Slashdot Mirror
Hugos Refuse To Award Anyone Rather Than Submit To Fans' Votes
An anonymous reader writes: You may remember way back in April there was a bit of a kerfuffle over the nominees for the Hugo Awards being "too conservative" based on a voting campaign organized by a group of science fiction fans who wanted to promote hard science fiction over more recent nominees. This was spun as conservatives "ruining" a "progressive" award. The question was left: would the final voters of the Hugo awards accept these nominees, or just take their ball home and refuse to give out anyway awards at all? The votes are in and we know the answer now: they'd rather just not give out any awards. (Wired has a slightly different slant on the process as well as the outcome of this year's awards.)
It's like Slashdot doesn't even try any more.
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
The headline there is stupid. The result IS the fan's votes. In six categories "No Award" won the vote.
This sums it up pretty well: http://io9.com/how-the-hugo-aw...
"This actually sounds like a compelling argument at first â" but the saboteurs themselves have already disproved it. Their own success shows that their conspiracy theory is absolutely false. If there had been a left-wing conspiracy to stuff the ballot, it would have largely counteracted the efforts of Beale and his friends. The Beale strategem only succeeds if all the other nominations are scattered and disorganized. And that kind of disorganization is exactly what we saw in most nominations. It appears that everybody except Bealeâ(TM)s crew simply nominated whatever stories they happened to enjoy in 2014. Had there been a secret left-wing bloc nominating its own stories in lockstep, then Bealeâ(TM)s strategy would have failed."
From the wired story linked above:
But in recent years, as sci-fi has expanded to include storytellers who are women, gays and lesbians, and people of color, the Hugos have changed, too. At the presentation each August, the Gods with the rockets in their hands have been joined by Goddesses and those of other ethnicities and genders and sexual orientations, many of whom want to tell stories about more than just spaceships.
While on the other hand, most SF fans like stories about spaceships as part of their science fiction, hence the rocket shape of the award.
But no, mustn't have anyone who isn't on-board with the latest politically correct dinosaur win!
I'm sure the fans can't wait until next year, when a concentrated campaign will emerge to vote one particular non-SJW in each category as the winner, turning their own tactics (block voting on one option and refusing to even consider the quality of others and vote for the "best") on their head.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
>GamerGate makes a political movement out of threatening with rape any woman who has the temerity to offer an opinion about a videogame.
This whole movement came out of the same place as GamerGate. A reactionary minority group, upset that their media fandom was getting too diverse, tried to spark a backlash. It didn't work for GamerGate, and it didn't work for the Puppies either.
The fans rejected the Puppies' attempt to stuff the ballot with their own (largely subpar) works, and now the Puppies are claiming victory with a refrain that sounds an awful lot like "Those grapes were probably sour anyway."
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
Makes no sense what's so ever.
This is the most ignorant story summary I can ever remember reading on Slashdot.
I don't believe that it is worth engaging with it, but readers should understand that there has always been a "No award" option. Furthermore, anyone can join up and vote in the Hugos. There is no "cabal" of "SJWs" who are taking over anything. Anybody can sign up to vote in the Hugos. If the majority voted "No award" in some categories, that reflects a democratic view of those people who bothered to register to vote.
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
On the one hand, there probably are some political blow hards fucking up the process... name a place where that isn't true.
On the other hand, the Hugos are not supposed to be a popularity contest as much as a recognition of something that was actually well written or interesting to OTHER writers of science fiction.
THAT said.. refusing to award someone that the people that paid 40 dollars a pop to vote in the election... is also wrong. By the bylaws of the organization I'm guessing that is a violation or something of their own rules.
I don't know... the whole thing looks like it got completely out of fucking control somewhere. I don't know where it started. But someone should have been able to reach a compromise rather than these power plays. When everything becomes power plays it is because people are being unreasonable thus reducing everything to force.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
I have to wonder why Slashdot ran that submission from an anonymous coward (sorry, reader). The Wired article Timothy mentioned in passing looks like it has a stronger grasp on reality but that submission is what people will actually read. Do we need to start moderating the editors or as the GG/Puppies contingent gotten so strong here that it's a lost cause?
The Hugos are a fan vote, not a judge vote. The fans voted: they rejected an attempt by two groups, one a band of right wing extremists, the other a kinda "We feel in our gut that previous winners are left wing but can't come up with a coherent reason why", to hijack the awards by gaming the nomination process.
The two groups, Vox Day's "Rabid Puppies" (the right wing extremists), and the "Sad Puppies", attempted (mostly successfully) to force fans to choose between only works they believed were ideologically sound by focusing nomination votes on two slates. With fans only able to vote for the highest supported works, there was a strong chance each ballot would only have Puppy-supported works on it. This happened in a number of ballots.
The fans said no. The choices we're stuck with suck. We'd rather not vote for anyone.
The headline is an outright unmitigated lie. The fans voted. They rejected the slates they were offered. The Hugos accepted the fan's choices here.
(And how ironic that supporters use the SJW canard when both Puppy campaigns were blatant attempts to prevent anyone voting for anything that might be ideologically unsound to the grounds involved.)
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
this has been an interesting development in Science Fiction. In many ways this has been an argument about the genre of science fiction: is the genre of science fiction about impossible but theorhetically plausible science such as the future or starships or aliens or time travel, or is the genre about a platform by which issues can be explored?
What I find interesting is the Sad Puppies were arguing that science fiction should be about the science fiction and not the platform argument, and yet not a single one has ever won a Hugo Award. Alternatively many past Hugo Award Winners such as Robert Heinlein absolutely used the genre of science fiction to ask questions about issues by using them in the somewhat fantastical but plausible context. Stranger in a Strange Land may have been in the future and involve aliens and be set in the future, but it's purpose was to take a plain, unbiased look at many of the social constructs in our society today and question them. Philip K Dick's work almost has to be set in a science fiction setting to his explore his typical themes of reality and perception.
So in many ways the Sad Puppies were arguing for a perception of what the Hugo Awards were about, a perception that in many ways was false. These guys may be science fiction writers, but I don't think they actually get science fiction.
Why are all these people obsessed with race and gender? There's something seriously wrong with your mentality when you spend all your time thinking about and talking about this stuff.
Who thinks and talks about black people the most? Bigots. Klan members. They can't shut up. They're obsessed.
Who thinks and talks about religious people the most? Bigots. Anti-Semites. Neo-nazis.
If you're obsessed with race and gender and orientation and WTF-else, you have a lot in common with Klan members and Nazis. If, when you hear an opinion you disagree with, your first impulse is to dismiss them as wrong-color, wrong-gender, wrong-sexual-preference, then you're a bigot.
I DESPISE everyone's IDENTITY. Who cares? not me. But I do like good stories. I DESPISE "SOCIAL" justice - that's National Socialism by another name. Nazis, for short. But I love progress and opportunity.
Really? SJW seems to be a favorite acronym of those who want to marginalize viewpoints they disagree with. Is there an equivalent acronym for these people? Social Ignorance Warriors (SIW)? Promoting ignorance and degradation of minority issues.
> This was spun as conservatives "ruining" a "progressive" award.
