As a fan of Writing Excuses currently binge-listening the archive, it's a relief to know they ended up being a group of classy people.
You know what? Nanowrimo's cancelled on account of the world is stupid.
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MayabirdPecking at the keyboardRegistered Userregular
Mary Robinette Kowal was indeed able to fix up the programming so Worldcon went without a hitch and now the Hugo Awards for 2018 have been announced.
NK Jemisin became the first writer ever to win three straight Hugos for Best Novel (for each book in the Broken Earth trilogy, which you should read if you have not). She gave a great acceptance speech too:
Among the other awards was Best Short Story for “Welcome to your Authentic Indian Experience™” by Rebecca Roanhorse. You can read that here or listen to LeVar Burton reading it.
(I think it's safe to say the Puppies have been defeated. I read they've gone off to try to ruin Renaissance Fairs now.)
+17
FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
I'm a huge fan of Murderbot and Martha Wells generally, so I was also stoked to see her win for Best Novella! Though that whole list was strong -- Black Tides of of Heaven is
Not really. The Dramatic Presentations can kinda fall there, but usually those are just used for TV and movies. Graphic Story could be online instead of a published graphic novel - XKCD won that once.
Mary Robinette Kowal was indeed able to fix up the programming so Worldcon went without a hitch and now the Hugo Awards for 2018 have been announced.
NK Jemisin became the first writer ever to win three straight Hugos for Best Novel (for each book in the Broken Earth trilogy, which you should read if you have not). She gave a great acceptance speech too:
Among the other awards was Best Short Story for “Welcome to your Authentic Indian Experience™” by Rebecca Roanhorse. You can read that here or listen to LeVar Burton reading it.
(I think it's safe to say the Puppies have been defeated. I read they've gone off to try to ruin Renaissance Fairs now.)
I'm wholly confident that if I looked I would find a Vox Day article about how this was actually an 11th dimensional chess victory over the stupid SJWs.
There were a few of them proclaiming the death of science fiction now that white men aren't allowed to be fans or something similarly low-wattage, but I think at this point they're mostly restricting themselves to the traditional Twitter echochambers.
I kind of enjoy how his crowd tantrummed itself into complete irrelevance while simultaneously probably managing to make the Hugos considerably more interesting, albeit in a way that lines up with VD's darkest nightmares.
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FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
Not really. The Dramatic Presentations can kinda fall there, but usually those are just used for TV and movies. Graphic Story could be online instead of a published graphic novel - XKCD won that once.
Not really. The Dramatic Presentations can kinda fall there, but usually those are just used for TV and movies. Graphic Story could be online instead of a published graphic novel - XKCD won that once.
Huh. I thought 17776 was nominated for something.
Wishful thinking, I guess.
iirc there wasn't a concerted nomination campaign so the votes feel across several categories and it didn't make the ballot on any
life's a game that you're bound to lose / like using a hammer to pound in screws
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
Yeah, the attempt was there but most of the categories had some pretty terrifying competition anyway, so I'm not sure what kind of mileage it would have gotten.
+1
MayabirdPecking at the keyboardRegistered Userregular
Not really. The Dramatic Presentations can kinda fall there, but usually those are just used for TV and movies. Graphic Story could be online instead of a published graphic novel - XKCD won that once.
It won a different award, from the American Society of Magazine Editors for Digital Innovation. It was something, just not a Hugo nomination.
Mayabird on
+12
MayabirdPecking at the keyboardRegistered Userregular
Sort of an update: the right-wing rabidity that tried to take over science fiction didn't go away after it was defeated in its attempts to take over the Hugos: It just moved to the romance section. The spark here is that Romance Writers of America tried to "discipline" one of its members who pointed out the racism in a best-selling author's books while never once ever disciplining members for, you know, actually doing racism, something which has been going on for a LONG time. There have been board member resignations and the current president of the organization is terrible and...I'm just going to say a lot of stuff. It's a very similar battle just being waged in a different genre.
Also Chuck Tingle got brought in too, because of course he did.
dang @romancewriters threatening buckaroos like @courtneymilan for standing up to devil ways. devils said that buds say 'inappropriate things to cause financial harm' APPARENTLY FORGOT scoundrel president inappropriately lied and said chuck was not chuck and more than one person
Chuck Tingle is a science fiction/romance writer and national treasure.
If people were interested this could go in its own thread, but I thought it appropriate to bring back up here as a reminder that the same problems continue.
