[karajorma]

What are the odds of that, Karajorma? The very five works that were poised to win were outnumbered by an almost unprecedented rally of "No Award"s? Man, I feel I could sell you so many ****ing bridges.

Actually the odds are pretty damn high. How many of the books on that list do you feel would have been nominated on merit?

[Goober5000]

Really? I think all it proves is that for all the talking Torgersen, Beale, Wright, Correia et al did, they weren't able to actually get their supporters to put in more than a token effort of support. Consider: Sasquan had an unprecedented number of memberships, and record attendance. As it turns out, most of the attendees were people who rejected the puppy slates; If the Puppy assumption that they represent some form of silent majority longing for the good ole days was true, one would think that they would have been able to motivate people to attend the Con and vote.

That assumes this year is the high-water mark of the Puppies effort.  I don't believe that will be the case.

Or they just simply didn't think anything on the slate was the best thing they'd read that year. If you asked me to choose between the various Sharknado films for best action movie ever made, I would simply say "none of them".

Are you claiming you'd pick one?

I certainly would.  Out of the Best Novella nominees, I've only read One Bright Star to Guide Them, but there's no question I believe it should rank above No Award.  Ditto "Turncoat" for Best Short Story.

And the No Award categories weren't limited to published works.  The fact that No Award beat out Mike Resnick and Toni Weisskopf defies logic.

What are the odds of that, Karajorma? The very five works that were poised to win were outnumbered by an almost unprecedented rally of "No Award"s?

It was not only unprecedented - the number of No Awards this year equals the total in the entire history of the Hugo Awards.  Prior to this year, the most recent No Award was in 1977.

The puppies wanted to prove a political bias in the system. They decided to do so by introcing a massive political bias in the system. As such, any result of their 'experiment' is automatically flawed, as refusing to subscribe to a political act (in this case voting for "No Awards") is in itself a political act, albeit a far more fair one.

That's a ridiculous line of reasoning.  You can't punch someone and then cry foul when they punch back.

[The E]

The puppies wanted to prove a political bias in the system. They decided to do so by introcing a massive political bias in the system. As such, any result of their 'experiment' is automatically flawed, as refusing to subscribe to a political act (in this case voting for "No Awards") is in itself a political act, albeit a far more fair one.

That's a ridiculous line of reasoning.  You can't punch someone and then cry foul when they punch back.

Problem is that that's what the Puppies are doing.

[NGTM-1R]

That's a ridiculous line of reasoning.  You can't punch someone and then cry foul when they punch back.

You can totally accuse the system of bias, introduce a biased slate of candidates to vote for to prove it, and then cry foul that people organized against you.

Douchebaggery is not a zero-sum game. No one should ever approach an argument assuming the side whose positions they favor is due special deference or special excuse. There are very few arguments that occur between black and white hats, and it is entirely possible that despite whatever cherished ideal or point of law is in contention both groups are composed of assholes and will be eager to prove it.

Just because you agree with someone doesn't make them tolerable or even sane human beings.

[Goober5000]

So, are you both saying that the Hugo awards were unbiased prior to the Puppies getting involved?

[Scotty]

Pretty sure they're (NGTM-1R and Kara) not.  Also pretty sure that you already know that, Goob.

[Goober5000]

If they acknowledge that the system is biased against the works that the Puppies favor, then they should have no cause to complain when the Puppies organize - within the rules - to counteract that bias.

And if they acknowledge that the system is biased, then they acknowledge that the system threw the first punch.

[NGTM-1R]

So, are you both saying that the Hugo awards were unbiased prior to the Puppies getting involved?

That's the most cretinous response you could possibly have given to a post whose entire point is that everyone can be bad guys.

It doesn't really matter whether the Hugos were biased or not (in my personal opinion they probably are, but such a bias is inherent to their genre nature: forward-looking science fiction and the fact that Cthulhu only swims left/moral arc of history); the response of Vox Day et. al. is itself significantly biased not only in terms of political leaning but also towards a specific organization and author.

This is not as simplistic as the self-defense metaphor you're pushing. An award given in acknowledged and intentional bias is worth less than nothing. The bias that "threw the first punch" is passive at worst, and likely a bias reflective of the reality of the genre and its fans. If it exists.

[karajorma]

And if they acknowledge that the system is biased, then they acknowledge that the system threw the first punch.

And that gives the sad puppies the right to drag the entire system all the way to their side? By that logic women should be removing the right to vote from men and all white people should be slaves. It's a ridiculous overreaction to fill the entire slate with only their authors and then complain that people get annoyed at that.

[Luis Dias]

The Cthuluh always swimming left might be something you feel as manifest destiny of some sort of inevitable history or whatever, but bear in mind that others might feel incredibly different than that. Let me expand on this point, because I feel is the most interesting one to me.

Thing is, conservatives *do not feel* that the way Ctuluh is working is something that is either random or an inevitable historical necessity, nor even that it is a good thing at all. And conservatives are, as I last recalled, still human beings. They are or should be allowed to imagine the future, or other realities, or fantasies, where the progressive storylines of all the ideological necessities that the core leftist wing demands of them, simply do not exist, or are even refuted, countered. Why not, it seems to me, is the pertinent question here. It's as if the biggest problem here is not *just* one of mere politics between cliques, but also a battle on the landscape of the imagination of possibilities for the future.

