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Isn't the Hugo voting literally anyone who signed up and paid? It's not some tiny board of judges imposing their SJW agender  on the masses.
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Aug 23, 2015 18:17
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Lprsti99 posted:I have no idea what the hell Puppies are in this context, or what the big deal with the Hugo awards this year is A group of conservative authors were upset that books they like don't do well at the Hugos, plus one of them wanted publicity for his small press. So they organised a mass vote at the nomination stage for two picked lists of candidates. This organisation was called 'Sad Puppies' or 'Rabid Puppies' depending on which of the two heavily overlapping lists it was. Since the Hugo nomination vote is a pseudo-FPTP system, this was much more effective than everyone else floating their nominations around whatever they fancied, especially the general lack of interest the nomination stage attracts. The result was that most categories were all or mostly stuff on the puppy lists. That a small organised group was able to dominate the Hugo nominations, and that their nominations were almost all of garbage quality, created a huge backlash, leading to voters deciding that they would rather the awards go to nobody at all than to people on the puppy lists. Hence a lot of categories being won by 'No Award' this year.
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Aug 23, 2015 18:17
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That's all very 
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Aug 23, 2015 18:20
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chrisoya posted:Isn't the Hugo voting literally anyone who signed up and paid? It's not some tiny board of judges imposing their SJW agender Yes. You pay like 40 bucks and you can vote online. You get the voter's packet along with it which, courtesy of publishers, contains a lot of the nominees in ebook format, so it's all around a good deal if you are at all interested.
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Aug 23, 2015 18:21
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Exmond posted:
Not just A book, but every book nominated.
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Aug 23, 2015 18:21
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chrisoya posted:Isn't the Hugo voting literally anyone who signed up and paid? It's not some tiny board of judges imposing their SJW agender Yes, it's open to anyone who pays a fee to support Worldcon. There were thousands of voters, and many more voters than normal this year because the puppy kerfuffle mobilised a lot of peripheral fans who normally wouldn't bother but cared about the institution being attacked. The FYAD scenario (I'd say /pol/ rather than FYAD) happened last year, when there were a couple of nominees from a voting list by a grumpy author. People just didn't vote for them, and only the white supremacist guy Vox Day was beaten by no award. This year FYAD nominees were the only option in some categories, and in those categories people decided not to award anything.
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Aug 23, 2015 18:22
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Lprsti99 posted:That's all very No Award “Flow”, Arlan Andrews, Sr. (Analog, 11-2014) Big Boys Don’t Cry, Tom Kratman (Castalia House) One Bright Star to Guide Them, John C. Wright (Castalia House) “The Plural of Helen of Troy”, John C. Wright (City Beyond Time: Tales of the Fall of Metachronopolis, Castalia House) “Pale Realms of Shade”, John C. Wright (The Book of Feasts & Seasons, Castalia House) I don't know Arlan Andrews at all. Apparently a lot of the voters felt their work was at least readable. I do know Kratman - crazed neo-nazi, in this case writing a knock-off of the Bolo stories in which the AI tank is a woman, experiences what it is to be raped, and orgasms in virtual training sessions where it's a glorious panzer shooting the Russian hordes. Previous highlights of his include that story where aliens invade and Germany reforms the SS by rejuvenating old nazis to show them how real men fight. Israelis are proud to join the new SS. John C Wright is most recently known for ranting about the evil of korrasami. He's pretty loving bad a lot of the time. Some of his novels were OK, then things went wrong. Castilia House is basically a way for Vox Day to pump out ideologically-pure SF authors eligible to join the SFWA and avenge him, or something, after he got kicked out for using their official Twitter feed to be more racist than usual. He believes white are better because they have more Neanderthal genes or something?
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Aug 23, 2015 18:27
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The gist of their reasoning is that they sincerely believe their books aren't winning not on account of being poo poo, but on account of political manipulation. So they try it too. Honestly, it feels like the whole thing is a huge strawman by a bunch of bad authors. anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 18:40 on Aug 23, 2015 |
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Aug 23, 2015 18:34
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anilEhilated posted:The gist of their reasoning is that they sincerely believe their books aren't winning not on account of being poo poo, but on account of political manipulation. So they try it too. That's pretty much the case. I've read some of their stuff, and it really just wasn't great. A friend handed me the monster hunters international books because she knew I like military sf, and they were pure Mack Bolan level wish fulfillment.
