whether explicit or the result of a wink-nudge word-of-mouth campaign, to sweep the nominations. The E Pluribus Hugo proposal achieves the second goal. I’d like to see it passed at Sasquan.
The best way to reduce the ability of any one group from “sweeping” the nominations is to have as many groups/individuals as possible involved in searching out and recommending work in time for people to read them and make nominations.
Call it crowdsourcing.
I would guess that the number of people this year who are paying attention to what is published this year and making an effort to look for the obscure gem that might get overlooked has exploded. MORE groups, not fewer, doing this sorting and even poaching from other people’s lists will have the best chance of finding and awarding the most worthy work.
The people enforcing ideological lines this year were the anti-puppies… if that keeps up, yeah, that’s not a good thing. It’s also not the fault of a “slate”, it’s the fault of petulant children who can only function as an us-vs-them clique.
“The best way to reduce the ability of any one group from “sweeping” the nominations is to have as many groups/individuals as possible involved in searching out and recommending work in time for people to read them and make nominations.”
I agree. One way to improve participation is to make people feel like their votes count. The problem with the current “first past the post” rule is that a relatively small group of voters can collude to sweep the nominations. It appears that a group of insiders accomplished this in the past, even if not explicitly, and the combination of Sad and Rabid Puppies definitely did it this year.
The knowledge that this works isn’t going to go away. The best we can hope for is to have lots of competing slates, as you note. That means that getting on a slate will be the only way for a work to make the ballot from now on.
E Pluribus Hugo offers a different approach. It ensures greater diversity of results by eliminating the power of slates. Under EPH, more voters will have at least one of their nominees on the final list and no minority of colluding voters will be able to sweep a category. I think that will encourage more participation, which the award desperately needs if it is to remain relevant.
I’m curious to hear any objections to the EPH approach.
You haven’t explained how it would reduce the power of me saying to my buddy… hey, there is this great book… we should tell our internet friends and see if they like it, too, because I think it should get a Hugo. I also don’t understand how a vote has more power if you very well might be the only person who ever heard of the amazing novel by the innovative author from Uruguay that was translated to English and released in September.
The goal of the E Pluribus Hugo proposal is that “No group — whoever that group may be — should be able to absolutely prevent nominees from having the chance to be considered for the Hugo Award.”
Under the current rules, a small minority of voters can completely sweep the nomination slots. We saw that happen this year. The preferences of most voters were completely unrepresented. (As a libertarian in the US, I know the feeling.)
So E Pluribus Hugo doesn’t reduce the power of you and your buddy to campaign for a particular work. In fact, it ensures that a larger campaign can’t swamp your efforts and deny your preference a slot on the ballot.
With respect to your other example, no voting system other than dictatorship is going to help if you’re the only person voting for a particular work.
E Pluribus Hugo makes it more likely that more voters will have at least one of their choices represented on the final ballot. That results in greater diversity in the selections and encourages more people to vote.
I’m a supporter, but I’m willing to change my position if EPH is shown to be inferior to the current system. If it’s not shown to be inferior, I hope others will support it at Sasquan.
You still didn’t explain the mechanism. You’re just asserting the intended results will happen.
“You still didn’t explain the mechanism. You’re just asserting the intended results will happen.”
The FAQ (http://sasquan.org/e-pluribus-hugo-faq/) goes through the mechanism in detail. Several people, including me, have implemented the algorithm and tested it against data from 1984. I’m putting together a blog post showing the effects on slates of various percentages — I’ll post a link here when that’s ready.
I found the time to run some tests with slates, using the 1984 data. The results are here: http://patrickmay.tumblr.com/post/126023308724/e-pluribus-hugo-vs-slates
For those who don’t feel the urge to click, here’s the difference between the current rules and EPH for the Novel category:
“With 43 slate ballots (10% of the number cast) added, the result would have been identical to the actual 1984 result.
With 85 slate ballots (20% of the number cast) added, one slate work would make the list, bumping off “Millennium”. This is quite different from the current rules where only “Startide Rising” would remain out of non-slate works.
