Former TOR editor still longs to gatekeep the field

199 comments

1. Dude! That was all kinds of awesome. My biggest concern from the very start was wondering why the elitist SF/F crowd couldn’t understand the concept of inclusion. They whine about it repeatedly. I think in their narrow minds, they focused so hard on including the “correct” few, that they pushed the entire field aside. They’ve become the proverbial person with a beam in their eye.

2. Reblogged this on westfargomusings.

3. These people have shat upon the awards enough that we shouldn’t be trying to redeem them, therefore gilding their shit.

   Start a set of new awards that will have inherent value simply through not having been associated with these SMOF jerkoffs.

4. Starting to transition from anger to pity, actually. Seems to me that we’re meant to take joy from life, and I find it hard to see how anyone could find joy in such bitter pills.

5. One of them said we are lying and want less diversity.

   “Really, my issue with the Sad Puppies is not that they want more diversity in Hugo representation. It’s that they want less.”

   Back to the we’re all racist male supremacists thing – how boring and predictable.

   I just want my white privilege to not be undermined and the centrality of the patriarchy to be maintained in its rightful and proper place. The cis-heteronormative universe will not fall to rebel scum. We will return to the days when a HAL 9000 could see gender just fine and didn’t disemvowel gender pronouns. But some of these feminist robot zombies appear to see gender and color just fine:

   “Didn’t need the user icon to know you’re white and male.” – TNH

   Oh, well, at least he wasn’t a “sour dough-faced” neck-bearded dudebro “cracka ass cracka with the brains of a savage buffalo.”

   And for TNH and her laughingly stupid idea of academia, we have this bit of retrofitting of history by a person who astoundingly claims to have a masters in history:

   BEST RELATED WORK “We Have Always Fought: Challenging the Women, Cattle and Slaves Narrative” by Kameron Hurley (A Dribble of Ink)

   That was scholarly all right. So scholarly it had to use paintings instead of photographs to illustrate its point. That was like J. Allen St. John’s documentary paintings of Pellucidar.

   I am writing my historical smash hit, “We Have Always Gone to the Center of the Earth,” and it is profusely illustrated with ink-wash drawings I made when I was held captive by Mahars, who are every bit as real as Hurley’s phantom Amazon armies.

   Next will be “We Have Always Lost Weight by Virtue of Regular Exercise and a Sensible Diet.”

   Besides that some of them are convinced we are using 8chan terrorists as our Brownshirts to instill terror among them, as if people afraid of clapping, comic book covers and crying over possible fat jokes don’t wake up scared as soon as their alarm clock says “Trigger warning, you are awake in a patriarchy. Rise and bravely face the day knowing it is of no use to do so.”

6. Amen…. Brad Amen…. SP’s unite…

7. Odd, this fear of new Hugo voters.

   Back in 1976, Spider Robinson was writing his sf/f review column for Galaxy, and he mentioned that people had asked him to use his “influence” to improve science fiction and fantasy. He was amused at the idea he had any influence, but then he said (in effect) ‘Hey, you do. Join the WorldCon as a supporting member, and you can vote on the Hugos. Winning awards influences the field, because the publishers and editors will bring out more books and stories like those that win.’

   Somehow, no one had a cow over the thought that more people would be voting. And the following year, Spider won his first Hugo, in a tie with “James Tiptree, Jr.” Somehow, no one accused him of doing anything untoward there.

   Btw, I’m proud to say that I voted “By Any Other Name” as the Best Novella of 1976, after much thought about whether “Houston, Houston, Do You Read?” was or wasn’t better.

   Gee. if everyone who read sf/f took out WorldCon supporting memberships and voted for the Hugos, the World Science Fiction Society would have money coming out of it’s ears, and could put on bigger, better WorldCons. The horror, the horror!

8. “Didn’t need the user icon to know you’re white and male.” – TNH

   Didn’t need hers to know that she is a toad. ribbit ribbit ribbit

9. When you realize what a tiny little club the Hugo voters are, the more you realize how little winning a Hugo means to having a successful career. By successful career I mean making a decent living, The list of big names who died nearly destitute is not a favorable testimonial for pursuing awards over audience.

10. Reblogged this on madgeniusclub.

11. Reblogged this on Otherwhere Gazette.

12. “First, there’s the Best Related Work category. That’s where the reference works wind up. Good reference books are labors of love, especially that last 10% of quality that takes 50% of the total labor. People who create reference books get one shot at the Hugo.”

    Ah, yes. “Reference books”, like the collection of rehashed Scalzi blog posts that won in 2008. I mean, who among us hasn’t given that work of profound scholarship a near-Talmudic level of monomaniacal study?

    How fortunate we are that Tor (cough) stepped up with a mass-market reprint to guarantee that its edifying vision won’t be lost to the masses. I only wish it were available on low-acid archival paper. Perhaps we can talk NASA into etching it on a gold plaque, to be attached to the next deep space probe. Perhaps it should be carved into a granite monolith, Rushmore-style, to ensure that its holy wisdom will survive the very fall of civilization itself.

    In actuality, the book has become so irrelevant that it doesn’t even rate its own Wikipedia article. Keep that in mind if (when) you see them complaining about Michael Z. Williamson’s book being on the ballot.

13. These folks want diversity as long as they control it. They welcome real diversity about as much as the Democrats would welcome the Republicans running a black woman for President. Perhaps worldcon membership should be hereditary to fix this. With rare grants of peerage.

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15. My understanding the term SMOF is that these are the people who RUN conventions. They do the work behind the scenes. Just so you understand that an entire network of hard-working volunteer fans should not be lumped together with mud-slingers.

    That being said, I read the entire thread over at Making Light (and now I have eyestrain). Notes:
    1. People who regularly attend Worldcon have to pay vast sums to do so. By pointing out the availability of Supporting Memberships Sad Puppies champions the little people who cannot plunk down at least $2K a year to attend. Yeah, the disadvantaged & poor. We’re actually on their side.
    2. We tolerate dissent. They disenvowel it.
    3. We won’t hold them accountable for their comment trolls’ views even if they hold us accountable for ours (although one might conceivably have fun looking at what their trolls say and then tongue-in-cheek pretend to attribute it to them.)
    4. They brainstormed rule changes on voting the Hugos to “stop us.” A Worldcon committee member shot down each suggestion as impossible or counterproductive – changes that would help us. The only practical solution they discussed was to come up with their own counter “slates.” Think about it: it was seriously suggested they handle next year by yelling “Vote for all of our (insert topic) books!” The subtext will probably be that if you do not vote for their (insert topic) books, you must be an (insert insulting term.) Within those proposed slates, I will concede that they want quality writing, but they did not concede that we want that, too.
    5. Gamergating.The inflammatory label “gamergater” is almost impossible to prove or disprove. That and the suggestion that we are mostly interested in military SF were eventually shaped into a consensus that SP3 supporters may be physically dangerous (you know, like me, the 60-year-old grandmother). While most of the whole Gamergate thing is indeed an internet kerfuffle, the _worst_ of the trollish Gamergaters really are misogynist and criminally dangerous stalkers. Hey, look, we know that real people have been stalked and threatened over this and other issues and we (this should be obvious) do not support criminals . We are for ethical things like the rule of law.
    6. Reavers. I am not a fan of Firefly, so I had to look this one up. Gawd, what a laden term. It goes further than suggesting we are criminally dangerous: it suggests SP3 supporters can be dismissed as sub-human. We believe in the dignity of the individual.

    No matter how we are taunted, I am imploring all of you to not name-call or demonize others like they did in that thread. Name calling is not debate. Demonization is not professional. Rise above.

16. “While most of the whole Gamergate thing is indeed an internet kerfuffle, the _worst_ of the trollish Gamergaters really are misogynist and criminally dangerous stalkers. Hey, look, we know that real people have been stalked and threatened over this and other issues and we (this should be obvious) do not support criminals. ”

    Wendy, you are casting false aspersions in ignorance. I strongly suggest you stop doing so. I am a GamerGater and I have been since before it was called GamerGate. What you are saying is absolutely false. You do not know anything of the kind. Look it up.

17. Nosy Parker aka Andrew Marston, you were the one who was brought down to the police station and warned about your seven years of cyberstalking me and various others. They even recommended to your caregivers to keep you off the Internet because you are incapable of controlling yourself. Obviously they are either unable or unwilling.

18. Wendy, that’s a very helpful summary, thank you.

19. “While most of the whole Gamergate thing is indeed an internet kerfuffle, the _worst_ of the trollish Gamergaters really are misogynist and criminally dangerous stalkers. ”

    Wendy – I got correct you on this. This is not an episode of SVU (a show I already refer to as the longest running alternate-reality series on TV)

    Sure – there likely are some total creeps somewhere on the fringes of gamer gate – no human organization is without its assholes and sociopaths that latch onto something.

    That said, the worst bloody shirts the anti-GG side has to wave are nasty comments that are “misogyinist” because, when you’re insulting someone, you use an insult that bothers them – and women are not bothered by the same things that men are, all in all. That and a “massacre threat” that turned out to be a) non-credible, b) not related to gamer gate, and c) actually, the guy was uncovered by gamer gate.

    Oh, and “death threats” towards Mr/Ms Wu who turns out never left her home when he/she claimed he/she did so.

    Countering that we’ve got “gamers are dead”, cartoons about shoveling gamergaters into ovens or into the sun, SWATTING instances, banning entire discussion threads, auto blockers that have caught up, among others, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and people stupid enough to screen cap an “Awful hateful” post “directed at them” not only before they logged out of the sock puppet account, but before they even hit “post”

    SWATTING – you know, cops called to your house or place of business on a false hostage situation report? One happened just the other day.

    This nasty, elitist, “we want to change how YOU do things instead of making our own” attitude was there front and center, from day one, across literally dozens of industry websites, with a full Journolist style forum dedicated to managing the message. The main celebrities of the anti-GG side have repeatedly and provably lied through their teeth.

20. anti-gamergate is about making money and silencing people who want to shine a light into the dark recesses of the gaming industry, plain and simple.

21. I haven’t ever paid attention to the Hugos in the past, largely because I’m so far behind in my “things to read” list, I’m still struggling to catch up on the classics. But since I’m a fan of Jeffro Johnson’s stuff, and he ended up on the SP3 list for best fan writer, I’ve actually taken an active interest for the first time ever. Seriously, the last time I gave a crap about the Hugos was when I was a little kid and heard that one episode of Babylon 5 won a Hugo and was all “Oh, hey, that’s cool.”
    Sad Puppies IS bringing in fresh blood and bringing back old fans to new material. My only regret is that I read If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love.

22. I see Paul Weimar is on Twitter frantically reminding everybody that Sad Puppies has links to GamerGate and Vox. Next week comes the Godwinning.

23. Point of information: I am a personal friend of Frank Wu, Brianna’s husband, who I have published. I have no idea where you get your information, and apologies if you trusted your source(s), but mine is from the horses’ mouth. They actually had to leave for a while. Frank has no reason to lie to me.

    OTOH look at what dgrsys said above: “Sure – there likely are some total creeps somewhere on the fringes of gamer gate – no human organization is without its assholes and sociopaths that latch onto something.”

    Those far-fringe people are indeed the “assholes and sociopaths” I was talking about and I think we can all agree on that.

24. Me being me, I disagree with everyone. I’m totally unhappy with the recent Hugo winners, and I’m unhappy with the Sad Puppies slate.

    Next year I’m going to nominate my own slate. Which is the way the Hugo awards are supposed to work. Fans decide.

25. “Frank has no reason to lie to me.”

    Not my dog, not my fight, but… the worst time in my life started when I trusted someone who was constantly telling me how trustworthy they were every time I had any doubts about whether they were truthful or honest. Turned out they were neither, and it took a bankruptcy and years to recover from it.

    Wendy – people lie for all sorts of reasons. To get sympathy, avoid shame, conceal something they know (or suspect) others would consider wrong, to evade blame or punishment, or to garner attention.

    If you’ve got to tell yourself (or others) ‘they have no reason to lie to me’ when others are suspecting lies or fabrications, you might really want to question whether they HAVE been honest with you.

26. Brad: as one of the people writing a proposal to “stop” the Sad Puppies, let me tell you why.

    The value of the Hugo is the integrity of the voters, and the idea that they are voting for what they think is the best. The worst thing that could happen to the Hugos is the perception</b? that to get one you need to know the right people and get on the right slate. If that happens, the Hugos become no more important than who won the election for dogcatcher.

    Unless you actually bring these phantom hordes (hordes not seen at Loncon) the other likely outcome is a bunch of "no awards" in various categories. Again, that renders the Hugos useless – what value is an award that's not given out?

    So what I'm proposing is "6, 4 and no 5%." We expand the Hugo final list to six, get rid of the 5% requirement, but members can only nominate 4 works in each category. That way, you, me, TNH, nobody can dominate the final slate. By getting rid of the 5% rule, we always get a full six in the final vote.

    I'm also thinking (haven't written it yet) about a Best Author Hugo. That way, guys like Anderson and Butcher can get an award for their body of work. After all, Issac Asimov only got one Hugo – a special "best series" one-off.

28. Sorry about bad HTML – only word that should be bolded was “perception”

29. perception that to get one you need to know the right people and get on the right slate

    Ah, but that’s the perception I have had for years.

30. Here’s another summary:

    The part about the Nail House is funny because that’s what happens at the end of a Bugs Bunny cartoon where some construction project comes to mess with him. The start of those types of cartoons are always the same: Bugs is hanging in his hole minding his own business….