Umm, according the blithest troll behind the group that's exactly what it is:
"For his part, Beale—who runs his own small publishing company, Castalia House, which got five of its writers and editors (including Beale himself) on this year’s Hugo ballot—has been outspoken about his goals. “I wanted to leave a big smoking hole where the Hugo Awards were,” he told me before the winners were announced. “All this has ever been is a giant Fuck You—one massive gesture of contempt.” Some nerds just want to watch the world burn."
[..]
“I have 390 sworn and numbered vile faceless minions—the hardcore shock troops—who are sworn to mindless and perfect obedience,” he said, acknowledging that his army wasn’t made up solely of sci-fi fans. On the contrary, “the people who are very anti-SJW said, ‘Okay, we want to get in on this.’”
-- source: http://www.wired.com/2015/08/won-science-fictions-hugo-awards-matters/
They are the typical scummy trolls, just like any other juvenile middle school troll. It's rather sad to see *adults* behaving that fashion. WTF is wrong with some people, really. And that's who you have writing your summary, great job there Slashdot. Breitbart, *really*?! Pretty low.
As soon as you start ignoring your supporters you start losing all integrity. Science fiction is all about ray guns and aliens. How could these idiots think it was ever any other way. Was it because star trek used the stripped guys to lash out at the stupidity racial differences? Maybe. But more than likely its this new need for many writers to tell the story of some lame social fantasy and call it Scifi.
I call the SJW 'Social Justice Whores'.
Maybe Social Strawman Warriors -- SS warriors.
If we could vote on a title I'd think mine would stand more of a chance, unfortunately unlike the Hugo's we can't so we're stick with the disingenuous shit Timothy put up.
Why did puppies have to be involved tho?
Please explain how a fallacy could be true.
It's literally defined as being a false belief or a failure in reasoning.
It's the "fallacy fallacy."
If you conclude that because a line of reasoning contains a fallacy, the statement reasoned about is false, you just fell into the fallacy fallacy..
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.c...
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Yeah, the headline is false- in fact, it is backwards.
The fans voted for no award.
No award wasn't instead of the fans' votes: it was the fans' vote.
(not in all categories, though.)
-- this is an artifact of the fact that it only takes a plurality to get on the ballot, but it takes a majority to win (with single transferable vote). So a small groups can get works on the ballot, if the rest of the nominators are split, but if the majority doesn't like those works, a small group can't make those works win.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
"The Hugo Awards, to give them their full title, are awards for excellence in the field of science fiction and fantasy. They were first awarded in 1953, and have been awarded every year since 1955. The awards are run by and voted on by fans."
It award excellence it says nothing else. If those women/minorities/LGBT novel shine by excellence then the sad puppies are idiot puppies. If on the other hand those novel do NOT shine by excellence then there is a suspicion they are nominated for other reason, being promotion of author for other reason. In such case then the puppies are correct as this should be excellence which should be promoted. Not political stuff.
I have no idea whichever way the true reality is I can only give my own take : I can only say the 2014 award did not please me , anciliary justice for example, I found it more old school and not really "excellent" (so the critic of not conservative enough is funny from my POV , it was very conservative in its execution IMNSHO). Water on the shoulder was nice. But both I will have forgotten in a few years. In the end I would not care less for politic I want to see good SF and fantasy float up , being written by and about transgender lesbian women non white or white male. After all I liked Friday from Heinlein. The problem is that definitively this year politics took over from both side.
My final verdict : both side can go to hell.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
I hope you get trapped in a mine with Joe and the other guy, never to be found again.
to obscure?
I trust him more than [xx]
Your fallacy is false dichotomy. Just because [xx] is a bad or unreliable commentator, doesn't mean that Breitbart is a good or reliable commentator
In fact, Breitbard is not a reliable source.
rather than actually pointing out anything untrue or misleading about what he wrote. If you see something he wrote that is untrue or misleading, spit it out. Otherwise, piss off.
Many people did so. His headline is backwards from the truth. The fans vote was for "no award."
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
What has that to do with the Hugos?
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
Yes, the social justice clique burned the awards to the ground to stop any Puppy-nominated candidate from winning. But all Vox Day (the Rabid Puppy leader) wanted was to take the award away from that clique, and he was openly willing to burn it down. They did it for him. Bravo.
The Sad Puppies this year were run by Brad R. Torgersen. He's the most moderate of the puppy group. He explicitly wanted the Sad Puppy slate to be apolitical, the best works around. So on the slate were works by people in the Social Justice clique, and works by those who were neither puppy nor SJ. All the clique had to do to save the award for themselves is vote for those works. But instead they hounded some of their own people into withdrawing their nomination, and refused to vote for those neutrals (e.g. Jim Butcher) who remained. Once again, bravo, SJW/CHORFs; in stomping on as decent a person as Torgersen you gave victory to Vox Day.
I have not been following this other than knowing some controversy existed so have no opinion either way. The only thing it has done for me is break any link in my mind between a hugo award and a good story.
If the system can and is being gamed the result cannot be trusted. The Hugo is now just another internet poll.
Goodbye Slashdot.
For the last couple of years, I've been mostly ignoring Slashdot, occasionally reading a headline, wishing back for the good old days when the incompetence was charming. This is not charming. This is hateful.
Science fiction authors always had political differences, which fans were in many cases aware of. In the days of the Big Three, we had, let's see...a New Deal Democrat, a military/libertarian Republican, a gay Eurosocialist. The worlds they built reflected their sociopolitical values, and guess what - nobody worried about it! It just caused them to offer different styles of future, which fans debated as alternative scenarios, which is the whole idea. The field as a whole had no net political coloration.
What Beale and his minions (there might be henchmen in next year's budget, but they'll never be able to afford cronies) are mainly concerned about seems to be identity politics, especially when combined with the current softening of the science being presented in an effort to broaden readership. I think they have a point on the retreat from science into what Beale calls "angsty fantasy," but do fans really care deeply about the gender ratios in their stories? Beale is attacking from a fundie Christian perspective that has zero following in the genre.
If SF needs a political mission, I would like to see it address a real present danger, which is the general culture's mounting disrespect for science itself. Tis showed up first as a generalized fear of every application of science, but it has mushroomed into deep-seated evil like this:
http://dgrnewsservice.org/2015...
If these people gain political traction, everything we value here is in deep trouble. If the genre wants to charge into a political battle, this is the one it needs to join.
Social Justice Warriors are a pox on society's arse.
There is no such entity as "Hugos" that can refuse or accept anything. The ballot was duly submitted to the fans, who in fact voted. They just didn't vote the way you thought they should vote. Well, tough; it's their vote and they can do whatever the hell they want with it, and if they don't think any of the nominees are worthy, that's why "no award" is on the ballot.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
"The majority of those people who signed up voted and Ancillary Justice won one of the awards. "
Majority from a self selected group is far from being an indication of excellence. But if you think so, then If you expand and read around you will see that the popular estimate is far more mixed for ancillary justice. Do not take me wrong, it is a good novel, but it is a novel conservative in its execution, and as such it does not reflect excellence and innovation. If you had told me it was a novel from a white old guy back in the 70ies I would have nodded : that is how conservative it feel in its execution (note : literary execution and plot, I am not using conservative in a political sense). Maybe it was the best they could find that year though I did not look that up. But then again they could simply have voted "no award". Read around i am not the only one to think so, the critics about its execution, I am not the only one thinking that, and web site where you can see collated critic and fan vote certainly show a wide split. A good novel, but not one of excellence.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
But if you compare the results of this year's vote, to votes of previous years, you can easily see that this year is the only year where there was an organized attempt to get certain people elected. Categories that they did not care about were ignored, there was no disagreement at all among the conspirators, while their was no unified pattern of votes in previous years. In previous years there was real competition - rather than an agreement for all of one category of voters to focus on a single, predetermined winner.
