A letter to the SMOFs, moderates, and fence sitters from the author who started Sad Puppies

On Saturday they announced the finalists for the Hugo Awards. As you are aware by now, Sad Puppies suggested candidates absolutely dominated. I tried to mostly avoid the internet this weekend because it was a holiday better spent with family than hate mail.

This blog post is directed at the newcomers, the fence sitters, the undecided, and the unlucky SMOFs who’ve been caught in the crossfire. There is no need to address my detractors, because they have already repeatedly demonstrated that they’ll just ignore what I actually say and do, and fabricate their own wild and crazy narrative about what I secretly meant to say.

This is going to be get long, but there are a lot of things being tossed around that I need to respond to.

For those of you just joining us, Sad Puppies 3 was a campaign to get talented, worthy, deserving authors who would normally never have a chance nominated for the supposedly prestigious Hugo awards.

I started this campaign a few years ago because I believed that the awards were politically biased, and dominated by a few insider cliques. Authors who didn’t belong to these groups or failed to appease them politically were shunned. When I said this in public, I was called a liar, and told that the Hugos represented all of fandom and that the awards were strictly about quality. I said that if authors with “unapproved” politics were to get nominations, the quality of the work would be irrelevant, and the insider cliques would do everything in their power to sabotage that person. Again, I was called a liar, so I set out to prove my point.

This blog post has details and links to most of the background, history, and fallout from last time: https://monsterhunternation.com/2014/04/24/an-explanation-about-the-hugo-awards-controversy/

Basically, I did what the other side had been doing for years, only in public and with the wrong kind of fans, and everything unfolded just like I predicted it would. Especially vehement was the contingent of fandom that I took to calling Social Justice Warriors.  This may offend the No Labels crowd, but oh well, it is what it is. The name has stuck in our culture.

Having proven my point far better than I’d ever hoped, I was going to walk away, but Brad Torgersen is a very idealistic author and fan, and he was inspired to continue the program for another year. All of his explanations are available at this link: https://monsterhunternation.com/2015/01/21/sad-puppies-3-only-a-few-days-to-register-to-vote/

Sad Puppies 1 consisted of me and a handful of blog posts. Sad Puppies 2, more people joined in, we had some fun with it (check the link, we’ve got badly drawn cartoons, videos, and a spokesmanatee), and we made a dent. A handful of nominations damned near caused the apocalypse. Then Sad Puppies 3 was wildly successful beyond all of our expectations.

Now I want to address some of the many concerns I’ve seen voiced over the last few days. I will try to be as honest and direct as possible.

-SP says that they’re fighting back against biased politics by having biased politics.

Yes and no. SP1 was very politically biased because it was just me. SP2 did have a preponderance of nominees on the right side of the political spectrum, again, because that slate was basically my suggested list of stuff that I personally enjoyed. However, ultimately that didn’t matter because the liberals we got noms for were just as attacked and vilified as the rest of us.

SP3 is actually extremely politically diverse. That’s because this time our slate of suggestions was put together by a bigger group of authors and fans, and since Brad was running the show and trying to be all about getting recognition for quality, deserving authors, their personal beliefs were of no concern. Don’t take my word for it. Go through our list of nominees for yourself. You’ll find that we have liberals, conservatives, moderates, and question marks who’ve kept their politics to themselves.

What these authors have in common is that they are good, entertaining, and wouldn’t normally have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting a nomination because they aren’t inclined to kiss the right butts. If you look at our best novel nominees, none of them are conservatives.  I was the only one on there who could possibly be described as right wing, and I refused my nomination.

For the record, Brad Torgersen is a moderate. By Utah standards he is a flaming liberal.

As you go through the other categories, you’ll find that we put up many authors and editors who are my polar political opposites, and I’d guess that a majority of them are actually moderate to left on the spectrum.

That’s because Sad Puppies suggestions was about the quality of the work. Not the author’s politics. Anybody who says the SP nominees are a bunch of right wingers is either misinformed, willfully ignorant, or a liar.

-Sad Puppies wants to destroy the Hugos

Not at all. The Hugos were already broken. My people are just the inevitable backlash that happens in any system when the pendulum swings too far in one direction.

For years people have paid lip service to bringing new people into the Hugos. Whenever people complained about the biased, cliquish state of the awards, they were dismissed and told that if they wanted to change things, they should get more people involved in the process.

Okay. Done. Next?

Note, a lot of the anger this week is about how my people are wrongfan having wrongfun, and thus are bad and should be dismissed, blocked somehow, or excluded. That kind of talk only proves my original point that started this all, and really, it is that sort of asinine, outlandish accusations that caused more of the previously apathetic fans to shell out their $40 to get involved too.

I fully admit, and am on record about starting this out of spite. However, it has grown far beyond just one man’s opinions. Brad is fighting to make the awards relevant to more of fandom.

Okay, many of us agree the Hugos were broken, but Sad Puppies isn’t the way to fix it

That is a valid opinion, and I’ve seen it pop up a lot over the last few days. I really want to address this, because I can’t stress enough that if that’s what you believe, we’re not your enemy.

For years authors have complained about the biased state of the Hugos, the politicking, and the games you needed to play in order to be considered. Most of the grumbling was in private, behind closed doors, and there wasn’t a green room at any con in the country where you couldn’t find authors complaining about the sorry state of things.

But nobody did anything.

Then some cliques started manipulating this small, easily manipulated system. When 40 or 80 nominations was all it took to sway the most prestigious award in the industry, a few whisper campaigns and calling in favors was all it took to secure a spot. Again, many honest WorldCon fans were offended by this behavior.

But nobody did anything.

As time went on, it got increasingly absurd and political. Some once beloved and award winning authors were shunned for their politics, never to be seen at the Hugos again. Editors and companies related to those shunned authors discovered that they too were shunned by relation, regardless of their politics. Campaigns became more public, with “award pimpage” becoming the norm. And the long time SMOFs who took pride in this award were offended.

But nobody did anything.

To my half of fandom, we’d pretty much written the awards off. They’d become a joke. Award winning became a synonym for boring and preachy. The insider cliques just declared that my part of fandom was stupid and didn’t matter anyway, while those who honestly cherished the awards didn’t like seeing their Hugo lose its luster in the eyes of the masses.

But still nobody did anything, and it got worse and worse.

Then several years ago some upstart, minor jackass hack pulp writer (who’d owned a machinegun store and did gun rights lobbying for the Republican party so couldn’t exactly hide his politics) managed to squeak in a Campbell nomination. I got to see how the sausage was made up close and I was stunned by how asinine the process really was.

So I did something.

Now I’m the bad guy. I’m cool with that. Eventually somebody was going to have to do it.

