Some Reactions to Sad Puppies 2: Rainbow Puppy Lighthouse The Huggening

sad-puppy2 (2)

There have been a few blog posts pop up relating to my noble endeavor to end Puppy Related Sadness by going directly to my fans and asking for them to nominate me for a Hugo. As usual they’re written by humorless finger shakers or people who just don’t get it. But that’s okay, because I’m here to help!

Here is one that linked back to my blog today: http://file770.com/?p=15783 This is a pretty good one that brings up some interesting points, so it’ll serve to clarify a few things. The original post is in italics. I’m in bold.

Larry Correia’s Vulgar Blog Post – His Word

Actually, no. Somebody used that word to insult my shameless self-promotion, so I took it and made it my own, which is sort of what I do when people try to insult me. (as a result Monster Hunter Nation is now the #1 Google result for Cismale Gendernormative Fascism!) 

Adam Roberts, meet Larry Correia!

Okay. Nice to meet you, Adam (okay, I’ve got absolutely no idea who that is, but we’ll run with it).

Last week Larry Correia served up a whole hot fudge sundae of self-promotion, victimhood, and smof-stomping in “Sad Puppies 2: The Illustrated Edition” at Monster Hunter Nation.

Self-promotion. Check. Victimhood? That implies that I’m sitting around rather than doing something, but hey, to left wingers “victim” is like an achievement, and since I’m normally just a filthy heartless capitalist 1%er on the internet, ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED! Smof-stomping? Sounds awesome.

Then he quotes me.

Some people rejoice in sad puppies. They say that having one tiny group of fans always vote for their favorites is “tradition.” They call popular authors’ attempts to stir up their non-WorldCon attending fanbase to vote in their little popularity contest as “vulgar.” By being vulgar and super non-traditional Larry Correia’s Sad Puppies 1 campaign only missed the Best Novel cutoff by a few votes, and those brave souls who supported him last year can do so again for FREE this year. But he needs more help… Larry Correia fans are far more likely to spend $40 on ammo, or snacks for the while they watch the new season of Justified than to join WorldCon, and if they actually attended a WorldCon they would probably be very, very bored.

But if somebody like Larry Correia would be nominated for a Hugo, then puppies everywhere would rejoice.

Indeed. And if you’ve watched the video you’re imagining Voice Over Guy and even the proper background music as you read that.

It really gravels him, as many fans as he has, that last year he lost what everyone admits is a popularity contest. Correia’s Monster Hunter Legion missed the 2013 Hugo ballot by 17 votes.

Ah, but here the obfuscation starts. First off, I was unaware that gravels was a word. Sweet. Second, Everyone admits it is a popularity contest? Really? That’s fascinating, because outside of a tiny insular group of folks that attend WorldCons, most people aren’t aware of that. In fact, me coming out and saying that it was just a popularity contest certainly managed to cause a lot of twisted panties. And most of that tiny insular group (smof, if you will) sure don’t like to come out and publicly admit that it is just a popularity contest. You see, the Hugo is SUPER PRESTIGIOUS and they’d love to keep it that way.

His strategy for avoiding the same fate in 2014 involves the rhetorical sleight-of-hand of convincing his fans that voting for their favorite (him) is a virtuous act of nonconformist rebellion, while the identical behavior directed by other fans towards their favorites (not him) is hideous elitism.

WHOOOSH. That is the sound of the Point flying past somebody totally oblivious.

Okay, let’s break this down for the utterly clueless. There’s not really any “rhetorical sleight-of-hand” involved with me going directly to my fans and asking them to pony up cash to vote for me. (I do like how it is implied that you guys are so easily bamboozled though).

If anything, compared to most self-promoting writers, I’m at least honest about it. The part that seems to get me in trouble is that I’m asking my readers instead of the proper gate keepers.

As for the nonconformist rebellion bit, he must have missed the last few years of internet arguments, literati trolling, and assorted BS my regular readers have watched transpire on this blog, Facebook, or Twitter, but that can’t possibly be why a bunch of you who don’t give a crap about going to WorldCon kicked in money to vote last year. I guess I’m just that good at stirring up nonconformist rebellion. Shrug.

Shouldn’t that work?

Considering how unpopular I am with the typical WorldCon attendee, and the fact that I missed last year’s short list by a handful of votes with a total that would’ve put me 2nd or 3rd in any prior year, and my entire suggested slate of nominees made the short list in every single other category, yep. Pretty much.

Along the way, Correia called on people to nominate his editor at Baen, Toni Weisskopf. Now that’s something I can agree with – Toni Weisskopf should be competing for a Hugo. She’s a terrific developer of talent.

So there’s hope for this guy yet! 

