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.

Comments

Idiocracy was prophetic

[suupaabaka]

Elon, get a move on, I want out.

Re:Idiocracy was prophetic

[Anonymous Coward]

sounds like a great sf plot. right wing nutjobs take over the planet, forcing the barrel chested, stentorian liberal science hero Evian Muskmelon to create an interstellar colonizing flotilla. he also creates an armada of quick attack ships, the I-regulars, to defend the flotilla, against the poorly designed conservative ships, the Reagan Reserves, who are trying to stop the spread of liberal values throughout the universe. Emperor Trump III fails in his effort to stop the flotilla. It returns a century later, with the support of the alien version of the Algonquin Round Table, which promptly retakes Earth, names it New Atwood, and places the conservatives in Coventry, until they choose psycho-rehabilitation.

Re:Idiocracy was prophetic

[mcgrew]

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.

Re:Idiocracy was prophetic

[ravenshrike]

You might want to reread that story. The entire point of the story was that if genetically engineered actual apes were sapient and deserving of the same rights as man, treating black people as subhuman because of their skin color was the fucking height of idiocy seeing as they're actually human. It's just Heinlein doesn't bludgeon the fuck out of his audience with a point.Though my favorite bit was this:

"The honorable Augustus Pomfrey looked every inch the statesman as he bowed to the court and to his opponents. "It is indeed strange," he began, "to hear the second-hand voice of a legal fiction, a soulless, imaginary quantity called a corporate ‘person,’ argue that a flesh-and-blood creature, a being of hopes and longings and passions, has not legal existence."

Why does it need to be political at all?

[BitterOak]

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.

Re:Why does it need to be political at all?

[Jiro]

The claim that people want "right-wing" books to win rather than just good books is basically being made up. It's not symmetrical.

Re:Why does it need to be political at all?

[Anonymous Coward]

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". For instance, I would absolutely classify most of John Scalzi's books as "swashbuckling fun", but they hate Scalzi. 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.

Re:Why does it need to be political at all?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never been into reading science fiction, but I've watched plenty of it on TV. I'll take Star Trek for example, which had a clear left wing bias to it. When it's done right, the end result can be very entertaining. When the message is too overt, it takes away from the story. Balance of Terror was one of the great TOS episodes. Racism was a major theme of that episode, but it was also one of the great TOS episodes because of how it makes its point and the overall quality of the story. Birth control was the major theme of The Mark of Gideon, which began as a rather creepy and interesting episode, but generated into a very overt point about birth control. Kirk's speech about birth control before the leaders of Gideon and the conclusion of the episode really took away from things. TNG didn't feel as political, but it had its moments. When done right, in stories like The Drumhead, it was also really good.

DS9 was all about politics and war, but it was, IMO, the best of the Star Trek series. The writing and acting were excellent, and it certainly wasn't a soap opera in the Delta Quadrant. They didn't portray it as a battle of good (the Federation) and evil (the Dominion), but characters that were all somewhere in between. The Ferengi were certainly representative of modern capitalists, but they were interesting, entertaining, likeable characters who weren't portrayed as buffoons like in TNG. The views on war weren't overt but rather shown through their effects on characters you cared about. It was absolutely left wing, but it was also really good.

It's not Star Trek, but I really didn't care for Torchwood. Doctor Who certainly touched on politics in plenty of episodes. Terry Nation created the Daleks as an allegory for the Nazis, which was really developed in later episodes from the classic series. Genesis of the Daleks was an outstanding story, which certainly had a political theme to it. Torchwood just seemed way too much in your face to be likeable.

I think a lot of good science fiction has a left wing bias to it, based on what I've seen. I'm okay with that. I'm sure it can be done well with a conservative bias, though it seems to be less frequent. I think left wing politics in science fiction are fine, but it can take away from the story when it's too overt.

Re:Why does it need to be political at all?

[MightyMartian]

There has been a long identified syndrome that seems to infect SF writers as they get older; they tend to become more Libertarian, more reactionary, more socially conservative. The likes of Larry Niven and Heinlein were transformed into pretty reactionary types as they aged. Some, like Jerry Pournelle and Orson Scott Card have always been that way, but most certainly the tension between the more liberal elements in SF and the more conservative elements has been their for decades.

That's not counting the SF writers who just get plain fucking weird. Philip Jose Farmer and Robert Heinlein both wrote some pretty disturbing eroticism in later life.

Re:Why does it need to be political at all?

[ultranova]

Why does it have to be either "left wing" or "right wing" books that win?

Science fiction is a vision of how the world could be. Or visions, which is a huge problem if you happen to be an authoritarian with political agenda.

Is the Lord of the Rings left-wing or right-wing?

Idealized feudal past and its Divine Right of Kings vs. vilified Industrial Revolution and its robber barons. Or, if you prefer, how right wing wants to see themselves vs. how they actually are.

Re:Why does it need to be political at all?

[Applehu Akbar]

"There has been a long identified syndrome that seems to infect SF writers as they get older; they tend to become more Libertarian, more reactionary, more socially conservative. "

This is true for humans in general.

Re:Why does it need to be political at all?

[Sarten-X]

Ignoring any bias in the demographic itself, it seems to me that it's just harder to write right-wing sci-fi.

It's easy to write about an enemy that has all of the money, power, and control, providing a convenient struggle for the protagonist. It's much more difficult to write (and thus, more rare to find) a good story where the enemy is given the same circumstances as the protagonist, and both are given the same life choices. Sure, you can say that the antagonist was given too much freedom... but then you have to establish why he chose that way, and if you try to use any variation on "because he's evil", your story goes from being a thought-provoking philosophical adventure to being a heavy-handed morality essay.

You could more generally make a strong leftist state be the enemy. That's the dystopian road blazed by sci-fi in the 1960s, and several movies since the 1970s, notably Logan's Run and Soylent Green. It's a time-honored genre, but that's also the problem. It's old. Dystopian fiction dates back a few centuries, and combining it with science is hardly groundbreaking.

For a while, a popular trend was to base such stories on real people and events, who could be suitably framed for conflict while keeping their political slant. Of course, the reading audience quickly grew tired of every Nazi and Soviet alternate-history piece, and those have waned in recent years.

To more directly address your point, consider the alternative: Writing left-wing sci-fi is easy.

The plot is simple: An underdog wants freedom for himself against the oppressive regime of the evil overlord, who had freedom and used it to oppress others. What makes the underdog different is that he will stand for justice for everyone, show kindness to everyone the audience could identify with, and never miss a chance to help others. Relying on teamwork and everyone's unique (identifiable and presence-justifying) abilities, the protagonist establishes a utopian foothold, where all of the characters that the audience identifies with are loved and cared for.

In fiction, that plot is sufficient for a story. In reality, things are much more complicated. What happens if one of the protagonist's allies was really only following because his girlfriend was? What if the rules of the protagonist's new state really screw some of the wealthier folks? What if the protagonist himself is genuinely a right-wing capitalist who just wants to make money and retire in obscurity?

