Toni Weisskopf got 1,216 first-line #1 votes. Arguably the most of any editor in the history of the Hugo awards.
Sheila Gilbert got 754 first-line #1 votes. Again, second only to Toni, arguably the most of any editor in the history of the Hugo awards.
By contrast, Patrick-Nielsen Hayden won a Best Editor Hugo in 2010, with just 140 first-line #1 votes.
2011 saw Lou Anders take a trophy with 207 first-line #1 votes.
2013 gave yet another trophy to Patrick Nieslen-Hayden with 209 first-line #1 votes.
Now, because of the way the Australian ballot works, the person with the most first-line #1 votes is not always the winner. But that’s usually the way to bet. Whoever gets the most first-line #1 votes is almost always the winner.
Except for this year.
I would like this noted somewhere that a biased media hack or a vengeful troll can’t blot it out: 2,500 people from science fiction’s so-called True Fandom throws women under the bus.
Toni and Sheila are the two most-voted editors in the history of their category. Nobody has ever gotten 1,200+ and 700+ Best Editor votes, respectively. Not for short form. Not for long form. That’s historic. A win for women! Right? Wait, no. Its not. True Fandom ruined it with NO AWARD. Yup. The tolerant and inclusive True Fandom. The people who want science fiction to be a safe place for women. Until True Fandom throws those women under the bus.
Mark it in your minds, friends. Remember it. Know the truth of it. The people who parade their inclusiveness and their tolerance, threw THE MOST-TANGIBLY-SUPPORTED EDITORS IN THE HISTORY OF THE HUGO AWARDS, under the bus. By 2,500 people. To make a point. Women who have given decades to the business, got thrown beneath the wheels because people wanted to be right more than they love this field.
Deserving women. Under the bus. By True Fandom. The defenders of Hugo awards purity. Paragons of tolerance. Brave defenders of diversity. They threw women. Under the bus. Wheels. Under. By Trufen.
They cheered when it happened. They CHEERED when Toni and Sheila went beneath the bus.
Not that this is new. Remember what they did to Jean Rabe? I do.
Women. Under. Bus.
Brad R. Torgersen 
“YOU MADE US DO THIS!”
“YOU MADE US DO THIS!”
The TrueFans are nothing but Haters.
And two of the Haters show up here. [Frown]
What do you expect Brad? You can’t expect the SJW to have principles that they actually live up to when they are in the middle of a spiteful hissyfit.
And when aren’t they in the middle of spiteful hissyfits? So, obviously principles are impossible.
Finally, as Camestrosfelapton points out, obviously people having a hissy fit and being spiteful and punishing women directly is your fault because … I dunno …. your a racist shut up … nailed it
The only people who should be “embarrassed” are the ones who voted based on the fact that “oh noes, someone put a person on a slate” rather than based on merit.
A travesty of the first order in my opinion as well, Brad. NOT True Fandom, not to pull this whiney trash and deny two strong, powerful, opinionated women their just props. Gee, does this mean we get to rightfully accuse these UNtrue Fans of being everything they claim not to be? Certainly! Will they listen and actually THINK about what they’ve inflicted upon Toni and Sheila.
Not on your tintype.
You voted on merit… but are judging her by something else.
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
“YOU MADE US DO THIS!”
The Third Law of SJW’s is “they always double down.” Like the two disgusting ones commenting here. When their own stupidity and perfidy toward science fiction and two gifted editors is pointed out…they blame Brad! But of COURSE. That’s what SJW’s do.
For everyone saying, “YOU MADE US DO THIS,” you realize that’s the cop-out of single-digit children and felons, right? Nobody “made” you do it. You did it yourselves. You knew what you were doing when you ranked NO AWARD above every editor in either Short or Long form. You didn’t care that you burned the village to save it. You only cared about having your way. Be proud, defenders of the sacred totem. You have proven yourselves ethically derelict and petty on a grand scale. No spinning it against anybody this time. You decided to burn it all down. You were warned that this was a terrible idea. But you didn’t care. You still wanted your way. Well, looks like you got your way.
Marriage counselors have a saying: would you rather be right, or would you rather be married?
I think you — the 2,500 so-called True Fans — have begged for a divorce.
@Julie so your saying neither of those editors are deserving. I’m just being clear here.
Did they edit those comments, Brad? I have something different in the comments on my phone.
Oh and everyone saying they where forced to do it. Someone held a weapon to you and forced you to be evil and vote no award to spite those on the ballot?
Still more of, “YOU MADE US DO THIS!”
No, because I don’t want to listen to 999 variations of “YOU MADE ME DO THIS” I am just editing all such comments to reflect their base argument. That will save you all time reading 999 variations of bullshit.
So Chris it was ok to be Evil and throw a temper tantrum and mass vote no award?
Wow! Just Wow! That is pathetic.
Ah. I was going to respond to what I had shown on my phone, but if you don’t want us acknowledging/feeding the trolls, then okay.
@TomT, I have no idea why you think that’s what I said. I’m saying that Toni deserved to win, based on merit. And the people who voted No Award over her because she was on the Puppies slate did so out of spite, not because she didn’t deserve to win. And those people deserve vilification.
I hope that’s clearer.
I have learned that Chris is many flavors of pathetic. Chris, bail out of the thread now.
Julie: spite would seem to be the thing most apparent in the pyrrhic victory celebrated by the 2,500 brave defenders of Hugo purity; who threw Toni and Sheila and the others under the bus. Mike Resnick too. Hell, a couple dozen good people all got thrown beneath the bus. Because 2,500 True Fans don’t know how to share. This is the sandbox. They are the spoiled children who think it’s theirs, and theirs alone. I was hoping they wouldn’t prove the worst prognostications right. They not only proved it, they said, “BOY HOWDY WE CAN’T WAIT TO SHOW THE WORLD WE’RE FIVE YEARS OLD! WEEEEEE!”
“YOU MADE US DO THIS!”
@Julie, Your right I went back and looked at your post and yeah…. ::tips hat to you::
“YOU MADE US DO THIS!”
Chuckle Chuckle. Brad, I just noticed the line you have above the comment box. IE “Give us a piece of your mind!”. I think the SJWs are losing what little mind they have by commenting here. [Evil Grin]
Paul: I think they self-lobotomized when they cast their ballots. But yes. (shakes head)
So one of the hater comments (yay email?) reminded me of something I just don’t get.
What is all this garbage about pushing people off the ballot?
It’s a ballot. There are only so many slots on it; by definition, everybody can’t be on the ballot. Nor is anybody guaranteed a slot on the ballot (no matter how much certain people seem to think that’s the case).
Do these guys go to track meets and yell about how their favorite runner was robbed of first place because those other people had the gall to run so much faster?
@Camestrosfelapton
“Sad that people can’t just say “we screwed up” anymore.”
I’m pretty sure Brad already said, “Guess we should have done it a bit differently in hindsight but what is done is done”. That is an admission that a mistake was made due to unexpected and unprecedented support.
You speak of taking responsibility, why not own that many people on your side voted out of spite and choose to nuke the awards rather than let ungoodthink people and stories win?
There was always the option for the TruFans(tm) to say, “Ok, the sad puppies got on the ticket lets read the stories and vote for the best one to win”, like adults, and then proved Larry, Brad, Sarah and Vox completely wrong about TruFans(tm) are like and that they are not a collection of spite filled toddlers who will have a trantrum and burn the house down if they can’ have their way.
It isn’t Brad’s fault the TruFans(tm) behaved as they did. They own that behavior. Cheering and applauding the No Award is proof of their spite filled nature. You might have voted No Award on “principle” but you lament it is necessary you don’t cheer it as a victory. That was pure malice and not some noble principled sentiment. .
Well, fox, the thing is, the “correct” people are naturally entitled to be on the ballot because (mumble mumble) and therefore anything that might take them off the ballot causes by-proxy raging fits among the CHORFs who want to be right, and don’t actually care about anything else.
This. In spades. And thank you for saying it. I’ve said it before: the world is looking in on this thing a lot, and screaming “YOU MADE US DO THIS!” might play well with a few people, but most people who understand how the real world — and being a grown-up — works, are going to look at that and go, “What?”
Now, you see, I understand that on one level, Brad (we’ve been seeing this happen all year, after all), but there’s still that element of complete incomprehensibility to it.
It’s 2 AM my time. I am gonna shut down comments for the night, since the denizens of Pravda 770 are busy.
I was surprised that those two categories got No Awarded. I was even more surprised that a lot of people actually applauded when it was announced. I thought that was just enormously disrespectful to the nominees. They’ve just been punched in the face. There’s no need to kick them in the teeth. And finally, I was surprised when the stats were released, which showed that No Award “won” on the first round (i.e., it got an absolute majority of the votes cast). The anti-SP/RP voters were obviously much more numerous than I was expecting.
And you threw everyone under the bus, by nominating crap. Toni’s name was hidden under a pile of crap. You built the pile. Nominating hordes of terrible writers. Terrible editors. One half-decent name got lost in that pile of crap you built. It’s your fault what happened to her.
Also, all the other deserving writers and editors who deserved a Hugo but didn’t get one — because you stole all the noms for your cronies — you threw them under the bus too. It’s all your fault.
If Toni was on a ballot that wasn’t tainted by your corruption, she might have a Hugo now. She probably would’ve been nominated anyway, in fact. But she rolled with the wrong crowd. The cheaters. The liars. The frauds. She should’ve spoken out against you and Vox when you tried to destroy the Hugos. But she didn’t speak out. She took the easy way; stood around with open arms, hoping to be rewarded with a Hugo. There’s no way she deserved a Hugo for her cowardice. If you left her alone, she might’ve been nom’ed anyway and might be waving around a Hugo right now. But you didn’t leave her alone — you tried to steal a win for her because she’s your friend. What happened is your fault. Cheaters never win. Enablers of cheaters don’t win, either. I know that you wish cheaters did win, you so very much wish that.
You made us do this. The mantra of abusers everywhere.
Y’all do realize that the RP side is likely to make sure that those categories are NO AWARDed forevermore, right?
For what it’s worth, Brad, I think you make a very good point. Too bad you undercut it by bearing false witness against your commenters.
Brad,
Editing the comments as you have done is certainly within your rights and privileges as the owner and keeper of this space.
I personally think its disrespectful to those commenters, though.
They are making variations of an argument you don’t like? Fine. I get that. The results from yesterday hurt. I get that, too. I’m a Hugo Loser. That hurts. But to change their words to a shrill and unrepresentative string of all-caps words is unrepresentative of what they are saying. And it’s childish on your part. Its the internet equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and saying I can’t hear you.
Worse, it suggests to me that you don’t want engagement, you don’t want people here save those who agree with you. Echo chambers, of any sort are bad for discourse and for the field in which they occur, be it politics, science fiction, or anything else. You’re entitled to build one here, if you want. But you should change the comment box from “Give us a piece of your mind!” to “Give us a piece of your mind…if you are of us.”
Thanks for clarifying your position, No Award voters. I’ve been silent all this last year because I didn’t want to alienate people who might someday buy my books. But they’ve quite clearly said they’re not interested in reading stories written by the likes of me, so what’s the point in being silent any more?
I think it’s time to start misbehaving.
This is a long post so I am not sure it will get through. This is my second comment ever on the Hugos, Sad Puppies or anything even remotely related.
Looking at this as a relative outsider, albeit one who had wasted most of today reading blogs, etc., the Puppies vs the SJWs being about ideology and the existence of the Sad Puppies being about countering ideological purity in Hugo nominations and awards is a false narrative. The issue is simply that the Hayden Nielsens, Scalzi and a clique wanted to run the show. It’s not about the writing and it’s not even about the writer (as evidenced by the diversity of those proposed by Sad Puppies 3 and all those women editors who got screwed) – it’s about whether the nominees are in the clique.
The Sad Puppies were right – the system was broken. Frankly, it was embarrassing for the Hugos that Scalzi won for Redshirts in 2013. Redshirts arguably didn’t even deserve to be nominated – the reviews on Amazon can tell anyone that. To me, this was the Sad Puppies point – that good work was getting passed over. However, I think Larry, Brad, etc. were less cynical than they ought to have been – what I saw them saying was that good work was being passed over by the clique because of its ideology/philosophy whereas I think it was passed over simply because of self-interest/ego on the part of the clique. The Hayden Nielsens and Scalzi went crazy over the fact that Sad Puppies was a slate but even their supporters are only able to say that slates had not “openly” existed prior to Sad Puppies. My criticism of Brad Torgensen and Larry Correia is that they pulled too many punches in not confronting the Hayden Nielsens, Scalzi, etc. head on.
However, I think that both of the two changes that are proposed for Hugo voting – the 4/6 proposal and the E pluribus Hugo proposal – will ensure a diversity of nominees/finalists and should be welcomed by Sad Puppies supporters. I believe that the 4/6 proposal was approved very narrowly today. I don’t know whether the E pluribus Hugo was. If approved this year the two changes have to be approved at next year’s Worldcon in order to take effect at 2017 Worldcon in Helsinki, i.e. nomination and voting arrangements in 2016 will be the same as this year. Those changes, together with the large increase in Worldcon members and voters, makes it much much more difficult for any clique to control the nominations and awards.
I am interested to see what some of the more reasonable opponents of the Puppies say over the next few days. George RR Martin has identified as an anti-Puppy. However, his big criticisms are that the Puppies monopolised the nominations – which wasn’t intentionally – and, in a couple of cases, included material on the list of nominations that wasn’t of Hugo quality. He’s equally acknowledged that the anti-Puppies extremists who pushed for no award over ever Puppies nominee were wrong. I am sure that he will criticise the no award that saw Toni Weisskopf lose out, albeit perhaps not as strongly as Brad Torgensen has here.
Oh, boo hoo hoo, Brad. People voted against your and Vox Day’s slate. Get over it.
“No, because I don’t want to listen to 999 variations of “YOU MADE ME DO THIS” I am just editing all such comments to reflect their base argument.”
Brad, with all due respect: BULLSHIT!
Editing comments is the crap that the people you’ve been arguing against pull. There’s no excuse for that. It’s the act of people who don’t want to admit that those who disagree with them aren’t drooling idiots, who don’t want to deal with any other point of view. If they’re making fools of themselves — let them, in their own words. So much the better!
I’ve had a great deal of fun with SP3. Writers like you, Larry, etc., are the reason I pay any attention to contemporary SF/F. It sucked to see No Award beat a lot of deserving nominees. But I’m way more disappointed in seeing you editing people’s comments than I was in anything that happened at the Hugos.
You’re better than this. Don’t do it.
This reminds me a lot of the Solomon story. They are displaying the fact that they are the ones who would cut the baby in half. In fact, even uglier, they would cheer as the baby was butchered.
Last time I checked 2500 is a lot more than 1216.
WorldCon voters decided that they’d rather No Award things then give an award tainted by unsportmsanlike conduct. If you don’t like the fact that the majority beat out your group, popular awards aren’t the game for you.
In order to win awards, you need a plurality of the vote. You didn’t have it. You were a poor sport at the beginning, and you’re a poor sport now.
Galatians 6:7 is highly applicable here.
Whether you’re talking about Ted Kennedy, Bill Clinton or PNH, proglodytes ALWAYS exercise power at the expense of women.
As for YOU MADE US DO THIS!… every spouse-abusing male in America uses that same excuse. How very mainstream of you.
NOBODY made you censor stories and authors you admit to having never read! That’s on you.
NOBODY made you react in blind terror to the horrible thought of someone being different from you even as you whinged about diversity and inclusiveness. That’s on you.
NOBODY made you post, tweet, and for all I know fall asleep dreaming the hate, bile, racism and misogyny you demonstrated, as has been richly documented. That’s on you.
It’s alllll on you, baby.
camestrosfelapton, Chris Gerrib, spacefaringkitten, Daveon and anyone else that wants to say “YOU MADE US DO THIS!”, I’m going to tell you the same thing I tell my 5 year old.
Shut up, go to your room, and think about why what you did was wrong and don’t come down until you can behave.
Throwing temper tantrums should be above the actions of adults. What you are showing the world right now is that you belong in kindergarten where your precious psyche can be sheltered from dangerous ideas.
“Things got a little out of hand. It’s just this war and that lying son of a bitch Torgersen and…I would never hurt you. You know that.” – Chris Gerrib
There was always the option for the TruFans(tm) to say, “Ok, the sad puppies got on the ticket lets read the stories and vote for the best one to win”, like adults,
Why is it more “adult” somehow to give out an award you don’t think is deserved than to say that one isn’t?
I mean, a Hugo for a lousy story is practically the same thing as a participation award, and I hear frequent complaints about how those are terrible things.
I read every one of, for example, Mr. Wright’s nominees. Had I been a magazine editor, I would not have bought any of them to fill my pages — why should I vote for one to win a prestigious award?
I encourage people *any* year, of *any* political/literary/philosophical affiliation, to make the nominations of the works they thought were best, and then vote on the ballot using the simple measure “Do I think this deserves to win a Hugo? If so, do I think it deserves it more or less than the last thing I read?” Rank the ones you think deserving, then vote “no award”.
I heard they made some kind of “nomination reforms” to prevent another slate vote next year, although I have no idea how that would work. My only guess would be anyone who is listed on a slate put out by you guys is instantly disqualified, which is just scary.. Any idea what those reforms were, and what the future holds for the whole Hugo Award process?
Analogkid,
Considering the fact that I pretty much allowed two or three dozen obvious trolls from Pravda 770 and elsewhere, to have unlimited time using my space for the past seven months, I think they’re getting off lightly. Someone else noted that “YOU MADE ME DO THIS!” is the refrain of abusers throughout history. It is also the refrain of children in need of being shown their childishness. If it upsets them that “YOU MADE ME DO THIS!” is being appropriately reduced to its base form, I will simply quote Scalzi and say: get a better argument. Again, they had free run of my comments for months. Everybody knows who the usual trolls are — such as Chris Gerrib — and nobody who reads this space is at all surprised to see the usual trolls trotting out “YOU MADE ME DO THIS!” as a line of argument. Again, it’s the refrain of abusers and children. What do you do with abusers and the childish? Sometimes, you give their words exactly as much dignity as those words deserve. Does that make me a hypocrite? Maybe. Or maybe I was far, far, far too liberal in my attitude previously. After all, many Puppy-kickers have complained I am bad because I don’t moderate the comments. So, if I do moderate the comments, I am also bad? Goal posts, always being moved out of reach.
Weimer: see above, please.
@torchie4269
That’s not what the rule changes do (and they have to be ratified next year, so won’t come in to force until 2017)
It’s a change from a first-past-the-post to a proportional system, which won’t prevent the most popular works on a slate getting on the ballot, but will prevent a slate supported by a minority sweeping the entire nominations list.
One or two people who have analysed the numbers and estimate that the Puppy supporters represent about 25-30% of the total voters in the nomination round. Under the new system that would see two Puppy nominations in each category.
That strikes me as eminently fair.
torchie,
Trying to read through E Pluribus Hugo — also known as “The Nielsen-Haydens directly inject themselves into the mechanics of the Hugo for yet another season” — can be a bit of a chore. My gross understanding is that they want to make it harder for any kind of “list” voting to get through the nomination phase. So that the more any single nominator nominates in a given category, the weight of that nominator’s voice is lessened. Ergo, you nominate one thing in one category, your vote gets full weight. You nominate five things in one category, your vote gets one-fifth weight for each of those five things, and so on and so forth.
My suspicion is that this will have unintended consequences even the sponsors of E Pluribus Hugo haven’t considered — and EPH was not the sole modification; I can’t claim to grok 4 of 6 because I haven’t examined it yet. That too may have unintended consequences. But none of this kicks in until 2017 at the soonest.
Honestly, I am not sure it matters at this point. I warned them not to play chicken with Vox Day. They said, “Fuck you,” and played chicken with Vox Day.
Worldcon — as a thing — may be beyond saving. The patient actively resists being healed. If we could bring 10,000 fresh faces to MidAmeriCon II that might jolt things in the right direction. After the way the 2,500 jeering and cheering Trufans asterisked Toni Weisskopf into walking out of the Hugos, they may have enraged enough Baen readers to take action. Especially since Kansas City is right in Baen Country proper.
But really, Michael Rothman’s kids said more with a few words than ten thousand partisans all yawping endlessly about this thing. The kids are the future. If Worldcon is reduced to nothing but angry, unhappy Social Justice cranks, and angry, unhappy, gray-haired Trufen . . . it’s dead. And all the histrionics and nastiness (on the part of Trufen) won’t bring it back. You can’t make people love you when you rip your mask off and tell people you actually hate them for wanting to be part of your tribe, and have a say in the selection of the totem.
Yup. In spades.
“Baby, I love you. But you have to understand. When you make me do things . . . well, see, you need to realize your responsibility in this. Because you knew what would happen. I told you what would happen if you made me angry. Please don’t make me angry. Now go put some makeup on that, before the neighbors see you, and start talking.” — Trufen
Maestro: keep screaming like a pill, I don’t think Michael Rothman’s kids heard you yet.
“So, if I do moderate the comments, I am also bad? ”
Moderate away Brad. I don’t have a problem with a blog owner moderating the comments on their blog. However LYING about what people said? That isn’t cool.
Nobody MADE you do that Brad.
A second convention in Kansas City, on August 17-21, 2016, could be interesting.
Dave Freer 17 August:
“10) Do you believe that comments that disagree with you should be censored, or disemvoweled? a) Yes. We’re protecting the freedom of speech and expressing tolerance. How can we do that if just any old redneck can say what he thinks? We’re looking for a vibrant diversity of opinion just like ours. You won’t get that if you let the scum talk. They need to be deprived of a platform, any platform! b) No. Give them a fair crack of the whip at least. Ask ‘em to be civil, maybe. And if they can’t be they can go and spout it somewhere else.”
Brad Torgersen 24 August:
“No, because I don’t want to listen to 999 variations of “YOU MADE ME DO THIS” I am just editing all such comments to reflect their base argument. That will save you all time reading 999 variations of bullshit.”