Beneath a photo of Toni’s dog, Daphne, Correia continued –

Daphne is sad because most of her owner’s authors are despised and ridiculed by the traditional WorldCon voting crowd and the snooty literati. She knows that her owner deserves a Hugo for Best Editor because of her impressive career editing hundreds of popular works of sci-fi and fantasy and for discovering dozens of new authors who went on to be big sellers…

Yep. Now let me point something out for. You realize Toni is worthy, and you are apparently aware of her many remarkable achievements, but did you realize that the only Hugo nomination Toni has ever received was because of my campaign last year?  Well, huh… Go figure.

But since we’re on this topic of this biased little popularity contest and how worthy figures like Toni have gotten completely hosed by this cliquish little group, were you aware that Stan Schmidt had been nominated over THIRTY times before he final won, and he actually had to retire in order to get that? If you want to talk about an editor developing new talent, you’d think the guy who edited Analog the entire time most of us have been alive, Schmidt should have won his Hugo long ago. But nope. He had a enough fans to get the nom, but since he wasn’t a WorldCon favorite, Stan was ignored.

And that’s in a category that at least has some different people win once in a while. Locus has won THIRTY Hugos. 30. Three zero. If you want a glimpse into the type of people who vote for the Hugos, they read Locus, and the only time I’ve ever showed up in Locus is on their bestseller list.  

Hmmm… Maybe a little shake up might do this super prestigious award a little good!

For all that the Hugos are a popularity contest, fans are aware a writer can sell an enormous amount of sf — stuff they like! — without moving them to give him an award. One of my personal favorites, Mack Reynolds, sold hundreds of stories in his career, only one of which garnered a Hugo nomination.

Wait… So you’re saying that Mack Reynolds was really really good, but got mostly ignored because he wasn’t a fan favorite of one tiny splinter faction of all sci-fi readers, yet I’m the bad guy?

It sounds absurd to argue that Toni Weisskopf has rendered service to the field while pretending her authors – which is to say Baen-published authors – are generally despised and ridiculed.

You must not know very many Baen authors… We are the black sheep of sci-fi/fantasy, but the thing that really pisses off the groupthinkers is that we’re so damned proud of that.

And for the record, we’re only despised and ridiculed by the literati message fic types.  Find some politically correct SMOFers (which is most of them), bring up Tom Kratman and watch them burst into flames. That’s really it for the ridicule though, since out in the real world we actually sell books by the ton and sleep on large piles of money.

Begin with Larry Correia himself. Worldcon members nominated Correia for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 2011. They sure didn’t despise him that year.

Well, I can see that somebody totally doesn’t know the origin story of Sad Puppies!

Let me help you out. I got the Campbell nomination because one small contingent of WorldCon voters is made up of Baen Barflies, and I was the new writer that they all got behind that year, and that in and of itself was a miracle, since getting all the Barflies to vote together is like herding cats. Just ask them. But my first book had made a big splash with Baen readers, so they nominated me. Most of WorldCon didn’t despise me then because at that point they hadn’t heard of me yet.

Then my name showed up on the shortlist so they looked me up… Hoo boy. It was the end of the freaking world. Most of them didn’t actually read my book to know they needed to vote against me. They found out I was an outspoken, right wing political blogger, and gun rights activist. Critics came out of the woodwork. Smofers actively campaigned against me. If you voted for Larry Correia, you were a bad person. I was accused of misogyny, racism, hatey-hate-mongery, and why wouldn’t I keep my Jesus out of their uterus! My favorite post however was from a British blogger who said that “if Larry Correia wins the Campbell it will end literature forever”.

So about a week after I got the nomination, and estimating the number of Barflies going to Reno, I figured I would come in last. Bingo. Not that I mind, since the guy who won hasn’t published a book since and my 11th is coming out this summer, so I’ve managed to squeak by (and personally, of the five of us, I thought Dan Wells was the most talented writer). 

Watching people brag about how they hadn’t read me, and never would, but were super proud to vote against me because of my having the wrong politics was enlightening. But that’s only part of it. Actually attending that WorldCon was very eye opening. It is an extremely political environment. If you want to win, you suck up to the right crowd. If you don’t say the right thing to that crowd, buh-bye.

Now, talent and sucking up to the right crowd are not mutually exclusive. There have been some extremely talented nominees, but the only way to be a nominee is if you’re popular with the right people. But if you are popular enough, then the actual quality is irrelevant. You make it sound like everyone admits this, when in fact, very few do.

And this isn’t even getting into the many allegations of fraud and complaints of missing nominations I heard, which aren’t my stories to tell, but I’m a retired auditor, so let’s just say that the public part of Sad Puppies is only half the fun for me! Somebody really cynical might think I’m just doing all this as a way to collect data for analysis, but that’s just crazy talk. 🙂

So I decided in Reno that if this thing was just a popularity contest, since I was popular outside of this tiny group, why not just go directly to my fans, tell them about how it works, and then ask them to go vote?