Was wondering if this was gonna show up here. I had almost posted about it a few days ago and it has just gotten worse since then. The best recap I've seen is the below twitter thread. Highlights include convening a super secret special ethics committee without telling the normal ethics committee such a thing could exist or that a complaint had been sent there. Always a solid plan when step 1 is "Cut the ethics folks out of the loop."
I disagree that this is the same shit that went down with the Hugos. There the shitbags were insurgents. The were on the outside because when something that was sorta similar happened in the SFWA, the SFWA kicked the racist fuck out immediately. Cue drama with semi-public voting for their awards.
Here the racists have run the organization since apparently forever. Romance has always struggled with issues regarding minorities of pretty much every stripe. This incident seems to be showing that it was institional at RWA with a lot of the non-elected staff short circuiting ethics complaints before the ethics committee even saw them. The SFWA dealt with the whole Hugo issue, albeit over a couple years, because they followed their by laws and proper order. They had the organizational tools and health to deal with the infection. The RWA is increasingly looking like it's going to be destroyed by this, and probably should be.
I disagree that this is the same shit that went down with the Hugos. There the shitbags were insurgents. The were on the outside because when something that was sorta similar happened in the SFWA, the SFWA kicked the racist fuck out immediately. Cue drama with semi-public voting for their awards.
Sounds like the same starting point to me, only the organization chose differently (as Jemisin pointed out, the big difference is that SFWA removed its loud bigot while the RWA invented rules and organizations to protect theirs) and thus hasn't (yet) kicked off the ensuing tantrum by the problematic authors. If the SFWA had closed ranks around Beale the two messes would be looking pretty close to identical right now.
Tying the two organizations together, Mary Robinette Kowal's okay (thread):
I disagree that this is the same shit that went down with the Hugos. There the shitbags were insurgents. The were on the outside because when something that was sorta similar happened in the SFWA, the SFWA kicked the racist fuck out immediately. Cue drama with semi-public voting for their awards.
Sounds like the same starting point to me, only the organization chose differently (as Jemisin pointed out, the big difference is that SFWA removed its loud bigot while the RWA invented rules and organizations to protect theirs) and thus hasn't (yet) kicked off the ensuing tantrum by the problematic authors. If the SFWA had closed ranks around Beale the two messes would be looking pretty close to identical right now.
I think that the different choices made in confrontation is what I meant when I talked about organizational health. SWFA's leadership seemed to be generally aligned with the bulk of their membership on issues of inclusion where RWA is not. Possibly they have staff who weren't the elected leadership who are out of alignment and they're facing a "Deep State" style of thing but that's tough to say. It seems like pretty much everybody has been resigning out of leadership roles over there.
Despite MRK's best pitching efforts, SFWA is a fraction of the size of RWA and offers a fraction of the services; the size difference is probably best summed up as a friend of mine, who is in both, put it to me: SFWA's Nebulas conference, their one big annual event, is roughly the same in size as a regional meeting of RWA. Romance publishing dwarfs sff and horror by orders of magnitude in volume.
What's going on with RWA is a racism shitshow, mind you, which is analogous to a little bit of what was going on with the Hugos but it's not really the same groups of people at all. Chuck Tingle was only invoked into the fray because the acting president of RWA, Damon Suede, claimed to know Chuck Tingle's identity.
And to be fair, the only reason sff knows anything about Chuck Tingle is that someone attempted to troll the Hugos by nominating him. The fact that he has come to represent the "love is real" factions of sff is nice, but he was in romancelandia way before he was an sff icon.
Mary Robinette Kowal was indeed able to fix up the programming so Worldcon went without a hitch and now the Hugo Awards for 2018 have been announced.
NK Jemisin became the first writer ever to win three straight Hugos for Best Novel (for each book in the Broken Earth trilogy, which you should read if you have not). She gave a great acceptance speech too:
Among the other awards was Best Short Story for “Welcome to your Authentic Indian Experience™” by Rebecca Roanhorse. You can read that here or listen to LeVar Burton reading it.
(I think it's safe to say the Puppies have been defeated. I read they've gone off to try to ruin Renaissance Fairs now.)
Tangentially related.
I really didn't end up liking reading the broken earth books. Read the first one and stopped the second one mid-read
Spoilers for all I mentioned
It's just... disaster after disaster after disaster, and a teeeeeeeeeeny little bit of scifi.