Here’s the thing. This massive upheaval wouldn’t have ever happened if the moderates had done something years ago, but they didn’t. I can’t really say I blame them though. If they took a stand against the perpetually outraged crowd, they risked their career and their reputation. We’re talking about the same angry, entitled twitter mobs that ran off a famous comedian because he might tell a fat joke in the future. Those mobs are quick to outrage, slow to reason, and will turn on their allies, because attacking is what they are programmed to do. And the moderates—those who will admit it—are terrified of ending up on the wrong end of a witch hunt.

Now it is okay to rail against my people for doing what the other side has done in the past, because we’re not going to sabotage anyone’s career or slander you. We actually believe in the concept of free speech and free expression.

We’re getting condemned for bringing politics into the awards, but we all know politics have been in the awards for a long time. We just did it openly.

I never expected us to sweep the awards. Frankly, I was shocked by the results. I didn’t realize just how many regular fans had been turned off for so long.

Now the moderates are telling us we did it wrong, or telling us what we should have done better, but the thing is at least we did something. There’s not exactly an instruction manual for this sort of thing you know.

-All the Sad Puppies people are lying. It isn’t about getting good books recognized, it is about TOPIC X.

Now this is a really hard one to argue against, because X is whatever they want it to be, and it changes constantly. I’ve seen how we’re all angry white straight males (which is why we’ve got like a dozen women in there, the person taking it over is female, I don’t care about anybody’s race, and I have no idea who our nominees have sex with). Yesterday X was about how my fans are motivated by homophobia. The day before X was racism. I’m sure tomorrow we’ll hate the disabled. Who knows? I can’t keep up.

That is all nonsense, but they keep on making new crap up, and the gullible keep swallowing the narrative and regurgitating it all over the internet.

Here is an interesting one for you moderates, SMOFs, and fence sitters to ponder on. Why is it that our own words and actions aren’t to be believed, but anything the other side says about us, no matter how outlandish, is to be accepted?

Over the years I’ve done Sad Puppies, do you know how many fannish blogs, fanzines, and podcasts interviewed me, the guy who started the campaign, about the goals of Sad Puppies?

None.

I can’t think of single one. You’d think with the most controversial thing to happen to the Hugos in forever, somebody would actually want to sit down and interview us and get our side of the story, but nada, zip. Sure, lots of people wrote about it, but it was pretty obvious these fannish journalists didn’t read what I actually wrote, and instead they critiqued Straw Larry, or they quoted other bloggers quoting Straw Larry.

Finally, last month Brad and I were finally asked to do a podcast interview. They tried to be unbiased. They asked us hard questions.

It was fantastic.  http://www.adventuresinscifipublishing.com/2015/03/aisfp-289-larry-correia-brad-r-torgersen-sad-puppies/

So I’ve been a little less than patient with some fannish journalists. It has been really interesting to see a few of them who originally hated my guts, watch the foot stompy outrage crowd doing exactly what I said they would, and having those journalists realize that maybe I was telling the truth after all.

On this note, I’d like to extend an olive branch to Mike Glyer at File 770. We’ve gone around a few times, but I’ve got to hand it to him. Recently he’s been fully quoting my side and letting our arguments stand without interpretation. Well done, sir.

-Sad Puppies is mean

We’ve been getting a lot of moderates and SMOF friends reaching out, concerned, because the straw versions of us are very hateful, and it is so very sad that there are sides in fandom, and they are fighting.

That’s nice. Now let me flip this back around. Where were you guys when my people were being libeled, slandered, attacked, and insulted? Did you reach out to the perpetually outraged crowd and urge them to be nice and tell them there shouldn’t be any fighting in fandom, or do you just do that to the side you know won’t sic an angry mob on you?

Do you know the biggest single reason SP3 got more fans involved than SP2? My guess is that it was after the other side moved the goal posts, and danced in the streets about our “humiliating defeat”, and called all those outsiders first time voters stupid homophobic racist sexists and other super gracious acts, and Hugo award winning former SFWA presidents take to Twitter to have all caps rants about how my people are motivated by hate and racism, you shouldn’t be shocked when my people are increasingly motivated.

Just think, if you guys urging peace, love, and harmony now would have reigned in the attack dogs years ago, Sad Puppies would never have existed.

Sad Puppies BLOCK VOTING is different because it was designed to lock out all other contenders

Nope. And here is a very simple way to tell that simply isn’t true.

Based upon our past performance, how in the world could we know we’d get this much more turn out?

Also, if you look at the suggested slate posts, you’ll note that in some categories we had 5, because we had 5 works that we really liked, and there are 5 slots. In other categories we had less because we didn’t think of 5 in time. We ran with what we thought of. It wasn’t exactly a nefarious master plan.

The year before we’d only gotten half of our novels on. In SP2, I put up 2 works for best novel. Mine (which made it) and Sarah Hoyt’s A Few Good Men (which sadly didn’t make it). Why wouldn’t we put up more this time?

(Funny note on A Few Good Men, as morons were saying Sad Puppies 2 was motivated by homophobia, trying to kick gays out of fiction, the protagonist and hero of that one is a gay man, but I voted for it because it was a fantastic book)

Now the moderates are telling us that if we’d suggested fewer/more works, then magically this would all be okay and they wouldn’t be so angry at us. Oh bullshit. Come on. We all know that whatever we do, whether there is one nomination or a hundred, the perpetually outraged would still be outraged.

I do love however how everybody who was completely silent while the SJW mob was running rampant and unopposed, are now full of all sorts of condemnation against my people, and full of helpful strategic advice about what we should do next time. So, when we were in a position of weakness, they maligned us. Now that we’re in a position of strength, they malign us, but your advice is to go back to a position of weakness…

Yes, that is super helpful. Thanks a lot.

Here’s the thing, this isn’t just me and a couple of my friends having fun with this anymore. It is bigger than that. There are a bunch of us involved now. For next year, we’ll take a look at how this shakes out and proceed from there. Kate Paulk is in charge next year and will be organizing what we do.

We don’t want to replace one kingmaker with another. We don’t want to replace one dominate clique with another. I don’t want the Nielsen Hayden’s throne of skulls. It doesn’t look very comfy to sit in.

Let me reiterate. We don’t want to exclude anybody. We want to include everybody.  We’ll look at what happens and adjust fire from there. We are willing to listen to suggestions, debate, and talk with you, because we truly don’t want to destroy the awards or lord over them like some petty tyrants. But getting screamed at, insulted, and lectured at is just going to annoy us, so you can skip that part.

-The Hugos belong to a select few

My, how the tune has changed in just a few years. I loved when Teresa Nielsen Hayden proclaimed that, because when I said the same thing several years ago, I was a lair.

Think about this carefully moderates and SMOFs, the Hugos are either:

  1. The most prestigious award in genre fiction that represents the best of all of fandom
  2. An award for the favorites for one small group of people at one small convention.

You can’t have both.

-Sad Puppies insults SMOFs

Now this gets tricky, because we get into the definitions of words that have insider meanings.

SMOF means Secret Masters of Fandom. It can be used in a few different ways. To people whose social lives revolve around conventions, it means the people who run stuff there. The word started as a joke.