With 128 slate ballots (30% of the number cast) added, two slate works would make the list, bumping off “Millennium” and “Tea with the Black Dragon”. Again this is quite different from the current rules where the only non-slate work remaining would be “Startide Rising”.
Even with 170 slate ballots (40% of the number cast) added, both “Startide Rising” and “The Robots of Dawn” would remain on the nomination list under the EPH rules. Under the current rules, slate works would sweep the category.”
And for the Short Story category:
“With 28 slate ballots (10% of the number cast) added, the result would have been identical to the actual 1984 result.
With 57 slate ballots (20% of the number cast) added, two slate works would make the list, bumping off “The Peacemaker” and “Servant of the People”. This is very different from the current rules where less than 15% of the voters could sweep the category.
Even with 113 slate ballots (40% of the number cast) added, “Speech Sounds” and “The Geometry of Narrative” would remain on the nomination list.”
As predicted, the EPH rules reduce the effects of slates, whether explicitly or implicitly created.
My inner analyst is comming out. I have one issue with your entire premise… How does this not also punish works that are simply generally and genuinely popular? That is that the fans, whom the Hugo is supposed to represent, genuinely like?
“How does this not also punish works that are simply generally and genuinely popular? ”
Generally popular works will be spread out over many ballots, not concentrated on ballots that contain exactly the same other works.
You can see this in the Novel category — “Startide Rising” and “The Robots of Dawn” remained on the ballot under EPH rules even in the presence of a massive slate.
EPH results in more voters seeing at least one of their preferences on the final ballot.
Does it? You say ‘Five identical Works’ on your fictitious slate. Does that mean 5 votes for the same work? How does it work if there are 5 different works? Or if it’s 5 different works does that give different results? You also don’t seem to have figured in genuine over lap with the rest of the world. Let’s use the same set of works you used on your own. A total of 426 votes were cast (less than 1/10th of what this years total was). Was this number constant or did you ‘add voters’ for the slate? If the former how did you decide where your ‘votes’ were drawn away from? Was it evenly spread amongst the participants? Did you just use the ‘unspecified’ remaining votes? If so did you account for the onesie/twosie votes that always come in? Did you factor in how adding an unspecified work that actually didn’t historically exist changes your base data and assumptions? You also don’t seem to have taken into consideration the impact of an increased total number of participants. You don’t seem to have bothered to run any kind of control grouping on this model either. Yes, I looked over the algorithm, but the more I looked at the more it seemed you were leaving some things out. I admit my programming ability is limited, but the explanation isn’t great either.
In short, this is cute, but it is quite far from a useful analysis. You want to actually prove this point, we need the origin of EVERY SINGLE number you input to the algorithm and exactly how the algorithm handles it.
“You say ‘Five identical Works’ on your fictitious slate. Does that mean 5 votes for the same work?”
No, sorry if that was unclear. I mean five different works, but close to identical ballots. That is, a number of people voting for (slatework1, slatework2, slatework3, slatework4, slatework5).
“You also don’t seem to have figured in genuine over lap with the rest of the world.”
That’s correct. I made the simplifying assumption that there was no overlap between slate and non-slate voters. If I get the time in the next few days, I’ll add a percentage overlap.
“Was this number constant or did you ‘add voters’ for the slate?”
I added voters equal to various percentages of the total real voters.
“Did you factor in how adding an unspecified work that actually didn’t historically exist changes your base data and assumptions? ”
My goal was to see what the effect of a slate would be on real data, as if something like the Puppies campaign had been run in 1984.
“You don’t seem to have bothered to run any kind of control grouping on this model either. ”
I ran the same sets of ballots with both sets of rules in order to see if the resiliency to slates that was predicted actually occurred.
“In short, this is cute, but it is quite far from a useful analysis. You want to actually prove this point, we need the origin of EVERY SINGLE number you input to the algorithm and exactly how the algorithm handles it.”
I never claimed it was a full analysis, but it is suggestive that EPH has some benefits. If you want the full details, you can read my description of the design and implementation process, complete with all code, here: https://softwarematters.wordpress.com/2015/08/06/e-pluribus-hugo/ The Tumblr post was just a summary.