Speaking of throwing women under the bus:
http://www.scifiwright.com/2015/08/in-memoriam-of-the-hugo-awards/
“At the reception just before the Awards Ceremony itself, my lovely and talented wife, who writes for Tor books under her maiden name of L Jagi Lamplighter, and who had been consistently a voice of reason and moderation during the whole silly kerfluffle, approached Mr. Patrick Nielsen Hayden at the party to extent to him the olive branch of peace and reconciliation.
Before she could finish her sentence, however, Mr. Hayden erupted into a swearing and cursing, and he shouted and bellowed at the tiny and cheerful woman I married.”
And you threw everyone under the bus, by nominating crap. Toni’s name was hidden under a pile of crap. You built the pile. Nominating hordes of terrible writers. Terrible editors. One half-decent name got lost in that pile of crap you built. It’s your fault what happened to her.
I think the Guardians of the Galaxy win shows how stupid this argument is. “We’re too upset to do anything other than mindlessly slate vote No Award over everything the Sad Puppies recommended… except Guardians of the Galaxy, because it was cool.”
I think changing posts to “YOU MADE US DO THIS” doesn’t help, but since similar stunts are accepted when done by the Social Justice Advocate types, unless you’re going to come in by quoting where you’ve argued against them for doing that, you don’t have much call to complain when Brad does it. Brad’s obviously angry, because his enemies that played dirty and won a spiteful “victory” are now trying to gloat; just about anyone would be angry.
“Terrible editors.”
Well, they’re no Patrick Nielsen Hayden, that’s for sure.
You made me complain about your comments!
//Civilis on August 24, 2015 at 6:32 am said:
I think changing posts to “YOU MADE US DO THIS” doesn’t help, but since similar stunts are accepted when done by the Social Justice Advocate types, unless you’re going to come in by quoting where you’ve argued against them for doing that, you don’t have much call to complain when Brad does it. //
I’m happy for Brad to delete posts or say that I am not welcome to post here. Fabricating comments in my name is wrong and it is wrong whether done by somebody on the left or the right.
Yeah, he lost and he lost by a lot. However I and nobody else MADE HIM DO IT. He is a grown up. He chose to do this stupid slate stunt and it upset a lot of people and a lot (i.e. THOUSANDS) of fans. Nobody MADE HIM DO THAT. I didn’t but Toni W on the ballot HE DID. Blaming everybody else for his choices is petty and childish.
If he had any honor left he’d remove what he did but he can chose to leave it there if he likes. The fabricated comments say more about his integrity than anything I could say about it.
You made him do it!
So, “maestro”, you are admitting that Sad Puppies was right all along. That Toni Weiskopf deserved an award, but you decided she had to be punished for being liked by the Wrong People.
THEY MODERATED CHRIS! Dirty stinking yellow puppies! I’ll kill them! I’ll….
“Hey, I think I’m going to be all right.”
Oh, shut up! Always stepping on my lines, raining on my parade…. THEY MODERATED CHRIS!
Camestros: everybody saw what you originally wrote, and “YOU MADE US DO THIS” is entirely accurate. You don’t have to like it that I gave your childishness the dignity it deserves, but then, you don’t have to comment here either. Shall I lump you in with Clamps? Maybe if you’re an even bigger dick to me than you’ve already been, Michael Rothman’s kids will change their minds about Fandom.
Chupik: I heard about that. Yup, Patrick Nielsen-Hayden, Emperor Of Worldcons, is a class act.
Snowcrash: shall I lump you in with Clamps too? Get a better argument than “YOU MADE US DO THIS!” and I’ll consider not adding you to the permanent troll list. So far Clamps has been the only guy to make the list. You and Camestros can to. Just keep it up with the “YOU MADE US DO THIS!” shit, and then be butthurt when I give your “logic” what it’s earned. You have an entire blog over at Pravda 770 who love you. Go be with your people.
The Fark mods (if not most of the commentators) agree.
http://www.fark.com/comments/8829618/After-all-controversy-2015-Hugo-Awards-were-finally-presented-last-night-Well-some-of-them-anyway-as-if-our-people-didnt-get-nominated-no-one-should-win-anything-crowd-succeeded-in-their-temper-tantrum
This is getting rich. They are now saying that 2.5K to 3K people are A LOT of people. Now, if you take the sum total of people who read SFF on a regular basis I would in no way classify 3K people as A LOT of them. The puppy kickers are making the mistake of publicizing their own behavior. The more they gloat about burning the awards, the more likely it is that SF readers who were sitting on the side lines decide to punish the toddlers.
Brad, I’m not actually sure how you go from my comment to “YOU MADE US DO IT”.
You used to pride yourself on your non-moderation of your blog, and clearly you’ve rethought that policy. Regardless, your house, your rules. I’m not in any position to make you do anything.
I just wish that you would hold yourself to the same high standard you hold others to.
Snowcrash,
As if you have a standard? Snowcrash, I’ve seen you at Pravda 770. I’ve seen what you say there. Your presence on my blog is that of a troll. In the case of your message above, a concern troll. You, Chris Gerrib, Camestros, and several other Pravda 770 denizens. I gave you the entirety of 7 months to say whatever you wanted, unrestricted. You now choose to selectively outrage over the fact that your childish argument was treated the way a childish argument ought to be treated.
Even I don’t have an unlimited supply of patience with people who have their fingers crossed behind their backs. You come to my blog space with oily words and plastic intention.
Brewer,
I think that’s a result of the “small” ghetto not spending any time looking outside of itself. They actively resist getting bigger because to actually open the doors all the way, and swell to the size of a small Comic Con, would destroy the ability of the Commissars to maintain control. When everybody is allowed to be a Fan (caps f) nobody is a Fan (caps f) and that means we’re all just fans (small f) and that would be a mortal wound for the Commissars and their devotees.
I just want to address something here:
“They actively resist getting bigger because to actually open the doors all the way, and swell to the size of a small Comic Con, would destroy the ability of the Commissars to maintain control.”
I don’t know if you’ve ever worked a convention — if so, you have some clue as to the amount of logistical work that goes into it. If not, I suggest asking a con-runner for some pointers.
Many Comic-Cons are run by a commercial operation with paid staff, for profit, and stay in the same place from year to year. WorldCons are run by a non-profit, with massive turnover in volunteers from year to year, moving from place to place.
I am not aware of any way they could “open the doors” any further — you pay your money, you can go to a WorldCon, just as a ComicCon. What do you want in that regard?
You might want a professionally-run, for-profit WorldCon sitting in one place from year to year — but that is not what WorldCon has been (nor do I think any such thing could justly call itself a “World”-con) and it’s not because a group of fans want to keep themselves “special” — it’s because of practical realities in the way they choose to organize.
Yeah, he lost and he lost by a lot. However I and nobody else MADE HIM DO IT. He is a grown up. He chose to do this stupid slate stunt and it upset a lot of people and a lot (i.e. THOUSANDS) of fans. Nobody MADE HIM DO THAT. I didn’t but Toni W on the ballot HE DID. Blaming everybody else for his choices is petty and childish.
Brad’s clearly taken responsibility for what he’s done. But the people he’s replacing the comments on aren’t taking responsibility for what they’ve done, and that’s what he’s trying to draw attention to. They’re the ones who’ve resorted to review-bombing and slander, the one’s that drove authors to ask for their works to be withdrawn because we liked them, the ones that slate voted No Awards. Further, they’re the one’s trying to blame it all on us, saying effectively “You [Brad and allied fans, the abuse victims] made us [Social Justice Types, the abusers] do it.”
““You [Brad and allied fans, the abuse victims] made us [Social Justice Types, the abusers] do it.””
And here we hit the crux of the problem. Because this isn’t a clear abuser/abused scenario. What we have gotten to, at this point, is a classic feud — where “who started it” has ceased, in many ways, to become relevant to either side, because things done *during* the feud now cry out for revenge.
The only way it’ll stop is if both sides stop poking the other long enough for some sanity to return; sadly, that does not appear likely at all.
You might want a professionally-run, for-profit WorldCon sitting in one place from year to year — but that is not what WorldCon has been (nor do I think any such thing could justly call itself a “World”-con) and it’s not because a group of fans want to keep themselves “special” — it’s because of practical realities in the way they choose to organize.
I opened up the front section of the Washington Post this morning and something on Page A3 immediately caught my eye. I saw a picture of some stereotypical congoers with a caption which I could make out “World… Con” in it.
You’ve trapped in your own logic. Why is a small “amateur con” holding a fan vote to decide the results of what was once probably the most prestigious award for Science Fiction? The Hugo award is still valuable, of course people are going to pay attention to the award. Imagine that one of the larger conventions offered a massive cash prize award for best costume; they may get away with nobody noticing for some time, but once people notice, the genie is out of the bottle and the costume portion of the con is going to become the attraction, and people that care about costumes as creators and fans will keep pouring attention on that con. The genie just got out of the bottle for science fiction and the Hugos, and there’s no putting it back in. You’re going to have to adjust to that reality, either by adjusting to the increased attention (which is good for Science Fiction in general, if bad for the con staff), or by dropping the value of the Hugos, which will happen anyways if you don’t open it up.
Oh, that picture on A3 of the Washington Post? When I read further it was for “Wizard World Comic Con” in Rosemont, Illinois. No mention of WorldCon in the paper.
The only way it’ll stop is if both sides stop poking the other long enough for some sanity to return; sadly, that does not appear likely at all.
I agree. The problem is that the anti-Puppy side had the upper hand (the awards)-; they had nothing to gain from being conciliatory. Likewise, the Puppy side, as the outsiders, had nothing to lose. They were already locked out of the awards by the Tor/SJW Old Boys Club.
The Puppies brought their A Game at nomination time. The Anti-Puppy response could have been to bring the A Game next year. Instead, they killed the award. Even if the Anti-Puppies bring their A Game next year, the Puppies can just kill the awards, because it’s now a legitimate strategy.
LOL. You sound shocked, Brad. Allow me to bloviate for a moment, as an ex-fan that gave up on this 20 years ago.
I feel your pain, I really do. When I gave up on SF it was like some kind of milestone. It started out that one in three new SF novels were sanctimonious SJW lectures aimed exclusively at pissing off guys like me – healthy straight males. I know when I’m not wanted…and so should you.
You’re fighting with idiots. They burned the house down. By now it should be obvious – you can’t share a house with them and live with them. You need your own awards, you need your own publishers and you need your own voice. The thing to remember is that there IS a market here, that the stupid people aren’t going to serve it or even acknowledge it – and you have a golden opportunity to lock it down for yourselves and make a buck in the process. Vox Day is already on that but he’s an asshole and everyone knows it. Even so – he is doing very well for himself. There is no reason in my mind WHATSOEVER that if you, some of your peers (like the ladies that got snubbed at the awards) – turned your effort to it – you would kick ass.
The Hugos for me became meaningless decades ago. They are going to have that SJW stink all over them for decades to come and even you won’t change that. The culture is entrenched, it appeals to a growing market of consumers that have been personally abducted by space aliens, or are enraged and disturbed by their own genitals, or are enraged and disturbed by yours or the colour of your skin.
Side Note: I am chewing through ‘Chaplains War’. It is probably the first SF novel I have read in years. There is an unsavoury undertone of SJW-ism in it but it by no means ruins the novel as it always does with the usual suspects. It is really well done and I will recommend it to others. I hope you sell a million copies and make a million bucks. There are still encouraging sparks of life in the genre but it needs to be handled by rational adults. Stupid people burn down houses when they are in charge of the fire – so you know now what you gotta do. You and those ladies need to get busy.
I’ve said it before: the world is looking in on this thing a lot, and screaming “YOU MADE US DO THIS!” might play well with a few people, but most people who understand how the real world — and being a grown-up — works, are going to look at that and go, “What?”
You put those words in your commenter’s mouths, Brad. In all caps.
Have you at last, sir, no honor?
By the way, Eric Flint, who was there and talked to Toni Weisskopf about it, says the rumors about her walking out of the Hugo ceremony aren’t true.
rsbrandt, Concern troll somewhere else. Read the comments and see Brad addressing your argument. You don’t like it? GTFO.
Brad,
If they’re trolls and ought to be banned because they do nothing but disrupt, as you say (and I’m not sure I disagree with that), then ban them. Sometimes that’s necessary, and it’s your blog, so it’s your judgment on when to do so. In the past, as far as I can tell, you’ve been quite fair about allowing people you don’t agree with to speak their mind.
Editing their comments to say something they didn’t write, even if you think that’s the essence of their argument, is what I object to.
I’m the farthest thing from a Puppy kicker, so what they say has nothing to do with me.
And you threw everyone under the bus, by nominating crap.
Which aspects of “Totalled” by Kary English did you find to be sub-par, and how do you feel they could have been improved upon?
Toni’s name was hidden under a pile of crap.
Which aspects of “On a Spiritual Plain” by Lou Antonelli did you find to be sub-par, and how do you feel they could have been improved upon?
You built the pile.
Which aspects of “Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust, Earth to Alluvium” by Gray Rinehart did you find to be sub-par, and how do you feel they could have been improved upon?
Nominating hordes of terrible writers.
Which aspects of Skin Game by Jim Butcher did you find to be sub-par, and how do you feel they could have been improved upon?
Terrible editors.
Which works in Shattered Shields did you find to be were sub-par, which aspects made them so, and how do you feel the editors could have improved upon them?
One half-decent name got lost in that pile of crap you built.
Which aspects of One Bright Star to Guide Them by John C. Wright did you feel to be sub-par, and how do you feel they could have been improved upon?
It’s your fault what happened to her.
Which works in Abyss & Apex did you find to be sub-par, which aspects made them so, and how do you feel the editors could have been improved upon them?
Also, all the other deserving writers and editors who deserved a Hugo but didn’t get one — because you stole all the noms for your cronies — you threw them under the bus too.
What aspects of Anita Sarkeesian lying about video games on camera would have qualified her work to be nominated for an award for science fiction and fantasy, much less guarantees her work’s right to a slot on the ballot to the extent that any other work getting a slot instead ‘steals’ said slot?
Was your reaction the same when The Quantum Thief by Hannu Rajaniemi was robbed of a nomination by George R.R. Martin’s A Dance With Dragons? What about when Nicola Griffith stole the Best Novelette nomination from Mary Robinette Kowal in 2010?
It’s all your fault.
Your behavior is your choice, as many others have already said. You voted No Award over nearly all entries nominated by people you didn’t like, based only on the fact that people you didn’t like nominated them. If you wish to dispute this fact, please answer the above questions before doing so.
To everyone saying “YOU MADE US DO THIS!”
No one Made you do anything!
No one put a gun to your head.
No one held your family hostage.
No one threatened your livelihood.
YOU chose to do it.
And you PROVED THAT LARRY WAS RIGHT. Politics above the story.
Well, this member of SP can hold her head up and say that I did read the packet. I voted for what I thought was the best (or in one case, least offensive). I didn’t look to see who nominated it. I didn’t run out and check the author/artist’s politics, race, religion, gender, or creed. I went by what I had in front of me. So, who was being “inclusive” and reading for merit, and who was voting based on a political slate?
You seem to be reading a post I didn’t make. Given that my post was juxtaposing your words with that of Dave Freer – someone with whom I think you share some common ground with – on a common topic (moderation policies) I’m not sure what the “childish argument” is.
To everyone saying “YOU MADE US DO THIS!”
No one Made you do anything!
Actually, yes. Brad made them say “YOU MADE US DO THIS!” They didn’t say that. He put those words in their mouths.
Mr. Anti-Censorship.
The only person saying that on this thread is Brad.
So what did happen with Jean Rabe?
You’ve trapped in your own logic. Why is a small “amateur con” holding a fan vote to decide the results of what was once probably the most prestigious award for Science Fiction?
Because they started it, and they haven’t stopped it yet.
And it gained that prestige through the respect of fans across many, many years.
What, pray tell, do you want to replace it with? We already have an SFnal equivalent for the Oscars in written SF with the Nebulas. We have an equivalent of the Viewer’s Choice awards in the Locus awards.
The genie just got out of the bottle for science fiction and the Hugos, and there’s no putting it back in.
That “genie” has been out for a very long time. What’s happened is that SF had gained broader appeal, and people who don’t know about its traditions are discovering them.
What you’re doing is the equivalent of people in the U.S. going, “Hey, this soccer thing is cool, but if you want it to work, you need to add more scoring, and more breaks, and make it more like football!” The people running soccer, and the people running the Hugos, have no need to bend to your requests.
You’re going to have to adjust to that reality, either by adjusting to the increased attention (which is good for Science Fiction in general, if bad for the con staff), or by dropping the value of the Hugos, which will happen anyways if you don’t open it up.
Considering that anyone with $40 can vote on them, unless what you want is the Locus Awards, I don’t see how it’s supposed to be “opened up” further.
Oh, that picture on A3 of the Washington Post? When I read further it was for “Wizard World Comic Con” in Rosemont, Illinois. No mention of WorldCon in the paper.
And if you want the future of fannish culture to be top-down cons that are about producers selling and hyping product to consumers, run for profit, then go enjoy them. I’ll stick with the model we’ve got, which works well enough for the people it serves.
James,
Jean Rabe was the long-suffering editor of the SFWA Bulletin. After the Social Justice minds of our field decided to excoriate Mike Resnick and Barry Malzberg for using the phrase “lady editor” — because apparently this was the worst crime against women in the history of the field, to call Bea Mahaffey a lady and an editor in the same breath — Mike and Barry correctly called those dolts Liberal Fascists.
So of course the way the liberal fascists reacted to being correctly labeled, was to promptly mob the officers of SFWA and have Mike and Barry and Jean thrown off the magazine. Now, technically, I think Jean resigned under protest. But it was still a forcing-out. So, to punish Mike and Barry, Jean got sandbagged.
Wow, sounds so familiar. A woman being thrown under the wheels, so that ideological puritans can punish the Bad Guys.
Anyway, that’s what happened.
I wrote: The only way it’ll stop is if both sides stop poking the other long enough for some sanity to return; sadly, that does not appear likely at all.
(Further quoted words belong to Civilis)
I agree. The problem is that the anti-Puppy side had the upper hand (the awards)-;
Except there is little, if any, evidence of an “anti-Puppy” *side* until (at the earliest) the Puppies decided to nominate someone specifically to annoy other people as much as possible.
And to this day, referring to the “anti-Puppy” side is a misnomer; rather like referring to the “dachshunds” and “anti-dachsunds” when referring to dogs; a small group, declaring everyone who isn’t them (or willing to submit to their positions) a unified enemy. The Morkies and the Irish Wolfhounds both look askance at this. 🙂
they had nothing to gain from being conciliatory. Likewise, the Puppy side, as the outsiders, had nothing to lose. They were already locked out of the awards by the Tor/SJW Old Boys Club.
An assertion which, over and over and over again, has been asked to be demonstrated, only to fall short of anything approximating proof.
“The Puppies brought their A Game at nomination time.”
If “bringing their A game” includes “engaging in behaviors that fans have long-standing objections to, and which they complained had been done to them in secret.”
“The Anti-Puppy response could have been to bring the A Game next year. Instead, they killed the award.”
No, they just brought their A game to the award. Perhaps the Puppies should have done the same, and then they would have won some.
Of course, I don’t believe that last sentence, because it implies that there’s a unified anti-Puppy side, and that the Hugos should become a hostile two-party system, which I find abhorrent. However, why it is legitimate to bring an A game that involves tactics generally despised, while not legitimate to use a rule already in place, is something that has not been adequately explained.
“Even if the Anti-Puppies bring their A Game next year, the Puppies can just kill the awards, because it’s now a legitimate strategy.”
That’s assuming the Puppies can manage to gather enough votes to do so. Of course, what *they* gain from this other than going “neener neener, you wouldn’t let us win when you thought we cheated, so now we’ll destroy everything” is beyond me.
As I said — every side feels grievances. That isn’t going to change. The question is will people be able to get past that. For example, EPH, which means a slate can’t *dominate* a ballot, but can pretty much ensure that a large enough group will get *something* on the ballot, will, I hope, help.
And, of course, even then, we’ll have to figure out how to cope with the conspiratorial thinking; the mindset that goes “My choice didn’t win, though it was clearly the best — it must have been a conspiracy” rather than accepting that, guess what? It’s not people’s favorite choice.
I mean, I know that some authors I love dearly are niche authors, who will not win major awards, or didn’t when it was their time to (since some are dead). And I cope with that. I can even (when feeling particularly snarky) push my glasses down to the end of my nose and say “Oh *that* won a Hugo?”. But I don’t think it’s because there’s a conspiracy to keep down my particular beloved individuals/political views/etc.
A Hugo doesn’t make a work you love any better, nor does not winning one make it worse; the best thing any of us can do to spread the love of SF that *we* love is recommend it, loan it, encourage people to read it — there’s a reason I’ve owned 7 copies of “Nova” and 5 of “Camp Concentration” and 4 of “The Iron Dragon’s Daughter.”
Brad, I’ve got ask this question: Why does it matter? Why does any of this matters? Why does it matter whether or not the Hugos, as you say it, are practically corrupt and beyond saving? Why does it matter whether one group of people get awards over another group of people. Isn’t the real value of a work whether or not someone enjoys it and doesn’t that ultimate translate to sales of said work. You’re a writer who sold a book to Baen publishing which means you’re already ahead of the game than 90% of us. And not only did you sell a book, you’ve sold (reportedly) a second book with Bean making you ahead of 99% of us. That must mean, at the very least, that you sold more than ten times the number of ‘truefans’ out there. All 2500 of them. I know that there’s no way an author can establish a career based on the opinions or prejudice of a small minority of people or in this case, truefans who were cheering. Why cater to a vocal minority of people when there’s a larger fan base to engage with. A larger fan base who doesn’t give two figs whether a story is sci-fi or mystery as long as it’s a good story, with great characters and they can loose themselves for a few hours. As an aspiring author myself, I know that these are the people I want to engage with. I want to have a career as an author in science fiction and fantasy and if that means that I won’t get any rockets because a small vocal minority deemed it so, then so be it. Rather have a few tens of thousands of readers enjoy my book than 2500 people who sit as the gatekeeper to decide what’s good and what’s not. And I know that there’s a healthy appetite for science fiction and fantasy, especially given the success of games/movies such as star trek, interstellar, gravity, deus ex, ex machina, halo, destiny, game of thrones. Those are the people I want to tap into. Not the 2500 people who already have their mind’s set.
