I was talking to Mike Kupari about this yesterday, mostly being my usual optimistic self, and telling him don’t worry, the election wasn’t going to be Donald Trump versus Bernie Sanders, so there was no reason to flee and build a compound in Costa Rica just yet. He suggested I write it up for the blog, so what the heck, here goes.

Note, these aren’t endorsements, they’re predictions. So you don’t need to yell at me for not backing your dude. Yes, I’m sure your Candidate X is super awesome, and I’m a stupid jerk face for not seeing it.

My prediction is that the republican nominee will be Ted Cruz. The democrat nominee will be Hillary Clinton.  At this early point in the campaigns I got Dole, Bush, and Romney right. McCain surprised me, but I think I was just blinded by my dislike for him. I predicted Obama as soon as he got done with that first original DNC speech, and sadly got that one right. Though I was surprised how fast he usurped the Clinton machine.

Here is my reasoning. First, the democrat side is really easy to predict. You’ve got one batty old socialist and a slightly battier old socialist. Though I’ve been told that Hillary Clinton isn’t actually a socialist because the way she loves taking bribes is very capitalistic. Good point.

Bernie is nuts, but he’s honest. He skips right over all the typical democrat feel good, heart string tugging reasons why they think the government should control everything, and gets right to the government controlling everything. He is economically illiterate. Those Occupy Democrat memes going around Facebook where they are quoting Bernie fucking up some basic economic principle are literally painful. Every time you share one of those, an accountant dies.

The only reason Bernie is actually polling surprisingly decently is because many democrats sense just how lackluster Hillary is. However, Hillary is still going to get the nomination. Because as much as democrats like to think that they’re all about tolerance, there is something incredibly emasculating about watching your candidate get chased off the podium of his own rally. There’s a reason the Black Lives Matter protestors haven’t invaded Hillary’s space, because we all suspect she’d shriek “GUARDS! SEIZE THEM!” super villain style, and then have them devoured by her nanotech enhanced attack weasels.

Hillary may be a liar and a cheat, and she’d sell your children’s organs to Russian mobsters to make five bucks, but at least she’s not a total chicken shit. So, barring the highly unlikely event that Hillary gets arrested by the FBI for one of her multitude of scandals between now and the primaries, Hillary is it.

On the GOP side it gets really hard to predict just because there are a slew of candidates. Right now I see it going Cruz, with an outside chance of Rubio or Walker. Yes, I know that isn’t what the polls say right now, but this is how I see it playing out.

Trump is a stunt candidate. He’s sitting around twenty percent, lots of people are flipping out about it, and the media is loving that. But the rest of the GOP can’t stand him. As we head into the primaries we always do this thing, where somebody will pop up, the voters will say Oooooh New and Shiny, they’ll surge, and then once people have a chance to actually look at what they’ve really done, they come back down.

The thing everybody needs to remember is that every single election cycle we go through this period where the media tries to pick the eventual GOP candidate for us. Their criteria are A. Can the democrat eventually beat them? And B. If they do somehow win, will they not rock the boat too bad for democrats? McCain is the greatest example of that ever. This time around their obvious pick was Jeb Bush. For weeks it was Jeb, Jeb, Jeb. Only Jeb was dull and Trump makes great TV. If you look at early polling it almost always correlates with how much media attention the candidate is receiving. So, a candidate polling at 5% is usually getting 5% of the coverage, etc.

Trump comes along, he’s bombastic, unapologetic, and simply does not give a shit. The real lesson to be taken from Trump and Bernie is that many Americans are so damned tired of the establishment and the media that they’ll root for anybody, no matter how crazy they are, if they’ll just quit sucking up and actually stand for something.

But here is the problem with Trump, and it isn’t his personality or being willing to insult people (because if I’m judging these people on personality, I’d probably get along with him in person way better than most of the others, and the Rosie line made me do a spit take). It is because he’s been a Republican less time than Bernie has been a Democrat. When I’ve talked to the hard core Stormtrumpers they’ll say he’s great on the border! Okay, but what about his record on abortion, guns, crony capitalism, government intervention, eminent domain, and single payer healthcare? Suck, suck, suck… oh but on that one he evolved… This week.