I’m glad you thought it was cute, though!
If you want to run something like a puppy ballot for 1984, give each title, let’s say, 100/90/75/60/50% chances to be on each ballot, effectively, determined at random for each ballot. Because that’ll be closer to the actual effect than running all 5 on each ballot.
As described in my blog post, I gave a 5% chance for each work to be changed and a 5% chance for it to be removed, for each ballot. Perfect discipline on a slate is unrealistic.
I’d love to know the real distribution of works on the slates this year. I don’t think that’s available anywhere yet.
We have high and low boundaries based on the nomination totals for the swept categories. That puts the number much closer to 50% than 5.
“We have high and low boundaries based on the nomination totals for the swept categories. That puts the number much closer to 50% than 5.”
Can you provide a pointer to the data, please? I haven’t seen it.
Initial screenshots:
http://madgeniusclub.com/2015/04/04/2014-hugo-nominations/
Lots of posts trying to break down the math, including noting changes:
https://chaoshorizon.wordpress.com/category/2015-hugo-award/
My apologies for the delay. I currently only have internet at work.
The issue is, pretty much NO ONE voted a straight slate sad puppies side judging from the comments here, at the Mad Genius Club, According to Hoyt, and Brad Torgersen’s blog. I can’t speak for the Rabid ones and they have no issue speaking for themselves, try asking them? They actually seem interested in number crunching on most topics. For your break down of the algorithm… I reiterate. It seems incomplete. I actually saw that post and read through it.
To actually mimic sad puppies you would need to presume the most popular work got around 80% vote of confidence from the puppies and work down from there. Like most statistics it’s a WAG, but it seems to mesh with the commentary. No I haven’t run the numbers, but until you assume that there is far more than a 5% variance on a slate, you’re not going to get close to an accurate model. The goal of a model is to model reality. For a control have you actually run a model that approximates what actually happened this year so you can estimate what was added to the equation? Until then, these proposed rule changes seem like so much sophistry.
I’d be interested in running the simulation again with a more accurate model.
However, the model I used had more powerful slates than those that you are suggesting existed. Even in that case, EPH resulted in greater representation across voters than did the current rules. Weaker slate discipline would mean that it works better by that metric.
It looks like EPH performs as expected. I think that makes it worth supporting at Sasquan. We’ll have another year after that to run more tests before EPH can be fully approved.
I’m interested in models that actually consider a range of variables, including things like how 1 ballot with 5 nominations has each vote count for less than 1 ballot with 1 vote, and the only time the number of separate votes appears to be counted is if the point totals tie. Which means 21 votes can beat out 100 if the 100 are divided amongst 5 nominations. Thus allowing individuals to, effectively, vote more than once for a given work. How does this pan out in the grand scheme of things? The field is not uniform.
“. . . the only time the number of separate votes appears to be counted is if the point totals tie. Which means 21 votes can beat out 100 if the 100 are divided amongst 5 nominations.”
Under EPH, if there are 21 ballots with a single nominated work, that work goes into the selection phase with 21 points. All of the works on the 100 ballots with five nominated works go into the selection phase with 20 points. If there are no works with fewer than 20 points, the five works tied at that point level are selected.
In the elimination phase, all five works would be eliminated if they all were on exactly the same number of ballots.
No slate is that disciplined, though. There will be overlap between non-slate and slate voters. There will be slate voters with only three or four of the slate works on their ballots, as we’ve been discussing here.
So, in practice, what happens is that some of the slate works are eliminated and some remain, with a corresponding increase in points in the next round. The result is that more voters see at least one of their preferences on the final list of nominees. Compare that to the current rules where 22 people voting in a disciplined slate would completely disenfranchise the 21 people voting for a single work.
It’s important to keep in mind that EPH is an improvement on the current voting rules. It is not a perfect solution (which is impossible anyway as shown by Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem).
“Thus allowing individuals to, effectively, vote more than once for a given work. ”
I don’t understand what you mean by this.
It looks like EPH has two goals, not one:
1) Restrict the nomination power of disciplined slates; while
2) continuing to restrict the number of nominees to 5.