    Never forget these morons started this with their lunatic and obsessive attacks on men, ethnic Europeans and heterosexuals. Those senseless and unending daily attacks were based on the idea of an oppressive, misogynistic, homophobic, patriarchy of Jim Crow-like dimensions in place in the SFF community that accounts for the fake underrepresentation and marginalization of women, gays and non-whites. By some mysterious means this “underrepresentation” never accounts for a single fucking thing in any cultural expression by non-whites, women or gays. From boxing to Samba, from nursing to romance fiction, it all goes into a memory hole. Any KKK light bulbs going off? Just use Occam’s Razor.

    “This means war.”

    That’s what Bugs said and that’s what I said to myself when I first encountered 3 of the worst morons who flog this stuff: John Scalzi and his stinking post about white privilege and the anti-white, anti-male, anti-heterosexual Liz Bourke at the inadvisable Tor where she quoted the equally inadvisable and delusionally hostile N. K. Jemisin.

    “This means war” also means “fuck these people.” This is an SFF community and literary genre and movement, not some fuck of a KKK for wacky intersectional gender feminists who [trigger warning] cry on Twitter because of a U.K. version of David Letterman and routinely lie about rape, men, and whites in statistic after statistic.

    Last year we were pummeled with what amounts to racial revenge fantasies given awards at the Nebulas and Hugo, all dedicated to the idea white men need to be paid back for genocide, colonialism, slavery, rape culture, and anything else this sick supremacist cult can lay at my door. Notice how any non-white, non-Western expression of colonialism, slavery and genocide also goes into a historic memory hole. More KKK light bulbs go off. Shave off some more with Occam’s Razor. This ain’t rocket science, folks. I’m not a rube to be conned by this carnival freak show.

    This is a con game started and promoted by racists and feminist lady supremacists and their dog-like “allies” – the social justice warrior who’s convinced they are the 21st century Freedom Rider who’ll get that gay black lady off the back of civilization’s bus, and SFF novels too. Screw every last one of them.

31. Personally I found it a very interesting exercise to compare the number actual violent attacks, murders, rapes, thefts, and general number of arrests between GamerGate and Occupy Wall Street.

    Funny thing that, for all that there are people who are using GG as an excuse to be complete and utter wankers to each other, (GG, anti-GG, third party Trolls, even mainstream journalists) there hasn’t been a single arrest made because of GG. Occupy… well, even if you discount the ones that were because of the actual protesting, there are a depressingly large number.

    There are a few that probably should be prosecuted – the swatting, the false claims of harassment, (and accompanying police reports, which tied up resources that would have been better spent doing anything else) but for the most part the bad element has mostly been just a word war back and forth. You know, stuff actually protected by the 1st amendment, no matter how hateful the actual rhetoric.

    Of course, as I’ve said already, GG is made up of gamers – the heaviest SFF medium out there. Its a natural place of overlap, and if they want to vote great.

    If someone else wants to get aGG voting more, by all means, but given how many of them aren’t gamers I can’t speak to how many are SFF book fans either.

32. “I am a personal friend of Frank Wu, Brianna’s husband, who I have published. I have no idea where you get your information, and apologies if you trusted your source(s), but mine is from the horses’ mouth. They actually had to leave for a while. Frank has no reason to lie to me.”

    SJWs always lie. Watch the video at the link, Wendy. It should suffice to prove that Frank lied to you. Brianna Wu gave the filmed interviews from his house on the dates when he was supposedly at “a safe location”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuoQL3m7yJI&list=UU8RJExf7iNpV6tp6hvNtwww

    Is that sufficient to change your mind or do you need more evidence that the Wus are not to be trusted? Because there is more.

33. This grows out of wondering why so many Sad Puppies are suddenly out and about on forums they don’t normally frequent, belatedly spreading this new and not very believable line about how the whole Sad Puppy thing is motivated by love, rather than spite and resentment.

    “Golly, someone actually disagreed with people who agree with me, when I was busy slagging the Sad Puppy strawman in a place I thought I’d get no opposition!”

34. “perception that to get one you need to know the right people and get on the right slate”

    When a (former) editor of one of the biggest publishers of SFF (and one who has won the award over and over again) openly says that I don’t love SFF (despite not knowing me or mine from Adam and Eve in almost all cases) because I don’t share the same tastes with her, we’re already at that point. Have been for years.

    If you don’t like the SP suggested slate, that’s fine. Do your own. Campaign to get more people voting for what you did like.

    Voter turnout and Voter suppression are entirely different animals, no matter how much you try and conflate the two.

35. “So what I’m proposing is “6, 4 and no 5%.” We expand the Hugo final list to six, get rid of the 5% requirement, but members can only nominate 4 works in each category. That way, you, me, TNH, nobody can dominate the final slate.”

    (laughs) Oh, it’s hilariously cute that you think that.

    The astonishing thing is that the nominations HAVEN’T EVEN BEEN ANNOUNCED and you’re already lobbying to change the rules because you’re afraid Tor and its pet SJWs MIGHT not collect their customary tribute.

36. VD – no, I’m concerned that open campaigning, a Sad Puppies innovation, will make the award look cheap. And if you didn’t like the non-existent “whisper campaigns” of yore, you’ll really dislike when Scalzi, Making Light and half-a-dozen other sites are running full slates.

    See, what I keep noticing is that the Sad Puppies top out at around 200 votes. That’s enough to get on the ballot, but not nearly enough to win. If several other groups start campaigning, y’all might end up worse off.

    Or shorter – consider taking half a pie instead of none.

37. “Didn’t need the user icon to know you’re white and male.” – TNH

    You know, I’ve gotten this several times in various places, in spite of having a long haired werefox in a cheerleading outfit for a user icon.

    The most memorable, I was somewhere in my third trimester and going stir-crazy because I’d promised not to go out walking after dark anymore.

    Says a lot about the folks who say it, not so much about their targets.

38. When a (former) editor of one of the biggest publishers of SFF (and one who has won the award over and over again) openly says that I don’t love SFF (despite not knowing me or mine from Adam and Eve in almost all cases) because I don’t share the same tastes with her, we’re already at that point. Have been for years.

    I’m already planning to get my mom a voting ticket for her birthday, since she’s been a fangirl since before Star Trek was first canceled. As folks have pointed out, since SP is going, that ticket has a good chance of getting you some good reads, in bulk!

    A delicate phrasing of how she’s likely to vote is that she only reads newly published books when 1) they’re free or 2) someone suggests them. When a life-long fan who doesn’t like romance novels is taking romance novels over the new books, there’s an issue in what’s being selected for publication.

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40. TNH: “Torgersen doesn’t surprise me. “Retreat to home turf; continue argument without opponent present” is a standard trollish endgame strategy.”

    Coming from a woman who locked Brad out for 24 hours and constantly berated him for not reading every word she or one of her minions spewed. She was using “home turf” as a fucking club, while Brad merely used it as a place to breathe.

41. And here’s more Occam’s Razor: considering these morons routinely claim America and SFF is a white male heterosexual supremacy dedicated to flouncing the marginalized’s skirts, that supremacy has mysteriously forgotten to make awards, magazines, web sites, lists of editors and authors, symposiums, and conventions ideologically dedicated to the specific identity of men, heterosexuals and whites. A demographic anomaly is not an ideology, so save any arguments about that.

    On the other hand, the demographic anomalies among social justice warrior institutions are remarkably segregated – ON PURPOSE. I have this to deal with:

    * Spectrum Awards
    * Goldies Awards for Lesbian Literature (Speculative Fiction Category)
    * Lambda Literary Awards (Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror)
    * Queer Horror Awards
    * James Tiptree, Jr. Award Winners and Shortlist
    * Lesbian Science Fiction
    * GLBT Fantasy Fiction Resources
    * 50 Most Important LGBT Comics Characters
    * Changing Images of Trans People in Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature
    * Transgender SF
    * The Complete History of LGBT Video Game Characters
    * The Gay and Lesbian Conundrum in Anime and Manga
    * Queer, Women Destroy SF, Fantasy, Horror
    * Strange Horizons
    * Afrofuturism Symposiums
    * The Hurston Wright Foundation
    * Black Writers Alliance Award
    * Celebration of Black Writing
    * Black Publishers & Writers Awards
    * New Voices Award
    * The Dickerson-Du Bois Undergraduate Award
    * BCALA Literary Award
    * Asian American Literature Award
    * Coretta Scott King Book Awards
    * The Unpublished Writers Award
    * Black Mystery Writers Awards
    * National Council for Black Studies Writing Award
    * AAMBC Literary Awards
    * African American Literary Awards Show
    * Con or Bust
    * Non-White Writing Excuses Grant
    * VONA non-white writing workshops
    * WisCon “Safer-Space” and unoffical off-campus dinner
    * “Octavia E. Butler Celebration of Arts and Activism at Spelman College Focuses on ‘Afrofuturism’ and Social Justice.”
    * We See a Different Frontier
    * Long Hidden
    * Alternative Futurisms

    And by an amazing Orwellian twist of the word “tolerance,” all of the people eligible for that stuff are eligible for the whitey-menz Hugo and Nebula. Just keep using Occam’s Razor, folks. Not exactly a murder mystery, is it?

42. And let me make something clear: I don’t have the slightest problem with people doing that. I consider it none of my business. But when people start using the word “diversity” as cover to attack me and say I’M the one doing that stuff when I’m not, then the gloves come off.

43. Wendy has a number of good points, but the fact that the SJWs have failed to change the Hugo voting to hamper the Sad Puppies revolt today doesn’t mean they won’t try and try again next year to do so. The Left does not like any opposition, and will go to any lengths to suppress it. My guess is that they will try to stuff the Worldcon committee with like-minded people over the next few years, then revote to restrict the nomination ability of supporting members. Supporting members will still be able to *vote* just not *nominate*, and then they can rest easy that only approved works will ever win.

44. I’m concerned that open campaigning, a Sad Puppies innovation, will make the award look cheap.

    Can’t make it look cheaper than Redshirts and “If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love”. That ship has sailed.

    And if you didn’t like the non-existent “whisper campaigns” of yore, you’ll really dislike when Scalzi, Making Light and half-a-dozen other sites are running full slates.

    (laughs) Bring it on. You clearly have no idea about the extent of Scalzi’s fraudulence. The very month he publicly claimed he had 2 million monthly pageviews in an interview with Lightspeed, he had 305,000. Just for this month I’m at, let’s see here, 1,552,629 as of now.

    If several other groups start campaigning, y’all might end up worse off.

    Do you know, we’re willing to take that risk. I very much want to see them do the very thing they complained about. I repeat: bring it on.

45. Seriously, the best way to deal with us is to open up the membership. Dilute us. The nominations for the most prestigious award in science fiction shouldn’t be decided by only 50-100 people. Open the doors, bring in thousands and tens of thousands new voters so that any campaign is weakened. 300 people is a lot only when 50-100 votes are needed and only about a thousand total, if that, nominate. 300 people isn’t much when 500-1000 votes are needed because ten thousand people nominated.

    Open the flood gates. Because changing the rules and making vague threats about upcoming events in the genre in complete ignorance to the two outlaw publishers and indies involved is the quickest route to irrelevance.

46. TNH: “Torgersen doesn’t surprise me. ‘Retreat to home turf; continue argument without opponent present’ is a standard trollish endgame strategy.”

    These are truly amazing people. They routinely censor and ban us, even pre-banning us, and then make an Orwellian cake out of it where it’s actually our fault. How is the opponent not “present”? It’s not like you have to walk here.

    SJWs created that – when you ban people they’ll go elsewhere, pop up again and keep talking. Scalzi and Tor and created more of their feared monsters than they’ve managed to suppress. In fact you can easily make a claim this entire counter-movement was created by the simple act of deleting and banning us.

    Charlie Stross: “I’m pretty sure that per the SPs I’m one of those liberal east coast elitist social justice warrior gamma males or something (but their good opinion matters little enough to me that I can’t be arsed going and finding out).”

    No, nobody gives a shit about profiling you. it’s actual quotes like this:

    “The comments on this blog entry are not intended for wild speculation about the identity and motivation of the (Boston Marathon) bombers; comments on those lines may be deleted, especially if I think they amount to hate speech directed against minorities.”

    One hour and five minutes later : “my money is on crazy white guys with a political axe to grind: the provisional wing of the Tea Party.”

    Then there was the piling on of Jonathan Ross, and this:

    “I am currently feeling really pleased that I haven’t received the ‘you have been nominated for a Hugo — do you wish to accept?’ email this year. It means I can go nuclear on my blog if this thing (Sad Puppies) goes the way I expect it to go without accusations of being self-serving.”

    Who cares if you’re self-serving? You’re a Gunga Din carrying water for daffy intersectional gender feminists. Eventually they’ll get to you, because you may have noticed you’re a white man, which is persona non grata in Lady-Worship-Land. You carry too many vectors of oppression in your DNA. That how the gentrified boutique KKK works, just like the actual KKK they mimic like monkeys. It’s a biological hatred. Soon enough you’ll figure out your very blood is “politics” and “ideology.”

47. “…you’ll really dislike when Scalzi, Making Light and half-a-dozen other sites are running full slates.”

    You mean like when people getting prank phone calls get caller ID or even screeners? Won’t do any good.

    Look up “Howard Stern Tradio.” Some of the funniest stuff you’ll ever hear. Pranking humorless racist morons is as easy as eating a slice of apple pie and washing it down with a nice glass of milk.

    I have an much easier solution: lay off with the straight white man stuff and enjoy SFF. That’s the easiest way to get rid of me.

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49. Bravo, Mr. Torgersen. Bravo.

    This from a 40+ years member of fandom.

50. Why are SJWs crying so? If we really wanted to prank them we could’ve got Milo Yiannopoulos at Breitbart London to join us in nominating Requires Hate for a single category. He knows about RH and said he was writing a piece about her.

