Hugo Drama 2015

[Cubarey]

Who's the "pedophiles" who have won? "

Samuel Ray Delany, Jr is the most obvious.

[Maltaran]

I honestly have never paid attention to the Hugos before. Who's the "pedophiles" who have won?

No idea. I've just had a look at the Hugo winners since 1990, and if any of them are the news hasn't made it to Wikipedia yet.

[Cubarey]

"This would be the 25 year period that not only includes a Best Novel Hugo for Dan Simmons, but also no fewer than three Best Novel Hugos for the avowed libertarian Vernor Vinge?"

Both of which who "played nice" with the powers that be.

Moreover, over a 25 year period, and you come up with two authors who won! So even if we take SIMMONS AND VINGE it's stil what 2 conservatives to about 150 leftists that are part of the clique. Your answer only proves the point that the left wing clique does not only exist but flexed its muscle constantly.

[Lightysnake88]

I think this is a standard example of moving the goalposts. Mormont points out that your argument is flawed by citing the nominations/wins of authors who are decidedly not leftists and then the reaction is to shift the argument in favor of some nebulous criteria like "plays nice with the powers that be.' What does that even mean here? Simmons has been roundly criticized for awful messages in some of his fiction, and I can't imagine Vinge's avowed libertarianism is endearing to many leftists.

Is it an argument that conservatives only win if they're not outspoken about it? Because that sure as heck isn't true. Also, you didn't exactly answer this question and it's a good one: "Which outstanding works in the last 25 years - works that are undeniably deserving of a Hugo Award - by 'conservative writers', however you choose to define that term, have been unforgivably omitted from the list?"

[Kalbear]

There's a major problem with this line of thinking too:

80%-85% of Americans consider themselves religious, the vast majority christian, but the Left-hard clique that controls the Hugo's is so secular that the best he can do when he wants to point out a person that both sides should be able to trust is Connie Willis? True a Christian but someone who is self avowedly hard left. Really? There are no other members of the clique that are people of faith with perhaps a less hard left political perspective? That Ms. Willis is in GRRM's view someone who should be acceptable to the Puppies, goes far to prove that the powers that traditionally decide the Hugo's are indeed a left wing cabal of which GRRM is a life member. Do not get me wrong I really do not care what GRRM's politics are I only care about the quality of his work, but his notions of what is happening with the Hugo's is colored by both his politics and the fact that he is part of the Clique that have longed ruled over the Hugo's.

While it might - and I say that loosely - be true that 80% of Americans consider themselves Christian, sci-fi/fantasy fans have never skewed close to those levels, nor have they been exclusively American. This shows an extraordinary amount of provincial thinking.

If you want to nominate a bunch of Christian friendly fiction, make your own award.

[jagilki]

Who's the "pedophiles" who have won? "

Samuel Ray Delany, Jr is the most obvious.

is there a news article on this? It may be common knowledge for all I know, but I've rarely actually paid attention to private lives of older authors, and this is the first I've heard this. Didn't see anything with a quick google, and nothing on his wiki entry.

[David Selig]

is there a news article on this? It may be common knowledge for all I know, but I've rarely actually paid attention to private lives of older authors, and this is the first I've heard this. Didn't see anything with a quick google, and nothing on his wiki entry.

He's made some controversial comments about NAMBLA . More details and his own explanation can be found here - http://shetterly.blogspot.com/2014/07/a-conversation-with-samuel-r-delany.html

Not sure how that's relevant since he hasn't even been nominated since the early seventies, long before the controversial statements, except for some collections of his older non-fiction stuff...

[Brendan Moody]

Edit: beaten to it, but:

In the 1990s Delany made comments about NAMBLA that have become controversial in recent years for fairly obvious reasons. The comments themselves are included in this recent interview, in which Delany reiterates and expands on his views. I don't agree with him at all, but none of that makes him a pedophile. Also, the comments came after his second Hugo win, which was in 1989, and thus (albeit barely) outside the arbitrary window we're discussing here. As David Selig suggests, Delany was most popular with Hugo voters several decades ago, back in the alleged pre-political golden age of the award that never really existed.

[jagilki]

Ah, that clears it up a bit more, thanks.

[mormont]

Both of which who "played nice" with the powers that be.

This is a weird argument. I'm not at all sure what 'played nice' is even supposed to mean (and I'm pretty sure that whatever it is, Simmons does not actually qualify). Again, you're not bothering to define your terms, just throwing out vague language as if it were an argument.

But putting that aside, is the idea that in order to prove that conservatives haven't been excluded, the Hugo voters not only have to nominate authors whose politics they disagree with, but also authors that are badly behaved?

This seems a bit of an unrealistic and, I dare say, hypocritical criterion. On the basis of your comments above, I doubt you'd be nominating Delany, however good you thought his work was.

Moreover, over a 25 year period, and you come up with two authors who won!

Or to look at it another way, I looked at one category and came up with four wins from a total of 25 that were by right-wing authors. That's four more than Delany in the same period, which in itself disproves your claim. There are 21 other wins, some of which are by left-wingers and some of which are by people whose politics I frankly have no clue about.

I haven't bothered to look at the other categories. Feel free to do so.