Wouldn’t a simpler fix for just part one be:
a) If no more than five of the nominees for a category appear on at least 5% of ballots for that category, the nominees shall be the top five nominees by total number of nominations; OR
b) If more than five nominees appear on at least 5% of the ballots, than the nominee list shall consist of up to ten nominees, based on the highest number of total nominations, so long as each receives at least 5% support.
With people still having only five nomination slots.
It has the virtue of being simple to explain (“if lots of nominees have strong support, we have a longer final ballot”), something at which EPH fails.
Craig(2),
That’s an interesting idea, but I’m not sure it would be as resilient to slates unless the number of potential nominees were significantly increased. Limiting to 10 just means that two slates could sweep a category.
An approach of “any work that gets at least 5%” could result in a maximum of 100 nominees (5 nominees per ballot times 20 slates with 5% each). In reality that wouldn’t happen, but the final number could well be higher than 10. If it’s limited, slates could still disenfranchise other voters.
The underlying goal of EPH is to enfranchise as many voters as possible. It accomplishes that goal even in the face of slates, without making the final ballot unwieldy.
First… I didn’t say the ballots with 5 votes each had the same selection on them just that each of those 100 votes had a single work in common. Which is how things get on the ballot at all. The 21/100 could EASILY happen with no rigging, no slates, and it still penalizes the 100 for having broader tastes than the 21 who were just so enthusiastic about THIS ONE BOOK. So the 21 are more powerful than the 100. This is the fundamental flaw I see with E Pluribus Hugo and why I cannot support it. It may degrade the power of disciplined slates, but at the expense of punishing those with broader tastes who have not organized themselves.
And on a side note, the law of averages indicates there are going to be identical ballots. ARe you actually going to go through and carefully look for patterns? Or will ballots that appear to be duplicates simply be eliminated even if they have nothing at all to do with each other? You have answered none of these questions. The algorithm answers none of these questions. The proposal answers none of these questions.
Wyrdbard,
“The 21/100 could EASILY happen with no rigging, no slates, and it still penalizes the 100 for having broader tastes than the 21 who were just so enthusiastic about THIS ONE BOOK. So the 21 are more powerful than the 100.”
Just to be sure I understand your scenario: Are you saying that a work that is on 100 ballots that each have five nominees is going to lose to a work that is the only nominee on 21 ballots? That would only be the case if every other work still in contention had more than 21 points. That would mean that every other work on the 100 ballots is still in contention. Ultimately that would result in some of the works on those 100 ballots having more points in the next round.
EPH is about enfranchising more voters by making it more likely that one or more of their nominees make the final ballot.
“This is the fundamental flaw I see with E Pluribus Hugo and why I cannot support it. It may degrade the power of disciplined slates, but at the expense of punishing those with broader tastes who have not organized themselves.”
This is exactly backwards, I’m afraid. EPH actually makes it more likely that more voters will see one or more of their choices on the final ballot. It prevents the disenfranchisement that the current rules allow.
You can’t compare EPH to some perfect system (which Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem shows does not exist). It must be compared to the current rules, and it is clearly a significant improvement on those.
“And on a side note, the law of averages indicates there are going to be identical ballots. ARe you actually going to go through and carefully look for patterns? Or will ballots that appear to be duplicates simply be eliminated even if they have nothing at all to do with each other? You have answered none of these questions. The algorithm answers none of these questions. The proposal answers none of these questions.”
The FAQ at http://sasquan.org/e-pluribus-hugo-faq/ addresses all these questions.
That EPH requires a long FAQ to explain it is a very significant argument against it. That the FAQ required separate PDF and powerpoint says more.
With a rules change you can’t only say it is better than the current system. You must show that it is better than all other proposals made, and in this case that is enough better to make it worth running a ridiculously complex system, with the added burden it places on the people managing the vote.
In the meantime, one could argue that the whole point of the system is to allow narrower block votes – like the Tor block vote that tracks a lot closer than the SP vote does – to get back to guaranteeing their annual nominations. Because when you look at “what does EPH allow that other systems don’t”….
