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The Hugo Awards 2016 and beyond
tapeslinger
Space Unicorn Slush RangerSocial Justice Rebel ScumRegistered User regular
Space Unicorn Slush RangerSocial Justice Rebel ScumRegistered User regular
So, the Hugo awards season is upon us. What are the Hugos and why do you care about them?
(Probably because George RR Martin does, a lot: http://grrm.livejournal.com/tag/hugo awards)
The Hugo awards are a speculative fiction award given at the annual Worldcon:
http://www.thehugoawards.org/
These awards are decided by an involved balloting process which is conceived to be by the fans, for the fans. A fact not necessarily widely known is that the awards process is open to anyone willing to shell out for a Supporting membership to the current Worldcon (in 2016, this is MidAmericon II in KC: http://midamericon2.org/ ) and fill out the ballot. Ballots go out twice-- in January, for nominees; in April, the nominees are narrowed down to the 5 or so* candidates which received the most votes in each category, and these are ranked in order by balloters and winners are determined by an exacting mathematical process. (No Award is considered an eligible contender in every category.)
A related award which is pertinent to the discussion is the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, often casually called the "Not A Hugo." Because it isn't.
http://www.thehugoawards.org/campbell-history/
This award is for authors new to pro publishing; authors are eligible for this award for their first 2 years of professional experience. Voting for this award occurs alongside the Hugos and the award, presented by Dell Magazines, is also awarded at Worldcon each year.
In recent years, the nomination ballots process for these awards has been indisputably gamed** by a very loosely organized bloc vote which is purported to represent what these individuals feel is an under-represented minority: (mostly) white, (mostly) male authors writing "ripping good yarns free of politics" etc etc. These individuals are bent on 'taking back' something they genuinely believe has been taken from or denied to them: a shiny, incredibly phallic trophy time-honored as an emblem of, I dunno, manly man dude writing. The most notable of these blocs is referred to, by its own voting bloc, as Sad Puppies.
2013-2014: some stuff happened before and during Sad Puppies 2: Sad Harder which is really hard to ignore in context.
A gentleman named Theodore Beale, who calls himself the voice of G*d ("Vox Day") and writes about elves finding Jesus with inaccurate Latin grammar, ran for the presidency of SFWA. Astute observers discovered that his blog is A Thing***. After several smaller incidents, in 2013, SFWA members call for him to be removed from the org after writing that another human being is a "half-savage" because apparently when you think the voice of G*d is a normal thing to call yourself you start thinking other equally unquantifiable, unprovable things. In fairness, his expulsion from SFWA wasn't, in fact, for believing his own rhetoric, but for using SFWA resources to broadcast it widely to the public under the SFWA banner, which is pretty gross. (http://www.locusmag.com/News/2013/08/beale-expelled-from-sfwa/)
Sad Puppies 2 (2014) happened right on the heels of the SFWA kerfuffle and, depending on your interpretation of sources was either confusing and sad, or wildly successful. Around one nominee from each category on the Sad Puppy slate landed on the finalist ballot; all but one of these finished last in their categories, and one even landed below No Award.
http://www.thehugoawards.org/hugo-history/2014-hugo-awards/
2015! Lots of things happened.
http://www.thehugoawards.org/hugo-history/2015-hugo-awards/
Sad Puppies 3 was joined by a new slate, the self-dubbed Rabid Puppies. These are considered by their originators to be separate efforts which are in the same spirit of taking "back" the Hugo. There's a lot of overlap between the two groups, and the names are similar, which necessarily causes confusion. The easiest way to disambiguate: Sad Puppies 3 is claimed by Brad Torgersen, Larry Correia, and a handful of others; Rabid Puppies is the effort of Mr. Beale.
The results of this combined effort have been surprising to all sides. A statistically significant segment of the ballot was dominated by SP and RP picks, with some categories unrepresented by the wider public at all. One nominee, Mr. John C. Wright, constituted 3/5 of the Best Novella category, for example. Only the Best Fan Artist category carried no Puppy picks.
There's been a lot of heated talk on both sides, and it's hard not to get a little mad. A number of nominated authors withdrew their works in order to disassociate themselves from the bloc-balloting groups, regardless of their own politics.
Whether it's morally right or against the spirit of the awards, the awards process has been gamed by a bloc-voting effort which is completely fair according to the given rules of the host organization based on the existing circumstances. There are lots of calls for change, but the road forward is going to be a long one. E Pluribus Hugo looks like the likely candidate to get 'er done at the business meeting, but it won't be ratified until MidAmericon II, meaning either another year of fuckery and No Awards and heartache, and Alfies, or...