The books just made me feel bad all the time when reading it, and it made them predictable, too, since you could pretty much guess what would happen- whatever hurt the characters the most emotionally.
I understand what the books are trying to do, and I commend it. They show real, horrible racism, and other facets of the human condition as a metaphor, and thus the horribleness is kind of the point.
But I just ended up having absolutely no drive to continue reading them, because they're about as emotionally draining as watching grave of the fireflies / waltz with bashir / hotel rwanda for hours and hours.
I might get back top the books to see where they go one day.
Mary Robinette Kowal was indeed able to fix up the programming so Worldcon went without a hitch and now the Hugo Awards for 2018 have been announced.
NK Jemisin became the first writer ever to win three straight Hugos for Best Novel (for each book in the Broken Earth trilogy, which you should read if you have not). She gave a great acceptance speech too:
Among the other awards was Best Short Story for “Welcome to your Authentic Indian Experience™” by Rebecca Roanhorse. You can read that here or listen to LeVar Burton reading it.
(I think it's safe to say the Puppies have been defeated. I read they've gone off to try to ruin Renaissance Fairs now.)
Tangentially related.
I really didn't end up liking reading the broken earth books. Read the first one and stopped the second one mid-read
Spoilers for all I mentioned
It's just... disaster after disaster after disaster, and a teeeeeeeeeeny little bit of scifi.
The books just made me feel bad all the time when reading it, and it made them predictable, too, since you could pretty much guess what would happen- whatever hurt the characters the most emotionally.
I understand what the books are trying to do, and I commend it. They show real, horrible racism, and other facets of the human condition as a metaphor, and thus the horribleness is kind of the point.
But I just ended up having absolutely no drive to continue reading them, because they're about as emotionally draining as watching grave of the fireflies / waltz with bashir / hotel rwanda for hours and hours.
I might get back top the books to see where they go one day.
Each of the Broken Earth books won the Hugo? It wasn't a horrible series, but it's not like the second and third books reached new heights in storytelling.
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
Mary Robinette Kowal was indeed able to fix up the programming so Worldcon went without a hitch and now the Hugo Awards for 2018 have been announced.
NK Jemisin became the first writer ever to win three straight Hugos for Best Novel (for each book in the Broken Earth trilogy, which you should read if you have not). She gave a great acceptance speech too:
Among the other awards was Best Short Story for “Welcome to your Authentic Indian Experience™” by Rebecca Roanhorse. You can read that here or listen to LeVar Burton reading it.
(I think it's safe to say the Puppies have been defeated. I read they've gone off to try to ruin Renaissance Fairs now.)
Tangentially related.
I really didn't end up liking reading the broken earth books. Read the first one and stopped the second one mid-read
Spoilers for all I mentioned
It's just... disaster after disaster after disaster, and a teeeeeeeeeeny little bit of scifi.
The books just made me feel bad all the time when reading it, and it made them predictable, too, since you could pretty much guess what would happen- whatever hurt the characters the most emotionally.
I understand what the books are trying to do, and I commend it. They show real, horrible racism, and other facets of the human condition as a metaphor, and thus the horribleness is kind of the point.
But I just ended up having absolutely no drive to continue reading them, because they're about as emotionally draining as watching grave of the fireflies / waltz with bashir / hotel rwanda for hours and hours.
I might get back top the books to see where they go one day.
Each of the Broken Earth books won the Hugo? It wasn't a horrible series, but it's not like the second and third books reached new heights in storytelling.
I'm especially salty about the 2nd book. It was a super strong year with every novel candidate being solid. I feel like half of them were better in the end than Obelisk Gate, in which, the first book kinda kept going to fill space until the resolution in book 3. It doesn't have a strong individual character to me.
Mary Robinette Kowal was indeed able to fix up the programming so Worldcon went without a hitch and now the Hugo Awards for 2018 have been announced.
NK Jemisin became the first writer ever to win three straight Hugos for Best Novel (for each book in the Broken Earth trilogy, which you should read if you have not). She gave a great acceptance speech too:
Among the other awards was Best Short Story for “Welcome to your Authentic Indian Experience™” by Rebecca Roanhorse. You can read that here or listen to LeVar Burton reading it.
(I think it's safe to say the Puppies have been defeated. I read they've gone off to try to ruin Renaissance Fairs now.)
Tangentially related.