You're right - Political strife isn't where really good fiction comes from. The best sci-fi works are ones where every character has their own motivations, and they don't boil down to "be good" or "be evil". Rather, they reduce to things like "sleep safely", "get back to stability" or "avoid the consequences of a mistake". One particularly good sci-fi space opera work, itself nominated a few times for Hugo awards, has spent nearly two decades dealing with the indirect results of a mistake. Characters have come and gone through the series, and politics has been an issue, but by that time every character had their own long-established reasons to hold their preferences. At no point was the story ever purely about morality, even when the "definitely evil" characters were introduced - they eventually got their own motivations.

Those deep-rooted, long stories that take the time to establish characters and motivation are great sci-fi, and can avoid bias toward either political slant.

That's hard, though.

Re:Why does it need to be political at all?

[edibobb]

I see the opposite. Maybe people tend to become more moderate, with less "fire in the belly" as they get older. Whether that's socially more liberal or conservative depends on where they started.

Re:Why does it need to be political at all?

[sg_oneill]

an underdog wanting freedom for himself against an oppressive regime is the fundamental belief of the Right,right?

Ah , now I know why the right wants to ban gays from everything, punish women for getting terminations, break the unions and increase criminal penalties. Its because freedom.

MEANWHILE IN BIZARO WORLD.

Re:Why does it need to be political at all?

[steveha]

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.

Re:Why does it need to be political at all?

[Darinbob]

It's a popularity contest basically. One guy (ONE) has gotten a group of followers who probably don't even read science fiction to vote for his choices. All he has to do is say "help me fight SJWs" and the morons line up to do his bidding.

Re:Why does it need to be political at all?

[serviscope_minor]

It would be more accurate to say that the Hugo Awards have been trying to move away from just rewarding

I don't think that would be more accurate: the Hugo awards don't as such do anything at all.

Nominations come from the membership only and then votes come from the membership only. The latter happens at the convention and gets moderate participation, the former, especially for anything other than the popular "best dramatic presentation long form (i.e. film)" , short form (i.e. tv) and novel is extremely low, because frankly, very few people care enough.

The only people who care enough are/were in fact those with some particular interest, and it just so happened that those people who still cared enough to vote had a personal liking for non white, LGBT stuff etc.

HOWEVER! And there's a big however. And this is also of course why the puppies were so effective. Flat-out lies are usually not as effective as lies with a kernel of truth, because people will latch on to the kernel of truth, especially if it's one that resonates.

What those people nominated (and what won!) in previous years was in many cases was the most atrocious drek. I mean just bloody awful. Weak stories, very poor on the speculative element, bad characters and in many cases flat out boring. For instance the risible "The water that falls on you from nowhere[*] won in 2013 and pretty much the only thing that distinguished it from the average scrapings from bottom of the barrel is that it didn't have the usual straight white man protagonist. Likewise "if you were a dinosaur my love". And others too. Were any authors pandering to that, knowing that that sort of thing gets nominated? Probably? It's a big world after all, but either way it doesn't matter because it was that sort of thing getting nominated anyway, and enough authors seemed to want to write it.

Having something other than the usual and rather heavily over-done perspectives is great, but it's not an excuse for poor writing. It seems however that the small community who gave a crap enough to vote didn't feel the same as me, or have different standards for "good writing". They're wrong of course because they disagree with my opinion. But I can't complain too much (define: too much) since I never voted but anyway.

So here's the silly thing. So OK, some small community were the only people voting (and there's no evidence of collusion), and the puppies (in many cases rightly) thought what they were voting for was bad. Heck, many people who weren't puppies agreed that really awful stuff was winning. But that's about as far as it got before it descended into farce. So they stacked the slate, and they had a golden opportunity to see all these marbellous speculative or space opera or mil SF (pew pew!) pieces that we'd been missing out on because no one bothered to vote and... well all they chose was yet more drek! About as bad as whatever had been winning before, arguable worse! And a good bit of it wasn't mainstream stuff, it was Jesus fan-fic (see John C. Wright's entries). What a wasted opportunity.

That also proves that the puppies are in fact a right bunch of nitwits and don't apparently actually care about good writing.

[*] John Chu. I've not read a single thing of his I like or even find passable.

Re:Why does it need to be political at all?

[serviscope_minor]

The Sad Puppies like entertaining books.

They don't apparently like entertaining short stories though, based on the 2015 noms. I've not checked out the 2016 ones yet. The stuff they nominated was *terrible*.

I mean if they were going to whine and bleat about all the "SJW crap" that was being published, the least they could have done was nominate something actually good. But no, apparently they wanted to compete with dinosaur and water for the worst things at the Hugos.

Re:Why does it need to be political at all?

[Warma]

The government has also ripped off most of my income and blocked me from earning anywhere near my potential

If they made up a new Hugo category for the most self-serving and narcissistic comment on Slashdot, I'd vote for this one.

Re:Why does it need to be political at all?

[Nikkos]

This is a fantastic writeup of examples by steveha that demonstrates the very problem - the cliquish pseudo-academic types have been screaming their bloody heads off, acting like American millenials. They're hypocritical and mindless, and if they don't get their way they resort to name-calling and claiming that the other side gamed the system.

steveha used Baen as an example, and it serves perfectly. Baen 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 is that they're set in worlds in which hard work, rugged individualism, independence, logic, - all those 'right-wing' and/or 'conservative' values - rule the day.

Re:Why does it need to be political at all?

[houghi]

Idealized feudal past and its Divine Right of Kings vs. vilified Industrial Revolution and its robber barons. Or, if you prefer, how right wing wants to see themselves vs. how they actually are.

As the winner writes the history books, that is hard to tell. I see it as a group that wants to keep the races separate. Pure appartheit with the results that in the end only men are left.
The ones that lost where the ones that wanted to let all live next to each other and among each other.

It is fun to read the books with that in ,ind as well as the fact that the winner wrote history, so heroes might not be heroes.

Re:Why does it need to be political at all?

[Anonymous Coward]

I see a parallel with "faith-based" movies. If you've ever seen one, you know what I'm talking about. Movies that sacrifice story-telling in order to be faith affirming. They are super popular among mormons and evangelicals because "god comes first." But anybody else who is not part of the cult finds them tedious as fuck because preaching to the choir is no fun if you aren't in the choir.

The puppies see the world through a reductive lens that assumes people are all in factions. I think part of it is that they are so thin-skinned, so sensitive to anything that challenges their world-view that they can't help but see those challenges as a grand conspiracy. So it is only 'logical' that the proper way to counter teh SJW conspiracy is to promote stories that affirm the puppy belief system. It is a fundamental misread of reality to believe in the conspiracy but if you are convinced there is a conspiracy then everything else makes sense.

Notice how all the alt-right movements like the puppies and gamergate have SJW conspiracies as a central of their grievances. Its because the internet lets them congregate in their own little worlds and they soon start to believe that their little worlds are reflective of the world at large. It's kind of like that old Colbert joke where he was parodying a Bill O'Rielly rant: "I know there are some polls out there saying this man has a 32% approval rating. But guys like us, we don't pay attention to the polls. We know that polls are just a collection of statistics that reflect what people are thinking in "reality." And reality has a well-known liberal bias."

Re:Why does it need to be political at all?