2016:
Sad Puppies 4 exists; Rabid Puppies 2 exists. Will they have an effect on the ballot at the end of April? It's tough to say; there is considerably less buzz, and considerably more social media fatigue. At the moment it's anyone's shortlist.
ANNND we're off to the races! Another banner year of Rabid picks domineering the ballots; will they finally get their way and ruin SFF forever?! Or will this just accelerate the likelihood of ratifying E Pluribus Hugo at the business meeting at MidAmericon II? My guess is more No Awards, more infighting, and the perceived moral victory regardless of outcome for Mr. Beale. Mostly because he's crafted a Wile E. Coyote Acme trap for us all! (No, not really, but you can't tell him that.)
*******
This is a thread curated with moderator permission specifically for discussion of the Hugos, with special attention to the issues surrounding the 2015 awards. Which are now the issues surrounding the 2016 awards.
It is not a thread about:
the politics of any specific authors in a general or unrelated way;
GRRM being distracted from finishing Winds of Winter instead of dealing with this shit;
rabies, which is a bad disease to get, especially if you are a puppy
Information on membership to Sasquan: https://sasquan.swoc.us/sasquan/reg.php
@Shadowhope has a tremendous list of related links here: http://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/32351997/#Comment_32351997, which I am hoping they'll repost here as well, it's very thorough. I am trying not to editorialize too hard in the OP but I am sure some of my biases inevitably creep through. Sorry.
*sometimes 4, sometimes 6, sometimes 7; depends on ties and min/max percentages
**even the individuals in question freely admit that this has happened, so this is a fact, not a speculation; their reasoning behind it varies widely between the axes of "ripping good yarns free of politics" and "BURN IT ALL DOWN"
***this is not a thread about how [adverb adjective] Mr. Beale's blog is.
tapeslinger on
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This is just the part where he is arguing against the puppies claim, he has more to say about the flaws of the Hugos and other awards in general:
- John Stuart Mill
When the two slates went head to head for nominations, the rabid puppies invariably won.
- John Stuart Mill
i wouldn't call them fine literature, but they are quite entertaining. Good enough that I've read 7 or 8 of the series.
- John Stuart Mill
That seems like it's be the worst feeling in the world to get nominated for a top award in your field only to find out it was by people who made assumptions about your politics.
They are...
Well, I was incredibly surprised to read Flint's statement (and interested enough to read the full thing at this blog) that he's been a socialist for 20 years. I imagined the guy as a dyed-in-the-Wool conservative sci-fi author, considering the first of the 1632 books is like...West Virginia coal mining town / high school / A&M college get sent back in time and provide 'Murican values to their local allies, who then kick the shit out of everyone, and then the nerd marries a hot local, and female biathlonist kills a hundred guys in the school stairwell.
It's fun, but it's a little problematic, if that's something you're concerned about.
I guess my reaction about Flint is the same reaction that a lot of folks had, including myself, when I read Old Man's War and it turned out later that Scalzi has the political affiliation he does.
Then again, Scalzi's a shrewd guy, and he's admitted to writing what he knows will sell (not a bad thing, he's an author). Piggybacking off of Starship Troopers for your first printed published work isn't a bad way to go, apparently. Not a lot of Scalzi's political beliefs come through in OMW, and I'm sure a lot of folks - myself included - just subbed in Heinlein's narration when, looking back, it really wasn't there.
It is available as a free ebook from Baen. Awesome! So at least something good has come of this so far.
I would say that Mr. Flint makes a very good point, in that awards can never recognize everyone deserving of one and that is true for all fields of entertainment.
Hitchcock never got an Academy Award as best director, neither did Kubrick.
On the other hand, there are countless books and movies that won awards at one time and are now almost completely forgotten.
I would also point out, that with the continuing success of YA literature over the last decade a lot more female fans and authors have found into the SF/F readership. And with the huge global success of some of these books of course also a lot of "minorities".
To not see this and to instead make this about a secret conspiracy of SJWs to change the world is what really makes me wonder about the puppies sanity.
They constantly use terms taken from 1984 when talking about their "enemies", like doublethink and their new favorite word wrongfan.
This way of believing to be the keepers of some secret or hidden truth fighting against a world full of enemies is an underlying mindset that they and by extension the gamergaters share with both neonazis and islamist fundamentalists.
about this post from Eric Flint:
http://www.ericflint.net/index.php/2015/04/16/some-comments-on-the-hugos-and-other-sf-awards/
on the history that surrounds the Hugos and some of the issues currently surrounding things like categories and so on.