51. “no more important than who won the election for dogcatcher”
    Really? You demean dogcatchers. They serve a much more vital function than any opinions about books. Your world is narrow and I assume you’ve never been threatened by a feral dog.

52. Funny, I can’t remember the last time I saw Teresa leave her home turf to take on an opponent. She’s smart. She knows this game. You stay on your turf where you control the rules and you shape the body of participants. Build yourself an echo chamber. Prune off the debaters and the plaintiffs. Win via fiat. And accuse others of wrongdoing. I’m dumb, but I am not stupid. Once Teresa made it plain she was going to seek excuses — any excuses — to begin moderating me at Making Light, I knew there was no way I was going back. I don’t like being a punching bag for someone else’s amusement.

    Besides, as long as Teresa is foolish enough to dog-whistle to the TruFen in a public fashion, I can highlight and criticise her snobbishness and her calls for moral victory and moral outrage “Unite on the aft deck, all ye TruFen, and let us sing The Song Of Our People!” it’s easy to dismantle her argument down to the roots.

    And her argument is: I am special, you are not.

    That’s it. That’s the core of it. She is special, we are not. Teresa’s friends are special, everyone else is not.

    This is kindergarten. Teresa has a sand box called “Worldcon” and she’s jealously guarding the toy called “Hugo” from all the other kids who might wander by, and want to come in to play.

    Because we don’t get to be special. Only Teresa and her friends get to be special.

53. Pingback: Sad Puppies Update: The Melt Down Continues | Monster Hunter Nation

54. Reblogged this on Things I Discuss With My Cats.

55. @ Charlie Stross: Is this quote really accurate?

    attributed to Stross’ blog, written by Stross, cited by May, above:

    ““The comments on this blog entry are not intended for wild speculation about the identity and motivation of the (Boston Marathon) bombers; comments on those lines may be deleted, especially if I think they amount to hate speech directed against minorities.”

    Also attributed to Stross, one hour and five minutes later : “my money is on crazy white guys with a political axe to grind: the provisional wing of the Tea Party.”

56. Chris Gerrib:
    Re: SP’s at Loncon
    Well, I was there. Didn’t go looking for others, but I think a few of us were around.

    I don’t think judging the SP voting results on votes cast for a European WorldCon are all that instructive of their voting strength as a whole. Wait until after the results of this year’s con, then we’ll talk.

    Re: “6, 4, no 5%”
    I actually would be in favor or this. It sounds like reasonable accommodation to make, especially since I think some form of block voting will be here for sometime to come.

57. It is: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/04/psa-ignore-the-news.html#comments

    Just do a Find for “provisional” after you get to the page.

    I’m somewhat pleasantly surprised that CS allowed the comment to remain publicly viewable after finding out how wrong he was.

58. One thing that I find interesting is how some of the comments that I read from those people are them bragging about how they’ve been involved in fandom (by which they seem to mean going to cons, volunteering at cons, etc.) for “decades” … which is pretty much them admitting that they are old and that they don’t consider anyone in their twenties or thirties worthy of being fans and/or are scared that younger people are now trying to be accepted as being just as much fans as these older people who’ve devoted all these decades to supporting their little con.

    I also find her “everyone in this field dreams of winning a Hugo with all their heart” to be more than a little egotistical. I want to tell her to get over herself.

59. I’ve just been looking at some Sasquan membership statistics. Its noticeable that there is a big uptick in Supporting memberships since the turn of the year. I suspect many of those are SPs. If so, credit to you, Brad, for motivating and energising. I agree entirely that the Hugos need to be more inclusive and more representative.

    What troubles me, though, is where the supporting memberships are coming from. Though there isn’t a breakdown of membership type by country on the Sasquan site (unlike LonCon 3), there is an overall country breakdown and it is disturbing. There are 4563 memberships that come from “the Americas” (that’s over 88% of the total memberships). Of those… 4557 come from the US and Canada. It’s worrying to me that only SIX memberships exist from the rest of the entire New World (and one of those is from Bermuda).

    I know there are a lot of people who say that “$40 for a membership isn’t much”, and in some places that’s certainly the case. In others… even parts of the US… it’s anything but trivial. So here’s an idea that I’d like to see SP get behind. How about organising a scheme to sponsor memberships? Raise funds for supporting memberships for people from countries where $40 isn’t a trivial amount (side note: there have been times in my life when $40 was anything but trivial), and campaign for WorldCon to assist such a scheme by looking at reducing costs for supporting memberships based on economic need? I mean, wouldn’t it be great if, say, of a $40 supporting membership from the US, $10 of that was actually taken out to grant supporting membership to an SF fan in Chile or Nigeria or elsewhere?

    I really think that’s a great way to move SP4 forward next year.

60. It’s absolutely accurate. The first in the post and the second in comment #7.

    http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/04/psa-ignore-the-news.html

    And there’s this in comment #185: “But you do not use specific bad examples to paint an entire nation or people with a broad brush.”

    Pwahahahahahahah. I love intersectionalists.

61. They’re already claiming Larry is paying for everyone out of his pocket (which is not only stupid, but delicious as the only way he could afford to do that is if he outsells them by a lot, so thanks for admiting that, I guess)

62. How do you say “You brought this on yourselves” in a language SJWs understand?

63. I put this at Larry’s. I thought you might enjoy it as well.

    ‘I predict a backlash is about to wash over the Sad Puppies. And when it does, it’ll be interesting to see what happens next in our genre.” – Jason Sanford

    Oh, really? You mean SJWs can be even more racist and discriminatory towards straight white men? How will Sunil Patel at Lightspeed and Liz Bourke at Tor improve already not reviewing white men? Is Mary Robinette Kowal going to go after that last white guy she mentioned last year? “…only one award went to a white male and that wasn’t one of the ones voted on by the membership.” Well, better get to work; there’s still a white guy in your soup.

    Will K. Tempest Bradford up her year-long probation of reading straight white men to a 10 year sentence? Will WisCon expand their segregated room to a whole floor? Will N. K. Jemisin declare SFF fandom is even more “racist as fuck” than racist as fuck?

    Will Ann Leckie change her gender-zombie so it can’t see men at all? Will Kate Elliott and Kameron Hurley put even more gay characters in their cutting edge fiction?

    Mikki Kendall’s already at around 165,000 Tweets, much of it about insane white racists. Will she double her output for the cause?

    Backlash? What the hell’s the last 4 years been? Listen, there’s only so many hours in the day. There’s probably literally 10,000 anti-white, anti-male, anti-heterosexual Tweets in the last year alone from the 100 worst SJWs in SFF. How the hell are they going to improve on that? Go at it, fools. The more you’re blogging and on Twitter complaining about white men the less you’re writing your incredible sophomoric conformist dreck revenge fiction assassinating or running away from white men straight out of a Clarion Writer’s Workshop.

64. @ Dan Paddock. Thank you. @ James May and Dan: Goddam, there it is. Well, kudos to Charlie for his strength of conviction that he would leave it up.

    Charlie, if you are reading this, well, crap, I don’t know where to begin. I am not in a position to ask anything of you, but your comments on your own board are SERIOUSLY fucked up. I don’t know if it is self hate, or deliberate and selective blindness or just sloppiness. I suppose that it doesn’t matter. It is just seriously, seriously fucked up.

    Did you address your comments anywhere else once the reality of the bombing became known? I ask since understanding that you have this filter colors everything else I read from you, everywhere.

    Brad, sorry for going off topic.

65. I wouldn’t be so quick to chalk it up to strength of conviction nor dismiss it. I will say that has been long-ago quoted and he knows it’s been quoted. Deleting comments can be even more problematic than leaving them up. It’s a lose-lose really. Rarely, people leave them up and add “I don’t know what I was thinking about.” Sometimes they delete them but will admit the entry was edited “upon further reflection.”

    I have a better idea. Throw this feminist intersectional cult to the side of the road. Read the guest post at Stross’s blog by Hild author Nicola Griffith, a gay staunch intersectionalist. Her comments about white men are rancid. Were someone to make such comments about gays, or blacks they’d get booted from the SFWA in about 2 min. There is a horrendous double standard and one I have long since tired of.

    http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2014/07/who-owns-sf.html

    “The world is changing. It no longer belongs to angry white boys sitting around in their white-wall buzz cuts eating white bread and watching Leave It To Beaver. (I’m not sure it ever did, but they certainly thought so.)”

    Thank you, ma’am. May I have another? Anything about angry black boys sitting around in their afros eating chicken and watermelons and watching Sanford and Son? No? Never? Gee, I wonder why that is.

    Hmmm…. let me think. Where’s Occam’s Razor?

    It’s a thousand posts and Tweets like that which lie in back of Sad Puppies.

66. Don’t worry, ratseal. I won’t get huffy and disemvowel you. That’s for “real fans” like Teresa.

67. @Christopher M. Chupik

    I don’t know about Paul Weimar, but I did make one tweet about it. I wouldn’t call one tweet about Mr Beale and Gamergate “Frantically reminding.” though.

    And, besides, Mr. Beale acknowledged this connection as such at File 770. Not everyone reads every blog, after all.

68. Clamps, spare us. Just leave. You are an assholish little asshole that only does assholey things. Go to Making Light. I’m sure you’d fit in perfectly with your own kind.

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70. First, fuck off. Then fuck off again. Vox explained it. At his site and every other site you frequent with your dribble. Like most morons, you lack reading comprehension skills and whine when given facts and so distort your worldview to match what you want to see.

    That is why you are always mocked. You lack any grasp of reality. So, piss off you mewling, pathetic wretch.

71. Brad, sorry for engaging the troll and taking up your blog.

72. First explain this.

    I used it to successfully smoke out the true identity of someone who had been cyberstalking my blog for five years. The one pressure that cracked you, Andrew, was paying attention at your little friend.

    Would you like me to arrange to leave as many comments at your friends’ sites as you’re leaving at mine? You can hardly complain it isn’t fair. She does choose to be associated with a known cyberstalker.

73. Argonaut,

    Since I’m new here, I do not know if you are a regular or not. Just looking at the one comment, I suspect you are attempting to be an agent provocateur on the buying votes issue.

    Your argument regarding national breakdown of new members, or whatever, is weak and has a SJW flavor. The US and Canada are closer to this and the next worldcon than the rest of the new world. This would naturally have an impact on the viability of travel plans. Furthermore, Canada and the US have large populations with English as an official language. This would tend to correlate with people who are interested in English language science fiction.

    Since when is my being poor enough that I choose not pay for a vote this year a matter for anyone else to solve?

74. I know nothing about this “buying votes” issue, Bob, I am new here too. I understood that SP was in favor of trying to increase participation in the Hugos and I was looking at Sasquan membership figures from that perspective (remember, membership doesn’t imply attendance – that’s exactly what the Supporting Memberships promoted by Brad et al are all about). I think you’ll find SF – whether in English or translation – has a popularity outside English-speaking countries that is underrepresented. I’d like to see that change, and feel that economics may be part of the issue.

75. I am what you’d call a SJW, I’m willing to argue for diversity. I also admit that all I know about Sad Puppies comes from some of Brad’s posts on Facebook. However, I don’t see how Sad Puppies — except for perhaps some of James May’s comments (though I’m assuming most of that is sarcasm) — is in any way implying they are against that diversity. To me, it seems the way to open up diversity is to open up the ballot for the Hugos, which is exactly what it sounds like you’re arguing for.

    Now, the /publishers/ needs some swift kicks about diversity, as I’ve known authors who had their manuscripts rejected not because of being bad novels, but because a character was a well-educated black teen (rather than the poor gangbanger stereotype), or a side character just happened to be gay.

    However, the Hugos should be about the fans. Fans that already include black, gay, disabled, etc. Opening up the ballot to more people should be all that’s necessary to ensure diversity of opinion.

    Anyway, just wanted to clarify that not all ‘SJWs’ are against Sad Puppies. (Unless I’ve totally misinterpreted what you’re about.)

76. Wendy S. Delmater writes:

    My understanding the term SMOF is that these are the people who RUN conventions. They do the work behind the scenes. Just so you understand that an entire network of hard-working volunteer fans should not be lumped together with mud-slingers.

    I agree Brad. Fan-run SF cons are put on by armies of volunteers, SMOFs are the ones who make things go, and don’t deserve to be dragged into this.

77. Argonaut,

    I imagine that someone in a country that doesn’t speak English has to have some disposable income if they are reading books that came out last year in English. Okay, Nigeria speaks English. Does Boko Haram keep the public lending libraries stocked with fresh material? What does Nigeria have in the way of public lending libraries anyway?

    My understanding is that, say, Sci Fi light novels written in Japanese do not qualify for the Hugo.

78. Chris Gerrib writes:

    So what I’m proposing is “6, 4 and no 5%.” We expand the Hugo final list to six, get rid of the 5% requirement, but members can only nominate 4 works in each category.

    Though I am very much enjoying the shake-up being caused by the Sad Puppies campaign, this strikes me as a fairly reasonable adjustment. It does mean that voters would have to examine six works in the allotted time, per category.

    The 5% rule should go away anyway. There are so many short stories out there that the only way to form 5% in the first place is by promotion of some kind,

    I also suggest you amend your proposal to remove the 25% rule. If we broaden the voter pool with a greater percentage of supporting members, the gulf between people who care about best novel, and fan artist, and fancast, will probably increase.

79. whoops, I meant close the quote after the first paragraph.

80. Echoing Wendy and Khazlek. Please don’t conflate the noisy public whiners with the many volunteers who work hard to put on the convention.