For the people convinced that Trump is the Real Conservative in the race, and that the other 15 are all RINOs, put down the crack pipe. This is the same guy who a couple of years ago was outraged about violent videogames and saying how somebody needed to do something about them. Yeah, there’s a dude totally grounded in the Bill of Rights.

And before any fanatical Trump fan yells at me again about Megan Kelly was mean and how I just listen to FOX News, I cancelled cable like a year ago, so I don’t watch TV news unless I’m on it. Sheesh. The hard core Trump fans remind me a lot of the old hard core Ron Paul fans.

So with all the attention in the world, he’s leading at 20%, but that’ll die down as the novelty wears off. Most people aren’t single issue voters, and they’ve already put up with two terms from a malignant narcissist, why pick another? Trump will eventually drop out and use his celebrity to make even more money, much of which he’ll donate to democrats and democrat causes.

Then it gets really complicated.

Carly Fiorina did really well on the first debate, and then kicked Chris Matthews’s ass (see that thing above about people being hungry for anyone who will stand up to the media). I’ve got several friends who are hard core Fiorina supporters, but I have another friend who worked for her at HP who really found her business practices shady, but I’ve not had a chance to delve into that enough to comment.

A lot of people are thinking it would be a good match up because Fiorina is a woman and Hillary is a sort of woman shaped carbon based life form. And it could possibly derail Hillary’s main campaign platform of Vote For Me Or You’re a Misogynist Pig. Which will probably be similar to Obama’s Vote For Me or You’re Racist and Vote For Me or You’re Racist 2: Extra Racist.

However, according to the media we all know that Republican women aren’t real women. Just like Ben Carson, Tim Scott, Mia Love, Clarence Thomas, Condi Rice, and Walter Williams aren’t actually black people either.

The strategic problem for Fiorina is that because she is a Republican woman, and she has done well, expect the media to go full Palin on her. If she does have any questionable business dealings, they’ll be huge headlines for weeks on end (unlike deleted emails, missing classified documents, and getting ambassadors killed, because what difference does it make?). She’s still a possibility, but if there is anything even vaguely shady or potentially shady, the media will use it as a club to discredit her. Nothing freaks out the media worse than female or minority republicans.

Once people get tired of the Trump show, that hunger for bucking the establishment and telling the media to bugger off will still be there. And this is why I think Ted Cruz will move into the lead. He’s been a pain in the establishment’s ass. The left wing media hates him. And you can usually tell who the media really fears by how much they try to ignore them, or talk about them, rather than to them (gee whiz, I can’t imagine where I came up with that theory!).

Cruz has an elected track record. He’s got actual conservative cred. He’s one of the Tea Party generation that’s been replacing the greying and thankfully dying off big government GOP. Is Cruz a fantastic candidate? Nope. His track record isn’t perfect and he looks a lot like a young Grandpa Munster. Once they can’t safely ignore him, expect the media to go after him extra hard. The thing Cruz has going for him on that front is that they’ve been trying for years, and they’ve already spilled every bit of dirty laundry they had to discredit him back during the government shut down fight.

The biggest hurdle Cruz has won’t be the DNC or their tame news media, it will be the McCains, Hatches, and Grahams of the GOP. Because they really want a Jeb or a Christie. (note, I didn’t put Lindsey Graham in that list of potential presidents, because nobody, and I’m including Lindsey Graham, think that Lindsey Graham can be president).

On Jeb Bush… Ain’t gonna happen. He was the media’s initial pick, and it was even more painfully obvious than when all the democrats showed up in our open primaries to “cross the aisle” to nominate McCain, and then promptly ditched him for Obama on election day. But Jeb’s got zilch. Actual conservatives don’t like him, the Tea Party hates him. On the issues, he’s mumble mumble amnesty and mumble mumble that’s not what Common Core was supposed to mumble. Seriously, do you know any actual voter who likes Jeb? Can you think of one? I can’t. Jeb has all the suck of the old, dying, big government GOP, so the conservative base will be even less enthusiastic for him than they were for Romney and McCain, with the added benefit that his last name is Bush, so automatically half the country hates him.

