…clearly, the people who instigated today’s parade of falsehoods at Entertainment Weekly were not eager for reconciliation. This was straight-up character assassination. A slash-and-burn hit job. Aided and abetted by media devices which are programmed to seek and spread controversy, for the sake of clicks, likes, and money.
Is Sad Puppies 3 a terrible thing? It is if you ask the opponents of same.
Is Sad Puppies 3 hateful to women or ethnic minorities?
Only if you believe Sad Puppies 3 participants like Annie Bellet or Rajnar Vajra don’t count.
I think perhaps what some people (unused to the insider baseball of SF/F) might not be clear about, is that Sad Puppies 3 is not a thing invented to keep anyone off the Hugo ballot for demographic reasons. It was invented to (originally) poke fun at some tired predictabilities in the selection process, as well as scuttle the notion that the award was actually all about quality, when it’s more or less been a popularity and quasi-politicized contest the whole time. Along the way we fairly skewered the concept of literary affirmative action — that works and authors should be judged on the basis of author or character demographics and box-checking, not the audience’s enjoyment of the prose — so perhaps that’s where opponents of SP3 thought they found a toe-hold? And used it as best as they could to rope in a lot of outside media, in a clownish attempt to punish and discredit both Larry and myself.
Obviously, anyone who tries to make a coherent case for me being racist or sexist . . . has over 21 years of contradictory evidence to overcome. You cannot have lived my life, and be a racist or a sexist. It is an ontological impossibility. I’ve seen too much of the elephant, to borrow a phrase. Plus, my wife probably would have thrown me out on my butt a long time ago — she being the far more astute judge of character, than either a low-rent tabloid blogger or a pernicious and vindictive SF/F personality.
And from Robert Tracinski: How to fight back in the culture war:
The other thing we’ve come to expect from the Social Justice Warriors is a bitter, dismissive hatred for the fans of their own field, who stubbornly refuse to be reformed by their betters. A rant from “progressive” writer Philip Sandifer, echoing last year’s proclamation that “Gamers Are Dead,” declared “The Day Fandom Ended.”
Sandifer argued for “the moral duty of progressive voices to form a blocking majority, and to loudly admit that fandom as it stands is broken, and that any work proclaimed to be the best of the year by a fandom this broken is demeaned by the association.” So he advocates that “progressives” should buy their way into the final ballot and vote for “No Award Given” in every category. “The 2015 Hugos should simply be blank.”
In other news, he’s going to take his ball and go home.
Not to be outdone, “Jeopardy Jerk“ Arthur Chu decided to live down to his epithet by denouncing “democracy” as such. It’s like Stalin said: the problem with elections is that you never know ahead of time who’s going to win.
Inherent in leftism is the notion that we all must be guided by a small elite, a revolutionary vanguard, and that if we resist our indoctrination, it is necessary to dissolve the people and elect another.
To be sure, it is possible some of the Sad Puppies nominees won because of their right-leaning politics rather than their quality. And it also appears that the proprietor of the competing slate, Rabid Puppies, has said a few genuinely objectionable things. But the science-fiction establishment might want to take a moment to ask how they have so alienated their core audience as to provoke this kind of mass protest vote. Than again, forget I said that. “Progressives” never ask that question. Inherent in leftism is the notion that we all must be guided by a small elite, a revolutionary vanguard, and that if we resist our indoctrination, it is necessary to dissolve the people and elect another.
I’d like to be a conscientious objector, but they won’t let me.
[Late-morning update]
It’s almost like they were all reading off the same script.
[Thursday-morning update]
The Social Justice Warriors aren’t so tough when even “sad puppies” can beat them.
[Bumped]
But the science-fiction establishment might want to take a moment to ask how they have so alienated their core audience as to provoke this kind of mass protest vote.
Ah, but this particular establishment (there is not one “the” establishment, though I suppose the Hugo voters who go to Worldcon might have been that … thirty years ago) does not have an “audience”.
The publishers and authors have an audience; these guys are just diminishing the value of the Hugo as a sign of quality.
What? You haven’t read Gerrib’s book either?
The last 10 years or so of Hugo winners have done that already. After so many “pound em over the head with message who cares if it’s got a plot” winners, I and many others have learned to actively avoid anything with a Hugo award on its cover.
To help you determine the quality of the Hugo awards in recent years, here is the short story Hugo winner from 2014.
http://www.tor.com/stories/2013/02/the-water-that-falls-on-you-from-nowhere
Very funny, posting a link to a random gibberish generator. Now where’s the real story?
Thanks for the link. I couldn’t read the whole thing, had to skim a bunch.
Wow. That has to be one of the lamest things I’ve ever wasted ten minutes on. And they call it sci-fi? Totally ridiculous.
Reminds me of an English major lit class. No wonder young adult is the best fiction out there. Adult fiction is total garbage–confessional, meandering, self-indulgent crap.
I don’t think that story would have survived workshopping.
Really?