The reason I say this is because you seem like a good person Brad, despite what all the naysayers say. Things like this tend to become distracting. Things like this take away from ‘writing the next book’. Ten, fifteen, twenty a hundred years from now, no one will remember sad puppies 3 or the scandal that is the hugos. If what you say is true then the hugos are irrelevant at this point and no amount of intervention can save it. Write the next book. Gives readers the next great adventure and then let everything else fall into place on it’s own.
Analogkid,
Fair enough — and I respect the objection. But as I’ve said elsewhere, even I don’t have an unlimited supply of patience. I am dealing with people who went to the Alinsky Tactics School. Banning them all might be the only recourse I have left. Because you can’t have an honest debate with people who have their fingers crossed behind their backs.
Speaking of which, none of the Alinsky-using, brave and stalwart defenders of Hugo awards, in this thread, have been able to sufficiently explain why it was a good thing for them to napalm a village in order to get one guy: Vox Day. They keep throwing out a lot of red herrings to distract from the fact that they napalmed the village — including women.
Rene,
The “outside” answer is that it doesn’t matter. It’s entirely true, the old saying about how the arguments which burn brightest, are the ones with the lowest stakes.
The “inside” answer is that this matters because it’s about art, and culture, and politics, all rolled into one big conflagration — as the professional world of SF/F and the old legacy world of SF/F fandom rip themselves apart. Most of the supportive mail I’ve gotten since the beginning of the year, has all said more or less the same thing: this is overdue. And I think they’re right. This thing wasn’t the result of one person, or even several people. This thing is the result of decades of smoldering resentments and slights and political disrespect and social disrespect and one-upsmanship and chicanery and egos maneuvering for prestige and influence and the perception of power. And it all came to a final moment on Saturday night, at which time the “True Fandom” went out like Slim Pickens riding an atom bomb.
For myself? My chapter in the drama is more or less concluded. I can never retire from Sad Puppies because until the last Puppy-kicker — who is emotionally invested in hating Sad Puppies, and will spend time and energy on this hatred — dies, there will always be somebody who hates me for having carried the banner this year.
But that doesn’t mean I don’t have a great deal to work on, and to look forward to.
I’ve got more stories coming with Analog and InterGalactic Medicine Show, and I plan for more books with both Baen and WordFire press. I am excited to get all of these things into print, and a whole lot more.
It’s been exhausting, but I am content knowing I stood up for a thing, on principle, at a moment when it was worth standing up.
No everyone will agree with me. But then, I wasn’t doing it because I wanted people to agree with me. I did it because I thought it was the right thing to do.
“Alinsky-using”
I don’t know if I qualify — I’m guessing, from the breadth of your brush, I do, so I’ll take up your challenge.
1) The village wasn’t napalmed. The Hugos are still there, will still be there next year, and the year after that, and so on. If you’re looking for a metaphor, one convoy didn’t make it through, or the local sports team was DSQ’ed from its competition, and all points removed — sort of like the death penalty on a college that engaged in severe recruiting violations.
2) It wasn’t to get one guy. History has shown (e.g. the Hubbard mess — heck, even the Puppies themselves) that large chunks of fandom react poorly to attempts to manipulate Hugo voting. The Puppies’ raison-d’etre, as far as I can tell, is that some such manipulation has been going on — and even in the absence of any useful proof, that accusation was enough to raise hundreds of supporters. Why is it surprising that a blatant attempt should raise even more in reaction to it?
If PNH promoted an “anti-puppy” slate next year to try and keep you off the ballot, I’d tell him to get stuffed — and if that ‘anti-puppy’ slate swept the nominations, I’d do just what I did this year — read it and vote accordingly. But I would sympathize with people, and understand, if they put China Mieville’s “The Dusty Hat” below “No Award” to punish the making of slates.
So, they didn’t napalm the village, and they didn’t do what they did (which was not napalming the village) for reasons other than the ones you claim.
Does that answer your question?
Speaking of which, none of the Alinsky-using, brave and stalwart defenders of Hugo awards, in this thread, have been able to sufficiently explain why it was a good thing for them to napalm a village in order to get one guy: Vox Day.
You mean apart from pointing out that a year of NO AWARDS is hardly “napalming a village”, is well within both the rules and the intention of the Hugos, and the Hugos will survive just fine, especially with EPH in effect 2017?
Keep up with the histrionics, Brad – you’re adorable.
At the very least, I am going to thank the people who have openly admitted that they did not consider actually considering the merits of women’s work, based solely on who thought they were deserving of an award.
First off I want to say that I really liked Chaplains War. I think your writing style is very similiar to Daniel Abraham which is a big compliment from me. He is one of my favorite authors. I like how you have a main character who isn’t a super genius and solves problems as a regular guy without violence. I am Jewish, so I don’t care about the christian references. I think it had some typical first book flaws, but I really liked the style. I don’t see alot of authors do this. To put this in perspective, Larry blows stuff up to solve problems. I have pretty eclectic tastes. I am a Robert Jordan fan boy and I really like Joe Abercrombie because a magic system based on cannabals is too cool not to like. I also thought Three Body Problem was a remarkable hard science fiction novel and I all of Cixin Liu’s books get translated to English. I like that the ‘do you want fries with this degree’ crowd finally supported a book that had actual science in it. They deserve a golf clap.
Didn’t you get nominated for a Campbell and get another Hugo nomination before last year when Larry put you on his slate? I mean dude… the SJWs liked your work. You are probably embarrassed to admit it. Now they just think you are an asshole.
That being said… dude you need some weed. Seriously. I am a conservative and I am supporting the ‘SJWs’ because you guys are being babies. Slates are lame. The way to get more books you like on the ballot is to encourage conservative authors (namely Correia and Ringo) to go to Worldcon. Then fans will follow. This slate thing is stupid.
As far as Toni Weisskopf not winning. SHe was on a slate. She ALSO made another mistake. She didn’t submit anything to explain what she did. Best Editor is best chief executive. I have posted in a number of places that I think Long Form editor award needs reform. We really need guidelines and recommendations on submission. She can’t just post a link to the site and go ‘look at my awesomeness’. Posted this on file770.
1. toni should submit a short 2 page essay or so explaining how the Baen approach to group editing works and why its so useful.
2. 1 editor should submit a short 2 page essay explaining how it works and why Toni is pivotal in this and how Toni specifically improved a few books this year.
3. A couple of authors (recommend a conservative not named Larry Correia or Brad Torgersen. and a liberal) author submit a short essay explaining how the unique Baen approach to editing has improved the book they released this year and what Toni specifically did. I think John Ringo would be a very good choice to submit a short essay.
Toni is a chief executive. Best editor isn’t an award for best executive. Its what you did for specific books that year. She could not have been pivotal in all the books. Come on.. no one can do that. This is also not a life time achievement award. If it was Harriet Rigney is LONG overdue (Wheel of Time, Enders Game, Glen Cook.. enough said).
For those of us not in the business its hard for us to figure out who did what. Just because a book is good it doesnt mean the editor did alot. I have a hunch that Larry Correias latest Monster Hunter book needed less editing work than yours did Brad since you are a first time author and this is another book in a long series.
It only takes like what 50-60 nominations to get someone on Best Editor ? You don’t need a slate to get Toni nominated. She wasn’t nominated before clearly because Baen fans didn’t care enough to nominate. The proposed rule change in 2 years makes it easier to nominate her by the way. Since if you just nominate 1 person in a category all your points go to that category. Alot of people will split their choices.
keep toni off of a slate and just nominate her. Don’t blow her chance by putting her on a stupid slate AND get her and Baen to submit a few things to explain how this ‘team editing’ approach works.
brad if you edit this down your a total dick. Seriously. This is pretty damn fair criticism.
Wyldkat: I, too, read all the finalists in the categories I voted on,and based on that, I decided what to vote and in which order.
You’re right, no one made me do it. I did it voluntarily, because my ethics dictates I only vote on things I know about. That’s also why I didn’t vote on editors, drama or fan categories – I had seen some of the movies, but not all of them, so I didn’t consider myself qualified to pass a judgment.
Having said that, I ended up voting No Award as first option in some categories, and I had it as one of the votes in all the categories I voted on. As far as I can tell (and as even Hugo Awards web page says), that’s a perfectly valid option when you think some of the finalists aren’t worthy of the award. That’s what happened with me.
I did write a few notes about the whole debacle, and also a suggestion on how to proceed: https://plus.google.com/+SamiSundell/posts/gyH9apPLDqr
one other thing.. I think your dumbass kept the Heinein Biography off the nomination list. The book was 15 nominations behind Sarkeesians. The whole twitter warrior sphere was a flutter over your stupid sad puppies so the Heinlein biography didn’t get any play. I really think there would have been more talk about this if not for the stupid said puppies and people in the ‘slate’ would have nominated it. Its just 15 votes.
I have not read the book, but heard it was very good. That is saying alot. Authors are boring. All you guys do is sit in front of keyboards all day. So to make an authors biography interesting requires good work. I think if they included the biography in the packet (its a business decision), it likely would have won. I have seen people rave about the quality. GRRM has said its great.
PNH has been manipulating the Hugos for years, my good sir. But in the quiet fashion. Oh, and larding out a lot of TOR money and goodies in the process. As any good politician knows he should. So, you shot the noisy puppies who came in the door with muddy feet, but the guy you really need to worry about has been eating our of your parlour for twenty years, and growing fat and happy in the process.
Hey, maybe this is the way True Fandom wants it: a small, closed circle of people who enjoy the presence of an El Patron like Patrick. Who abuses your system in subtle ways. But he’s got the coolest car at the drive-in, and everyone who hangs out with him gets to have the cool rub off on them. Until he decides they aren’t useful to him anymore.
Ryan,
The first part of that same biography was on the Hugo ballot a couple years back, and it lost . . . to Chicks Dig Time Lords.
So much for bona fide scholarly effort winning in a competition with fluff.
“PNH has been manipulating the Hugos for years, my good sir. ”
Provide proof, please.
I mean, I doubt you will, since if you *had*, this year, or the year before, you would have gotten a lot more support than you did.
And, indeed, you’re making my point for me: the mere *suggestion*, the simple *accusation* that someone was rigging the Hugos produced enough outrage for the Puppy movement to exist — and you are somehow surprised that there is greater outrage when a blatant and obvious effort to control the Hugos was launched?
So: Would you care to respond to the rest, or shall I take your silence as agreement?
By the way, Brad, didn’t you learn your lesson about presuming to speak for women back when you were making claims about Juliette Wade withdrawing from the slate because of “her fears at being shamed, shunned, and ostracized”, only to have Wade herself come on and brutally slap you down because “you had deceived me and betrayed my confidence”?
We sure as heck haven’t forgotten.
http://crimeandtheforcesofevil.com/blog/2015/05/sad-puppy-brad-torgensen-lies-like-crazy-and-juliette-wade-calls-him-on-it/
Ryan, RE: rules changed for Best Editor.
Take it up with Kevin Standlee, who seems to be the guy always soliciting people with complaints to formalize those complaints into something that can be tabled at a business meeting.
sschwartzoak, I’m still puzzled by why people felt the SP/RP folks tried to manipulate the nomination process. The Hugos are supposed to receive nominations from the fans. There was apparently only a comparatively small group of fans that tended to participate. Naturally, it got a bit cliquish.
Larry Correia decided to try to get more participation to try to have a more diverse set of works nominated so he openly asked his fans to sign up and nominate (Sad Puppies 1). Each year that effort has grown as more people became interested and participated. I personally became aware of SP2, but wasn’t engaged enough to participate in the Hugos until after the 2015 nominations were announced. Given that Larry, Brad, Sarah, etc. had been openly engaged in trying to get more fans to participate that doesn’t seem like manipulation. The Rabid Puppy contingent developed after SP3 started and also began promoting the contest.
The fans that opposed SP/RP nominees were able to promote the awards widely enough to find 2500-3000 people to slate vote No Award so they evidently were able to encourage more people to participate. There was absolutely nothing wrong with encouraging more people to register and vote. They certainly could have done this in the run up to the nominations closing. It’s not like SP3 or RP were hiding their actions or stuffing the nominations box.
I think the slate-voting of No Award by many who openly stated with pride that they weren’t going to consider the Puppy-supported nominees was foolish and deeply mean-spirited. You say that you honestly read everything and presumably fairly evaluated all the candidates for long and short form editor so I’ll take you at your word you weren’t one of those. Looking at the results and the social media postings, it’s clear that much of the voting was done that way.
The RP folks had a slate for nominations and voting. I didn’t see one for any of the SP authors. I saw people over and over again saying “read the works and vote as you see fit”. I did that, and am quite appalled that many of my considered votes were nullified by thousands of slate voters who decided to angrily No Award entire sets of nominees without even considering them.
It came across as a spiteful action by people who took the nominations process for granted and were unhappy that they didn’t do more to grow active participation until afterwards when they realized the SP/RP participants had become quite numerous. That’s not defending the Hugos or “punishing slates”, it’s throwing a tantrum. Toss in the unpleasant behavior exhibited at the award ceremony….cheering for No Award? Scolding people that began to express their disapproval of the No Awards, but saying applause for it was okay? Well, that was just shameful.
Ah, but herein lies the core of my disillusionment. Yes, I was the triple-nominee in 2012, and the curtain was pulled back for me, and it became a question of, “Here is the list of rings and asses you have to kiss, to become a ‘regular’ Hugo nominee and/or winner,” and I was personally revulsed. That, combined with the fact several agents and editors admitted to me that the Hugos don’t play a factor in sales, or in contracting, and I walked away wondering, “What is this thing everyone covets, and yet the prestige seems hollow?”
Now, I could have simply walked out and walked away. But when it became clear that SF/F as a profession had been enveloped by the wider culture war — call it the Social Justice movement, or whatever label you want to slap on it — the Hugos became important again, because they are a touchstone that everyone recognizes; and they had becoming increasingly taken over by identirarians.
The reason Ringo doesn’t go to Worldcon is because he’s not going to spend money to go and get treated like a second-class citizen. This is why many Baen authors go to Libertycon. If you’re going to travel to a con, you at least want to go somewhere you’ll be appreciated. Worldcon is an environment which lets you know very quickly if you “fit” or not.
For myself, I’d like to see the Hugo awards honor storytelling before ideology, or demographics, or who-you-know. Those who rely almost entirely on being nominated and winning for ideology, demographics, and who-you-know, were highly offended that an open group of scrumming radicals decided to upset the script this year. A great many long-time fans, authors, even some SMOFs and editors, all contacted me to say, “Thank you, this has been overdue.”
My only unpleasant surprise — at the end — has been watching the True Fans obliterate their precious thing, in order to save their precious thing. We’ll see if they do it again next year. At which point it won’t be me the True Fans have to worry about.
Jill, ah, but you see, it was all necessary to protect the Hugos from harm. The Hugos were being held hostage . . . so they shot the hostage.
Well said, Jill. Thank you for writing everything you wrote.
CPaca, to take you seriously, I’d have to believe you actually cared about anything other than being a complete dick in any conversation in this space. Red herring, again, dude. The keepers of the true flame — all 2,500 of them, including their SJW hirelings — shot the hostage to save the hostage. In the process they shot all the editors and authors along the way. Because if the “right” people can’t keep the award out of the hands of the “wrong” people, then clearly the best solution is to ensure nobody gets anything. Yup. Brilliant, mature, adult, and entirely classy strategy.
Jill, I’ll try and answer:
Larry Correia decided to try to get more participation to try to have a more diverse set of works nominated so he openly asked his fans to sign up and nominate (Sad Puppies 1). Each year that effort has grown as more people became interested and participated. I personally became aware of SP2, but wasn’t engaged enough to participate in the Hugos until after the 2015 nominations were announced. Given that Larry, Brad, Sarah, etc. had been openly engaged in trying to get more fans to participate that doesn’t seem like manipulation. The Rabid Puppy contingent developed after SP3 started and also began promoting the contest.
I’ll start by pointing out that in SP2, Larry specifically nominated someone not because of their quality, but because he felt it would annoy the rest of the community — which is already a corruption of the process and goals.
Then you get RP, where people were told “nominate these works, exactly”. Not “read, and if you like, nominate”, but “nominate these things” — and very explicitly in the context of a culture war. Not even “We like them, and think you will too!” (indeed, there has been a very conspicuous absence of Puppy leaders explaining *why* they picked the works they did), but “vote for these because I tell you too/it’ll annoy these people/etc.”
To give you a specific example: I’ve been a possible nominator for years; but only rarely nominated, in years when I felt I’d read enough to make useful nominations. If I’d only read 10-15 works in a year, nomination was a bit tricky, because unless one of them was truly *great*, how could I be sure I was nominating the best works?
Slate voting, especially of the “vote for this for ” breaks that, and breaks the system that relies on people voting their own individual opinions.
That’s why people think it was manipulating — and, indeed, the Puppy leaders *know* it’s manipulating, they just felt they could do it better than the shadowy cabals they thought existed to keep them down.
The fans that opposed SP/RP nominees
Minor note: Many of them opposed the notions of slate-voting, rather than specifically the Puppies. We’ve seen this before in SF.
were able to promote the awards
The awards were amply promoted. Many, many people knew — and either did not feel strongly enough, or did not feel informed enough, to participate.
widely enough to find 2500-3000 people to slate vote No Award so they evidently were able to encourage more people to participate. There was absolutely nothing wrong with encouraging more people to register and vote. They certainly could have done this in the run up to the nominations closing. It’s not like SP3 or RP were hiding their actions or stuffing the nominations box.
Except that adding 5 voters for every 1 the Puppies did, if they asked them to nominate their consciences (and nomination requires more work than voting — the voters need to read a shortlist), would not have prevented the slate from working. People with a philosophical objection to slates can’t just bring in more people to overwhelm them.
I think the slate-voting of No Award by many who openly stated with pride that they weren’t going to consider the Puppy-supported nominees was foolish and deeply mean-spirited. You say that you honestly read everything and presumably fairly evaluated all the candidates for long and short form editor so I’ll take you at your word you weren’t one of those. Looking at the results and the social media postings, it’s clear that much of the voting was done that way.
Imagine the Tour de France was an election, rather than a race — and it was revealed that, though many people had been *suspected* of doping, one team announced that they were going to dope through the race, because other teams (unproven) did, and if that violated the spirit of the rules, so what? They could find a loophole. And then, to top it all off, announced that their riders hadn’t agreed to this, but were going to do it anyway.
People voting to punish that team viewed themselves as punishing cheaters — which any system like this has a way to do.
The RP folks had a slate for nominations and voting. I didn’t see one for any of the SP authors. I saw people over and over again saying “read the works and vote as you see fit”. I did that, and am quite appalled that many of my considered votes were nullified by thousands of slate voters who decided to angrily No Award entire sets of nominees without even considering them.
Well, imagine how the nominators who spent hours reading, considering, etc. felt when their nominations were nullified by people who voted because someone else told them to vote that way, doing none of the work.
That’s not defending the Hugos or “punishing slates”, it’s throwing a tantrum.
So, then, what recourse do peopel who don’t like slates have? Should they have sat there, watched what they felt was a set of works on the ballot dishonestly win, and then…well, since they think slates are wrong, they can’t counter-slate, so…they used the one tool they had for their recourse.
I, personally, think that none of the original puppy-slated works deserved to be on the ballot (Vox Day’s claims about 3BP only highlight the problem of slates, as I’ve said before), and regret the time I spent honestly trying to judge if any of them were worth it.
Finally — compared to the gloating after the nominations came out, and the rhetoric that has followed, cheering for No Award seems a minor matter indeed.
Oak,
Ultimately, it becomes a question of relevance. The Hugos and Worldcon may survive, but what will that look like when PNH and his like-minded fellow travelers have again manipulated the rules, and so on and so forth, until all the “wrong” people have been kept out of the process? What’s left? The Hugos will have been painted into a corner that is at the far end of the giant building encompassing the entertainment arts. And it will be the dustiest, most neglected of corners.
Maybe this is what “True Fandom” wants most? To be overlooked and ignored by the big world, so that Patrick and others can play at being emperors in a terrarium?
Hi Ryan.
First of all, this:
one other thing.. I think your dumbass kept the Heinein Biography off the nomination list.
is incorrect.
One thing to note is that vol. 2 of Bill Patterson’s Heinlein biography still wouldn’t have made the ballot; it’s 6th place on the Puppy-free list.
Nice try, though.
Moving on to the other comment of yours I saw:
[Skipping the part at the beginning where you try to make Brad think you’re not a troll. Go ahead and keep insulting people though.]
I am a conservative and I am supporting the ‘SJWs’ because you guys are being babies.
You’re sounding an awful lot more like a concern troll to me right now.
Slates are lame. The way to get more books you like on the ballot is to encourage conservative authors (namely Correia and Ringo) to go to Worldcon. Then fans will follow.
Really? Because Correia’s talked about how he was treated when he did go to Worldcon. Between that and the display of immature behavior on display this year, why should they go?
As far as Toni Weisskopf not winning. SHe was on a slate.
Here’s the thing a lot of people seem to be having trouble with: that slate? Was a list of recommendations. Nobody was forced to vote for anything they didn’t agree with. And if they’d done what the people cheering No Award did, Adventure Time and Regular Show would have gotten a lot more votes (Seriously, I can’t even find Regular Show on the statistics.)
Toni Weisskopf had the third highest number of nominating votes this year, at 368 (assuming I’m reading the stats right, anyway). Only Skin Game and Guardians of the Galaxy got more. Most of the other Puppy nominees received nominations in the 200s or lower, which tells me it might just possibly be more than the slate that did it.
Posted this on file770.
A true bastion of conservatism.
It only takes like what 50-60 nominations to get someone on Best Editor ?
It used to. There are more voters now, so it looks like the finalists had between 160-370 nominations this year. And taking Toni off that list drops the range immediately to 160-300 for the remaining nominees.