When I left that WorldCon I had a long conversation with another author who I will not name. I won’t out this particular person because he is decently popular with the WorldCon voters clique and has won a Hugo. I told him what I was thinking of doing. His comment to me was that he was normally against my crazy desires to break everything (hey, former auditor, can’t help it), but in this case, the system sucked and needed it.

Of course, that was years ago. Since then my fans have gotten a lot of enjoyment out of literati twatwaffles coming around, picking fights, calling us names, and explaining how I’m not a *real* writer and my fans are dumb. So if you want to know how I got 100 people to kick in $60 last year to do this, it certainly isn’t because of my crafty sleight of hand, but rather because they’ve personally seen the snooty morons up close, and like me, rejoice in anything that pisses those people off.

Lois McMaster Bujold is a 12-time Hugo nominee, 5-time winner – and 3 of her Hugo-winning novels were published by Baen.

You’ll note that in the prior posts of mine you went through, I always say most Baen authors, as in all but one. Lois is our one anomaly because there is a big group of WorldCon voters who love her. The Barflies are a small group, and there is some crossover between them and the Bujold fans, but there are more Bujold fans at WorldCon than there are Barflies. If Lois writes a Vorksogian novel, she is going to get nominated that year. The rest of us are fully aware of this. She’s had an entrenched fan base at WorldCon since 1989.

Once again, popularity contest, and she’s popular with that group. And I really like Lois! I think she’s an extremely good author. The main difference between Lois and the rest of us however, is that the average Correia/Ringo/Kratman/Hoyt/Williamson fan would rather set themselves on fire than sit through a WorldCon, especially when it is competing with DragonCon (i.e. Nerd Mardi Gras).  

Other current Baen authors have history with the Hugo/Campbell awards from when they were with other publishers. Timothy Zahn won a Hugo and received two other nominations for short fiction in Analog.

Wait… So your evidence that the WorldCon voters aren’t biased against Baen is one of my publishing house’s authors won a Hugo in 1984? I was in 4th grade. Many of my readers hadn’t been born yet. And judging by the general cardiovascular fitness of most WorldCon attendees, I’d hazard a guess that most of the people who voted in 1984 are dead now.

Wen Spencer won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer when she was with Roc.

So one of our authors won an award before she was published by us. Wow. That sure is some compelling evidence that the WorldCon clique isn’t predisposed to dislike stuff from Baen!

It is a little surprising that two leading alternate history authors, Robert Conroy and S. M. Stirling, who are up for the Sidewise Award almost every year, have never made the Hugo ballot. (Stirling’s Nantucket trilogy came out when he was at NAL/Roc, so as I’m suggesting, the pattern probably has nothing to do with Baen.)

Conroy and Stirling are both accomplished authors. Full agreement… Wait… So are you agreeing with me now that this popularity contest is stagnant and needs a good kick in the nuts?

You want to know why those guys win Sidewise Awards but not Hugos? (same reason I’ve won some Audies). It is a juried award where a handful of specialist experts read a bunch of submissions and weigh their relative merits, instead of a popularity contest decided by warring cliques of fandom. Sadly, which award has more name recognition to regular readers? Yep. The popularity contest.   

However, I never said it was just about Baen (especially since this bias extends into categories other than best novel or best editor). This applies to anybody who isn’t popular with the in crowd in any category.

 And there are some more Baen authors — Michael Z. Williamson, Eric Flint, David Weber, and Mercedes Lackey – who have provided so much entertainment over the course of their careers it’d be great to see them nominated someday.

Interesting. I’m friends with some of those people and have had long conversations with a few of them about this very topic… Want to guess which one of us they agree with? And if you think I’m militant about the bias in this business, Mike makes me look like a hippy with a Give Peace a Chance sticker on my Prius.

I too would like to see some of those authors nominated someday, but they won’t ever be nominated unless they do the same sort of thing I’m doing right now that you find so very distasteful. The only reason I can do this and have a chance of sneaking in is because I have a bigger online presence than the other people you mentioned, and my fans are hard core. If I thought I could pull this off with somebody else the literati found as uncouth as me, I’d do it in a heartbeat.

And the sad thing is if Flint or Lackey were to get a nomination nowadays, at least their politics would keep them from getting character assassinated the whole time.

In fact, the part I’m really excited about is if I do pull this off, I will have demonstrated once and for all that it is just a popularity contest, and then I can’t wait to see what authors way more popular than me do with this most prestigious award EVAR. I don’t know how many blog posts I saw lamenting some amazing favorite book of theirs not making the list. Good. Now you know what you need to do in order to get your favorite author on there for next time.