To many of my people, SMOF was seen as a pejorative, used for the snooty, snobbish types who liked to tell those fans that they aren’t real fans, or that they are the wrong kinds of fans, or that they were having wrongfun.

However, many good, decent, honorable people self-identify as SMOFs. I count many of these people as friends, and many of them are cheering Sad Puppies on.

This is why Brad Torgersen, being diplomatic, made up the word CHORF to describe the snoots. https://bradrtorgersen.wordpress.com/2015/03/31/chorf-its-a-word-now/ which I must admit, made me laugh.

We’ve got nothing against fans. We’re fans too.

-Larry Correia is a big mean jerk

No denying that.  As Sarah Hoyt said the other day, nobody raised in a Portuguese household has ever been accused of subtlety. I’m loud, opinionated, and bombastic. Part of that is because I didn’t get to Live Life on the Easiest Difficulty Setting, and where I come from if you look like food you will be eaten.

So yes, I can be rude, impatient, and I’m quick to anger. It is a character flaw. I never claimed to be perfect, but I’m the one who showed up.

I used to be more patient. For those of you who are authors, artists, or creators, I want you to think back to the meanest, most vile, fundamentally dishonest, cruel thing anyone has ever said about you or your work. How did that make you feel? Now I want you to imagine getting that twenty times a day for your entire career. How long do you think your thin veneer of civility would last?

The SJWs are bullies. They can’t tolerate anybody being outspoken against their ideas. So when you are the nail that sticks up, they will try to hammer you down. They will spread lies about you, hoping that everyone else will shun you. This gets tiresome after a few years, especially when they start to make up “scare quotes” from you in international newspapers.

I’ve had a bunch of honestly concerned people tell me recently that they think I’m being too mean, or that I’m so used to responding to malicious attackers that I sometimes lump in innocent bystanders in with those malicious attackers (a moderate friend referred to it as my “shotgun approach” which is a good comparison).

You get attacked enough and eventually your ability to differentiate targets starts to suffer. For those caught up in that, I apologize.

To those who still willfully want to attack me, come get some. 🙂

Vox Day! VOX DAAAAaaaay!

Vox Day wasn’t on the Sad Puppies suggest slate. Sorry. Can’t blame that one on us.

Well, I suppose you can, in that I demonstrated how small this most prestigious award actually is last year. Vox Day’s alternate Rabid Puppies slate was him going directly to his fan base. Looking at the numbers, and he on his own was about as successful as I was last year for SP2.

Now here is an interesting thought for you moderates out there who despise Vox Day. Above I talked about the angry reaction to SP2… Honestly, last year Fandom (capital F) insulted hundreds of outsider fans’ taste and intelligence, called them names, and basically treated them like trash (while the majority kept their mouths shut at best, or gave tacit approval at worst) and now you’re shocked when Vox Day has appealed directly to those people you mocked to vote in a manner that especially pisses you off?

Well, duh.

-Sad Puppies invited in Breitbart.

That’s cool. The SJWs brought in the Guardian, Io9, and Tor.com, so now we’re even.

Actually Breitbart approached me and asked for an interview. Last year the SP2 controversy got a small mention in the USA Today. The guys who talked to me from Breitbart have been doing reports on SJW crusaders across many industries, and this is news, so this isn’t exactly shocking.

GamerGate is behind Sad Puppies!

Okay, now this one is just stupid. It comes from Teresa Nielsen Hayden, head of the SMOFfen SS.

Because many SJWs check under their bed for the Gamergate boogieman before going to sleep, obviously GamerGate is responsible for the Sad Puppies sweep. Apparently she discovered that one of my longtime fans, Daddy Warpig, is a GamerGate blogger, and has tweeted about SP3, and she exposed this shocking revelation!

Wow… Yeah, good work there, Sherlock. You could have just saved time and asked me, since I also favorited those and retweeted them. I’ve also been on his podcast. But if you want to really damn me, let me save you some detective work. I’m also friends with actor Adam Baldwin, the guy who coined the word GamerGate. I’ve also blogged about GamerGate, but more in relation to Sarkesian calling for a boycott of my home state because she didn’t understand our constitution or laws wouldn’t allow for violating our citizen’s civil rights because of fake threats against her. https://monsterhunternation.com/2014/10/21/fisking-the-deseret-news-anti-ccw-article/

But GamerGate isn’t behind Sad Puppies.

  1. SP predates GG by a couple of years.
  2. SP is tiny compared to GG, and the vast majority of GG paid no attention to SP,
  3. Until the Breitbart article came out, but if you loot at the dates of the article https://monsterhunternation.com/2015/02/05/breitbart-reports-on-sad-puppies/ it came out too late for any new people to register in time to nominate for Sasquan.
  4. We do share some common members, but enemy of my enemy is my friend, and both movements can’t stand Social Justice bullies telling people they are having wrongfun.
  5. There were like 2,000 total nominations. If it had been a GamerGate plot there would have been 20,000 nominations, and they would spammed it across the internet and had a great laugh about it.

Oh, quick note moderates and SMOFs, if you don’t want GamerGate to get involved in the Hugos, don’t blame me. Tell your Social Justice idiots to shut up on Twitter!  TNH is the one invoking and provoking them, not me.

Brianna Wu—who is despised by hundreds of thousands of gamers as an opportunistic vulture—took to Twitter after the nominations were announced, blaming GamerGate for ruining the Hugos, and then she tweeted about how the awards were precious and sacred to her because her husband has 4 Hugos.  That is like waving the red cape in front of the bull.

-We’re going to vote No Award against every single thing suggested by the Sad Puppies slate!

Yes, voting based on politics with no consideration for the quality of the actual work will sure show Larry Correia what’s up.

The fact that the CHORFs were already demanding rule changes, No Awarding everybody, and blocking the wrong kind of fans before the nominations were even announced should be pretty telling. Funny. That is exactly what I said they would do years ago. The insider clique cares far more about maintaining their insular little kingdom than they do about the awards.

Here’s the thing, if you No Award everybody on the slate with no consideration to the authors or their work, you’ll just be proving me right.

And seriously, you’re telling me Jim Butcher, the god father of an entire genre, isn’t worthy? Marko Kloos indy published sci-fi book has sold literally over ten times as many copies as last year’s winner Ancillary Justice, and people love it, but it isn’t worthy? You’re telling me that Kevin J. Anderson, industry pro, 23 million books in print, three decades of working in fandom and helping other authors, isn’t worthy?

Bullshit. And none of those authors share my politics.

Toni Weisskopf has spent her entire life in fandom. She grew up at cons and lived in Rocket City. She had relatives on the Manhattan Project and ate dinner at Warner Von Braun’s house. I don’t know how many hundreds of conventions Toni has gone to, as everything from volunteer to GoH. She’s edited hundreds of authors, took over and successfully run a publishing house, and it is telling that she was ignored until Sad Puppies came along. She’s not worthy?