You don’t need a slate to get Toni nominated.
2010 Hugos: 18 nominations
2011 Hugos: 19 nominations (and actually would have made finalist that year if one more person had declined. Clearly she was robbed of that slot on the ballot.)
2012 Hugos: 18 nominations
2013 Hugos (Sad Puppies 1): 50 nominations. Toni makes the bottom of the list. Everyone proceeds to lose their minds.
She wasn’t nominated before clearly because Baen fans didn’t care enough to nominate.
Well, you’re not wrong. Looks like there were about 18 or 19 die-hards still holding out hope that Toni could get nominated. Now more people care. What’s the problem?
The proposed rule change in 2 years makes it easier to nominate her by the way.
‘Kay. So you won’t mind if we let people know the option exists? Ohhh wait, that’s a slate and thus bad and pushing more deserving people off the ballot.
keep toni off of a slate and just nominate her.
So if I were to make a blog post next year listing people and works I think would be deserving of a Hugo and asking people to look through and consider voting for th- oh wait Mr. Correia and Mr. Torgersen did that and everybody hated on them and voted down everything recommended to the extent of doubling the number of No Awards the Hugos have had in one night. Dang.
CPaca, to take you seriously, I’d have to believe you actually cared about anything other than being a complete dick in any conversation in this space.
Wait – let me explain to you what you really mean by that…
More than anything else, this entire shameful episode—including the SJW remarks here—illustrates the First Law of Social Justice Warriors: They always lie. If it wasn’t obvious before the other night’s Worldcon award ceremonies, it’s certainly obvious from what they are saying here.
SJW’s ALWAYS LIE.
Fox, you’re trying to reason with a pig. Remember: “SJW’s always lie.” That includes showing up as concern trolls. So of COURSE what he says is bullshit.
Regarding the condemnation for the YOU MADE US – after seeing all the crap Torgersen has put up with for the past seven months, I really can’t blame him.
Yeah, but I bet this is what he’ll be known for and what’ll be trumpeted on every SJW blog from here on it: Straw Torgersen the censorus hypocrite. You can’t win: slip up once and they’ll bury you, and if you don’t slip up they’ll misinterpret or invent something.
Fox, you’re trying to reason with a pig.
I know, but it’s still dearly-needed practice for me.
Blaming everybody else for his choices is petty and childish.
You mean how you excuse the mass No Awarding by claiming it was Brad’s fault?
IOW, Brad’s editing of comments like that to “YOU MADE ME DO IT” is an accurate summation.
I’m with Paul Weimer and analogkid. If you’re not going to show what people actually said, then just delete it. Don’t put other words in their mouths.
“The first part of that same biography was on the Hugo ballot a couple years back, and it lost . . . to Chicks Dig Time Lords.”
The Heinlein bio, as others have noted, was 11th in the nominations, so it wouldn’t have made the ballot.
Instead, we would have had Chicks Dig Gaming and a Tropes vs. Women video.
Actually, yes. Brad made them say “YOU MADE US DO THIS!” They didn’t say that. He put those words in their mouths.
IOW, progs don’t like their “shorter” tactic used against them… especially when it’s used to accurately summarize what the prog said.
My heart bleeds… really.
(Though I’d rather he simply put “Editor’s Note: IOW, they mean ‘YOU MADE US DO THIS'” at the end. OTOH, with the usual comment vanishing/disemvowelling used by prog blogs it may be a matter of karma for you guys. So sad.)
“Ultimately, it becomes a question of relevance. The Hugos and Worldcon may survive, but what will that look like when PNH and his like-minded fellow travelers have again manipulated the rules, and so on and so forth, until all the “wrong” people have been kept out of the process? ”
Well, considering that the last attempt at “manipulation” results in, if they care to pursue it, a near-guarantee of one slot per award for the Puppies, they don’t seem to be working very hard at keeping the “wrong” people out of the process.
And the answer will be, they’ll be as relevant as SF fans make them. Ironically, I suppose we should thank you — because what I’ve seen a lot of this year reminds me of the song “Big Yellow Taxi”: Don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone. Because a lot of fans took, I think, the idea that the Hugos would go on without their input for granted, until they woke up and realized that they’d gone sideways — and they’ll be awake to that possibility now.
“Fox, you’re trying to reason with a pig. Remember: “SJW’s always lie.” That includes showing up as concern trolls. So of COURSE what he says is bullshit.”
Congratulations on achieving epistemic closure.
Thanks, Bob. It’s been a very crazy experience, becoming the object of the Two Minute Hate. I am not sure some of the more oily snakes in the pit realize that Orwell wrote a warning, not an instruction manual. I am quite sure the committed Social Justice zealots will keep me filed in the ever-expanding BAD PEOPLE category, forever. Honestly, that’s not a bad category to be in, because that’s where the bulk of the human race ends up anyway. One thing about zealots: they eventually realize that the vast majority of people can never live up to the zealots’ standards, so they conclude it’s the human race itself that’s broken, and in need of “fixing.” So I’d rather be in the box with the rest of everybody, than on the other side with the zealots — who don’t really understand what justice means anyway.
Only Two Minutes, Brad? It’s more like they sometimes pause to catch their breath for two minutes then continue seething at you and others…
You didn’t make us do this.
You made No Award the least bad option available to us.
I’ve been a Hugo voter for six years, making my nominations as an individual in good faith and always seeing some of them on the ballot. This year, because of bloc voting, 15% of the nominators filled the entire ballot while 85% of us chose almost none.
To make the strongest possible protest against bloc voting, I voted No Award above all slate nominees. It wasn’t something I got much joy in — helping someone win a rocket is more fun — but there is one thing about the No Award victories I do cheer.
Your pal Theodore Beale told Wired of the Puppies campaign, “All this has ever been is a giant Fuck You — one massive gesture of contempt.”
So I celebrate the defeat of that. The No Award option helped us protect the Hugos from a group whose goal is to destroy them.
We’ll keep protecting them as long as it takes for the Puppies to get bored and find some other punch bowl to crap in. See you next year.
“Congratulations on achieving epistemic closure.”
You seem to think “SJWs” means “not us” (as if “us” was politically well-defined.) No. SJW means a proponent of a specific, vicious, and obnoxious ideology.
Chester: LOL! Truth. Truth!
“You seem to think “SJWs” means “not us” (as if “us” was politically well-defined.) No. SJW means a proponent of a specific, vicious, and obnoxious ideology.”
Save that most people identified as such by others don’t actually follow much of that ideology. That may be what you think it means, but that’s not how it’s regularly *used*.
No, they don’t. Scalzi and Teresa Nielsen-Hayden have done this for years. But I guess it’s okay when they do it?
Eh, I’ve learned that people determined to troll me will seek the tiniest of excuses to become outrageously butthurt.
But I also think the honest critics had a point. I’ve been going light today. My fury over what has been done to Toni Weisskopf is now down to a permanent stamp on my hull plating. Not gone. Not ever gone. But the iron has cooled.
out of curiosity, do you feel any remorse over having blocked Eugie Foster’s last chance for a Hugo? Given that she died?
Danny: that’s a “Have you stopped beating your wife yet?” question. Nice try. Troll harder.
RCade: “Your pal Theodore Beale told Wired of the Puppies campaign, “All this has ever been is a giant Fuck You — one massive gesture of contempt.”
Nice attempt to conflate the two Puppy movements there. You’re a regular Michael Moore.
Two pleas to the sad puppies (given the rabid puppies don’t give a kitten’s caboodle for the Hugos, they just like smearing poo on the walls and laughing about it, this isn’t for them):
1) Please check out EPH and 4/6.
You can find both of those proposals here:
http://sasquan.org/business-meeting/agenda/
EPH is written to prevent slates from winning. It isn’t a case of someone manually going through the votes and checking what they think is a vote from a slate. In the case that Brad is correct and Tor has been sponsoring a secret slate, Tor’s secret slate will also be neutralized – just as any puppy slates, SJW slates, SS slates, USSR slates, etc., will be effectively neutralized. People who better understand the maths have fully explained this elsewhere.
2) Next year, please put up a recommended reading list, not a slate.
I for one would be excited to see and check out what works you are stoked on. “Wisdom from My Internets” is obviously not one – that was an attempt to poke your SJWs in the eye. Maybe John C. Wright has written some worthwhile material, but I bounced off “The Golden Age” when I first attempted to read it, found “The Parliament of Beast and Birds” to be the Sci-Fi equivalent of Christian Rock, and couldn’t handle his tone or overly verbose style, in general. To nominate him for so many awards was ludicrous. There were some Puppy works I put above No Award, but not many. I’ve been poking around in the Puppy field since the slates were announced and I’ve found some good stuff doing so (Kloos, for instance, who I don’t think necessarily deserved a Hugo, but neither did Scalzi, IMO, despite also writing fun MilSF).
Seriously, if you just put out a recommended list that is not a wink-nudge slate, and spend more time talking about whatever great book you’re reading than about how persecuted white, male Christians are, a large chunk of your “puppy-kickers” would suddenly become puppy-petters.
Beale’s one face of the movement and Torgersen’s another. Annie Bellet put it well in that Wired piece when she said she told Torgersen, “Dude, you’re in the same car, and Vox Day is driving.”
The bloc of voters that rejected the slate (or “list of recommendations” if you prefer) and voted “no award” did not discriminate. No one was singled out enough to reasonably be considered “thrown under a bus.” Man or woman, gay or straight, white or black, all who found themselves on the slate were rejected. Bloc voting drove not a bus but a steamroller over pride, individual aspiration, recognition, admiration and every other basic human drive in play.
Before that makes you too angry, please recognize that you tried to drive that same steamroller. Your slate of nominations forced decent candidates out of contention who in any other year would have won the right to proudly post “Hugo nominee” on their blog. And before you suggest that your motivations were of a higher order please note that I read here the comments going in to the construction of the list. Some who were listed were very deserving. Others appear to have been listed just to make a point. Your road was no higher than theirs.
I do understand your anger, though. It’s not just that you started out with good principle in mind and lost; it’s that the winners were guilty of the most classless foul there is: excessive celebration.
Danny-the-troll said to Brad: “Out of curiosity, do you feel any remorse over having blocked Eugie Foster’s last chance for a Hugo? Given that she died?”
That question is just so *filled* with irony…not that Danny would be able to either spot or understand it.
Hey Rogers. Rabid Puppy here. Thanks for giving your personal testimony showing that SJW’s Always Lie.
Alan says “The bloc of voters that rejected the slate and voted ‘no award’ did not discriminate….Man or woman, gay or straight, white or black, all who found themselves on the slate were rejected….Some who were listed were very deserving.”
Well that mighty generous of you, Alan. Talk about proving the Puppies’ POINT! LOL, you clueless idiot.
Hey, ct236 — do point out the “lie” in what was said. And remember — a misunderstanding? Not a lie. An accurate statement that gives a different impression at first glance? According to your own Vox Mustela, not a lie, but rhetoric. A difference of opinion? Not a lie.
So, do, please, demonstrate the “lie”.
“Talk about proving the Puppies’ POINT!”
Nompe. That’s proving that people will take what they consider to be cheating seriously enough that they punish people who are only associated with it. Unless the puppies were trying to argue “Hey, if we cheat, you’ll punish us!” that doesn’t prove their point one bit.
(I note, BTW, that I suspect the Puppies would be complaining if only white male authors who were slated had been “no awarded” — so this was the classic “Heads I win, tails you lose” rhetorical dishonesty; if you no-award the women, we complain you’re throwing them under the bus. If you don’t, we complain that you’re showing your bias. Sorry, not playing your little game.)
Hi, sschwartzoak, I appreciate your answer from 8/24 1:25 pm and will try respond in 4 chunks to keep this from being too unwieldy. 1) the SP campaign, 2) the RP campaign, 3) Slate voting, 4) the incivility at the awards ceremony
1) you mention that Larry Correia started SP1 by nominating “someone not because of their quality, but because he felt it would annoy the rest of the community — which is already a corruption of the process and goals.” I was unaware of the SP campaign until late in the SP2 stage so I can’t speak from personal experience. My understanding from reading up on the subject is that he nominated people & works that he personally liked. He had formed the opinion that the small group of people that tended to be heavily featured at the Hugos and Worldcon overall were ideologically hostile to authors that were politically conservative and works that were less “literary” (a.k.a. perhaps more widely appealing commercially). Larry Correia tends to write a lot and very lengthy blog posts and sometimes he dashes things off quickly. I think it’s possible that something he said may have come across as “I nominated people to tick the clique off” when what was meant was “I nominated people that I liked and I knew that the clique would be annoyed”. I don’t think that’s a violation of the spirit of the Hugos – we’re supposed to nominate things we think are good, and there have to be allowances for differences in taste. It’s a big genre.
He felt that his point was made when he succeeded in getting a few nominations in and there was great consternation on the part of the small group that tended to run things.
Somewhere I dimly remember reading that when he ran the SP2 campaign he tried to solicit more ideas, but it was still pretty much that he was nominating works he was familiar with and liked. I recall reading that he was pleased when Brad took it on and began looking at a wider array of categories and more diverse areas of the genre.
I don’t know Larry Correia or Brad Torgersen personally. There’s a limit to how much you can know someone just reading their words. However, I have been reading Larry Correia’s blog periodically for over a year and Brad Torgersen’s periodically since April. My gut feeling is that they’re being honest about wanting to see a wider array of works and people recognized. Encouraging greater fan involvement and get them reading and nominating more things was a way to do that.
My dear ct236 (if that’s your real name): I am definitely clueless — I have no clue why you would think, given my comment, that the puppies had no point. I was merely pointing out that the puppies and their opponents played essentially the same game. Brad is understandably sad that Toni didn’t collect her win, but his slate ensured that other deserving candidates weren’t considered.
Let me dumb it down for you: bloc voting is the enemy. Does that help?
Oak, I know you want to play move-the-goalpost. It’s what SJW’s do. But I’m not into playing those games, so I’ll simply point out the following lies lofted by Rogers:
Rogers said: “Beale’s one face of the movement and Torgersen’s another.”
This is an effort to conflate Rabid Puppies with Sad Puppies. Everyone, including you and Rogers, is aware that the two groups are different. You have been told so many times by both Correia and Torgersen. Rogers and you, and people like you, think you gain an advantage by attaching Vox Day to Larry and Brad by conflating the two groups. I don’t care, but it is a lie to do so, and have been informed of the differences many times in the past: The two groups have different people involved, have different leadership, and have different aims despite the overlapping desire to defeat and expunge the politically correct clique that currently controls the awarding of Hugos and which seek to impose politically correct Diversity GroupThink on science fiction writers and fans. Your side of thought-controllers is going to lose, and what you all did the other evening at the awards ceremony is a nice boost in that direction.
Another lie? Rogers said: “Annie Bellet put it well in that Wired piece when she said she told Torgersen, ‘Dude, you’re in the same car, and Vox Day is driving.’” It is a continuation of the above lie, using Allie Bellet’s little prejudice, once again attempting to conflate the two Puppy groups as one (oh yes, they do share the same kingdom and genus, there is that I suppose).
So like I said, Oak, SJW’s Always Lie. It is one of your most permanent and endearing qualities.
I’ll respond more fully later,, ct236 — but first tell me what my specific ideological position is? (After all, analogkid above said that SJWs have a clear and identifiable one) — since after all, you can’t know I’m an SJW without such a definition, unless your definition is “anyone who disagrees with you”, in which case we’re back to my congratulating you on epistemic closure.
Hi, sschwartzoak, I appreciate your answer from 8/24 1:25 pm and will try respond in 4 chunks to keep this from being too unwieldy. 1) the SP campaign, 2) the RP campaign, 3) Slate voting, 4) the incivility at the awards ceremony
2) I caught up on the SP3 campaign right around when the nominations were announced and the people who are often called the “True Fans” or “Trufen” (not sure of the idioms here) reacted angrily. It was only then that I heard of the RP campaign. While I chuckled initially looking at their logo which was so clearly a spinoff of the SP3 logo, it was quickly apparent they had a totally different approach and potentially goals. Here again, it’s hard to accurately ascribe motives to other people I don’t personally know.
My impression is that Vox Day/Theodore Beale profoundly disagreed with some of the previous winning works and he was offended at having been placed below No Award in the final vote for SP1 or SP2. Losing was understandable (he’s not everyone’s cup of tea, to put it mildly), but placing 6th out of 5 candidates (below No Award) irked him. He doesn’t seem to be someone who shrugs that sort of thing off. His campaign was definitely different and did have an explicit slate. His supporters seem to have been the margin of “victory” in some cases getting candidates on the ballot.
VD/TB has a much more aggressive style, and it’s my understanding that Larry, Brad, and Sarah have tried to persuade him to tone it down and not threaten to blanket No Award everything in 2016 if things didn’t go well in 2015. I agree with you that VD/TP and the RP folks took great pleasure in tweaking the “in group” with the nominations they made, but I also think they thought well of the people & works they nominated.
The 2015 nominations/voting would have been a far less controversial if RP hadn’t sprung up. No doubt about that. However, it’s not fair to hold the SP folks accountable for the RP folks. They’re separate efforts and it’s been my impression that the SP organizers would have preferred if VD/TB had chosen to call his group something distinctly different. Larry Correia got VD/TB involved in one of the earlier SP campaigns by nominating him for something because he said he’d genuinely liked one of his books. The subsequent involvement by VD/TB and the RP folks appears to have been an independent decision.
Objections to the RP tactics are fair game, but that shouldn’t be laid at the door of Larry and Brad. VD/TB and his crew are pretty clearly marching to their own beat.
Oh, what the heck — I have some time now:
“This is an effort to conflate Rabid Puppies with Sad Puppies. Everyone, including you and Rogers, is aware that the two groups are different.”
There is also massive evidence of overlap between them. A “movement” does not need a formal membership list; their goals, their nominations, their messaging — were often in close alignment.
So, no; not a lie. A disagreement. Perhaps even a rhetorical trick.
Now, a *lie* would be to say that I know something which I do not know. As you just did.
“Another lie? Rogers said: “Annie Bellet put it well in that Wired piece when she said she told Torgersen, ‘Dude, you’re in the same car, and Vox Day is driving.’” It is a continuation of the above lie, using Allie Bellet’s little prejudice, once again attempting to conflate the two Puppy groups as one (oh yes, they do share the same kingdom and genus, there is that I suppose). ”
He quoted Annie Bellet. He made an (as far as I know, and you do not dispute) true statement that she said what she said. You *disagree* with what she said, but that doesn’t make Rogers a liar.
In other words, no, you don’t have a lie; you have a difference of opinion/interpretation, and a quotation you disagree with.
Try again some other time.
(Oh, and as a footnote: It’s quite possible that the various Puppy leaders lied in what they said — why should they get any benefit of the doubt because *you* choose to believe them?)
One of the things that makes the Sad and Rabid Puppies two faces of the same movement is the employment of overheated, angry, tribe-reinforcing rhetoric like yours.
Calling people like me SJWS, CHORFs and other names because we object to the bloc voting campaign is another.
When Sad Puppies 3 was announced I was sympathetic to the idea that Hugo voters might be overlooking some worthy nominees. I like some of the same types of SF works that Correia and Torgersen do. I’m happy to read conservatives when they write something good. I’ve got two Monster Hunter books sitting her on my desk in my to-read pile.
But because I think the ballot takeover sucked, I’ve been called an evil lying SJW for months. That insult means nothing to me. I don’t even have a strong sense of what it’s supposed to mean. I guess it makes people like you happy to say it, though, because you go on and on about it like John Belushi ranting on Animal House.
Hi, sschwartzoak, I appreciate your answer from 8/24 1:25 pm and will try respond in 4 chunks to keep this from being too unwieldy.
Glad to! And I know I’m also long-winded, so thank you for splitting it up.
) you mention that Larry Correia started SP1 by nominating “someone not because of their quality, but because he felt it would annoy the rest of the community — which is already a corruption of the process and goals.”
Sorry — I must have been unclear. It was SP2, when Correia put Ted Beale on the list, stating that offense was part of the motivation.
I think it’s possible that something he said may have come across as “I nominated people to tick the clique off” when what was meant was “I nominated people that I liked and I knew that the clique would be annoyed”. I don’t think that’s a violation of the spirit of the Hugos – we’re supposed to nominate things we think are good, and there have to be allowances for differences in taste. It’s a big genre.
It’s possible. However, it’s still a lousy motivation for nominating someone for a literary award. It also opens up the just and fair response of voting him down because he wasn’t engaged in the spirit of the rules.
My gut feeling is that they’re being honest about wanting to see a wider array of works and people recognized. Encouraging greater fan involvement and get them reading and nominating more things was a way to do that.
Except that producing a slate *reduces* fan involvement, and it certainly reduces the diversity of works being recognized.
Furthermore, looking at the slate eventually pushed, it’s very hard to argue that it was a “best SF I think this year” vs. a “Best SF people near to me wrote/published/etc.” by and large. Again, a lousy way to run a campaign for a literary award.
Indeed, if the goal had been greater fan involvement, there would have been a much greater correlation between the suggested works when he called for them and the resultant slate then there actually was.
On the SP/RP thing: However, it’s not fair to hold the SP folks accountable for the RP folks.
Well, I sure didn’t see a bunch of people calling Beale’s work unjust, unfair, etc. I did see a lot of people defending him from the SP side, and accusing “CHORFs/SJWs/etc.” of injustice.
It would not have been fair had they attempted to draw more than a hair’s-breadth difference between them. But that’s not what happened, at least in the public eye.
And yes — had it not been for RP, SP might have gotten some works on the ballot, but they wouldn’t have run the table. And people would be a lot less upset with them.
It’s why I encourage people to support E Pluribus Hugo, which will significantly reduce the chance of slates owning entire categories, while ensuring that organizing will lead to representation. Then we can have the kind of diverse ballot, and high fan engagement, that I’m told the SPs want.
If that’s where it ends up, I’ll be delighted. If a SP ballot movement gets Gene Wolfe on the Hugo ballot, I’ll be thrilled — provided that it doesn’t do so by swamping everything else out.