Chris Christie is beloved by the media because he’s loud, and the biggest big government big republican they can have lose to Hillary, and if Christie happened to somehow beat Hillary, then they’d only be stuck with a republican who was electable in New Jersey. Christie came to prominence because of that same phenomena that is floating Trump now—which I think will eventually give it to Cruz—in that he’s willing to be disagreeable. Sadly, he’ll buck the media, but he won’t buck the establishment because Christie is the establishment. By volume, he’s half the establishment. And I’m saying that as a 6’5” 300 pounder myself.

On the far side of Christie is Rand Paul. Now personally, I really like Rand. I think he’s actually got real convictions and he’s got guts. As hipsters where whining in one tweet about the horrible evil Tea Party, and their next tweet was lamenting how bad it was the government was reading their emails, a guy elected by the Tea Party was the one fighting to get the NSA to quit reading their mail.

If you had to name three elected officials in the GOP who have been the biggest pain in the establishment GOP’s collective ass over the last few years, it would be Paul, Cruz, and Mike Lee (that’s my senator! I don’t claim Hatch). Luckily, I think Lee is too antisocial to ever run for president, which is good, because I want him to eventually replace Mitch McConnell and his weird turtle face.

But between Rand and Cruz, Cruz is polling better now, and seems to be having a better run of it. Gut feeling, barring a really good showing, I think Rand is principled enough that he’ll drop out after the first couple of primaries to not split the Tea Party contingent, and the liberty minded republicans who are backing Rand will go to Cruz. That’ll be the jump. Of the other candidates, who else would they support? A regular Rand ally, or one of the bigger government types? That’s a no brainer and several percentage points.

That’s if the Tea Party side coalesces into one favorite. The establishment side is split too, so it’ll be interesting if they all get behind one person.

There are two others that I still see as strong possibilities, Rubio and Walker.

Scott Walker is an election winner and a union buster, two things that really appeal to the base. He had a pretty vanilla showing in the last debate. He’s squishy on some core issues, but the feeling I get is that for some reason he’s a relative unknown to most primary voters. Which again shows that who the media most fears, they ignore, until they can’t, then they lie. They did the lie/fear thing in Wisconsin, but at the national level it has mostly been ignore. So if Walker does something really interesting enough to sneak past the Trump circus sucking up all the coverage and oxygen in the room, he could still have a shot.

Rubio is an interesting one. If you’d asked me four years ago who I thought the GOP front runner would be today, he probably would have been my call. It seems like he’s got a lot of national electability, but his problem is that he straddles the line between big government establishment republican and small government conservatism way too much. Note, to all aspiring young politicians, if perpetual loser John McCain wants you to team up with him on a big controversial issue, RUN AWAY! The whole fishing boat, speeding tickets, NYT expose helped him more than anything else. It humanized him and made him relatable. But there are too many issues he has sucked on with the base, so I think he’s going to fall by the wayside.

If several of the candidates drop out and toss their support behind Rubio or Walker, it could very well go their way.

Cruz and Rubio are both Latinos. Some republicans seem to think that is like a magic bullet, and suddenly republicans are going to get the Latino vote. That’s stupid. Just stop. The concept of “Latino” as a demographic is horribly flawed and unrealistic to begin with. How in the hell can you expect to stick people whose ancestors originate from one whole continent, the bottom half of another continent, and the west end of a third continent, islands in every hemisphere, spread over like 30 countries, in America between one and ten generations, and expect them to be this homogenous voting block?

Though since Cruz and Rubio are both Cuban, I expect to see the media declare that Cubans aren’t real Latinos. Sort of like when the government declared that Portuguese are Latino, and I was all like MWA HA HA HAAAAA I’M OFFICIALLY A MINORITY and they were all like oh shit what have we done?

On the same note, some republicans seem to think that if we run Ben Carson, republicans will suddenly get the black vote. I like Ben Carson. I think he’s probably a really good man. I also think focusing on his race is an incredibly stupid philosophy, and one that the democrats will beat republicans at every time. Identity politics are stupid democrat games. Don’t be surprised when you play their game and lose. That’s because they make the rules and game is rigged. You want to win, convince people that you’re worth voting for.