See, I suspect when you say self-promotion, you’re using it as something derogatory. Popularity contests are always about self-promotion. In the past, the Hugo was about self-promotion, only it was promoting yourself to the WorldCon crowd. After the reception I got from WorldCon, I figured what the hell, I’ll just go around them. Of course, the people most offended by this sort of barbarity are the people currently getting their way.

You mentioned Hideous Elitism earlier, as if I didn’t approve when other authors engaged in self-promotion. Quite the contrary. I think it is fantastic. Now you’re putting words in my mouth.

You’ll note that in all of these silly campaigning posts I’ve done, I’ve never bashed any other author’s promotion of their work. Take Seanan McGuire/Mira Grant for example. She promotes herself and is popular with the WorldCon crowd and has won some stuff. Good. I like her writing. I’ve VOTED for her. An author who doesn’t self-promote is a sucker. Look at last year’s best novel winner, John Scalzi. I am the political polar opposite of Scalzi. I disagree with Scalzi on about just about everything, but as a capitalist I’ll give him points for being such a shameless self-promoter, and the typical WorldCon voter loves him.  

I think if an author wants to actually make a living at this stuff, they’d better be a self-promoting machine. My problem isn’t with the authors and other creative types promoting their work, since that is sort of our job. But some of us will never be liked by the average WorldCon voter. Period. My problem is with one tiny group of gate keepers declaring themselves the deciders of all that is good.

So we can either put up with the gate keepers, or we can go around them. I don’t know how you define “victim” but I’m guessing we have very different definitions of the word. 🙂

And since I’m on a roll, the comments to this blog post are good too.

  1. 1.    Reed Andrus on January 22, 2014 at 3:47 pm said:

Larry Correia seems to be in the small-but-very-visible class of genre authors whose work is extremely good while (his in this case) personality sucks. There are a few others I could name, but probably won’t in the interest of fair play. Nice write-up on this particular innocuous kerfuffle.

My personality sucks. That is remarkably nice compared to most of the things I’ve been called on the internet. At least this guy was honest enough to admit that I can actually write. Most of the time they just call me names and haven’t actually read my stuff, so I call this a huge step in the right direction.

Luckily, the award is for Best, not Nicest. Though in all honestly I’d be curious as to what the criteria for “nice” would be to somebody like Mr. Andrus. I’m betting for the people on my side of the aisle that probably means not arguing back whenever somebody tells us how stupid we are. 

  1. 1.    J. C. Salomon on January 22, 2014 at 5:10 pm said:

There’s no “rhetorical sleight-of-hand” here. Larry is openly acknowledging the Hugo Awards as a popularity contest and he’s asking for votes. And anyone asking for votes while being less honest about this is fair game to be—rather gently—mocked.

“You can beat any system. All you do is turn the handle the way it goes, only more so.”

Now this guy gets it. And that is also a really good quote.

EDIT: Wait just a second… This post was from a website called File 770… That sounded strangely familiar for some reason. Oh, will you look at that. Thanks, Wikipedia. File 770 has won SIX Hugos for Best Fanzine and been nominated another TWENTY TWO times. Well, shucks. I can’t imagine why they’d think shameless self-promotion by a WorldCon outsider would be such a terrible thing!

And on that note, my nomination for best Fanzine will be going to http://elitistbookreviews.blogspot.com/, who Sad Puppies 1 got a Hugo Nomination for last year. 🙂

##

But since I’m surfing around the interwebs tonight, let’s see what other fun ad Puppies related stuff I can find in the track backs. From http://chris-gerrib.livejournal.com/

Okay, that is a very fair post, but the poster is missing one big part of the puzzle (and he did vote for me for the Campbell, so we’re cool) 🙂 He read MHI and didn’t think it was Hugo worthy. Fair enough, except that was my 1st novel. I’m promoting Warbound, which is the 10th novel I’ve written. You know what they say about practice. And speaking of the Campbell, like I said, I wanted Dan to win.

He said MHI is just basic Let’s Go Kill Some Monsters fiction. Okay, but Warbound is the last book of a trilogy which is a totally different series, and as far as originality goes, I don’t know, it is a pretty standard diesel punk, 1930s alternative history, super heroes with sci-fi based extraterrestrial magic, noir-pulp, epic fantasy, Tesla weapons, gangster, zeppelin, great depression, samurai power armor novel… 

(though my favorite negative review is, and always will be, the guy who said the Grimnoir trilogy was just ripping off the X-Men when I had FDR try to round up over a hundred thousand people who were considered scary to put them in concentration camps. Holy crap.)