Maestro Fitzman on August 23, 2015 at 5:42 pm said:
(Re: Toni)
She should’ve spoken out against you and Vox when you tried to destroy the Hugos.
There’s no way she deserved a Hugo for her cowardice.
– – – –
I think that speaks volumes.
Let me dumb it down for you: bloc voting is the enemy.
Unless it’s your side bloc voting No Award to keep the ‘bad’ people out, right?
@NancyG: Looks like more of the “YOU MADE US DO IT” bleating.
Hi, sschwartzoak, I appreciate your answer from 8/24 1:25 pm and will try respond in 4 chunks to keep this from being too unwieldy. 1) the SP campaign, 2) the RP campaign, 3) Slate voting, 4) the incivility at the awards ceremony
3) My impression is that part of your ill feeling with the 2015 nominations is that you have a very serious, idealistic view of the Hugo process. You say that you’d rarely nominated over the years because you hadn’t always read enough to feel comfortable that you were making good nominations. That speaks very well of your dedication to the process and a desire to only reward good candidates. Looking at it from the perspective of an outsider to the process but a long time fan of SF/F, this appears to be a culture clash in multiple ways. Literary SF/F vs. less literary SF/F. Long term “True Fans” vs. fans that weren’t as plugged into the Worldcon culture. Then there’s a whole spectrum of how “good” gets defined.
George R.R. Martin has spoken of the Hugos as representing the best of SF/F as seen by the Worldcon enthusiasts as opposed to being a general popularity contest for what sells well. [Note, I’m paraphrasing what I recall reading from his blog so any mistakes in describing this are my own.] Larry Correia has spoken of the Hugos being billed as the best works from the perspective of the SF/F fan world. That’s bigger than Worldcon which has (again per GRRM) deliberately chosen to remain a smaller, more intimate kind of gathering. Yet while the Hugos are owned by Worldcon, it is a process open to all fans (a fact I didn’t know until 2 years ago).
This might not have been an issue except there is a palpable sense that the quality of the Hugo winning works has declined in recent years, and the same individuals kept coming up over and over again. I haven’t really paid much attention to the Hugos in recent years because I thought it was just for literary SF/F (not my favorite area), and didn’t realize what a wide set of awards there were. Looking over some of the recent winning works, it does not appear to me that every person in the small group offering nominations was applying your personally high standards. Observing the same author and editor names coming up over and over again suggests that the process of picking candidates had become stale. This is not unusual in small groups. Unconscious bias creeps in easily when you know everyone in that small group, think well of them, and want to see them recognized.
The SP campaign wanted to open the process up more by encouraging more fans to be involved and to recognize some people that hadn’t been nominated/won before. You expressed unhappiness with not having sufficient transparency in how the SP and/or RP picks were made. Perhaps Brad would like to discuss that. There has been some discussion about Kate Paulk running SP4 with lots of suggestions coming in from everyone (including the “TrueFen”). If it results in more suggestions about good things to read that might not come to my attention otherwise, great!
Your observation that the awards were amply promoted, but that without having an anti-SP slate it would be hard to round up lots of people to read and nominate in time. “Many, many people knew — and either did not feel strongly enough, or did not feel informed enough, to participate”. Okay. I was one of them. That was my choice. Other people chose to get involved. Some of them may have been swayed by the recommendations of the SP folks and the specific instructions to the RPs.
I get that you disagree with that, but it wasn’t against the rules. You brought up the example of the Tour de France being an election. Let’s look at just a plain election. Every Presidential cycle I research the candidates deeply and make choices in the primary and the general election. Other people just vote a straight party ballot. It irks me that my well-informed vote gets diluted or cancelled out by someone else’s casual allegiance to one party. That’s life. It’s democracy.
If the folks that like different areas of the genre want to nominate what they think is the best and it looks different from what the “TrueFen” think is the best, that should be an opportunity for all of us to challenge our usual reading ruts and try something from the other end of the spectrum. Larry, Brad, and Sarah clearly thought they’d put forward suggestions for some very good works and very good people. They’ve said they didn’t expect to sweep some of the nomination categories. How would they have known how many people they were persuading to get involved? They post words on a blog, people drive by randomly and read them. There’s no way to know that 500 people would respond to SP3 or how they’d all choose to nominate. The “TrueFen” were also surprised, even though this is their area and they’ve seen the SP campaign getting larger every year.
How to respond to slate nominees was also a choice for the “TrueFen”. One choice was the one GRRM and many others chose: read the books/stories/etc, consider the candidate authors/magazines/editors, and vote their conscience with No Award as an option not a default. A second choice was to see SP/RP as an invasion and respond by slate voting “No Award” for virtually everything that was remotely SP or RP related. That had the effect of shutting out some very worthwhile nominees like Toni Weisskopf, Sheila Gilbert, etc. You’ve observed that you felt it was a bad choice between letting nominees that were unjustly placed on the ballot potentially win awards or razing the awards with slate voting No Award. Everyone has to answer to his/her own conscience, but I think the GRRM choice was less likely to lead to continued strife in 2016.
The logical consequences of slate voting No Award will be turning off some newly involved fans and enraging others. It becomes a new strategy that has been legitimated by the “TrueFen” and will most assuredly be used by the RP folks in the future. Five categories going “No Award” may be the minimum in 2016. An eye for an eye is going to leave a lot of rocket awards unclaimed on the table next year. That’s a shame.
Of course, now Vox has declared that RP and SP have irreconcilable goals from here on in. Sad Puppies 4 wants to redeem the Hugos, Rabid Puppies 2 is going to destroy them.
But I’m sure it’s just misinformation by the Illuminati-Halliburton-Walmart Axis to suppress women in SF using Sarah Hoyt and Kate Paulk as their figureheads.
Cadenhead,
It seems to me people complaining with “tone argument” against the Puppies, are either blissfully unaware of — or deliberately obtuse about — the massive wall of hatred, bile, and lies that have been directed at Larry Correia, myself, the Sad Puppies nominees, the Sad Puppies voters, etc. This dates back long before now. I therefore don’t have a lot of patience with the tone argument in this regard. It’s a bit like when one side yells nasty words at your mother for five minutes, then when you say, “Shut up, asshole,” the other side whimpers and says, “Why did you have to be so mean?” I think Larry put this on his Internet Arguing checklist — as a tactic he sees all the time.
Now, maybe you yourself aren’t doing it deliberately. But I am explaining why I myself don’t think it flies.
Patrick Chester on August 24, 2015 at 6:17 pm said:
@NancyG: Looks like more of the “YOU MADE US DO IT” bleating.
No, it’s more sinister than that. You made us do it is a cop out. My take on what Maestro is saying is that she didn’t come over to their side so she needed to be punished. She was a coward for not speaking out against the Puppies. She is not one of them, therefore she doesn’t deserve an award.
But there’s no clique. SMH
But I’m sure it’s just misinformation by the Illuminati-Halliburton-Walmart Axis to suppress women in SF using Sarah Hoyt and Kate Paulk as their figureheads.
I’m sure the SJWs will try to tell them that. I’ll be running for the escape pods…
@Nancy: Oh. So instead of a childish bleat, it’s a totalitarian impulse wanting to punish those who don’t denounce the UnPersons?
Sigh. No. That was not “my side.” One bloc beat another. Yay.
The winners are out there spiking the ball and misrepresenting SP3 pretty badly. I have trouble identifying with that tribe. Brad is meanwhile presenting an argument in response in this post that does not flatter him. The SP3 slate successfully forced good potential nominees to the sidelines. The “no award” crew did the same to Toni. Once Brad cools down a bit, I hope he’ll recognize this.
Boorish and insensitive cheering, though? Oh yeah.
They don’t see the abuse that’s been heaped on us because they don’t see it as abuse. It’s just The Way Things Are. Liberals are shining saints incapable of error (except when they are insufficiently leftist), while conservatives are inbred woman-haters who keep swastikas in secret shrines in their basements. Look at how Phil Sandifer declared the Hugos a victory over fascism. What a profound insult to all those who have risked and lost their lives fighting real battles against the real thing. Conservatives are libertarians are tolerated as long as they shut their mouths and don’t speak up when their are insulted and marginalized. And anyone who dares do otherwise is worse than Hitler. That’s The Way Things Are.
This has been a very familiar message from the opposition for a long time — those who did not “see the light” and defect, were to be punished. The few who “saw the light” were embraced, everyone else is to be punished for the crime of associating with Bad People; whether the association was asked for or not. It’s all very Orwellian. And I don’t think the opposition notices, nor cares.
Next year, somebody else gets to endure the Two Minute Hate. All from the people who preach love, tolerance, and inclusivity, of course.
@Chupik: Phil… that the “politics is quality” twit from Twitter? 😀
Yes, his stream is full of quotable nonsense.
Hi, sschwartzoak, I appreciate your answer from 8/24 1:25 pm and will try respond in 4 chunks to keep this from being too unwieldy. 1) the SP campaign, 2) the RP campaign, 3) Slate voting, 4) the incivility at the awards ceremony.
Gosh, sorry, this has still gotten very long…
4) The incivility. I was at work and didn’t tune into the pre-awards show on the livestream so I missed a lot of the content that seems to have really ticked people off. When I turned it on they were almost ready to begin. Some of the casual joking around by the MC in the award process as it got underway struck me as insufficiently formal, but I was new to the event and most of these people know one another so some casualness can be written off.
What appalled me were a) those asterisk coasters that were given out and b) the handling of the cheers & boos for No Award.
The asterisks were created with the approval of the Convention Committee. Clearly, they anticipated it was possible some of the SP and/or RP candidates could win and wanted to signal their disapproval. That’s insulting. It was also a marvelous way to continue breeding an atmosphere of antipathy between the in group and the SP/RP voters. In such a contentious atmosphere, that was gasoline on the fire.
The cheering for No Award disgusted me, but feelings were running high so it wasn’t exactly a surprise. Random people will always give in to baser feelings at such times, particularly when they are in a group. The boos for No Award were a natural reaction to the cheers. It sounded to me like they started later. The people that genuinely felt block-voting No Award was the honorable thing to do should have adopted a “more in sorrow than in anger” approach. Respectful silence was the appropriate response not triumphal cheering.
What is absolutely inexcusable to me is the behavior of Mr. Gerrold as the senior MC. The first time “No Award” was announced he should have discouraged any reaction. Instead, he did nothing until around the third or 4th No Award when the boos became noticeable. Then he chastised the people booing and said words to the effect that “applause was okay, but booing was not”. This was totally wrong. Booing a person or a work for winning would have been very nasty. Booing the act of blotting out a category with No Award and telling every nominee sitting there that they ranked lower than “No Award” was a direct response to the people who cheered this outcome. Mr. Gerrold had the right and responsibility to set a good example. He failed badly. To scold the boos while saying the cheers were fine was disgraceful.
If Mr. Gerrold was not capable of controlling his antipathy to the SP/RP nominees and running the event in a professional manner he should have excused himself months ago and asked Worldcon to find another MC. I believe that is what Connie Willis did.
Instead, his actions further antagonized people. It widened the gulf between the two sides, and made prospects for a less contentious Hugo Awards in 2016 much lower. It was also a really poor way to present Worldcon and the Hugos to a new set of first time participants. Regardless, of how anyone felt about the new voters SP/RP brought in, they contributed to the financial success of Sasquan and a lot more attention on the awards. That should have been a positive for the future. Some new participants were undoubtedly doing it on a lark with hostile feelings. Many of us were not. Personally, I was excited about feeling part of something that had historically been an important part of SF/F. I was looking forward to seeing and hearing authors that existed to me only on paper. [It was neat to see and hear Robert Silverberg.] This should have been treated as an opportunity to educate new people about the existing culture of Worldcon and the Hugos and present it in a positive light. The incivility was a huge missed opportunity and a short-sighted invitation to further hostility.
You know, a few months ago I joked that Gerrold might throw the trophy on the floor if a Puppy won. Turns out that the truth wasn’t far off.
Voting No Award wasn’t burning down the village; it was smelling the shit sandwich you tried to force down our throats and saying, “Get that out of my face! I’d rather go hungry.” We’re not gonna starve to death.
And yeah, Kary English and Toni Weisskopf were more like white-bread dinner rolls than shit sandwiches, but if someone offered you shit in one hand and some dry bread in the other, would you take either one? Or would you say, “Get away from me!”? Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas.
Goldfarb: do you think if you said that to Michael Rothman’s kids, they would magically love Fandom?
In other words, you made us do this? 😉
Sigh. No. That was not “my side.”
If you say so.
The winners are out there spiking the ball and misrepresenting SP3 pretty badly.
They haven’t even really won anything, they’re just able to say they stopped the other side from winning. Except they’re not even able to do that; Guardians of the Galaxy was on the Puppy recommendations, and the gold star – Best Novel – went to a book that would have been on the Rabid Puppy slate if Vox Day had read it sooner, from what I heard.
Not to mention, while I wouldn’t have minded if more Puppy nominations had gotten awards (I really liked “Totaled”, for example, and “Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust, Earth to Alluvium”) the entire point of Sad Puppies was to get the other side to show their true colors. Mission accomplished in spades, and it’s still ongoing.
Brad is meanwhile presenting an argument in response in this post that does not flatter him.
How so? Please, explain.
The SP3 slate successfully forced good potential nominees to the sidelines.
No one is guaranteed a Hugo Award Nomination. And yes, no one is guaranteed a Hugo Award, either. That’s kind of the point.
The “no award” crew did the same to Toni.
What you are missing is that the reason those categories were No Awarded was that a lot of people simply voted No Award without even reading the works. Not because ‘bloc voting is the enemy’ (because if they were being honest, that would include bloc voting No Award), but because they were nominated by the wrong people. Which is ironic, considering all the yammering I heard about how ‘inclusive’ Worldcon and the Hugos are before and during the ceremony.
If you think slates and bloc voting are evil, the solution is not more slates and bloc voting. The solution is behaving with some integrity and judging the works on their own merits. So with that in mind:
Which aspects of “Totaled” by Kary English did you find to be sub-par, and how do you feel they could have been improved upon?
Which aspects of “On a Spiritual Plain” by Lou Antonelli did you find to be sub-par, and how do you feel they could have been improved upon?
Which aspects of “Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust, Earth to Alluvium” by Gray Rinehart did you find to be sub-par, and how do you feel they could have been improved upon?
Which aspects of Skin Game by Jim Butcher did you find to be sub-par, and how do you feel they could have been improved upon?
Which works in Shattered Shields did you find to be sub-par, which aspects made them so, and how do you feel the editors could have improved upon them?
Which aspects of One Bright Star to Guide Them by John C. Wright did you find to be sub-par, and how do you feel they could have been improved upon?
Which works in Abyss & Apex did you find to be sub-par, which aspects made them so, and how do you feel the editors could have been improved upon them?
What aspects of Anita Sarkeesian lying about video games on camera would have qualified her work to be nominated for an award for science fiction and fantasy, much less guarantees her work’s right to a slot on the ballot to the extent that any other work getting a slot instead ‘steals’ said slot?
Was your reaction the same when The Quantum Thief by Hannu Rajaniemi was robbed of a nomination by George R.R. Martin’s A Dance With Dragons? What about when Nicola Griffith stole the Best Novelette nomination from Mary Robinette Kowal in 2010?
More Sandifer:
“Phil Sandifer
@PhilSandifer Right, so, on to the next battle: keeping dogshit off the ballot entirely next year. #HugoAwards”
My impression is that part of your ill feeling with the 2015 nominations is that you have a very serious, idealistic view of the Hugo process.
Indeed. SF is important to me as a reader, and as a writer.
Looking at it from the perspective of an outsider to the process but a long time fan of SF/F, this appears to be a culture clash in multiple ways. Literary SF/F vs. less literary SF/F…. Then there’s a whole spectrum of how “good” gets defined.
Indeed. And part of the problem many people had with the slates was that what was slated did not match up with the complaints made (e.g. if you’re going to complain about “literary” fiction, putting a lot of John C. Wright on the ballot makes you look silly.)
George R.R. Martin has spoken of the Hugos as representing the best of SF/F as seen by the Worldcon enthusiasts as opposed to being a general popularity contest for what sells well.
Indeed. There are other awards (e.g. the Locus awards) that are even more open to mass voting.
This might not have been an issue except there is a palpable sense that the quality of the Hugo winning works has declined in recent years, and the same individuals kept coming up over and over again.
I’ve seen other people’s analysis, and done some of my own. I’m curious as to the works you feel mark a “decline” — I suspect that I could match them, decade-for-decade, with winners we now feel might have been mistakes. As to the “same individuals” — that’s been the case since the awards began. Because it’s a fan vote (especially in lesser-known categories like Best Fan Writer/Best Artist) it’s easy for one person to become almost the default choice. But, as I said, that’s been going on forever.
Observing the same author and editor names coming up over and over again suggests that the process of picking candidates had become stale.
See above.
… to recognize some people that hadn’t been nominated/won before.
Here’s the thing. Lots of people don’t win Hugos. Indeed, many of my favorite authors didn’t win Hugos. But SP/RP explicitly stated a group of people they felt weren’t getting enough nominations, using a set of fairly specific (and occasionally political) tests. That’s not “broadening the field”, that’s “We’re not getting ours!”
If it results in more suggestions about good things to read that might not come to my attention otherwise, great!
We’re in agreement. If SP4 is a 20-item-per-category list (or a 3-item-per-category) with the “please read, and nominate if you liked!”, I’m cool with that.
I get that you disagree with that, but it wasn’t against the rules.
If they didn’t read the works before nominating them, yes, it is. From the Hugo FAQ: “No, don’t nominate or vote for something you have not read or seen, and don’t vote based on reputation — the Hugos are meant to honor your choices and judgments, not the rumor of someone else’s.”
Other people just vote a straight party ballot. It irks me that my well-informed vote gets diluted or cancelled out by someone else’s casual allegiance to one party. That’s life. It’s democracy.
Yes, but how would you feel if people plunged through a loophole to say “You only get to vote for candidates of one party — or vote “No Candidate”, and the office stays open, but then you’ve destroyed the office and it’s not fair!”
That’s what happened to the Hugos this year, in a nutshell.
Larry, Brad, and Sarah clearly thought they’d put forward suggestions for some very good works and very good people.
Given some of what they nominated, I am honestly not sure I believe that.
They’ve said they didn’t expect to sweep some of the nomination categories.
It was an eminently foreseeable consequence that if you promote exactly as many works as can win in most categories, and ask people to vote for them as they are, that you might take over the ballot. And an easily avoidable one.
How to respond to slate nominees was also a choice for the “TrueFen”. One choice was the one GRRM and many others chose: read the books/stories/etc, consider the candidate authors/magazines/editors, and vote their conscience with No Award as an option not a default.
This is the one, for example, I chose.
A second choice was to see SP/RP as an invasion and respond by slate voting “No Award” for virtually everything that was remotely SP or RP related. That had the effect of shutting out some very worthwhile nominees like Toni Weisskopf, Sheila Gilbert, etc. You’ve observed that you felt it was a bad choice between letting nominees that were unjustly placed on the ballot potentially win awards or razing the awards with slate voting No Award.
A minor point — it’s not “slate voting”; bloc voting, perhaps, but a slate involves a list of candidates, such as the Puppies used to block other people from the ballot entire.
Everyone has to answer to his/her own conscience, but I think the GRRM choice was less likely to lead to continued strife in 2016.
Perhaps, but people like Ted Beale had already said “Any no-awarded category will never get awarded again.” And for that there’s no way to tell between “I voted no award because I thought everything in the category fell below my Hugo standard” and “I voted No Award because I felt slate voting was cheating.”
The logical consequences of slate voting No Award will be turning off some newly involved fans and enraging others.
And encouraging others. There are people who were first-time Hugo voters who voted because they did not want to see the slates, and the people behind the slates, win.
They count too, when we’re looking at the consequences of the vote.
It becomes a new strategy that has been legitimated by the “TrueFen” and will most assuredly be used by the RP folks in the future. Five categories going “No Award” may be the minimum in 2016. An eye for an eye is going to leave a lot of rocket awards unclaimed on the table next year. That’s a shame.
And it’s a shame entirely to be laid at the feet of the people who choose to invoke it. Hopefully, if you’ve looked at EPH, you’ll see that it’ll support diversity while drastically reducing the power of slate voting – and then we can try to get back to business as usual, and arguing about important things like Who’d win — Banks’ Culture or Zelazny’s Amber. 🙂
Chris: aaaaYUP.
The cheering for No Award disgusted me, but feelings were running high so it wasn’t exactly a surprise. Random people will always give in to baser feelings at such times, particularly when they are in a group. The boos for No Award were a natural reaction to the cheers. It sounded to me like they started later. The people that genuinely felt block-voting No Award was the honorable thing to do should have adopted a “more in sorrow than in anger” approach. Respectful silence was the appropriate response not triumphal cheering.
Many of the people there remembered the gloating and dancing and celebrating when the ballots came out.
I agree; it would have been tactically helpful to have been silent. I understand also not being so.
If Mr. Gerrold was not capable of controlling his antipathy to the SP/RP nominees and running the event in a professional manner he should have excused himself months ago and asked Worldcon to find another MC. I believe that is what Connie Willis did.
Considering that it was a member of the SP (IIRC) and RP ballots who attempted to inform the Spokane police department that Mr. Gerrold was a threat, I think he did reasonably well.
Again; you are drawing a line at the beginning of the ceremony, and going “Why didn’t people behave after this”, while ignoring much of what went before.
Many of us were not. Personally, I was excited about feeling part of something that had historically been an important part of SF/F. I was looking forward to seeing and hearing authors that existed to me only on paper. [It was neat to see and hear Robert Silverberg.]
Cool!
This should have been treated as an opportunity to educate new people about the existing culture of Worldcon and the Hugos and present it in a positive light. The incivility was a huge missed opportunity and a short-sighted invitation to further hostility.
It could have been better. But, again, I think you’re placing the blame (and the requirement for ‘good behavior’) solely on one side, rather than on both where it belongs. There’s been more than enough incivility to go around.