81. I’ve known a goodly number of dedicated con-runners in my local neck of the woods, and not a one of them has ever identified with SMOF, nor have they embraced the concept behind SMOF. Having been professionally involved in the field since 2009 the acronym SMOF (to my ears, coming out of others’ mouths) has typically been used tongue-in-cheek to refer to fans who deliberately set up fiefdoms for themselves, among other fans. In other words, these are the “über” fans who are more-fan-than-thou.

    If people are using SMOF in the non-pejorative sense, it’s honestly news to me. But then, I wasn’t hanging out with Worldcon people as a teenager, nor as a young adult.

    If SMOF is taken (as a positive word) what shall we call the “über” people who think they are more-fan-than-thou?

    I am open to suggestions.

82. Bob – No, the Hugo awards are indeed for works in English, not Japanese (though I for one would be interested see a “best translated work” category added). There are Japanese members of Sasquan (and Chinese, and more). People all over the world speak or read English – if it isn’t the first language for a country, it’s often the most useful second language. Again, I fail to see why, given the aim is to be inclusive and expand the validity of the Hugo awards, there wouldn’t be some interest in seeing how such people could be better represented.

    (I’m trying to work out what Boko Haram have to do with this. Why did you bring them into this conversation? Vile people, doing vile things. Not really germane to a discussion on SF readership and Hugo voting eligibility, I would have thought? Nigeria, by the way, has an extensive public library system; literacy rate is around 60% overall, which means about 100,000,000 people who can read.)

83. Well, something like All You Need is Kill, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, or A Certain Magical Index appears to be eligible in both the year of original publication and the year of translation…

84. “Funny, I can’t remember the last time I saw Teresa leave her home turf to take on an opponent.”

    She’s been verbally abusing people online for about 20 years (that I know of), and yes, she retreated from the public forums to her private Stalinist sewing circle just as soon as it became technologically feasible to do so.

85. Apologies for getting your name wrong, Paul.

    But in the interest of fairness, would it be okay to remind people of Requires Hate and her connections to various people on your side of the political divide? Tor.com was still publishing her work, last I checked.

86. Brad – I think you are right that there is a distinct difference between SMOFs and most of the people involved in con-running (though it’s a continuum). In my limited experience, I have mostly seen SMOF used as a self-defined term, with humorous or self-deprecating intent (i.e. they certainly don’t see themselves as secret), for people whose hobby is as much managing and running cons as it is SF itself. There is such a thing as SMOFCon, for example; a convention specifically designed for people who are interested in learning how to run conventions.

    I would note that, just as by no means all people involved with conventions would self-identify (or be identified by others familiar with the term) as SMOFs, I doubt very many SJWs would identify as SMOFs or vice versa. I’ve certainly never heard TNH referred to as a SMOF before. SMOFs are all about fandom – many dating back to the pre-internet days of fanzines – whereas TNH is most definitely about the business side of matters, not fandom per se.

87. Argonaut, he is calling you out for being an SJW. If I am comprehending correctly (Bob, feel free to correct, I do not mean to put words in your mouth), he is saying that the rest of the world can take care of themselves. If they feel strongly enough about voting on an award in a foreign language, they can pony up and pay the fee. If they can’t afford it, too bad, that’s the price for admission.

    Being inclusive of others is a noble idea, but not realistic and not practical. No one is trying to exclude anyone, but if someone feels strongly enough about voting, they will find a way.

88. Nathan – I was not aware of that; my understand was “first publication in English” was the date criterion. Thanks for the information. Adds to my case, I feel; a “best translated work” might both give higher profile to translated SF as well as removing such loopholes.

89. Yes, SMOF is typically used tongue-in-cheek, at least as a noun. It isn’t the sort of word one associates with oneself, if it weren’t tongue-in-cheek. I think smofing is used more positively as a verb. smofcon is a thing for con runners. I’d say it’s a term, generally used tongue-in-cheek, but not pejoratively, by others to describe con runners.

    I’m not sure that I have a single word to describe who you mean in a serious way. Trufan/trufen is probably closer to the mark, but it’s generally used in an ironic context.

90. If SMOF is taken (as a positive word) what shall we call the “über” people who think they are more-fan-than-thou?

    Roadkill.

    Anyhow, I know both Larry and I have publicly expressed our appreciation for the strict professionalism and neutrality exhibited by the Worldcon people running both Loncon and Sasquan. Right down to keeping a straight face and neutral tone when reading less-than-entirely-popular names.

    They’ve been so relentlessly neutral that I have no idea what they actually think one way or another. They should be highly commended for this by everyone, on every side.

91. I would clarify, B.J. I doubt you qualify for what is typically meant by SJW.

    The problem isn’t the push for equality and diversity, (their stated goal, though often it really means power) but their tactics. Social Justice Advocates are generally nice people who care about others and the world.
    SJW’s are radical leftist authoritarian Killjoys. Quite different.

92. It’s fascinating watching the battlespace prep on the other side, preemptive attacks etc. They must be really spooked.

93. Khazlek & DeTroyes – To get on the floor at Spokane, I need to list at least one other supporting member as seconding the proposal. If you’re interested, email me at cgerrib at comcast dot net.

94. bassmanco,

    I am saying that someone who cannot afford a $40 membership likely has a difficult time reading any qualifying works unless they live in a first world English speaking country.

    Argonaut,

    I am currently attempting to read Anderson’s Dark Between The Stars. I borrowed it from the library, for free. I’ve yet to read Drake’s third Book of the Elements because my library doesn’t have it. I didn’t manage to read Hodgell’s Sea of Time from last year.

    The activity of an organization like Boko Haram in a country affects my assessment of what that country’s libraries are likely to have in stock when. What languages are spoken in a country affects my guesses about what languages are most stocked in their libraries.

    The people in such countries who have read enough qualifying works before the voting period to have an opinion likely have spent more than forty dollars to do so. They may have more disposable income than I do.

95. FYI: Using “SMOF” without providing the definition is poor form. NEVER use acronyms in a long form piece (i.e., Tweets live by different rules) without providing the meaning at least once, preferably upon first usage. The only exceptions are for acronyms that are so widely known through common usage. Examples would be FBI, CIA, UK, etc. Even that second one, “CIA”, may require definition, especially if one is discussing gourmet wetwork. (There’s a spooky story cooking there, y’all can run with it….)

    It is cruelly ironic that such acronymistic jargon is parading about in this particular context. It is the sort of “inside speak” that is exclusionary. I am exactly the sort of long time SFF reader/fan who is not of the TruFan Fen, yet find this entire Sad Puppies vs SJW Mutants debacle worth following.

96. A contribution to the history of “SMoF.” Originally it was a perjorative. (Not unlike the way it’s being used in this post today!) It satirically referred to a small number of people who really had the clout to make things happen in sf fan conrunning circles.

    After a few years some of the intended targets embraced the term (people often like to be viewed as bad boys or outlaws). Two of them, Charles N. Brown (of Locus) and Bruce Pelz, amused themselves at the 1971 Worldcon by selling SMoF numbers to other fans for a buck, which certified the buyer as a fellow secret master. They sold around 80.

    Pelz used to have a personalized license plate “SMOF 2″, from which you can deduce who everyone thought was SMoF #1.

    SMoF evolved into a kind of high-camp word. In the early 1990s an e-mail listserv for conrunners named itself the SMoF List — and it eventually grew to have hundreds of subscribers.

97. Admin note: after much cogent discussion on Facebook, and in the comments, there seems to be substantial logical evidence for changing the acronym SMOF to something else; since some people use the acronym in the positive sense, versus the negative sense. And this piece is not aimed at people who simply work hard to make conventions happen. I know many people who throw a lot of work into local cons here in Utah, and though they’ve never used SMOF (that I am aware of) I don’t want to paint with a brush that’s broader than necessary. So, I would like to birth a brand new acronym into the lexicon of the field. CHORF: Cliquish Holier-than-thou Obnoxious Reactionary Fanatic. Yes, I think that fits the bill nicely. As opposed to the SMOF, who may simply be toiling with diligence, a CHORF is somebody who’s all about fan politics, being a decider of who is and is not a fan, who gets to dominate the fan cliques, who is and is not a taste-maker, and so forth.

98. CHORF is satisfying similar to C.H.U.D., it has that going for it.

99. How about the Moronic Brotherhood?

100. There might be reasons that have not yet occurred to you why Brad would not find that as satisfying as you do.

101. Pingback: Afternoon coffee 2015-03-30 – Defending the nail house against Sad Puppies | Mangy Dog

102. I tried reading through the comments over at TNH’s site but rather disgusted with the SJWs and their mentality of mock everything we don’t agree with, even if it is true. I deal with enough delusional people at work, I don’t need to seek them out during my time off.

103. Listen to how hot and heavy the bullshit gets at the Moronic Brotherhood #851:

     “And as for voting — I’m with Abi. The people on the slate have chosen to ally themselves with people who consider me less than human, who are trying to drive me and people I admire out of public spaces, who have publicly declared that women and minorities should be stripped of rights. I will vote No Award above anyone who has not removed themselves from the ballot.”

     Yet more of this dial tone that I hate gays, they are less than human and based on what evidence other than the whining paranoia in their own head? Exactly who considers who less than human? Out of hundreds of comments by Sad Puppies advocates, they can’t come even close to matching what I can find from the Justice League of Race and Gender when it comes to the mass defamation of men, whites and heterosexuals as morally and spiritually inferior and in an historic timeframe stretching across centuries, so stuff yourself.

     Be with Abi, the arrogant moderator and dope who pie-charts literature on the same presumption no less than 100 million white men have it in for her precious fucking darlings who can’t catch a break in life yet have oodles of time to Tweet bullshit on multi-hundred dollar iPhones and laptops, not to mention expensive college educations beyond the means of most people. That’s not including the loose change they have to consume hundreds of dollars worth of music, books and movies as well has having the internet and cable systems. You’d think they’re all nibbling gov’t cheese and talking to us on tin cans stretched across a roof.

     Another nuthatch is #821, who straight up makes up lies out of her head about “those participating in gaming the system in order exclude participants they believe to be inferior (i.e. female, liberal, gay, etc.)”

     What nonsense these idiots spout. The only people I want to marginalize is those who rattle off hate speech as a second language. Their race, sex and sexual orientation doesn’t enter into it. However I would say neither #821 or #851 could pass the Paul Atriedes test or understand the Magna Carta without a seeing eye dog.

     Revowel this: G fck yrslf.

104. Wow. They seriously think that?

     That is a graduate level class on paranoia, right there.

     I can’t even imagine what rights they’re talking about. The right to vote on genre awards? What?

     Then again, this is the same general group that wants to ban clapping…

105. It’s a tired refrain. 100 million white men are hell bent on returning to the days of Ozzie and Harriet and Jim Crow. Gays go back into the closet. White men want to see all suffer except for their men’s club where they sit in smoking jackets chomping on cigars and borrowing money from each other for prostitutes. Only a sociopath lights up that many people at one time. I often think of them as Hitler without an army. Just sitting alone in his room writing blog posts and Tweets about Jews.

106. I read the comments through this morning, I believe.

     I wonder what they’ll think next year when Kate hosts it. After all, SP’s are only interested in promoting white males, right?

107. Nitpick to Chris Gerrib:

     Isaac Asimov won FOUR hugos.

     Outstanding Contributions to the Field (Special One-Off that he presented to HIMSELF)

     Best Series (Special One-Off that you mentioned)

     Best Novel – The Gods Themselves

     Best Novella – The Bicentennial Man

108. I would agree with Jared Anjewierden’s response to B.J. Baye; and add this:
        When we say “SJW” we do not mean “one who cares about fairness to all regardless of {insert group membership here}.” Despite the libels aimed at us we welcome the presence of women, ethnic minorities, people from disadvantaged backgrounds, etc., etc., in our lives and our genre.
        (Of course, their stories ought to be within the genre to be recognized; you will find a fair amount of complaining about an award-winning story from last year’s season not because of its author’s identity or sex but because it was in no way SF/F.)
        No: the self-styled (originally; now we use the term in recognition of its three lies in three words) “Social Justice Warriors” are the censorious scolds searching for Sin—by lamp-light at mid-day, it seems, and inventing it if they find nothing; painting defense or disagreement of any sort as evidence of evil intent (a tactic named the “kafkatrap” for obvious reasons); and for whom the destruction of dissent justifies means fair & foul alike (look up SJW par excellence “RequiresHate” if you’ve the stomach for it).
        Mr. Baye, you might disagree vehemently with the political opinions of everyone behind the Sad Puppies campaign (though with their diversity of opinions it’s likely you’ll find something to agree with here & there); you might find every one of their works and everything they proposed for nomination to be unreadably bad (with the same disclaimer & for the same reason)—but you gave us a fair hearing, listening to what Brad, Larry, et al. said rather than what was misreported about them. I’ve known SJWs, Mr. Baye, and you’re no SJW.

109. This comment from Making Light had my jaw on the floor:

     “Tired_of_Modern_Geekdom ::: (view all by) ::: March 31, 2015, 09:20 PM:

     It’s time to say it.

     Sci-Fi, along with every other geek past-time these days, has been hopelessly politicized by culture warriors. Typically reactionary culture warriors who raise a stink at the slightest percieved offense.

     And they are ALL AMERICAN.

     This is an American issue. It’s like a drinking problem. And none of you are able to keep it out of Science Fiction or the Hugos. You are throwing up all over the floor and the rest of us are getting splattered every time we go near you.

     The solution is simple: If you’re American — Don’t vote. And don’t come. You can’t do it impartially, you won’t, and you will only raise a howling fit no matter what way the awards go.

     Just stay at home this years. Get off the internet for a few months. And leave the rest of us alone.”

