Eligible Works for Hugo Worldcon 2016 - Deadline 31st March!

[Mudguard]

I think Space Raptor Butt Invasion by Chuck Tingle (Amazon Digital Services) for Best Short Story is probably worse than My Little Pony, but I can't really say since I haven't read or watched either.  Anyone going to take one for the team and read that short story?  I'm going to pass after reading the short description on Amazon.

[Maltaran]

54 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Maia,

Are we going to ding authors for being picked by the Puppies?  Should we?  The only book on my nomination slate that made it for best novel was Seveneves.  I enjoyed it.  Should Neal Stephenson be penalized for Vox Day's bullshit?

Alistair Reynolds specifically requested both groups of Puppies to take his story off their list, but they ignored him and it's got on the ballot.

 

Anyway, now we wait and see if there are as many withdrawals as last year. I also assume this means E Pluribus Hugo will get ratified for next year.

[Darth Richard II]

Yeah Uprooted and The Fifth Season are such hard SF...

Honestly, I know some MLP fans in real life, its not terrible by any stretch, it just seems out of place.

I'm sad so many of those were actually puppies noms, there's some stuff I like on a lot of those lists.

Edit: Best Related Work is so terrible it's funny. I can't even begin to imagine the shitstorm that's about to unfold across the interwebs.

[felice]

1 hour ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Are we going to ding authors for being picked by the Puppies?  Should we?  The only book on my nomination slate that made it for best novel was Seveneves.  I enjoyed it.  Should Neal Stephenson be penalized for Vox Day's bullshit?

I suggest putting No Award first for any category with fewer than two non-Puppy nominations, and otherwise ranking based on merit. Who'd want to win a Hugo when there's no genuine competition? It would be pretty hollow. Some of the Puppy nominations might actually be decent works, but I'd be uncomfortable voting for something even if I did like it when it's only an option because VD allows it to be, and other potentially better works are excluded because of VD. A few of the Puppy nominations might have made the ballot even if there hadn't been a slate, but they might not have. And the Puppies will be voting, too; their impact will be significantly less there, but not irrelevant. Reynolds' objection to being slated is good, but if he wins over Okorafor by less than a few hundred votes, he'll be winning because of VD.

Stephenson wouldn't be penalised since there are several non-Puppy works to judge it against. Has he made any comment on being slated by Puppies?

2015 and 2016 should be rerun as Retro Hugos at some point in the future.

[Darth Richard II]

It will be interesting to see who withdraws/declines their nomination.

I have a fantasy where JJ Abrams and Disney publicly pull out and then send Chewbacca to kick Vox day in the groin.

 

Edit: I'm kind of shocked to see the Okorafor on their actually, everyone I know who read it, both big Okorafor fans and not, absolutely hated it.

[Darth Richard II]

Dear God

http://file770.com/?tag=sad-puppies

Well, I'm moving to a cave on mars. See ya.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

This is what Vox Day had to say about Seveneves, the novel he put on his slate:

 I started reading Neal Stephenson's latest novel, Seveneves, and it is truly depressing. Less because nearly everyone on Earth dies than because he appears to have gone full SJW with a Gamma sauce. It's the first time I've found it necessary to force myself to keep reading one of his books, and the first time one of his books has struck me as being proper Pink SF. Female presidents, token ethnic melanges, you name it, he's got it to such an extent that were it not for Stephenson's past gamma markers, I would almost suspect an epic, master-class trolling of the current genre.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

VD is trolling with his choices.  He wants good books to lose because he picked them.

[Darth Richard II]

6 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

VD is trolling with his choices.  He wants good books to lose because he picked them.

I was thinking that.

Also kind of shocked to see Uprooted on the sad recs, doesn't seem like their thing.

[felice]

I'll be very curious to see the nomination data when that comes out.

[David Selig]

36 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

I was thinking that.

Also kind of shocked to see Uprooted on the sad recs, doesn't seem like their thing.

The Sad Puppies selection this year is just a list of the most recommended works on their open recommendation threads for each categories, anyone could add works there, including people with very different tastes than the Sad Puppies supporters from before. So their selection this year is quite reasonable.

45 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

VD is trolling with his choices.  He wants good books to lose because he picked them.

He wants to be able to claim a win no matter what, he is about as childish as it gets.

[Darth Richard II]

Glad to not see Wright this year. He makes VD look like a puppy(see what I did there?).

Kind of shocked to see Ultron on the RP list. When I think of the anti vox day Whedon is who usually comes to mind. But hey, he wants to have his cake and eat it too.

[marcaramini]

3 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

Yeah Uprooted and The Fifth Season are such hard SF...

Honestly, I know some MLP fans in real life, its not terrible by any stretch, it just seems out of place.

I'm sad so many of those were actually puppies noms, there's some stuff I like on a lot of those lists.

Edit: Best Related Work is so terrible it's funny. I can't even begin to imagine the shitstorm that's about to unfold across the interwebs.

That volume on Wolfe looks pretty good to me ...

 

[Lily Valley]

7 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Maia,

Are we going to ding authors for being picked by the Puppies?  Should we?  The only book on my nomination slate that made it for best novel was Seveneves.  I enjoyed it.  Should Neal Stephenson be penalized for Vox Day's bullshit?