So the analysis of their attempt to game the system proves that they were in fact WRONG, and previous awards were fair voting, rather than a conspiracy as they paranoidly claimed.
But it's not entirely fair to blame the conspirators. They simply abused a system that was not designed to handle intentional abuse.
Frankly, the main problem is that people simply don't care enough about the Hugo's to cheat - until now. So now we have to upgrade the voting system to account for a-holes trying to game the system.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
I haven't heard anyone ask this: were the nominated works any good? If you don't like the nominees, is it because of their politics or because the works sucked?
I just want to read a good yarn. I have never researched the political views of any author, and I'm not about to start now.
I tried reading the Wired article, but all the talk about puppies just confused me.
This is continually being framed as "white guys stuffing the ballot box." It is my understanding that they were doing so in response to GLBT communities stuffing the ballot box with works by/about their community. That part of the story seems to be continually glossed over in favor of political correctness.
Anyone who cares about Sci Fi can join the Worldcon for $40 and nominate which ever person or work they care about. When the voting time comes, please read all the works in a category and vote for which ever you think deserves an award.
Slates have always been there. Politics and vote begging have always been there. Please ignore them. Also ignore the voting based only on political views held by the author. Be an adult and judge work on merit, not ideology. There is too much crap on both sides here.
The WSFS brought this upon themselves by intentionally being vague and nebulous about what they're giving awards for.
The popular belief is that Hugo awards are for science fiction and possibly fantasy, but the truth is you can nominate any form of fiction.
Quote the FAQ:
The charter explicitly makes fantasy as well as SF eligible for our awards. Works of fantasy have often won Hugos, and, in fact, Hugos have been won by works that some people consider horror or even mainstream. There will never be universal agreement about the precise distinctions between genres and sub-genres, so WSFSâ(TM)s position is that eligibility is determined by the voters. To paraphrase the great SF editor and writer Damon Knight, a Hugo winner is what the Hugo voters point to when they award a Hugo.
The idea of voting for a work based on the gender, race, skin color, sexual identity, etc. of either the author or characters is stupid. How about basing it off the plot, character development and writing quality?
For example, Citizen Kane was a great movie and that isn't impacted by the fact the main characters are all heterosexual and white. It wouldn't be improved -- nor detracted from -- if the characters were of a different race or sexual orientation. The story stands alone.
Conversely, Gigli was a steaming pile of fecal matter. Replacing everyone in it with a wide variety of LGBTQ people of a random variety of races, skin colors and genders wouldn't help. It would still be shit all on the merits (or lack there of) of plot, writing and character development.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
The Sad Puppies won. Yes, they didn't win a single award -- in fact, some really good works lost to No Award, seemingly just to spite them.
But that was the point.
Their stated goal was to prove that there was a group of people out there voting for political reasons and fixing the Hugos. To fight this, they did the unforgivable sin of nominating some good works (such as one of the Dresden Files novels) for a Hugo.
The CHORF / SJWs fell for it en mass, just as George R R Martin begged them not to (archive version) back in April. They proved the Sad Puppies point -- that the Hugos are fixed by a group of gatekeepers.
The Hugos have been fixed for years, to the point that Steven King outright refused to participate due to how bad it became. The CHORFs proved the Sad Puppies' point more than anything else could. The Hugos have been forever tarnished by this -- not by the Sad Puppies voting in the "wrong way" for the "wrong type of fans", but by the CHORFs decreeing that you have to have the right politics, the right thoughts, the right opinions, to be a "real fan" or a "real hugo winner."
Of all people, you the sockpuppeteer master know what squiggleslash. The folks @ Hugo Awards do too obviously. So much for "fans" (especially fake ones by sockpuppet).
And the Tor Books award for outstanding book published by Tor goes to........ wait, we didn't get nominated.....
Sorry guys, going to have to cancel the "hugos" they have clearly been infiltrated by some sort of anti-tor hate group, they're probably conservatives or libertarians or some shit, yeah that's it, they are misogynist fascist republican shape-shifters who hate tor.
Seriously Fuck the Hugos.
Ender's Game got a Hugo, and it was the biggest let down I've ever read. I will say that it was well written in that it was clear and easy to read so it might it might be a good first novel for a First Grader or Kindergartner. (I read The Hobbit in Kindergarten and Ender's Game is simpler reading than that, so it really is marvelous how OSC could write a book like that, I was astounded.) But for someone whose reached puberty it's homoerotic mediocrity. And I still think OSC is a closeted homosexual, even more so since he's come out as a homophobic asshole.
But since that's the kind of novel that get's Hugos, bugger-em, long and hard in the ender.
Here is an issue with a single transferable vote(STV) that is caused by voters not using it properly. Say there are five candidates and they are almost equally popular so each would initially get about 20% of the vote. The problem comes in if the voters do not make a second choice and the default is "none of the above". In this case basically stating their book is the only one qualified. By the third round of eliminations "none of the above" wins. That is why most elections have a runoff rather than using STV.
Write well.
The Puppies groups got a lot of objectively poor writing nominated. That writing got included in the packet that is made available to all voters to ensure that the voters can read all of the material before casting their vote. Everyone got to see the poor quality of the works they were offering.
The nub of the story is the definition of SF. Since Jules Verne and HG Wells a certain type of fan has build a clubhouse for like-minded people. They have evolved their own idea of the SF genre. Now fringe genres want in, and are being resisted. Whether this is good or bad is a matter of opinion.
Mine is that just claiming 50 Shades, Noddy, Teletubbies, Dianetics, Marxist Manifesto or The Fountainhead as SF, does not automatically make it so. Because if so, then we would soon see Heinlein fans submitting his works for Feminist awards and wailing when they are inevitably rejected. The SJW are rejected not because of their beliefs, but because they are not SF fans and cannot unilaterally define SF.
We end up with LGBT cake shops being forced to bake confederate flag cakes - is that really what we want?
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
If the shoe were on the other foot, the rally cry would be for the liberals to go establish their own award and awards process. Why can't the conservatives do the same? Yeah, we know that slashdot has catered to the right for some time (note the breitbart link in the summary as yet another of thousands of front-page examples here) but really the hypocrisy here is rather extreme.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
See subject & Khyber the "Human Fail" fails again http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...
APK
P.S.=> You're such a stooge Khyber - now, everyone gets to see HOW MUCH of an incompetent ignoramus you are in every post you make... thanks! apk
All that butthurt just because the summary doesn't have a 'progressive' slant.
But the reason for (a) is often defended by rhetoric such as would appear in (b). Hence the confusion. E.g. game writer sleeps around with lots of game journos who then "happen" to give her game a good review WITHOUT DISCLAIMING partisanship.
This was "rebutted" by a "You MRAs hate women getting ahead. Just because she's a woman and she writes game for women, you gotta hate" and so on.
If you are a real sci-fi fan and not another SJW who sees sci-fi as just another medium to broadcast his (ahem, "her") cis-gendered religious beliefs, then how can you not love this one from TFA?
