The puppies went to Hugo, 2015 version.

Well, there is no live streaming down here, but there is twitter. I need not remind many of you about the Hugos going more and more to the liberal/progressives until Vox and Larry started to do something about it. Vox before it began:

Aaron sent over this cheerful meme of the Supreme Dark Lord at his ease. I just wish he’d sent it sooner, so I could have sent it in as my picture for the Awards ceremony. C’est la vie. I’m feeling more than a little optimistic today, although about what exactly I can’t say. Perhaps it is because I finished the final draft of SJWS ALWAYS LIE: Taking Down the Thought Police last night and will be able to deliver it on August 27th, the first anniversary of #GamerGate, as planned. Or perhaps because Art of Sword is coming along nicely, as we’ve finally got some of the powerups in and working. Or perhaps because we’ve got our gargantuan new project server coming on line this weekend.

I’m looking forward to tonight no matter what happens. Several media outlets have asked me for my take on the situation after the awards are announced, as there is considerably more interest in the outcome than usual, but the fact of the matter is that we achieved our objectives back in April. The Rabid Puppies outperformed my expectations, and if they do so again tonight, it won’t be for the first time. Regardless, we have broken the perceived power of the SJWs in science fiction once and for all; they are not frantically debating the best way to mitigate our growing influence in science fiction because they believe they are still in control of it.

I had to laugh when I read that some of the people at the business meeting wanted to postpone the vote on EPH until after the awards were announced because they wanted to see what the results were before taking a position on it. This indicates that they still have no idea what motivates us or what we expect to accomplish. They are too solipsistic to understand our goals even when we tell them straight out what they are. So to be clear, WorldCon, be informed that He Who Shall Only Be Named In Fearful Whispers supports E Pluribus Hugo 100 percent. As for the other anti-slate plan, X of Y, I am totally indifferent because it is structurally futile. Contra the purpose of its designers, it provides an even bigger advantage to disciplined slates than the current rules do. It’s irrelevant.

As the International Lord of Hate observed concerning EPH: “So it rewards coordination between a group that is willing to focus votes for one item per category. Did Vox write that proposal for them?”

Well, the SJW are worried, if one considers the tweetstream.

Let them vote. The award is already exposed as the work of a few self-interested parties. Time for a walk. No need to get involved in that tweetstorm: besides the SJW blew the Hugos up, outvoting the Sad puppies and the dark ilk.

Late Saturday, Worldcon released data from a parallel universe, one in which the Puppies hadn’t intervened. That let Martin give trophies to the people who would have been on the ballot. Sci-fi writer Eric Flint got an Alfie for his “eloquence and rationality” in blog posts about the Puppy kerfuffle. So did legendary author Robert Silverberg, who has attended every Worldcon since 1953, just for being himself.

The biggest cheers, though, broke out when Martin honored two people—Annie Bellet and Marko Kloos—who’d been first-time Hugo finalists this year until they withdrew their names. The new data showed Bellet would’ve been on the ballot anyway; the Alfie clearly stunned her. “I want these awards to be about the fiction,” Bellet said, “and that was important enough to me to give one up.”

The final Alfie of the night went to Kloos, a German-born writer (now he lives in New Hampshire), for turning down his Puppy-powered nomination and making room for the winner, The Three-Body Problem. “I may get nominated again,” he said after shaking Martin’s hand. “But knowing why I got this and who gave it to me—tonight, this beats the shit out of that rocket.”

The question is, does the tweetsorm matter? Not a whit. But do our myths matter?

For fiction is our mythos. It is the stories we tell each other, the mental models we have of what is right and true and proper. These matter: the damage Disney has done with their myths about strong independent princesses who still get prince charming (when he is not gay) encourage feckless choices: that women ignore their mothers and sisters telling them that that boy is no prince, is not charming, but a dickhead he is.

And SF used to be the place where e played with ideas, while rewriting the greek and norse sagas with rivets. (Besides, Tolkien, who had both a great faith and great knowledge, has a more realistic understanding of the costs of war and the role of princesses. He both knew the sagas, and saw war.. Of the current sides, look where the veterans, reading Baen and Torgeson, for they know who has shed blood and seen mud).

The Puppies slates have been characterised by some in the media as “raging white guys” upset that sci-fi is providing a home for more diverse voices. But a quick glance at the authors they actually chose for their slates shows this to be nonsense.