Craig(2),
“That EPH requires a long FAQ to explain it is a very significant argument against it. That the FAQ required separate PDF and powerpoint says more.”
The FAQ is there for people who aren’t used to alternative voting systems. SDV-LPE is used by some local and regional governments, but it’s not terribly well known. It is relatively easy to understand and certainly no more complicated than the existing rules for computing the actual Hugo winners.
“With a rules change you can’t only say it is better than the current system. You must show that it is better than all other proposals made, and in this case that is enough better to make it worth running a ridiculously complex system, with the added burden it places on the people managing the vote.”
EPH is demonstrably better at increasing enfranchisement than either the current rules or the 4 of 6 proposal. Again, it’s no more complex than the current Hugo final round rules. Several people, including myself, have implemented the algorithm quite easily and the code is available for use by the convention runners.
“In the meantime, one could argue that the whole point of the system is to allow narrower block votes – like the Tor block vote that tracks a lot closer than the SP vote does – to get back to guaranteeing their annual nominations. Because when you look at “what does EPH allow that other systems don’t”….”
That’s actually the opposite of what EPH encourages. The goal of the proposal is to increase the chance of each voter seeing one or more of the works he or she nominated on the final ballot. It increases enfranchisement.
The current rules allow a minority of voters to collude and eliminate all other works from the final ballot. EPH prevents that, regardless of whether the colluding minority is a publicly run campaign or a group of like-minded insiders working in private.
The real answer to the problems with the Hugos is greater participation by SFF fans. EPH encourages that by making every vote count more than the current rules do.
Patrick, there are already a high percentage of people that don’t get the preferential ballot. And EPH *is* more complex than the final ballot, because it involves constantly recalculated fractions (and experience has shown me that a substantial majority of people cannot instinctively work and rework fractions in their head). If it wasn’t more complex, why are there 113 slides? ‘Nominate X/pick Y’ can be explained clearly in a tweet.
But, let’s review the powerpoint and apply the strikes:
Strike 1: Adds more complexity to a system that already leads to charges of being rigged because people don’t understand how it works.
Strike 2: No real data set exists to test the data against.
Strike 3: The test data uses a single data set that generated an improbable result of ‘no change’
Strike 4: The test data set of “slate” votes – purporting to be a check on the results of this year – does not actually make any attempt to calculate the actual likelihood of ballot variance based on the known nomination totals in categories where RP/SP were dominant, and instead uses a very high figure.
Strike 5: the result of the combination of using a generated set of “previous” ballots where EPH doesn’t change the end result, and a generated set of “slate” ballots with a very high degree of similarity that has no basis in the actual numbers, is to push a false narrative – that everything was OK before, but then this year the slates ruined everything, and only because they all voted the same, not because they attracted a lot of voters that liked different things than what would normally have been nominated.
Let’s go back to Chaos Horizon on April 6th: the high vote in categories swept varied from 230 to 368. He estimates the low vote at 145.
CH puts low at 41% of high, and compares it to the 37.9% of the year before (and that’s not factoring in categories where nominees did not make the final ballot, implying even lower vote totals and thus lower percentages).
This was all readily available, easily determined from public information.
Overall; I was a soft No before I read the powerpoint; now I’m an absolute No, because the test datasets in the powerpoint are fundamentally dishonest.
Craig(2),
“Patrick, there are already a high percentage of people that don’t get the preferential ballot. And EPH *is* more complex than the final ballot, because it involves constantly recalculated fractions (and experience has shown me that a substantial majority of people cannot instinctively work and rework fractions in their head). If it wasn’t more complex, why are there 113 slides? ‘Nominate X/pick Y’ can be explained clearly in a tweet.”
There are 113 slides because it walks through several rounds of selection phase and elimination phase to demonstrate the behavior of the algorithm.
“Nominate X, pick Y” is easy to explain, but suffers from the same lack of resiliency to slates as the current rules.
I take your point, to an extent, though. Voting methods need to have the confidence of the voters. EPH needs an elevator pitch that shows it deserves that confidence.