[T.E.D.]

They hate Scalzi because his books are crap. He wins because he's got a big megaphone. Redshirts was at best an ok send up of a really old joke, but somehow it won the Hugo for best novel. Why? Not because it's good

I picked it up in a bookstore because it looked fun. I wasn't disappointed.

Was it the best SF book I read that year? Probably not. Was it "crap"? Hell no. Was it better than its competition for the Hugo that year? Since I never even heard of those other books, I'm going with a "yes".

Re:Why does it need to be political at all?

[Stuarticus]

Logic and the right wing have long since parted ways.

Re:Why does it need to be political at all?

[serviscope_minor]

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.

Re:Why does it need to be political at all?

[mcgrew]

The government healthcare bureaucracy has drastically impeded the research necessary for prolonging life and restoring youthful characteristics and will most certainly spike any such treatment, at least until most of us boomers are safely killed off.

In 1900 you were lucky to reach 50, my dad died at age 84 and my mom still goes bowling twice a week at age 88. Her brother is in his late nineties. That was almost unheard of a century ago.

When you're faced with limited remaining life in a fragile body on miniscule after-ripoffs savings, with a healthcare system that looks to be dedicated to killing you while retaining plausible deniability

Funny, my mom says Medicare is the best health insurance she's ever had. I'm looking forward to being eligible next year because my insurance REALLY sucks.

You're crazy, Louie. See a doctor about that early onset Alzheimer's.

Re:Why does it need to be political at all?

[Daetrin]

"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?"

I didn't personally think those were the best works those years either, but do people really need to get so riled up about it? The things i really like rarely make the semifinals and even more rarely win, but i don't feel compelled to invent some "SJW" conspiracy to explain it. (The fact that people _still_ insist on using that term to create a singular enemy out of nothing is just mind boggling.) A bunch of LGBT people and their friends got on a celebratory high because of the social progress their cause has been seeing lately. Because they're a relatively small part of the overall voting base they had a disproportionate effect on the awards for the shorter works, which usually get less attention. (For the exact same reason those are the categories that the Puppies have had the most success in.) Did they go a little overboard in their enthusiasm in this case? Maybe. But it is far from the first time the Hugos (or any other awards) has gone through some kind of phase, nor will it be the last i expect. It would have blown over soon enough, but the Puppies made things infinitely worse by deciding to stage their campaign and have only prolonged the problem.

"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."

Many of the people who ended up founding the Puppies had a hate on for Scalzi years before the Hugo kerfuffle. I don't know what started in back in the day, but it's certainly been long standing and mutual. A lot of the stuff i've seen from the anti-Scalzi side has been filled with bile and hate, while i rarely see that from the pro-Scalzi side. But like everyone else i do have a biased viewpoint.

I've got to say though the goodreads link you shared doesn't really make a good case for what you're claiming. Scalzi's tweets, are certainly silly and juvenile (and really, you don't expect people to be silly and juvenile on twitter from time to time?) but they don't actually seem to be directed at Correia, just the Puppies in general. And Correia himself isn't coming off sounding very well in his response to it.

" 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."

See, this is conflating two different issues, and is probably a fundamental part of the whole problem to begin with. There is a group of LGBT people amongst the Hugo voters (not an organized groups trying to control the vote in some sinister manner, just a Venn diagram type group of people who happen to have similar viewpoints) but there is a far larger, far older overlapping group, the "fen". These are the people who have been going to conventions forever, who _run_ the conventions and who hobnob with the authors and each other at those conventions, and write the fanzines and do the podcasts and all that other stuff. They participate heavily in WorldCon and the running of the Hugos and so of course the results of those awards tend to reflect their tastes.

And i can tell you that for any self-selecting fan group that runs their own awards if you create something that panders to that group it has much higher odds of winning. The degree and style of pandering varies between contests, but it's always there. Tha

Re:Why does it need to be political at all?

[steveha]

I didn't personally think those were the best works those years either, but do people really need to get so riled up about it?

Well, I agree with Larry Correia: the Hugo award could be the award for the best work, or it could be the private award of a group of people who attend WorldCon every year, but it can't be both. And if it's going to be the award of a clique, they should be up-front about it, and not try to claim that it represents the "best" anymore.

It used to be every SF writer's dream to win the Hugo. It has now become clear that if the clique doesn't like you, you can't win a Hugo. Remember, the justification for the voting slate last year was that the Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies had to be stopped to "protect" the Hugo, and multiple people publicly bragged that they didn't read any Puppy-nominated books before voting against them.

the Puppies made things infinitely worse by deciding to stage their campaign

What should they have done instead? "Just accept that conservative or libertarian writers will never win" is not a good answer.

Scalzi's tweets, are certainly silly and juvenile (and really, you don't expect people to be silly and juvenile on twitter from time to time?) but they don't actually seem to be directed at Correia, just the Puppies in general.

The Sad Puppies 2 campaign was pretty much a solo effort by Larry Correia. That year, taunting over the results was taunting Larry Correia.

If you disagree, then please tell me whom you think Scalzi had in mind when he wrote: "I NEVER WANTED THE AWARD THAT'S WHY I'VE WHINED LIKE A KICKED DOG ABOUT IT FOR A COUPLE YEARS RUNNING."

So Among Others and Redshirts were not part of some "SJW conspiracy." They were just "good" pandering to the fans who usually vote for the awards.

First of all, Sad Puppies posits a "cabal" of those "fen" you mention, who noticed how few votes it would take to sway the Hugo awards and started voting in blocks behind the scenes. The cabal tends toward liking SJW stuff and favors various specific people and companies. This is different from saying that some "SJW conspiracy" infiltrated fandom and started controlling things.

Anyway: you give a plausible explanation. However, this doesn't convince me that there's no cabal, because Tor Books got so many more nominations than other publishers, Scalzi and Glyer get so many Hugo nominations.

Should Scalzi have 30% more Hugo nominations than Arthur C. Clarke? Does Glyer deserve 51 Hugo nominations, when Stanley Schmidt was an editor for three decades and didn't get nominated until he retired?

http://www.scifiwright.com/2015/04/did-i-get-too-many-nominations/

The thing is that the fen are not being intentionally cliquish. They're happy to welcome new _individual_ members with open arms.

This whole thing started when the cliques failed to welcome Larry Correia with open arms.

...my first book had made a big splash with Baen readers, so they nominated me. Most of WorldCon didn't despise me then because at that point they hadn't heard of me yet.

Then my name showed up on the shortlist so they looked me up... Hoo boy. It was the end of the freaking world. Most of them didn't actually read my book to know they needed to vote against me. They found out I was an outspoken, right wing political blogger, and gun rights activist. Critics came out of the woodwork. Smofers actively campaigned against me. If you voted for Larry Correia, you were a bad person. I was accused of misogyny, racism, hatey-hate-mongery, and why wouldn't I keep my Jesus out of their uterus! My favorite post however was from a British blogger who said that "if Larry Correia wins the Campbell it will end literature forever".

Starship Troopers

[jfdavis668]

Anything by Heinlein or Jerry Pournelle would fall into the right wing Scifi genre.