Edmund Schubert has been running Intergalactic Medicine Show for years, producing tons of great short fiction, and you’re telling me he’s unworthy? Why? His boss (who he disagrees with) doesn’t like gay marriage? Jim Minz started as David Hartwell’s assistant at Tor, and is beloved by everybody in publishing and has spent his whole life in fandom, and he’s unworthy?

All of these short fiction authors, some of whom have been writing for places like Analog for decades, they’re unworthy? Campbell nominees who are brand new, producing all sorts of great work, and you’ll shit all over their prospective careers and No Award their future because Brad recommend them?

They’re unworthy because of association, but you didn’t say a damned thing when the SJWs tried to give a Campbell to Requires Hate?

That is hypocrisy.

We want people to read the works and judge them for themselves. We were accused of trying to get people to nominate without reading, but we put that one to bed when we Book Bombed all the short fiction in the weeks leading up to the nomination’s, selling thousands and thousands of stories, and bumping all of our nominees up to the tops of their Amazon categories sales rankings, and making the SP nominated works the most widely read things on the ballot in years.

But yeah, No Award a bunch of obviously worthy creators over politics and brag about it on the internet in advance. If I truly wanted to destroy the Hugos credibility to all but one tiny, insular little group of fans, that’s exactly what I’d do.

Well, the whole world is watching now. What are you going to tell them the award is really about?

 

EDIT: To add, read this article for Entertainment Weekly http://www.ew.com/article/2015/04/06/hugo-award-nominations-fall-victim-misogynistic-and-racist-voting?hootPostID=221657cca998c926458486c3f53fbe17

So, SMOFs and Moderates, read that article. Hell, just read the headline… If you’ve paid any attention or have even an iota of honesty in your soul you know that article in a national publication is total bullshit.

Now do you understand why it is so very tempting for my side to just say to hell with it and hoist the black flag?

EDIT 2, they’ve already changed the article because the EW lawyers freaked out. That should tell you something. I’ve got the original cached.

Since they changed it, here is the original. See moderates? This is what happens when you cross the Social Justice crowd. The truth become irrelevant and they spread whatever they can about you to get you shunned and destroyed.

Hugo Award nominations fall victim to misogynistic, racist voting campaign
BY ISABELLA BIEDENHARN • @ISABELLA324

The Hugo Awards have fallen victim to a campaign in which misogynist groups lobbied to nominate only white males for the science fiction book awards. These groups, Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies (both of which are affiliated with last year’s GamerGate scandal), urged sci-fi fans to become members of the Hugo Awards’ voting body, World Science Fiction Convention, in order to cast votes against female writers and writers of color. Membership only costs $40, and allows members to vote for the 2016 nominations as well as the 2015 nominations, which were just released.
Sad Puppies broadcast their selection on Feb. 1, writing: “If you agree with our slate below—and we suspect you might—this is YOUR chance to make sure YOUR voice is heard.” Brad Torgerson, who runs Sad Puppies along with Larry Correia, complains that the Hugo Awards have lately skewed toward “literary” works, as opposed to “entertainment.”
Torgerson also writes that he disagrees with Hugos being awarded for affirmative action-like purposes, as many women and writers of color went home with awards in 2014: ”Likewise, we’ve seen the Hugo voting skew ideological, as Worldcon and fandom alike have tended to use the Hugos as an affirmative action award: giving Hugos because a writer or artist is (insert underrepresented minority or victim group here) or because a given work features (insert underrepresented minority or victim group here) characters.”
The other lobbying group, Rabid Puppies, is run by Theodore Beale (who goes by the name Vox Day). As The Telegraph reports, “Members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America have called for Beale’s exclusion from the group after he has writtenagainst women’s suffrage and posted racist views towards black writer NK Jemisin.”
Fortunately, some sane voters allowed well-deserving writers to pull through. Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Sword and Listen was nominated for Dramatic Presentation, and Annie Bellet’s Goodnight Stars was nominated, despite having a non-white, female protagonist.
Plenty of members of the science fiction community have voiced their disgust with both sects of “Puppies.” Writer Philip Sandifer wrote on his blog Sunday, “The Hugo Awards have just been successfully hijacked by neofascists.” Sandifer’s post, which is worth reading in full, addresses what this disaster means for the sci-fi world:
To be frank, it means that traditional sci-fi/fantasy fandom does not have any legitimacy right now. Period. A community that can be this effectively controlled by someone who thinks black people are subhuman and who has called for acid attacks on feminists is not one whose awards have any sort of cultural validity. That sort of thing doesn’t happen to functional communities. And the fact that it has just happened to the oldest and most venerable award in the sci-fi/fantasy community makes it unambiguously clear that traditional sci-fi/fantasy fandom is not fit for purpose.
As writer Joe Abercrombie put it:
The Hugo Awards winners will be announced on Aug. 22 in Washington.

##
And this is how she addressed me after being called on these obvious blatant lies on Twitter.

isabella biedenharn ‏@isabella324 1h1 hour ago
@monsterhunter45 Hi Larry, we’re happy to update to include your side. Please send me your comment when you have time
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Addendum to Yesterday's Letter
Sad Puppies Update: The Nominees Announced and Why I Refused My Nomination

821 thoughts on “A letter to the SMOFs, moderates, and fence sitters from the author who started Sad Puppies”

  1. “Well, the whole world is watching now. What are you going to tell them the award is really about?”

    If they’d only done that to begin with, none of this would’ve been necessary.

          1. And an Iron Fist Larry, to do battle with the foul Reichsfuhrer Teresa Nielsen-Hayden, She-Dachshund of the SMOFfen SS.

            😛

          2. Now Wes. No insulting Dachsunds man! they are some of the sweetest dogs on earth. Hell I had one walk right up to my car as I as parking yesterday, and as soon as I opened my door hop right in and say ‘hi’ tail waggin, tongue hangin out in a doggy grin.

          3. How about bring out Tetsubo Larry!?

            Hmm, maybe that’s what started the whole thing and its a gleeful and true shock wave that is still reverberating 3 years later.

            Hmm, I like that.

          4. Remember, remember, the fifth of November..

            What you need at the next con you all go to (LibertyCon?) is Larry Correia effigy made of straw and a bonfire. Bring some marshmallows, bacon & Chianti (yes, I’m a foodie) and run video. Then the next time these gum has bring up straw Larry, you can prove he’s gone:-)

        1. You’re welcome! I got my membership today and am waiting for my name to show up on the membership list.

          Excited to vote in the genres I’ve loved and grown up with.

          1. I pretty much voted a straight JCW slate for short fic. I don’t read everything in the field: just Analog, Sci-Phi & a few (mostly YA) anthologies, but he just blew me away this year.