I really didn't end up liking reading the broken earth books. Read the first one and stopped the second one mid-read
Spoilers for all I mentioned
It's just... disaster after disaster after disaster, and a teeeeeeeeeeny little bit of scifi.
The books just made me feel bad all the time when reading it, and it made them predictable, too, since you could pretty much guess what would happen- whatever hurt the characters the most emotionally.
I understand what the books are trying to do, and I commend it. They show real, horrible racism, and other facets of the human condition as a metaphor, and thus the horribleness is kind of the point.
But I just ended up having absolutely no drive to continue reading them, because they're about as emotionally draining as watching grave of the fireflies / waltz with bashir / hotel rwanda for hours and hours.
I might get back top the books to see where they go one day.
Each of the Broken Earth books won the Hugo? It wasn't a horrible series, but it's not like the second and third books reached new heights in storytelling.
I'm especially salty about the 2nd book. It was a super strong year with every novel candidate being solid. I feel like half of them were better in the end than Obelisk Gate, in which, the first book kinda kept going to fill space until the resolution in book 3. It doesn't have a strong individual character to me.
If I recall, 2018 had Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee and All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders on the final ballot. I haven’t read Obelisk Gate, but I thought that NG/ATBITS were both excellent, and I can’t help but wonder if transphobia impacted voting results.
Civics is not a consumer product that you can ignore because you don’t like the options presented.
Mary Robinette Kowal was indeed able to fix up the programming so Worldcon went without a hitch and now the Hugo Awards for 2018 have been announced.
NK Jemisin became the first writer ever to win three straight Hugos for Best Novel (for each book in the Broken Earth trilogy, which you should read if you have not). She gave a great acceptance speech too:
Among the other awards was Best Short Story for “Welcome to your Authentic Indian Experience™” by Rebecca Roanhorse. You can read that here or listen to LeVar Burton reading it.
(I think it's safe to say the Puppies have been defeated. I read they've gone off to try to ruin Renaissance Fairs now.)
Tangentially related.
I really didn't end up liking reading the broken earth books. Read the first one and stopped the second one mid-read
Spoilers for all I mentioned
It's just... disaster after disaster after disaster, and a teeeeeeeeeeny little bit of scifi.
The books just made me feel bad all the time when reading it, and it made them predictable, too, since you could pretty much guess what would happen- whatever hurt the characters the most emotionally.
I understand what the books are trying to do, and I commend it. They show real, horrible racism, and other facets of the human condition as a metaphor, and thus the horribleness is kind of the point.
But I just ended up having absolutely no drive to continue reading them, because they're about as emotionally draining as watching grave of the fireflies / waltz with bashir / hotel rwanda for hours and hours.
I might get back top the books to see where they go one day.
Each of the Broken Earth books won the Hugo? It wasn't a horrible series, but it's not like the second and third books reached new heights in storytelling.
I'm especially salty about the 2nd book. It was a super strong year with every novel candidate being solid. I feel like half of them were better in the end than Obelisk Gate, in which, the first book kinda kept going to fill space until the resolution in book 3. It doesn't have a strong individual character to me.
If I recall, 2018 had Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee and All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders on the final ballot. I haven’t read Obelisk Gate, but I thought that NG/ATBITS were both excellent, and I can’t help but wonder if transphobia impacted voting results.
Also Closed and Common Orbit and Too Like the Lightning. It was a rock solid year.
Christ, I can only imagine the shittery they'll get up to in RenFairs.
The only upside is that there's a non-trivial chance that they'll run into an actual crusader.
I feel like RenFaires are 50% dispassionate tourists, 40% BDSM fet-community in their downtime, and 10% standard nerd community so... I'm really not sure what would happen.
Mary Robinette Kowal was indeed able to fix up the programming so Worldcon went without a hitch and now the Hugo Awards for 2018 have been announced.
NK Jemisin became the first writer ever to win three straight Hugos for Best Novel (for each book in the Broken Earth trilogy, which you should read if you have not). She gave a great acceptance speech too:
Among the other awards was Best Short Story for “Welcome to your Authentic Indian Experience™” by Rebecca Roanhorse. You can read that here or listen to LeVar Burton reading it.
(I think it's safe to say the Puppies have been defeated. I read they've gone off to try to ruin Renaissance Fairs now.)
Tangentially related.
I really didn't end up liking reading the broken earth books. Read the first one and stopped the second one mid-read
Spoilers for all I mentioned
It's just... disaster after disaster after disaster, and a teeeeeeeeeeny little bit of scifi.
