Kojiro Posted June 17, 2015 Share Posted June 17, 2015 Apparently the only men your neighbor knows are dwarfs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sologdin Posted June 17, 2015 Share Posted June 17, 2015 'puppy-kickers' is kinda bland and mostly harmless as a pejorative, no? i guess it tries to liken certain opponents to those who are cruel to domestiicated animals, a criminal offense (but non-defamatory as mere insult, opinion, and figurative, of course)--though for the figure to function, the SP group must therefore be a domesticated animal. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChillyPolly Posted June 18, 2015 Share Posted June 18, 2015 'puppy-kickers' is kinda bland and mostly harmless as a pejorative, no? It's a totally-predictable play on words. There is hardly a point to calling ones' group the "Sad Puppies" if one cannot call at least some of one's opponents "Puppy Kickers". The expression has always had a half-humorous connotation. I think it dates back to James Thurber's THE THIRTEEN CLOCKS (1950), where the evil Duke was lame, because he had spent his childhood "drop kicking puppies and punting kittens". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Squab Posted June 18, 2015 Share Posted June 18, 2015 SJWs enjoy kicking puppies!! In a recent twist for the increasingly less relevent Hugo awards, a group of easily offended nerdlings have taken to kicking puppies in an effort to wrest back control of the awards from the rabid and often sad canines. The usual outrage on social media ensued with pointing of fingers, claws and paws and tit-for-tat threats, all proving the politics surrounding the awards will continue to overshadow their legitimacy and threaten to forever tar whoever does win. Like crying 5 year olds, both sides claim the other started it but, in a battle where the fronts are blurred and supporting a side is more like supporting a sports team to be followed through thick or thin, who can tell? There will be bandwagoners as well which only adds to the flame and distorts the votes but as long as their team wins, right? Hopefully the war will turn people away from reading to computer gaming as there's a lot less politics there at the moment, right? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ser Scot A Ellison Posted June 18, 2015 Share Posted June 18, 2015 Those horrible "Social Justice Warriors!!!. Will no one save us from their terrible campaign to promote something as evil and undesirable as "Social Justice"??? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TannerSack Posted June 18, 2015 Share Posted June 18, 2015 Author Steven Savile (one of Brad Torgersen's lecturers @WotF) exposes Brad's real motive :https://twitter.com/avram/status/610920847566598144 Just as a data point - when Brad won Writers of the Future, I was one of his lecturers. I took him aside as I'd noticed him going toe-to-toe with Scalzi on his blog and basically said, you know, you might want to be careful because the internet never forgets. Thing is, I don't forget either, I remember his response. His entire aim was to position himself as the Anti-Scalzi because it hadn't hurt his mate Larry. He intended to Make Waves and Be Loud in the name of attracting the attention of the right wing money. So for me, from day one this has never been about the Hugos, he's not thick enough to believe you should be able to judge a book by its cover (that ridiculous opening Salvo about disappointment a book with a space ship on the cover how very dare it not be about... just a space ship and have, Oh I dunno, subtext)... it's always been about visibility. Making Baen happy they took on a loud mouth who's gotten himself disproportionately noticed. Evidence - when EW and Salon etc first ran with the story he was never named. What was his first action? Name himself in challenge to the journalists. He wanted his name associated with this.... Steven Savile WOW! This is by far the most tragic bit of information about this self indulgent twit that I have read. I had a feeling he couldn't be as ridiculous as he is without a underhanded motive. I hope people on the right realize what he is doing and disassociate from him although the majority of these bizarre groups seem to take joyous baths in their collective ignorance. Sad really. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lily Valley Posted June 18, 2015 Share Posted June 18, 2015 Those horrible "Social Justice Warriors!!!. Will no one save us from their terrible campaign to promote something as evil and undesirable as "Social Justice"??? Do me a solid, man. Remind me to remove my "HARLOT" hat when I am trying to represent 2018. I wouldn't want to embarrass the team. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maester Llama Posted June 18, 2015 Share Posted June 18, 2015 Okay, so I'm having a bit of a crisis of faith here. I know the block vote was calculated and political and driven by all the absurd motives that have been discussed at length, but in my simple-mindedness I find it hard to believe that the people orchestrating it don't think the work they're promoting is good. I mean, they must think it is good, right? And, well, I'm reading Kevin J. Anderson's The Dark Between the Stars, and can anybody tell me whether it improves? Significantly? Because wow. The gap between my own reading preferences and the set of reading preferences that think this is award-worthy work is not a narrow one. They ... they like this? As reasoning, thinking human beings, they look at this and say "yes, that is exceptional"? How does that work? I'm not trying to be a dick. I just want to understand. Edit: Actually, upon a bit of reflection, in a couple senses this Anderson book really is taking what I understand to be the puppy aesthetic at face value. There is as close as