110. Wow. We’re officially reached this point.

     It’s like a masterpiece of insanity. I’m not sure how many more wrong things could be crammed in there and have it still be understandable English.

     The projection and self-loathing (for some just for being a geek, I’m sure a lot of the Americans reading that board will agree wholeheartedly before going out and voting themselves, because hypocrisy is in this year) alone is reaching critical mass.

     It’s not even hard to completely blow that argument out of the water though, without even moving beyond the Hugos. Ross, anyone? A World Con in London managed to make Neil Gaiman embarrassed to be associated with them.

     [link deleted, Jared! – BRT]

111. Bother. Wrong link. Since I cannot seem edit it, perhaps the link could be deleted, of kind host?

     This should be the right link.

112. That particular twit seems to be unaware of the fact that Americans, being the largest portion of the Anglophone First World, make up the majority of fandom.
     The vast majority of fandom.
     Also, I’m pretty sure we weren’t the ones who politicized this thing.

113. I’ve got a con badge with a ribbon that identifies me as a SMOFette local#… I can never remember what SMOF stands for. 🙂

     Also, what Joel said about Social Justice Warriors. There’s a big difference between people who believe in maximum fairness and inclusion, equality and encouragement… and a SJW. “Searching for Sin” is exactly the right phrase. We could also add “Professional Fabulist” to the description because of how often they simply make stuff up, slander people, and more or less *create* the need for their Life Cause in order to have meaning.

     Because lets be honest here… is there someone, somewhere, (and I am NOT excluding VD), who is even slightly interested in excluding ANYONE from the field? Okay let me restate that…is there anyone on the Sad Puppies, anti-SJW side… because frankly there seems to be a lot of people wanting to exclude the wrong sorts from the field… it’s just no one I hang around with doing it. And I’m not excluding VD. I wouldn’t expect him to *hold my hand call me darling and mentor my career*… but I’ve seen zero reason to expect he’d try to sabotage it. The worst would be… he wouldn’t care.

     Someone not *caring* is not out to get me, exclude me, or discourage me… and that’s the worst that SP can come up with? But what is the worst that the “Good Guys” throw out there? Threats to destroy someone’s career? Requires Hate had good little girls and boys who followed all the rules quivering in fear that they’d get attacked for making the wrong sort of statement or making an error or even just coming to the attention of PEOPLE ON THEIR OWN SIDE.

     Because that’s how SJW acquire power when they Search for Sin.

     What am I afraid of on the Dark Side? Not much.

114. “See, what I keep noticing is that the Sad Puppies top out at around 200 votes. That’s enough to get on the ballot, but not nearly enough to win. If several other groups start campaigning, y’all might end up worse off.”

     How?

     So “those other people” start bringing in the hoi polloi… TOO. This is bad, how? This is Sad Puppies worse off, how? It’s still displacing a moribund legacy clique with fans who are excited about fun stories.

     This is what we call… winning.

115. Empress Teresa disemvowelled the person I quoted above, but I think my point still stands.

116. I enjoyed the comment, Christopher. I might not have agreed with all of it, but I enjoyed all of it. 🙂

117. My argument has a pretty severe weakness. Yeah, a cartel of publishers effectively has made the cost of buying examples of qualifying works for the novel category pretty high, relative to $40. Yes, even if $40 is big money, one had better live in a society where it isn’t if the libraries are to supply one with enough new hardcovers to get much out of comparing them.

     There are other categories, which maybe are cheaper to get a sampling of. I don’t know how expensive internet is in the third world compared to cost of living.

     Furthermore, if the nominations are potentially worthwhile, buying a voting membership may be an expensive way to get the works at a discounted price.

     Perhaps as Brad says, the Hugo needs to be opened up. Perhaps this might include qualifying markets in languages other than English. If so, more people overseas might be interested in voting, and current costs of membership might be higher than desired. Well, we don’t know what the future holds, and we can only match current prices with current standards for qualification.

     I still contend that the cost of reading enough to care is probably high enough that focusing on the $40 as the limiting factor is silly. Furthermore, the failure to study Sad Puppies enough to assess whether the proposal matches methods and goals seems careless at best.

118. @Julie and your 8:12pm – well said, and thank you.

119. “I’ve wanted a Hugo since I was in middle school, but I dreamed of being given one by SF community, not Larry Correia.”
     When did they change the rules? I’d like to have Larry give me a Hugo. Is there a form I fill out or what?

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121. It was Djbril al-Ayad (an alias) in the U.K. and Fabio Fernandes in Brazil who co-edited that racial stink fest anthology We See a Different Frontier. The twin idiots Rose Lemberg and Ekaterina Sedia who never shut up about white male heterosexuals are from Russia, living in the U.S. Silvia (“can someone think about the white people”) Moreno-Garcia is in Canada via Mexico. Requires Hate is from Bangkok living in the U.K. Alex (Daffy binary girl) MacFarlane is U.K. Foz (“old white men”) Meadows is from Australia living in the U.K. Nalo Hopkinson is from the Caribbean basin. Farah Mendelsohn started the Jonathan Ross affair and was seconded by Charles Stross are both U.K. The violently anti-white Rochita Loenen-Ruiz at Strange Horizons is in the Netherlands arrived from the Philippines. The ultra-PC Lavie Tidhar is from Israel. The supremacist dolt Aliette de Bodard is French. The amazingly PC feminist idiot Justine Larbalestier is Australian. Tobias (one-drop kid) Buckell is from Grenada originally. The racist Jaymee Goh is a Malaysian citizen. The man-hating Liz Bourke is in and from Ireland. Hal Duncan is a Scot. Tor itself is U.K. The newly Nebula-nominated and anti-white Alyssa Wong is from Vietnam. Intersectional idiots Joyce Chng and J.Y. Yang are both in Singapore. The diversity-obsessed trans Cheryl Morgan is U.K. The two dipshitz who run the hyper-anti-male Book Smugglers are Brazilian and English living in the U.K. The deliciously stupid Amal el-Mohtar is Canadian living in the U.K. Frau Nazi Cora Buhlert is in Germany. Anti-white idiot Charles Tan is in the Philippines. The whining feminist fuck author of Hild Nicola Griffith is from the U.K.

     Ditch that crew of retards and you ditch about a million words of anti-white, anti-male, anti-heterosexual, and anti-Western bitching.

     The thing from Miskatonic TNH is still blubbering straw men: “They think they used to own the SF world (they never did), are entitled to own it again (NFW), and are owed all sorts of good things”

     Not at all. I just don’t like KKK and I do like a strike zone when I play softball. I’m not having this power-privilege “punching up” bullshit fixing the game so I always get strikes.

     Get a time-share in R’lyeh and croak your Cthulhu fcking kkk bllsht thr. Dn’t frgt t et thsnd gts.

122. Oh, and I forgot the mentally disheveled U.K. citizen dodging around India Damien Walter, the scare-quoting knothead who never saw a piece of stupid pie he didn’t gulp down with both buttocks.

123. I’m not a writer or an editor. The closest I’ve been to the book business were the eight years I worked at a Barnes & Noble. Really, I’m just your average, middle-aged Reader and my shelves are equal parts “good” stuff and lowbrow trash (there must be balance amirite?). Hell, right now my pile includes Nicholas Baker’s “The Anthologist,” Cruz’s “Gorky Park,” Nibley’s “The World and the Prophets,” Rothfuss’s “Wise Man’s Fear,” and Jack Vance is vying with Peter Shickele and Glen Cook for what’s left of my reading time, and there ain’t a whole hell of a lot of that. Peter Hathaway Capstick will have to wait until July, I think. We just got rid of winter and I don’t want to read about people being eaten by lions this early in the year.

     Point is, I like reading, and I’m a generous reader. I’ll give anything a chance as long as it doesn’t start preaching at me. I got enough of that at school (native Southern Californian until I finally moved out of state a couple of months ago).

     And all I know is, right now, there are few things that will turn me off from wanting to check out a book more quickly and more completely than knowing that it won a recent award, any award, but that most certainly includes the Hugo and the Nebula.

     So instead of spending time with new authors in what was my first favorite genre, I keep looking more and more to the past to satisfy my scifi/fantasy jones, because – by and large – to read the currently “important” speculative stuff is to read something that will sooner rather than later overload my bullshit filter, that handy thing that keeps an author’s obvious political bias out of the way of other elements in the story I do like.

     But when a book is all bias – when bias IS the point and the plot – well, I’ve been burned by too many of those things to want to gamble any more money on what’s currently hip.

124. I’ve got a question.

     Hi, I’m new here.

     As preamble, I think, though I can’t be sure now, that the only year I voted in the Hugos was 1993. I hang out in various pockets of fandom (or, in more modern parlance, I hang out in some fandoms), but I’m not deeply into SF book-focused cons anymore, because I can spend my disposable income in different areas. Like, say, books. (I may or may not vote this year, but I’m certainly glad more folks are being made aware of the options for Hugo voting.)

     The cultural mainstreaming of computer gaming, comics, anime, SF shows, and YA fiction have really quite delighted me, even while traditional SF being in a mild form of eclipse has also baffled me. (Though I mean, MilSF and Urban Fantasy are hale and hearty, so it’s not that speculative fiction as a whole is dying.)

     So now, this whole Hugo kerfluffle has me confused. I was wandering around here, and on Making Light, and my confusion has not, really, been alleviated.

     Apparently, to The WSFS As An Institution, the point is to crowdsource the nominations, and to vote independently and without influence from your fellow fan. Also apparently, the crowdsourcing thing is really important. Kevin Standlee goes on about it here.

     Personally, I think this (not actually) Platonic ideal is impossible to attain, and that you’re influenced by conversations you have all the time, and blog posts of Hugo Eligibility, and so on and so forth. (Apparently, though, to award purists, the eligibility posts are to be avoided, too, which was a surprise to hear.) But I get that it’s a thing, and something they apparently feel strongly about.

     So my question for y’all is, since one of the stated objection to the SP 1 and 2 slates was that they /were/ slates, why keep up with outlining specific slates? Why /not/ do something like what the Bay Area SF folks do, and accumulate a bunch of suggestions from a whole lot of people, but not have a specific slate?

125. Hi Brad,

     As someone who would like to be a first time voter, if it’s alright with you I’d like to ask some questions.
     1) If I buy a supporting membership between the time the official nominations are announced and when the votes close, am I able to vote for the nominated works?

     (The reason why I am waiting for the official nominations announcement is I want to see if any of the works I *have* read and enjoyed will be on the slate.)

     2) When is the closing date for the voting? I’d like to know how much time we’d have to try read some of the other offers (I’m assuming that buying the voting membership nets me the voting packet.)

126. Erm, sorry, I sneezed. Thank you in advance for any answers and thanks for continuing other SFF fans know they can vote for the Hugos. I personally did not know that fans could nominate and/or vote for the Hugos. The last time I’d heard of it before Sad Puppies was Girl Genius getting the Hugo, and Neil Gaiman.

127. Quite a lot has changed since a parade of intersectional gender feminists and their shaggy priests of Opar blistered Mike Resnick and Barry Malzberg over precisely nothing on almost 80 blogs posts that defamed their race, sex and age as being the main contributing factors to their cluelessness about how to properly think of the world.

     In essence, it would’ve been the same had the SFF community written 80 blog posts about the inferiority of black, gay, lesbians and used those 3 words as perjoratives meant to make the problem self-explanatory. In other words – in principle – it was the same swarming one might see from within a white supremacist community of neo-Nazis. The race and sex of those two men was in and of itself the problem, and of course, there’s the demonization theory meant to be the Mark of Cain called “privilege.”

     That’s where the entire attitude behind the President of the SFWA Steven Gould writing “Hard as it to believe, somewhere right now, a white, straight male is explaining to a woman or POC what they =really= meant” comes from. That’s how blogger Natalie Luhrs can write “he’s older and white, do i even need to mention that?” That’s how Rose Fox can write “I’d say most white men should come with TWs (trigger warnings) for unthinking privileged arrogance, but that’s like saying books need TWs for ‘contains words’.” That’s how TNH can write she “Didn’t need the user icon to know you’re white and male.” If you ever in a thousand years think those people would write that about women or PoC then perhaps you can imagine the KKK holding rallies for the NAACP.

     The truth is Malzberg and Resnick never knew what hit them, but as you can see from those quotes, what hit them was the blind spot Orwell warned about in 1984. He called it doublethink; the ability to hold two mutually exclusive ideas in one’s mind at the same time. That’s where our Orwellian racist anti-racists come from. In our specific community, the blind spot came about because girls in pig-tails came bearing gifts of social justice wrapped in talk about allergies to scented products and wheel-chair access, marginalization, diversity and the underrepresented. All noble goals wrapped in noble language. Unfortunately that language turned out to be bald-faced hate speech.

     That doublethink is where #SegregationIsDiversity comes from. That’s how SJWs can write perfectly Orwellian sentences that contradict themselves before they reach the period, like Nebula nominee Kate Elliott writing in the name of anti-racism “‘lazy’ is such a code word for white people to use to denigrate & dismiss.” That’s how segregated rooms and anthologies are “inclusive.” Elliott may as well have written “Polacks are such racists.”

     That’s how Kate Elliott last year smugly and happily read Kameron Hurley’s foppish acceptance speech about how many of her “colleagues, grind to dust my most fervent hopes and desires for a future that includes me and others like me,” and add “Creators don’t like being called on their BS.”

     At no point is it not obvious Hurley is talking about ethnic European heterosexual men nor that Elliott was proud to be the delivery system. In intersectional gender feminism straight white men as an entire group are morally, spiritually and intellectually inferior. Elsewhere Hurley claims these are the very people who “want to drag me behind a truck because I’m a woman/not arrow straight.” It sure as hell wouldn’t be PoC women, would it? They are permanently encased in morality due to post colonialism and patriarchy, like the Fremen under the Harkonnens.

