Memo to Tor Books, The progressive “puppy kicker” activists and the pantywaists at the Guardian.
All your base are belong to the Rabid Puppies. Who will make the Hugos once again signal a book worth reading.
The annual Hugo awards for the best science fiction of the year have once again been riven by controversy, as a concerted campaign by a conservative lobby has dominated the ballot.
The Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies movements, which both separately campaign against a perceived bias towards liberal and leftwing science-fiction and fantasy authors, have managed to get the majority of their preferred nominations on to the final ballot, announced today.
If only the sci-fi writers who hijacked the Hugo awards had the wit to imagine a world beyond the Good Old Days
This means that voters on the prestigious awards will now be choosing from a shortlist which includes SJWs Always Lie, an essay about “social justice warriors” by Rabid Puppies campaign leader Vox Day; a self-published parody of erotic dinosaur fiction called Space Raptor Butt Invasion, by Chuck Tingle; and My Little Pony cartoon The Cutie Map.
Since 2013, the Sad Puppies has posted recommendations of works to combat the Hugo tendency to reward works that writer Brad Torgersen deemed “niche, academic, overtly to the left in ideology and flavour, and ultimately lacking what might best be called visceral, gut-level, swashbuckling fun”. Supporters are encouraged to buy memberships to the annual World Science Fiction Convention, which enables them to nominate works chosen by the campaign and vote on the final selection for the Hugo awards.
‘No award’ sweeps the Hugo Awards following controversy
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A breakaway, more political faction called the Rabid Puppies was formed in 2015, the year the prize was most rocked by the twin campaigns. After the shortlist was dominated by nominations from the Sad and Rabid Puppies’ lists, Game of Thrones author George RR Martin said the Hugos were “broken”, while previous Hugo winner Connie Willis pulled out of presenting a prize, saying her presence would “lend cover and credibility to winners who got the award through bullying and extortion”. In the end, members of the World Science Fiction Society rejected finalists in an unprecedented five categories, voting for “No Award” rather than any of the nominees backed by the campaigns.Led by Beale – who writes under the name Vox Day and was once dubbed “the most despised man in science fiction” by the Wall Street Journal – the Rabid Puppies has been successful in getting its nominations on the shortlist again this year; out of 80 recommendations posted by Beale on his blog, 62 have received sufficient votes to make the ballot.
What the editors of the Guardian and the puppy kcckers forget would take all day to write. So here is a TL:DR list. They need help.
- Game designers make unfair rules and then gamers find loopholes. Part of the fun. Your rules were going to be pwned.
- the Hugos had become useful only in this aspect: If a book won a Hugo it was to be avoided.
- Follow the money. Of the Kickers, Stross sells. Because he writes a world where reality (From another dimension) breaks the politically correct UK bureaux. The Laundry series is good. His other stuff works less well. The Scottish SF writers did put together viable left wint worlds with some handwavium. But they knew plot and did not posture. The current crew do, and thus the readers have left. Baen sells (at least to me): Tor does not
- The independents are nwo good. Sarah Hoyt, Chris Nuttall… are writing well. I buy not paperbacks, but stuff for my kindle. The ecosystem has shifted: you have not
- If you nuke the Hugos (another round of “No award: will do that, it will count as a win for the Rabids.
I am not a Rabid. I don’t nominate. I don’t vote. But I read and much of the list that is non Rabid (the exception being Dr Who) is bad. Not worth my time. Nor yours. Vote for the stuff that is good, not to virtue signal.
For the Virtue signalling is leaving a wasteland where the Hugos were.
UPDATE.
File 770 has got someone repeating that old canard: the fans are wrong so we should replace them. And then falling into the trap: nuking the award. Double links, because precious linked to his own site, and it is easier to put it all together.
I hope this puts an end to the “we just need more fans to vote” argument, because wow did we get it, and wow, did it not work. As always, one party vs. unorganised candidates sweeps almost everything, even with very small percentages of voters.
I was a big NO AWARD ALL SLATES last time, and they adapted to that, with sabotage nominations; I have a new strategy here which I hope people will consider:
NO AWARD above anyone connected to running this slate. Anyone who supported it, anyone who promoted it, anyone who worked on it: NO AWARD over them. NO AWARD above Vox Day, NO AWARD above Castalia House (and all its works), NO AWARD above all of it.Everyone else, vote for the best. Last year was a highly effective action showing rejection of all slates. But this year, the targets must be the specific perpetrators directly. It must be the people who are doing this, because while half of their interest is destruction, another half is self-promotion and boosting the visibility of their own works.
And until slates can be stopped via electoral changes, until e pluribus hugo can pass second reading at this year’s Business Meeting, this must be opposed. Because a vulnerability, once exposed, will be exploited. This will not stop, until it is stopped.
Particularly since Vox gets to spend all of daddy’s money on whatever little ragefest his neofascist heart desires.
e pluribus hugo is now the minimum requirement to save the Hugo awards, in anything like their current form. We knew this would take two years to fix, and this is year two; e pluribus hugo must pass second reading in Kansas City. Fandom, if you care at all about the Hugo Awards, do not fail.
Read. The. Main. Post. The Hugos are without any utility. They indicate that the book is boring, Changing the rules will nto work because you are up people who play games, and are not midwits. The rules will be kept.
The Puppies will win: if the awards blow up they will win, and if they do not blow up they will win.
What is weird about all this as that in the entire spectrum of the culture wars a group of scifi nerds, fantasy geeks and video game enthusiasts are winning……they are actually taking ground back from the left and they aren’t stopping for sh$t…these guys take scalps, burn their enemies bodies, and p!ss on their ashes and move on to the next target of total annihilation..they are unmerciful and brutal………beautiful…many people on the right should take notice…this is a case study in winning and what winning is……something the right sorely needs to learn….
Well, it is. Do not bring a narrative to a Role Playing Game, because you will find it runs somewhere you did not plan.
Far too many never want to actually expand their understanding. Vox Day is so far up in the OODA loop of the Puppy Kickers that he’s setup a Xanatos Gambit: he wins, whatever you do.