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The last page has reminded me Architect of Aeons is out in a couple of weeks. Given how insane the scope was in the Judge of Ages and the Hermetic Millenia, and how much Wright packed into the periods, the fact this is going to look at things on an even bigger scale has me in a state of anticipation.
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Apr 5, 2015 11:15
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House Louse posted:
Yeah. The reason the troll entries succeed in the nominations is because they vote as a block, which means they overwhelm the normal nominations, which are widely dispersed. However in the final vote everyone has the same shortlist and a preferential ballot, so most people not actually thinking that much of the Sad Puppy nominations sinks them. The twist this year is they've managed to dominate several categories completely, which basically renders the year a dud in those categories, and the Best Novel list itself is so thin on the ground that it's hard to take seriously. The only question is how many No Awards will be issued in protest.
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Apr 5, 2015 12:17
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Drifter posted:It was posted a little bit ago up the page. Oh thanks, I missed that. thehomemaster posted:Wow, just reading about all this Sad Puppies and Hugo nomination stuff I can't get over the astonishing lack of self-awareness. 'One point of view shouldn't dominate sci-fi, so we're going to make sure that's exactly what happens!'
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Apr 5, 2015 12:32
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So what's the crossover between Sad Puppies and Gamergaters? I'm guessing 'significant'.
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Apr 5, 2015 12:33
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Darth Walrus posted:So what's the crossover between Sad Puppies and Gamergaters? I'm guessing 'significant'. http://voxday.blogspot.com/2014/10/gamergate-open-letter.html http://www.castaliahouse.com/on-gamergate/ quote:We are very pleased to see that the gaming community, players and professionals, men and women, young and middle-aged, Left and Right, has banded together to reject this latest entryist offensive by the cultural Marxists. One of our authors, the brilliant American military theorist William S. Lind, has observed that “the greatest threat to freedom in America is the left’s ideology of cultural Marxism.” What #GamerGate is doing, whether its members realize it or not, is fighting for freedom.
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Apr 5, 2015 12:57
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People should be aware that the guy behind Vox Day is on a whole different level of crazy relative to gamergate anti-feminist nerds. He's against suffrage for women and believes that the Taliban were on the right track in Afghanistan with respect to women. He needs mental health treatment and support. I feel bad for the anti-feminist SF fans that have hitched their wagons to him.
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Apr 5, 2015 13:23
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Actually it's about Marxism in video gaming journalism.
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Apr 5, 2015 13:40
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Ultimately organised politics and voting is always going to have an advantage over disorganised politics and voting, and an organised counter-slate would just make things even of a farce, so it's not clear to me how the Hugos can recover from this. They weren't a great award before, but this is a new level. As for Vox Day, his views have been known for a long time. By this point everyone in his baffling support group knows who they're lauding as the foremost mind of SF. If anyone was hoping to use the Hugos as a reading list, the Nebula is still sane and contains thread favourite The Three-Body Problem. If you want to know what this 'feminist SF' stuff that people are so mad about is, the Tiptree recently announced the 2014 winners and honour list. Likely little to none of it would have actually seen the Hugos but a firm grip on reality has never been necessary to get mad about
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Apr 5, 2015 13:42
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shrike82 posted:People should be aware that the guy behind Vox Day is on a whole different level of crazy relative to gamergate anti-feminist nerds. The Dark Enlightenment's involved in Gamergate. Beale is pretty much on par.
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Apr 5, 2015 13:43
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fritz posted:http://voxday.blogspot.com/2014/10/gamergate-open-letter.html I don't follow or fully understand gamer gate but the comments on that article are amazing. One guy is angry that Amazon recommended him Scalzi as he was shopping for Gibson and another guy starts talking about the ACA and how Obama lied about keeping your insurance
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Apr 5, 2015 13:44
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Peel posted:Ultimately organised politics and voting is always going to have an advantage over disorganised politics and voting, and an organised counter-slate would just make things even of a farce, so it's not clear to me how the Hugos can recover from this. They weren't a great award before, but this is a new level.
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Apr 5, 2015 14:42
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So, what do I have to do to sign up and vote No Award for all this bullshit? Maybe I was just dumber then but it seems to me that when I was a kid fifteen years ago, the Hugos were actually reasonable reading reccommendations. I don't like the idea of right-wing reactionaries taking over the medium. Why are all the public libertarians always the worst kind. They're not even real libertarians, contradictory as they are and selective as to when liberty should and and shouldn't be respected and to whom liberty should even be granted.
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Apr 5, 2015 15:32
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I'd say the Hugo is about done. They'll do exactly the same next year and the next till doomsday comes, because they're dicks who get off on this stuff. You can't counter-slate because as pointed out that would just be more of a clusterfuck. The organisers throwing out slate entries just opens a whole new can of problems. I don't see how the Hugo gets unfucked now there are people deeply invested with loving it. Guess the Nebula is going to become the unchallenged most prestigous award. This can't be hosed up the same way right? It's chosen by SF professionals, and they generally seem to care about the integrity of the result.