The problem with Ben Carson is that he’s not a politician, and it shows. You’d think being a non-politician at a time when everybody hates politicians would be a winning proposition, but they still have to know how to play the game. Trump isn’t a politician either, but he is a consummate game player. Fiorina isn’t a politician, but judging by how she rolled Jabba the Matthews, she’s got game. As a brain surgeon Carson is probably the smartest guy on the stage, but he’s not a political animal. Hillary has 1/3 of Carson’s IQ and none of his humility, but my gut feeling is that she’d walk all over him in a debate. Then Carson had to go and suck on guns, which is a kiss of death issue with the base.

Kaish… I’m not even going to bother to look on Google to see if I spelled that right. I have no idea why he is there. Non-entity. He could be the best candidate ever, who is right on every single issue, but I wouldn’t know, and neither do any of the voters. Perry just can’t seem to shine. Lots of Texans seem to love him, but he’s got zero momentum. Jindal, same thing. Barring any sort of super brilliant coup maneuver, I don’t see these guys moving up.

Lindsey Graham… Holy shit, just shoot me now. If Lindsey Graham got elected president I’d volunteer for that one way trip to Mars, and if that was a no go, I’d build my own rocket. He’s everything wrong with John McCain and the GOP, only he’s not a war hero, and has a lisp.

Again, these are just my guesses. I could be totally wrong. I also predicted Romney was going to win in the electoral college (to be fair, he only lost by like 600k spread across four swing states, so it wasn’t like I totally blew it). But the democrat side is going to be Hillary, unless she is arrested and can’t make bail.  Republican side, I figure Cruz, with an outside chance of Fiorina, Rubio, or Walker.

However you look at it, no matter who wins, we’re going to end up with somebody better suited for the job than Barack Obama. Sadly, I’m including Bernie Sanders in that equation, and that’s really saying something.

I used to take orders for personalized autographs here on the blog, but the constant shipping just turned into a nightmare, so I quit doing it. I do personalized signings in person whenever I’m at an event, but the hard part there is that I can’t go everywhere.

Luckily, every year when I go on book tour I try to stop at Uncle Hugos. They are the store that introduced my self published MHI to Toni at Baen, so I love those guys. I’ll be there again in October for the release of Son of the Black Sword.

One nice thing about Uncle Hugos is that they will take orders for personalized autographs. So if you’ve got any requests, or want to give away any copies as gifts, and you aren’t going to be near any of my tour stops, this is your chance.

http://www.unclehugo.com/prod/ah-correia-larry.php

I usually fly in a day early so I can go straight there, and sign autographs for the copies that need to be shipped. The last few times I signed hundreds of books waiting to be shipped before the actual book signing.

It doesn’t have to be just the new book (though you should get SotBS, because it is awesome, and I’m really proud of it) but Uncle Hugos will bring in copies of everything. So if you want to give away a bunch of autographed Hard Magics or MHIs for Christmas, with their name in it from me, we can do that. And I’ll write pretty much anything. I’ll even doodle (badly) if you want.

This works well for everybody. You guys get personalized autographed copies, Uncle Hugos sells lots of books, and I don’t have to have half my office dedicated to shipping and receiving (I needed the space for mini painting!).

We’re doing Challenge Coins again! Last time we did a Kickstarter and sold over $100,000 worth of them, which turned out to be a LOT of freaking coins. So we’ve learned from last time around and will be doing a few things differently. This post was written by Jack Wylder. He’s the poor guy who actually had to keep track of all this stuff, bag them, mail them, and answer all the emails. ## Ok here it is at last-

CorreiaTech Challenge Coins (Series II)