So this guy invents a dopey plot device that could solve all the world’s issues regarding water (hell it is even distilled, potable, and a great thermal sink) and uses it to demonstrate the protagonist’s sister a liar and tell his boyfriend he loves him (by lying). CA would be drowning in an overabundance of water, and our politicians would finally have a productive purpose (we could use them like sprinklers to irrigate our fields or as a mobile water-cooler where talking politics is encouraged). Space colonization would be much easier, just bring a politician along and you’ve got precursors for fuel, agriculture and drinking. Just bring some duct tape to prevent them from filling your craft full of water. If the water still “falls” in a microgravity environment toward the liar from some repeatable direction, you could use a politician as a self-cooling spacecraft engine! Of course then there would be a lot of focus on this ridiculous plot device, a “what-if” that isn’t really worth considering (isn’t that what award winning SF/F should be made of tho?).
He also requires his readers to be able to read two very different languages to get all the nuance in his story, two of the hardest to read mind you. Very inclusive.
Oh, and it was a mostly boring insight into the mind of a pathetic beta that no one should aspire to be. It contained no larger theme or message of import that I could suss out, unless it is the common “be true to yourself, some people may be mad but everyone will still love you deep down (even if you are a bit of a sad sack)” cliche.
I don’t see the high art or exquisite storytelling that would inspire a prestigious award, let alone the effort to read another chapter if it were any longer.
WTF? OMG!
If that doesn’t make Sad Puppies’ point, nothing does.
But of course the lead horse here isn’t Sad Puppies, it’s Vox Day’s Rabid Puppies, who got significantly more of their slate onto the ballot. And Vox is by his own words a racist, sexist, misogynistic homophobic bigot.
With an inordinate love of the authors he publishes from his obscure company in Finland.
I’m not seeing the argument that he represents the core audience of SF. Perhaps someone will explain it to me in small words.
I think you take Vox a little too seriously. Why do you let him troll you?
Because he succeeded in getting more worthy works squeezed off the Hugo ballot.
Just imagine how unpopular you SJW’s must be if a horrible person like Vox could be so successful.
Maybe you have some fences to mend?
I don’t think you understand how organized block voting for a slate lets a small minority swamp the nominations. This is why so many fans think that it’s unethical.
No, we’re well aware how ‘organized block voting for a slate lets a small minority swamp the nominations’. It’s been standard practice on the left for decades.
I don’t know whether any of these books are more worthy of awards than any others that might be nominated, but they’ve got to be better than the Hugo winner linked to up above. Are you really claiming it was the best SF short story of that year?
Well, in your opinion.
Not even that. He mentioned no “Worthy” works, did he? Which he would have done, if he actually had an opinion. (I’m sure a list will be quickly put together, to cover up the fact his post was just advancing the “Two Minute Hate”…..)
Not just mine. Look at the works on the Nebula short list that didn’t make it onto the Hugo Ballot. The Three-Body Problem has gotten very good reviews. One of the puppies has admitted that it should have been on his slate but he didn’t read it in time.
it should have been on his slate but he didn’t read it in time
I’ll point out this argument is possible for any creative award system. Oscars, Grammys, Tonys, etc. Sometimes voters don’t get to consume all the potential nominees. It even happens in sports with everything from NCAA Top 25 (football, basketball, or baseball), Cy Young, MVP (football or basketball). Sometimes the voters don’t get to consume all the potential footage available to make decisions.
Hell, the argument can be made for elections for political offices. For instance, how much air is being spent on covering Hillary Clinton as a potential Presidential nominee despite her unwillingness to hold a press conference.
I guess to say it another way. I’m not finding the argument compelling. Shouldn’t I find it compelling if it is supposed to be a winning argument? You know, that concept could play into stories nominated for Hugos…
Will McLean says:
Because If You Were A Dinosaur, My Love was a “worthy” work…
I get that some people don’t think it was worthy, but it wasn’t the lowest ranked story in the final vote. Unlike Vox Day’s novella, which came in behind No Award.
In this one instance are you claiming that Vox’s place was determined by worth? Or is it that some people were not voting on the worth of the work in question?
This whole effort was to show that worth had long been dropped from the list.
Were the works on these two slates in question bad or good? Maybe they were not your favorites but were they quality storytelling?
There will always been good stories that fall through the cracks or do not have wide appeal but elevating crappy writing doesn’t do anyone a service and leads to the thing you were complaining about, “succeeded in getting more worthy works squeezed off the Hugo ballot.”
Should things be squeezed out due to competition that causes the best, but maybe not your favorite of the best, to rise to the top or should the best works get squeezed out by mediocrity and political favoritism?
I’m not seeing the argument that he represents the core audience of SF. Perhaps someone will explain it to me in small words.
Nobody else here sees that argument either. I guess you’ll have to go elsewhere for that argument.
Granting that Day is basically a horrible person, arguendo [I haven’t paid enough attention to him to have my own judgment, but it seems perfectly plausible] … who cares?
