Articles with the Tag Sad Puppies

No Award All the Things

Fandom, science fiction
Published on 4 Comments on No Award All the Things

Hugo Awards voting is open. Last year I was late with reading and voting because I’d only decided a couple of months before the con to actually get involved. This year it’s slightly easier as I prepared better, but mostly because the Puppies made it pointless to do anything but vote No Award in the following categories, either completely Puppy swept or with a majority of Puppy candidates:

  • Best Novella
  • Best Novelette
  • Best Short Story
  • Best Related Work
  • Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form
  • Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form
  • Best Editor, Short Form
  • Best Editor, Long Form
  • Best Professional Artist
  • Best Fanzine
  • Best Fancast
  • Best Fan Writer
  • John W. Campbell Award (not a Hugo)

No Award All the Things!

Sorry Thomas Olde Heuvelt, you may actually get your Hugo this year, but since you’re the only candidate there on merit I felt uneasy voting for you by default. Better luck next year.

Puppies think all children should get prizes

Fandom, science fiction
Published on Leave a comment on Puppies think all children should get prizes

So there was a bit of Puppy mocking doing the rounds on Twitter over the weekend, started by Catherynne Valente (as far as I know) after finding herself dragged deeper in the Puppy mire after being described as the “queen bee” of Social Justice Warriors by Turgidsen; because we’re all still in high school apparantly. What she and others took aim at was perhaps the most sensitive spot of the Puppy movement: their belief that just by showing up they deserved Hugo Awards. Hence the talking about Hugos not won, or nominations not gotten, as Wesley Chu below.

Because for a bunch of tough, rootin-tootin cynical internet hard men (and women) wise in the ways of the world, these people sure are behaving like the middle school teachers of many a rightwing anecdote and expecting every child to get a prize. It’s visible as far back as Larry Correia’s original report on the 2011 Worldcon. Both Larry and Brad are incredibly quick to start wallowing in victimhood when they don’t get what they think they’re entitled to, although they’re — as they never tire of pointing out — succesful, bestselling writers and don’t need the Hugos or Campbell Awards.

Now consider. Campbell eligibility last two years after your first publication, which means that with a slot of five nominees each year you have ten shots at being nominated, in a field that sees many dozens of new writers each year, especially in the last decade. For any Hugo category too there are only five spots, again in a field that sees countless metric tons of short fiction each year and upwards of 1,000 new novels published. The odds that you as a writer are good enough, visible enough to be nominated are small and not being nominated is not a slur against you: plenty of better writers weren’t. Being nominated puts you already in an elite position compared to almost all your peers that year: why gripe that you didn’t win?

It’s just being a sore loser and having to invent conspiracy theories as to why you didn’t win because you cannot imagine not winning, only makes that impression worse. Not all children can get prizes.

Hugo voting strategies

Fandom, science fiction
Published on 1 Comment on Hugo voting strategies

In the light of what the Puppies did to the Hugos, and with the ballot now seemingly finalised, it’s time to look at how to vote, if you’re going to vote. If you’re upset and frustrated with what those Puppy assholes did to the Hugos, what are your possible strategies? As I see it, there are five possible responses