“So hey, SJWs, we just made history, doubling the total number of No Awards ever in a stunning anti-fascist victory. Go us. #HugoAwards— Phil Sandifer (@PhilSandifer) August 23, 2015”
Delusional.
Whoa, Nellie! You’re giving Beale credit for Three Body Problem being on the ballot — and winning — when he kept it off the ballot through his slate voting campaign?
TBP was only on the ballot because Marko Kloos took himself off, an action for which he provided this explanation: “I have officially withdrawn my acceptance of the Best Novel nomination for ‘Lines of Departure’ at this year’s Hugo Awards. … I also wish to disassociate myself from the originator of the ‘Rabid Puppies’ campaign. To put it bluntly: if this nomination gives even the appearance that Vox Day or anyone else had a hand in giving it to me because of my perceived political leanings, I don’t want it.”
@thedrunkfox
Except they’re not even able to do that; Guardians of the Galaxy was on the Puppy recommendations, and the gold star – Best Novel – went to a book that would have been on the Rabid Puppy slate if Vox Day had read it sooner, from what I heard.
So the Puppy-Kickers aren’t 100% dicks?
(More like 96+%, since it’s probably impossible for anyone to be 100%, though they’ve been trying.)
You’re giving Beale credit for Three Body Problem being on the ballot — and winning — when he kept it off the ballot through his slate voting campaign?
Not at all. My point is that the book they’re now gloating over was the favorite of their most hated enemy. That doesn’t strike me as much of a win. He didn’t “keep it off” from what I understand; he hadn’t read it yet, so he didn’t put it on his slate. It was #1 on his ballot for the award itself.
Believe it or not, I do remember what happened with Marko Kloos. I was disappointed at the time, but can understand why he took the actions he did. None of that has anything to do with what I said.
” and the gold star – Best Novel – went to a book that would have been on the Rabid Puppy slate if Vox Day had read it sooner, from what I heard.”
And here is your one-line explanation for why Slates are Bad. One person should not have the kind of power to — oops — not read something, and therefore it doesn’t get a chance at a Hugo.
“He didn’t “keep it off” from what I understand”
He almost did, by providing a full slate to vote for. That he *failed* to do so and realized his “mistake” later does not give him any credit.
VD liking 3BP is like the old remark about stopped clocks.
So the Puppy-Kickers aren’t 100% dicks?
Well, I don’t know if I believe anyone’s 100% a dick…
I have 12% of a plan!
You said you really just wanted more people voting. Then more people voted, but it turned out that, although you definitely inspired more people to vote and to get involved, there were more people who got involved because they *didn’t* like what you were doing than who got involved to support you, and suddenly you don’t like it so much that there were so many new voters (assuming that you’re not simply confused by the math). You said that the problem you were trying to solve was that the awards were too much driven by identity politics. Then voters chose “No Award” instead of voting for some of your candidates who are women and you accuse them of “throwing women under the bus”. You’ve rejected arguments that you’ve harmed the Hugos or SFF fandom because you stayed within the letter, if not the spirit of the rules, but now you’re arguing that fandom was hurt by the votes for “No Award,” which were equally within the rules. You created a “my way or the highway” choice, now you’re blaming people for choosing the highway.
Can you start to see why some people don’t think you’re arguing in good faith?
Cadenhead: Nathaniel Givens performed a very thorough analysis of the events, and yes, it seems the Voxies did indeed knock Three Body Problem off the bottom of the ballot, but when Larry Correia and Marko Kloos made room for TBP on the ballot, the Voxies were also the votes needed to make sure TBP actually got ahead of Goblin Emperor. As always, truth is far stranger than fiction. Especially when you consider the fact that if Vox had nominated TBP as he says he would have, if he’d read it sooner, then the Trufen who NO AWARDED everything Vox slated, would have NO AWARDED Three Body Problem into oblivion.
And here is your one-line explanation for why Slates are Bad. One person should not have the kind of power to — oops — not read something, and therefore it doesn’t get a chance at a Hugo.
Lots of things don’t get a chance at a Hugo. A Redtail’s Dream, to my knowledge, didn’t get a chance at a Hugo. Archipelago, to my knowledge, has not yet had a chance at a Hugo. The Property of Hate, to my knowledge, has not yet had a chance at a Hugo. And I mean they haven’t even been on the lists in the statistics PDFs in the past five years. It’s impossible for everyone to know about everything, and things get overlooked, especially now in the age of self-publishing. Do you really think there are no hidden gems on Amazon, or Smashwords, or Kobo, that never got a chance at a Hugo?
Do you know who else hadn’t had a chance at a Hugo before? Abyss & Apex. Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine. Oh, but hey, Lightspeed Magazine got their fifth Hugo nomination and second Hugo win in a row this year, so I guess that’s cool!
Recommending works is not bad. Recommending works gets the word out about works that might otherwise have been completely overlooked. Blindly voting without reading/watching and deciding for yourself is the problem, and that is what the other side did with the No Awards.
Well, that’s better than 11%.
28 percent, if it bothers you that I’ve correctly pointed out the hypocrisy of a culture that endlessly pats itself on the back about how it supports and wants women to be at home in SF — then throws those women beneath the bus for having “wrongness” on them — I don’t care. Toni and Sheila were sacrificed to the false idol called NO AWARD. How about you start to admit that the culture itself might be the problem?
Three Body Problem was being praised by all sides after the Hugo ballot came out. It’s still being praised by all sides. In a rolling flamewar where we disagree on countless things, the excellence of that book doesn’t seem to be one of them.
I just noticed that Andy Weir finished sixth in Campbell Award nominations. Slates kept the author of one of the most popular hard SF novels in years — and an incredible example of a first novel rising from self publishing to the big time — from Campbell consideration.
One of the slated nominees was Eric S. Raymond, who has only a single story in SF/F to his name and didn’t consider himself worthy. He wrote, “I don’t really feel like I belong on that shortlist – and if I’m wrong and I actually do, I fear for the health of the field.”
There are fans among the anti-Puppies who are sympathetic to the goal of broadening the scope of Hugo nominees, whether it’s to get more old-school SF, self-published authors, a media tie-in or another overlooked niche on the ballot.
You lose us when slates give us no chance to see any of our nominations on the ballot.
“And I mean they haven’t even been on the lists in the statistics PDFs in the past five years. It’s impossible for everyone to know about everything, and things get overlooked, especially now in the age of self-publishing. ”
All the more reason not to vote to one person’s slate, but vote what *you* have read and what *you* liked. All the more reason to despise slating.
“Oh, but hey, Lightspeed Magazine got their fifth Hugo nomination and second Hugo win in a row this year, so I guess that’s cool!”
So, what? You want Hugos to rotate? I thought your type tended to be against “participation awards”.
(BTW, I never see this kind of outrage about, say, Michael Whelan and his Hugos. Or Orson Scott Card and his. Or even Lois McMaster Bujold and hers. Just when someone you don’t like politically is winning them.)
“Recommending works is not bad. Recommending works gets the word out about works that might otherwise have been completely overlooked. Blindly voting without reading/watching and deciding for yourself is the problem, and that is what the other side did with the No Awards.”
And that’s what the Rabid Puppies did to put us in this position. That’s what it looks like Brad Torgersen did to put us in this position, unless he wants to come out and honestly claim that “WIsdom from My Internet” was one of the 5 best SF-related works of the year.
Why should that behavior be rewarded?
(Oh, and once again, you have projected *an* “other side”, when there was no such thing. There were a lot of people who had different opinions, and coalesced around several main options to deal with what they saw.)
As I’ve said, though, letting 1-2 people pick “the Hugo ballot”, how is that in any way, shape, or form going to help matters? I thought that was your entire complaint, that that was somehow already happening.
Seems that it’s not that you mind narrow ballots that miss things — you just feel that *you* should get to pick them.
Three Body Problem was being praised by all sides after the Hugo ballot came out. It’s still being praised by all sides. In a rolling flamewar where we disagree on countless things, the excellence of that book doesn’t seem to be one of them.
Fun fact, I didn’t nominate or vote for the Hugos. I don’t have $40 to spare on a membership at the moment, and I think by the time I found out that SP was actually continuing, it was too late for me to read the suggested works (especially since I was busy as heck), so I just didn’t bother. So I haven’t read Three Body Problem yet, though given that a lot of people liked it, as you said, I might pick it up from the library once I’m done with the book I’m currently reading. So if you meant ‘we’ as in ‘you and I’, there’s your reason; I’m not qualified to speak on how good or bad the book was, so I won’t.
I just noticed that Andy Weir finished sixth in Campbell Award nominations. Slates kept the author of one of the most popular hard SF novels in years — and an incredible example of a first novel rising from self publishing to the big time — from Campbell consideration.
You guys keep blaming all the things you don’t like on ‘slates’. The fact is that there are a limited number of spaces for the Campbell, and the crunch is especially bad there since you only get two years to get nominated for it as opposed to your entire professional life for the Hugos. Kary English was on her last year; is it somehow okay for her to not get consideration so that Andy Weir has a chance? Heck, Wesley Chu was on it last year; he should stop hogging those valuable Campbell spots!
One of the slated nominees was Eric S. Raymond, who has only a single story in SF/F to his name and didn’t consider himself worthy. He wrote, “I don’t really feel like I belong on that shortlist – and if I’m wrong and I actually do, I fear for the health of the field.”
He had the option to refuse the nomination though, didn’t he? Maybe you should go ask him why he didn’t do so to give Andy Weir room? Oh wait, he already said why:
It is, of course, a considerable honor to be nominated, and one I am somewhat doubtful I actually deserve. But after considering the ramifications, I have decided not to decline the nomination, but rather to leave the decision on the merits up to the voters.
I make this choice because, even if I myself doubt that my single story is more than competent midlist work, and I want no part of the messy tribal politics in which I seem to have become partly swept up, there is something I don’t mind representing and giving people the opportunity to vote for.
That something is the proud tradition of classic SF, the Golden Age good stuff and its descendants today. It may be that I am among the least and humblest of those descendants, but I think both the virtues and the faults of Sucker Punch demonstrate vividly where I come from and how much that tradition has informed who I am as a writer and a human being.
If you choose to vote for Sucker Punch as a work which, individually flawed as it may be, upholds that tradition and carries it forward, that will make me happy and proud.
I think you should totally go give him what for. Yep. How dare he. Insert indignation here.
There are fans among the anti-Puppies who are sympathetic to the goal of broadening the scope of Hugo nominees, whether it’s to get more old-school SF, self-published authors, a media tie-in or another overlooked niche on the ballot.
Then go do it, and stop complaining over here about how the Puppies did it the wrong way and did the bad thing and shouldn’t they just feel so horrible! Everything I’ve seen said about other parties bringing more people in has been along the lines of ‘great, we wanted more people! Shake things up so we can see what SF/F fandom really likes’!
Thedrunkfox: For the life of me, I don’t know how you can write a sentence like “no one is guaranteed a Hugo award, that’s kind of the point” and still support Brad’s point in this post. As I said earlier, I read the discussion on this blog of who to included in the SP3 bloc vote. Quality was NOT the only criterion put forward, and the moment a full slate was put forward with even a single nominee put there just to make a point, a more deserving nominee was excluded… and poof, there goes the credibility of anyone later arguing that a deserving nominee was unfairly excluded by the “no award” crowd.
If your argument is simply that your opponents didn’t read as much good SF as you did, that’s as arrogant as it is impossible to prove.
I am so, so tired of this culture war, liberal vs. conservative nonsense. It’s a false dichotomy built on lizard-brain reflex thinking. SP1 and SP2 were breaths of fresh air. They got my attention and I agree with the basic idea of bringing that side of SF to the ballots. SP3 stepped of a cliff when it produced entire slates of nominees and openly forced the social justice (whatever that is) crowd into just one way to have a say. And now you argue that their bloc voting is unfair and uninformed, while yours was above reproach? Seriously, focus on your strong argument — there is still an important facet of SF that is going largely unrecognized.
Um, except when it isn’t (see Hugo for Best Novel, 2015…). I think the good sense got lost in the shouting there somewhere.
All the more reason not to vote to one person’s slate, but vote what *you* have read and what *you* liked. All the more reason to despise slating.
But if I were to go ‘hey guys, I really like these comics over here, and that anthology over there, and also these books are freaking amazing, I really think you’ll agree they’re worthy of a Hugo!’ that would be wrong and bad.
So, what? You want Hugos to rotate? I thought your type tended to be against “participation awards”.
No, I want you to stop crying about things that didn’t get on the final ballot. The other two magazines I mentioned have been around a lot longer than Lightspeed and never got nominated until now, but now that they and others got nominated, it’s all about the deserving works that got “shoved off” and had the nomination “stolen” from them. I thought your type wanted to be “inclusive”.
(BTW, I never see this kind of outrage about, say, Michael Whelan and his Hugos. Or Orson Scott Card and his. Or even Lois McMaster Bujold and hers. Just when someone you don’t like politically is winning them.)
Seeing as you never heard anything from me until this year (and in fact until yesterday), that’s not exactly a shocker.
Orson Scott Card got a Campbell in ’78 (before I was born), and he got Hugos in ’86, ’87, ’88, and ’91, and was nominated in ’87 and ’88. So when I was a child, basically.
Michael Whelan’s last Hugo award was apparently in the very early 2000s, so we’re at least in the area of my reaching adulthood now, though I was still broke all the time and didn’t really know about the Hugos aside from maybe the occasional mention about some book or whatever that had gotten it. And that’s with his last couple Hugos. Before that, we’re back to ‘I was a child and didn’t know anything about anything’ territory.
Okay, Lois McMaster Bujold got her nominations and awards mostly in the ’90s and early 2000s, so yeah, wasn’t exactly invested in awards as a kid and young adult, so sue me. Her latest two nominations were in ’11 and ’13, but unfortunately I didn’t even know about Sad Puppies and the Hugos until sometime in ’14, and again, haven’t exactly been doing anything regarding it until basically yesterday.
In addition, you don’t know what my politics are, much less that I like those three politically.
And that’s what the Rabid Puppies did to put us in this position.
Oh, my, are you lost? Do you need help finding Vox Day’s blog?
That’s what it looks like Brad Torgersen did to put us in this position, unless he wants to come out and honestly claim that “WIsdom from My Internet” was one of the 5 best SF-related works of the year.
Ask Mr. Torgersen, not me. I assume he and the others who voted for it, y’know, enjoyed it and thought it qualified. I also assume the fact that it wasn’t thrown off for not qualifying means they were correct. But you know what happens when you make assumptions; you make an ass of u and mptions.
Why should that behavior be rewarded?
Why should people whose only crime is having work that was enjoyed by certain people be punished? Why should they have humiliation piled on top of the punishment, at that?
(Oh, and once again, you have projected *an* “other side”, when there was no such thing. There were a lot of people who had different opinions, and coalesced around several main options to deal with what they saw.)
I’ve been trying to refrain for exactly that reason, but would you rather I just called them Puppy-Kickers? Or maybe ‘these people who did something incredibly self-destructive for whatever reasons’? Also, you’re assuming the same wasn’t true of the Puppies’ side. I promise, the Puppies aren’t a hive-mind. Or do you really think the people who hate Mr. Torgersen gave almost 200 nominations to his book (which wasn’t on The Slate)? Or do you really think they just didn’t notice Regular Show while they were slavishly obeying The Slate? Or do you really think the nomination numbers were all over the place because- actually no, how do you square that with your ‘they only got nominated because of The Slate’ hypothesis?
As I’ve said, though, letting 1-2 people pick “the Hugo ballot”, how is that in any way, shape, or form going to help matters? I thought that was your entire complaint, that that was somehow already happening.
Okay, I want you to pay close attention to what I’m about to say next.
The problem is not reading/watching and deciding for oneself before voting.
Seems that it’s not that you mind narrow ballots that miss things — you just feel that *you* should get to pick them.
“Oh, and once again, you have projected *an* “other side”, when there was no such thing. There were a lot of people who had different opinions, and coalesced around several main options to deal with what they saw.”
Somebody said that recently, I wish I could remember who- oh right, that was you! And then I said:
“[Y]ou’re assuming the same wasn’t true of the Puppies’ side. I promise, the Puppies aren’t a hive-mind.”
Let me add to that now with something I said in another comment:
I, personally, did not nominate, nor vote, in the Hugo Awards.
“But if I were to go ‘hey guys, I really like these comics over here, and that anthology over there, and also these books are freaking amazing, I really think you’ll agree they’re worthy of a Hugo!’ that would be wrong and bad.”
Nompe. But that’s not what either Puppy bunch did. Both Brad and Vox made no real ttempt to say “Hey, read this and nominate” — they said ‘If you’re with me, nominate.”
And, of course, if it was one or two things, then you couldn’t be taking over the ballot.
“No, I want you to stop crying about things that didn’t get on the final ballot.”
Then will you stop crying about things and people that got no awarded?
“but now that they and others got nominated, it’s all about the deserving works that got “shoved off” and had the nomination “stolen” from them. I thought your type wanted to be “inclusive”.”
That’s because of the *method* of their nomination, as I would imagine you well know, but are refusing to admit.
What will it take to get through to you that it’s slates people objected to, more than the slated nominees? (Many of the slated nominees were *also* terrible, which didn’t help the case for “Oh, these poor neglected folks…”)
“In addition, you don’t know what my politics are, much less that I like those three politically.”
I have no idea about Michael Whelan’s politics. However, if you’re going to argue that “people are getting too many shots at the Hugo!” you have to account for the fact that a) it’s always been like that, and b) why, therefore, it is *suddenly* a problem that needs to be dealt with by methods that fans have disapproved of in the past.
“And that’s what the Rabid Puppies did to put us in this position.
Oh, my, are you lost? Do you need help finding Vox Day’s blog?”
I presume you’re trying to argue “Oh, no, the Sads are very different from the Rabids” again. Whatever their goals, the slating tactics were identical, the complaints about how No Award were unfair were identical, and, indeed, the leader of the Rabids was one of the people Brad claimed, at one point (unless the pravda on this has changed) to have consulted on assembling the Sad Puppies slate.
“Ask Mr. Torgersen, not me. I assume he and the others who voted for it, y’know, enjoyed it and thought it qualified.”
There is then no accounting for taste, since “Wisdom from my Internet” is further away from SF by a long shot than, to pick an example totally at non-random, “If You Were A Dinosaur”. Putting it on his slate undercut his position drastically.
” I also assume the fact that it wasn’t thrown off for not qualifying means they were correct”
The phone book could get nominated; the committee is historically loath to throw works off for any reason other than being outside of publication date. Your assumption is, as you put it, making an ass out of you.
“Why should that behavior be rewarded?
Why should people whose only crime is having work that was enjoyed by certain people be punished? Why should they have humiliation piled on top of the punishment, at that?”
What’s the “punishment”? Not winning a Hugo? Many, many, many people don’t win Hugos every year. As for the “humiliation” — should someone be given a Hugo because otherwise they’ll be embarassed?
Consider, for example John C. Wright. He honestly felt he deserved 6 nominations. Are we supposed to give him a Hugo to salve his ego?
” Or do you really think the people who hate Mr. Torgersen gave almost 200 nominations to his book (which wasn’t on The Slate)?”
Perhaps this should have indicated that without the slate, there was still support for Mr. Torgersen, support which he managed to undercut through his own machinations.
“The problem is not reading/watching and deciding for oneself before voting.”
Quick clue: THe same holds true for *nominating*, which is precisely the argument against slating. And the slating came first.
If slates are viable, then No Award without reading is at least as justified. More so, in fact, because it does not actually rob anyone else of their *choices*, only of, at most, their chances of *victory*.
A whole lot of people never got to be considered because of the slates. The people on the slates, because of how they got there, had to deal with the wrath of people who felt they were part of an unjust effort.
“Let me add to that now with something I said in another comment:
I, personally, did not nominate, nor vote, in the Hugo Awards.”
Fair enough. You’re just *defending* people who believe that 2-3 people should get to pick for all of fandom what the Hugo choices should be.
For the life of me, I don’t know how you can write a sentence like “no one is guaranteed a Hugo award, that’s kind of the point” and still support Brad’s point in this post.
Brad’s point is that a bunch of people who hate the Puppies, both Sad and Rabid, chose to refuse an award to women who are extremely popular just for the sake of giving those Puppies what-for.
My point is that nobody is guaranteed a Hugo award. The fact that it was possible to vote No Award proves that much. And if your work doesn’t make the cut for nominations, that’s unfortunate, but the only way you can go on and on and freaking on about works having nominations stolen from them is if you think they were somehow destined to be nominated. I’m here to tell you that is not the case. Nobody is guaranteed a Hugo award. I’m not guaranteed a Hugo award. Toni Weisskopf is not guaranteed a Hugo award, but unlike you she seems to actually get that.
As I said earlier, I read the discussion on this blog of who to included in the SP3 bloc vote. Quality was NOT the only criterion put forward, and the moment a full slate was put forward with even a single nominee put there just to make a point, a more deserving nominee was excluded… and poof, there goes the credibility of anyone later arguing that a deserving nominee was unfairly excluded by the “no award” crowd.
Anybody other than Alan or the trolls want to back this up?
If your argument is simply that your opponents didn’t read as much good SF as you did, that’s as arrogant as it is impossible to prove.
Do I have to call you a misogynist for you to listen to me, or are you going to continue assuming I’m other people regardless?
My argument is:
The stuff that went down at Worldcon was shitty behavior! Bloc voting No Award sight-unseen is shitty behavior! Claiming that shitty behavior is justified because you didn’t get what you wanted before is more shitty behavior and also kind of really dumb! If you want to change things, stop engaging in shitty behavior and go bring your A game like the Puppies did!
I am so, so tired of this culture war, liberal vs. conservative nonsense. It’s a false dichotomy built on lizard-brain reflex thinking. SP1 and SP2 were breaths of fresh air. They got my attention and I agree with the basic idea of bringing that side of SF to the ballots.
It’s funny because SP1 and SP2 were more about getting good conservative works on the ballot than SP3, to my understanding.
SP3 stepped of a cliff when it produced entire slates of nominees and openly forced the social justice (whatever that is) crowd into just one way to have a say.
