science fiction

Butcher fails where Bellet and Kloos succeeded

Published on April 19, 20154 Comments

Jim Butcher is currently one of the most popular fantasy writers in the world, with several series being NYT bestsellers, as well as having a television series made out of one of them. Not quite George R. R. Martin level, but getting there. He’s nothing like Annie Bellet or Marko Kloos, two much more modestly successfull writers, except in one thing: all three got on the Hugo nominations list thanks to the efforts of the Sad Puppies.

Where they again differ is that Bellet and Kloos, after some soul searching, decided to withdraw their nominations. It’s hard to overstate how difficult that must’ve for them, seeing as how these nominations may be the only time they’ll actually get on the shortlist. Consider: in any given year there are only twenty places open for a professional writer, five each for Best nobel, novella, novelette or short story, while anywhere from 1000-1500 eligible novels are published each year and ghu knows how many eligible works in the other categories. You have to be an incredibly good or well known writer to have a shot at being nominated, let alone be nominated more than once. Yet they gave up these nominations because they knew they way they’d gotten them wasn’t fair.

Not so Butcher though, somebody who on his own merits could have a stab at the Hugos. He’s kept radio silence all this time and when asked point blank, this is what he said:

@senji People keep proclaiming their stance on everything, acting like politicians, and then get all shocked when things become politicized.

— Jim Butcher (@longshotauthor) April 15, 2015

I’m not sure whether his stance is naive or calculating. His presence on the Puppies ballot from the start was clearly intended as a shield, a way to give some credence to the idea behind the slate(s), that popular works have no chance at the Hugos and really, we’re only suggesting those works we really really think are worthy of a Hugo. By neither withdrawing nor speaking out against the Puppies, Butcher gives tacit approval to their slate voting, validates their political beliefs because surely this means Jim Butcher himself thinks he can’t win a Hugo otherwise?

The same goes of course for all those other nominees used as shields: if you don’t withdraw, if you don’t speak out, I don’t care that you were put on the slate involuntarily or without your knowledge, you’ve given your retroactive consent. By your actions you help support this partisan political attack on the Hugos and I will judge you for it.

UPDATE: you know who does get it right? Black Gate.

Larry Correia: entitlement and ego

Published on April 18, 2015Leave a comment

Maureen O’Danu explains something I’ve been arguing from the start: that the Puppies are driven by entitlement:

Larry Correia’s public attitude makes it pretty clear that he felt that he deserved to win and that the Hugo he was nominated for was stolen from him, rather than simply won by another contender. (Larry denies this verbally, but one of the first rules of psychology is that when there is a conflict between words and actions, believe the actions.) The subjective nature of literary awards makes this a not uncommon problem. In any award where winning is at least partially a matter of opinion instead of mathematics, the language of robbery holds sway. “He was robbed” “She stole that award” “How on earth did he take that away from her.” From ice dancing to dressage to debate to writing, any ranked creative competition is going to generate these sorts of claims.

Correia took this further, speculating on the basis of negative comments he had received from either fans or writers (he has never specified) that he was specifically denied his award because of his political views. He has said that he believes has been specifically denied because he owns a gun store, is Mormon, is conservative, or all or some combination of the above.

You could see that entitlement at work even in Larry’s 2011 Worldcon report which is slightly too full of not winning the Campbell award, when he was in a field with Lauren Beukes, Saladin Ahmed and Lev Grossman, among others, not the weakest of competitions. It’s almost as if he felt he’s owned the Campbell, which of course he does. It’s not enough to just be nominated and get on the shortlist, something most new writers never manage in their two year eligibility window, he of course deserved to win.

And you do wonder if it’s his background, conservative, gun shop owner, Mormon, with ties to the Bush-era US military that’s the problem here. Not in the way Larry thinks, with all the evil leftists sneering at these things, but that all these make him susceptible to his entitlement complex. What Larry can never get his head around was that most people, like me, had never heard of him until he started making an ass out of himself last year with the Sad Puppies. I had no clue about his politics, his background or his writing, just got to know him as an obnoxious loudmouth, a crybaby that wanted to ruin the Hugos because he felt underappreciated.

But it didn’t surprise me to learn that he was a wingnut, not even if he’d reined in the evil SJW rhetoric. This sort of entitlement, by people who already are successfull by any objective standard — how many people get to be a professional writer in their chosen genre after all and a bestselling at that — but who want everybody to acknowledge that they are the greatest, especially those they see as their enemies, is pretty much a rightwing disease. And Mormonism, with its history of persecution and theological sense of entitlement, is a religion that’s pretty good at creating this type of asshole (it’s perfectly possible to be a conservative Mormon without being an asshole, of course and millions of people manage to do so.)