  1. Business as usual. Vote for the candidates you like, whether or not they’re on the ballot thanks to the Puppy slates.
    Noble, but a political act needs a political response. Whatever else happens, giving the Puppies a win is legitamising their slate building. Nor can you be confident that their nominations are uniformly so terribly you’ll No Award them naturally (though it is the way to bet). Remember: it doesn’t matter what your intentions are, the Puppies will take a win as their victory over all the evil unpeople ruining the Hugos until now.
  2. Bugger this for a game of soldiers. Don’t vote, go do something else. If the Puppies want the Hugos, they can have them.
    Tempting, especially if you were already half convinced the Hugos were no longer worth the renown they’re hold in. It’s no secret the Hugos have had problems staying relevant in an ever bigger science fiction landscape and it’s always an option if you don’t have the spoons to worry about this and think other awards do it better anyway. For me this is no option, but if we keep having a Puppy infestation and the WSFS is helpless to deal with it, this will become a possibility.
  3. No Award the feckers. Vote for the non-Puppy candidates, then vote No Award. Deidre Saoirse Moen has a nifty guide on how to do this.
    If you reject option one or two, this is the minimum you should do to combat the slate voting. Some people however think this isn’t going far enough.
  4. No Award all the things. Since the slate voting has polluted the Hugos to such a large extent, any winner, Puppy or not, has won unfairly. Therefore No Award everything and put it to rights in the retro Hugos (if possible).
    This is one option I first heard at Eastercon, just after the nominations were known, before the withdrawals and disqualifications. The problem with this is that this isn’t what the Retro Hugos –intended to award those worthy sf works published before the Hugos existed — are meant for and there’s no guarantee this will be possible. Therefore:
  5. A variant on the last one: No Award those categories with majority (3 or more) Puppy candidates, treat every other category as normal.
    The option I’ll be choosing. If I don’t vote for any Puppies, then some categories become a farce, like best novelette, which Thomas Olde Heuvelt then would win by default. Much as I’d root for his first Hugo win, it wouldn’t be a fair win, as his peers are not available to compare his story against.

So what would that last option mean for my Hugo ballot? That I would No Award the following categories, with either no, one or two non-Puppy candidates:

  • Best Novella
  • Best Novelette
  • Best Short Story
  • Best Related Work
  • Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form
  • Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form
  • Best Editor, Short Form
  • Best Editor, Long Form
  • Best Professional Artist
  • Best Fanzine
  • Best Fancast
  • Best Fan Writer
  • John W. Campbell Award (not a Hugo)

That’s thirteen categories which the Puppies ruined; imagine if all those were No Awarded, that sends a pretty clear message of rejection, grim as it is. It would still leave four categories worth voting in:

  • Best Novel
  • Best Graphic Story
  • Best Semiprozine
  • Best Fan Artist

One thing is certain: it makes my Hugo reading a lot easier…

Butcher fails where Bellet and Kloos succeeded

Fandom, fantasy, science fiction
Published on 4 Comments on Butcher fails where Bellet and Kloos succeeded

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:

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.

Annie Bellet and Marko Kloos do the right thing

Fandom, Fantastika
Published on 1 Comment on Annie Bellet and Marko Kloos do the right thing

Annie Bellet has withdrawn her Puppy slated story from the Hugo ballot:

I am withdrawing because this has become about something very different than great science fiction. I find my story, and by extension myself, stuck in a game of political dodge ball, where I’m both a conscripted player and also a ball. (Wrap your head around that analogy, if you can, ha!) All joy that might have come from this nomination has been co-opted, ruined, or sapped away. This is not about celebrating good writing anymore, and I don’t want to be a part of what it has become.

So has Marko Kloos:

I also wish to disassociate myself from the originator of the “Rabid Puppies” campaign. To put it bluntly: if this nomination gives even the appearance that Vox Day or anyone else had a hand in giving it to me because of my perceived political leanings, I don’t want it. I want to be nominated for awards because of the work, not because of the “right” or “wrong” politics.

It can’t have been easy for either writer to give up an honour that few authors will get to experience even once. It’s a credit to their character that both choose the right thing to do, voluntarily withdrawing rather than profiting from an unearned nomination. Hopefully, this also means that some of the writers excluded unjustifiably from the Hugo ballot thanks to the Puppies now can be added back in.

What I found interesting in Bellet’s withdrawal is that she felt “stuck in a game of political dodge ball” thanks to her nomination. It’s clear that for those writers on the Puppy slates but not part of the hardcore loonies, there is a lot of social oprobium they have to deal with, as for some strange reason people have not greeted the slates with unadulterated joy. For the Wrights, Days and Correiras this is not a problem, they’ve burned their bridges a long time ago, but for those drafted into the slates (or gods help them, who were naive enough to volunteer), it seems there is a cost, there’s social pressure to reject the slate. If we’re lucky, now that the first two writers have done the decent thing, have gotten respect from the sane part of SF fandom for it, more will follow.