1) It’s funny because you’re saying you don’t know what SJWs are ON THE INTERNET. WHERE YOU CAN LOOK IT UP.
2) The Puppies had no real way of knowing they would be as successful with nominations as they were. I remember watching the ceremony; I was floored by the news (and also kind of shocked that people who love sci-fi are so bad with tech, but that’s neither here nor there). So if there was an assumed very small chance of many suggestions getting nominated, why wouldn’t they want more options? You risk splitting the vote, yes, but you also have a higher chance of something getting through.
And now you argue that their bloc voting is unfair and uninformed, while yours was above reproach?
No, I’m arguing that voting without reading/viewing the works and making your own decisions is unfair and uninformed. If people in the Puppies did it, shame on them. But do you honestly want me to think that 2000+ people all thought every single work nominated by the Puppies was undeserving of an award after reading/watching and careful consideration? And I’m the arrogant one?
Also, I love how this-
“It’s a false dichotomy built on lizard-brain reflex thinking.”
-turns into an assumption that I had anything to do with anything that happened. I support the Puppies, but as far as actual nominating/voting, I did NOTHING, so yes, my complete lack of bloc voting is above reproach. Again, I’m the arrogant one?
Jill, thanks for well thought out responses!
I appreciate the effort of Correia and Torgersen on getting people more active voting in Hugos. I truly do.
What I don’t appreciate, however, are the slates. Is that really needed? If that’s what it takes to get “your kind of literature” (and I’m using quotes here since I don’t really think there’s that much of a difference between Sad Puppies and other Worldcon members) in, does it really deserve being one of the finalists?
You probably already know that in regular years, particularly the short fiction category nominations are extremely diverse (in the sense of how the votes get divided between works). They are actually so diverse, that there’s been many years when there haven’t been five finalists because rules require at least 5% of nomination votes for every finalist.
So, an example: in 2011 Best Short Story had 515 nomination ballots, and only four finalists, since the fifth had only 25 votes. The highest nomination had 72 votes, the fourth had 29. The fourth one – For Want of a Nail by Mary Robinette Kowal – ended up winning.
Those voting numbers are _tiny_. They also show people haven’t voted in lockstep: if they did, nobody would trust 29 votes to be enough to decide a finalist. People voted diversely, it’s more than likely some very deserving works were left out, and… That’s fine! That’s actually also reflected in the final vote: in 2011 there were 86 votes for No Award as first choice for Short Story. That year 86 members thought none of those short stories were good enough.
Guess what I’m going after here is this: How about if for SP4 Kate Paulk wouldn’t compile a list. How about encouraging people to read. Go out there, engage! Read reviews, write reviews, post links to possible nominees.
There’s about eight months before the nomination phase for 2016 Hugos ends. Every single one of us should spend that time reading stories, finding the good ones. Subscribe to one or two SF/F magazine if you haven’t already and read the stories they publish. Make notes of what you’ve read. And when the time comes, don’t publish a ready made list for voting but remember what _you’ve_ read and cast your ballot accordingly.
“Brad’s point is that a bunch of people who hate the Puppies, both Sad and Rabid, chose to refuse an award to women who are extremely popular just for the sake of giving those Puppies what-for.”
Or, as been repeatedly made clear, to demonstrate that slate nominations won’t be accepted. It’s not like they were especially targeted.
As I’ve said, this is a rhetorical finger-trap: Had they been granted an exception to the “no award” because they were female, people would be screaming that “Oh, look, those SJWs give awards on the basis of gender.” When they were not, it was “Oh, look, those SJWs threw a *woman* under the bus.” When no matter what happens, you go “SJWs were bad people!” it rather diminishes the reason for anyone to a) believe you, and b) take your views (or the views of those like you) into consideration.
“And if your work doesn’t make the cut for nominations, that’s unfortunate, but the only way you can go on and on and freaking on about works having nominations stolen from them is if you think they were somehow destined to be nominated”
Or the nomination counts show that, had people not used a tactic many people find illegitimate (and, indeed, which *you* claim you would protest, if it was used *the way its proponents said it should be*), they would have been nominated. This isn’t some nebulous “Oh, we’ll never know who might have been nominated if it weren’t for the slates” — we can come to some pretty clear answers, based on the math.
“2) The Puppies had no real way of knowing they would be as successful with nominations as they were.”
No; but they had easy ways of trying to reduce the risk of the outcome that happened, if they had cared to. The failure mode of a 3-item slate is much different than the failure mode of a 5-item slate, or a 15-item slate. Indeed, many people would argue that 3- and 15-item lists aren’t slates, because they don’t have that 1:1 correspondence with the available slots.
“. If people in the Puppies did it, shame on them.”
Well, considering that one Puppy leader explicitly told people to do that, and another gave no indication that reading the items was important, I think we can pretty clearly say that Yes, they did, and thank you for saying that. I hope you’ll increase your calls of “shame” to the people who encouraged such behavior.
” But do you honestly want me to think that 2000+ people all thought every single work nominated by the Puppies was undeserving of an award after reading/watching and careful consideration? ”
Well, obviously not watching, because Guardians of the Galaxy won.
But, as was pointed out, and has been pointed out repeatedly, people took the position (which you can disagree with) that it was important to deal with the issue of slating via the only tool at their disposal. I’m not going to be overly harsh on them for using the only tool they had to deal with an apparent problem that had been foisted upon them.
One side, through a slate process, reduced everyone else’s options to two: go along with the list they’d been presented, or no award in retaliation for what they felt was injustice. If they didn’t want that reaction, they could have avoided putting people there.
Looks like Brad is still frightened that his followers will read what I wrote. A sad end to Sad Puppies.
Brad,
You have zero dignity—zero—for editing comments. This is your space, but changing legitimate comments to suit your narrative is the stuff of an entitled brat. Please, act with the kind of maturity expected of you.
And if you feel like I’m talking down to you, good. You deserve it.
@camestros,
To be fair, YOU MADE HIM DO THIS!
“Three Body Problem was being praised by all sides after the Hugo ballot came out. It’s still being praised by all sides. In a rolling flamewar where we disagree on countless things, the excellence of that book doesn’t seem to be one of them.”
I’ll let you in on a dirty secret: I actually voted Three Body Problem as last, below No Award. I don’t know what people see in it, I thought multiple works this year were more worthy of an award than Three Body Problem was. And yes, that includes Puppy options.
I voted Ancillary Sword as my first pick, Goblin Emperor second, The Dark Between the Stars third. I personally liked The Dark Between the Stars enough that I’ll probably buy the next book in the series and I’m seriously thinking about buying the first saga if I can’t find it from libraries.
So, yeah. I don’t know who voted what, and I don’t really care. I know what I voted, I did it after reading everything, and I’m happy with my choices. I’m also happy with the end result: congratulations to Cixin Liu for winning a Hugo! The award doesn’t make me think the book’s any better than when I originally read it, but I happily accept not all or, indeed, most people agree with me.
Not at all. My point is that the book they’re now gloating over was the favorite of their most hated enemy.
Dude, it’s a good book. That’s why it won. Guardian of the Galaxy was a good movie. That’s why it won despite being put on the Puppy slate.
The Puppy slate was, by and large, crap. That’s why they lost. One or two may have been marginal – but they were not good enough to overcome the widespread revulsion against the Puppy gaming of the Hugos.
If you really wanted to bake “the SJWs” squirm next year, you’d field a slate of (i) really good sf material worthy of a Hugo (ii) whose authors won’t immediately denounce their inclusion in your slate.
You’re not going to be able to do that. No decent author is going to want to be associated with a bunch of whining losers.
Matthew Foster says it best
fosteronfilm.com/thoughts/the-hugo-results-dont-be-a-dick.htm
Quick quiz…
You do realize you’re on an author’s blog, telling him his work is crap, right?
Just checking.
Quick quiz…
You do realize Torgensen was not on the 2015 slate, right? ( http://www.thehugoawards.org/hugo-history/2015-hugo-awards/ )
Just checking.
YOU MADE ME BRIAN… and my wife as well!
Pathetic style.
Wow, you really aren’t keeping track, are you?
Apparently, there were 196 nominations cast for some book called ‘Chaplain’s War’ by some bloke last name of Torgerson.
Check your facts next time.
This from a commentary about the Hugo awards in The Federalist: “Nerd communities have seen proof that social justice politics cannot be tolerated, because it will sooner immolate the very institutions it inhabits than tolerate the existence of disparate elements….Thanks to the Hugo Awards, the nerds now know that you cannot make a treaty with a cancer. You can only treat it by stopping its spread.”
Read the entire piece at http://thefederalist.com/2015/08/24/the-hugo-awards-why-the-waronnerds-is-a-war-on-art/
I go to sleep, I wake up to find Camestros, Snowcrash, and CPaca have laid more turds. Don’t worry boys, you continue to represent the CHORFhole contingent with distinction. Troll on, my fine fellows! Troll on! You are so totally winning over Michael Rothman’s kids! The teenagers are flocking to Fandom!
I do not think that word means what you think it means.
Regardless, it’s unfortunate to see you go from a poorly thought-out “you should’ve voted for these women because they’re women” argument to a poorly thought out “WON’T SOMEONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN” one.
What would you suggest to get more youth interested? Accusing prior winners of being affirmative action picks, as you did for Ann Leckie and John Chu? Making up snide nicknames for whatever “Other” you’re displeased with now, like CHORF?
BTW, I’d still love to find out what was so childish about me quoting Dave Freer’s Quizz to you.
Here’s the thing about the codependent mindset that many CHORFholes seem to be displaying.
In an independent relationship, Person A’s mental and emotional well-being does not depend on Person B’s actions or words. Nor does Person B need Person A’s actions and words to flatter what Person B thinks. Person A and Person B both take independent responsibility for their own selves, and don’t let reactiveness (to each other) rule the outcome.
In a codependent relationship, Person A’s mental and emotional well-being does depend on Person B’s actions and words. Whenever Person B says or does something that Person A does not like, this “hurts” Person A, and Person A therefore will use manipulative means to try to get Person B to do or say what Person A wants. Likewise, if Person A’s manipulations end up not working, and Person A overreacts — thus genuinely hurting someone in fact — Person A automatically blames Person B because Person B’s failure to be manipulated “made” Person A overreact, and cause the harm.
“You made me do this!”
Which in itself is another manipulation: guilt-trip Person B, and you (as Person A) might be able to force Person B into “owning” the harm Person A caused, thus Person A has succeeded in extracting the words/actions — from Person B — that Person A requires to feel okay; because Person A has successfully evaded responsibility. The “badness” has been successfully displaced onto Person B, and Person B has been made the “receptacle” for Person A’s ownership of what Person A has done. It’s all Person B’s fault, both for failing to be manipulated, and for “causing” Person A to lash out and do real harm.
Codependency is a clinically documented component of many abusive and dysfunctional relationships. Scratch a CHORFhole, and you will (in a majority of cases, I think) discover somebody who had this codependency modeled for him in his home of origin. The codependency manifests in adult life, long after the actual damage has been done.
Thing is, codependency is the “normal” for millions of families across the country. They can’t see or recognize it because it’s like expecting a trout to recognize that water is wet.
Worse yet, if both Person A and Person B are codependent, they will interlace in a tightening noose of manipulations and counter-manipulations as each of them tries to control the other person, evade responsibility, counter-control, counter-evade, and so on and so forth. A lot of children hate their parents for this reason, even if they can’t quite discern why, because they grew up in codependency — and it was a poisonous experience. Many marriages are miserable, or end in failure, because codependency dictates their shared lives.
The trolls that have been trolling this site since day 1, act as if the things they have said in the past mean nothing. The goal posts continually move and they are forever indignant.
It was a travesty that some women were kept off the ballot. It was not a travesty that women were punished by them to get back at Brad. They can’t even see the contradiction in their own argument.
Let’s move on, they frequent making light and other authors blogs that will edit or delete all dissenting posts on a regular basis and that is ok with them. Brad squashes their posts for one day and all the sudden they are deeply offended and Brad isn’t being honorable. They don’t see the contradiction in their stance on that.
Any allegation made by Brad must be proven beyond a reasonable (or unreasonable) doubt. Any assertion they make about Brad being a homophobe or a racist requires no evidence. They don’t see the contradiction in that.
One other point I want to make is that now that we see the nomination numbers it is interesting to see that Ms. Sarkeesian’s youtube channel would have made the list. Does anyone find it coincidental that out of nowhere gamer gate was accused of getting involved in the puppy campaigns? Might I suggest that the clique that we are assured doesn’t exist was pulling for that one? Then in a fashion al la Clamps GG gets drug into the argument out of nowhere even though no one else was making that connection. The narrative that a clique doesn’t exist is laughable when it was obvious an organized campaign was launched utilizing all the sympathetic media outlets they could get to listen. All of these articles pushed the same narratives and included the GG angle. This is of course speculation and heresay so the trolls will discount it because it is not evidence that would be admissible in court. You know, because CHORFdom would be sent to jail if our allegations prove to be true :eyeroll:
Brad, in the midst of all the CHORF ugliness—and we now know exactly how nasty they can get, since they have displayed it to the world—let me thank you personally for heading up SP3 and taking all the lies and flak from the SJW’s. You’re a brave guy to have done it, especially in view of how ugly and vicious SJW’s are. You deserve heartfelt thanks from all of us. It’s a tragedy that those people have been allowed to take over the Hugo awards to push thought-control and political correctness. Thank you again for all you’ve done, and thank you for your excellent books man.
Ah yes, someone else claiming that Puppies kept Weir off the ballot. And if the Puppies had put Weir on the ballot, YOUR SIDE WOULD HAVE NO-AWARDED HIM BECAUSE WE NOMINATED HIM.
I think the best illustration of the CHORF mentality is a Venn diagram.
https://novelninja.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/not-a-real-fan.jpg?w=960&h=899
THEY think they’re the only ones who get to define what ‘Fandom’ is, and who should be allowed in, and THEY think they’re the final arbiters of what consists of ‘good fiction’. And people who disagree are obviously being led, because people don’t ever have opinions other than those they’re told to hold by others – right?
This is the first year I’ve been a supporting member in literally decades. Last Worldcon I went to was in ’86, after that ‘real life’ was a lot more important than fandom. Still read a lot of SF, but I haven’t been happy with a LOT of what I’ve been reading from Tor, and I ended up dumping a long-time subscription to Asimov’s because the fiction got way too preachy and unsatisfying.
(Hey, I’ve got no problem with the protagonist losing, even losing their life – but there’s got to be a ‘win’ somehow in the end as a payoff for the reader – and more and more there simply wasn’t for me.)
This year, I read and enjoyed a lot of the works in the Hugo awards pack – and voted according to what I liked and what I didn’t. Next year – I plan to do the same. And if my votes don’t please the self-appointed ‘Fandom’ hierarchy – then that’s their problem, not mine.
They’re not the gatekeepers any more, deciding who or what gets published. If they want a small sandbox they can control, that’s their problem, not mine. They can keep their sandbox – the rest of us have a universe to explore.
From a Twitter convo between Shaun Duke, Paul Weimer and Aaron Pound, discussing Brad:
“Hugo-Loving Lich @AaronPound · Aug 23
@eruditeogre @shaunduke @PrinceJvstin He thinks as long as he has Analog and Baen as contracts and the related fans, he’s good.”
Oh no! All he has is a magazine that publishes him regularly, Baen as a publisher who doesn’t stifle him, and fans who buy and read his work! He’s doomed!
Nompe. But that’s not what either Puppy bunch did. Both Brad and Vox made no real ttempt to say “Hey, read this and nominate” — they said ‘If you’re with me, nominate.”
“As noted earlier in the year, the SAD PUPPIES 3 list is a recommendation. Not an absolute.”
“Gathered here is the best list (we think!) of entirely deserving works, writers, and editors”
“If you agree with our slate below — and we suspect you might — this is YOUR chance to make sure YOUR voice is heard.”
In other words, ‘here’s our opinion; vote for what you agree with’.
You are a liar, and I’m finished with you.
You know what’s missing from your list of disclaimers, Inebriated Vulpine?
The word “read”.
As in, “read these and vote what you think.”
So, no, I see no real attempt to say “read this and nominate”. I see a lot of “We think this is good, so go vote.”
“In other words, ‘here’s our opinion; vote for what you agree with’.”
Are you familiar with the term “plausible deniability”?
“You are a liar, and I’m finished with you.”
You’re welcome to be done with the discussion.
” Any assertion they make about Brad being a homophobe or a racist requires no evidence.”
Well, y’know, calling someone gay as an insult, then apologizing for calling them gay because that’s an insult rather speaks for itself. Not much more evidence required.
“Well, y’know, calling someone gay as an insult, then apologizing for calling them gay because that’s an insult rather speaks for itself.”
Calling people Nazis, racists, misogynists, on the other hand: perfectly okay!
Hypocrite.
“Calling people Nazis, racists, misogynists, on the other hand: perfectly okay!
Hypocrite.”
Are you really that dim, Locktopus? Try and keep up.
If someone wanted to call me a Naziphobe, on the grounds that I used it as an insult, and apologized for falsely calling someone a Nazi, I’d say they had a point — because I do hate and despise Nazis.
Brad apparently feels that calling someone gay is an insult — that’s how he used it — and then apologized for being so insulting as to call someone gay. If you think calling someone gay is insulting them, you’re a homophobe.
Okay then. Let’s hear you tear the anti-Puppy crowd a new one for laughing at the idea of Vox Day/John Wright slashfic.
Because making “gay!” jokes is only offensive when it’s not being done by the people who declare themselves the champions of LGBT people (well, those who don’t disagree with them).
Wow, you really aren’t keeping track, are you?
Apparently, there were 196 nominations cast for some book called ‘Chaplain’s War’ by some bloke last name of Torgerson.
Check your facts next time.
My comment : The Puppy slate was, by and large, crap.
You do realize Torgensen was not on the 2015 slate, right? ( http://www.thehugoawards.org/hugo-history/2015-hugo-awards/ )
Quick clue: No one* making those slashfic remarks would apologize to VD or JCW for saying they might hypothetically be gay, because the people making those remarks don’t think it’s an *insult*. The humor in the slash fiction is the difference between the people and their actions.
If, for example, someone had written a fic about a group of SJWs meeting (secretly) in their private Heinlein shrine, afraid of what their fellow SJWs would think if they were found out — no writer of that would think to apologize to SJWs for writing it, because they wouldn’t think having a secret Heinlein shrine was an insult.
See the difference?
*Well, some people might, because they would feel it was disrespectful of their autonomy to assign any orientation/gender/etc. to them — but they wouldn’t have written the slashfic in the first place. 😉
Brad, I wasn’t trolling, I was pointing out to someone that he was calling your work crap… on your own blog.
Brad:
Read your blog, but don’t comment very often. First off, thank you for your effort these last seven months, it has been appreciated. Next year, we’ll just, as Vox says, bring more puppies. I’m definitely in for SP4.
I also heartily approve of your correctly shortening comments to “YOU MADE US DO THIS” because that’s exactly what they’re saying, despite the endless word-streams of denial to the contrary. They know it’s the behavior of abusers, but the can never admit that. They also, as a rule, cannot take responsibility for their behavior and actions. If they could, Toni Weisskopf would have a Hugo. They are quite content with throwing women under the bus to prove a point, especially when she’s not of the SJW ilk. They don’t actually support actual women, only the ideology. They claim principles where they have none. The Neilsen-Hayden’s routinely “disemvowel” wrong-thing comments, and Scalsi uses the “banhammer”: you have allowed discussion and rabid insult to remain here for months, so they have no complaint when you correct their posts. None. It’s well deserved.
The Puppies point has been well proven. The “Fandom” elite responded as predicted and now stands amid the smoking rubble loudly claiming “we didn’t burn anything down!! (And If we did, which we didn’t, you did it or made us do it or something!!!).”
The complain that they just “rejected a shit sandwich”, so I guess they understand how Puppies felt at lauds and awards going to “If You Were a Cupcake, My Dinosaur” or “The Water That Falls on the Story That Goes Nowhere.” They constantly complain that they just don’t get what the Puppies want and invent convoluted strawmen to further confuse them. I’ve always put it quite succinctly: Good SFF (or any fiction) puts story before identity politics. Of course, it would take a modicum of honesty and wit to understand that, which I doubt they can muster. Because the SJW narrative is that identity politics trumps anything and makes any story “better.”
After wading through the cesspit of Vile770, I’m done with trying to reason with the unreasonable: reason, logic, and honesty are not in them, and they lack the wit to understand anything but the narrative.
But I’m not done with the battle to restore quality to SFF and to the awards that purport to reward quality. I’ll be back next year, and the next, and the next, for as long as it takes. They think we’re going away; we’re not. They think we’re angry about No Awards; we’re not–we were expecting them and are largely amused that they acted as predicted.
So, for your part in this third wave, you have my thanks.
You know what’s missing from your list of disclaimers, Inebriated Vulpine?
The word “read”.
As in, “read these and vote what you think.”
So, no, I see no real attempt to say “read this and nominate”. I see a lot of “We think this is good, so go vote.” -sschwartzoak
And now we see the SJW moving goal posts and tactics on full display. In argument 1 our intrepid SJW troll claims to no understand that there is an implied “you should read the works” in the statement “if you agree with our slate”.
“” Any assertion they make about Brad being a homophobe or a racist requires no evidence.” – basementhomebrewer
“Well, y’know, calling someone gay as an insult, then apologizing for calling them gay because that’s an insult rather speaks for itself. Not much more evidence required.” -sschwartzoak
In argument 2 our intrepid SJW now understands the full implied message of Brad’s statement even though he never said “John Scalzi is gay”. Isn’t it interesting that he requires a flat out statement when the implied statement doesn’t help his argument and yet when it does help him paint Brad as a homophobe all the sudden he is able to deduce the meaning. Note this is the only statement he is able to point to in regards to Brad and he doesn’t have any defense for the racist and Nazi insults thrown Brad’s way.
This is an individual, like all SJWs who is not an honest broker. He does not seek the truth. He seeks to win an argument at all costs. In that vein he is going to search out any technicality and resort to looking up the 3rd or 4th definition for a word in the dictionary if necessary.