The books just made me feel bad all the time when reading it, and it made them predictable, too, since you could pretty much guess what would happen- whatever hurt the characters the most emotionally.
I understand what the books are trying to do, and I commend it. They show real, horrible racism, and other facets of the human condition as a metaphor, and thus the horribleness is kind of the point.
But I just ended up having absolutely no drive to continue reading them, because they're about as emotionally draining as watching grave of the fireflies / waltz with bashir / hotel rwanda for hours and hours.
I might get back top the books to see where they go one day.
Each of the Broken Earth books won the Hugo? It wasn't a horrible series, but it's not like the second and third books reached new heights in storytelling.
I'm especially salty about the 2nd book. It was a super strong year with every novel candidate being solid. I feel like half of them were better in the end than Obelisk Gate, in which, the first book kinda kept going to fill space until the resolution in book 3. It doesn't have a strong individual character to me.
If I recall, 2018 had Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee and All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders on the final ballot. I haven’t read Obelisk Gate, but I thought that NG/ATBITS were both excellent, and I can’t help but wonder if transphobia impacted voting results.
Not saying that transphobia did not affect the choice. But I would like to point out that obelisk gate is written by a black woman, and features gay/bi characters having a healthy dose of sex - like, it would take a very specific type of bigot to have issues with trans, but not with the other stuff.
I've read both broken earth trilogy as well as machineries of empire (the ninefox gambit). Love both trilogies, but for me broken earth is the better work of fiction.
Mary Robinette Kowal was indeed able to fix up the programming so Worldcon went without a hitch and now the Hugo Awards for 2018 have been announced.
NK Jemisin became the first writer ever to win three straight Hugos for Best Novel (for each book in the Broken Earth trilogy, which you should read if you have not). She gave a great acceptance speech too:
Among the other awards was Best Short Story for “Welcome to your Authentic Indian Experience™” by Rebecca Roanhorse. You can read that here or listen to LeVar Burton reading it.
(I think it's safe to say the Puppies have been defeated. I read they've gone off to try to ruin Renaissance Fairs now.)
Tangentially related.
I really didn't end up liking reading the broken earth books. Read the first one and stopped the second one mid-read
Spoilers for all I mentioned
It's just... disaster after disaster after disaster, and a teeeeeeeeeeny little bit of scifi.
The books just made me feel bad all the time when reading it, and it made them predictable, too, since you could pretty much guess what would happen- whatever hurt the characters the most emotionally.
I understand what the books are trying to do, and I commend it. They show real, horrible racism, and other facets of the human condition as a metaphor, and thus the horribleness is kind of the point.
But I just ended up having absolutely no drive to continue reading them, because they're about as emotionally draining as watching grave of the fireflies / waltz with bashir / hotel rwanda for hours and hours.
I might get back top the books to see where they go one day.
Each of the Broken Earth books won the Hugo? It wasn't a horrible series, but it's not like the second and third books reached new heights in storytelling.
I'm especially salty about the 2nd book. It was a super strong year with every novel candidate being solid. I feel like half of them were better in the end than Obelisk Gate, in which, the first book kinda kept going to fill space until the resolution in book 3. It doesn't have a strong individual character to me.
If I recall, 2018 had Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee and All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders on the final ballot. I haven’t read Obelisk Gate, but I thought that NG/ATBITS were both excellent, and I can’t help but wonder if transphobia impacted voting results.
Not saying that transphobia did not affect the choice. But I would like to point out that obelisk gate is written by a black woman, and features gay/bi characters having a healthy dose of sex - like, it would take a very specific type of bigot to have issues with trans, but not with the other stuff.
I've read both broken earth trilogy as well as machineries of empire (the ninefox gambit). Love both trilogies, but for me broken earth is the better work of fiction.
Huh, I wonder which way the bigot would break there. Ninefox and Birds in the Sky don't really touch much on gender stuff, at least not in the first books. Though the authors being trans, (which I just now learned about Lee), could be a thing I guess. I dug up the vote totals and how it broke down in the various rounds and don't see much evidence of such bias to a casual look.
Interesting that All the Birds in the Sky was actually winning up until that last round.
Pretty sure that book also has a prominent trans character in it. She's definitely in the series and important, I just don't remember when she appears and is explained to be trans.