     That’s precisely why you’ll never hear “old black women” used by SJWs as a self-explanatory term for moral retardation like they do “old white men.” Along with Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice which represented gender abolition, Hurley represented the smelly morass of racial and sexual bigotry and supremacy that has dogged SFF for a few years now. There were the two stars of last year’s Hugos – the amazing coincidence of intersectional gender feminism. Humorless bullshitters doesn’t begin to describe this cult of lady-worship.

     But the swarming’s over. We now know exactly what hit Malzberg and Resnick and we’re calling them out for the crew of dirty ass little shits and intolerant bigoted supremacists they are. We’re not going to be fooled by the word “feminist” again.

     “we don’t want equality within these oppressive systems.” – self-decribed “intersectional” feminist Anita Sarkeesian.

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129. Shadowdancer to answer your questions:
     Yes, you can still vote if you get a Sasquan membership after April 4. The exact dates for coting have not been announced, but voting will close around the end of July.

130. Wow.

     I’m seeing it claimed elsewhere (Jason Sanfords blog, most specifically) that SP has swept all the short fiction categories and placed 4 of 5 in the novel category. If so, that is a staggering achievement.

     Also being claimed is that Worldcon is pissed, and that rules changes are being considered to keep something like this from happening in the future. The rules changes I’d expect, since it seems SP has shown slates can be effective and we’re now likely to see more (frankly, I’m surprised we didn’t see more of them this year from the Scalzi/TNH crowd). But none of these efforts can change this years ballot, nor probably the voting rules for next year.

     Batten down the hatches, because the backlash from the Entitled Crowd is coming. And it’s going to be incendiary.

131. kate,

     Per:

     http://madgeniusclub.com/2015/02/09/shooting-the-messenger/

     Standlee apparently is not involved in the Hugo, as he is instead ‘perpetual head of the WSFS Business Meeting’.

     Given that he additionally is also an interested party in the fuss, I would ask if you have any other citations supporting what you assert?

132. 4 out of 5, huh? Well, I guess Novel #5 will be the default winner. The other side would sooner die than vote a Puppy in, even if Skin Game makes it.

133. If the 4 of 5 is true, then I’m guessing Three Body Problem is the non-SP, since my gut feeling is that is the title the Chorfuhlu crowd were grooming for Best Novel.

     But even if all the SP’s made it onto the other categories, there would still have to be many non-SP finalists in the short fiction categories because not every category had 5 SP suggestions.

134. I’m gonna go out on a limb here and suggest Skin Game is a finalist and will be the favorite to win Best Novel.

135. People were thinking that of the Wheel of Time, yet the rather tepid Ancillary Justice won last year.

136. And what is stopping the anti-SP crowd from promoting their own preferred slate, should they wish?

137. Nothing. And I suspect they have before, many times.

138. “4 out of 5, huh? Well, I guess Novel #5 will be the default winner. The other side would sooner die than vote a Puppy in, even if Skin Game makes it.”

     I think you over-estimate the size of Baroness Harkonnen’s network. The number of like-minded people who worked the more seemly method of coming up with consensus choices in private and distributing them “organically”, instead of the gauche use of a slate. They were able to game the nomination system with a much smaller number of voters than the sad puppies had this year. I’m guessing the actual numbers of influenced votes is around what sad puppies 2 had. Their side would rather die, but their side is a small fraction of the total Hugo votes, even pre-puppies. I don’t think they can manage enough slander against Butcher to tip the balance of voting fans. No way whatever socially meaningful effort they got on the ballot has as many fans as Harry Dresden.

139. Hope you’re right. I’m hoping Butcher gets in and wins.

140. I am quite sure the reaction (after Saturday) will be to organize two things. One, a strong push to effect WSFS constitution and rules changes so that it’s harder for something like SP3 to occur in the future. The most obvious way to do it would be to make it so that only people physically present at the Worldcon can nominate or vote. This would dramatically shorten the nomination and voting window (5 days only!) and it would give the trophy folks hell, for having to slap name placards on all those trophies at the last minute, arrange the slideshow at the last minute, etc. But it would effectively allow the CHORFs to control the voting body much more effectively — unless, of course, we rally the Baen fans, gamer fans, and others, to stage mini-Gencons and mini-Dragoncons inside Worldcon. A few hundred “outside” fans raiding the Worldcon hotel every year, could foil the CHORFs.

     Two, the CHORFs (some of them, at least) will come out of their closets and begin to openly show their slates. Don’t think these slates did not exist before now. The lists have been in existence for decades; just behind closed doors. See, that’s the thing. All of this is old hat. SP3 is nothing radically new. We are “new” in that we are doing this with transparency, in full view of the public eye. The CHORFs have been doing it behind closed doors for a long time. I didn’t know that until I began publishing and began hearing and seeing the whisper campaigns, and the different ego cliques competing with each other; even in CHORFdom. So, they will open the windows and do it openly, to try to combat SP4, SP5, etc.

     I think their key problem is that those ego-cliques won’t go away. The CHORFs tend to devour their own. Lots of personality conflicts, even among people nominally to the other “side” of this thing. Maybe their rage at SP3 unites them long enough to stage a coherent “Fuck you, oustiders!” counter slate campaign. For one season. But then, this would put the lie to the noble idea that the Hugos should be about individuals making personal choice, based on individual merit. Which is a noble sentiment, frankly. It’s just that events of late have convinced me that this sentiment is ignored, even by many who profess it.

141. Bob: Shrug. He’s involved in WSFS, sure. So are you. (Mostly to critique it, but that’s a form of involvement.) So are a lot of people. And?

     I pay a lot of attention to local government (this is not irrelevant, I promise), and there are some people who are just process geeks, who want to make sure a meeting runs right, or a Town Meeting article is written right even if they don’t agree with it. They’re sometimes annoying, but they tend to be pretty useful, too. That’s Kevin Standlee, only with him it’s the WSFS.

     I was going to say Brad hadn’t answered my question, but I guess he did. That is, correct me if I’m wrong Brad, but you figure there’ve been slates going on for decades, they just did them in private. So the SP public slating is just making the whole thing more transparent?

142. The most obvious way to do it would be to make it so that only people physically present at the Worldcon can nominate or vote.

     That isn’t practical. 5 days to take nominations, count nominations, determine elgibility, contact the nominees and get them to accept, and then have a round of voting?

     If one were going to take that approach, one could just require attending memberships instead of supporting memberships. You could still vote absentee if you were willing to pay for an attending membership.

     The approach that Chris Gerrib is suggesting is to have more names on the final ballot than there are blanks on the nominating ballot. Then it might take two popular slates to tie up all of the slots.

     Actually Brad, while having a whole set of nominees for many categories may have been an effort to broaden the scope of the award, the resulting criticism that you are trying to control entire categories doesn’t strike me as crazy. Perhaps either suggesting fewer titles per category or suggesting more, per the NESFA website would be a better idea for next year.

143. DeTroyes writes:

     If the 4 of 5 is true, then I’m guessing Three Body Problem is the non-SP, since my gut feeling is that is the title the Chorfuhlu crowd were grooming for Best Novel.

     I’m fine with that. I nominated Three Body Problem as well as Skin Game.

     If you want to look at Three Body Problem as message fiction, the message is that the Cultural Revolution and the Red Guard did great evil. It would be amusing if SJW CHORFs rallied around that book, considering how much of that crowd model themselves after the Red Guard.

144. I didn’t know that until I began publishing and began hearing and seeing the whisper campaigns, and the different ego cliques competing with each other; even in CHORFdom In reviewing my blog, I found that I voted in the Hugos since 2008 – nomination and final rounds. I didn’t attend Worldcon until 2011. I personally know Lynne Thomas – met her in 2005 at a (local to me) Chicago con. I personally have known Mary Robinette Kowal since 2008. Both those individuals knew I was a Hugo voter when their stuff was in contention. Neither they nor their friends said anything to me or any other Hugo voter of my acquaintance asking or encouraging me to vote for them. In fact, I didn’t know Lynne had an eligible work until it hit the final ballot. So, Brad, you’re sadly misinformed about these “whisper campaigns.” (Since it’s your blog, I’ll refrain from using stronger words.)

     So, they will open the windows and do it openly and why not? Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander too.

     It’s just that events of late have convinced me that this sentiment is ignored, and your running around calling people liars and cheats has nothing to do with it?

     Khazlek- per Kevin Standlee, I still need a second from a supporting member to put my proposal on the agenda. If you’re interested, cgerrib at aol dot com

145. Khazlek – “Three Body Problem” is on the Nebula ballot, which is completely controlled by SFWA members, the very definition of “insiders.”

146. You do realize that saying you never saw something, therefore he is lying it is about as useful as me saying that everyone who says the Isle of Man exists is lying because I’ve never seen it?

147. Yeah, Chris Gerrib, because two people who were eligible for a Hugo didn’t say anything to you about a whisper campaign, it is obviously all lies. Seriously, reread what you wrote. Do you even believe your own bullshit?

     Have you been involved in anything behind-the-scenes an actual published author (like our host) would be privy to? Don’t paint yourself as an expert if you have no idea what you are talking about.

148. It is difficult to disprove a negative. I can’t prove that people aren’t being abducted by aliens. I can show that it is unlikely they are being abducted by aliens, partially by producing alternative explanations for what happened and partially by refuting specific cases. (Joe couldn’t have been abducted by an alien – he was playing cards with me that night.)

     Brad specifically alleged that “Chicks Dig Time Lords” won a Hugo based on a whispering campaign. I’m saying no, because had there been such a campaign, I would have at least heard of it if not been a direct target. That’s refuting a specific case.

     Brad specifically alleged that “Redshirts” won a Hugo based on a whisper campaign. I offer as an alternative explanation that the book also won the Locus Award and the RT Reviewer’s Choice Award. It was, in short, very popular. It also did not win until the 3rd round of voting, which suggests that it had the advantage of a weak and/or divided field.

     Kowal’s short fiction was published by Asimov’s, the same people that publish Brad’s short fiction. Is Brad alleging that his publisher pushed Kowal’s work ahead of his? Her novella was originally self-published, and picked up by Tor after it was kicked off the ballot by the concom. Who pushed that nomination?

149. Two trolls in two days. I just need to stop.

150. First, what precisely is a whisper campaign? I’ve never been approached at a con by people asking me to vote for a particular work.

     I’m not sure what a whisper campaign would mean in the context of Redshirts. John Scalzi is the emperor of self-promotion and there is nothing quiet about it.

     I’d also like to suggest that Brad and Chris have experienced what they experienced, and those experiences may be different.

151. Khazlek re: Three Body Problem

     I’ve got nothing against the book. It’s actually been on my radar for a few months now, ever since a friend recommended it to me. I just haven’t had the chance to read it yet. And unless it’s on the Hugo ballot, I probably won’t until after Hugo voting is closed.

     Re: Wheel of Time vs Ancillary Justice (and Skin Games chances):

     While I mostly enjoyed WoT, the problems I had with it were mostly the same a number of fans did – it was way too long, with vast tomes in which nothing really happened. Books 7-11 could have been condensed to 1 or 2 books, and the series would have been much better for it. Thus, it only got to #3 on my vote (for the record, my #1 was Neptune’s Children).

     I don’t see the same problem with The Dresden Files that I saw with WoT. Each book has been well written and fast paced, with characters I actually like. Plus, this would be a nomination for an individual title, as opposed to a 10,000 page juggernaut. To say nothing of Dresden’s legions of fsns. I’d say Skin Game has a pretty good chance to take it all, even against a more literary favorite.

     Re: whisper campaigns & slates

     I actually don’t think there has been a whispered campaign to get certain works on the ballot, but only because I also think they hadn’t needed to. I think the Chorfuhlu clique has become so dominant among the Hugo voters that they pretty much come to a group consensus without much prompting. They’ve insulated themselves into their “no one I know voted for Nixon” bubble so much that they just can’t imagine anyone could possibly think differently. Thus, they react so negatively when confronted by the fact that fandom is not a universal consensus and there are indeed differences of opinion.

152. http://www.wikihow.com/Conduct-a-Whisper-Campaign

     If they’re walking up at the con and going “Hey, vote for this book for the Hugo!” they’re doing it wrong.

     If they’re going, say, “clearly anyone who doesn’t throw a fit over it being publicly known that those people liked their book has something wrong with them….” or “only h8ers don’t think this book is awesome” type things, OTOH…..

153. I think the Chorfuhlu clique has become so dominant among the Hugo voters that they pretty much come to a group consensus without much prompting except complaining about who got nominated for and won the Hugos has been a spectator sport for years at cons. The dominance of last year’s “Ancillary Justice” and “Lady Astronaut” were both exceptions.

     The more typical result is what you saw in last year’s short story race. 4 works getting into the final, the last one based on 43 ballots, and then, after a lot of head-scratching, a story winning in round three. Or shorter, there is no illusion of “universal consensus.” There’s a dislike of organized campaigning and an irritation with being accused of doing something you’re not.

154. “clearly anyone who doesn’t throw a fit over it being publicly known that those people liked their book has something wrong with them….” again, neither Lynne nor Mary said that to me. In fact, the only people I’ve seen say stuff like that are Sad Puppies and their supporters.

155. Chris, are you really incapable of understanding really basic statements in English, or are you only pretending to follow insane troll logic?

     Since you are obviously hard of understanding: that is what the free association type accusations you keep using are called, it’s not name calling.

     There’s a freaking reason that people ignore you, and it’s not the awesome power of you arguments.