And we all know that this is the issue. Progressives can't stop talking about this. How certain narratives are not "enabling" certain demographics, how certain stories are "limited" from a diversity point of view, not being sufficiently open to certain possibilities and futures of sex, genders, racial identities, and any other identity-laden issues you might imagine. Thus one might infer that this struggle is about who gets to define what is a *good* imagination from not just an artistic, literary point of view, but more than that, to a political and moral issue.

Returning to Ctuhluh swimming left, YES, I could even accept this sort of metaphysical inevitability (I don't, my pessimism doesn't allow it), but Vox Day and friends don't. And I refer to Vox Day especially here, because he is indeed the extreme reference here. And perhaps you don't know this, but he's not just a "rabid" right wing lunatic, he's a guy that is involved in the Dark Enlightment movement. And this movement proposes that this Cthuluh exists and its name is The Cathedral, which is a huge ideological edifice being maintained by academia and promoted by the "Public Opinion" (not the real public, mind you, but of those who are the real Opinion Makers, that is, the Media, the Schools, etc). Everything being discussed by the Academia at a certain point in time will eventually trickle down to the media and opinion makers who will hammer down the point until the public accepts it. This is a decades-spanning phenomena.

Now, I'm not the kind of person who accepts such weird theories, but I do accept that they believe these things, which can be summed up as saying that Ctuhluh always swims left because the system makes it swim Left (In a way, it's a paranoid theory that mirrors the "Patriarchy" quite well).

If you accept that Ctuhluh swimming Left is not the work of Inevitable History, but rather the combination of wilful acts of the society at large, then you are forced to accept that People can affect this direction themselves, and that's what these people are trying to do.


From MY point of view, I don't subscribe to this point of view, but I REALLY don't want to be left in a world where the only allowed imaginations are those who are pre-described ideologically, who all point to the same direction (OR ELSE), where all must abide to the new social justice checklists of approved talking points, tokens and thematics. I don't welcome a world where not only Ctuhluh rides Left, but we can't even imagine it going anywhere else.



Regarding Karajorma's point that all the slate books were terrible (did he read them at all?), let me just state that I find that statement incredible, that I don't buy that whole reasoning one bit, and that I would much rather have people tell me (like The_E for instance) that what *really* happened was that people disapproved of the Puppies' tactics and decided en masse to vote against it for these political reasons. I see a lot of contradictions here (people shouting on twitter in utter unironical or self-aware mode that it had nothing to do with politics, it was just our "community" that decided to keep these "people out" and so on and so on, you can't make this **** up), but at least I respect it.

Yes, the Puppies have shown that it is politics. I commend them for having made everyone aware of this situation. I am not convinced that they are able to do anything else in the future. Solutions, real solutions must come from elsewhere. Or not. I mean, it's not inevitable that the whole Hugo Awards and the whole sci fi genre doesn't go to the ****ters. My pessimism is way less censorial in its imagination than any social justice inclined voter at the Hugos was.

It's a ridiculous overreaction to fill the entire slate with only their authors and then complain that people get annoyed at that.

Talk about overreactions, just look at your rationale for god's sake.

[The E]

Regarding Karajorma's point that all the slate books were terrible (did he read them at all?), let me just state that I find that statement incredible, that I don't buy that whole reasoning one bit, and that I would much rather have people tell me (like The_E for instance) that what *really* happened was that people disapproved of the Puppies' tactics and decided en masse to vote against it for these political reasons. I see a lot of contradictions here (people shouting on twitter in utter unironical or self-aware mode that it had nothing to do with politics, it was just our "community" that decided to keep these "people out" and so on and so on, you can't make this **** up), but at least I respect it.

Yes, the Puppies have shown that it is politics. I commend them for having made everyone aware of this situation. I am not convinced that they are able to do anything else in the future. Solutions, real solutions must come from elsewhere. Or not. I mean, it's not inevitable that the whole Hugo Awards and the whole sci fi genre doesn't go to the ****ters. My pessimism is way less censorial in its imagination than any social justice inclined voter at the Hugos was.

It's a ridiculous overreaction to fill the entire slate with only their authors and then complain that people get annoyed at that.

Talk about overreactions, just look at your rationale for god's sake.

From where I'm sitting, it looks more like a rejection of Vox Day in particular than any given conservative viewpoint.

[Luis Dias]

1) Shunning people by association is politics in itself.
2) Rejecting Vox Day is entirely politics.
3) The reasons why Vox Day was rejected is also about politics, namely his.

[Goober5000]

From where I'm sitting, the Puppies viewed it as a travesty that so many great conservative writers went unrecognized for their works.  So they organized to get some conservative writers on the ballot to right that wrong.  And the response of Worldcon is to hold them in such contempt that they would rather not give out any award than give one to a Puppies candidate.

And I know Vox Day is everyone's favorite boogeyman, but don't forget that this is as much Torgersen and Correia as him.