Pretty sure that book also has a prominent trans character in it. She's definitely in the series and important, I just don't remember when she appears and is explained to be trans.
Pretty sure it was a first book thing onwards.
Of course it only comes up once or twice. It was just like mentioning that the character had blonde hair or something. Really only more than once because the book series features new communities that the main group gets introduced to a couple times.
The problem with attempting to re-litigate old years of hugo voting is that part of why NKJ was getting top billing was expressly a middle finger to the bigots and somewhat not about the specific perfection of the books, and the ballot placement in each runoff round matters, so it's very likely that people placed it higher to avoid the runoff.
After the gongshowulositude of the last several weeks I'm sort of legitimately impressed that they're admitting in the first sentence of the statement that they know they aren't considered competent to handle something like that right now.
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Gabriel_Pitt(effective against Russian warships)Registered Userregular
Was wondering if this was gonna show up here. I had almost posted about it a few days ago and it has just gotten worse since then. The best recap I've seen is the below twitter thread. Highlights include convening a super secret special ethics committee without telling the normal ethics committee such a thing could exist or that a complaint had been sent there. Always a solid plan when step 1 is "Cut the ethics folks out of the loop."
I disagree that this is the same shit that went down with the Hugos. There the shitbags were insurgents. The were on the outside because when something that was sorta similar happened in the SFWA, the SFWA kicked the racist fuck out immediately. Cue drama with semi-public voting for their awards.
Here the racists have run the organization since apparently forever. Romance has always struggled with issues regarding minorities of pretty much every stripe. This incident seems to be showing that it was institional at RWA with a lot of the non-elected staff short circuiting ethics complaints before the ethics committee even saw them. The SFWA dealt with the whole Hugo issue, albeit over a couple years, because they followed their by laws and proper order. They had the organizational tools and health to deal with the infection. The RWA is increasingly looking like it's going to be destroyed by this, and probably should be.
Just kind of the cherry on top, Damon Suede, the president of RWA who threatened that 'if he went down, the RWA was going with him,' has resigned, following revelations that he faked books, and lied about publishing dates of another, in order to meet the publishing credentials required for the position.
I am surprised by that. It doesn't seem to be an active fuck up which seems to be the only thing the RWA was capable of lately. Did they, per chance, publish all the private emails on their way out or something?
I'm not quite sure what you mean? even some of the regular rank and file have been asking Damon Suede and Carol Ritter to step aside pretty much since this thing began (or shortly thereafter, at any rate)
and it's literally taken three weeks to arrive at "come on, folks, he's not even qualified to be here, much less take the helm" when there were several other opportunities for him to step aside and call a halt to this terminal downhill trajectory
crashing and burning the RWA national conference and the awards show before stepping down is absolutely "an active fuck up" tbh
I'm not quite sure what you mean? even some of the regular rank and file have been asking Damon Suede and Carol Ritter to step aside pretty much since this thing began (or shortly thereafter, at any rate)
and it's literally taken three weeks to arrive at "come on, folks, he's not even qualified to be here, much less take the helm" when there were several other opportunities for him to step aside and call a halt to this terminal downhill trajectory
crashing and burning the RWA national conference and the awards show before stepping down is absolutely "an active fuck up" tbh
Last I had heard he was resisting all calls to resign and telling folks privately that if he were to be removed as President it would destroy the RWA. There was a petition going around calling for his recall and a new election. He should have stepped down weeks ago among such a huge member revolt. Stepping down now seems to be the right move, albeit really damn late.
Of course the big issues seem to stem from non-elected staff but I guess it really depends on how takes Suede's place.
I am surprised by that. It doesn't seem to be an active fuck up which seems to be the only thing the RWA was capable of lately. Did they, per chance, publish all the private emails on their way out or something?
If had to make a guess it has something to do with his interference with the ethics committee and the selection of the group that made the "recommendation" to the board and the meeting the board had to ratify the same. Both were held in non-compliant means and have yet to be made readable to the members of the RWA. Then there's the PR group that's been hired. The first thing they would likely recommend would be for him to fall on his sword, so to speak. Especially after having to cancel their biggest yearly moneymaker.