Re:Starship Troopers

[SNRatio]

Starship Troopers (the novel): right wing.

Starship Troopers (the movie): taking the piss out of the right wing, but still plenty of viscera and guts.

So where does Mad Max: Fury Road, which is actually on the ballot, go?

Re:Starship Troopers

[rossz]

The movie had very little to do with the book, and out of respect, should never be mentioned in the same breath as Heinlein.

Re:Starship Troopers

[lgw]

Starship Troopers (the novel): right wing.

Only if you believe the character's voice is the author's voice, which is frankly a childish view. Do you imagine Heinlein was endorsing the fascist society in Starship Troopers merely because the characters inhabiting the world accepted it? Was he then also endorsing the libertarian society in Moon is a Harsh Mistress? And where does Stranger in a Strange Land fit in?

Man, I'm tired of people trying to convince me Heinlein was fascist libertarian hippie. He wrote about the good and bad aspects of a society taken to the extreme in some direction. Sorry, no child-safe black-and-white there, just an attempt at an honest examination of how these societies would look from the inside, leaving up to you how to view them from the outside.

Re:Starship Troopers

[Maxo-Texas]

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.

Re:Starship Troopers

[steveha]

Personally, I think the book Starship Troopers is more libertarian than right-wing. I have argued that point here on Slashdot.

Reason also counts Heinlein as a libertarian. "I'm so libertarian I have no use for the libertarian movement," said Heinlein.

P.S. It's a sobering thought to realize that Starship Troopers couldn't possibly win a Hugo today. I'm certain that people would literally bus in additional voters if that was what it took to make sure it didn't win, because the modern SJW thinking is that Heinlein was a right-wing fascist misogynist racist. Never mind that he wrote Stranger in a Strange Land, never mind that he wrote strong women (possibly modeled after his wife, who was a strong woman in real life), and never mind that his works do feature minority characters. (In the short story "Water is for Washing", written not very long after World War II, the protagonist rescues two children and himself from a watery disaster, with help from a hobo. One of the children is a Japanese-American, and the protagonist says something like "He's a Jap!" The other child, a white girl, says "No, that's Tommy." Heck, the novel Starship Troopers has a Filipino protagonist and the future armed forces are completely racially integrated.)

Re:Starship Troopers

[Uberbah]

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.

With an emphasis on military service and jingoism, or fascism for short.

Re:Starship Troopers

[Maxo-Texas]

fasÂcism
ËfaSHËOEizÉ(TM)m/
noun
noun: fascism; noun: Fascism; plural noun: Fascisms

An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization.

---

auÂthorÂiÂtarÂiÂan
É(TM)ËOETHÃrÉ(TM)ËterÄ"É(TM)n/
adjective
adjective: authoritarian

        1.
        favoring or enforcing strict obedience to authority, especially that of the government, at the expense of personal freedom.

---

Militaristic, yes. Nationalistic? Nope. Authoritarian? Some-but mostly driven by the war and otherwise nope.

The society has considerable freedom. In most ways equal to our own (and in some cases greater than our own).

It's simply a democracy with limited right to vote. Anyone can earn the right to vote. They just have to pass one moral test- are they willing to put the good of society ahead of their own.

You know-- like being a democrat, hispanic, or black in florida (where they incorrectly disenfranchised 89,000 voters) or the mid west (where they disenfranchised per their own statements 5% of democratic voters with a combination of voterid+closing voterid offices all but 4 days a year).

The united states was a democracy between 1941 and 1945. The war drove certain authoritarian policies.

Or...

[cirby]

Maybe it shows that the people who have BEEN gaming the awards for the last couple of decades are finally being outnumbered by people who actually vote for good writing, instead of politically-acceptable dross. Up until a year or so ago, there was a huge amount of campaigning for Hugo awards. Now, the same people who used to get nominated regularly by doing so are whining because someone else is also campaigning - and getting nominated instead of one of their friends.

The people running the Hugos whine about ""Republicans" - but go and actually LOOK at the nominees from the Sad Puppies. There's actual political diversity there, not the progressive sameness of a typical Hugo ballot.

Re:Or...

[steveha]

go and actually LOOK at the nominees from the Sad Puppies.

Yes, but I think this is now mostly about Rabid Puppies, who successfully nominated Space Raptor Butt Invasion.

The Rabid Puppies pretty much packed the nominations... some of the nominated works were on the Sad Puppies list so they are likely good, but some of them are just trolling in-jokes. I'm pretty sure the Space Raptor one is just trolling.

Every slot filled by Rabid Puppy trolling is a slot that wasn't filled by a good work worthy of a Hugo. This is much worse than last year.

The shame is that

[Rinikusu]

There are actually some really good books in the lists that are now "tainted" by these shenanigans. Hell, I like Jim Butcher and I know he's got some right-of-center politics, but best novel? No way. And Seveneves? Good book for about 3/4, then falls a bit, also not a good pick for any cause.

Re:The shame is that

[rossz]

Is the book better than Scalzi's Red Shirts? He got the 2013 Hugo for a fun popcorn read, but was no way deserving of a Hugo, but that seems to be the standard if the author is of the right politics and/or demographics.

Also, if you you believe the books are now tainted, then you are an idiot. The entire point of the Sad Puppies was not to fix the Hugos. They simply said, "read these books you might otherwise ignore and if you think they deserve it, vote for them." The SJW fools lied about that and spread the false rumor that the intent was to overload the Hugos only right wing stores and authors. Some of the SJWs went so far as to say that only books by women of color should be considered.

Re:Holy Shit! this is opposite world!

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Just Stop Having the Hugos

[spitzig]

It's not two different genres. SF is large. It's one genre, and it's filled with lots of variety. I have no interest in some(books for kids and books heavy on the romance). I like some "swashbuckling". I like some political novels.

The people organizing the either need to reorganize them so campaigning doesn't work or people need to get used to campaigning for books. To me, the second seems like it would suck the fun out of the prize, but it also seems a lot like what authors currently do marketing their novels to get people to buy them.

Key points to understand

[steveha]

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.

Re:Key points to understand

[cbhacking]

I too once (naively) believed that the Sad Puppies were honest about that goal.

Unfortunately (for everybody), their claim would be a lot more credible if one of the leaders of the Sad Puppies hadn't not only put a book by Vox Day on the Sad Puppies slate, but then gone on record saying I nominated Vox Day because Satan didn’t have any eligible works that period.

That is not a claim compatible with "The Sad Puppies have always been about recommending the SF works that you enjoyed the most." Yes, the Sad Puppies leader liked Vox Day's story, but he didn't nominate the story "because there wasn't a better story available from somebody at least approximately as disliked by social progressives", he nominated the story because it was it was eligible and as close to Satan as he could come.

Second verse, same as the first

[93 Escort Wagon]

I've never heard of such a brutal and shocking injustice I cared so little about!

Right wing bias?

[mi]

So, not only the reality, fiction also has a Right-wing bias?

Re:I'm Supposed To Read A Sci-fi Book Every Year??

[AJWM]

Fans read an SF (not skiffy) book a week, or at least I did when I had the time. The "job" is volunteer, and you get to vote by buying a membership in the con.