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Apr 5, 2015 15:35
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The Nebula is all about voting for your friends, but in theory it should be harder to corrupt, since you have to be a SFWA member (which requires a certain number of stories/novels published in prestigious markets) to vote. It would go the same way as the Hugo if the industry had enough people of a given political orientation organize a slate.
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Apr 5, 2015 15:54
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You might hope the obvious peril the rise of block voting puts the whole institution in would lead to an appeal to reason, but if the current crop of reactionary outbursts are any guide they're not interested in reason, just rationalisation. They're willing to burn the Hugos down rather than have books they don't prefer be in fashion at them.bonds0097 posted:So, what do I have to do to sign up and vote No Award for all this bullshit? http://sasquan.org/ is the convention website. If you don't want to attend (it's expensive) a cheaper supporting membership lets you vote for the Hugos this year and nominate next year. Still costs, but you also get the voter packet which will hopefully have Ancillary Sword and Goblin Emperor this year, not to mention whichever of the Puppy books aren't completely terrible, just part of a dumb campaign.
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Apr 5, 2015 16:10
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House Louse posted:Nope; nominating requires a supporting or attending membership of either the worldcon where the Hugos will be awarded, or the one before or after. Voting requires membership of the worldcon where they'll be awarded. Supporting memberships go for about $40, which is incredibly cheap considering the voters' packet, and mean you could vote for $13 a year, if you're cheap. Ah, thanks for the correction. It's been a few years since I've had the money to seriously look at getting involved at the process. Deptfordx posted:I'd say the Hugo is about done. They'll do exactly the same next year and the next till doomsday comes, because they're dicks who get off on this stuff. You can't counter-slate because as pointed out that would just be more of a clusterfuck. The organisers throwing out slate entries just opens a whole new can of problems. I don't see how the Hugo gets unfucked now there are people deeply invested with loving it. Yeah, it doesn't seem like there's much that can be done to preserve the "integrity" of the Hugo barring a major change to the nomination rules. The only thing I can really think of is dropping the number of nominations a person can make while keeping the number of finalists at five. That way you can keep an organized voting block from completely dominating the ballot. There's not really a lot that can be done to keep the spirit of the Hugos alive when a large group of people are dead set on politicizing it. Not that the juried selections of the Nebulas are a much better indicator of quality. Kij Johnson's award winning stories from 2010 and 2011 are poo poo, and then there's "That Leviathan, Whom Thou Hast Made" that won best novella in 2011... Anyway this year's Best Novella ballot looks pretty boring. I don't really read too many magazines and don't keep up with the online outlets, so I'm sure I'm missing some decent stuff at least. What were some good novellas and short stories that should have been on the shortlist this year that I need to check out?
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Apr 5, 2015 16:55
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corn in the bible posted:my copy of the new translation of the dead mountaineer's inn arrived and it is a good book This sounds right up my alley for when I finish the First Law books, is this the right translation? http://www.amazon.com/The-Dead-Mountaineers-Inn-Detective-ebook/dp/B00N6PBGRM
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Apr 5, 2015 19:10
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General Battuta posted:The Nebula is all about voting for your friends, but in theory it should be harder to corrupt, since you have to be a SFWA member (which requires a certain number of stories/novels published in prestigious markets) to vote. Charles Stross thinks Vox Day created his own publishing house specifically to stack the SFWA membership.
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Apr 5, 2015 19:19
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Besides the racist stuff, this whole thing is making the genre look like the pathetic mess that it is. How are these people adults? They're all broken.
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Apr 5, 2015 19:21
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There are plenty of happy, functional, decent people in genre. But the Hugos are an award for people who care a lot about going to cons and people who are really angry.
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Apr 5, 2015 19:23
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General Battuta posted:There are plenty of happy, functional, decent people in genre. But the Hugos are an award for people who care a lot about going to cons and people who are really angry. You're right. All this is disappointing, is all. This is what happens when you ''network'' with authors on social media and you have to read all the stupid poo poo they say on a daily basis.