What the Puppies represent, say organisers, is the insistence of fans and many writers themselves that awards should be judged solely on quality, and not become backslapping circlejerks for social justice groupies and their favourite minority of the month.

That’s not just mud-slinging, by the way. The social justice tendency, here as elsewhere, is driven by anxious white middle-class bloggers and authors who turn their noses up at the tastes of the proletariat. They’d rather celebrate books about coming to terms with the disabled transgender experience than a good story about aliens and ray guns.

Sadly for them, they’re in the minority: Puppies authors tend to sell a lot more books, which supports the Puppies’ claim that all they’re fighting for is quality and popularity over well-meaning but boring identity politics. This class war of working-class fans and populist authors versus the PC liberal elites is perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the Hugo drama.

The social justice warrior onslaught was co-ordinated on the blog of Tor books editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden and his wife Teresa. Patrick and Teresa are, if you like, the Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine of this space opera. Breitbart legal will not allow us to identify which one is which.

Um, Larry is whatever hispanic is, Brad’s wife is more Black than Obama, and chucks are running next year’s sad puppies campaign. This is not about identity. This is about goodthink.

Besides, the Worldcon people are missing the point: this is not about the awards, it is about getting our myths back. A rocket is now a useful sign: it a book wins a Hugo do not buy it,, for it generally will be unreadable.

Worldcon is as much about the world as baseball is: the very idea that a book has to be published in English to be nominated is evidence enough.

So WorldCon started and there has been a whole new deluge of articles and media reports about the scourge of Sad Puppies. Personally, I was too busy yesterday to pay much attention. But don’t worry, from what I heard it was all the same old narrative.They had the business meeting. I’ve been told the proposed “improvement” to the Hugo voting system is a complicated and nobody understands it. So E Plurbis Hugo is like the Obamacare of fandom, but that’s what you do to protect your clique from Wrongfan and their Wrongfun. They postponed that to be voted on Sunday probably hoping that most of the rational productive people have left so they could be back to work on Monday.

What was it GRRM told the CHORFs about all those rule change schemes to keep out Wrongfan? I think it was knock if off, what are you trying to do, prove the Puppies right?

My prediction for the awards tomorrow? Beats me. I won back when they reacted exactly how I predicted they would and showed the world what a bunch of insular, cliquish, holier than thou, jerks they were. No matter what happens tomorrow night, they’ll shift the goal posts, declare absolute victory, and call us sexist. Since next year’s campaign is being run by Kate, Sarah, and Amanda, I’m sure they’ll just switch the narrative to something else and go full Palin on them.

But of all the Sad Puppies nominees, I’d really like to see Toni Weisskopf win. She’s a pro’s pro, respected by everyone, who runs one of the bigger publishing houses in sci-fi, has developed lots of great talent, edited hundreds of books, and been in the industry and fandom for decades, but the Hugos ignored her until Sad Puppies came along.

To the organizers of next year’s puppies campaigns, including Vox, best wishes. The ground of the Hugos is now sown with spent uranium. You will need hazmat gear.

For the rest of us. If it has a rocket, it is crap. Spend your money elsewhere.

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UPDATE.
From the multiple comment streams, this at Vox’s place:

Fascinating night. In all this it comes down to sales, and I suspect they have soiled their own nest and probably done themselves out of some jobs with these victories.

I suspect there are some phone calls this morning between people not in the fray but involved in the industry. No awarding proven producers out of spite and then cheering will end up in positions no longer funded, job descriptions disappearing, people getting suggestions to move on. It was a very bad idea, very bad. Economics always trumps.

A previous generation put up with artist dying in their vomit and destroying hotel rooms because the music was unbelievably good. It is still unbelievably good. College writing class pretentious drivel that doesn’t sell doesn’t buy you very much slack.

Yep. Redshirts (Which won the Hugo last year) is semi readable: I gave up half way through. Ancillary Justice has no plot, and I got about a third of the way through that. George Martin has not written anything readable since the first Game of Thrones novel.

But Stross has. Read his Laundry series: it is good. Webber has. Eric Flint has. Vox has. John C Wright has. Mike Williamson has. Sarah Hoyt has… and so has Chris Nuttall. Guess who I spend the beer money on. And in the end, book selling remains a business, even in the times of e-readers and an international bookshop named after a large river.