My Grimnoir trilogy has already been nominated for a bunch of other awards, including the Hugo equivalent of other countries, and won a couple of juried awards like two Audies for best audiobook, so it isn’t like I’m just chucking crap at the wall to see what will stick. This is actually a good book, not that very many WorldCon voters would ever look at it otherwise. 🙂

The Drowning Empire, Episode 44: Subotai's Dilemna
Quick Reminder, SAD PUPPIES 2 only available until the end of the month

93 thoughts on “Some Reactions to Sad Puppies 2: Rainbow Puppy Lighthouse The Huggening”

  1. Not quite. I’m not anti-Hugo. I just don’t care about either Hugo or Nebula. Partly because I don’t have time to read all the nominees, so it wouldn’t be fair for me to vote for one, and partly because if I did, a lot of the nominee works wouldn’t interest me, which doesn’t mean their quality is bad, just that I don’t like them. Just as I like Scotch and amber ales, but destest IPA and Rye. Now, if you narrow the field to Scotch, I’m your man. So I’d be all over a milSF award. But a generic SF award? Meh.

  2. Oh, I do think it’s ridiculous to have 5 categories of short work and consider anything over 40K a novel. The multiple short categories are obviously to maximize awards and potential slots, and 40K as a novel was a valid criteria in 1950, but the literary world has changed. These days it should be “Short work” and “novel” meaning over 80K.

  3. Just for being called ‘easily bamboozled’, I’m going to register my kids to vote!

    There. That oughta make some heads explode.

  4. Let’s see, Neil Gaiman is getting a nomination this year (for a book that is called a novel but may really be a novella, but I believe WorldCon voters have tried nominating an email he sent to his daughter’s school for best novel). And very likely Margaret Atwood will get nominated, because every award she gets causes a baby panda to be born. Scalzi might be up again–he used the word “human” in the title of his book, how amazing is that! Orson Scott Card is not getting nominated, but if he does protests will rise and Amnesty International will have to get involved.

    I haven’t read Warbound, but I liked Hard Magic and want to read Spellbound and Warbound. You have my nod. Good luck.

  5. well, I’d love the headline for an MHI book winning a Hugo. something like MHI:Alpha Kills Secret Monsters of Fandom” would be appropriate

    1. OK, have I so thoroughly gaffiated that I missed SMOF being transmogrified into “Secret MONSTERS of Fandom” instead of “masters”?

      every once in a while SWMBO and I discuss getting back into fandom, and the idea usually dies an uninteresting death…

  6. Personally, I’d have to disagree with the Chris Gerrib nonsense post. It was only an opinion of a sad and lonely man. I mean look at the guy’s picture. He’s about as interesting as a scheduled meeting. Put pockets on his shirt and he’s a pencil holder. It’s all about opinions apparently. Michael Williamson apologizes covertly in his comment and claims he’s just stating what he likes (his opinion), including the Scotch he consumes before, during, and after each of his performances. Does he get paid for advertising Scotch? I wonder. Some people will do anything to take away the sting of life I guess. Anyway, Chris Gerrib may have thought I Am Not A Serial Killer is not an ordinary novel, but it is. If he had read it at all, I doubt he would attempt to compare it to Monster Hunter International. I’ve read both, and my opinion could be summed up easily: Monster Hunter International is adventurous, clever, full of fast-paced action, daring, and fun to read. I Am Not A Serial Killer was the opposite, in my opinion. Because this is my opinion, I think Larry should have lots of awards, and he should have lots right now while he’s still writing and not yet retired.

    1. Gerrib is a regular leftie troll on Rand Simberg’s site, usually posting about how Liberal = Good and Conservative = Bad.

  7. I do think it’s ridiculous to have 5 categories of short work and consider anything over 40K a novel.

    I’m 40k into my current novel and I’m not even one-sixth done. My big novels run 300k. I’m also putting out another book soon that goes around 60k. It’s basically a novella as far as I’m concerned.

  8. I really hope VD above is Vox Day.

    Once we get Larry his (overdue) Hugo, we need to start a campaign to get one for Vox. Talk about heads exploding…

    1. SMOF = Secret Master of Fandom. Look for the Propeller Beanie.

      Oh, and Larry, the IMPORTANT question: if your personality sucks, does it at least have the common courtesy for a reach-around ??? (evil grin)

  9. Secret Master Of Fandom. It’s a joke there are no secret masters of fandom, because they are all like cats and go wherever they want.

    Still a MHI book dealing with the mosnters of SMOF would be fun to read, and might well make you friends too. Well one can hope.

  10. Don’t tell them this, Larry, but I often have a deep, dark fantasy of being nominated for a Hugo, winning it, then going on stage and proceed to tear the entire thing apart verbally, deriding their selection process and, should they get angry, accuse them of racism, because according to everything I’ve seen so far, nothing makes them happier than a minority calling out the establishment on inequality.