All opinions are my own and in no way reflect that of my employer.
yeah, it's really easy to speculate on the sidelines for this one but I have several friends who are in the trenches on this one and it is really a way bigger mess than it looks from the outside. It's not at all clear that the org will survive this; a lot of folks are definitely indicating that they're not interested and are working on forming new orgs but the infrastructure of the old RWA will be hard to replicate.
that being said, though, seeing as the racism and classism and anti-lgbtq+ agendas kind of go the whole way up, I'm not sure there's really a viable way to salvage the existing org and it's quite likely that the structure of the existing org was concealing multiple layers of interior rot.
Stepping down now seems to be the right move, albeit really damn late.
And only because he's at the 'leave, or be kicked out' stage anyways, since he doesn't even fulfill the eligibility requirements for the position in the first place.
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NK Jemisin became the first writer ever to win three straight Hugos for Best Novel (for each book in the Broken Earth trilogy, which you should read if you have not). She gave a great acceptance speech too:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lFybhRxoVM
Among the other awards was Best Short Story for “Welcome to your Authentic Indian Experience™” by Rebecca Roanhorse. You can read that here or listen to LeVar Burton reading it.
(I think it's safe to say the Puppies have been defeated. I read they've gone off to try to ruin Renaissance Fairs now.)
Not really. The Dramatic Presentations can kinda fall there, but usually those are just used for TV and movies. Graphic Story could be online instead of a published graphic novel - XKCD won that once.
I'm wholly confident that if I looked I would find a Vox Day article about how this was actually an 11th dimensional chess victory over the stupid SJWs.
But I won't bother looking.
I kind of enjoy how his crowd tantrummed itself into complete irrelevance while simultaneously probably managing to make the Hugos considerably more interesting, albeit in a way that lines up with VD's darkest nightmares.
Huh. I thought 17776 was nominated for something.
Wishful thinking, I guess.
iirc there wasn't a concerted nomination campaign so the votes feel across several categories and it didn't make the ballot on any
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
It won a different award, from the American Society of Magazine Editors for Digital Innovation. It was something, just not a Hugo nomination.
Also Chuck Tingle got brought in too, because of course he did.
Chuck Tingle is a science fiction/romance writer and national treasure.
If people were interested this could go in its own thread, but I thought it appropriate to bring back up here as a reminder that the same problems continue.
I disagree that this is the same shit that went down with the Hugos. There the shitbags were insurgents. The were on the outside because when something that was sorta similar happened in the SFWA, the SFWA kicked the racist fuck out immediately. Cue drama with semi-public voting for their awards.
Here the racists have run the organization since apparently forever. Romance has always struggled with issues regarding minorities of pretty much every stripe. This incident seems to be showing that it was institional at RWA with a lot of the non-elected staff short circuiting ethics complaints before the ethics committee even saw them. The SFWA dealt with the whole Hugo issue, albeit over a couple years, because they followed their by laws and proper order. They had the organizational tools and health to deal with the infection. The RWA is increasingly looking like it's going to be destroyed by this, and probably should be.
Sounds like the same starting point to me, only the organization chose differently (as Jemisin pointed out, the big difference is that SFWA removed its loud bigot while the RWA invented rules and organizations to protect theirs) and thus hasn't (yet) kicked off the ensuing tantrum by the problematic authors. If the SFWA had closed ranks around Beale the two messes would be looking pretty close to identical right now.
Tying the two organizations together, Mary Robinette Kowal's okay (thread):
I think that the different choices made in confrontation is what I meant when I talked about organizational health. SWFA's leadership seemed to be generally aligned with the bulk of their membership on issues of inclusion where RWA is not. Possibly they have staff who weren't the elected leadership who are out of alignment and they're facing a "Deep State" style of thing but that's tough to say. It seems like pretty much everybody has been resigning out of leadership roles over there.
Despite MRK's best pitching efforts, SFWA is a fraction of the size of RWA and offers a fraction of the services; the size difference is probably best summed up as a friend of mine, who is in both, put it to me: SFWA's Nebulas conference, their one big annual event, is roughly the same in size as a regional meeting of RWA. Romance publishing dwarfs sff and horror by orders of magnitude in volume.
What's going on with RWA is a racism shitshow, mind you, which is analogous to a little bit of what was going on with the Hugos but it's not really the same groups of people at all. Chuck Tingle was only invoked into the fray because the acting president of RWA, Damon Suede, claimed to know Chuck Tingle's identity.
And to be fair, the only reason sff knows anything about Chuck Tingle is that someone attempted to troll the Hugos by nominating him. The fact that he has come to represent the "love is real" factions of sff is nice, but he was in romancelandia way before he was an sff icon.