I await the list of significant overlooked works by right-wingers in this period, by the way.

[farseer2]

I think that to get a balanced understanding one needs to look at it from both points of view.

This is from the puppies' point of view:

http://thefederalist.com/2015/04/08/the-hugo-awards-culture-wars/

And this is from the anti-puppies' point of view:

http://io9.com/the-hugo-awards-were-always-political-now-theyre-only-1695721604

[David Selig]

There are 21 other wins, some of which are by left-wingers and some of which are by people whose politics I frankly have no clue about.

I think this applies for most winners from the point of view of most Hugo voters. I am not a voter, but I follow the genre pretty closely, visit many blogs and forums and yet have no clue what are the political views of most of the nominated writers most years. Which makes the claim that the award is all about the politics pretty silly IMO.

[Lily Valley]

If you're still confused about what's going on, I wrote a thing: http://www.popsci.com/culture-wars-raging-within-science-fiction-fandom

Yags, you're a writer? (Why did I think you were a porn star? What the hell is wrong with me? Not that they're mutually exclusive fields. Somebody has to write the script.)

Great piece.

Don't be silly, Atwood doesn't write scifi, that's like dumb spaceships and shit.

:rofl:

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

"This would be the 25 year period that not only includes a Best Novel Hugo for Dan Simmons, but also no fewer than three Best Novel Hugos for the avowed libertarian Vernor Vinge?"

Both of which who "played nice" with the powers that be.

Moreover, over a 25 year period, and you come up with two authors who won! So even if we take SIMMONS AND VINGE it's stil what 2 conservatives to about 150 leftists that are part of the clique. Your answer only proves the point that the left wing clique does not only exist but flexed its muscle constantly.

Care to keep moving the goalposts? The fundamental problem with your thesis is that you are assuming that 50% of the time for the last 25 years the best book has been written by a politically active conservative author. Is that the case?

[Ran]

I would in fact enjoy it if the Sad Puppies did a Retro Puppy Award and proceeded to reveal what novels should have won the award over the last 25 years.

Would their list be 50% conservatives? 80%? 20%? Who knows, which is why I'd be quite curious.

[Lily Valley]

Fantastic. Probably my favorite so far.

Oh my God. George called in the BwB.

I am seriously waiting on tenterhooks for the response from Correia and Torgerson. Not kidding, I made popcorn and I keep hitting the refresh button on both sites.

[Guest]

New Republic has something on all of this.

[Ser Ash the Red]

The real problem with puppygate is not that a slate of nominees was submitted by the puppy groups but that they had multiple slates that swept aside most of the other nominees giving no choice to fan of other works. To do this they must have presented multiple slates. Where they alowed to make multiple nominations by each by membership or did they buy over 25% of the memberships that made nominations.

[Zorral]

Edit: beaten to it, but:

In the 1990s Delany made comments about NAMBLA that have become controversial in recent years for fairly obvious reasons. The comments themselves are included in this recent interview, in which Delany reiterates and expands on his views. I don't agree with him at all, but none of that makes him a pedophile. Also, the comments came after his second Hugo win, which was in 1989, and thus (albeit barely) outside the arbitrary window we're discussing here. As David Selig suggests, Delany was most popular with Hugo voters several decades ago, back in the alleged pre-political golden age of the award that never really existed.

. I don't agree with him at all, but none of that makes him a pedophile. :agree:

This cannot be said too often, because he is not a pedophile, and never has been.

He was talking about himself as a very young gay man within the sexually conservative world in which he was growing up, and why he thinks that being in a relationship with an older male in those very confused years would have been good for him.

[williamjm]

I would in fact enjoy it if the Sad Puppies did a Retro Puppy Award and proceeded to reveal what novels should have won the award over the last 25 years.

There is an award for Libertarian SF and I think at least some of the leading Puppies are libertarians so if we wanted to see whether the Hugos were biased against libertarian writers we could see how many of the winners of the Prometheus Award have also been nominated for a Best Novel Hugo.

Looking through the list of winners

Prometheus Winners who won the Hugo (not necessarily for the same work): Larry Niven, Vernor Vinge, Neal Stephenson, Charlie Stross*, Harry Turtledove*, Jo Walton, Poul Anderson*, John Varley*

Prometheus Winners nominated for Hugos : Michael F. Flynn, Jerry Pournelle, Ken MacLeod, Donald Kingsbury, Cory Doctorow, Terry Practhett*

Prometheus Winner not nominated for a Hugo : Victor Koman, James P. Hogan, L. Neil Smith, F. Paul Wilson, Dani and Eytan Kollin, Sarah Hoyt, Ernest Cline, Delia Sherman, Rameez Nam, J. Neil Schuman, Brad Linaweaver.

* Hugo nomination for something other than Best Novel

It looks like almost 2/3 of the Prometheus Award winners have at least been nominated for a Hugo, this doesn't necessarily disprove that there could be some anti-libertarian bias but if there is it isn't enough to exclude authors that libertarians like. I'm not aware of an award specifically for conservative SF (and some of the Prometheus award winners are definitely not conservatives) so it's probably not as easy to look for anti-conservative bias.