“But, let’s review the powerpoint and apply the strikes:
Strike 1: Adds more complexity to a system that already leads to charges of being rigged because people don’t understand how it works.
. . .
Overall; I was a soft No before I read the powerpoint; now I’m an absolute No, because the test datasets in the powerpoint are fundamentally dishonest.”
Here is the core problem with EPH. None of the various factions that have arisen over the past couple of years trust each other, and some have very good reason not to. It certainly doesn’t help that EPH was hashed out on Making Light, a blog not known for its respect for freedom of expression or being open to alternative views.
I got interested in EPH because I’m a math geek. I support it because it addresses the problem that the current rules allow 15% of voters to completely disenfranchise the remaining 85%. I don’t care who the 15% are, that’s a serious flaw in the system. EPH fixes it by increasing the number of voters who are likely to see one or more of their preferences on the final ballot. I think that’s a good thing.
Your comments about data are also valid. We only have the real 1984 data for testing. The Chaos Horizon data doesn’t have enough information to recreate the voting patterns of other years. If EPH passes this year, I’ll definitely be simulating more scenarios in the year before it can be ratified.
So I understand your position, do you agree that the ability of 15% of voters to disenfranchise the majority is a problem? If so, what would it take to convince you that EPH is a good solution?
The ability for 15% (or, often, 10% for the ‘lesser’ awards) of the voters to disenfranchise the rest has always been a problem, and the joke that is the history of the short dramatic nominations shows that. Problem one in proposing alternatives is that the people proposing didn’t care until someone they didn’t like benefited from it.
However, there are a lot bigger problems (like the fact that it is now precedent-legal to buy a hundred memberships for other people).
What I’d need: Actual data. In the absence of a multitude of actual data (at least three years), don’t run one scenario, run a *lot* of scenarios. Including scenarios with multiple block votes. Including scenarios where there were vote blocks in the *existing* data (by genre, by publisher, by ‘tend to have similar nomination totals’ (like Scalzi-Stross)). Data where other math geeks (Keranih, CH, etc.) that have no association with ML, Tor, etc. are helping to vet the scenarios and data.
Football Outsiders uses something like 10,000 simulated seasons to test their predictive numbers. With almost no real data of what you’d best need to simulate (which would be every nomination ballot individually for one category for one year), that’s much closer to the number of scenarios that you need to run than one.
Craig(2),
We definitely need more data and more simulations. The preliminary results indicate that EPH ensures that more voters see one or more of their preferences on the final ballot. That’s a good result.
Based on that, I hope the Business Meeting approves EPH this year so that, if it passes those additional tests, it can be ratified next year.
It’s important to note that EPH prevents small insider cliques from dominating the ballot, just as it prevents more publicly organized groups from doing so. This makes the nominations more representative of all the voters. That should do more to encourage participation than slate wars will.
I’ll disagree, heavily, on the premise that we need to pass EPH to see what’s inside it. It’s unproven. It’s being pushed using a slanted data set.
Fail it, and make the people pushing it generate real proof with a proper multitude of data sets. Make them try honestly to establish it.
To quote another famous modeler, Michael Mann, “Why would I want to do that? You’re just another denier.”
As long as it superficially looks good and still gives the “proper” results, “the science is settled.”
And no numbers I have run have actually shown that it is any way better. The nominations are not ’rounds’ under EPH as far as I can tell. And yes, I’ve read your algorithm post. I’ve read the FAQ. The FAQ poses more questions than it answers.
And yes the scenario is 21 votes all dedicated to a single work, vs. a single work that appeared on 100 ballots that each have 5 of a variety of other works giving it 20 points. Some of those ‘other works’ might have appeared on multiple ballots but might not have.
A work only 21 people liked should not beat out a work that 100 people liked just because that 100 people also liked other works and therefore voted for more things. You are saying that a small number of very dedicated people are MORE important than a broad base of people which is the exact opposite of what you are claiming the proposal does. The Numbers do not do what you say the numbers do. A small number of dedicated voters (Which can and does happen in dedicated fandoms with no slates, no coordination just enthusiasm) can swamp the field without trying very hard because each of their votes, being dedicated to a single work, counts for two to five times what a more broadly read and broadly enthusiastic reader’s votes count for.