--- quote ---
Going forward, he [Beale] said, no matter how the Hugo administrators modify the nominating process to try to prevent manipulation (and there are two proposals being considered), he will still have enough supporters to control future awards. Specifically, “I have 390 sworn and numbered vile faceless minions—the hardcore shock troops—who are sworn to mindless and perfect obedience,” he said, acknowledging that his army wasn’t made up solely of sci-fi fans. On the contrary, “the people who are very anti-SJW said, ‘Okay, we want to get in on this.’” When I asked him how he might deploy those people in the future, he continued, “It’s very simple. The dark lord speaks, the minion acts.”
--- end quote ---
Let's rename it "Hugo Award for Political Correctness" and be done with the charade. ;)
Otherwise innocent SF readers may mistake award-winning works for readable ones.
The other TFA from Wired, not the main one.
After a several year break, I decided to come and give Slashdot a try again. And on my second time checking the site, I find *this* crap on the front page? Offensively misleading summary on an article by "anonymous coward". It would be hard to find a less worthwhile "news" website.
Rule 35 of the internet: "If it can be hacked, it will be". - Charles Stross
The headline is bogus but that aside it is difficult to spin what's happened here to suit Wired's agenda. A whole bunch of social justice warriors joined up to vote no award at the Hugos in many categories as a political act. That's pretty disgraceful. They weren't content to simply vote for works they liked they've completely politicized this award making it irrelevant.
“I said the Hugos were dominated by cliques that cared more about an author’s identity and politics than the quality of their work,” Sad Puppies founder Larry Correia told Breitbart. “Tonight they proved me right.”
You must not be familiar with the wildly successful (and brilliant) novel "The Martian", which is bound to win at next year's Hugo ceremonies. BTW, the Ridley Scott directed movie adaptation is coming out in a few months and I can hardly wait.
Welcome back!
This is the new improves /. with the overt right-wing, libertarian, whiny, misogynist agenda!
I mean still? I have not read an interesting book for ages and I still try from time to time - I look up nebulas and hugos from last few years and try to read some of them but that is an universal crap or I grew uninterested maybe. The books also suffer from less editing - nobody reads the books before printing it seems. Which is just as well - I stopped reading now for good. Looking how god awful the scripts for SF movies are I'd say interwebs and gobalization destroyed many things - good writing was among them.
The Free Market Libertarians aren't going to let things like voting with dollars, (Hugo voting isn't free ), or even reality get in the way of their agenda or weltbild.
“I said the Hugos were dominated by cliques that cared more about an author’s identity and politics than the quality of their work,” Sad Puppies founder Larry Correia told Breitbart. “Tonight they proved me right.”
Except he's wrong.
You want to vote, you pay your money. http://www.thehugoawards.org/i-want-to-vote/
He just has sand in his vagina because his conservative agenda failed, because his followers weren't willing to fork out the €35 / $40 to vote for him.
...turns out, it isn't as easy as you thought to rig an election. it's not their authors being "conservative" that makes those books lose. incidentially they are all - sometimes entertaining - pulp novels. it's the quality, stupid.
The Hugo awards are a part of the Worldcon, nominated and voted on by members of the Worldcon. Anyone can be a member of the current Worldcon by paying a membership fee. Supporting membership usually costs $40. That doesn't get you physical access to the con itself, attending membership is a lot more.
Joining the Worldcon makes you a member of the World Science Fiction Society (WSFS) for that year. As part of that membership you get nominating and voting rights for the Hugos including the right to nominate the next year but not vote. If you want to vote next year (that con will be in Kansas City in 2016) you need to pay for a supporting or attending membership for that specific convention.
I was a member of the 2014 Worldcon, nominated and voted that year and nominated this year but I couldn't vote this year since I didn't join Sasquan.
As I understand it a lot of people joined Sasquan as supporting members after the nominations closed simply to vote for the Hugos, generally opposing the slate nominees. They couldn't change the nomination lists but they could vote against the slate nominees. In the end the opposition was strong enough that most slate nominees ended up below No Award (or as David Gerrold calls it "Noah Ward").
The no awards didn't receive a majority, but rather a narrow plurality.
So if you're going to complain about slanted news it behooves you not to engage in the practice.
Nope.
In every single one of the categories in which NO AWARD won, it won on the first ballot with a majority.
The closest was in editor, long form, where the results were:
No Award 2496
Toni Weisskopf 1216
Sheila Gilbert 754
Anne Sowards 217
Vox Day 166
Jim Minz 58
Total votes 4907
But 50.9% is a majority. (The other categories were not nearly as close.)
I'm rather sorry for Toni, who I rather like, and who might well have won in the absence of the puppy-only ballot. If she had won, I would have said "well deserved."
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
The Hugos did not "choose not to award anyone rather than submit to fan's votes". They submitted to the votes of the fans, as always. The fans voted for "No Award".
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
disgusting. really.
"The facts of this case are the same as in gaming and in every other industry that social justice warriors touch. They do not care about art forms. They do not care about science fiction. They do not even particularly care about talent. They care about enriching and ennobling themselves and their friends, and pushing a twisted, discredited, divisive brand of authoritarian politics."
"Puppies supporters say that slew of "eno award" wins this year can at least partially be attributed to the fact that SJW votes were concentrated on that choice, while Puppies votes were distributed between as many as four deserving authors.
First, all of the "no award" wins won by a majority on the first ballot. Even if all of the puppy voters had agreed on a single candidate-- they still wouldn't comprise a majority. That argument is false.
Second, that argument is by somebody who doesn't understand how the ballot functions. It works for the nominations, but not for the actual votes, which use a "single transferable ballot" (aka, "australian ballot"). When your first choice is eliminated, your vote goes to your second choice. So, if the puppy vote was distributed between four authors-- so what? As each candidate is eliminated, that vote doesn't go away.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
The terribly slanted summary aside, I think ultimately this has shown that the process is borked to high heaven. Even if I give every point the No Award crowd seems to be pushing, which I certainly would not, they have shown that they will vote as an ideological block themselves to a degree that completely eclipsed the 'problem' group. All you have proven is your system is woefully broke and subject to ideological influence over all else. It is rather sad. It has proven to me that unless the Hugos completely overhaul there methodology, they are worthless, and just a matter of who can rally the biggest crowd of supporters, rather than anything to do with actual worth of the work.
What was the best reading/watching this year? The nominees, or some stuff that didn't clear the nomination cut? This whole thing seems kind of confusing.
Interestingly, Heinlein holds a record of five Hugo awards, including one for the "nazi" Starship Troopers and another — for the "libertardian" The Moon is a Harsh Mistress .
Clearly, there was a point, when Hugo Award was given for other than "progressive" works. But then, again, there was a point when Nobel Peace Price was given for actual contributions to world peace too...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
SJWis a favorite acronym of the SIWs! ;)
Poor Trigger - he should have known that Roy rodgers.
Now he's completely stuffed.
First, a pox on BOTH sides in this. The SJW crowd took over the Hugo twisting it into another weapon in their cultural war toolbag, then the puppies came along to push back - BOTH SIDES are guilty of distorting a LITERARY award into a flag on the cultural tug-of-war rope.