I like her suggestions, if only because there is sort of a dearth of a specific type of workshop in the present environment.
Uncanny Magazine!
The Mad Writers Union
http://www.jimchines.com/2015/04/10-hugo-thoughts/
These puppy guys sound like real assholes.
Shitty Tumblr:lighthouse1138.tumblr.com
It's dead Jim.
Google has a cached copy up here.
I have also read Larry Correia take on why he supported the Sad Puppies(never the Rabid Puppies, heavens forfend) at his blog and I have never seen anybody come off as more self-pitying, self-justifying and whiny little shit in my life. People didn't like you because you where a conservative gun-store owner? Because you where a Mormon? That the Hugo's had been taken over by the "Cool kids" leaving poor Correia to drown his sorrows at the bar with Baen Barflies? Gimme a break.
As for Vox Day, any guy that thinks its acceptable to call a woman of color a "half Savage" and who gives himself the internet moniker translating to "the voice of God" is not worth listening to in the first place.
Shitty Tumblr:lighthouse1138.tumblr.com
Ideally, all the SP nominees finish last and the Sad Puppies go home and cry themselves to sleep before vowing to become better people. But that's unlikely. At least the last part.
Choose Your Own Chat 1 Choose Your Own Chat 2 Choose Your Own Chat 3
Uncanny Magazine!
The Mad Writers Union
http://www.blackgate.com/2015/04/04/a-detailed-explanation/
(linked from that Jim C Hines piece)
There's a lot of interesting stuff here. In particular it exhaustively details a number of suspicions I had about the motivations of the people putting together the puppies nominations (namely that a lot of it is motivated by a conflation of quality and commercial success; a perception that the Hugos exist for the purpose, essentially, of advertising; and that it involves a particular parochial US-centric view of what science fiction is).
Really what I find most annoying about this is that now when I see "Hugo award winner" it'll prompt me to wonder if it's a real Hugo or a puppies Hugo, whether they end up getting any of their nominations awarded.
Shitty Tumblr:lighthouse1138.tumblr.com
"nominee" is specious even pre-puppies, so
Uncanny Magazine!
The Mad Writers Union
I just don't see anyway they could do it without changing what the Hugos are on a basic level. For better or worse its one of the few awards ordinary people can vote on. And if it's easy for people to vote it's going to be easy to have people try to manipulate the vote. It's hardly new back in the day the Scientologists for Hubbard nominated for a bunch of things by buying up votes in bulk.
pleasepaypreacher.net
Shitty Tumblr:lighthouse1138.tumblr.com
pleasepaypreacher.net
The first alien invasion story is a metaphor for how fucked up British imperialism and racial theory is. Science fiction has always reflected social issues.
Shitty Tumblr:lighthouse1138.tumblr.com
Right and none of the military sci-fi of the 60s-80s(the golden age of sci-fi to the puppies folks) had ANYTHING to do with the Cold War in the least
Steam - Talon Valdez :Blizz - Talonious#1860 : Xbox Live & LoL - Talonious Monk @TaloniousMonk Hail Satan
And somehow, we're still dealing with today.
Fun fact: Apparently this episode was based on the Comic Code Authority.
Do you know why EC Comics eventually shut down? Was it because of all the violence? The covers featuring a guy putting a syringe to some lady's eye?
Nope. It was because of this:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/saladinahmed/how-the-comics-code-killed-the-golden-age-of-comics
True. Hopefully they just ride it out.
Choose Your Own Chat 1 Choose Your Own Chat 2 Choose Your Own Chat 3
This joke was basically for @Preacher
Steam - Talon Valdez :Blizz - Talonious#1860 : Xbox Live & LoL - Talonious Monk @TaloniousMonk Hail Satan
And I appreciate it. THE SANCHIZE!!!
I do like how sad puppies wants to avoid being confused with Vox Day because even they recognize he's poison to their cause.
pleasepaypreacher.net
It feels more like an effort to destroy the Hugos than to "take them back":
And destroying something because they don't like how it goes is totes in line with this groups usual mindsets. A group of taking my ball and going home fuck whits.
pleasepaypreacher.net
And Torgersen and Correia distance themselves by saying "we are not Vox Day, but freedom of speech arrglllbarrgll" which is not a very convincing way to go about it.
Because that's the only way I can see a good ending coming from this.
Poor Connie is too stupid to see what is really happening! SP3 just wants to heal the Hugos and make it all better!
pleasepaypreacher.net
Yes, no award can place
I believe it's Kevin Standlee or someone similar who holds the trademark on "Noah Ward," the synonymous author pseudonym
Uncanny Magazine!
The Mad Writers Union