This makes the system even more simple to game, because you need smaller numbers to push together to guarantee something is on a ballot. Which means it doesn’t even fulfill the purpose of killing slates. The numbers themselves are against your argument.
Wyrdbard,
Under EPH in your very simplified scenario, the most that a minority could achieve would be to get one work on the ballot. The other four slots would represent the rest of the voters.
Compare this with the current rules where 15% of the voters could take every slot, completely disenfranchising 85% of the voters.
EPH ensures that more voters will see one or more of their preferences reflected on the final ballot.
If you’re going to criticize EPH, please do so in comparison with the current rules. EPH is far more resilient to gaming than what exists now.
You get the same general effect with a few dedicated fandoms. How is this better?
Wyrdbard,
“You get the same general effect with a few dedicated fandoms. How is this better?”
If I understand you correctly, then yes, five equally matched slates could each get one nominee on the final ballot under the current rules. That’s phenomenally unlikely to happen, though. What will continue to happen, as long as the current rules are in place and slates are being pushed, is that a minority of voters will be able to sweep the ballot.
Compared to the current rules, EPH ensures the more voters will see one or more of their preferences on the final ballot. That’s a big improvement.
You keep saying that, and the numbers I run keep showing the opposite. Have you actually tried to BREAK your model yet? You say you’re going to run more numbers if it’s accepted. This is the wrong way around. You need to have the numbers to hand so you can show all the ways it might break, all the ways you’ve thought bout that, what trade offs you’re willing to make. Right now the trade off is that a block can focus on a single work and get it on the ballot with 1/2 to 1/5 the voters.
Wyrdbard,
“You keep saying that, and the numbers I run keep showing the opposite. ”
Please provide a link to the numbers you’ve run. I’d love to see your full simulation.
Sure, give me a few to actually compile things from my scattered notes. No fancy programming. Just Excel. In the mean time, how about you run an actually VARIETY of tests and try and break your pet program.
And to the ‘extremely unlikely’, Let’s see… the Dr. Who fandom, The Game of Thrones fandom, Someone mentioned Outlander in a few other places, a few years ago True Blood could have had an overwhelming majority, ditto twilight. I can keep going if you like. How about say Tor buying memberships for their people and putting push behind works. They’ve got enough employees that, at the current levels they could swamp the system (And if you follow the reports of Sara Hoyt, Jerry Pournelle and a few others, have been throwing their weight behind various works.)
You’re giving more power to the small and dedicated. This is not improvement. You haven’t run any numbers on this… and it’s an equation that you can do in your head relatively easily to get a ‘feel’ for what can happen.
If anyone wants to take Patrick up on his offer, I took a bunch of screenshots with EPH’s FAQ and the explanation for the current Hugo Nomination and voting rules side by side, put them onto one huge image, and left space on either side for people to actually write down their criticisms on MS paint if they want.
Feel free to turn the image into a bunch of slides. The reason why I chose the FAQ is because it’s SUPPOSED to answer questions, yet still manages to be almost twice as long as the CURRENT Hugo rules.
Me it always gets me that the first question in the FAQ is never answered directly, but is answered by the response in terms of demonstration. The answer is “no.”
You should do that. To the extent that you have voters agree with you, you will influence the chances of the book. Under the proposal puppy nominations and final votes still give them representation. Have you seen the proposal?
It’s hard to get a good feel for it at a quick glance. Reducing the number of nominations a voter can make to 4 and increasing the number of nominees at voting to 6 seems a decent idea, though. Not sure I’ll still think that after I’ve thought it through, and I only skimmed the proposal. Generally though, a system that is “winner take all” for all the nominations seems… a bad idea.
But really, you want to fix the system? Get enough fans involved that 100 votes can’t decide the outcome.
This is kind of Worldcon’s chance to prove it’s inclusive, to me. Or rather, is it big enough to include me? We’ll see.