WIRED, sadly being full of SJW idiots, unfortunately could not resist the urge to slander the puppies with every trashy accusation they could make that was short of spurring a lawsuit. Do we really need a run-down on just how native-American one of the players in this drama is??? Has WIRED ever been equally hostile to the actual basis of ethnicity claims by any SJ, like Elizabeth Warren, for example??? This is one reason I can no longer endure the poor writing at WIRED; they seem to have completely lost the art of neutral reporting. Either trash BOTH sides with all available dirt, or leave all the trash out from both sides and report the facts. Trashing one side is not journalism. And, no, I'm NOT one of the "puppies", do not know any of them, have no known political or economic ties to them, etc. I am just tired of biased drivel pretending to be "reporting"
When "progressives" (new age term for socialist, liberal, communist) don't get their way, they just pick up their ball and go home.
Vote No Vote
On the other hand, maybe it's a simple as people become pissed off when they think other people are trying to cheat?
Fanatically anti-fanatical
It's fantasy as well these days - so much so that a guy that wrote a sequel to a small part of "Gulliver's Travels" accused Greg Egan of having too much science in his fiction for it to be SF! Apparently Greg Egan's aliens are a bit too alien as well, perhaps they should have been like little people who behaved exactly the same as full sized people.
Where was the cheating? Even George RR Martin admits that the Sad Puppies did everything within the rules. The issue here is a clique of Social Justice Bullies have taken over the Hugo's and it was exposed over the last 3 Sad Puppy campaigns. Now we see that the SJB's will burn the house down around them to prove that they are a clique and hostile to fans that aren't "trufans".
-- Slashdot, making the Left look conservative since 1997.
Science Fiction is largely a vision about the future, and often it is used to promote particular political views. There are communist and socialist futures, corporatist futures, libertarian futures, militaristic futures; authors explore these futures from a utopian, dystopian, or neutral point of view. Science Fiction also validates or contradicts scientific and economic predictions like climate change. Depending on your own political leanings, you may find a particular science fiction story interesting and insightful, or manipulative and propagandistic.
Occasionally, there are stories that straddle political lines and are interesting even if you disagree with them. For example, although I think Ursula LeGuin is wrong on many political points, but her stories are still interesting and thought provoking. On the other hand, I find Arthur C. Clarke's politics utterly naive; I think he thought himself above politics and I can see why people who aren't very much interested in politics might like his stories, but I find him an utterly naive technocrat and really don't enjoy his books very much anymore (I used to enjoy him more when I was younger and didn't really understand much of the political dimension).
I think it's a bit too much to expect a single convention or set of awards to be able to cover all those different political views. We'll have to accept the fact that there is going to be at least a split between progressive, libertarian, and apolitical science fiction fans. There is even some Christian and conservative science fiction (arguably, the ultra-crappy "Left Behind" falls into that category, in addition to the only slightly less crappy C.S. Lewis), though perhaps not enough to support large conventions or awards.
In my youth, I was a voracious reader of Scifi and it is still my area of choice in reading and other forms of entertainment.
But I've never given two shits about the Hugo awards so hearing there's a dispute among several factions about.... something that isn't entirely clear, just made me realize I still don't give a shit about the Hugo awards and by extension I care even less about the people upset about it. My life up to now has been just fine in blissful ignorance of the entire thing. I suspect a lot of other people have gotten along just fine too.
And if that is the case, if people can lead meaningful lives without knowing about the Hugo dispute, then do the Hugo awards need to exist at all? Not existing would solve everybody's problems all at once.
Sig for hire.
If I read the rules for the Hugo awards, an award can be made in 20 years or so for a previous year that had no winner in a category. So, look for the real Hugo's for 2015 in 2035 :-)
Oh, and it might have been 25 years or so, I don't remember, it was back in Feb that I read it :-)
Others have in the comments, quotes about turning the Hugos into a smoking hole, but don't take it from me or them - take a look at "Vox's" website so that you can find out what is going on instead of wasting time guessing about it and wasting time writing down your guesses.
Yes I know the "stop wasting my time" is just movie inspired shit to try to look tough, but it's pretty funny since you are so busy wasting it instead of spending far less time looking at the source to see what is going on.
Strawman? Vox rants about it length so I'm describing a real man pointlessly charging at figurative windmills. While Vox is possibly just an attention seeker trying to stir up trouble that is still the centre of this ridiculous vortex of shit - pointless hate of feminist SF for the sake of it.
Basically a while ago some writers decided that awarding a SciFi trophy to non-SF lit was stupid, so they gamed the (imho totally broken) system to ensure only SciFi got nominated, and therefore awarded. Then the hippies and weirdos who wanted Hugo awards but weren't eligible re-gamed the system to get their non-Sci-Fi awarded again. It's a shitty game of one-upmanship that nobody truly wins, so this result is fair.
tbh its kinda stupid that the "SJW" ppl started dicking with the Hugos in the first place but the award has been abused so much that it's lost all meaning.
Literally anyone could vote if they signed up. The Puppies lost a POPULAR democratic vote.
Their original argument was that their preferences were more populist and would win the popular vote, but the nominations process was being secretly block voted by a small shadowy liberal cabal to keep populist authors off the nominees list if favor of more preachy, pro-liberal agenda authors.
This was the stated reason for their publicly arranged block voting of nominees, to provide the popular vote with a choice they felt was lacking.
The voting fandom responded massively against them.
So now, they are arguing that the popular vote is rigged by the shadowy cabal as well, except it's now not a tiny cabal, it's the majority of fans. Which is less a sneaky cabal of so called "SJWs" and more, you know, most people.
If their actions had supported their "populist" argument, they would provably have carried the day. But putting up people like Kevin J. "suncrusher-I-ruined-star-wars-long-before-jar-jar" Anderson and highly divisive figures like John C Wright and the Rabid Puppies Vox Day up on their slate as the poster boys for their "populist" argument probably didn't help, if they'd put up more genuinely popular, genuinely decent authors like Jim Butcher then their argument may have been a hell of a lot more compelling and effective.
John C Wright and Vox Day were up their simply to provoke outrage at their views, not because of the quality of their writing. Which, at least in the case of Vox Day, is objectively terrible. Many of the puppies chosen authors (not all) were...not actually all that good. Not innovative, or exciting, or fun, or smart. They did not make me think, or shout with Joy, or smile (with, of course, the exception of the excellent Jim Butcher). Most of the winners did.
The no awards were mostly, as far as I can tell, a reaction to the politicization of the awards. And whatever the puppies argument that the awards were always political, these campaigns are what made them so in the public consciousness. By making a political argument for the vote, the puppies forced everyone else to consider the awards in a political, rather than creative context. the trouble there was, when people did consider the issue politically, they decided they didn't agree with the puppies, as evidenced by, you know, the POPULAR VOTE!
Literally anyone could vote if they signed up. The Puppies lost a POPULAR democratic vote.
Their original argument was that their preferences were more populist and would win the popular vote, but the nominations process was being secretly block voted by a small shadowy liberal cabal to keep populist authors off the nominees list if favor of more preachy, pro-liberal agenda authors.
This was the stated reason for their publicly arranged block voting of nominees, to provide the popular vote with a choice they felt was lacking.
The voting fandom responded massively against them.
So now, they are arguing that the popular vote is rigged by the shadowy cabal as well, except it's now not a tiny cabal, it's the majority of fans. Which is less a sneaky cabal of so called "SJWs" and more, you know, most people.