12 Points We’re doing it a bit different this time (learning from our mistakes)

• 1) We’re not doing it through KickStarter. KS was great in many ways, but Larry’s got a large enough audience that there’s really no reason to hand them 10% off the top (when they brought in less than 1% of sales)
• 2) Instead we’re doing it through the MHI Swag page: https://mhiswag.myshopify.com/ Important: Do NOT order yet! Wait until all 12 designs are finalized and up there so you only have to order once. Even if you’re planning on buying a complete set, hold off- we have a few other items we’ll be introducing along the way that might interest you. In fact, I’m not even going to put them on the site until all has been revealed…
• 3) Since we’re not doing it through KS there’s not a big reason to do stretch goals. It’s easier for all if you only have to place one order one time, so we’re going to just unveil one design a day until we get all 12 shown then you can go order all you like. Don’t order until they’re all posted! You might miss one you love AND we’re going to add a couple of other non-coin items as things go along. We’re going to run this whole thing through the end of the month.
• 4) Actually 2 of the designs are yet TBD- we want to see what coins YOU want so we’re doing 2 backers choice coins. (Last time around the backers’ choice coin ended up being the most popular- the PUFF exemption tag.) Rather than have to wade through a bazillion comments here we’re opening up the discussion on the all new Monster Hunter Forums: (UPDATED- the Forums didn’t pan out) (Ok the forum isn’t actually 100% yet but it makes too much sense to launch it now and I can adjust as we go along…) We were going to make a bigger deal about the forum’s launch but this seems as good a time as any.
• 5) We’re not numbering the coins this time- the numbering last time created WAY too much work and problems and was single handedly responsible for setting us weeks (possibly months) behind schedule on shipping.The exception to this is the first tag we’re doing, but all numbers will be done in a random manner…
• 6) We’re using a new provider for the coins this time. Last time the mint we used did beautiful work but between broken molds and various other delays, what should have been done in less than 6 weeks ended up being over 6 months. The new provider does work JUST as nice (if not nicer) and we have complete confidence that they will deliver in a very timely manner. Speaking of which…
• 7) The molds for the first 10 designs are almost done! Once we have a final tally we can get them to start immediately with much less of a wait. (We should actually be able to show you samples before we even finish unveiling all the designs…)
• 8) Even with the KS 10% loss, the single biggest financial loss last time out was with shipping (no questions, not even close). We’re going to make it much easier this time- all domestic orders are a flat $15 shipping and handling and will ship first class priority mail (along with tracking numbers.) International orders will be a flat $45. Yes, this might seem a lot for one coin but with the swag page we have to put one price in; with the underestimated international shipping last time, we essentially gave hundreds of coins away for free. It’s a lot for one coin, but if you order the whole set it becomes a lot more of a bargain… 😉
• 9) We’re not doing all of the tiers like we did last time. Again, it just ate up way too much time and needlessly complicated things. You can order the whole set for $150 (which is like getting the 2 backers choice coins for free) or you can order just the individual coins you want.
• 10) Like last time we’re going to round up the final tally and get the coins minted and then that’s it- once they’re gone, they’re gone!
• 11) Because we’re using the swag page this time, you can add as many non-coin items as you want. Since we’re shipping things to you anyway it’s an excellent opportunity to stock up on whatever you want.
• 12) Check back daily here for updates and if you have any questions just let us know!

-Jack

First up: The Provisional PUFF tag

When you sign up for STFU you aren’t granted a PUFF exemption; the whole point is you have to earn it. So how does the government prevent hunters from claiming bounties on members of STFU? The Provisional PUFF exemption tag of course! Bearers of the “P PUFF X” tag can prove that they are regarded as ‘People Pro-Tem’ in the eyes of the MCB and that their death might be considered murder. Good times….

Update:
Here’s the sample of the actual coin. (This is the prototype but the production ones will have a random number on them)

Note- so many people were upset about not getting a PUFF exemption last time that we came up with this as a way for them to get exempted too. We are not bringing back the original PUFF and we are only doing these for this run of coins- there will not be a second run of these and I don’t see any way we can do a third PUFF coin.

Coin II: The Grimnoir Seal

As promised, we’re not going exclusively MHI this time! The Grimnoir seal on one side, a highly reflective surface on the other… Wonder what THAT could be used for? (salt not included) Update: Here’s a (not very good to be honest) picture of the actual production sample:

Coin III: The STFU/Heather Coin

In the series I coins the Heather/STFU coin came in second as the backers’ choice. By popular demand here it is at last! The artwork is usually not really representative of the final product so here’s a close up to give you a better idea of what the coin will ACTUALLY look like…

Coin IV: The (un)holy symbol of the Sanctified Church of the Temporary Mortal Condition

Stupid squid lovers… Ok what isn’t shown is that the full title of the cult is engraved around the edge of the medallion. This is another one of those that looks better in reality than in photos…

Coin V: Grimm Berlin Germany’s foremost hunting team gets it’s own coin, with the logo on one side and a portrait of their founders on the other.