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Apr 5, 2015 19:28
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I like Butcher's stuff, and while I don't think Skin Game was his best, Scent of a Woman wasn't Pachino's best either. But I'm really torn on voting for it after it dragooned onto their slate. I don't want to give them a win
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Apr 5, 2015 19:40
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pseudorandom name posted:Charles Stross thinks Vox Day created his own publishing house specifically to stack the SFWA membership. I'm not sure that's such a problem. I imagine professional writers of all stripes would take an extremely dim view of him churning out a load of brand new members as 'Published Authors' via short stories in cobbled togethor epub anthologies.Vox day was kicked out of SWFA for being a colossal dick. If his pets tried similar games there's a good chance they'd be shown the door as well. Deliberate loving around with Awards ceremonies that those in the industry in question select, tends to get an extremely bad reaction from those members. Edit: If worst comes to the worst, we'll have to go full Stonecutter and create a new Science Fiction award. The 'No Vox Days'. Deptfordx fucked around with this message at 19:48 on Apr 5, 2015 |
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Apr 5, 2015 19:44
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Orson Scott Card's magazine as well as Abyss & Apex are on the Sad Puppies slate. A&A expressed some support for the whole thing, now deleted from their website.
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Apr 5, 2015 19:44
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Deptfordx posted:I'm not sure that's such a problem. I imagine professional writers of all stripes would take an extremely dim view of him churning out a load of brand new members as 'Published Authors' via short stories in cobbled togethor epub anthologies.Vox day was kicked out of SWFA for being a colossal dick. If his pets tried similar games there's a good chance they'd be shown the door as well. Deliberate loving around with Awards ceremonies that those in the industry in question select, tends to get an extremely bad reaction from those members. They'd need cause to expel them though, and 'voted for something we didn't like' is a tough sell, for obvious reasons.
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Apr 5, 2015 20:11
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Expelled for 'engaging in an open conspiracy to fake writers credentials so they could steal an election' isn't.
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Apr 5, 2015 20:38
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Only if that violates SFWA bylaws.
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Apr 5, 2015 20:43
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Well the bylaws say you can be dumped if 'the member has engaged in conduct materially and seriously prejudicial to the purposes and interests of SFWA'. Attempting a conspiracy to wreck the SFWA's 50 year old award for petty points scoring because you have hurt fee-fees qualifies to me, your mileage may vary. I repeat my point it all comes down to how existing members would react to such a attempt, and I still think the answer would be they'd be extremely pissed. Deptfordx fucked around with this message at 21:36 on Apr 5, 2015 |
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Apr 5, 2015 21:29
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I think the only people SFWA's kicked out are Vox Day and Stanislaw Lem. (Plenty of people leave on their own tho: http://file770.com/?p=21536)
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Apr 5, 2015 21:46
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Have any of you book mavens read "Theft of Swords" by Michael J. Sullivan?
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Apr 5, 2015 22:05
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If it's anything like his other stuff it's decently written but utterly generic fantasy.
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Apr 5, 2015 22:11
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A3th3r posted:Have any of you book mavens read "Theft of Swords" by Michael J. Sullivan? A decent attempt to ape Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, but ultimately not entertaining enough to keep reading.
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Apr 5, 2015 22:20
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anilEhilated posted:If it's anything like his other stuff it's decently written but utterly generic fantasy. I've not read any of his other stuff but this is accurate. However It's entertaining enough that I intend to read the sequel eventually.
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Apr 5, 2015 22:38
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anilEhilated posted:If it's anything like his other stuff it's decently written but utterly generic fantasy. I'd also agree with this. It's entertaining if you've got the itch for fantasy and there's some nice bits in the rest of the books too, but I wouldn't go in expecting something new.
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Apr 6, 2015 00:18
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fritz posted:I think the only people SFWA's kicked out are Vox Day and Stanislaw Lem. I was not aware of this and quote:Lem has always been critical of most science fiction, which he considers ill thought out, poorly written, and interested more in adventure that ideas or new literary forms. Lol.
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Apr 6, 2015 02:44
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Has there been any breakout low fantasy in the past few years with the sort of intricate world and society building exercises as seen in The Prince of Nothing series? I'm getting fed up waiting for the next entry there, and generic S&S high fantasy just bores me to tears these days. I'll even take historical fantasy, I went looking for some sort of pseudo-Byzantine stuff but apparently there's only been one series done in that setting ever. 
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Apr 6, 2015 02:51
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Rime posted:
Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe reads like a mix of sci-fi and fantasy, and he specifically said he modeled it off of the Byzantine empire. It's kind of hard reading though
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Apr 6, 2015 03:03
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I don't think the BotNS is a good recommendation. Some aspects may have similarities to the Byzantine Empire but they're pushed into the background.
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Apr 6, 2015 03:13
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Yeah I'm hoping there's something new on the scene in the past four years or so, because I've read pretty much everything worth reading published prior to that. BoTN is dope, series gets meh later on though. I wish there was more hard / low fantasy that merges post-science fiction into it Bakker / Wolfe style, such an underrated fusion. Rime fucked around with this message at 03:28 on Apr 6, 2015 |
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Apr 6, 2015 03:26
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So I was recently thinking about how the reveal in Ender's Game blew my mind a couple years ago when I read it. What are some other good books with huge twists/reveals/etc.
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Apr 6, 2015 03:32
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