David Selig Posted August 24, 2015 Share Posted August 24, 2015 I don't know, Wolfe is a Christian white dude and his books involve swords and spaceships, they're probably fine with them, even if they don't understand them ;) And of course Wolfe has never won a Hugo, showing the inherent bias in the system, or something. Yeah, but do they have spaceships on their covers? This is the crucial question here Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gasp of Many Reeds Posted August 24, 2015 Share Posted August 24, 2015 I don't know, Wolfe is a Christian white dude and his books involve swords and spaceships, they're probably fine with them, even if they don't understand them ;) And of course Wolfe has never won a Hugo, showing the inherent bias in the system, or something. Has won a shitload of other awards so might be a difficult argument (unless you want to say the Nebula, World Fantasy and Locus awards are less 'biased' than the Hugo, which seems difficult to sustain): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_Wolfe#Awards Doesn't John C. Wright basically model himself after Gene Wolfe, so was a bad choice if the Puppies wanted to attack literary pretensions (as opposed to a motive of nominating vitriolically homophobic berks)? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mormont Posted August 24, 2015 Share Posted August 24, 2015 Yeah, but John C Wright is the greatest writer working in the field today. Everyone knows that. :p Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ser Scot A Ellison Posted August 24, 2015 Share Posted August 24, 2015 Mormont, A legend in his own mind. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darth Richard II Posted August 24, 2015 Share Posted August 24, 2015 I don't get why everyone focuses on Vox Day when you have John C Wright who seems to be 100x more crazy. I mean, it's gotten to the point where I can't tell if he's actually as stupid as he comes across. The whole married names thing is just...what? how do you even... just...what? Also real money says TOR is going to drop him like a hot rock. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Selig Posted August 24, 2015 Share Posted August 24, 2015 Also real money says TOR is going to drop him like a hot rock. Given that he publicly offered to send free copies of his books to his fans who were mad at Tor and wanted to boycott the company but still read his stuff, I'd say that's a pretty good bet. ;) "edit* I just saw that he claims he is done with Tor because Patrick Nielsen Hayden insulted his wife. Most likely he was kicked out and he's covering his butt. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darth Richard II Posted August 24, 2015 Share Posted August 24, 2015 I love what GRRM did with the alfies. Absolutely brilliant way to effectively give a giant twist of the knife to the puppies, and even smarter to have press at the private party. OK you lost me, what's an alfie? Edit: Oh, duh, me read article. ME SO SMART! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Werthead Posted August 24, 2015 Share Posted August 24, 2015 Yeah, but do they have spaceships on their covers? This is the crucial question here Yes. The Citadel of the Autarch is on quite a few of the covers ;) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
williamjm Posted August 24, 2015 Share Posted August 24, 2015 That only means that their nominations sucked. Why didn't they nominate someone like Gene Wolfe, a conservative yet awesome author? The Puppy nominations seem to be more representative of writers in their own clique than a real attempt to nominate the best conservative or libertarian writers. I remember reading some analysis of how most of the Sad Puppy nominees were friends of Torgersen, and Vox Day seemed to largely add nominees from his publishing house. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SerHaHa Posted August 25, 2015 Share Posted August 25, 2015 The Puppy nominations seem to be more representative of writers in their own clique than a real attempt to nominate the best conservative or libertarian writers. I remember reading some analysis of how most of the Sad Puppy nominees were friends of Torgersen, and Vox Day seemed to largely add nominees from his publishing house. Others have noticed this as well. IMO it's one of the worst cases of pot calling kettle black in the last year online. Was that not their major point of contention to begin with? Then for the first act in their offensive, they do precisely the same thing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ser Scot A Ellison Posted August 25, 2015 Share Posted August 25, 2015 SerHaHa, I disagree with the slate voting but I believe their purpose was to "illustrate" what they believed was going on behind the scenes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darth Richard II Posted August 25, 2015 Share Posted August 25, 2015 Oh, they had a purpose? I thought they were just butthurt because they, you know, can't write. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sci-2 Posted August 25, 2015 Share Posted August 25, 2015 The slate was ridiculously biased. There are a variety of writers they could have picked in the vein of Guardians of the Galaxy, but from what I could get out of the "manifesto" via Twitter was the need to preserve Western culture while simultaneously being more populist about the selections. In short, I think it was all bullshit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darth Richard II Posted August 25, 2015 Share Posted August 25, 2015 Things like these always make me wonder how much the bullshiters believe their own bullshit, but I suppose that's what Poe's law is really about. Anyways, we should get Stanek nominated. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shryke Posted August 25, 2015 Share Posted August 25, 2015 The other factor you have to account for is the Hugo voters' preference for sci-fi over fantasy. It's not universal, by any means - lots of fantasy has won the Hugo - but it's easier for sci-fi novels. (Strangely, fantasy fans have not yet risen up against this manifest injustice... Sad Dragons, anyone? :P) Fantasy fans went through proper channels and bitched about and mocked the Hugos on the internet. Been doing that for years. On this forum and everything. That's the way this stuff is supposed to work! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shryke Posted August 25, 2015 Share Posted August 25, 2015 The Puppy nominations seem to be more representative of writers in their own clique than a real attempt to nominate the best conservative or libertarian writers. I remember reading some analysis of how most of the Sad Puppy nominees were friends of Torgersen, and Vox Day seemed to largely add nominees from his publishing house. Rhetorically it was all about pushing back against those damn SJWs who were taking over the Hugos. There's a whole host of issues with this idea that have been gone over ad nauseum. The slate as it existed, of course, was practically just one guy pushing his own tripe and hoping the ginned up anger of a bunch of reactionaries would push it into the spotlight without them noticing. Essentially, the Puppies were pulled in by bullshit rhetoric and then ultimately conned by a bunch of hucksters with some different extra goals. This kind of thing is actually incredibly common in reactionary products (see - people selling gold on TV and radio and such) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SerHaHa Posted August 25, 2015 Share Posted August 25, 2015 I disagree with the slate voting but I believe their purpose was to "illustrate" what they believed was going on behind the scenes. Ser Scot, yes, agreed that this is what they often stated as their purpose, however I still think that they acted in a pretty hypocritical manner, in terms of the nepotism they showed - which again, was one of their complaints as well, that "what they believed was going on", was that the Hugos had a lot of nepotism and was generally just a big popularity contest between liberal writers and their friends and liberal publishers like Tor which excluded any conservative authors works (I say liberal as in what the Puppies claim, not myself). You know, I've always subscribed to the theory that there isn't any such thing as "bad" publicity, and I think this whole PuppyGate thing of 2015 illustrates the validity of this concept. I mean seriously, look at the record busting numbers of new people committing $ to both WorldCon and the Hugos by extension. I know for my part it was the first year I've really payed close attention to anything beyond the winners article the following day, and I'm not alone, heck, we had 6 people at our home who watched the Ustream live video of the awards, 3 of whom hadn't even heard of them until I quickly filled them in on the goings on for the last year, and put it up on our home theater PC. I think moving forward it'll only mean more people getting actively involved, and despite Vox's posturing and claims of trying to do x and y in 2016, the overall net result will be a positive thing for fans, authors, and publishers in the future. This all came about due to the attention given to the Hugos/Puppygate issue in online forums, blogs, and media articles and such. This whole thing truly opened up scifi/fantasy to a lot of new readers IMO. Perhaps this is my attempt at being glass half full, but I really can't see how anyone can punch major holes in this opinion. As stated, I've really enjoyed the posts/thoughts here from the owners/mods/long term members, as well as Martin's on his NotaBlog, and I received a rapid and accurate education in a new subject and its long history which I otherwise would not have. I also ended up reading a pile of books from the package which I would not of, and I truly enjoyed many of them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The King in Black Posted August 25, 2015 Share Posted August 25, 2015 Essentially, the Puppies were pulled in by bullshit rhetoric and then ultimately conned by a bunch of hucksters with some different extra goals. This kind of thing is actually incredibly common in reactionary products (see - people selling gold on TV and radio and such) I wonder if there still are losers out there who still haven't figured out what was going on the entire time. I mean come on, "fight evil SJWs by.... voting for my book for these literary awards " has to be one of the lamest ways anybody has furthered their own agenda by simply screaming "SJWs !!!" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Selig Posted August 25, 2015 Share Posted August 25, 2015 I wonder if there still are losers out there who still haven't figured out what was going on the entire time. I mean come on, "fight evil SJWs by.... voting for my book for these literary awards " has to be one of the lamest ways anybody has furthered their own agenda by simply screaming "SJWs !!!" Oh, there are. Quite a few of them actually. Reddit for example is full of morons who'd buy anything no matter how silly if you claim the goal is to harm the SJW bogeyman. Yesterday some posters on Reddit claimed that GRRM was part of the Hugo conspiracy since he handed out his "alfies" awards to the ones who didn't get to be nominated because of the Puppy slate. Their reasoning - "how did GRRM knew in advance they won't win?" The fact that these people were not nominated and this was known months ago somehow evaded them. ;) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChillyPolly Posted August 25, 2015 Share Posted August 25, 2015 I don't think episodes of a longer serial should be excluded: previous winners include plenty of individual books in a series, including several Vorkosigan novels, Foundation's Edge (Book 4 of 7), whilst both Ancilliary Justice and The Three-Body Problem are the opening volumes of trilogies. A distinction can be drawn between a "novel that is part of a series" and an "episode in a gigantic novel". Yeah, it's a fuzzy distinction, I know, but still. And no, I don't think there should be a rule either. Just a principle of judgment. Without an identifiable beginning, middle or end, you cannot distinguish between "novel", "novella", "novelette" or "short story". Can I pick my 6 favorite chapters and nominate them for best novelette? If a thousand page episode gets published in 2 parts in some quarters, which episode is eligible for "best novel"? Can I pick a chapter in a novel at random and nominate it for best "short story"? The Blood of the Dragon arguably meets the criteria of a beginning, middle and end and identifiable story arc. And I was not objecting to it, or arguing that it should be excluded merely because it was an episode in a larger story. I just think there should be a more meaningful artistic division than "I decided to publish because I ran out of time and pages and decided to save the rest for next volume". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.