(I like to have the original artwork as well as the photos because a) I don’t have ALL the sample coins in and b) I’m using the camera on my iPad which doesn’t always take the best pictures…)

(case in point- to get this one with the wacky lighting it had to be taken at a very odd angle…)

A surprising number of the upcoming designs have been requested on the forum. I take this as a good sign 😉

Coin VI: the Imperium Guards

One side has the distinctive gray eyes of the feared Shadow Guard, the other the snarling visage of the implacable Iron Guards battle helm. Oh- and even though it’s counter-intuitive, it’s kind of a cool effect that the Shadow Guard side actually glows in the dark!(I’ve been assured that the Kanji is 86.6% likely to be at least not terribly incorrect.)

Coin VII: the International Lord of Hate!! Cower mortals and despair at the dread visage of the International Lord of Hate! Behold the hated face of hatred personified (hatefully). Thaaat’s it- BEHOLD IT!!!

Coin IIX: MHI Redux The iconic image that started it all; the horned smiley face logo of Team Harbinger!

Coin IX: (Pirate) Captain Bob Southunder
Undisputed leader of first the Bulldog Marauder and then the Traveler, Captain Bob was integral to the Grimnoir’s plans.
(Sorry for the less than awesome picture- I’ll update with actual pics as soon as I get the sample in hand…)

Coin X: Stranger & Stranger
You’re in strange hands with Stranger & Stranger!

(This is one of those times where a picture just doesn’t do it justice. The hands on the front glow brilliantly in the dark and though the sample lacked the enamel top coat that makes it happen, the back of the coin has a strange finish wherein the design in the back is only visible from certain angles. The sample I saw of the effect was one of the strangest things I’ve ever seen on a challenge coin which is why it is perfect for THIS design!)

Coin XI: the Women of MHI (Backers’ Choice coin #1)
Starring Julie Shackleford-Pitt and Holly Newcastle!

Coin XII: (the Final Coin of Series II) Milo Anderson- the DaVinci of Destruction! (Backers’ Choice coin #2)
MHI’s resident mad scientist finally gets his own coin. (His was very high on the list of requested Backers’ Choice coins last time)

Ok so here, as promised, are some of the additional items we’ll have for you:

Series II Zippos (not knock offs) in either a high polish chrome or black, both engraved

We haven’t done a new patch in a few years, so why NOT suck up to the CorreiaTech CFO by putting him on a patch?

I’ve lost count of how many times we’ve had a request for these… Available in White, black, bright green, or chrome.

(I don’t actually have a sample so I had to cheat, but this is pretty close to how they should come out.) Tiny MHI Smiley pins suitable for hats, bags, cufflinks, tie tacks, whatever!

We will start taking order Monday for the individual coins, the full sets, AND for the new items. (Pricing then)
It will NOT be first thing in the morning as I still have to enter all the info into the Shopify system but we will *DEFINITELY* let you know as soon as you’re cleared for takeoff.

Readers can vote for their favorite military sci-fi stories of the year. The deadline is the end of August. Details at the link.

http://baen.com/yearsbestaward2014.asp

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 6^th, Are the Hugo nominees really the best sci-fi books of the year?

April 9^th, George RR Martin says rightwing lobby has broken Hugo awards

April 17^th, Hugo award nominees withdraw amid “Puppygate” storm

April 18^th, The Hugo awards hijack is nasty and dishonest

July 20^th, George RR Martin urges every true fan to rally for Hugo awards vote

July 24^th, The Hugo Awards will be losers if politics take the prize.

July 27^th, 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.

As Damien Walter argues,

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 3^rd on my personal ballot. I believe the Villainous Vox Whom the Guardian Hates Above All put it 1^st 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. 🙂