If their actions had supported their "populist" argument, they would provably have carried the day. But putting up people like Kevin J. "suncrusher-I-ruined-star-wars-long-before-jar-jar" Anderson and highly divisive figures like John C Wright and the Rabid Puppies Vox Day up on their slate as the poster boys for their "populist" argument probably didn't help, if they'd put up more genuinely popular, genuinely decent authors like Jim Butcher then their argument may have been a hell of a lot more compelling and effective.
John C Wright and Vox Day were up their simply to provoke outrage at their views, not because of the quality of their writing. Which, at least in the case of Vox Day, is objectively terrible. Many of the puppies chosen authors (not all) were...not actually all that good. Not innovative, or exciting, or fun, or smart. They did not make me think, or shout with Joy, or smile (with, of course, the exception of the excellent Jim Butcher). Most of the winners did.
The no awards were mostly, as far as I can tell, a reaction to the politicization of the awards. And whatever the puppies argument that the awards were always political, these campaigns are what made them so in the public consciousness. By making a political argument for the vote, the puppies forced everyone else to consider the awards in a political, rather than creative context. the trouble there was, when people did consider the issue politically, they decided they didn't agree with the puppies, as evidenced by, you know, the POPULAR VOTE!
(reposted logged in)
(and re-posted ACTUALLY logged in this time. Sigh.) Literally anyone could vote if they signed up. The Puppies lost a POPULAR democratic vote. Their original argument was that their preferences were more populist and would win the popular vote, but the nominations process was being secretly block voted by a small shadowy liberal cabal to keep populist authors off the nominees list if favor of more preachy, pro-liberal agenda authors. This was the stated reason for their publicly arranged block voting of nominees, to provide the popular vote with a choice they felt was lacking. The voting fandom responded massively against them. So now, they are arguing that the popular vote is rigged by the shadowy cabal as well, except it's now not a tiny cabal, it's the majority of fans. Which is less a sneaky cabal of so called "SJWs" and more, you know, most people. If their actions had supported their "populist" argument, they would provably have carried the day. But putting up people like Kevin J. "suncrusher-I-ruined-star-wars-long-before-jar-jar" Anderson and highly divisive figures like John C Wright and the Rabid Puppies Vox Day up on their slate as the poster boys for their "populist" argument probably didn't help, if they'd put up more genuinely popular, genuinely decent authors like Jim Butcher then their argument may have been a hell of a lot more compelling and effective. John C Wright and Vox Day were up their simply to provoke outrage at their views, not because of the quality of their writing. Which, at least in the case of Vox Day, is objectively terrible. Many of the puppies chosen authors (not all) were...not actually all that good. Not innovative, or exciting, or fun, or smart. They did not make me think, or shout with Joy, or smile (with, of course, the exception of the excellent Jim Butcher). Most of the winners did. The no awards were mostly, as far as I can tell, a reaction to the politicization of the awards. And whatever the puppies argument that the awards were always political, these campaigns are what made them so in the public consciousness. By making a political argument for the vote, the puppies forced everyone else to consider the awards in a political, rather than creative context. the trouble there was, when people did consider the issue politically, they decided they didn't agree with the puppies, as evidenced by, you know, the POPULAR VOTE!
So people who vote for things that you don't like are "voting as an ideological block". What do you call people who vote for the things that you do like? "Fine, upstanding fans of sci-fi"?
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
You can't have it both ways. The Sad Puppies were within the rules. So was the electorate in rejecting most of their nominations. You can't say that one side was "bullying" and the other was not if both "sides" followed the rules.
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
Ok so the summary was really confusing, and the articles linked were obviously one-sided, and talking about "sad puppies" right away (wtf are you even talking about?), but some of the comments here clarified the situation. The only question is, how were these groups able to control who got nominated in the first place? Are the nominations picked by one group of people? Are these the people that rule the awards, will they pick the same way next year? How can they win at the nominations and lose at the final vote?
--
Stay tuned for some shock and awe coming right up after this messages!
Just as useless and pointless at the Oscars, Emmys and Tonys...
The socjus clique in the WSFS were not vetting the works themselves, they were vetting the authors political views, associates and social media output, and those that weren't considered "suitable" weren't nominated.
This is essentially a modern day Goskomizdat representing the authoritarian left, and even the libertarian left were smeared as bigots and blackballed, let alone any centrists/right leaning types.
In Vista, the article notes it: Turn off Windows Defender for it to work right again (but NOBODY BOUGHT INTO VISTA or if they did, they wanted it gone... lol!)
APK
P.S.=> This 'takes the cake' from you:
"Very soon Windows Defender will NOT be able to be turned off, and your HOSTs file will become FUCKING USELESS" - by Khyber (864651) on Monday August 24, 2015 @06:17AM (#50378637)
Ah, I see - "the GREAT PROPHET/SEER speaketh" (not)!
+
"See APK fail fucking miserably since his HOSTs advice is OUTDATED AS SHIT" - by Khyber (864651) on Monday August 24, 2015 @06:17AM (#50378637)
Oh, really, "great prophet" (lol) - well, "Today is NOT THAT DATE" to twist that phrase a little since it fits here (the 12th of NEVER, lmao)... apk
See subject & Khyber's massive fail -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...
* LOL!
(Keep on dancin', BOY!)
APK
P.S.=> "Dance, BOY - dance" - R O T F L M A O!
... apk
If the Puppies had won, this would mean they were right, and they represented the true breadth of fandom, that populist work was underrepresented in the Hugo awards in favor of stuffed nominations for a socially "progressive" agenda. This would be proof of "SJW" conspiracy at nomination stage. If the Puppies lost to "no vote", this is the "SJW's" cutting off their noses to spite their faces. Proof that the SJW anti-puppy campaign (any evidence of this existing, please, provide links, that I cannot find it does not mean it does not exist) controls the actual voting (better than the three active puppy campaigns influenced their voting slates anyway). If there were no "no awards", but all categories with a non puppy approved author went to that author, this would presumably mean the SJW machine was also in effect, they just corralled their voters into voting tactically in favor of SJW approved writers and threw a bone in the puppy dominated categories to maintain the illusion of a democratic vote. It seems to me, whatever the result, the puppies would just declare "Mission Accomplished" But, I may well be wrong: Please tell me, what would a loss for the puppies look like? What outcome of the vote would be evidence that the puppies are wrong and that there is no evil SJW conspiracy? Is that even an acknowledged possibility? Or is this conspiracy simply accepted fact?
It seems to me that the essential conflict here, if you ignore all the "racists vs SJWs" rhetoric, is this:
Some people think science fiction should be primarily about action, inventing amazing new gadgets, and people fighting aliens in space. This is called "hard" SF.
Some people think science fiction (or fantasy) should be more about telling stories that allow the exploration of real-world issues in a world whose cultures, asumptions, and in some cases even the laws of physics or magic, are constructed to throw them into sharp relief. This is called "soft" SF.
While there's some overlap - a notable example being the new Battlestar Galactica show - most authors fall primarily into one or the other camp. So having one set of awards for two genres, many of whose fans on both sides consider them opposed, is like trying to support a one-state solution in Israel / Palestine instead of a two-state solution: naïve.