The problem with 4 of 6 is that it just pushes the problem back one level. Two slates will take 4 and 2 spots, respectively, under first past the post rules.
“But really, you want to fix the system? Get enough fans involved that 100 votes can’t decide the outcome.”
That’s the real answer. There are enough SFF fans that voters should number in the thousands, not dozens. I do think that E Pluribus Hugo encourages participation by making minority views more likely to be heard.
Crowdsourcing. Thanks for reminding me that I’ve not checked on Kickstarter lately… though that is probably a good thing since I need to get some things first, like preordering Son of the Black Sword next week, and Cinder Spires. Oh and a new Cintiq stylus, the model of which I need is not cheap.
“The way to make the Hugos more relevant is to increase the number of people voting and decrease the ability of slates, whether explicit or the result of a wink-nudge word-of-mouth campaign, to sweep the nominations.”
Mission accomplished. This year’s nominating ballots set a record, and this year’s vote smashed the previous record set by LonCon, which itself smashed all previous records. Sasquan is being held in a small western city, LonCon was held in one of the largest cities on the planet.
“The E Pluribus Hugo proposal achieves the second goal. ”
It may decrease the potential of slate sweeps, but it would institutionalize the power of insider cliques to claim ballot slots.
Wat Tyler,
Sorry I missed this before now.
“It may decrease the potential of slate sweeps, but it would institutionalize the power of insider cliques to claim ballot slots.”
EPH doesn’t eliminate slate votes, it simply ensures that more voters are likely to see one or more of their preferences on the final ballot. Under the current rules, a minority of colluding voters can sweep the ballot. Under EPH their representation better reflects the views of all the voters.
If an insider clique has enough members to get a work on the ballot, that work should be on the ballot. It does, after all, represent the preference of those voters. No minority clique, however, should be able to dominate the ballot. Under the current rules it can. Under EPH it cannot.
The thing that jumped out at me was the simple lack of looking up underlying facts.
Not about the politics, religion, viewpoints et. al., they’ll lie deliberately about those until the ravens leave the tower.
But Sasquan doesn’t start until the 19th, and the Hugo nightmare won’t end until Saturday the 22nd.
Which they could’ve looked up, or asked even one of their SJW kin…
Pathetic.
“Damien Walter @damiengwalter · 4h4 hours ago
I love it when Larry Correia fisks something I wrote then gets to a sentence with more than four sylables and screams he can’t understand.”
Oh Damien, you’re so vain, you probably think this fisk is about you.
Damien is such an imbecile. The poor sap actually thinks he’s clever. It still hasn’t sunk in for him that this is a spectator sport.
And another thing:
If any of the puppy kicking sjws are reading this, going back to classic style doesn’t mean a) pulp or b) manly men doing manly things (seriously, a panelist at WesterCon insisted that was what the Puppies are all about).
The sixties, seventies, eighties? The Human Wave. Ellison’s Dangerous Visions. Expansion writings.
That was thirty, forty or fifty years ago. That is now the classic style. That’s what *I* think about when Larry and Brad talk about going “back”.
Hah. “Classic” in this sense means art for art’s sake rather than parsing the world through the paranoid lens of everyone from Robyn Morgan to Monica Byrne. Smash the patriarchy and abolish gender? Right. We get it. Now write something worth reading.
I -just- finished reading a darned good dissection of political correctness/SJW insanity here:
https://tomowolade.wordpress.com/2015/07/04/thoughts-on-political-correctness-and-sjw/
Sample in the intro:
“Ultimately, this ideology, known to many as ‘political correctness’, subordinates the principles underpinning a free society – freedom of speech, rule of law, rationality, and an egalitarian ethos – to power relations. What’s important is not supporting individual liberty and equality, but focusing on who is privileged, and acting accordingly to undermine their privilege. And thus, under the banner of social justice, illiberal politics are excused in places that should be bastions of freedom. ”
It’s more focused on wider events than the Hugos, but there are a long list of worthy works for further reading going back decades. It seems relevant and topical to me.
“By Adam Roberts
Never heard of the guy.”
It says a lot about Mr. Correia if has never heard of a writer who has received m