The Hugo Awards have always been a popularity contest, since they're nominated and voted on by the fans (or, anyone else willing to pony up the money for a membership, although there are a couple of rules to discourage organized (vs disorganized, like the Puppies) bloc voting.

For that matter, the Nebula Awards, which are nominated and voted on by SF/F writing professionals (ie, SFWA members) are also something of a popularity contest, it's just a different crowd.

I suppose it's inevitable that any kind of award for the "best" in a subjective field like the arts (whether writing, filmmaking, whatever) ultimately devolves to a popularity contest of some kind.

In some objective sense the only contest that counts is who has more readers. As Jerry Pournelle put it when one of his books was nominated but didn't win, "New York Times best sellers [which his was] will get you through times of no Hugos better than Hugos will get you through times of no best sellers."

And while I'd love to have one of those little silver spaceships sitting on my mantle, Jerry has a point. A Hugo by itself isn't going to let me quit my day job and spend more time writing.

That is what it is now

[SuperKendall]

Why not just choose good books, regardless of politics?

That is what has happened, if you actually READ the list of recommended books from the Sad Puppies list for example, it's not really a set of "right wing" books at all. It's simply good books.

The issue is that for many years beforehand it HAD been a politically chosen set by a tiny minority with no diversity of thought, and so the "normal" became a set of overwrought heavily left-wing oriented books. Now that it's reverting to center it's being portrayed as political, when what is occurring is the opposite of a political movement. It is a QUALITY movement.

Re:That is what it is now

[iris-n]

Good books? You mean "Space Raptor Butt Invasion"? Or maybe "SJWs Always Lie"?

Re: This is sad seeing republicans...

[MightyMartian]

Republicans haven't meaningfully stood for small government... ever. It's a trope passed out to the Libertarian wing of the party, but it's just a load of shit. As to freedom, well, so long as it isn't women looking to control their own bodies, or cis individuals picking the bathroom of the gender they identify with, oh no, not then.

Anything beyond the centrist moderate wing of the Republican party is a pack of frothing-at-the-mouth reactionaries that hate just about everything about the modern world.

That alone does not satisfy

[SuperKendall]

There are a number of books in the "Sad Puppies" slate that have gay/lesbian characters. It's just that they "think wrong" according to how gay and lesbian people are supposed to think, and that is the ultimate crime.

Never has the echo of "Uncle Tom" been heard so loudly across the land, issued forth by people who pretend to be for diversity while growing the most singular monoculture ever conceived by man.

Informed opinions

[Livius]

I think it's sickening to have these puppy factions undermining the awards process.

Which books are the kittens recommending?

Jesus fucking christ, we're doomed..

[swb]

I'm willing to advocate for war, and for war fought cruelly, with scorched earth tactics when necessary to win.

But in my heart, I hate conflict and value understanding. At night I really do dream of a peaceful understanding among men and wonder how conflicts like Syria or places like Afghanistan can be made less broken. And sometimes I hope there will be a way.

But then I read this story and realize it's hopeless. If the world of fucking science fans can't manage to run their awards ceremony because of nitpicking and infighting, what fucking chance does the rest of the world have?

We are doomed.

Re:booky mcBookyFace

[lgw]

By design the Hugos are a popularity contest. The Nebulas are chosen by critics, the Hugos by fans. There's no "stacking the vote" in any way, just voting (it's not like this is an internet poll or something silly like that).

While the only important popularity contest is book sales, the Hugos do sometimes help less-known authors get discovered. Even then it's about the books you like, not the books you're supposed to like - the latter was always the Nebulas.

Campaign against a perceived bias...

[BrookHarty]

Perceived?! When they vote "No Award" so to not give an award to someone based on their views, that is text book bias.

The hugos have been a mix of political correctness in the 5+ years. Why the fuck has a left wing political view have need to be pushed in an awards meant for best scifi/fantasy... Why do they have to censor what we read to not offend someone. This PC crap has been getting out of hand since they gave a Nobel peace prize to someone because of his lefty party affiliation and not his works.

Re:"swashbuckling fun"

[cirby]

They've been doing that for a few years now, it's just that they've been giving it to left-wing talentless self-publishers.

So, apparently, the only thing that outrages you is that they're coming from the wrong flavor of politics?

Re: This is sad seeing republicans...

[whoever57]

Many of those "Small government Republicans" are deluded Tea Party members. They don't realize that the whole "small government" meme is driven by the super-wealthy and aimed at gutting the good things that government does. Like protecting the environment, collecting taxes from those who have the means to hide their income, etc..

Except...

[cirby]

...that's wrong.

While some of the folks behind the Sad Puppies movement are definitely right-wing, or Libertarian, or something similar, their nominations are all over the map, because they didn't run their nominations through a political filter before putting them up.

On the other hand, the left-wing types who have been running the Hugos process for a long time have been... less honest about it. They whine about the Puppies "promoting" books for the award, while people like John Scalzi have been doing it for years. For that matter, touting books for the Hugo has been a part of the process as far back as I can remember (and I've been in and around fandom most of my life).

Re:Except...

[Oligonicella]

Two years ago on Scalzi's blog he had a screed about how this and that should be included in people's stories. In particular I found it amusing his take on using xir ad naus.

So, I published a comment that basically said "Write your stories the way you want. They're *your* stories. People will buy them or not." Within minutes I got comments like "So you don't want people to criticize your writing?"

Telling people *how to write* their stories is not criticizing, it's control. And that, in a nutshell, is what has been happening in SF.

Re:This is sad seeing republicans...

[guises]

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.

Re: This is sad seeing republicans...

[Anonymous Coward]

A baby's freedom to live certainly supersedes the mother's freedom to kill him or her.

Very true. The problem comes from people who use the term 'baby' to describe a zygote or fetus.

Re:booky mcBookyFace

[Oligonicella]

The Hugos have always had how to vote cards. It's just now it's common knowledge.

Re: This is sad seeing republicans...

[tsotha]

Translation: Women are breeding machines. Oh, and because it's all so very Libertarian, pregnant women shouldn't get any publicly-funded health care either.

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.

Fucking Jesus, who died and made you God, that you can impose your will on the decision a woman and her doctor makes? What makes you so fucking special? Considering the numbers of actual babies who die or suffer every year, even in the US, due to poverty and a lack of decent health care, why not show some fucking compassion for them, rather than fetuses.

Fucking Jesus, who died and made you God...

That's pretty funny coming from someone who spends his time thinking up new ways to spend my money.

... that you can impose your will on the decision a woman and her doctor makes?

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.

Considering the numbers of actual babies who die or suffer every year, even in the US, due to poverty and a lack of decent health care, why not show some fucking compassion for them, rather than fetuses.

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?

And get off my lawn

[huckamania]

Two of my favorite authors died recently, Pratchett and Banks. I still have about 5 Banks books, although none of them are science fiction. I have about 8 Pratchett books left. I'm not going to stop reading and saying there is a shortage of good authors is about stupid. I remember a flame war on the old SciFi Weekly site where some idiot said women can't write. I listed off about 8 women who can hold their own with any man, and I didn't even include Heinlein. The Sad Puppy website that someone posted didn't seem to have any overt political overtones. It seemed more like a bunch of nerds talking about what books they read that they liked. I'll probably go back and write some names down after I finish off the last of my Pratchett and Banks books.