This is analogous to how some tabletop gamers prefer RPGs that are "crunchy" with a lot of combat and mechanics, and others prefer rules-light systems that tend to gloss over the mechanics a bit. Neither style is "wrong" or "bad", they just may not be be compatible with each other.
I'm not sure whether separate awards for hard SF are the solution, or just separate categories (or a "hard" and "soft" winner in each existing category, maybe). But that's how I see this playing out in an ideal world.
See subject: I'll continue lmao @ Khyber here http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...
* :)
(We understand, Khyber - YOU can't HELP but FAIL... especially vs. "yours truly" - replying by ac now isn't saving face for you, it's ruining your 'face' even more... lol!)
APK
P.S.=> It's just "what you do/how you roll", lmao... apk
Wtf? TPDR = Too Partisan Didn't Read.
The text was dripping with digital spittle. Feel free to get a tetanus shot at your earliest opportunity.
Requiem for the American Dream
I'll take it that you are an expert on the topic and also somewhat passionate about it, so I'll ask you. How does the single transferrable vote thing work?
It's also known as "Australian ballot." You rank your choices numerically. The number one votes (and only the number one votes-- that's the "single" in the name of the voting system) arecounted. If any candidate has a majority, they win. If there is no candidate ranked number one by a majority, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated. Everybody who voted for that candidate has their number two vote moved up to number one, and the votes are tallied again. The process is repeated until a candidate has a majority.
Someone below stated that if you only chose one work, your second choice defaults to "No Award".
No.
In the Hugo balloting, "No award" is an actual choice on the ballot, not a default for abstain.
Therefore an evenly divided electorate that had a majority of voters failing to select a second choice would give results exactly as you have listed. Is that how it works?
But that's not how it actually works. You have to positively vote for no award; it's not a default. (In any case, though, "no award" won on the first ballot-- there was no transfer.)
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
This is a good one. i suggest you read about the history of the Hugos before asking conservatoves to create a new award..
Maybe I should have dumbed it down to politics not being a huge deal in voting for who gets an award for a work in SF than it is now with a fucking voting guide from manipulative pricks who are politicizing the process instead of readers voting for what they like independently.
Now do you get what this is about instead of rolling out Diamond Age and some out of touch Russian that saw the capitalist system in a republic as a dystopia?
I find it funny that all these people are saying that the puppy noms didn't win because 'They sucked', when so many of them, and their leaders freely admitted that they did NOT READ any of the puppy noms.
Because the politics of the author are more important than the story written.
Three Body Problem only won because the 'Rabid Puppies' voted for it as a block. Does that mean Three Body doesn't deserve it's award? That it sucks? And what about 'Guardians of the Galaxy'? That was a puppy nom, why didn't that get blackballed as well?
And lets not even mention the months and months of harassment and libel that has been taking place. I find the lying of the establishment to be pretty funny.
Really? Those being called out as SJWs are the ones I see marginalizing other's viewpoints. The whole thing about GG and anti-GG was the anti-GG people trying to shut down the other group rather than even discussing what they were saying. In this thing, you have the same thing, those who have subverted the voting system in order to shut down another person's viewpoint. These are the SJWs, the ones preferring to vote no award because they don't like the politics of those that were nominated. Hell, many of them didn't even read the entries and were bragging about it. How can you vote in a best of award without even reading the material?
http://whatever.scalzi.com/201...
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Maybe we should create a new award for science fiction. It is a shame the nomination process has become political correct.
The stuff the puppies nominated that was genuinely great mostly did well: Pretty sure lots of people voted for GOTG because of all the awesome, puppies or no. The rabids seemed to have about 500 votes total (https://chaoshorizon.wordpress.com/2015/08/23/2015-hugo-stats-initial-analysis/) so, less then 10% of the total vote. Three Body Problem was well received by all and was not part of the puppies original slate. The rabid puppies jumped on, after the nominations, instead of their own nominated Skin Game (a genuinely great book by a class act of an author) just so they could declare a victory and we all know it. Skin Game, by the way, awesome book: Would have finished a lot higher if the rabids had not abandoned it in favor of jumping on a winner for the sake of point scoring. (http://www.thehugoawards.org/content/pdf/2015HugoStatistics.pdf) "Parkour, Bitch". As for not reading the stuff, I read a lot of the books despite not voting, but for one. For one I drew the line. No, not the objectively terrible Vox Day stuff, a few snippets were enough to know that was rubbish. I'm talking about the one author I will never read ever again. Never. Not one more penny from me. In fact not even for free: I'm talking about Kevin J Anderson! Why? Because he's Kevin J. Anderson, ruiner of franchises, creator of the sun crusher and the darksaber and fucker-up of Dune. His latest stuff may be 100% gold plated genius (I'd lay odds it's not) but I'll never, ever know, because he's Kevin J "my-jedi-is-a-bigger-jedi-than-yours-Kyp-Durron-was-fucking-terrible" Anderson! I'm proud not to have read his book. Because fool me once Mr Anderson, shame on you, fool me five damn times because you're attached, lamprey like, to franchises I love and just...no. No more of my money. Not ever. So, I didn't read that book. But not because: Puppies. Not because: Ideology. Because: Oh God I just remembered the end to the meandering pointlessness of Darksaber where the fucking thing just crashes into a rock in total anti-climax. *weeps*.
I can't believe that the voters haven't acknowledged No Award before now; it's not perhaps Zelazny's best work, but it's up there (first published in The Saturday Evening Post, then in Last Defender of Camelot).
When Paul Kantner's Blows Against The Empire was the first rock album to ever be nominated for a Hugo Award, in the category of Best Dramatic Presentation.
In voting, the album garnered the second most votes for the award, losing to "No Award", which received the most votes.
Because you can't have dirty hippies winning anything.
Fuck the Hugos.
Breitbart is considered a reliable news source here? Seriously? What a fail of an article.
"You yellow bastards! Come back here and take what's coming to you! I'll bite your legs off!"
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
Nowadays they give them out for passing gas.
It's not about quality, but about how much money they can make off it all.
They can take their HUGO award and shove it where the sun doesn't shine (Black Hole?) ;-)
No, but having people vote overwhelming for NOTHING because they don't like the candidate IS ideological block voting. I would say the same damn thing if sad puppies won overwhelmingly. Instead of the qualities of the books being what sets the bar, this clearly shows that it was politics that set the show. Sorry, you can't hide behind it's all personal choice when there was such campaigns pushing these outcomes at play here.
Where was the cheating? Even George RR Martin admits that the Sad Puppies did everything within the rules.
Are you kidding? Do you really think "technically, they aren't cheating" is going to calm anyone who thought the puppies were stuffing the nomination box? Because if you do, you have a lot to learn about human nature.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Mike Resnick is a good editor, a fine writer, a witty conversationalist, a font of wisdom and knowledge in the field, a person who is interested in helping others, and in pretty much every way I can think of, a genuinely nice guy.
If all of the nominations by the sad and the rabid puppies had been people as well-regarded in the field as Mike (and Toni), there would have been far less controversy.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Holy fuck Slashdot, Brietbart?
Really?
This entire website can just sit in the trashfire it has become.
The 'no award' vote was a blatant block vote and only won because the others split their vote among the other options. So much for 'will of the people'.
Breitbart died on the toilet.
A lot of my friends are writers, and are quite diverse, but we all were glad that No Award was made in the categories where the "slate" got all five positions.