    1. You can still vote for the Hugo though. Get a supporting membership, read the nominated works and vote!

  2. Looks like one of the authors that SP nominated is a socialist and she is getting harassed by people for having this endorsement. I had never heard of her. However, it looks like her most popular series is Urban Fantasy. This group has a large Urban Fantasy fan base. How about book bombing her to help her out? Its a way of showing people on the opposite side that this group can appreciate quality writing and its not about your political views?

    https://overactive.wordpress.com/2015/04/05/hugo-nomination-and-thoughts/#comments

    https://twitter.com/anniebellet

    1. She was on our slate because she wrote a good, quality, worthy story. Period. The fact that the perpetually outraged foot stompy crowd is attacking a bisexual socialist should tell you who the real bullies are in this story.

      1. I haven’t read the story yet. So I don’t know. I was just pointing out that it was ignorant for people to harrass. Its why I floated the idea of a book bomb. Especially since she focuses in a genre(Urban Fantasy) which is both popular with this crowd and not real popular with the Hugos. Just floating the idea. Not telling you what to do…. it would kind of be an ultimate screw you to people saying you only want to help political conservatives.

        1. I’ve only seen her short fiction, and we hit that already during the SP book bombs. I’m not adverse to the idea, but short fic is killer hard to bomb. I try to stick to books.

          The funny thing is, I’ve book bombed authors from all over the spectrum, and it hasn’t mattered. No matter what I actually do, they’ll just make up some outlandish bullshit about me. 🙂

          1. This is a big issue- but your turning down the nom this year? And also having Brad being the main organizer?

            Damn, that’s some fine chess you were playing, sir. Some real fine chess.

          2. The entire ideology is detached from reality. Whether it’s a James Nicholls thread or Scalzi or Making Light, I am stunned by the stupidity of SJWs. Nothing they say makes any sense to me or resembles the world I’ve moved around in.

          3. I feel really bad for that Annie person so I bought one of her books to check it out (I also love urban fantasy).

            She clearly wants to keep the politics off her page but you can help but wonder if a few people might start to wake up in the face of such treatment. She runs to a defense of being socialist and bi, but she shouldn’t have to and clearly she knows it. This is why this whole thing has been fascinating.

          4. If she wants to be out of the politics, nothing wrong with that. Was going to buy the first story in the series Adam was mentioning, but it was on sale right now, so I bought more.

            Because The Author Must Get Paid.

          5. Sadly, the disinformation campaign does seem to be working with a segment of the low info fen.

            I dropped into the FL of my much-neglected mommy blog and ran into a post by a fellow Bujoldian about the “depressed bitches”. Classy, calling me a bitch (though as a multiple female rescue dog owner, maybe not so bad 🙂 but it was the straight up party line. From someone I know,mwho I would have sworn Knows Better.

            Both of my puppies shed hot tears of sadness

      2. The SJWs are desperate to keep all minority people on the designated plantation, so they lynch a few uppity ones to discourage the others.

        1. “Saladin Ahmed @saladinahmed · Apr 4 Far-right Catholics, market fundamentalists, pseudo-anarchist gamers. Amazing how they can all get together to hate women/queer people/POCs.”

          It’s amazing how opposing a few dozen kooky gender feminists who hate me in actual quotes 365 days a year becomes 6 billion people I hate instead.

          1. As a Far-Right Catholic (António de Oliveira Salazar Division), I welcome Saladin Ahmed’s hatred. See you at Lepanto, Sally.

      3. Good thing the other side is doing that. If we did it, it would be evil! (rolls eyes)

    2. Ugh. I think a book-bomb is an excellent idea. Although I plan on buying a membership and will hopefully get a copy of her book anyway. Still, good work is good work- and deserves to be acknowledged.

    3. Annie Bellet is also an Indie publishing star (seriously, check out her 20 Sided Sorceress series, it’s awesome. Next book is out tomorrow). So she’s not sucking up to the right people despite having the ‘right’ politics.

      1. I hope she isn’t shamed into withdrawing. On top of that libelous EW article, I’ve had just about enough of these little tin fascists.

      2. Annie is hanging tough. In her own words, she’s finding out who her friends are. She won’t be cowed into abandoning her nomination. She earned it, SP3 aside. Anyone who attacks her is an idiot and a fool. Seriously.

      3. Huh, guess I should buy one of her books. Just got book one of the series you recommended.

        Looks to be good stuff, and man I so love the indie publisher thing on Amazon. So many good books I’d never seen/heard of. Love how it expands the library.

  3. James Nicoll, world-famed for the best and most succinct analysis of the state of the English Language ever published, announces a new policy due to Toni Weisskopf’s essay at Hoyt’s:

    http://james-nicoll.livejournal.com/5297418.html

    I like Nicoll’s reviews and am saddened that he now chooses to exclude a massive segment of the genre from his sphere of influence.

    His choice.

    1. Oh man, somebody who never reviews our books isn’t going to review us anymore? I’m heart broken.

      1. Oh dear ghods .. his readers are trying to figure out what the term “Publisher” is/means over there….

    2. Never heard of him, but I did find it odd he does paid reviews. That’s generally considered a conflict of interest, because even if the author has no direct control over the review, it’s still amounts to paid advertising, and obviously an incentive exists to attract customers.

      At any rate I’m not reading advertisements or reviews by someone whose reading comprehension is poor enough to call the SP slate “doctrinaire lockstep.”

      1. It is, unfortunately, becoming far more normal for reviews to be paid for.

        However, I figure if I have to pay someone to read my book, I probably wrote something shitty anyways.

        1. …and PNH poked GamerGate?! Taunting them that they couldn’t organize anything?

          Do they really want a hundred James May’s crawling all over their stuff?

          1. J.C. Solomon that got a real LOL outta me.

            Haha!!

            Geek cred to you sir!

            Its an old reference to D&D, and there was a chance if you said his name, he’d show up and eat you. Or his unpleasant minions would. Either way, all bad.

            And “Hack” as we called him is brother of Cthulhu (admit I looked that up, been that long since reading Deites and Demigods). Its a very unpleasant end at that point.

        2. No, I think that given the tremendous volume of material being published, paying for a review is a legitimate approach. Reviewers have a fixed amount of time in the day, an amount that is clearly insufficient to review even a small fraction of what’s available. This isn’t to say that paid reviews can’t be abused, but as long as the payment is disclosed, the review reader is able to assess it’s objectivity. Any reviewer who consistently overrates their subjects is going to lose credibility, and thus lose eyeballs, and poof, no more paid reviews.

          1. I understand there’s a large volume of material and reviewers prefer to be paid for their time (as do we all), but that doesn’t negate the conflict of interest. People generally respond to financial incentives, and if he gave a lot of bad reviews that didn’t drive book sales authors would have less incentive to employ him as a marketing tool.

            Anyways, nothing wrong with marketing, and I don’t begrudge the guy a living, I just find his sanctimony to be built on sandy ground.

        3. There’s an unspoken thing with book reviewers (yes, I am one, but don’t worry unless you write for the kids/YA market) wherein we think: o god do I have to read/finish this book–?!