[Luis Dias]

Harmful Opinions got it right. As much as one could ever try to make the point that the Opposition to the Puppies' Slates didn't exist, that they were a kind of paranoid delusion from right wing schizophrenics (a claim that I personally still laugh at with contempt), the real opposition to every proposal by these Slates and the way they did it firmly established that indeed this opposition exists.

[karajorma]

Regarding Karajorma's point that all the slate books were terrible (did he read them at all?), let me just state that I find that statement incredible.

Imagine that, you find the strawman you've constructed incredible.

I did not say the books are terrible. I asked how many of them would have been nominated on merit i.e how many of them would have gotten through in an unbiased world. I suspect the number is less than half and probably a lot lower than that since the sad puppies were only voting for people who agreed with their politics and that is always a minority, no matter what you believe in.

[Luis Dias]

Less than half is not 0%. Again, you are not analyising this with your brain in full power here. The odds of this happening without politiking is zero. ZERO. And all that even if we *didn't* have so many people on the record with recommendations to burn the whole puppies' books down because they were Puppies, NOT because they were of "poor quality".

If you remain in the corner that all of this backlash from the Hugo Awards to the Slates is entirely about Quality, I won't comment. Not even the majority of people who are deeply aghast by the Puppies would even manage to get themselves to even think about that justification. It wasn't and it isn't.

I repeat here. If the position anti-Puppies is that "We won't stand for these tactics and that's why we did what we did", at the very least I'll respect it. Not your position, I just find that ridiculous.

[NGTM-1R]

The Cthuluh always swimming left might be something you feel

It isn't.

It's objective fact that the last ten generations have seen Cthulhu swim left. To predict the future, our only implement is to study the past. And the future being more left than the past has held true for a considerable length of time. The left is identified as progressive, as forward-looking. The right is identified as conservative and by either its respect for the present or its faith in the institutions of the past.

A genre that speaks to and of the future must both acknowledge the trends of the present, and bear in mind the sort whose eyes are turned to the future. And in general that isn't a favorable pair of obstacles to the right.

You want this to be about my beliefs and your beliefs and Vox Day's beliefs. So you babble about them for irrelevant paragraphs.

It isn't.

Beliefs don't matter. This is a statement about environment.

Was Vox Day's response going to change the environment? No. It was a pointless temper tantrum in comparison to the forces that shape the sci-fi-reading public. Was it going to make the awarding of the Hugos somehow more fair if it worked? No, the exact opposite.

[Grizzly]

Regarding Karajorma's point that all the slate books were terrible (did he read them at all?), let me just state that I find that statement incredible.

Imagine that, you find the strawman you've constructed incredible.

I did not say the books are terrible. I asked how many of them would have been nominated on merit i.e how many of them would have gotten through in an unbiased world. I suspect the number is less than half and probably a lot lower than that since the sad puppies were only voting for people who agreed with their politics and that is always a minority, no matter what you believe in.

I'd argue that there's none. The rabid puppies' ballot consisted almost entirely of books published by Vox Day's micro-publisher. The few people that were not published by Vox Day but were on the slate have withdrawn from the hugo awards.

[Luis Dias]

NGTM,

And you confuse your own beliefs about Ctuhluh for the reality. You do not speak for Reality. Yes, Cthuluh has been swimming Left for ten generations. If I accept that statement alone as a brute fact, then it follows that 11 generations ago, it didn't swim left. Which means it's not inevitable, it's not fate.

The Left is "forward looking" and the Right is "conservative looking" because of the French Revolution, it's a purely historical thing. In hindsight and in very naive terms, it does seem that the Left gets "its way" and the Right has been conceding terrain. Except that in many ways, the Left has been stopped from doing many really nasty things by either historical facts or by the Right's insistence that they should not get away with it.

That is, the Left is not an Oracle. And unless you propose that the Left is an Oracle that Gets It Right Every ****ing Time, then it definitely should not have the hegemony of our imaginations of the Future. Hell, you just have to look at the past and see that the Right Wing did have their influence on Sci Fi. Michael Chricton's warnings about technologies, George Orwell's warnings against Communism (yes, I know he was a leftist but his warnings were extremely influential in a conservative way), etc. etc.

I'd argue that there's none. The rabid puppies' ballot consisted almost entirely of books published by Vox Day's micro-publisher. The few people that were not published by Vox Day but were on the slate have withdrawn from the hugo awards.

Only one "No Award" displaced a Castallia House edited winner. So your argument falls.

[NGTM-1R]

It's fascinating to me that so many people are supporting making things objectively worse.

The result of the slate is not that bias is corrected; the slate expresses active bias itself, and bias beyond the merely political, but into the personal. If there was some kind of left-wing conspiracy blocking the Hugos before, it might, perhaps, have been an appropriate response, but I haven't seen that alleged.

Since we seem fond of terrible metaphor, we have here a situation where someone has decided that since the local African population outnumbered them and people were hiring from their friends and social circles just because, the only correct response to this is to start staging cross-burnings and declare a Klan rally lead by the one white guy who runs a store in town.

Respond to a passive problem by creating an active one. Instead of working to change things so they are more fair, declare that fairness is impossible in the current system and start lighting things on fire. Don't emulate MLK; be a Black Panther.