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Aug 23, 2015 18:46
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Really the Hugos are lucky the first big attempt to brigade them was from such a nasty bunch, if it was from a more sympathetic group it would have been more successful. And then it's voting slates from there on out. This fiasco might prompt some real reforms to the system.
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Aug 23, 2015 18:46
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chrisoya posted:Isn't the Hugo voting literally anyone who signed up and paid? It's not some tiny board of judges imposing their SJW agender The final vote is everyone who paid, and that's between the top five candidates of the nomination process. The nomination process kinda is a tiny board of judges because not too many people actually bother to vote at that stage, and those who do tend to vote for stories they found personally meaningful, so it's vulnerable to a small group of people all voting for the same thing. Also the nomination process occurs half a year in advance, so a lot of people aren't aware of it, or haven't signed up for Worldcon yet. In the past, there have been accusations that this work or that work has only gotten on the final top five ballot thanks to the votes of a small group of people (see any discussion about the hugo awards ever, see Mr. King above) but it's not the kind of thing that could ever be proven. Still, even if someone cheated their way onto the final ballot, they'd be on the ballot with four incredibly popular works and rounding up a few dozen people can't beat the hundreds or thousands who actually do bother to vote for the final step of the hugo awards. And again, there's no evidence this has ever happened, although it's easy to think so when you're a little drunk and bitter your awesome story hasn't been nominated for a hugo while some real shitbirds have. But. Three years ago, someone (Brad Torgson? Larry Correria? I don't really care.) has the bright idea--if you can organize a group of people to vote up one story, why not vote up five stories in every category, pushing out everyone good who might compete with you in the final stage but don't have the numbers in the nomination round? He writes up a slate of rad stories he likes instead of awful SJW crap he hates, and gives it an awful name, Sad Puppies. For two years, it doesn't really work. Then this year hateful lunatic Vox Day decides to get in on the action and makes his own list of stories to vote for, the Rabid Puppies. And because people attending Worldcon have shown they're not interested in someone else's list of manly tales, he reaches out to a group of people eager to defeat those accursed Social Justice Warriors... GamerGate. Now there's votes for one of the slates and at the end of the nomination period, eight or nine categories are just five nominees from one of the two puppy slates. Are these nominees uniformly terrible? Taste is subjective, so. Personally, I liked the Lego Movie. But a few people dropped out because they didn't want to be on the ballot with the help of the puppies, and one short story was ruled ineligible due to... rules, I guess, so Short Story and Novel both wound up with 6th place, non-puppy candidates, and a lot of the "lesser" categories (Like best fanzine) didn't have the same fervor put forward in whitewashing to them and had non-puppies on them already. Unfortunately for the assorted puppies, every catagory they managed to get five nominees on got a No Award, nearly every category with both puppies and independents went to an independent, and the only puppy nominated work to get a Hugo was Guardians of the Galaxy, which didn't need their "help". While it's neat to see proof that you can't steal respect, everyone's seen the power of a bloc of voters. Vox has already said he's going again next year, and we'll get to see if he gets another sweep, or if other people start organizing similarly. Fandom may be moving from a by fans, for fans system to a political party system.
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Aug 23, 2015 19:32
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He'll hopefully have more trouble next year because more people will participate in the nominations, but the more arcane categories like the fan categories are doomed, and short story is inevitably going to be split a million different ways outside the puppy slates.
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Aug 23, 2015 19:37
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I retweeted someone applauding the no awards stuff and some angry puppy dude starting quizzing us on Hugo awards in some sort of No True Scotsman bid to prove we weren't real scifi fans. Like who cares how many books you read or how much trivia you know.
