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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.
Why does it have to be either "left wing" or "right wing" books that win? Why not just choose good books, regardless of politics? I think a feature of some of the best books written is the politics is left up to the reader. Is the Lord of the Rings left-wing or right-wing? I've seen commentaries taking both positions.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
I was about to comment this, but you beat me to it.
Republicans have Fox News. Democrats have, well, everything else. I'm not even a Republican and I can see the clear projection happening here. Whenever either side gains power politically or socially, they flex their power in an authoritarian way. You just don't mind it so much when it's the "right" person controlling you.
The "Rabid Puppies" and "Sad Puppies" have about as much to do with each other as "JavaScript" and "Java". That is, nothing but a confusing similarity of name.
Charges that Sad Puppies needs to control Vox Day are simply unfair. How are they supposed to do that exactly? Vox Day is an independent adult and there is no reason why the Sad Puppies would have the ability to control him. See above point.
Last year, the Sad Puppies pleaded with Vox Day not to burn the Hugo Awards to the ground. Then the science fiction fandom got really organized and burned the Hugo Awards to the ground. Vox Day got everything he wanted and they did the work for him.
The Sad Puppies have always been about recommending the SF works that you enjoyed the most. Sad Puppies 4 continues this tradition.
Rabid Puppies, on the other hand, seems to be a trolling campaign by Vox Day. (Vox Day seems to have a knack for saying things that are so beyond the pale that they literally enrage people. I suspect he's trolling because his statements are so perfectly calculated to enrage. And now "Space Raptor Butt Invasion"?)
One final point, submitted for your consideration: The novel Three Body Problem won a Hugo. It was Vox Day's favorite novel of the year, and had he read it a little sooner, he would have nominated it for a Hugo. It would then have lost the Hugo to "No Award" as the organized fandom was voting an "anti-Puppy" slate.
The organized fandom and their organized "No Award" campaign claimed that they had to award an unprecedented number of "No Awards" to protect the Hugo, but how would denying the Hugo to Three Body Problem have protected anything? What was protected when Toni Weisskopf was denied her Hugo? And here we are, with the Rabid Puppies causing worse trouble than ever, and some fraction of fandom repelled by the No Award and wooden asterisk plaque antics, and walking away from the whole thing.
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Starship troopers isn't facist.
It's a democracy where the right to vote is awarded to those who put the good of society ahead of their own well being for a few years.
Many democracies have not given the right to vote to all citizens.
And democracies which give the right to vote to all citizens are classically predicted to vote themselves out of business ( and not just thru social programs - this is not an anti left wing statement. I'm a strong liberal ).
Volker was also fairly true to the books (outside of lacking budget for power armor). He played up the fascist symbolism but left the valid arguments that
a) power grows out of the barrel of a gun.
b) people who won't sacrifice their own good for society probably shouldn't be running society.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Not at all. Conservatives simply don't believe in infantilizing women by pretending they simply have no way to avoid pregnancy.
And yes, people should pay their own way. They only people who should get publicly funded health care are people who can't afford it.
That's pretty funny coming from someone who spends his time thinking up new ways to spend my money.
Aren't we forgetting someone? ... a woman, her doctor, and the baby, right? The woman had ways to avoid the situation. So did the doctor. The baby? Not so much.
More horseshit. Infant mortality rates aren't any higher in the US than they are anywhere else. In a lot of places babies are counted as stillborn if they die within 24 hours. That's the benefit of socialized medicine - you don't get better care, but you do get comforting statistics from the medical bureaucracy.
Beyond that, if you want a kid, have a kid. But taking care of that kid is your responsibility, not mine. I'm under no obligations to see that your kid is fed and clothed and has proper medical care. That's your job as a parent, and if you can't swing it don't have kids.
But I have questions for you, Mr freedom-loving guy. Why is your party so intent on taking away my freedom to defend myself, and my freedom of speech?
But don't you remember, how good life was in those older days? Think back of the 1950s and 1960s. Everything was better then. Ok, if you weren't a woman. Or black. Or gay. Or pretty much anything but a white protestant male. But if you were, life was better. You had a house, a chicken in the pot and two cars in every garage! And even if you were just a normal worker! You had a job that you could feed your family on, your wife didn't go to work (the mere idea alone, a working woman! Can't get a husband, eh?).
This all changed for the worse, and Republicans want those glory days back! Is that really so bad? Ok, granted, it's not so great for non-white, non-hetero, non-religious non-men, but for us it's going to be great again! Ok, maybe not all of it because we sure as fuck aren't going to get working wages that can sustain a family again from Republicans, but at least we'll get that those black atheist fags will have it worse!
Now ain't that something?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Even the pro-choice side generally don't like abortions
Though I can't speak for others, I don't believe "them" saying that on TV, because it's activists pushing abortions trying to sound reasonable. (Show me NARAL running a string of adoption placement centers and I'll start to change my mind.)
Individuals saying things like "I'm personally against abortion, but think it's a woman's right to choose" makes me want to retch at the intellectual vacuousness, since what it really means is, "I'm personally against sucking babies through tubes into biohazard bags / taking pills to flush them down the toilet / have their heads crushed and then sucked out, but think it's a woman's right to choose".
or as something which must be legal as it is sometimes the least-worst of a set of bad options.
Paradoxically, that's why I think that abortions should be legal: women are going to have them anyway, whether we like it or not.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
The problem is, WHAT is highly subjective.
Here, I'll show you.
I consider myself a decent sci-fi and fantasy fan. Not the biggest fan in the world, but more than a casual fan. I've read a lot of Heinlein, some Asimov, practically all of Pratchett's Discworld series, a chunk of David Drake's work, stuff by Ellison, Gerrold, etc. and so on.
But you know what? I've never read any of the Foundation books from cover to cover. Just can't get into them. I've read other Asimov stuff. Just never got into the Foundation series.
Does that mean I don't think the Foundation series is worthy of having won a special Hugo for "Best all-time series"? *shrug* Doesn't concern me one way or the other. Heck, I've read most of the other series that were in consideration for that award when Foundation won it, and they're all pretty good, so I assume that the Foundation series is too.
But I don't know.
See?
I know there are sci-fi fans out there who can't stand Heinlein's "Future History" books. Hell, I used to live with one.
The problem is that the * Puppies groups are treating subjective opinion like objective fact. "I didn't like this, therefore it's not good, and that it got nominated is a sign that the secret liberal reptilians have taken over the nomination process. Therefore, we have to act against them." (Or something like that. I'm not really sure what their reasoning is.)
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.