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https://www.amazon.com/dp/B083FKZ4ZK/ref=cm_sw_r_other_apa_i_H1aeEbTWVY898
Everyone should take a look at his latest work.
The one thing Chuck doesn't do is subtle.
Tangentially related.
I really didn't end up liking reading the broken earth books. Read the first one and stopped the second one mid-read
Spoilers for all I mentioned
The books just made me feel bad all the time when reading it, and it made them predictable, too, since you could pretty much guess what would happen- whatever hurt the characters the most emotionally.
I understand what the books are trying to do, and I commend it. They show real, horrible racism, and other facets of the human condition as a metaphor, and thus the horribleness is kind of the point.
But I just ended up having absolutely no drive to continue reading them, because they're about as emotionally draining as watching grave of the fireflies / waltz with bashir / hotel rwanda for hours and hours.
I might get back top the books to see where they go one day.
The only upside is that there's a non-trivial chance that they'll run into an actual crusader.
Each of the Broken Earth books won the Hugo? It wasn't a horrible series, but it's not like the second and third books reached new heights in storytelling.
I'm especially salty about the 2nd book. It was a super strong year with every novel candidate being solid. I feel like half of them were better in the end than Obelisk Gate, in which, the first book kinda kept going to fill space until the resolution in book 3. It doesn't have a strong individual character to me.
If I recall, 2018 had Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee and All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders on the final ballot. I haven’t read Obelisk Gate, but I thought that NG/ATBITS were both excellent, and I can’t help but wonder if transphobia impacted voting results.
Also Closed and Common Orbit and Too Like the Lightning. It was a rock solid year.
I feel like RenFaires are 50% dispassionate tourists, 40% BDSM fet-community in their downtime, and 10% standard nerd community so... I'm really not sure what would happen.
Not saying that transphobia did not affect the choice. But I would like to point out that obelisk gate is written by a black woman, and features gay/bi characters having a healthy dose of sex - like, it would take a very specific type of bigot to have issues with trans, but not with the other stuff.
I've read both broken earth trilogy as well as machineries of empire (the ninefox gambit). Love both trilogies, but for me broken earth is the better work of fiction.
Huh, I wonder which way the bigot would break there. Ninefox and Birds in the Sky don't really touch much on gender stuff, at least not in the first books. Though the authors being trans, (which I just now learned about Lee), could be a thing I guess. I dug up the vote totals and how it broke down in the various rounds and don't see much evidence of such bias to a casual look.
Interesting that All the Birds in the Sky was actually winning up until that last round.
Pretty sure it was a first book thing onwards.
In other news:
it's interesting to see that RWA ended up canceling their awards altogether:
https://www.rwa.org//Online/News/2020/Status_of_the_RITA_Contest.aspx
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Just kind of the cherry on top, Damon Suede, the president of RWA who threatened that 'if he went down, the RWA was going with him,' has resigned, following revelations that he faked books, and lied about publishing dates of another, in order to meet the publishing credentials required for the position.
and it's literally taken three weeks to arrive at "come on, folks, he's not even qualified to be here, much less take the helm" when there were several other opportunities for him to step aside and call a halt to this terminal downhill trajectory
crashing and burning the RWA national conference and the awards show before stepping down is absolutely "an active fuck up" tbh
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Last I had heard he was resisting all calls to resign and telling folks privately that if he were to be removed as President it would destroy the RWA. There was a petition going around calling for his recall and a new election. He should have stepped down weeks ago among such a huge member revolt. Stepping down now seems to be the right move, albeit really damn late.
Of course the big issues seem to stem from non-elected staff but I guess it really depends on how takes Suede's place.
If had to make a guess it has something to do with his interference with the ethics committee and the selection of the group that made the "recommendation" to the board and the meeting the board had to ratify the same. Both were held in non-compliant means and have yet to be made readable to the members of the RWA. Then there's the PR group that's been hired. The first thing they would likely recommend would be for him to fall on his sword, so to speak. Especially after having to cancel their biggest yearly moneymaker.
that being said, though, seeing as the racism and classism and anti-lgbtq+ agendas kind of go the whole way up, I'm not sure there's really a viable way to salvage the existing org and it's quite likely that the structure of the existing org was concealing multiple layers of interior rot.
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And only because he's at the 'leave, or be kicked out' stage anyways, since he doesn't even fulfill the eligibility requirements for the position in the first place.