          Frankly, that’s no bad thing; better to skip a book, if you suspect you can’t treat it fairly. There’s a book I’m passing on because I read an author interview before I read the book itself that was astonishingly bigoted: and the characterization in the story is just weak enough, and it’s got that typical first novel slow middle… Am I irritated by the the book itself, or the book that exists only in my mind?

          Better to pass. If your job makes it so you can’t, well…

        1. That is a thing. Well, huh… Didn’t know that anybody would actually pay money for something you could just get for free.

          1. For SJW fiction, are you surprised, Larry? SJW fic usually sucks so hard that you HAVE to commission just to get a reviewer to want to read it.

          2. As was once said about Microsoft, the only way SJWs will make something not suck is if they get in the vacuum cleaner business,

          3. But even then, there’s a chance that they will fuck up said cleaner’s design by insisting that it fit a certain social paradigm even though it doing so means that the cleaner won’t work.

          4. Stop suggesting things like that J.C.!

            Larry has the 150k Tomb of Ringo to go work on that will provide plenty more filthy lucre and we don’t need him distracted with writing up more fisking.

            No matter how hilarious it would be.

            Great one on Sarah Hoyts page today too.

      2. Back when my first book came out, I was looking for ways to get reviews, only to decide I’d rather keep my ethics than get in on so many of those scams. There were “review” blogs out there that would take your money, plus a free copy of the book, for a “chance” at a review. No actual promise of one. The more you “donated” past the base fee, of course, the greater chance you had of being reviewed. They admitted as much.

        I found another site that had “tiers” of reviews. Want a mention in passing? X dollars. A paragraph and a star score? Y dollars. A full article? Z dollars. Want front page coverage with a “favorable” response? XYZ dollars.

        Yuck.

        I settled for simply writing and relying on Amazon reviews. It’s not the best system, but at least I get to keep my scruples.

        But the road to reviews these days is pretty fraught with insanity.

        1. I would write reviews for free books all day long. Unless the book really sucked, like so many self published garbage.

    3. Oh no! Deprived of the SJW critical endorsement, Baen will be forced to rely on their massive, outspoken loyal fanbase instead.

    4. Nice guy he also posted online that Jim Baen shouldn’t get the Long Form Editor Hugo posthumously. Jim lost the Hugo on the last tabulation by 2 votes.

    5. I love that the comments describe Tom Kratman as “not merely a Holocaust apologist”.

      That’d be the same Kratman who describes himself as “a Catholic, and mostly Irish. There’s a chunk of Scot in there, along with an eclectic mix of Ashkenazi Jew, Gypsy, Russian, Magyar, Pole, German, Austrian, and God alone knows what else.”

      Now, the two are necessarily mutually exclusive, but I’d love to see a cite.

  4. I’ve been watching Sad Puppies over the years, and just wanted to say thank you, Larry.

    I’ve been dismayed over the outright hate and lying that has been going on when a simple google search would have sufficed to clear up any confusion. As you said, you’ve been very forthright about your position.

    Thank you for standing up for good stories, and for shedding light on the hypocrisies, lies, and general uncivil behavior that has gone on far too long.

    1. Don’t forget the intolerance.

      What saddens me about all this is that Larry, et al., have to continually defend themselves against such base ignorance and hatred; yet the worst offenders don’t see themselves in that light. As you said, hypocrisy. I refuse to engage them directly (it’s pointless; they’re never going to grow up), though I’m outspoken enough among friends and family.

      Instead, I made a conscious and deliberate decision to combat the problem from the inside in my own genres (Fantasy and SciFi Romance under not-very-well-hidden pen names) where many masquerade their hatred of freedom and self-expression behind the politically-correct/SJW flag. I would worry about alienating readers with my blunt honesty, but I’m a relatively new author. Not much to worry about when your readership is small. 🙂

      Keep fighting the good fight, Larry.

      1. That bothers me too. Especially when it’s not that hard to go back and read what he actually said.

        *high five to new authors*

        I’m trying to get to the point that it doesn’t bother me if I alienate some readers due to being honest. I would rather have fans to enjoy my stories and are the sort that can separate the author from his/her books–and who both have and can enjoy varied and different opinions–rather than those that demand I march in lockstep to what they believe is the One True Way or else.

        1. I’m at that age where I’m tired of biting my tongue. It was getting kinda sore. Also, I’m not a lockstep kinda gal. I’ve always been out of step with the people around me, always. Don’t see any reason to change that now.

          I’m waiting for the backlash, though, and not from the average reader. Truthfully, most are willing to overlook a character’s politics if the story is good and the message isn’t preachy. But there are a handful of self-appointed gatekeepers that will take one look at the stories I’m publishing and scream loudly about what an anti-[insert cause of the day here] I am. I’ll do my best to ignore it and focus on cultivating readers more interested in a well-written tale than on whether or not the characters and story lines conform to popular ideology.

          I’ve been following the Hugo/Sad Puppies discussion on a certain forum and have noticed your attempts at rationality, reason, and an informed opinion. Kudos on that and much luck. I would join you, but I’m pretty sure attempting to reason with that crowd is like spitting in the wind.

          1. Me too. 🙂 That’s why I’ve started speaking up now, and plan to in the future.

            That’s the thing that I’m angriest with. People shouldn’t have to be afraid for speaking their opinion out loud. Silencing an opinion doesn’t magically make it go away. Shunning people who don’t have the “right” opinions isn’t going to make those people go away. What it does is convince those who are trying to do the right thing that we need to stand our ground and say “Enough is enough.”

            *writing cookies* To good stories! Hear, hear!

            Thank you. 🙂 I spoke up because the OP didn’t have any truth to it. And that bothers me. I’m not planning on going back because once the argument devolves to discrimination is okay so long as it’s a woman/non-caucasian person doing it, well, it’d be like volunteering to be Sisyphus *and* keeping Prometheus’s eagle on retainer. :p

          2. It’s not the first thing that OP has deliberately mangled. But yeah, I get why you’re speaking out. In fact, I agree with you on all points. Especially the cookies. 😉

            re: Sisyphus/Prometheus. *snicker*

          3. The only thing better than cookies is dragons. O:) *am thankful my muse is easily bribed*

          4. !

            You have no idea how awesome that sounds. Just the thought of those delectable treats has sent my muse spinning furiously all sorts of wonderful ideas. Right. Before. Bed. Time. O.O

  5. If Twitter is any indicator, SJW is not well regarded by anybody. And the Gamer Gaters are going “HUH? WTF, We’ve been playing, who has time to read about trisexual nymphs?”

    1. Gamergater here. You know, I would make more time for reading if it weren’t for the likes of Scalzi putting me right off the hobby sometimes. Or way back when I found a proto SJW calling Piers Anthony a pedophile.

      I was reading long about gender swaps long before SJWs made it their religion in the likes of John Varley.

