Brad Torgersen, in a move reminiscent of a Great War general deciding that this marching his men into the German machine gun fire will win him the battle, is calling on his fans to vote for a Sad Puppy slate again in the Hugos, cause that worked so well last time. Here’s a classic case of projection, courtesy of File 770, because no way I’m linking to Torgersen directly:
For those of you who don’t know what SAD PUPPIES is, it’s a (somewhat tongue in cheek) running effort to get stories, books, and people onto the Hugo ballot, who are entirely deserving, but who don’t usually get on the ballot. Largely because of the nomination and voting tendencies of World Science Fiction Convention, with its “fandom” community. In the last decade we’ve seen Hugo voting skew more and more toward literary (as opposed to entertainment) works. Some of these literary pieces barely have any science fictional or fantastic content in them. Likewise, we’ve seen the Hugo voting skew ideological, as Worldcon and fandom alike have tended to use the Hugos as an affirmative action award: giving Hugos because a writer or artist is (insert underrepresented minority or victim group here) or because a given work features (insert underrepresented minority or victim group here) characters.
So last year Torgersen and co got enough people to waste at least $50 on a supporting memberships to be able to get a lot of shite on the final ballot that otherwise would get nowhere near the Hugos, but came up with a big fat nothing when the awards were actually chosen, usually ending up last or second to last in their categories. Satisfying as that was, it did mean actually deserving books and stories got short shrifted as the Sad Puppies got on the ballot instead.
Now he wants to do it again, but it’s not him that makes the Hugos into an ideological purity test, oh no, it’s those nasty liberals. They force him into this sad spectacle, because of their constant nominating of inferior science fiction. Because honestly, you don’t actually think a writer of colour can be any good now can you? And you sure as hell don’t want to read about those people if you can read about manly men manly saving the universe for America. Again.
The truth is of course that all those socalled “affirmative action” nominations happened organically, because people actually liked the writers, books, stories and artists they nominated, actually like reading books not written by a white American writer doing the same old, same old done better three decades ago.
It’s a bitter pill to swallow and if there’s anything rightwingers are incapable off, it’s accepting bitter truths gracefully. Much better to throw a temper tantrum.
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