I've seen in a very long time to legit no subtext here, no sense in which the prose or the events are working on multiple levels, no thought. I mean, there's subtext of course, because there's subtext in everything -- the evil career-driven lady who neglects her child emotionally is especially special to see in this the year of our lord 2015, though I totally own that I'm early in the book and this may turn around -- but there's no sense so far as I can tell that the prose and the events are operating in more than one way; everything is just straight up declarative. It is incredibly expository writing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kojiro Posted June 18, 2015 Share Posted June 18, 2015 Yeah, when I saw Kevin J. Anderson on the Puppy Slate when I first heard about this whole fiasco, I laughed so hard. That colored my perception of them so much. The guy is a terribad writer. They were either complete morons for including him, or they were simply trolling really, really hard. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darth Richard II Posted June 18, 2015 Share Posted June 18, 2015 Anderson is like, the main puppy Guys mentor, or some such bullshit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kojiro Posted June 18, 2015 Share Posted June 18, 2015 So morons then. Damn, I wish that had been a troll. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TannerSack Posted June 18, 2015 Share Posted June 18, 2015 I read several times that Kevin J. Anderson is a mentor to one of the clowns that helped create the slates. I have been trying to read the nominees in the Best Novel category, I made it through 4 out of 5 but his novel was so mindlessly boring I just couldn't waste my time finishing it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darth Richard II Posted June 18, 2015 Share Posted June 18, 2015 Yeah well when a bunch of people claim an award is ignoring all the real talent and then nominate thenselves...well you get the idea. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Selig Posted June 18, 2015 Author Share Posted June 18, 2015 Most of the stuff which Torgersen selected for his slate was written and/or published by his personal friends. Kevin Anderson is a close friend and mentor of his, same for Mike Resnick. Charles Gannon is his friend. Same for John C. Wright. he picked a lot of stories from Analog and not a single one from any other major magazine because that's where he publishes his story and where a lot of his buddies do, plus it always helps to suck up to the editor who publishes your work when you are a minor barely known writer. Zombie Nation, one of his nominees in the Graphic novel category, was written by another friend of his, they even wrote a story together a few years ago. Annie Bellett mentioned on GRRM's blog yesterday that she and Torgersen were friends. Etc, etc. Nearly all of this stuff is easy if you just look around his site for 10 minutes. Yet none of the Puppies so far have objected to such blatant nepotism. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ser Scot A Ellison Posted June 18, 2015 Share Posted June 18, 2015 ML,Okay, so I'm having a bit of a crisis of faith here. I know the block vote was calculated and political and driven by all the absurd motives that have been discussed at length, but in my simple-mindedness I find it hard to believe that the people orchestrating it don't think the work they're promoting is good. I mean, they must think it is good, right? And, well, I'm reading Kevin J. Anderson's The Dark Between the Stars, and can anybody tell me whether it improves? Significantly? Because wow. The gap between my own reading preferences and the set of reading preferences that think this is award-worthy work is not a narrow one. They ... they like this? As reasoning, thinking human beings, they look at this and say "yes, that is exceptional"? How does that work? I'm not trying to be a dick. I just want to understand. Edit: Actually, upon a bit of reflection, in a couple senses this Anderson book really is taking what I understand to be the puppy aesthetic at face value. There is as close as I've seen in a very long time to legit no subtext here, no sense in which the prose or the events are working on multiple levels, no thought. I mean, there's subtext of course, because there's subtext in everything -- the evil career-driven lady who neglects her child emotionally is especially special to see in this the year of our lord 2015, though I totally own that I'm early in the book and this may turn around -- but there's no sense so far as I can tell that the prose and the events are operating in more than one way; everything is just straight up declarative. It is incredibly expository writing.Part of the reason I can never read KJA was the idea that they would let this one track pony play in Frank Herbert's Dune universe. Imagine how awful that would be? Herbert was all about subtext and triple meanings. Anderson is such a klunky workaday author he could never have come close to finding Herbert's voice or vision. I'm so glad they never let KJA write any Dune novels. They would be travesties on multiple levels if they existed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SkynJay Posted June 18, 2015 Share Posted June 18, 2015 and can anybody tell me whether it improves? Significantly? Not a chance. If you didn't listen to everyone's warnings about how bad KJA is then you have to finish the book yourself as punishment. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maester Llama Posted June 18, 2015 Share Posted June 18, 2015 Wow. I had heard that Anderson was a mentor of Torgerson's, but I didn't realize the connections between him and so many of the other nominees were quite that blatant. Oh please no no no I know I have been foolish but I do not deserve another 550 pages of this. Here's some dialogue, spoken by a teenager: "I'm not a detail person. Maybe big ideas aren't always enough. I get impatient, cut corners. You're the exact opposite. It never occurred to me that details could be as important as a leap of genius." And that's what we learned today, kids. Here's one more, from one of the book's big early character showcase scenes. [This ended up being long because the amazingness just kept happening, so I have spoilered it for size.] Note the subtlety of the characterization and the depth of interiority: "Iswander could not be allowed to think that Elisa was not reliable, that she was one of 'those' professional women who couldn't balance family matters with business necessities. She didn't want to be seen like that. She had worked too hard, devoted too much of her life, made too many sacrifices, to get where she was. All along she had thought Garrison was her partner with the same goals, who saw the same intensely bright guiding star, to use his silly Roamer metaphor. While cruising along, ... Elisa pulled up her personal image library, and scrolled through to find a photo of Seth [not that she had forgotten what her own child looked like, thank you!] The first photo she found was a portrait of herself and Garrison, smiling as they held the one-year-old boy. Happy times. Elisa frowned when she saw it, recognizing the delusion in her eyes. Without thinking, she deleted the image, scrolled through the library, and found another one of Garrison and Seth laughing as they ate some gelatinous pasta meal they had cooked together. She deleted the second image as well. When she finally took Seth back, she did not want her son to be able to view and remember enjoyable times with his father. She found several more images of Garrison and Seth at different ages. Then two of herself and Garrison. She deleted them. Elisa didn't need to be taunted by her mistakes. Then even more photos of Garrison and Seth. What did he do, spend all of his time staging images? No wonder he hadn't advanced far in his job. But she couldn't find any warm photos of just herself and Seth. And since Garrison was so keen to take images, he must have intentionally left her out. She finally uncovered several images of her son alone, which she kept. She studied the shape of Seth's nose, the curve of his smile, tried to determine how much of his features looked like her. She saw hints of Garrison there too, that couldn't be helped. Seth was her son, regardless. Elisa displayed the images on the cockpit screens. She could always use her imagination to place herself there alongside him, or splice some images together. It would be good enough." These were just what I could find in the ten pages or so immediately prior to where I'm at. I know that sometimes we're prone to cherry-pick clunky moments from books we're not enjoying to score points, but I feel that these are representative. Yeah, when I was younger I had this terrible dream that Anderson and Herbert's kid had written Dune prequels and I had taken them out of the library on audio book [they were narrated by Tim Curry for some reason, so that was something.] So, even though it was just a dream, I have some idea what an Anderson-influenced Dune might look like relative to a Herbert original, which is all about the layered, reflective, thoughtful writing, as you say. I have to admit a certain sympathy for the perspective the puppies have here, because there was a time in my life when I really honestly didn't notice the flatness and wroteness of prose like this and thought of it mostly as a delivery mechanism for cool action, while the reflective stuff sometimes annoyed me. That's no longer the case, but I can recognize it as a valid way that people feel. However, while I know appealing to age is kind of a dickish thing to do, I was kind of twelve when I thought this, and I got over it. I wish Torgerson could do the same. Did I enjoy Anderson's Star Wars books? You bet. I own that lapse in judgment, even value it -- there was a time in my life when those gave me joy, and that is great. And then I became not twelve. And then, agonizingly slowly, I learned that words could do more than one piece of work at once, and that books could be both thoughtful / rigorous and rad cool at the same time. And also that just because something looks wicked in its subject matter/ plot outline -- and I totally agree that Anderson's Dark Between the Stars, with its lava planets and psychic trees and ancient galactic powers, looks awesome in outline -- doesn't mean it will actually be a compelling story, because the ideas are a crucial foundation, but execution is god. I want Breq back. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ser Scot A Ellison Posted June 18, 2015 Share Posted June 18, 2015 ML,Which is why it is such a positive thing that KJA was never allowed to write in the Dune Universe.:firm nod: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SilentRoamer Posted June 18, 2015 Share Posted June 18, 2015 I personally liked Andersons Saga of the Seven Suns and I have Dark Between the Stars on my to read pile. Seven Suns Could have been shorter and KJA is not the best wordsmith but I enjoyed the premise and the story. There - I said it. However as someone only this year who has fallen in love with Dune I have already decided that I will only be reading the original 6 FH novels. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lyanna Stark Posted June 18, 2015 Share Posted June 18, 2015 Do me a solid, man. Remind me to remove my "HARLOT" hat when I am trying to represent 2018. I wouldn't want to embarrass the team. Can I borrow it in the meantime? :D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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