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2016 Hugo Awards Shortlist Dominated By Rightwing Campaign (theguardian.com)
Dave Knott quotes a report from The Guardian: The annual Hugo awards for the best science fiction of the year have once again been riven by controversy, as a concerted campaign by a conservative lobby has dominated the ballot. The Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies movements, which both separately campaign against a perceived bias towards liberal and leftwing science-fiction and fantasy authors, have managed to get the majority of their preferred nominations on to the final ballot, announced today. Since 2013, the Puppies factions have posted recommendations of works to combat the Hugo tendency to reward works that leaders of the movement deem "niche, academic, overtly to the left in ideology and flavor, and ultimately lacking what might best be called visceral, gut-level, swashbuckling fun." The Rabid Puppies has been successful in getting its nominations on the shortlist again this year; out of 80 recommendations, 62 have received sufficient votes to make the ballot. At MidAmeriCon II this year, it was announced that more than 4,000 nominating ballots were cast for the 2016 Hugo awards, almost double the previous record of 2,122 ballots. This news was initially greeted with cautious optimism, but the shortlist shows that the Puppies and their supporters have redoubled their efforts to "game" the awards. The shortlist will be voted upon and the winners revealed at the forthcoming Worldcon in Kansas in August.
It's not republicans, it's not conservatives, there's nothing right-wing about the Sad Puppies. I can't blame the submitter for the terrible summary, because it's just copied from the article, but maybe I can blame the submitter for linking to a terrible article? The Sad Puppies are just a group who felt that sci-fi was getting too preachy and wanted to promote some lighter fare. That's it. the website. I had a ridiculous time finding that, since the top search page is just full of articles talking about how awful these people are. It's appalling how one-sided the reporting on this is.
The Rabid Puppies are something else. They seized on this idea and decided to make it more political - I'm not sure that calling them right-wing is accurate, more like anti left-wing, but these are separate groups with separate goals.
The Hugos have always had how to vote cards. It's just now it's common knowledge.
I think the "left-wing" label mostly only exists in the minds of these activists - it's a catch-all for "any work that discusses topics or espouses positions that we are uncomfortable with".
The typical Sad Puppies member is not so much decrying "left-wing" as decrying SJW-ish works. Have you read "If You Were a Dinosaur My Love"? I refuse to believe that it was the best short fiction in its year, but it got nominated for the Hugo. Was it because it checked the right boxes... SJW themes, written by a woman?
http://www.apex-magazine.com/if-you-were-a-dinosaur-my-love/
http://difficultrun.nathanielgivens.com/2015/02/10/the-hugo-awards-dinosaurs-and-me/
I would absolutely classify most of John Scalzi's books as "swashbuckling fun", but they hate Scalzi.
I think it's not so much that they hate his books, and more that they hate Scalzi the man, and that pretty much because he hated them first.
My respect for Scalzi plummeted when I read him taunting Larry Correia on Twitter. I've met 5-year-old children with more good manners and dignity.
Larry Correia collected the juvenile taunts in this blog posting: https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_posts/6846396-hugo-aftermath-post
The other part of it is that they hate Scalzi because they believe he is connected with the behind-the-scenes clique or cliques that used to decide who got the Hugo. I've never met anyone who genuinely believed that Redshirts was the best novel of its year, deserving of Hugo status; I've heard it is a light and fun read ("swashbuckling" maybe?) but it can't have been the best novel published that year. Somewhat more egregiously, Scalzi published a book of stuff from his blog and that won a Hugo also, and then as part of the Sad Puppies firestorm the cliquish types claimed that some of the Sad Puppies nominations were not sufficiently scholarly and were an insult to the Hugo. I don't know about you, but I hate double standards, and here a double standard was applied to the benefit of Scalzi.
http://monsterhunternation.com/2015/03/31/sad-puppies-update-the-melt-down-continues/
I suspect they don't like Lois McMaster Bujold very much either, since she frequently explores gender issues - but most of her books are also pure space opera.
Oh no, not at all. The Sad Puppies are not a homogeneous bunch, but on the whole they love Lois McMaster Bujold. If you know only one thing about a book, that it was published by Baen, you know that the Sad Puppies probably like that book. Not a slam dunk, but that's the way to bet.
Lois McMaster Bujold writes entertaining books. The Sad Puppies like entertaining books. Her books aren't loaded down with SJW freight; it's interesting to see how a strong and independent woman from Beta Colony reacts to the strangely backward society of Barrayar.
Remember how the Sad Puppies nominated Toni Weisskopf? She's the senior editor at Baen. She edited Lois McMaster Bujold's books. The Sad Puppies nominated her for a Hugo for editing.
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Looking at the shortlist it looks like I'll be voting "none of the above" in most categories. Right wing takeover? I don't see it and haven't since Heinlein died in 1988. I do see a lot of right wing and left wing stuff on the list.
I don't want either right or left wing politics in my science fiction.
That said, I did write one story with a hint of politics and religion, basically with the message "you can't eat gold." Left or right? I don't know but I doubt it's right wing.
I nominated my own Mars, Ho! but it didn't make the shortlist. I nominated C.C. Finlay, Editor in Chief of F&SF as best editor. He's not on the list, either but damn it, he should be. His magazine has the best SF IMO and he even occasionally sends personalized rejection letters. No other magazine does that, at least that I've seen (granted, there are quite a few I don't submit to).
Oddly, four of five in the "semipro" list are counted as professional markets by the SFWA (the folks behind the Nebulas).
The Guardien calls the Hugos "biggest prize in science fiction and fantasy", but I disagree. Fans vote for the Hugos, science fiction and fantasy professional writers ("professional" being defined as selling three 1000 word or longer stories for a nickle a word or more, or a novel (at least 40k words) that earns $3000 from self-publishing profits, an advance, or royalties) vote for the Nebulas. If they were movie awards, the Hugos would be the Sundance Film Festival's Audience Award and the Nebula would be the Oscar.
Free Martian Whores!
I love it how you don't let facts penetrate your arguments.
aen has long published some of the most libertarian 'right-wing' authors, but in those books they've had the strongest female characters along with the widest variety of ethnic backgrounds and sexual orientations I've come across. The problem
What problem? For all of your complaining about "cliquish pseudo-academic types", McMaster (published by Baen) is in fact tied in first place with Heinlein for largest number of Hugo wins ever.
So, the Hugos have in fact been recognising stuff published by Baen, and that was before the puppies of any sort got involved.
SJW n. One who posts facts.