          1. I’m this weird hodgepodge of southeast Asian, Spanish, and German. I still need to find out where the Asian came from (surprisingly, the test ruled out Genghis Khan… damnit).

  11. Curses.

    After reading chords of drivel last year that came with the voting packet, I told myself that there is no way I am going to waste any more money on that Con and “support” that kind of garbage. Then came the Sad Puppies Campaign, and I have been waffling about it. I like supporting authors that have a good read without preaching heavy-handed global-warming the-human-race-are-terrible-people message fiction. But every time I go to the Hugo site, I have just not been able to cross that line of giving them money.

    Then this article. It pushed me over the edge, and I gave them money. And now I need a shower to get the Hugo stink off of me, but I will do what I can to get some actual good books to get the award.

    Let’s get you, and Toni, and Howard Taylor some popularity awards!

    1. I’m biting the bullet and doing it this year. I can’t afford it, but… as a new author (who will NEVER be eligible for any award, not as a non-traditional author) supporting those in my industry who get it (and write really good books…) I have to do it.

      1. They officially support non-traditional works. Not sure how that translates into getting a nomination, but here is the official stance:

        Are works published electronically eligible?

        Yes they are. The definitions of the Hugo Award categories refer only to the nature of the work, not the medium in which it is published. A novel is a novel, regardless of whether it is published in hardback, softback, as a serial in a magazine, or on disk. A webcomic is a graphic story just as much as is a comic book or graphic novel. A fanzine is a fanzine, regardless of whether it is posted as paper, emailed as a PDF, or a blog.

        BTW, the wife and I enjoyed Pixie Noir. 🙂

      2. I’m glad to hear you both liked it. And Pixie is actually published by StonCroft Publishing, in both print and paper. So? Who knows. I’ve bought into rocking the boat from the inside, this year.

  12. Larry, you’re a rabble rouser, a revolutionary. We NEED a Che Correia shirt where you are holding a puppy instead of an AK-47.

  13. Wait, what? Someone somewhere thinks you can win a Hugo _without campaigning for it_? What kind of idiot is he? Oh. the kind who’ll rant about Larry without reading his work, and vote against him because of his politics. Well, okay, ID10T error.

    Larry — as you may have noticed, I frequently disagree with your politics. However, I own most of your books and expect this to continue. And I’ll vote for you if I buy a WorldCon membership this year. (Though I admit that’s unlikely!)

    –Phil

  14. Hey, bonus fact: Larry Correia and J. R. R. Tolkien can be compared as great writers who never won a Hugo for Best Novel (yes, Tolkien was eligible in for the Hugo in ’55 and ’56…)

  15. So, he agrees with you about everything except what to do about it? What’s the issue there, exactly?

    Oh yeah, it doesn’t meet the approved list for how to break into WorldCon’s good graces. Screw ’em.

      1. Yeah, it is.

        Of course, if people INSIDE the damn boat would rock it, people outside the boat wouldn’t have to.

        Funny how that works, ain’t it?

  16. I don’t get it. Where in your sad puppy campaign is there ‘slight of hand?’ That phrase implies subtly, not satirical bricks to the face (and ensuing laughter).

      1. No. Apparently I’ve conned a bunch of you into buying WorldCon memberships because you really do believe Puppy Related Sadness is an actual medical condition and real crisis tearing America apart. But personally I’m waiting for the blog post that exposes this “Larry Correia” is just a pawn and this is really all a nefarious plot to sabotage the Hugos by Wendell the Manatee. Now there is a master of metaphorical manipulation if there ever was one.

        1. He is the craftiest of all manatees and a hero to his people. We land mammals merely dance for his amusement.

        1. We were just discussing Wendell’s potential presidential run on FB. He’s over 35 in manatee years and was born in coastal Florida, so good to go.

      2. Sweet! Let me know if he needs a speechwriter or anything. I definitely need to find a way to get paid for writing, and since I write politics… 😀

  17. First off, Larry your work has gotten me through tough times, and has been more entertaining than most things on the idiot box. Second, I have met Larry and he is one of the most genuine and humble people I have had shared the company of. So in closing, Screw this guy, as most of you, I have never heard of him and I hope we never do.

  18. “my favorite negative review is, and always will be, the guy who said the Grimnoir trilogy was just ripping off the X-Men when I had FDR try to round up over a hundred thousand people who were considered scary to put them in concentration camps. Holy crap.”

    Clearly, history needs to sue Chris Claremont for plagiarism. I mean … sheesh. I run an Avengersverse+X-Men game online (link in my name, speaking of shameless self-promotion), in which the government consists largely of power-hungry bureaucrats and superhumans are widely viewed as exotic and terrifying. So, clearly I’m ripping off both MHI /and/ Grimnoir. Sorry, Larry!