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Aug 23, 2015 19:40
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I really hope they manage to pass the E Pluribus Hugo thing. It won't take effect until...well, Finland but it at least seems very likely to mitigate 'slate' tactics from anybody. I am also completely unsurprised that a bunch of middle class white (or mostly white) christian males decided their merit was so self evident and the only way it could have failed to win recognition was conspiracy. Seriously, the puppy stuff I have read was basically terrible to mediocre. They couldn't even pick a good comic to push on the ballot (Fables? Bill Willingham is a fellow traveler of theirs). Marko Kloos deserves respect for choosing to withdraw, but having read part of his book, I wouldn't ever list it as one of the best five books written in a year either. I haven't read Butcher and that might be the sole exception, though he's also popular on his own without their clique.
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Aug 23, 2015 19:55
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Reading about all of this Hugo stuff was like some kind of scifi fantasy short story
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Aug 23, 2015 19:56
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occamsnailfile posted:I haven't read Butcher and that might be the sole exception, though he's also popular on his own without their clique.
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Aug 23, 2015 20:16
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Antti posted:Apparently everyone behaved at the actual event in Spokane, so I'd give this maybe 0.5 dramabombs. I heard some of the Puppy-nominated people (including Baen editor Tori Weisskopf) stormed out when No Award won? Also Vox Day is Theodore Beale, and Natalie Luhrs live-tweeted reading one of his books: http://www.pretty-terrible.com/category/opinion/bad-life-decisions/ ETA: also: Lou Antonelli tried to SWAT the ceremonies http://www.pretty-terrible.com/2015/08/10/pattern-matching-lou-antonelli-and-the-sad-puppies/ fritz fucked around with this message at 20:51 on Aug 23, 2015 |
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Aug 23, 2015 20:40
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quote:With so much at stake, more people than ever forked over membership dues (at least $40) in time to be allowed to vote for the 2015 Hugos. Before voting closed on June 31, 5,950 people cast ballots (a whopping 65 percent more than had ever voted before). It was a Hugo conspiracy. The whole thing was set up to get the nerds involved.
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Aug 23, 2015 21:04
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The puppies thing is the saddest nerd internet slap fight ever. The only really bad thing is the 40$ fee doesn't go to charity or something instead. That, at least, would make something good come out of it. As it stands, it's just a bunch of old white dudes and pissed off MRAs throwing poo poo at one another and yelling about how the other is TOTALLY RUINING the genre.
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Aug 23, 2015 21:19
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Next year they should direct a portion of the $40 fee to charity, but people get to vote on which charity.
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Aug 23, 2015 21:26
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Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:The only really bad thing is the 40$ fee doesn't go to charity or something instead. That "something" being bags of Doritos
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Aug 23, 2015 21:52
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I mean, I have no problem believing some people are passing over more pulpy fiction or stuff with spaceships in it in a futile dumbass attempt to make sci-fi more acceptable to "literary" types or whatever. I'm not worried about the Hugos being RUINED FOREVER because of it though, because nerds will always love them some spaceships.
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Aug 23, 2015 22:01
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This poster loves police brutality, but only when its against minorities!
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Never mind that the novel category winner is at its core exactly the kind of SF these people are clamoring for, but only got on the ballot because Marko Kloos was a champ and withdrew from consideration. George RR Martin gave him a special award for that in the Hugo Losers' Party.
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Aug 23, 2015 22:09
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Antti posted:Never mind that the novel category winner is at its core exactly the kind of SF these people are clamoring for, but only got on the ballot because Marko Kloos was a champ and withdrew from consideration. George RR Martin gave him a special award for that in the Hugo Losers' Party.
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Aug 23, 2015 22:33
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anilEhilated posted:They are not clamoring for any kind of SF - they are clamoring for more recognition of their own books. If there's anything the puppy ballot shows without the shadow of doubt, it's that quality or theme weren't ever considered, despite what they're saying. quote:In fact, their argument is actually pretty interesting. They say their beef is more class-based; Torgerson says his books are blue-collar speculative fiction. The Hugos, they say, are snobby and exclusionary, and too often ignore books that are merely popular, by conservative writers. The Sad Puppies have a name for those who oppose them: CHORFS, for “Cliquish, Holier-than-thou, Obnoxious, Reactionary Fanatics.”
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Aug 23, 2015 22:38
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A phrase I never thought I would say: Kill All Puppies.