You proved a lot. You proved that there wasn't slate voting before, and also that fuzzy nipples or whatever GG name you're going by this week are a bunch of jerks.
And as someone who's held shiny Hugos and had the hassle of going thru security with them, I'm glad of the result.
Here endeth the lesson. Cheaters never prosper.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
What is this all about?
No seriously - explain what this is in 5 sentences or less.
I enjoy sci-fi and fantasy books. There were quite a few good ones in 2014/2015... Somehow nerds are ruining it for other nerds? There is no way "no award" makes any sense. "No Award" might as well be replaced by "Fuck books and the people that write them". It's so bizarre I can't even begin to understand it.
One more worthless award.
Your categorization is off. "Hard" SF deals with technology that is at least theoretically possible, "Soft" does away with that limitation.
Somewhere further along the spectrum after "Soft" it fades from science fiction to fantasy fiction.
Traditionally, science fiction involves introducing some technology to the reader and then exploring the world that results from its existence.
This fiasco draws attention to one inescapable fact -- Sci-fi has gotten really fucking shitty in the last decade. We don't have grandmasters. We have a few aging masters and a whole bunch of 2000 ELO (chess term) newbies who write one or two decent debut stories. Many authors have lost the plot! They hide weak characters and clumsy writing behind alien language, violence porn, and emo cliches. Short stories, the true metric of the overall health of sci-fi in the opinion of this humble reader who has read more of it than anyone alive, have gotten so woefully bad that some yearly collections are 80% unreadable! We don't have craftsmen, we have dilettantes - we don't have artists, we have children's coloring books.
You seem to be misinformed.
The people who rigged the nominations, to ensure that ONLY their nominees made the ballot were the Sad and Rabid Puppies. They didn't come to participate. They came to dominate. Torgenson says up front that they did mathematical analysis to determine how many votes it would take to get all the nominees in a given category. And that's what they did. They used the slate to take the entire category for their nominees. Nobody else was allowed to nominate anybody in those categories.
And the fans didn't like that. That's rude. It's beyond rude. It's appalling behavior.
So, yes, some fans voted against the slate to send a message "DON'T DO THAT". Don't take our ball and say we can't play any more. We don't mind if you nominate, but you don't get to be the ONLY ones who nominate.
And some of us read the works. Well, parts of them. Most of them were pretty awful, and painful to read. I couldn't finish quite a few of them.
The Hugo award has about as much substance as the People's Choice Award. The Nebula Award is picked by the SFWA and thus has a slighter probability of exercising some critical discernment.
Nobody else was allowed to nominate anybody in those categories.
That is entirely untrue.
Anyone could nominate, it just happened to be a voting bock of 300 who got a few slates nominated. The answer is not to have no award (despite good entries being nominated) by 3000 people (out of 5000).
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
First off Larry wasn't an organizer of Sad Puppies 3, second it was people like Mary Robinette Kowal and John Scalzi that urged the destruction of the Hugo's. People learned that the Social Justice Bullies were playing in a tiny sandbox and using the reputation of the Hugo to nominate works based not on the quality, but if it was a "good message", bonus points if the SJB's could tie in a minority author. Mary went so far as to organize mass buys of supporting memberships for people who couldn't afford it, with the "wink wink" that they would vote No Award for anything Sad Puppy related. Mary and her ilk were happy to light a match and drop it at their gasoline soaked feet. All Larry has done is expose the hypocrisies of the "trufans".
Except you miss the point where they Hugos are pure capitalism--you pay your money, you get to vote.
The alleged cliques have exactly zero say in who gets to vote, because it boils down to the number of people who are willing to put their money where their mouth is.
On the other hand, I don't have respect for the Hugos because first grade reading material like Ender's Game wins.
I think just adding the word 'Voters' fixes a lot of the issues with this terrible headline, and shows why it's terrible. The voters refused to submit to the votes!
Of course the correct statement is, even more clearly, "Hugo Fan Voters Refuse To Award Anyone Rather Than Submit To Fans' Nominations," which points up how ridiculous the whole thing is.
SJW's buying Hugo supporting memberships. http://maryrobinettekowal.com/journal/talk-with-me-about-being-a-fan-of-science-fiction-and-fantasy/ They say there wasn't be any collusion.
Yes, because name-calling is so conducive to discussion. As soon as you start throwing around SJW you marginalize.
Did you read that link you point to? Or did you just start spouting off the SJW name-calling like a petulant child as soon as you identified that his position was different from your own? My guess is the latter. Here's a quote from your link:
5. Also, in case people think I’m being arch or coy on this subject: Yes, in fact, I do intend to read all the fiction nominees this year and consider them seriously for my ballot. I’m not expecting, say, Tom Kratman to surprise me, but maybe he will. Note well, however, that (as with every year), I read the nominations until I decide the work is not worth my time. The works that engage me long enough to read all the way through will be ranked. The ones that don’t won’t make my final ballot. And yes, this means it’s possible that something not on a slate won’t make my final ballot (and that something on a slate might).
Give it up they don't or won't understand. The only thing proven here is the SJW's were better at getting people to pay 40 bucks then SAD to vote no award. Certainly not all of them but if you actually really read the works nominated for no award to find none of them worthy stretches incredulity.
"NOD32 detects a trojan in APK's HOSTS bullshit." - by Khyber (864651) on Saturday August 22, 2015 @01:02PM (#50370415)
VirusTotal & NOD32 SHOW IT COMPLETELY CLEAN IN ITS EXES
https://www.virustotal.com/en/...
AND
https://www.virustotal.com/en/...
There's only 2 exe's & 5 text files in it - The exe's are proven clean as shown above in the 2 links from VirusTotal, the installer's a SFX rar (keeps it 2mb smaller on download) - that's NO virus!
(Unless YOU know of a way that .txt files are "viruses")
---
"he's tying to get your fucking information." - by Khyber (864651) on Saturday August 22, 2015 @01:02PM (#50370415)
My program doesn't transmit outward ONLY intake of data from 10 reputable sources in the security community!
---
"APK is apparently too fucking stupid to do this at the ROUTER level where it's most effective" - by Khyber (864651) on Saturday August 22, 2015 @01:02PM (#50370415)
You believe in "eggshell security" which fails per -> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...
A TRULY COMPETENT NETWORK ADMIN WOULD DO FAR MORE THAN MERE PERIMETER LEVEL SECURITY @ ROUTER LEVEL!
(Right down to the endpoints/network nodes level in PC workstations also using tools you already have in hosts + firewalls (vs. "piling on 'MOAR'" that's inefficient & not nearly as effective in slower usermode browser addons)).
---
"Windows 10 has hardcoded IPs and bypasses HOSTs." - by Khyber (864651) on Saturday August 22, 2015 @01:02PM (#50370415)
Windows ONLY bypasses hosts files for Windows update (Win8 & below) & for the tracking "telemetry" in Windows 10 (this is going to KILL Windows 10, mark my words - nobody likes tracking -> http://localghost.org/posts/a-... - test it yourself.
---
"Browsers can bypass HOSTs as well." - by Khyber (864651) on Saturday August 22, 2015 @01:02PM (#50370415)
WTF? They'd be bypassing the IP stack itself, hosts are part of it - since that's impossible? You've proven yourself a moron, again.
APK
P.S.=> See subject & "EAT YOUR WORDS"... apk