NO.  Some of my picks wound up on their slates for category, not for particular stories that they published or for writers or editors that contribute.  This is telling.  NONE of the stories published by Daily Science Fiction made their slate, yet the magazine made their slate.  I assume it's because neither editor has offended VD.  It's a great magazine.  

The Dark Forest didn't wind up on the slate, the author pissed off VD last year.  The author also publicly asked his Chinese fans not to nominate the book.  This is a damn shame.  It's awesome.

Edit #2

marcaramini, Congratulations! I wish you the best of luck.

The short and long form dramatic presentations call all kiss my arse.  Yes, yes, you all loved Ex Machina.  I hated it.  Mad Max bored me and I have no comment at all on Star Wars.  I agonized over both of those categories and none of my babies were nominated.

BTW, File770 is down.  Interesting.

[Darth Richard II]

2 hours ago, marcaramini said:

That volume on Wolfe looks pretty good to me ...

 

Yeah, but I don't do Ebooks anyway, so the point is moot. Good luck though.

[serdog]

Question has anyone read "SJW always lie" ? is it remotely a related work ?

[The Marquis de Leech]

Having lived in a house where my flatmates had small children, I ended up watching a fair amount of the (modern*) My Little Pony. It's actually quite intelligent, and there are various bits and pieces for an adult audience (and, yes, that includes Game of Thrones references). 

*My Little Pony started out in the 1980s as a mechanism to sell toy ponies to little girls. The modern incarnation (the one with the Friendship Is Magic subtitle) is a good deal more sophisticated. Whether it necessarily deserves a Hugo is another question, but its nomination isn't outrageous. 

[mormont]

9 hours ago, felice said:

Some of the Puppy nominations might actually be decent works, but I'd be uncomfortable voting for something even if I did like it when it's only an option because VD allows it to be

But in the case of the likes of Seveneves, or any other work that's worthy of being on the ballot, to treat it as only there because VD 'allows' it to be is simply begging the question of whether it would have been present anyway. Until the nomination numbers are released, we can't say for sure.

Besides, that's what VD was up to. He's looking to amplify his influence and claim victory whatever happens. He thinks this is a Machiavellian master stroke double-bluff no-lose genius gambit, instead of just a sad little dickhead playing silly buggers.

I've said before, and I say again: ignore it. Evaluate the works on their merits. There is no reason to do anything else. Whatever you do, VD will be sitting home masturbating furiously about how everything turned out just as he planned. So you might as well just roll your eyes and evaluate the nominees as they stand. If they're worthy of winning a Hugo, more power to them. If they're not, No Award. In the long run, that's the best thing for the awards, the WSFS and your own sanity. Second-guessing and tactical voting to maintain the unsullied purity of the award is futile. 

I think the outcome is pretty predictable anyway. No Award will likely win in a couple of categories, any reasonable nominee will win the others, and the objectionable ones won't win anything.

Also, there has never been a year in the history of the awards when 'potentially better works' didn't make the ballot for one reason or another. That's just how awards (and shortlists) work.

I'll say this, though: some of the nominees in Related Work ought to be disqualified. Writing screeds vilifying other members of the WSFS and then getting your pals to nominate them isn't politics, it's harassment.

I'll say this too: at least the problem here is now laid bare. The Sad Puppies have done nothing wrong this year: I have no problem with their contribution at all. It's all about VD trying to be a bully, as usual.

[Maia]

12 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Maia,

Are we going to ding authors for being picked by the Puppies?  Should we?

Eh, where am I dinging anybody? I liked/loved a couple of things on their slate too and wasn't impressed with the one novelette that made it independently. And Stephenson in particular - I, personally, was disappointed by "Seveneves" (which I expected to love sight unseen, BTW), but it was a foregone conclusion that it would be one of the finalists, RPs here or there. A lot of stuff on their current slate seems to be there as a shield or in an attempt to prove some point. Like, they might expect "My Little Pony" to win because SJW sensibilities or whatever and then they'd get to  flaunt the fact that Hugos have fallen so far that they'd award an "obviously unworthy" "kiddy cartoon" solely because it toes an ideological line*.

But I don't see why we shouldn't illuminate the extent of RP slate either. As to SPs, I don't consider their recommendation list to be a slate, as it was honestly sourced this time around and contains sufficient amount of entries.

*Disclaimer: I haven't seen any "My Little Pony" beyond a couple of screenshots and GIFs, so the above guess is based on second-third-hand impressions of the series. The episode itself might have something that RPs like, as Roose Bolton's Pet Leech notes below.  

 

[The Marquis de Leech]

19 minutes ago, Maia said:

 Like, they might expect "My Little Pony" to win because SJW sensibilities or whatever and then they'd get to  flaunt the fact that Hugos have fallen so far that they'd award an "obviously unworthy" "kiddy cartoon" solely because it toes an ideological line.

Or perhaps they are particularly keen on the couple of episodes that have a Zebra as a Magical Negro and Buffalo as Native American stand-ins? There's the uncomfortable implication that the ponies are supposed to be white people.

(Bearing in mind, I think this was probably unintentional on the part of the writers).