I remember when the Hugo and Nebula would award the same book with their awards. I can't think of one book that did win that after reading didn't appear to deserve it.

Pournelle maybe

[huckamania]

Read Stranger in a Strange Land or To Sail Beyond the Sunset and then get back to us. Heinlein, like every human ever, was a product of his times and a lot of his juvenile works (including Starship Troopers) were written as serials, often to specifications by the publisher. A lot of his later novels are not right wing at all.

It is the hubris of the living to cast shade on the morality of the past.

Re: This is sad seeing republicans...

[Anonymous Coward]

Except when women exchange the terms as a matter of convenience. Assault? Baby. Abortion? Fetus. Pregnant Women Assistance programs? Baby

If women can't even make up their own minds about the status, you can hardly blame anyone else for being confused.

Re: This is sad seeing republicans...

[MightyMartian]

Translation; I'm going to force you to have an unwanted baby, but I bear no responsibility for the end result of the force.

Good old reactionary conservatives. Quick to tell people waht to do, but greedy sociopaths in every other way.

Re: This is sad seeing republicans...

[Sarten-X]

When did "slots in this bathroom" and "tabs in that bathroom" get sooooo controversial?

I know someone who was born with a slot and a tab, and a 50% mix of cells for each... where do they go? The bushes?

For about the first 14 years, the "tab" was dominant, and he was a mostly-healthy boy, starting to form the preferences that boys do at that age. Then puberty struck hard, and the "slot" parts started making hormones that would have been lethal to suppress, so he became she, and her "tab" is now in the process of being suppressed so it can eventually be cut off completely.

So now there are many complicated questions to be asked. She still has both kinds of parts, has adjusted to looking and behaving like a "slot", prefers to be assembled with other "slots", and eventually will have only a "slot". What bathroom would she be comfortable in? In which bathroom would her presence make others uncomfortable? Does any of that coincide with her (tab-indicating) driver's license, or her (duality-indicating) birth certificate, or her (slot-indicating) recent medical records?

On an unrelated note, I am hereby starting a petition to revoke your euphemism privileges.

Ancillary Mercy?

[ljw1004]

I'm confused. TFA says that "Ancillary Mercy" is in the Sad Puppies' list. But I thought the earlier books in this series were books that the Puppies specifically disliked and thought represented the weird academic leftist trend they were complaining about?

Re:Ancillary Mercy?

[91degrees]

There are two groups. Sad Puppies, and Rabid Puppies.

Sad Puppies are based off a belief that the nominations are dominated by a clique, and wanted to get a broader spread. It was run by a different organiser this year, who offered a public poll of the works that should be nominated in the list. A lot of them actually liked Ancillary Mercy, so it's in the list.

Rabid Puppies motives are a lot harder to work out, but generally anything that's seen as too liberal will not make the list.

Re:Ancillary Mercy?

[Gryle]

The Sad Puppies evolved. I've followed this whole shebang for the last few years, mostly out of curiosity. The most civil response I saw to Sad Puppies last year was "Recommendations are fine, but you didn't have a large enough list of recommendations, so you're really just slate voting." To counter that, this year the Sad Puppies basically ran a mini-nomination. They put up a website (http://sadpuppies4.org/) where anyone could post a nomination recommendation for whatever they believed was worthy of a Hugo nomination. Ancillary Mercy ended up on the list: http://sadpuppies4.org/the-lis....

Re:Simple

[Orgasmatron]

Speaking of dishonest, I present you with a quote from the biggest liar of the day (so far):

Vox Day and others stepped in the try to "correct" that and argue that only things conforming to their ideology deserved awards instead of just what people enjoyed reading.

For the last few decades, a small cabal has run the Hugos as their own personal award mill, and they ensured that nearly nothing could win if it didn't fit their ideology.

And guess what, sales figures show pretty damn clearly that people do NOT enjoy reading that crap. Go check the long tail sales figures on some winners and nominees. It isn't hard to find single books by pre-SJW writers selling more copies per year than a decade's worth of Hugo winners.

And the claim that Day is pushing for ideological purity is totally fucking insane and can be trivially disproved by reading nothing more than one-paragraph summaries of the nominated works. There is no common ideology in the puppy lists.

You are a lost cause, but I urge anyone else reading this to go see for themselves.

Re: This is sad seeing republicans...

[AvitarX]

Are you saying Republicans are pro birth control?

Or teaching the facts about sex and birth control?

Re: This is sad seeing republicans...

[DNS-and-BIND]

A government powerful enough to give you everything you want is powerful enough to take everything you have.

Your reaction is a common "poison pill" fallacy committed by government agencies ordered to cut their bloated budgets. They immediately cut the things that will hurt while keeping the fat safe. Small government conservatives don't want to get rid of the fire departments or the police departments (but a lot of leftists want this one) nor the environmental departments (admittedly this one has become a nest of far-left hate). They want an out-of-control federal government to be reined in, and the best way to do that is the same way you get rid of a cancer, i.e. stop its blood flow.

Re:Simple

[thesupraman]

Actually no, as someone who has actually READ most of this stuff for several decades, there was a sudden and huge shift of both nominees and awards, specifically to 'minority rights' content, over more general interest stories, and to the EXCLUSION of general interest stories.

Should those books exist? Of course!
Are they general interest enough to be winning Hugos? Almost certainly not.

Remember, it has never been a lack of other options, there was a very specific stuffing going on, and then a reaction by the general reading public to that.
The people were trying to take control of the Hugos then got all prissy that their politically motivated work got blocked by the majority.
Boo Hoo, its an award, I'm afraid the true majority IS right in this case.

The only unfortunate thing is that it took so long to notice/correct, and that a number of very worth books did get caught up in the fallout, both before and
after.

But the claims of block voting for no award being bad are just laughable - they were a direct relation to an attempt to limit the nominees to a selected PC subset of options, to control the outcome.

As to trying to pull out the 'Right Wing' label for the majority of SciFi fans, that just STINKS of standard SJW label bashing - if they cannot win, they have to destroy. They have exactly zero respect for the actual Authors, SciFi in general, or the general public.

Re: This is sad seeing republicans...

[TheEyes]

A government powerful enough to give you everything you want is powerful enough to take everything you have.

In a vacuum, yes this is true, a powerful government can take everything from you. Keep in mind, though, that the alternative is to allow powerful individuals to control everything instead; in that case, a state which humanity has languished in for thousands of years, those powerful individuals will take everything from you.

The large middle class that we've seen rise in America and other modern countries has only come into existence thanks to the tireless work of powerful governments holding back the power of the very wealthy. It's no surprise that, now that those very wealthy have managed to subvert the government, we are seeing the middle class shrink, battered by high costs imposed by the rent-seeking rich.

Re:booky mcBookyFace

[taustin]

Allowing broad public campaigning undermines things because it becomes either a popularity contest

An award voted on by whoever chooses to participate is a popularity contest. That's the whole point.