    1. The best part is that guy probably has no fucking idea that liberal superhero FDR actually rounded up over a hundred thousand people and put them in concentration camps because he thought they were scary.

  19. Wait a minute you mean when you said think of the puppies and think of Stephen King we weren’t really doing it for the puppies or Stephen King? I feel so duped, so tricked by your magnificent sleight-of-hand Larry. You are the chessmaster, congratulations. 9_9

  20. Silly Literati! First you dismiss Larry because he’s self published, and he gets a contract form Baen. Next you dismiss him for being a nobody, and he gets on the NYT Bestseller list. Now you say he’s not a ‘real author’ because he hasn’t won a Hugo, and it’s now just a matter of time.

    It’s the literary equilivant of yelling “Hey Genghis! Bet you can’t conquer my city!”

    1. Ah yes, that would have come from poor dumb Clamps. He’d be a typical voter, except for that whole sex offender thing.

      1. Being a sex offender doesn’t stop lefties from voting for them; not sure why being a sex offender would exclude him from their crowd.

      2. Why not, they covered for Roman Polanski for years. The guy drugged a 13 yr old and proceeded to rape her repeatedly over several hours. But somehow to the left, she not only deserved it but she should have been grateful for the attention.
        I don’t understand these people.

  21. Hi all, when I saw mention of sad puppies I just comment here on account of having a puppy of my own who is actually quite depressed over the state of SciFi and literature in general. Her name is Uschi and she let me know that I had to put up a comment up on your blog.

    First things first, she wants me to let you all know that she is a real puppy as well as a fan of your work. Here’s a picture she had me take of her:

    I don’t know where she got that plush manatee from, but as you can see, she is real, enjoys your books, and is very sad. I mean look at her face…or what you can see of it.

    She loves your work though (especially Monster Hunter Alpha – thanks to you she’s got a thing for werewolves) and she thinks that it’s horrible that you’ve not gotten a Hugo yet, despite the fact that what you write is a lot of fun to read. She’s looked at some of the books that did win and was horrified that so many of them lack explosions and shootouts. In her opinion there’s something very wrong with a book if you get more than half way into it without there being a really awesome fight scene of some sort. For this reason she has insisted that I post this and her picture as well as give you permission to use her name and image in your Sad Puppies campaign.

    P.S. Do you have any clue why she might have insisted I take her picture next to a plush manatee?

  22. I for one am SHOCKED that this blogger didn’t even think of the puppies! He never mentioned them once. For me, that says a lot about humanity and its sad state. Will no one think of the puppies? I bet 99.9% of you won’t re-post this, but for the .1% that do, you will show the world that you care about our furry brethren that share this spaceship Earth.

    Please think of them before you fill up the tank of your SUV.

  23. As for MHI vs the Grimnoir Chronicles- I have to admit the Grimnoir books is my favorite series this century. Damn straight it deserves a Hugo. It deserves a Hugo presented by a troop of Twi’lek dancers.

    The characters in that series were fantastic, a great cast. I was sad that you decided to end it. My favorite touch is still the historical “quotes” at the beginning of every chapter. Had me reaching for the googles to find context and the original.

      1. I really hope not. I like all of Larry’s books but the Grimnoir trilogy was the very best. I haven’t read a lot of recent science fiction (I stopped pretty much in the 80’s) but this was fresh and unique. I listened to it rather than read, it, and Bronson Pinchot narration was undoubtedly a large part of why it was so enjoyable. I’ll probably get it for the Kindle. I really hope we see/hear more of Jake, Faye, Heinrich, et al. They were such engaging characters.

  24. I agree, Warbound was a really good book and an overall really good series. I found the whole magic system to be very Brandon Sandersonesque. I thought you were ripping off real history with having FDR round all the magicals up (y’know that whole WWII era Japanese internment camp thing). Keep up the good work!

    1. I have a (very very leftist) acquaintance who is a history prof at a university. Granted, her focus is medieval history, not American, but I was shocked when I brought up the internment camps like Topaz and she had no idea what I was talking about. I was even more shocked when she argued with me about it. She told me that it had to be some right-wing historical smear on FDR. I eventually linked her to a number of sites about it, including the Topaz museum and she shut up. But this is someone teaching college students, and she was that ignorant of some thing fairly major in recent history. It’s sad how far the leftist groupthink and groupspeak has reached.

      1. I thought the damned internment camps and the atomic bomb were the ONLY things they taught about the Pacific War these days (because they provide that warm fuzzy feeling that comes from hating America).