@basementbrewer
I find it interesting that you can read the implied “read” into the sentence “if you agree with our slate” (which reminds me — to anyone who wants to call it a “recommendation list” instead of a “slate” — here’s BT himself calling it a slate) and expect everyone else to, but then come back and argue that this: “Correia also likes women. We’re not sure about Scalzi on that account. If you know what I mean” was not calling Scalzi gay, and as an insult. To top it all off, he later apologized for “inferring abotu Scalzi’s sexuality”. In other words, that calling Scalzi gay was not OK because being gay is bad.
In other words, your “not an honest broker” is, if it is true of me, equally true of you. Cope.
Except, I never said, nor implied, that Brad didn’t imply that Scalzi was gay. I am saying that one statement does not a homophobe make. Again, you are trying to get me on technicalities that aren’t even there. This is typical, as I pointed out ,of someone like you. You are desperately trying to win the argument by grasping at straws. You are in no way interested in getting to a resolution or in finding the truth.
Again, you ignored my points about the charges of racism and Nazi being acceptable to you with no evidence because you can’t even find a minor flaw in the statement.
Since this will devolve until you get the last word ( which is another typical sign of someone only interested in winning the argument) I am going to ignore your further attempts to try and get me on a technicality. Perhaps you can point out a few of my run-on sentences or typos?
Ok, I’ll bite, since nobody else seems interested to. This probably contains spoilers if some of you haven’t read the stories, but I’ll try to keep it short.
thedrunkfox:
“Which aspects of “Totaled” by Kary English did you find to be sub-par, and how do you feel they could have been improved upon?”
I think it was an ok short story. The bad guy was a bit too bad, the romantic subplot unnecessary and the slow deterioration could’ve been depicted better. Having said that, I liked that English focused on the emotional side rather than going for the horror which is the typical realm of the brain in the jar stories.
“Which aspects of “On a Spiritual Plain” by Lou Antonelli did you find to be sub-par, and how do you feel they could have been improved upon?”
I found it odd that even though the protagonist is a chaplain, there’s very little in the way of exploring the spiritul repercussions of seeing ghosts/souls. Or that the story differentiates between ghost and soul, but make no mention on how this differentiation was determined. Also, pretty much nothing happens in the whole story.
“Which aspects of “Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust, Earth to Alluvium” by Gray Rinehart did you find to be sub-par, and how do you feel they could have been improved upon?”
Again, an ok short story, except it had some weird stuff (Where’s Earth? Why was the first contact person killed?) and it didn’t really have an ending.
“Which aspects of Skin Game by Jim Butcher did you find to be sub-par, and how do you feel they could have been improved upon?”
I thought it was a fun read. However, I have no idea who the people are in the book, it starts from the middle of the story and makes no attempt to introduce the characters. No wonder since it’s 15th book in the series, but I thought both Ancillary Sword and The Dark Between the Stars did a better job with that even though both are (at least sort of) sequels.
“Which aspects of One Bright Star to Guide Them by John C. Wright did you find to be sub-par, and how do you feel they could have been improved upon?”
Exposition and heavy religious message. It’s fine to let your characters describe some events from the past, but there was too much of that. And it was not just the past: there were actually crucial events that happened *during* the story that happened outside the reader’s view and were then just described by the main character.
No idea about Shattered Shields, Abyss & Apex – didn’t read, didn’t vote. And I don’t really care about Sarkeesian.
However, the whole line of questioning here is off the base. The real question is: what made these works worthy of a Hugo?
What was the particular quality in Wisdom from My Internet that made you nominate it? What works did Toni Weisskopf edit last year that made you think, *as a reader*, that she’s the best suited candidate? What was is that lured you into The Triple Sun? What made The Dark Between the Stars better than, say, Ancillary Sword?
“I found it odd that even though the protagonist is a chaplain, there’s very little in the way of exploring the spiritul repercussions of seeing ghosts/souls. Or that the story differentiates between ghost and soul, but make no mention on how this differentiation was determined. Also, pretty much nothing happens in the whole story.”
Do you even Aristotle bro? It was originally published in Sci Phi Journal (http://sciphijournal.com) and it fit quite well. It is an exploration on the nature of the soul and hylomorphic dualism. It was kind of high brow I guess, but there is quite a bit going on in the story.
I’m biased, I did buy the story.
Jason, thanks for the reply!
“Do you even Aristotle bro?”
Nope, can’t say that I do. I guess I read the story differently: I though it had a great potential for exploring the nature of soul or the differentiation between soul, consciousness and body, but it didn’t do that – instead it seemed like the main character (and, I assume, although I might be wrong, the author) already had decided on the answer that didn’t require exploring – starting from the beginning where they set on the journey to get rid of the dead service mate.
Sorry that was a joke.
It’s alright, it does explore the idea of hylomorphic dualism. I really liked the story when I read it, enough to buy it from Lou. Not every story is for everybody, but there is a fair bit going on in the story.
I don’t know what religious background (if any) that you have. The story did seem to prove popular with Roman Catholics and Protestants with a bit of a theology background. It probably assumed a bit of familiarity with Aristotle and Aquinas, which are part of an older philosophical tradition than most moderns grow up in.
Well of course. Repeat after me: SJW’s Always Lie. There is no other First Rule.
A warrior, fresh from the crusades, walks onto a bar. The cutest little puppy sits wagging his tail behind the taps. He jumps up, pushes out five pints filled with amber liquid, and proudly offers “Hey, thirsty fella, what would you like? A light beer, an IPA, a stout, an ale or a lager?”
The warrior scrunches his nose. “Beer, beer, beer, beer or beer? What have you got against whiskey?”
“Whiskey? –” the puppy curls his lip and growls, “It’s awful, no real man likes that stuff, they just swirl it around pretentiously, saying it has ‘flavor notes’ and crap. Fakes, Wusses. Effete wimps.”
Unable to contain his anger, the warrior raises his righteous war hammer and with one mighty swing, destroys the establishment.
Ears down and eyes wide with astonishment, the puppy sits amidst the rubble and ashes and watches the warrior gleefully gallop away into the distance on his prancing purebred pony, proudly proclaiming victory.
George R.R. Martin emerges from the smoke, surveys the damage, and scratches the puppy behind the ears. “Oh dear, what did you do, little puppy?”
“Just offered him a beer, George.”
Alan, that made me smile!
I should probably start by saying that my dog in this fight is probably pretty atypical. I don’t much care about the Hugos, the only work that was proposed for nomination in any category that I’ve read, let alone am a fan of, is Order of the Stick, I didn’t know that there was a Hugo category that would have been available for Order of the Stick until after the awards were done and over with, and I think that OOTS is probably doing just fine without the Hugo, so who cares. I have zero information or opinion on the prevalence of SJW’s, self-describing or otherwise, among Hugo decision makers, and I’m not sure that the reality on that question is relevant; like the ghost of Hamlet’s father, it’s the appearance that matters, not the apparition. I don’t even have an opinion on J. J. Abrams reboots – about the strongest opinion I have about SFF is that whoever gave the order to cancel Firefly should be the first one against the wall when the revolution comes. My area of study could best be described as psychology in the pre-psychological novel, and my interest in this whole I-will-not-call-it-a-kerfluffle is the *massive trainwreck* you’ve got going on here. I just can’t look away, so here goes.
Right, there’s this thing called “Reactance,” it’s a cognitive bias, which means that it’s a way that people behave that isn’t necessarily in their best interest and it isn’t necessarily rational, but it’s what people do (we could have a long discussion about other cognitive biases like ultimate attribution error, neglect of probability, optimism bias, self-serving bias, actor-observer bias, naive realism, availability cascade, the illusion of asymmetrical insight, the Dunning-Kruger effect, stereotyping and the Semmelweis Reflex, but for now, let’s stick with reactance). When people perceive that their choices have been limited and that something that was formerly available has been removed, they will reflexively fight back to reacquire that choice. They don’t have to be good or bad or childish or rational or anything, they will straight up do whatever to get their choice back. This is human nature, and although it can lead to some irrational, self-destructive actions, most of the time it’s not a bad plan. As a matter of fact, the alternatives to reactance, capitulation and appeasement, have, shall we say, their detractors.
What I’m saying is: this voting for No Award was an inevitable move. Eventually, this year, next year, whatever, you were going to put together enough of a coalition to flat-out capture the nominations for a category in its entirety, and when that happened, the odds of No Award winning were pretty high. Not an absolute certainty, but very likely, and there’s no need to organize at all to make it happen. It doesn’t matter who your “opposition” was: you could have been doing this for School Board nominations in the most conservative county in the country or you could be knocking out a candidate for the chair of the Women’s Studies department at Sarah Lawrence, it makes no difference. When you limit someone’s choices, you immediately make whatever was taken off the table more attractive and, even if the person in question is able to overcome that and decide that the option you knocked out wasn’t their choice anyway, *they will still want to punish you*. The reason that this is a cognitive bias is that that urge is so strong that people will do things that have negative utility to fill it (your favorite shirt was a gift from the ex who just dumped you, so you torch the shirt, stuff like that.) They don’t have to be bad people to do this, or stupid people, or short-sighted people, all people will do this. The only thing that could have prevented this outcome, given your actions, especially your consistent refusal to acknowledge that your actions were provocative, would have been a small enough voting pool for any outliers to be relevant.
Of course, this isn’t just how your opponents have behaved, it’s what you yourself were doing from the start. Your entire rationale for this campaign – at least the most PC explanation you’ve given for your rationale – is that your choices for the Hugo have been limited, you believe that they have been limited not by any organic, democratic process but by means of manipulation, and you are seeking to reacquire the options to which you believe you are naturally entitled but which you were denied. It’s pure, unadulterated reactance, and, once you’ve accepted the idea that any outcome other than recognition of your preferences is a perversion of the natural order, it’s normal and natural for you to want to take back what you see as rightfully yours.
What’s really interesting, in a Greek tragedy kind of way, is that that base assumption, that your choices are entitled to recognition, is both what propelled you and what doomed you from the start. Without it, you might have reasoned that the books being preferred aren’t really your thing but life is like that and you read what you read and whatever, but with it, when that “most prestigious award” goes to books you don’t like, you start a campaign to change things, and good for you for campaigning to change things. Kudos, Then again, without that sense of entitlement, you might have acknowledged that other people’s preferences are also valid and their preferences not being reflected in the nominations at all was as problematic as your preferences not having whatever prominence you think is appropriate (you kept arguing that the choices you got nominated are good ones, but that’s not what’s relevant. If you go out to dinner with a friend and are looking at the menu, thinking about what you’d like to have and your friend orders for you, it doesn’t matter if he ordered hamburgers or lobster, what matters is that he took away your choice. If you protest and he responds by telling you that what he chose for you is good and you should try it, that still isn’t the point, the point is that he took your choice away from you. If he continues to argue and accuses you of being a neanderthal for rejecting the good lobster or a snob for rejecting the good hamburger that still isn’t the point, the point is that he took your choice from you. As a matter of fact, because every argument he makes for how good the thing is cannot avoid also being an argument for why he was justified in denying you the chance to make the choice yourself, unless you’re pathologically submissive, everything he says in favor of that lobster will make it harder for you to enjoy the lobster). Had you acknowledged the importance and value of the nominations reflecting the widest consensus possible, you’d have largely negated the sense of loss that prompted their reactance. Instead, you decided to treat the world to some pious sermonizing humblebrags that could hardly avoid convincing anybody who read them that you thought that any objection to your preference’s dominance was not only without merit but was worthy of ridicule, and then on top of that you telegraphed loud and clear that you deeply cared about avoiding a No Award vote. You gave a whole lot of people who had one clear path open to punish you absolutely no reason to think you’d back off without being made to, and then you’re surprised when they choose to punish you instead of capitulating, and you double down on the sneers, sermons and humblebrags.
Like I said, trainwreck. Can’t look away.
@sjsundell
First off, thank you for answering my questions. And I’m sorry it took me this long to respond; for whatever reason, I didn’t get notified of your comment. I do have a minor quibble here-
[On One Bright Star] Exposition and heavy religious message.
-in that Mr. Wright has stated before that the story was written when he was an atheist, and (to my recollection) never intended any religious message. You’re hardly the first person to interpret it that way, though, so it’s only a minor quibble.
One other thing:
What was the particular quality in Wisdom from My Internet that made you nominate it? What works did Toni Weisskopf edit last year that made you think, *as a reader*, that she’s the best suited candidate? What was is that lured you into The Triple Sun?
I’ve said it a few times now, but those are buried in the huge pile of comments now, so it probably makes sense that it went unnoticed. I, personally, did not nominate or vote for the Hugos. I didn’t have the funds for a membership to do so, and I was late to the party, so to speak, so I watched from the sidelines instead. If someone else here wishes to answer, however, more power to them.
The point of asking the questions was because I suspected a lot of the people going on about nominations being stolen and the nominees being crap hadn’t actually read the works. So I asked about works I had mostly been able to find to read, so that I could compare whatever answers they gave with what I had read. You’ve already implied pretty strongly that you did read the works and nominate accordingly, and your answers (a few of which I kind of agree with) only confirm that in my mind. So, again, thank you.
@thedrunkfox, no problem. I’ve also noticed WordPress doesn’t send e-mail for all the comments, which is occasionally annoying 😛
(I have no idea how to style comments in WordPress, I’m hoping some HTML gets through)
-in that Mr. Wright has stated before that the story was written when he was an atheist, and (to my recollection) never intended any religious message. You’re hardly the first person to interpret it that way, though, so it’s only a minor quibble.
I’ve seen some people reading it as a straight-up Narnia pastiche and being happy with that. I thought there were some things there that were explicitly Christian (and Catholic) – if Wright wrote the story before his conversion, that’s just another proof that author doesn’t equate with his stories. And just to be sure: both the Christian views and not writing according to your own are, of course, perfectly fine.
I, personally, did not nominate or vote for the Hugos. I didn’t have the funds for a membership to do so, and I was late to the party, so to speak, so I watched from the sidelines instead. If someone else here wishes to answer, however, more power to them.
I hadn’t noticed your not nominating/voting before, but yes, those were meant as questions for more general audience as well. And the reason I asked was kind of the same as you had with your questions 8) There’s most definitely a bias here, where the “puppy side” assumes other people voted blindly No Award, and, similarly, other people assume puppy nominations were made blindly. I don’t think either is completely true, and separating the good will from bad or differentatiating between motivations in an anonymous voting process is impossible, and, ultimately, fruitless.
That should be the name of a character. Pious Sermonizing Humblebrags the Third, starring in For Whom The Concern Troll Tolls.
28 Percent, you’ve clearly devoted a lot of time to thinking about it. But nothing you wrote addressed the core problem that the so called “lovers of diversity” decided to burn the grass hut down while the women were still inside it. I have no doubt people didn’t like being “forced” to vote on things they themselves hadn’t put there — almost nobody does, but then, this is the nature of so many democratic processes — but the moral error occurred when they determined that it was okay to go scorched-earth on the very people they claim to be defending by going scorched earth. “We have to keep the evil white men from doing their evil white men things and stuffs!” That is the imposed narrative that has been crowed often and loudly since April. Evil white mens being evil and white. Save the womens! Protect the womenses! And then women got burned. You may be entirely correct about the psychology of it. But understanding why somebody shoots the hostages — to save the hostages — doesn’t make it right. Nor does it absolve the shooters of their responsibility for pulling the proverbial trigger. In other words, psychology is not an excuse for acting terribly, and against your very own stated moral imperative.
@sjsundell
no problem. I’ve also noticed WordPress doesn’t send e-mail for all the comments, which is occasionally annoying 😛
It really is.
(I have no idea how to style comments in WordPress, I’m hoping some HTML gets through)
It looks like it does, for italics at least. I’ve yet to get bold text to work, and I don’t know how people are doing the indented quotes. (Markup, maybe? I think that’s what it’s called.)
I’ve seen some people reading it as a straight-up Narnia pastiche and being happy with that.
I was the same, though I’ll admit it was pretty cool to see Mr. Wright’s explanation for what he was doing with those parts of the story and going ‘ohhhhhh, that’s what it was!
I thought there were some things there that were explicitly Christian (and Catholic) – if Wright wrote the story before his conversion, that’s just another proof that author doesn’t equate with his stories. And just to be sure: both the Christian views and not writing according to your own are, of course, perfectly fine.
Absolutely.
There’s most definitely a bias here, where the “puppy side” assumes other people voted blindly No Award, and, similarly, other people assume puppy nominations were made blindly.
Well, I certainly don’t think every single person who wasn’t a Puppy voted blindly. Problem is, I think most of the people who didn’t probably didn’t bother to take the time to come to Mr. Torgersen’s blog and blame him for everything. I hope most people who are Puppies didn’t vote blindly either, and I’ve seen conversations during the past few months implying that at least some didn’t, which is of course good. As I said in an earlier comment, any who did, shame on them. What really gets me angry are the accusations and insinuations that Mr. Torgersen and Mr. Correia told the Puppies to vote blindly according to The Slate. Either way, I think I have an idea to sidestep the issue entirely, but I won’t be able to get into it publicly until at least tonight.
I hope you get some answers to your questions, but unfortunately I think Brad’s put up a new post and everyone got distracted by the shiny. As for me, there is (as always!) work to be done.
That should be the name of a character. Pious Sermonizing Humblebrags the Third, starring in For Whom The Concern Troll Tolls.
When it’s a name there’s no “o” , as in Pius S. Humblebrags, the Anti-Anti-Pope.
I’m going to start this by giving my personal opinion on the Best Editor award: it’s stupid. LIke a People’s Choice Award for Lighting Design kind of stupid. I don’t mean that the controversy over them is stupid or that editors are stupid or anything else other than that the concept of readers judging from the finished book how much impact an editor had on the book is one of the single dumbest things I’ve ever heard of. I’m really kind of amused by all the “did you read the book or just vote?” questions about it. Are you going to read To Kill a Mockingbird and say “wow, that’s some good editing?” (by all accounts it was excellent editing, but that’s the thing about good editing: it’s invisible to the reader). How does reading the finished book help you to understand how it developed from the early drafts you’ve never seen? How does it tell you how much moral support the editor provided during the revision process? How is it any less well informed to vote for an editor without reading the book than it is to vote for them without having been privy to the meeting where the publisher was trying to decide whether to continue moving forward with a book and the editor did what had to be done to get it through? Readers can’t do that – they can read a book and see that it needed a good editor, but they can’t read a book and determine that it had a good editor. Authors can’t even do it, their experience of other editors besides the one or two they worked with that year is too narrow. The pretense that an award for Best Editor can be given by popular acclaim from fans based and be awarded solely on merit is fatuous at best.
The other opinion that I feel that I should disclose is that I am personally vehemently opposed to the kind of gender preference you appear to be demanding, that of giving an award, even an award I think is silly, to a woman for the sake of giving it to a woman. I could go on about diversity of viewpoint and opinion strengthening organizations and about representation mattering, but none of that adds up to being willing to give a woman an award with an asterisk attached. As a woman and as a feminist, I consider the concept condescending, patronizing and altogether insulting. I would also like to add that, while I have long ago stopped bothering to count the number of conservatives who have demanded, as you are doing, that as a feminist, I should make judgments on what I think is a fundamentally disgusting basis, I have encountered in my life exactly one liberal who did the same.
I’m working on unpacking the assumptions you’ve got in play here, picking just a few:
“No Award” was a “scorched earth” response. I wish I’d started noting all the different ways you’ve described the “No Award” option when I started going through your archives. You use so many violent metaphors to describe this, I’m surprised that, to my memory at least, you’ve never happened on referring to it as a “nuclear option.” Minus the hyperbole, the only damage done any of the people in this category, male or female, is that they didn’t get an award, and that was going to be true for at least four of them no matter what. Since both the women you mentioned were in the same category, it’s difficult to see how they both could have been harmed, even if you grant that being nominated for an award is harmful if you don’t get it (isn’t it an honor just to be nominated anymore?)
“Evil white men must be stopped.” There’s a difference between being pleased to see a woman win and being pleased to see a man lose; there’s an even bigger difference between wanting to see literature that is liked particularly by women (or by LBGTQ or by people of color) be thought of as literature of interest instead of as literature of special interest and thinking of the white straight male perspective as evil. Characterizing feminism that way though makes it a great deal easier to avoid understanding the feminist position, but that may be the point.
You can’t be for more than one thing at a time. This is the underlying assumption that drives accusations of hypocrisy. You may want to protect women, for instance, but that interest wouldn’t stop you from convicting a woman of a crime if you thought she was guilty of it if you loved justice more. That’s not hypocrisy, that’s the condition of not suffering from monomania.
I think this is particularly interesting:
But understanding why somebody shoots the hostages — to save the hostages — doesn’t make it right. Nor does it absolve the shooters of their responsibility for pulling the proverbial trigger.
Am I reading this right, are you equating yourself to a hostage-taker who used women as human shields, and then using that as the basis of a metaphor to accuse someone else of a moral failing? Seriously?
Ah, 28 Percent, there is no satisfying you. A true troll to the last. Even GRRM hated what the Trufen did to the editor categories. The Trufen burned the hut with the family still inside. No amount of artful pin-head tap-dancing can spin the Trufen out of their culpability on this. Remember GRRM’s admonition? Scalpel, vs. bludgeon? I guess the Trufen didn’t listen, and torched the hut anyway — and cheered themselves doing it.
Of course, GRRM was also the guy who said nobody should be singled out or punished because of an association, or being on a list, or otherwise being recommended.
if Trufen spent more time listening to George — and less time cheering their own hubris — the wider world wouldn’t be shaking its head at the Trufen: overgrown children, who never learned how to share.
An award that has become so corrupted by political cliquishness has no legitimacy in the first place.
When they banded together to vote “No Award” they signaled that the award itself was in no way genuine or valid.
It doesn’t matter who wins the Hugos because the process by which the recipient is determined is fundamentally broken. Answers from a magic 8 ball have more validity as they at least give everyone an equal shot.
They’ve burned down the village to “save it.”
Let them sit among the ashes and wonder why they are now being ignored.