156. kate,
     His part of the organization is apparently different from the part that administers the Hugos, and hence he might not have any special knowledge. That is a reason to think that he might be similar to someone in the city fire department who is very outspoken on a hiring matter in the city police department.
     I cannot attest to the specifics, I don’t have the collection of links, but the link I gave has evidence of prior conflict between Standlee and members of the Evil League behind Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies. Kate Paulk, who will be running Sad Puppies 4, is one of the hosts of Mad Genius Club, where Standlee is apparently one of a small number who were banned.
     Should I understand your not having provided a second citation as meaning you have no evidence for your argument independent of Mr. Standlee? Because if not, it is also plausible that Mr. Standlee is speaking not from process obsession but instead bad blood.

157. I just finished reading THE THREE-BODY PROBLEM. If it makes the shortlist, I will vote for it and will recommend that everyone else do likewise. SKIN GAME is the best novel that Jim Butcher has written and NEMESIS shows how Larry Correia has picked up an already very good game, but THE THREE-BODY PROBLEM is one of the best SF novels written in years.

     Had I read it sooner, I would absolutely have put it on the Rabid Puppies list. Unfortunately, Tor Books is no longer attempting to curry my favor like they used to when I was twice on the Nebula Best Novel jury; I still have the copy of OLD MAN’S WAR they sent me one year. Ironically enough, the piles of mediocre drivel they sent me was part of what convinced me there was something seriously wrong in science fiction. It was so bad that neither my wife nor I managed to finish most of the books they sent us. We used to laugh and wonder what sort of lunatic was signing these books; little did we know.

     As for whisper campaigns, let me direct your attention to the Scalzi nominations from 2007 to 2009.

     2007
     27 Best Novel
     15 Best Novel
     23 Best Fan Writer

     2008
     41 Best Novel (Scalzi)
     40 Best Novel (Stross)
     43 Best Fan Writer
     09 Best Related Work

     2009
     54 Best Novel
     09 Best Novella
     24 Short Story
     23 Best Fan Writer
     31 Best Related Work
     45 Best Drama Long

     In 2008, Scalzi and Stross were pushing each other. The two books they kept off the ballot? HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS by JK Rowling and MAKING MONEY by Terry Pratchett.

158. Bullies don’t like being pranked. Funny how that swarming thing works two ways.

     First of all, I understand there’s a lot of WorldCon sorts who aren’t overtly on board with this goofy feminist stuff and secondly, I understand the leadership somewhat changes from year to year. That means some folks are being caught in the middle.

     But at some point the very culture that makes so much of racial and sexual harassment has to look at what that actually means and take steps. The very nature of the term harassment makes clear there is a difference between politics and sexual and ethnic issues. Daffy intersectional feminists can call lighting up straight white men 7 days a week “politics” all they want but I’m not buying it.

     The tide really turned last year when feminist Farah Mendelsohn resigned and instituted the usual swarming campaign on the internet. The Hugo people should’ve had the sense and the guts to say “See ya.” Secondly, when Seanan McGuire got on Twitter, had a psychotic break with reality and started defaming Ross and white men, there should’ve already been rules in place to disqualify authors who act like that. Would WorldCon put up with authors whining about a black lesbian parade all year long? That’s not politics. WorldCon should’ve told McGuire and that asshat racist Fabio Fernandes down in Brazil to take a hike. Unfortunately none of that happened and it only encouraged the sheep who’ve embraced this trigger warning ideology. Well, encouragement works two ways. If WorldCon is going to allow a culture of authors who spend the entire year defaming heterosexuals, whites and men who then follow it up with racially defamatory revenge fiction that is nominated for awards, then pranking is going to occur.

     WorldCon can change its phone number all it wants. Nothing is going to change until a culture is created that makes a distinction between politics and hate speech. Message fiction is one thing, hate fiction powered by 12 months of hate speech and harassment another. If people want to say this is about my white tears and hurt fee-fees, then look to your own identity tears and fee-fees, cuz I’m claiming equal protection whether you like it or not. Damien “”””Scare Quotes””” Walter can sit on Twitter and lie about us wanting “to enforce an all white, all male SF field” all he wants but saying shit like that is the reason Sad Puppies exist.

     If you want a backlash and to change rules, kick these fucking racists out of your culture or we’ll do it for you. Even right this minute I can go on the Twitter feeds of Nebula and Hugo nominees from last year and hear non-stop stuff about straight white men and how we’re all privileged racists who shoot down children, bomb brown people because they’re brown, and hate Arabs and blacks and want gays back in the closet and women barefoot and not writing so much and fuck you and enough already. It’s not like I’m making that stuff up. That’s what I see on SFF Twitter feeds every single day.

     When did SFF go from being a genre of speculative fiction to speculation as to the moral and spiritual failings of white men? When did that happen? Who are these obsessive, sociopathic and creepy people? Why was this the centerpiece of your winners last year? Is that really the face you want to put on WorldCon?

     Last year’s Hugo and Nebula winners might make a great start to form a KKK but they are a disgrace to themselves and the genre. These folks can ignore us and chalk it up to us being racist women-hating terrorists all they want. We’re not listening and we’re not going away, so just keep coddling your feminist KKK and their insane paranoia about living in a white gulag of patriarchy.

159. but THE THREE-BODY PROBLEM is one of the best SF novels written in years.

     The Chinese language original is from 2008, so it has been years.

160. Now, here is what is interesting and tends to support my point about the Scalzi whispering campaign. Scalzi got 41 votes in one category and 43 in the other. He didn’t receive ANY OTHER VOTES in any other category. (I made a mistake above, he got none in Best Related Work). But here are all the categories for which he broadcast his eligibility.
     —–
     As has become my annual thing, each early January I note what works I’ve had out there that are eligible for awards — specifically the Hugo Award, since that’s my genre most notable award at the moment. This year, I have quite a spread of eligible material, so let’s dive in to this round of wholly unseemly self-pimpery.

     Best Novel: The Last Colony

     Best Novelette: “The Sagan Diary” (online version)

     Best Short Story: “Missives from Possible Futures #1: Alternate History Search Results”
     Best Short Story: “Pluto Tells All”
     Best Short Story: “The Life and Work of Godfrey Winton: A Panel Discussion on One of Science Fiction’s Lost Masters” (With Sarah Monette and Nick Sagan)

     Best Related Book: You’re Not Fooling Anyone When You Take Your Laptop Into a Coffee Shop: Scalzi on Writing

     Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form: “The Sagan Diary,” audio version (read by Mary Robinette Kowal, Elizabeth Bear, Karen Meisner, Ellen Kushner, Helen Smith and Cherie Priest)

     Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form: Old Man’s War, audio version (read by William Dufris)
     ——
     So, Scalzi gets enough nominations to trump JK Rowling and Terry Pratchett in Best Novel and Best Fan Writer, the same number as Charles Stross, but he gets no other votes for a novelette, three short stories, a related book, or two dramatic presentations. Stross also gets 19 in Best Novelette, but ties for sixth.

     Of course, Stross is a pretty good writer. His 19 novelette votes are probably legit; I was one of those who regularly nominated him for the Nebula back in the day. The 40 votes they both got in Novel and Scalzi got in Fan Writer are the campaign to get them on the shortlist.

161. Well, Vox, as you yourself point out, Pratchett rather publicly declined a Hugo in 2005 (at a British Worldcon, no less) so perhaps fandom decided he didn’t want one.

     In any event, your “proof” of a whisper campaign seems to be two authors were close in the nomination list. Not much of a proof.

162. You can read the whole thing here: http://whatever.scalzi.com/2008/01/03/the-2008-award-pimpage-post/ Notice what a shameless liar he is. Even while he’s running his little campaign, he claims he doesn’t REALLY want the Best Fan Writer award, but the other awards for which he gets no votes.
     —
     As most of you know, last year I was nominated for the Best Fan Writer Hugo, which I lost by a single vote (which I think is pretty damn funny). My nomination in the category caused some seizures in fandom about whether I should have been nominated at all, being that I am a pro as well as a fan, but I think more importantly the nomination reminded people that a whole hell of a lot of fan writing is going on in blogs and LiveJournals, and not just in traditionally formatted ‘zines. Hey, the 21st century. It’s wacky that way.

     As with last year, I’m not seeking a Best Fan Writer nomination, nor recommending myself for the category, but I won’t turn it down the nomination if it’s offered. That said, I hope when Hugo voters make their nominations they look far and wide at who is writing interesting stuff as a fan.
     —
     And then he gets 43 votes for the category he’s “not seeking”, 41 for Best Novel, and nothing for the stuff he says he wants. The man is a shameless liar and he’s constantly spinning the narrative; if Scalzi says he doesn’t want something, that’s an indication it is his true focus.

163. Jame May writes:

     Bullies don’t like being pranked. Funny how that swarming thing works two ways.

     Pranking? I think I missed something somewhere.

     The Hugo people should’ve had the sense and the guts to say “See ya.” Secondly, when Seanan McGuire got on Twitter, had a psychotic break with reality and started defaming Ross and white men, there should’ve already been rules in place to disqualify authors who act like that.

     No they shouldn’t. You are angry at them for wanting to exclude people they don’t like and therefore you want to exclude them? You want the Hugo committee to base this on what sort of well-defined standard, and you trust the Hugo committee to share your idea about what the standards should be? What would those rules that should already have been in place actually say? This sounds like a plan that might have been hatched at Making Light.

164. In any event, your “proof” of a whisper campaign seems to be two authors were close in the nomination list. Not much of a proof.

     It is not proof, it is evidence. And note that they are much, much closer than, say, the “bloc vote” for Larry’s work and my work were last year that you and others were whining about. Scalzi had 2.5 percent more votes than Stross. Larry had 165 percent more votes than me.

     I am confident that an investigation will reveal that the voters for Stross and Scalzi in 2008 are identical. Would that be sufficient to convince you?

165. Hey look everybody. Whites have no equal protection in the United States of Abi:

     “In my experience, there is a certain subset of spoiled white boys (to use AlexR @942’s term) for whom ‘victim status’ is cake (to use Teresa @925’s analogy). And they do want their slice: the sympathy, leeway, and accommodations that the mindful give the struggling*.

     “Unsurprisingly, they don’t actually want to be victims of unfair discrimination. (And really, who does?) They often think they are, mostly because losing unfair advantages still feels like a loss. Or, alternatively, they think that other people who claim to be the targets of sexism and racism are just making the whole thing up, and if there’s good stuff to be had by making things up, well, they’ll happily join the making-things-up party.

     “This is all very broad-brush stuff, and of course there are also people of good will but poor information in all of these communities.”

     What a fucking idiot. Oh, my aching privilege. Wherever did it go? Come back, Shane – and Lassie!

     And here we have Abi’s founding idiot, #942:

     “Yup. Definitely spoiled white boys. Without ever having met one in person, it’s written all over their behavior. And paranoid too, in a particularly white and spoiled fashion.”

     I love these anti-racists. They claim we do something like that but we don’t. They don’t have 1,000 quotes like I do. But if we did write that shit, what would SJWs call someone who writes about “spoiled black boys”?

     Head Chorfulhu at #942 writes we “don’t want to hear about cake-distribution inequalities others have had to endure… it’s really their cake and always has been.”

     Cue sad clowns crying down by the river about Jim Crow. hahahah. Man, I just love these people. I want my cake back, cuz I’m a spoiled white boy in a particularly white way. Hahahaha.

     In her cake factory under the sea, KKKhorfulhu lies dreaming of custard pies and raspberry pudding and racial particularities particular only to whites. Send in the subs and torpedoes and take out that reef of fish-heads.

166. Vox – so if Scalzi had gotten a Hugo in short fiction would you accuse him of shamelessly campaigning for it? Because it seems you’re applying a “head I win tails you lose” logic to this.

     “Don’t give me what I ask for,” Scalzi says, “except when I really want you to give me what I ask for.”

     “How I am to know which is which, O Great Master of Right-Thinking Science Fiction?” I ask.

     “Feel the Force, Luke,” Scalzi says.

     “My name’s not Luke,” I reply. “And isn’t that a copyright violation?”

     “Whatever, and it’s ‘fair use.’ Now figure it out and fetch me a Coke Zero.”

     [And that’s sarcasm with a touch of mockery, for those so impaired.]

167. voters for Stross and Scalzi in 2008 are identical. – Except I *know* somebody who split the vote. I voted in 2008, and Saturn’s Children was on my ballot and Scalzi was not. So am I the Most Unique Person In The World? (If so, when do I get my beer commercial?)

168. @Kate
     your question is: “Apparently, to The WSFS As An Institution, the point is to crowdsource the nominations, and to vote independently and without influence from your fellow fan”

     The answer is no, that is not what the conflict is about. The conflict is about a self-important clique who have successfully imposed a political correctness purity test on writers nominated and awarded the Hugo Award.

     At about this same time, in the SWFA, the writers association for science fiction, decided to purge their members for the politically impure beliefs, and fire certain writers and the editor of their in-house magazine. In umbrage, I shook the dust off my sandals of SWFA, and quit.

     Shortly thereafter, I invited others who had been publicly denounced for our political thoughtcrimes, for being sexist and racists and Christian, Sarah Hoyt (Portuguese) Larry Correia (Spaniard) and Theodore Beale (Red Indian) to join me in forming an Evil Legion of Evil. Since this was the name were we being slandered with by the hysterics, we assumed it as a badge of pride.

     I and my fellow Evil Legionnaires of Evil, being mortally offended by the notion that ‘Redshirts’ or ‘If You Were A Dinosaur My Love’ were actually said to be as meritorious as ‘Dune’ or ‘Allamagoosa’, determined to fight against the establishment, big brother, the conformists, the social justice warriors, the limpwristed British, and the Devil himself, by putting up a slate of candidates based, not on their political opinions or their membership in recognized victim groups, but ON THE MERIT OF THE WRITING.