      Regarding the comments from Dawn about people being willing to read a story with politics they don’t agree with I can attest to that since as an atheist lefty type I read a good bit of Dean Koontz and Orson Scott Card lately. Their worldview is their worldview and it does come out in their writing but they are still masters of their craft and I have the tolerance to enjoy their works unlike the faux-tolerance of the SJWs.

      Please keep doing what you are doing you guys, I had no idea this was a thing until recently but glad to see people standing up to SJWs in any field. I’ve no desire to see the dogmatic religious right just get replaced by a dogmatic cult of the left. It’s bad for free thought, creativity, and real tolerance all around.

      1. So say we all!

        Long time gamer here too.

        Hm, got a “comment too short” so the rest of what I would say is: “Well said!”

        1. It is the dumb new spam filter, but we switched servers and the old one didn’t work any more. One day without a spam filter got me 2,5000 spam messages, so now we make do with this one. 🙂

      2. Sorry for the late response, but…there are left-wing Gamergaters? I’m amazed, since all of the media’s been painting them as right-wing morons who, live in their parent’s basements and are fat with Asperger’s. Thanks for confirming this; I’m a left-wing gamer myself, but of the pragmatically progressive type (and I hang out at this blog with like-minded people.)

  6. Just a minor proofreading comment. In the “The Hugos belong to a select few” section, I suspect that Hayden called you a liar.

    You are a big guy, to be sure, but I doubt anyone would consider you a lair.

    1. It’s the hobo beard. Lotta lair could be built in that beard.

      And it’s at a great height, good defensive position…

  7. As a Hugo voter for several years, I regard the slates as tampering because they filled the ballot with the choices of only two people: Brad Torgersen and Vox Day (Theo). As a nominator I picked works I liked and have been confident in my belief that the bulk of nominating and voting is done by other people doing the same. But the pool of people eligible to vote for Hugos is small (850 people nominated a best novella last year), so it doesn’t take much for a small group voting as a bloc to determine all of the nominees.

    I’m what the Puppies crowd claims to want as a Hugo voter. I pick the works I like and don’t vote my political preferences or any other considerations.

    But none of my nominees made the ballot, and for as long as there are slates, it is unlikely that any nominee I select as an individual will ever make the ballot.

    So my choice is to either reward Torgersen and Day for their hostile takeover of the Hugos or use No Award to discourage the use of slates in the future.
    I
    t’s quite obvious that Hugo voters will use No Award to reject this.

    That’s a pity for the worthy nominees promoted by a slate, but letting two people dictate the Hugo ballot is something I can’t abide.

    So thanks for that, Larry. Be sure to let me know when your movement to oppose elitism in the Hugos will allow nominations to once again be selected by individuals instead of your friends.

    1. Yeah, I’m sure sorry I wasn’t able to right every single wrong and do everything absolutely perfectly, especially with all that help we were getting from you guys in the process.

      So, as a noble Hugo voter, did you ever take issue with small groups getting all their friends nominated before? Did you enjoy being able to choose between five works of approved social justice? Did you ever complain to the regular kingmakers, and the authors who sat at the cool kids table, or just us?

      And it wasn’t just Torgersen’s picks… There’s actually a bunch of us who had input. Oh, and most of us fished around looking for suggestions from fans and readers as much as possible. Vox had his own slate with his picks on it, can’t speak for him.

      So, when Brad and other members of the ELoE were asking for input from fans and authors about works we should look at and consider, did you suggest anything? Politics wouldn’t have mattered. He championed a socialist because of the quality of her work. Or, were in the crowd that made fun of Brad and his fans, and insulted them for being barbaric outsiders rather than engaging and suggesting worthy works?

      But you can No Award all you want. That is your choice. I win either way.

      1. Like any other Hugo voter, in past years I questioned the presence of some works on the ballot. Nobody agrees with everything that gets nominated or everything that wins the rocket. Some Twitter gasbags with big online followings got more acclaim than I thought they merited.

        Do you recognize the flaw in defending your takeover by claiming that a bunch of people had input on your slate?

        I wasn’t one of those people. I used the normal Hugo process to make nominations. My individual choices — along with the individual choices of hundreds of others — were swamped by bloc voting.

        Since you folks are vowing to do another hostile takeover next year, if I want to have input on the 2016 Hugo awards, am I required to make suggestions to your slate?

        That’s quite a future you envision for this award: Each spring, a friend of Larry Correia/Brad Torgersen/Vox Day takes suggestions on a blog, these are winnowed down to five per category and around 150-200 people vote as a bloc to keep every other nominator from making any selections.

        You have created a solution worse than any problem you thought you were solving.

        1. Nice concern trolling there.

          We are taking back the Hugos, not taking them over. A bunch of Tumblr trigger-warning special snowflakes have smeared their politics all over the Hugo process.

          Just rolling over and playing nice is exactly what they want, since they never play nice, conduct witch hunts, and try to ruin the careers of anyone who opposes them.

          So no, we aren’t going to play nice anymore.

        2. Hey, even if you really could appeal to 3 of us to have a shot, that’s a 300% improvement than the prior system of sucking to the 1 twitter gas bag. 😀

          Serious answer, yeah, I know it is flawed. I don’t know how many more times I can say that it isn’t perfect, and we’re learning as we go. However for the first time in forever, my kind of fan doesn’t feel totally disowned and disavowed. You think the problem is worse now because you were eyeball deep in it, but my people are throwing a party.

          I don’t think SMOFdom is going to be quite as lockstep condemnatory as you think either. Considering all the thank yous we’ve been getting from authors, artists, creators, and fans who are sick and tired of the current process, and they’ll take a new form of imperfect over the stagnant crap of recent times, because at least we’re trying.

          1. As I said elsewhere – I hope the end result of this is thousands of new voters, and I hope a ton of them are liberal as well as conservative.

            Strong competition breeds better results – no one gets complacent and starts nominating stuff that isn’t top notch.

          2. I see you getting thank yous from people waging a culture war who will quickly move on to the next outrage du jour. I don’t see random Hugo voters like me thanking you for making our vote completely meaningless.

            Your scheme won’t even improve things in the future for the kind of works you celebrate. The most likely outcome is for a bigger slate to emerge and some other self-appointed gatekeeper to dictate all of the picks. That will suck too.

          3. You can read me and Brad’s email? That is pretty remarkable. Do you work for the NSA?

            No, I mean we’re getting emails from long time SMOFs, people who’ve attended lots of WorldCons, writers, and professionals. Since the SJW side is vindictive and quick to blame all dissent on racism/sexism/homophobia we’re doing what they can’t.

            When TNH had her little foot stompy come apart about owning the Hugos last week, that was like the best thing that ever could have happened for us. It ripped the mask off for everyone who cared to see.

            Gatekeepers were already there. Only you guys never stood up to the twitter windbags, and probably didn’t mind them too much as long as they were only slandering people on my side. Personally, I’d like to see enough widespread involvement that no one clique can dominate. Everybody on my side has suffered through years of crap we didn’t like and our votes not counting, so now you can suffer through a year of feeling like your vote doesn’t count (even though our nominees are actually diverse, good, and if it wasn’t for us, you’d probably not mind voting for them).