Re:booky mcBookyFace

[taustin]

This entire controversy is about a small group of elitist pricks trying to hijack a meaningless award away from another small group of elitist pricks. The only difference between the Hugo inner circle for the last couple of decades and the Puppies (of either variety) is which books they're hawking. None of them want general participation on the part of the book buying public.

It's been decades since there was any detectable connection between what the sf buying public is buying and either the Hugos or the Nebulas.

Re: This is sad seeing republicans...

[corwinsr]

I understand what you're saying but the problem is back one step - which is that any effort to tip the scale in favor of a vocal minority - no matter how benign - is an in democratic (small c) distortion of how the voting should be. This is also a failure on the part of the Hugo's to have a more balanced and stable voting process. It needs to be redesigned.

Re:Example plots?

[Revek]

Any plot that doesn't have some downtrodden minority sexual preference as a hero as far as I can tell. On the other side we have old hardliners who We must admit, some of them are outspoken bigots. What both sides of foaming fanatics are doing is ruining an awards process to further their own polarized agendas. I've read some really old sci-fi that integrated other sexual preferences as far back as the fifty's. Its was a robot or a alien but you could see what they were driving at.
Today however the lefties insist it must include their ideals to be real sci-fi. The righties? They insist on their missionary style of writing to be the only real sci-fi. Personally I'm in the middle. And as a straight up het, I can take or leave some of this hermaphroditic crap I see nowadays. The best I've read lately has included a little of both.. So the answer to you're question is, If it doesn't have LGBT flowing out of every page its right wing.

Re: This is sad seeing republicans...

[SuricouRaven]

I don't see any conflict. It's the old Voltaire position on free speech: I may not agree with your decision, but I believe it must be your decision to make.

I find it very frustrating that the pro-life side generally opposes contraception and sex education, even though these are the best mean we have to reduce the need for and number of abortions. I think it's because they have such a strong religious element - almost all of the major pro-life organisations and leaders are explicitly Christian and devoutly so, which means they must regard their mission as not only to eliminate abortion, but to eliminate the evil of non-marital sex too.

Re: This is sad seeing republicans...

[corwinsr]

And you have a child's view of the issue. A person that identifies as male dresses that way and the same with female. By this ridiculous laws standard we'd end up seeing a person that outwardly appears male going into a women's restroom and an apparent female going into a men's restroom. Yeah, that won't cause any confusion. Then what about the significant portion of transgenders that are born with both male and female genetic traits? X and Y. Yeah, probably didn't know that right? Who decides which they have to pick? Because by this law it has to be the gender you're born with. They have both. And the right talks about the left wanting to control our lives. Uh huh, right. Finally, to address the "real" reason so many on the right hate the idea of transgenders using the restroom of their identified sex - there have been zero cases of a transgender assaulting, molesting or in any way harrassing anyone in a restroom, male or female of any age. Zero.

Re: This is sad seeing republicans...

[guises]

This certainly does represent a distortion of the process... One of the points the Sad Puppies make is that typical voting for the Hugos is only 5,000 people out of the millions who read these books. With their campaigning they have more than doubled that, so it's no wonder that they're dominating the list of nominees. The point they make is that such a small voting pool can't possibly represent the views of the readership at large, but of course flooding the voting pool isn't exactly representative either.

What this demonstrates is that democracy doesn't work when voter participation is too low, but I don't think that's a revelation. Unless the book publishers start sticking pre-addressed voting card inserts into their books, I'm not sure what the Hugos can do about this.

Re: Holy Shit! this is opposite world!

[thesupraman]

You havn't studied much history have you..

Or perhaps you think the Chinese cultural revolution and Stalinist Russia were right wing?

The reason you are dead wrong of course is the neither left not right is the enemy. Totalitarianism is.. And that can be either..

And the world is rushing to become more totalitarian year by year at present.. In the name of making us safe from ourselves.

The opposite of totalitarian is freedom.. Just remember that.

Re:This is sad seeing republicans...

[cbhacking]

Here, let me link you to something that a leader of the Sad Puppies said last year, posted on his own blog: http://monsterhunternation.com...

Crtl+F "Satan", and bear in mind that Vox Day is
A) the leader of the Rabid Puppies, who don't bother with the pretense of their nominations being about quality
B) the kind of bigot who makes comments to the effect of "Europe would be better off if it were run by neo-Nazis", so the comparison to Satan (at least politically) is way less hyperbole than you might expect.

Re: Holy Shit! this is opposite world!

[Salgak1]

I'm a Sad Puppy too, and have been since it all started. What's amusing, is that, last year, Vox Day and his alt-right people decided to leverage the "Sad Puppies" with their own "Rabid Puppies" slate. And, of course, both have been conflated, despite the fact that they come from VERY different places.

Besides, the Hugo Awards, and Worldcon, have been dying for years. The announcement of the Dragon Award by DragonCon in Atlanta is just another nail in the coffin. When the "WorldCon" got 5,171 attendees last year, while DragonCon got over 70K attendees. . . the argument than the WorldCon is representative of Fandom tends to fail. . . similar attendance is seen consistently at the San Diego Comic Con, the Salt Lake City Comic Con, and the New York ComicCon.

That would suggest that perhaps the Hugos and the WorldCon are NOT representative of SF and Fantasy fandom. . .

Re: This is sad seeing republicans...

[Salgak1]

In a vacuum, yes this is true, a powerful government can take everything from you. Keep in mind, though, that the alternative is to allow powerful individuals to control everything instead; in that case, a state which humanity has languished in for thousands of years, those powerful individuals will take everything from you.

You appear to believe this is an either/or situation. I would suggest that, as significantly smaller governments HAVE existed, would prove that we do not have a binary solution set, but that there is an entire range of solutions. Some of which would be acceptable to the vast majority of the population. . .

Re: This is sad seeing republicans...

[DRJlaw]

I understand what you're saying but the problem is back one step - which is that any effort to tip the scale in favor of a vocal minority - no matter how benign - is an in democratic (small c) distortion of how the voting should be.

Of course! The solution is to prevent distortions by suppressing small minorities that get out their vote! Not to prevent distortions by getting a so-called silent majority to get out their own vote.

You're calling for governance by statistical polling. Valid concept, but let's not pretend that it's democratic. People who can't even be arsed enough to affirmativelty cast a vote have opted out of participation. The fact that you can extract an opinion -- concerning anything from anyone -- does not mean that that person has been excluded from a democratic decision.

Re:This is sad seeing republicans...

[Salgak1]

Likewise, I'm a Sad Puppy. And am amused, that, IMMEDIATELY, the narrative came out again about this being a right-wing effort. if you go back to the start, Larry Correia started the Campaign to Stop Puppy-Related Sadness as a tongue-in-cheek parody of a relatively standard campaign for the social cause du jour, which always seems to be "for the children"

The point was, boring fiction used as a vehicle for social messaging and virtue signaling had been increasingly dominating the Hugo Awards, and he, and those of us that joined him, wanted the Hugo to be about the BEST Science Fiction of the year. Since then, it's become a source of repeated One Minute Hates from "trufandom".