American conservatism is stewed in entitlement and persecution complexes and Correia and Brad Torgersen show all the hallmarks of it. For those of us who have spent the last decade and a half looking at what we used to call warbloggers, their type is depressingly familiar. They always think they’re better than they are, they always think everybody is out to get them, that there are huge conspiracies solely there to stop them from getting their due and they’re always projecting their own actions on their opponents. It was Correia and co who introduced partisan politics in the Hugo nomination process, but they had to invent a SJW conspiracy to make themselves the good guys. Perhaps they need to do this because they just cannot help but see everything in the context of partisan politics and believe everybody else does so too.

The end result though is that Correia is a massive cock wrecking things because he feels people aren’t nice enough to him.

Sad Puppies: what to do?

Published on April 10, 20152 Comments

The more I think about the whole Puppies situation, the more I think my initial reaction during the Emergency Hugo Panel at Dysprosium this weekend is correct: the people driving the Puppy slates do not care for fandom or science fiction, even if they call themselves fans and SF writers, they’re political operators who jumped on science fiction fandom as an easy target for their kulturwars. As Nicholas Whyte succincintly said: this is a political act that needs a political response.

And the first thing to remember is that these people for all their rhetoric aren’t conservatives, but radicals. They have a vision of what they want fandom and science to be and no respect for its values or history. What the Puppies have instead are massive entitlement issues and equally massive egos. They know they’re supposed to be the popular kids, that they have a right to the Hugos, that only a conspiracies of critics and other leftists is stopping their inevitable domination of science fiction.

All of which is pure projection on their part. Because they are the sort of people who lie and manipulate to get their slate on the Hugo ballot, they naturally assume anything they don’t like is the result of similar manipulation. Their own actions therefore are done in self defence against the shadowy conspiracy of Social Justice Warriors. It’s bogstandard rightwing conspiracy thinking that’s motivating the Puppies, the same sort of logic behind the idea that Barack Obama isn’t really the president because he wasn’t born in America, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.

Engaging them therefore is pointless. They don’t care about anybody who isn’t like them, don’t think anybody who doesn’t share their politics is legitamite. What to do instead?

This year, all we can do is contain the damage. There are basically three short term responses to their wrecking of the Hugos: 1) business as normal, ignoring the slate and just voting on merit, as Geri Sullivan proposed at the Hugo Emergency Panel discussion and also preferred by John Scalzi, 2) No Award everybody on the slate, innocent or otherwise and vote normally otherwise, which is what I did last year with the previous slate and 3), the most radical, No Awarding everything because the intrusion of the Puppies is so massive it’s an unfair advantage for even non-puppies to get normal consideration. This is an option Erik V. Olson explained on Metafilter:

I feel that this year’s awards are fundamentally compromised, and that maybe a better solution is this.

Vote No Award on *everything*.

Why? Because if we honestly No Award every award, then, well, no awards are given in 2015. We now have a mechanism in place to fix them — the Retro Hugos. Normally, we have to wait some large number of years (50, IIRC) to do that, but the other critera is that we only do Retro Hugo’s when there were no Hugo’s awarded.

So, if we No-Award this year, and change the constitution a bit, we could run the 2015 Retro Hugos in 2017.

It’s not a perfect answer — but it could be a better answer than most. It’ll be an award for 2015. It’ll let everyone have a fair shot again. It won’t affect the next years award like an all-kill and extend eligibility would.

There’s no good answer, but maybe that’s the least bad. But I’m personally not willing to vote for the few non S/RP nominees, because they’re not running against the works they should be running against. They’re basically getting a free ride if I do that. It’s not fair to them or to the works that were shoved off by the slate.

Which I’m honestly starting to lean towards, considering how many categories have been tainted. It’s the strongest possible rejecting of slate voting and the puppies, it could provide a fresh new start, but it would depend on enough people joining in, otherwise it’s pointless.

But at the very least all puppy candidates should be No Awarded, should be taught the lesson that if you’re on the slate, you may get nominated, but never win and now your name is mud. This should be done across the board, even for things like the various movies put on the slate, even if these were only put in as a cover. The same goes for the socalled “innocent” or “pressganged” puppy nominees, be they high profile authors who could’ve arguably had a shot at a Hugo on their own like Jim Butcher, or naive fools like Kary English. They cannot win in any category, they must be rejected entirely. Fandom must show it rejects slate voting and it rejects the attempt to make the Hugos into a partisan political mud fight.

And for those who are on the Puppy slate against their will, they should do the honourable thing: withdraw themselves from consideration.

“a covert kind of feminist SF”

Published on March 11, 20151 Comment

In ada, “a journal of gender, new media & technology”, Lucy Baker looks at how Lois McMaster Bujold treats the birthing process in her Vorkosigan series and how it echoes real world feminist concerns:

Lois McMaster Bujold’s science fiction (SF) relies on the symbiotic relationship between the technological and the social. This is often illustrated by the tension between the scientific and medicalized process of reproduction (via uterine replicators, cloning, and genetic modification) and the primal, ‘natural’ process. Varied levels of technological advancement and associated societal changes across the myriad planets within her SF universe allow Bujold to structure this tension as an emotional and social process as much as a medical or obstetrical one, while maintaining a respect for the choices, risks, and vulnerabilities involved in becoming pregnant.