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Aug 23, 2015 23:02
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cultureulterior posted:Well, Carolyn will destroy the sun, conquer the universe and kill her most-loved memory in the last 2/5th of the book Ok, I guess. Is her character going to get fleshed out or likable further in the book? Because I absolutely cant stand her right now. I'm about past interlude 3.
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Aug 24, 2015 00:16
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I admit to having been slightly interested in the Monster Hunter books because I (mistakenly) thought they would be along the lines of Richard Kadrey's Sandman Slim series. But after listening to Larry Correia on a podcast, I was quickly disavowed both of that belief and of the need to read anything he wrote.
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Aug 24, 2015 00:26
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Robot Wendigo posted:I admit to having been slightly interested in the Monster Hunter books because I (mistakenly) thought they would be along the lines of Richard Kadrey's Sandman Slim series. But after listening to Larry Correia on a podcast, I was quickly disavowed both of that belief and of the need to read anything he wrote. It's 100% "shut your mind off" popcorn fiction. Is it award worthy? Not in the slightest, but it's a fun read. I think the Grimnoir stuff is better.
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Aug 24, 2015 00:41
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DeusExMachinima posted:I mean, I have no problem believing some people are passing over more pulpy fiction or stuff with spaceships in it in a futile dumbass attempt to make sci-fi more acceptable to "literary" types or whatever. I'm not worried about the Hugos being RUINED FOREVER because of it though, because nerds will always love them some spaceships. The funny thing about it is that Puppies don't want to represent the mundane rank and file, the base-level nerds who buy books on spaceships. They want to be seen as the Inherent Future Of The Medium, in which winning awards accomplishes. Genres do look better/worse depending on what wins and doesn't win its awards.
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Aug 24, 2015 01:07
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anilEhilated posted:They are not clamoring for any kind of SF - they are clamoring for more recognition of their own books. If there's anything the puppy ballot shows without the shadow of doubt, it's that quality or theme weren't ever considered, despite what they're saying. This exactly. If the Puppies were intellectually honest, they'd be loving overjoyed every time Scalzi gets nominated because he's writing exactly the kind of sci-fi they claim to want to see recognized by the Hugos. He even won one for that kind of sci-fi!
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Aug 24, 2015 01:26
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Less Fat Luke posted:So more white male martyred power fantasy from John C. Wright instead of The Three Body Problem. Gotcha. No but you see we won because the Three Body Problem only got the award due to Rabid Puppy votes; otherwise The Goblin Emperor *spit* would have got it! *sigh*
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Aug 24, 2015 01:51
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Less Fat Luke posted:The Wired article, which interviews some of these idiots, does claim that they're clamoring for their style of SF and not this white collar stuff (whatever that means LOL):
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Aug 24, 2015 02:03
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Ornamented Death posted:This exactly. If the Puppies were intellectually honest, they'd be loving overjoyed every time Scalzi gets nominated because he's writing exactly the kind of sci-fi they claim to want to see recognized by the Hugos. He even won one for that kind of sci-fi! I like the Dresden Files. They're good popcorn reading, and I read "Skin Game" when it came out. Was it a fun read? Yes. Did I enjoy it? Yes. Is it worthy of any "Novel of the Year" awards? Oh, hell no. But according to the Puppies, it is.
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Aug 24, 2015 02:18
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chrisoya posted:Isn't the Hugo voting literally anyone who signed up and paid? It's not some tiny board of judges imposing their SJW agender Missed this the first time, nice 
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Aug 24, 2015 03:01
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People care about the Hugos?
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Aug 24, 2015 03:13
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A lot of people were so upset about it that they paid money to vote No Award
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Aug 24, 2015 03:25
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So what about other rewards picking up the slack. Would nebulas get more impact? Edit: ı just checked them out and yes, much more meaningful awards there this year.
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Aug 24, 2015 14:58
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Grimwall posted:So what about other rewards picking up the slack. Would nebulas get more impact? vox day said that after this proof that the hugos are worthless, they;re going to try and gently caress with nebulas next
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Aug 24, 2015 17:22
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I finished Red Seas Under Red Skies last night. It was a fun read, although closed out with a real whimper of an ending.
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Aug 24, 2015 17:25
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