As I've said elsewhere in the topic today, the Hugo and the WorldCon and "Trufandom" are of increasingly less significance every year. SF and Fantasy Fandom are no longer tiny, cloistered groups, and the rise of Indie Publishing is slowly killing off the gatekeepers of "TradPub". i.e. "traditional" publishing.

Me, I really don't care about the Hugos, but AM highly amused that, amongst the nominees, is "Space Raptor Butt Invasion". Never read the book, don't plan too, but am laughing at the reaction. . .

Re: This is sad seeing republicans...

[Applehu Akbar]

That's why conservatives are just as afraid of Trump, but for the opposite reason, as the liberals. He's the first candidate to be getting Hitler and Stalin jokes at the same time.

Re: This is sad seeing republicans...

[Major Blud]

Very true. The problem comes from people who use the term 'baby' to describe a zygote or fetus.

So when does it quit becoming a "zygote or fetus" and become a "baby"?

that you can impose your will on the decision a woman and her doctor makes

Shouldn't that be a woman, her doctor, and the father? You're making it out like he has no say-so in the matter, until she decides to have the kid and he's stuck paying child support for the next 18 years. I guess some people are more equal than others.

Re:booky mcBookyFace

[arth1]

For quite a while the public ballots worked, but where a group decides to undermine the process by intentionally stacking the vote, well yes, it gets undermined. All these right wing goons are doing is destroying the Hugos.

You must be new to the Hugo Awards. The "vote stacking", i.e. grassroot campaigns to get voters to vote based on WHO instead of WHAT were done by the social issues wing, not by the old school sci-fi guys.

(There's nothing left-wing and right-wing about this - there's a substantial leftist political view in both camps. The fight is on whether writing about social issues is a goal to be rewarded, and whether Sci-Fi world views that's not kosher should be shunned.)

Re:booky mcBookyFace

[Kierthos]

I'd also argue it's much easier to promulgate "how to vote" cards.

I mean, think about it. In the '50s, how would you promote the idea of a mass of people voting the same way for the Hugo slate? Massive letter writing campaign, probably.

Now, it takes a ding-dong with a blog post.

Re:booky mcBookyFace

[Kierthos]

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.)

Re: This is sad seeing republicans...

[alexandru_preoteasa]

Right on, tried debating some leftie acquaintances on this one and they just couldn't get past the feminist dogma. LEFTIES: "Well, **he** chose to have sex." ME: "But so did **she**! Why is he the only one paying for their (hopefully mutual!) choice?" *crickets* LEFTIES: "But **he** CHOSE TO HAVE SEX." Then I switched from beer to whiskey in an effort to numb the awareness of just how deep the brainwashing goes.

Re: This is sad seeing republicans...

[dywolf]

Actually I posit the opposite is true. That there ARE more small-government democrats than small-government republicans.

But the key difference between a small government republican and a small government democrat, is that where the democrat simply wants enough government to do the jobs given it and acknowledges that government has legitimacy to do those jobs and that the list may grow since government is a reflection of society..the republican simply wants no government at all, and denies that government has any legitimacy whatsoever.

No democrats actually want to instate totalitarian or authoritarian government with 100% control over everything.
More of us think like Bill Maher and are closer to left-libertarianism (aka real libertarianism, not the RW abomination that worships Ayn Rand and co-opted the name), than they are to Lenin, regardless of what conservatives like to tell us we think.
--

As to the 2nd half and naming it a "child's view of freedom"...the word for that is projection, because forcing one person to endure slavery in the name of another's freedom (specifically another that isn't actually a person, a separate entity, and will not be until born) is not a grown up view of freedom. Nor is forcing a child to be born, but refusing to help or enable that childs freedom following birth. Rather like allowing discrimination against a group in order to accommodate the religious freedom practices of another group.

The grown up view of freedom is that if your outward freedom of action should not affect the intrinsic or inward freedom of another.
IE, my right to not be punched in the nose trumps your right to punch me in the nose.

As for the bathroom, no freedom is being threatened here, other than your prudish 17th century mindset that makes you scared of peoples naughty bits.

Re: This is sad seeing republicans...

[dywolf]

Not at all. Conservatives simply don't believe in infantilizing women by pretending they simply have no way to avoid pregnancy

because conservatives are such noted supporters of contraception...

as for paying their own way...what do you suggest for poor women? sterilization?
actually no need to ask, because yes, conservatives have said that, past and present.

few more things:
-the baby isn't a baby until its born. until then it's a fetus, and part of the woman's body
-yes, infant mortality rates are higher in the US than most other OECD countries, especially the ones with national healthcare
-other countries, again the ones with national healthcare systems, show little difference between rich and poor infant mortality rates. in the US however, there is a big difference, with the poor ones being much more like to die in infancy.

basically, you're just full of BS.

Re: Holy Shit! this is opposite world!

[whitroth]

How many ways can you manage to be *wrong*?

1. More than *twice* as many nominating votes came in for the Hugos this year than last year... and last year was a new record. This year, over 4000 nominations. That's "shrinking" and "not representative"?
2. I went through the list a bit ago on file770, and one thing I noticed is that the puppies were also recommending folks who might well have been put on the list *anyway* - I mean, Lois McMaster Bujold? Neil Stephenson? (And, btw, I also nominated Slow Bullets, published by WSFA Press... of which club i am a member, and out GOH at Capclave last year.)
3. Last year, there were people who were put on, and then withdrew because they Puppies had pushed them... clearly repudiating the Puppies. If I had one up, I wouldn't withdraw it... but I would *sure* post something that told Vox Toilet what I thought of him and his schemes, and his stooges.
4. Worlcon was *huge* in 2014. I'm interested in seeing how big it is this year. So much for "shrinking".
5. If you don't like the Hugos, or Worldcon, GO THE FUCK AWAY, AND STOP BOTHERING THE REST OF US.

          mark, been a fan since probably before you were born,
                          and have *zero* intention of being forced out

Re:Holy Shit! this is opposite world!

[ncc74656]

They already control nearly every moment of our lives.

I don't know in Amerika, but in the rest of the world the LEFT is the one trying to control everything you do, lest you say something somebody wouldn't like

It's no different here. Outside of who you screw, whatever "gender identity" you imagine yourself to be, and your wife's/girlfriend's/mistress's options if you get her knocked up (assuming for the sake of argument that you swing that way), Democrats are all about micromanaging your life.

Re: This is sad seeing republicans...

[david_thornley]

Exactly how does the change of the birth certificate match what the person is at the proper time? What about someone who has done the transition fully without having the genital surgery, which may be contraindicated for a variety of reasons? (I knew people with a bleeding disorder; one of them had to have surgery aborted because, even after replacing all her blood, she still was bleeding far too much. Given when the surgery happened, she was very lucky not to have contracted HIV. What if she'd been a transsexual?)

Seriously, how many men are willing to go through hormone therapy and dress like a woman in order to sneak a peek in the ladies' room? Heck, how many women in the ladies' room are showing anything unusual outside their stall? (I have absolutely no experience in this.)

As far as "thou shalt not murder", abortion has traditionally not been murder. It's been illegal, but typically with a far lesser penalty.