        1. They leave the concentration camps out, because it is a smudge on the shining liberal icon that is FDR. Nobody remembers that Truman was a democrat, so they still teach about the bomb. 🙂

      2. Tarl, I’m not a teacher nor a student these days, so this is second-hand information, but my understanding of what they teach about the Pacific Theater is the nukes and that Pearl Harbor was a justified response to the US not negotiating with Japan on their oil needs, not an unprovoked sneak attack. Pretty much all the rest of it (Bataan, Iwo Jima, Midway, Japan’s treatment of mainland Asians and Allied POWs) is ignored.

        Your mileage may vary, of course, as the teachers/professors I tend to hear from are acquaintances/friends at more of the blue-state unis (or formerly at blue-state unis, now feeling exiled and isolated in places like Utah or The South). I can’t imagine that sort of explanation of the Pacific Theater would fly in most of the schools in places like Utah or Texas.

  25. “Larry Correia fans are far more likely to spend $40 on ammo, or snacks for the while they watch the new season of Justified than to join WorldCon, and if they actually attended a WorldCon they would probably be very, very bored.”

    Well, except that I can’t buiy much ammo for $40 these days ….

    1. Heh. I just paid $40 for ammo cans to put ammo in. Not for storage, but for range trips. . . Might have to plunk down for some Sad Puppy voting anyways. . .

  26. “You want to know why those guys win Sidewise Awards but not Hugos? (same reason I’ve won some Audies). It is a juried award where a handful of specialist experts read a bunch of submissions and weigh their relative merits, instead of a popularity contest decided by warring cliques of fandom. Sadly, which award has more name recognition to regular readers? Yep. The popularity contest. ”

    Eh, I’m not sure juried awards are so much better as different. I read all the World Fantasy Award nominees for best novel in 2008, 2009, and 2010 and I don’t think they made the right call on the winner in any of those years.

    On the other hand, nobody has won more than twice, so they aren’t by any means stagnant.

    1. They might not make the right call and they can be just as biased (look at the Oscars!) but that is the reason. Usually the juries actually read/watch all of the things that are submitted to them, which can’t be said for the popularity contests.

  27. What is this I don’t even…

    “Larry Correia fans are far more likely to spend $40 on ammo, or snacks for the while they watch the new season of Justified than to join WorldCon.” Man, I’m as liberal as they come and the only thing I can find wrong with that statement is that $40 doesn’t go as far on ammo as it used to, especially if you’re buying snacks too.

    On the plus side, he reminded me that I haven’t watched this week’s episode of Justified yet, so thanks guy!

  28. A point and a question.
    First, some few of us still remember when John W. Campbell was the iron fist driving Astounding then Analog down the long bumpy road against the hoards claiming SF was just a niche market and a passing fad.
    Second, a commenter spoke of the death of literature as if it was a bad thing. Now there’s a sad puppy that should have breathed its last long since.
    To refresh your memory, you and I were scolded in Huntsville to stop talking about guns and get back to science fiction.
    As for your critics, I’d just forward all comments to your publicists, Kratman and Mad Mike, and let them deal with it. Or as the old saying goes: Cry havoc and let loose the hounds of war!

  29. I just wanted to let you know that I’ve known Mike Glyer since 1976, and he’s a political conservative — but one who doesn’t use the term “liberal” or “leftist” to smear people with whom he disagrees about other issues.

    One other thing: he’s been employed since 1980 or so…as an auditor.

    1. Oh, good for him. Then as an auditor he should be curious to see if the old rumors of WorldCon discarding nominations they don’t like are true then, and this should confirm that everything is totally honest and upright.

      As for liberal or leftist, oh good, the No Labels police are here. Notice that conservatives and libertarians never seem to mind when they are labeled as conservative or libertarian when they are being smeared by the pepole they disagree with.

      As for Glyver’s personal politics, don’t know, don’t care. He could worship fruit bats and I’d say good for him. The people who actively campaigned against me last time and character assassinated me were self identifed liberals though, as are the vast majority of my hate mailers, the SFWA bullies, and the boring ass message fictioneers worried about defaulting to non-binary gender in sci-fi. So you’ll live.

      Obviously, not all liberals believe the same crap, and we’re all unique special snowflakes, but that takes too damn long to type repeatedly. If you’re not a pretentious literati douche, good for you. Then we don’t have a problem. 🙂

      1. “who doesn’t use the term “liberal” or “leftist” to smear people”

        Have you been calling spades ‘spades’ again, Larry? tsk.

  30. MHI is very high pun per word, which gets it to good in my book. However, Grimnoir is really good, before factoring in FPW. The characters are better, the plot is more consistent, and the story is better structured. It’s clearly a development in terms of writing and plotting skill.

  31. “Wait… So you’re saying that Mack Reynolds was really really good, but got mostly ignored because he wasn’t a fan favorite of one tiny splinter faction of all sci-fi readers, yet I’m the bad guy?”

    Nailed it.

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