     For the radical notion of giving the premier science fiction award to science fiction writers who write the best and most popular science fiction of the year, rather than giving the premier science fiction award to untalented writers penning social commentary of a dreary and predictable leftwing slant, we are slandered, libeled, abused, mocked, derided, and villified.
     And we laugh the laughter of the gods, because the impish pests attacking us threaten, oh, dearly threaten, to mock us again EVEN HARDER next time, if we do not fall into line, and bow the knee to their political idols.

     For wanting to award the award on the basis of merit, not political ideology, we are called political ideologues. For wanted to write and read science fiction that is fun and well written, we are called persons who wish to murder and annihilate three fourths of the human race.

     No slander, no matter how outrageous, hesitates behind their teeth.

169. Hey Khazlek. You know what a strike zone is? It doesn’t exclude people it doesn’t like. It excludes people who can’t bat. It plays no favorites. How do rules which apply to all exclude one side? Wake up.

     I never said the standard should be my idea. I’m not the idiot who puts in harassment language as if a frickin’ SF convention is a Hell’s Angels party. My own idea would be to let people say whatever they want as long as it is ALL tolerated, not just some. So the uneven slope is already in place. That’s obvious to anyone with eyes. The truth is McGuire and all the rest of those dullards can go apeshit with racist comments and my just being white and existing is considered the equivalent racism. Gee, who wouldn’t want to use those rules in a softball game?

     I’m being sarcastic. These are the morons who put up harassment rules but then don’t trust them when it’s applied to where they don’t want it applied. Go to the SFWA web site and look at their rules about this shit. Do you think for one minute they honor the spirit or letter of those rules? It’s just fine for their precious protected but if I even suggest it should extend to me I have you pre-whining about it and the United States of Abi crying foul ball.

     Go to some forum about umpiring soft ball games and tell them not to be so angry and what their problem is anyway and they should shut up.

     And who said anything about pranking? The 10,000 pizzas being delivered to WorldCon are legit and so’s the entire nominated field. It just happened.

170. the resulting criticism that you are trying to control entire categories doesn’t strike me as crazy

     That was the only criticism I thought was legit. I can completely see that pov. (Leaving aside whether they were doing it already in secret.)

     Making a longer list of ‘suggested works’ like apparently everyone else does might be a good idea.

171. James May writes:

     Hey Khazlek. You know what a strike zone is? It doesn’t exclude people it doesn’t like. It excludes people who can’t bat. It plays no favorites. How do rules which apply to all exclude one side? Wake up.

     You just suggested that the Hugo administrators should have excluded McGuire from the ballot based on her behavior and not on the eligibility rules, and that there should have been rules in place to do exactly that.

     One problem with doing that is that it would increase the subjectivity of the thing, when the Hugo rules are designed to make the process as objective as possible.

172. I have the feeling I’m not really answering what’s being put to me, and I don’t mean to. I’m just not widely read, blogwise, and, also, working on deadline tonight.

     Bob: I don’t necessarily think that being banned somewhere automatically means you’re unreliable and your information is shaky. I mean, I think Mr. Day has some good things to say about various things, and look at the places he’s been banned.

     That said, I get that you’re suspicious of him. (Standlee, not Day.)

     But no, I don’t have another link for specific discussions of the intricacies of Hugo voting, and more specifically the unwritten traditions surrounding it, because that’s pretty inside baseball and I don’t really read a lot of inside baseball blogs. (Actually, your link doesn’t talk about that, either, just that Standlee’s been banned.)

     It’s not a big deal, since I’m a little skeptical of all this “no, do not lobby in any way, shape, or form!” stuff from their end, I just figured the question was worth asking.

     Mr. Wright – Hi there! Glad to hear from you. Yes, I have read the background back and forthing about ideologies on both sides. I was focusing on a smaller aspect of it, is all. (That is, if one of their major stated objections was to slates, why have a specific slate and not a call for suggestions.)

173. Hey Khazlek, are you really so dim you didn’t observe Jonathan Ross get excluded for just existing? In real world terms, Seanan McGuire did what she claims Ross did. In effect, McGuire called for her own expulsion but is too unprincipled and stupid to know that. That’s because her moral ethos is grounded in her identity, not an actual moral ethos. I am woman therefore I am right. Ross is “white dude parade” because I enrolled him in that. Fuck her and her shifting rules and pre-crime. Go ask Ross what the word “excluded” means.

     Did you go to that umpire’s forum? It’s called the Federation of Umpires Calling K’s.

174. Here’s another idea Khazlek: make up your own definition of hate speech. I wouldn’t even care what it is, just something everyone benefits by. Keep in mind this fact: Ross was booted for hate speech he never uttered. Surely a mind like yours can make a better standard than that. So don’t tell me there wasn’t already a standard in place. Ross knows better. Just improve it or do away with it entirely. The entire community owes Ross an apology.

175. James, I suggest you strive not to become more like what you oppose.

     If the rules you suggest existed, and Worldcon is already as far gone as you constantly argue, which is more likely, that McGuire would be excluded from Hugo consideration, or that Larry Correia would be excluded after his angry Twitter exchange with John Scalzi.

     As it happens, I have seen the McGuire tweet, about Ross. If I hadn’t, would that really make me dim? It isn’t entirely true that she wanted Ross excluded just for existing. She believed that Ross would behave in a way similar to the way he had behaved on another show in another context. She may not have been right about that, but it wasn’t for just existing.

176. Ross wasn’t excluded from eligibility for a Hugo award. The Hugo administrator doesn’t run the ceremony.

     I’m a 1st amendment fan, find someone else to write a hate speech law for you.

     I’m inclined to agree about the apology for Ross.

177. Correia didn’t defame an entire race of people or what someone MIGHT say but laughed at what a specific person actually said.

     And of course it was for Ross existing. Exactly what is a “white dude parade?” And may I remind you you can’t criticize someone for something they MIGHT say?

     I’m not actually asking anyone to write anything. I’m pointing out the hypocrisy which already exists. There already not only is an existing hate speech law, but one which pre-convicts. I’d think that should be obvious concerning Ross. On the other hand, actually quoted racial and sexual group defamation is completely okay from SJWs. Where exactly is your sense of fair play?

178. Correia didn’t defame an entire race of people or what someone MIGHT say but laughed at what a specific person actually said.

     Yes, but if you write some sort of standard like that into the Hugo eligibility rules, and since you have already indicated your belief that Worldcon has fallen entirely into the hands of SJWs, wouldn’t you expect McGuire to press for Correia’s exclusion from Hugo eligibility for just such asymmetrical reasons, and quite possibly succeed?

     And of course it was for Ross existing. Exactly what is a “white dude parade?” And may I remind you you can’t criticize someone for something they MIGHT say?

     I can’t criticize someone for what they might say, but I can select someone for a job based on what they are likely to say or do. Ross wasn’t actually excluded from anything to the best of my knowledge. In any case, you keep wanting to paint me as approving of what happened with Ross, and I don’t. So stop it.

     My sense of fair play tells might to fight SJWs for being socially unjust, not join them.

179. Him being banned alone does not make him unreliable. The manner and reasons may.

     http://madgeniusclub.com/2013/09/09/defeating-the-anak/

     I see that as at least carelessness on his part.

     If he is the sole source for inside baseball, I would consider the information suspect.

     There are others in the organization closer to the matter, if they withhold such information, maybe there is a reason why, or maybe the information doesn’t actually exist.

     It is somewhat silly to enter a competition that punishes one for violating rules that were not advertised.

180. Vox – so if Scalzi had gotten a Hugo in short fiction would you accuse him of shamelessly campaigning for it? Because it seems you’re applying a “head I win tails you lose” logic to this.

     First, I’m accusing him of something worse than that. I’m accusing him of secretly campaigning for both Best Novel and Best Fan Writer in 2008 despite denying he even wanted a nomination. I am, again, calling him a liar. Just like I did when I called him a liar about 2 million monthly pageviews and 50,000 daily visits. And when he said he didn’t send Old Man’s War to PNH in an attempt to avoid the slush pile.

     I’ll bet he lied in 2008 too. Because with Scalzi, it’s always safe to bet on the lie.

     But in answer to your question, no. I would only have found a Hugo in short fiction in 2008 to be suspicious if he had also gotten 40-43 nominating votes in that category as well as the other two. I find it very amusing that you are seriously going to double-down on the idea of 183-69 being a bloc vote, but 43-41-40 being nothing more than mere innocent coincidence.

181. VD writes:

     I find it very amusing that you are seriously going to double-down on the idea of 183-69 being a bloc vote, but 43-41-40 being nothing more than mere innocent coincidence.

     So almost no one who wasn’t in on the block vote voted for either Stross or Scalzi, two fairly popular authors? I don’t think that there is much you can infer from the vote totals without seeing the ballots.

182. @DeTroyes Thank you for that answer! I’ll definitely keep an eye on when the slate is announced then =D I might make a handy dandy little referable blogpost for other folk who want this question answered / need a helpful place for the link.

     (Sorry for the late reply; I’m in Australia and time differences and AFK stuff. )

183. Er, sorry, I meant bookworm1398. Coffee hasn’t kicked in yet.

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186. Brad, I could really care less about any of these gate keepers. I’ll just go on selling my work directly to fans and make a good living doing it. Tor is not a publisher I would work for, and the good news, with indie publishing, is that I don’t have to. I wish you well in salvaging the Hugo. I really don’t expect to ever be nominated, since all I write is that militaristic fascist space opera crap that people like to read.

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189. This is the text of an email message I have just sent to Teresa Nielsen Hayden. It has clearly been written as an open letter/message/whatever.

     It wasn’t personal. Now it is.

     I had scanned the File 770 posting on the current Hugo kurfullfle earlier today, but I had missed this upon my first reading/scan. This is the former Teresa Barbara Nielsen (I won’t let her hide behind another persona) as quoted in F770, from her blog “Making Light” —

     “Third, when the people doing a block voting attack on the Hugos claim to practically worship Heinlein, but aren’t aware that the second huge volume of his first major biography has come out, perhaps you ought not worry about your own lack of omniscience.”

     So here we have Teresa trying to wrap herself in the flag (so to speak) of the 2nd volume of the Robert A. Heinlein biography by Bill Patterson. That Tor published.

     Bill died last year on 22 April 2014. He was my best friend for 40 years. He was someone that Teresa (and her husband Patrick) knew.

     Did they even mention that someone they knew (Bill) had died on their Making Light blog back last year? No. Not a tit; not a tiddle. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Zero. Goose egg. He was, the way they treated him, an unperson. Despite the fact that two volumes of a book by him was published by Tor. They made no mention anywhere at anytime of his death despite all of the various venues they had available to them to do so, such as their own blog.

     And here Teresa wants to claim somehow that she was somehow on Bill’s side, so as to make some points against the Sad Puppies folks.

     Bill was a friend — clearly not a concept, Teresa, you are familiar with. Your attempt to use him a year after his death, after you had formerly thrown him metaphorically under the bus, shows for one and all what sort of a human being you are. Certainly it shows it to me, after 40 years of fooling myself.

190. Tim Kyger (no fan of mine, as far as I know) focused on a central point. Tor published Bill Patterson’s two-volume bio of Heinlein — and the second volume that should have been on this year’s Hugo, would ballot wasn’t despite its detailing Heinlein’s libertarian philosophy and evolution — was neither pushed by Tor for the Hugo nor did the so-called Sad Puppies who are supposed to be libertarians of some stripe also failed to vote for its place on the Hugo ballot.

     The only solution to Sad Publishers and Mad Puppies, both Epic Fails, would be a Special Hugo for Patterson.

191. That’s NOT what I wrote. Let’s try it again since there’s no edit button.

     Tim Kyger (no fan of mine, as far as I know) focused on a central point. Tor published Bill Patterson’s two-volume bio of Heinlein — and the second volume that should have been on this year’s Hugo ballot wasn’t despite its detailing Heinlein’s libertarian philosophy and evolution — was neither pushed by Tor for the Hugo nor did the so-called Sad Puppies who are supposed to be libertarians of some stripe vote for its place on the Hugo ballot.

     The only solution to Sad Publishers and Mad Puppies, both Epic Fails, would be a Special Hugo for Patterson.

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193. Wendy S. Delmater wrote: “Those far-fringe people are indeed the “assholes and sociopaths” I was talking about and I think we can all agree on that.”

     Far-fringe asshole and sociopath describes Vox Day perfectly, and he’s a Gamergater. You have it right.

194. Tim Kyger wrote: “Teresa Barbara Nielsen (I won’t let her hide behind another persona)”

     Are you an idiot? Or are you not taking your psych meds? “Another persona” is crazy talk. Well, you worked for the Republicans on science issues, so we can tell you must be an epic moron.

195. VD wrote: “I’m accusing him of secretly campaigning for both Best Novel and Best Fan Writer in 2008 despite denying he even wanted a nomination.”

     Next year you’ll be blaming the Jews, you bigoted freak. Get psychiatric help.

196. kate wrote: “I mean, I think Mr. Day has some good things to say about various things, and look at the places he’s been banned.”

     Well, he’s certainly an authority on tax fraud schemes and what it’s like when a parent goes to prison. There’s that.

197. “So almost no one who wasn’t in on the block vote voted for either Stross or Scalzi, two fairly popular authors? I don’t think that there is much you can infer from the vote totals without seeing the ballots.”

     VD just can’t accept the reality that the vast majority of people don’t like his work. They even think his mouse design was idiotic. He probably blames Scalzi for its failure. Somehow.

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