[…]

Bujold’s SF work highlights and integrates women’s experiences into the narrative. It is this examination and ultimately hopeful yet practical approach that makes Bujold’s work feminist – it is “Invention…stories and role models and possibilities, that prepare us to leap barriers and scale heights no one has reached before, that prepare us to change the world.” (Gomoll 6).

I only found this because it showed up in my referers one day, linking to my post arguing that Bujold writes hard science fiction. It’s further proof that despite her and the Vorkosigan series massive popularity, she’s still underestimated as a serious and important science fiction author. Partially it must be because the series is published by Baen Books, often somewhat unfairly dismissed as a publisher of cookie cutter mil-sf and other pulp and at first glance it’s easy to confuse the Vorkosigan books as something like the Honor Harrington series: lightweight entertainment.

That her gender also plays a part I’ll take as a given, though I note that hasn’t stopped her from winning an impressive number of Hugo and Nebula awards.

But what may also play a role is perhaps that Bujold is actually not obvious enough with her writing; as Baker argues, she writes “a covert kind of feminist SF”, nowhere near as overtly political as a Joanna Russ or even a Nicola Griffith. That the setting is the familiar sort of semi-feudal, aristocratic stellar empire helps hide this too, as the revolution the uterine replicator brings to Barrayar on the surface looks just like modernisation, not anything really revolutionary. In the same way the uterine replicator itself doesn’t look like hard science fiction because Bujold focuses too little attention to the technological side of things, but rather more on the social impact of it as filtrered through the point of view of her aristocratic protagonists.

(You could even make an argument that the overall story of the Vorkosigan series is showing the start of a bourgeois revolution, as progressive members of the old aristocracy make common cause with the up and coming rich merchants to remake the feudal system in their favour…)

And of course perhaps the most important reason why Bujold is underestimated is that she’s so very readable; you rarely have to struggle with reading her novels and we still tend to think difficulty equals genius.

Hugo Noms: Fan writer & fanzine

Published on March 10, 2015Leave a comment

Just in time before the deadline closes, let’s talk a bit about potential candidates for the Hugo’s best fan writer award:

First for consideration is Deidre Saoirse Moen, for her work in uncovering and investigating the child abuse of Walter Breen & Marion Zimmer Bradley in fandom, a story that waited fifty years to become fully public. She’s not the only one who had been pushing this story last year, but she was the impetus behind getting what “everybody knew” out in public and making it undeniable. It’s not a happy fun story and I do have the feeling some segments of fandom are less than happy with her for doing this, but it’s an important bit of fan history that was previously swept under the carpet and it illuminated the deep dysfunctionality of some corners of fandom. Something that’s sorely needed especially today, as fandom attempts to belately welcome those who want to be fans but by reason of gender, race, sexual or gender orientation found themselves less than comfortable in it.

Similarly, James Nicoll has also been adept at peeling back the foreskin of ignorance and applying the wirebrush of enlightenment to fandom, being an amplifier both of inconvenient truths and an (unpaid) publicist for worthwhile ventures that otherwise might have escaped my knowledge. His critical attitude towards much of what happens in SF fandom makes his opinion on what is worth looking into that much more important. His recent reviewing site is also a good example of how he has helped shine a light on the more neglected corners of fantasy and science fiction.

The same can be said of Ian Sales, for his SF Mistressworks project, showcasing overlooked works by female writers that should be in the Gollancz Masterworks series. (Full discloser: I review for it). But I also like his own personal writing outside of it, on his blog and on Twitter, like James, that of a critically engaged fan.

Natalie Luhrs may call her blog Pretty Terrible, but it’s far from it. Her fan writing these days consists mainly of link posting and writing on Twitter, but don’t underestimate the power of a good link roundup. She has also been actively pursuing some of the nastier stories in fandom last year, one of the people who with e.g. Moen helped keep the MZB saga out in the open, as well as the Wiscon/Frenkel debacle and far too many other scandals. She has helped keeping fandom honest.

Abigail Nussbaum is one of those people whose opinions I always want to argue with, not because they’re wrong but because they’re consistently smart and well reasoned and I still disagree with them and they make me think more about why I like something she doesn’t or vice versa.

The same goes for Ethan Robinson, who is often wrong, but interestingly wrong.

Fanzine wise, Europa SF is a great project that deserves more attention, attempting to provide an English language portal for the European (continental) science fiction scene(s). In a world so dominated by American and British concerns, any counter to it is welcome.

The other fanzine I like to nominate people will probably not know, is Chaos Horizon, attempting to “make sense out of awards chaos” and predict the Hugo/Nebula winners. Whether they succeed is not the interesting part, but just getting some scientific rigour to this whole awards business is sorely needed.