Are the works he suggested people nominate bad SF? Are they full of “racist, sexist, misogynistic, homophobic” content?
Nothing’s obviously wrong with the list of nominees I saw, compared to, oh, two years ago before all this froofraw.
It’s perfectly possible – though, again, I lack the information to judge – that his slate is closer to what the general SF audience would like than whatever The 2012-era Worldcon Clique would have preferred.
Or maybe not, sure.
Will McLean said:
Define “racism” and “racist”.
EW’s correction is still idiotic. To paraphrase, the awards sucked because there were only white men. Now they don’t suck because it isn’t all white men.
Has EW changed its opinion? No. They’re still obnoxious SWJs. They didn’t apologize for being jerks, nor for thinking that people should decide a story’s quality based on the race or gender of the author.
Funny.
For all the railing they do against the “male gaze”, they sure like to judge people as pieces of meat.
Unless of course, they genuinely believe that ideas and content of character are determined by that thin multi-colored layer on the outside of all that meat, or how this meat touches that meat, or small variations in the shape and mass of meat. I guess if these were true you could judge a book by its cover.
This blog looks interesting. It was linked on one of the Sad Puppies threads. I didn’t actually see anything about space, but the author sure hacks into bad art. Rather refreshing.
http://spaceramblings.com/
Odd, in his Honor Harrington series, the women hating, racist David Weber has the following characters.
1. Honor Harrington, Admiral, who is basically a female Nelson in
space, and the star of the show.
2. Michelle Henke, Honor’s best friend, also an admiral, and black.
3. Elizabeth Wynton, Queen, and later Empress of the Star
Kingdom/Empire of Manticore, who is also black.
Most of the male characters are smart, but not quite as smart as Honor.
But of course the lead horse here isn’t Sad Puppies, it’s Vox Day’s Rabid Puppies, who got significantly more of their slate onto the ballot.
Because having people vote for the wrong things is always a problem.
With an inordinate love of the authors he publishes from his obscure company in Finland.
As opposed to the inordinate love every other publisher has for its authors published from their multinational conglomerate in Germany.
Because he succeeded in getting more worthy works squeezed off the Hugo ballot. Look at the works on the Nebula short list that didn’t make it onto the Hugo Ballot. The Three-Body Problem has gotten very good reviews. One of the puppies has admitted that it should have been on his slate but he didn’t read it in time.
Wait a second; Nebula had a short list of Hugo recommendations? The same Nebula that awarded “If you were a dinosaur my love” best short story? So Nebula fans were asked to vote on a suggested list? Isn’t that bloc voting? And what about all the other people that hadn’t read “The Three Body Problem” or didn’t like it. Don’t they get any blame for it not being on the ballot? At least the sad puppies said they nominated things they read as opposed to nominating something just because everyone says it’s great.
don’t think you understand how organized block voting for a slate lets a small minority swamp the nominations. This is why so many fans think that it’s unethical.
Part of the problem has been that nominating votes have been so small that it only requires a handful of nominations to be a bloc vote. In 2008 there were only 483 nomination ballots cast. This year there are over 2000. Besides, it’s only unethical when done in public by other people.
I get that some people don’t think it was worthy, but it wasn’t the lowest ranked story in the final vote. Unlike Vox Day’s novella, which came in behind No Award.
This would hold a lot more weight if people voting last year hadn’t publicly announced they would not soil themselves by read his book and would vote for “No Award” just because he is an awful person. It would also hold more weight if I hadn’t read”The Water that Falls from Nowhere”
The Nebula short list isn’t a suggested list, it’s the six words in the category that got the most nominations.
And I’ve read the Vox Day piece. It earned its position behind No Award on its merits.
Six works in the category.
That may or may not be true (again, it is your opinion), but that doesn’t change the fact that many judged the book by its author.
This reminds me a bit of what happened to Orson Scott Card. In the early 2000’s he didn’t take an anti-war stance. He actually took a pro-war stance and this was something the SJ Warrios could not forgive. This was the beginning of their witch hunt for OSC.
Soon he was called a racist, misogynist, and homophobe in the most vile ways possible. But the accusations were not the interesting part but rather the method used to broadcast them. There was a concerted and organized effort to spread false accusations against him using social media.
The SJ Warrios even tried to get Ender’s Game canned. They were so pissed that the movie was made. I guess in this situation using a pressure campaign is acceptable for the SJ Warrios. The entertainment media and nerd press was in full attack mode but they just took their ques from the SJ Warrrios so they got bad information.
In one article just before Ender’s Game came out, the author claimed it was incredibly clever how the director of the movie cast all of these females and minorities in the movie just to show OSC how wrong he was about hating women and non-whites. The author really liked sticking it to OSC.
Of course the comments section was filled with people saying, “You know all of these characters were in his book?”
Sometimes the truth just doesn’t fit the narrative and if you are a leftist, you should really question the people who like to make these accusations because they are usually not concerned with the victim class but rather using them to achieve their ulterior motives.