            Or you can go ahead, No Award everything, which will prove my point (but poor idealistic Brad will be proven wrong, because he actually has faith in fandom at large), and show the whole world that it isn’t about the quality of the work at all.

          4. A weakness of your argument is that you assume my opposition to your campaign is because I’m not on your “side.”

            I’m a 30-year SF/F reader whose tastes have always leaned towards the Heinlein quadrant of the genre that you and the other bloc campaigners seem to love the most. I don’t share your politics, but that didn’t stop me from loving Heinlein and wouldn’t stop me from reading your books, which truthfully sound like something I’d enjoy.

            When I No Award all of the slate nominees, the point will be that I hate bloc voting. It won’t have anything to do with this war you’ve ginned up against social justice warriors.

          5. rcade:

            A question for you:

            This year, it looks like 200 – 300 people pretty much completely took over the Hugo nominations process, despite warning everyone before hand that they were going to do that.

            Given that, do you really think that slate voters haven’t been gaming the system for years? Do you really think that 40 – 50 people couldn’t gang up together and push through slates? Looking at the nominees over the last 5 – 10 years, do you really think they have NOT being doing that?

            Are you really complaining just because Sad Puppies forced you to realize that your nominations never mattered?

          6. I have seen no evidence that people have successfully gamed the Hugo nominations in past years. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that a small number of nominees got on a ballot through secret campaigns in past years, but there’s never been anything like what Correia’s campaign has openly done here — take entire categories and almost the whole ballot.

            As for the last 10 years, there were times I was disappointed in the nominees and winners, but I read a lot of online talk about the Hugos and I saw no evidence of manipulation. Just the normal unhappiness that follows an award leaving off people you think deserve to be there and the typical conspiracy theories.

          7. “but there’s never been anything like what Correia’s campaign has openly done here — take entire categories and almost the whole ballot.”

            Again, the main complaint here seems to be that SP has broader appeal than past such lists. Yes, when more people vote your vote matters less. But when very few people vote you get Ferguson and the pre-SP Hugos.

            Most of the “thank-yous” are from people like me, who were introduced to some astounding work by SP.

          8. When I No Award all of the slate nominees, the point will be that I hate bloc voting.

            So you’ll join the bloc vote No Award to fight bloc voting?

            Thanks for screaming how dead on accurate the Sad Puppies campaign had you folks pegged.

            To add hilarity, you complain that after Larry’s bloc voting blocked your favorites from getting nominated.

            The direct correlation is that your choices got nominated in the past. Presumably your nominations knocked other sincere concern trolls’ nominations off the short list, but you don’t seem to mind when your choices are on top…

        3. Like any other Hugo voter, in past years I questioned the presence of some works on the ballot.

          But not enough to actually do anything, I noticed.

        4. I notice that you didn’t answer the question asking if you had no-awarded prior slate nominations by the likes of Scalzi’s ‘award pimpage’… planning on doing that anytime soon?

    2. rcade, take your sanctimonious crap and shove it back up your ass. People like you are what got people like me voting in the first place. All your hand-wringing, false-modesty, whining, belligerence and flat out lying pissed me (and judging by the comments and this and many other blogs) and plenty of others off.

      You don’t own being a fan. You don’t get to tell people how and how not to feel about anything.

      1. So what?

        He used bloc voting to enable 100-200 Hugo nominators to drown out the choices of everyone else. This even hurt the fans who made suggestions to him: If a work they liked wasn’t in his top 5, it had almost no chance of being nominated.

        A bloc voting campaign putting the choices of two people all over the ballot is not made more acceptable by the fact they took some public input. It’s still a subversion of the process that gives those of us who do what Correia said he wanted — vote for great SF/F books without a political agenda — no voice in the Hugos.

          1. I wasn’t referring to books having a political agenda. I was referring to Hugo voters having a political agenda, such as rewarding an inferior book because it espouses the correct political views.

            Those of us who don’t do that will have no voice in the nominations while bloc voting persists.

          2. Rcade is going to block vote “No Award” to protest alleged block voting.

            And opposes the political goal “Find actual good books”.

          3. Before the nominees were announced, I had hope that the Puppies movement would help improve the awards by bringing in more fans with a broader range of SF/F interests.

            But now that their slates are taking up almost the entire ballot and leaving almost no space for any work that didn’t meet their bloc’s approval, I see no choice but to use No Award to repudiate that.

            If the shoe was on the other foot and one of the people Correia calls a social justice warrior hogged the entire ballot with a slate, he’d be calling for No Award to be used too.

          4. Nope.

            Feel free to check through my many copious writings on the subject. I’ve always encouraged people to read the works and vote accordingly. I’ve never called for No Award. In fact, if I really wanted to destroy the awards like you guys accuse me of, I’d encourage my people just to No Award everything to be dicks.

            And hate to break it to you, but when the finals look like Best Novel: SJW. Best Novella: SJW. Best Short Story: SJW. Best Related Work: SJW, you’re already getting gamed.

            Only my side is honest at it, and apparently better at it.

          5. No. When that happened Sad Puppies was born.

            We got off our butts and voted. I nominated stuff I loved and thought deserving.

            You are welcone to disagree, but don’t go telling us what we’d do. Especially when your hypothetical is anything but.

          6. Rcade:

            The SJWs HAVE been “hogging the entire ballot”, that’s why Sad Puppies came about.

            And if Sad puppies were JUST “block voting”, we’d have had 5 Novel nominees.

          7. Correia: You have no proof the Hugos were successfully gamed in past years. I will buy a copy of every novel you’ve written if you can prove that even a single novel/novella/novelette category was stuffed with a secret bloc’s nominees in the past 10 years.

            Greg: The only reason you don’t have all five best novel nominees is because that category gets the most nominations. There were 1,595 best novel nominations in 2014. It would have taken 369 bloc voters to take all five slots or 220 to take four.

            By comparison, there were 847 novella nominations and only 144 bloc voters could take all five slots.

          8. Luckily for you, they’re not that stupid, but I won’t miss the sales.

            Also, Sad Puppies didn’t sweep novellas. We had 3 nominees. The fact that those people went on to nominate other Wright novels? I didn’t tell them to do that. If somebody else told that to do that, can’t blame my slate. Though it probably has something to do with the week before the noms closed when we sold 2,000 novellas, making them the most widely read things to show up on the ballot in a very long time, and while those fans were on Amazon they bought a ton more of his products and ended up liking those two.

            Damned fans and their incorrect opinions!

          9. Using No Award as a political bludgeon will destroy the Hugos faster than the Sad Puppies ever could.

          10. Using No Award isn’t political at all if you are using it to reject the tactic of bloc voting.

            If a liberal author had organized a campaign that swept entire categories of the Hugos I’d be saying exactly the same things to him I’m saying to Correia.

          11. “rewarding an inferior book because it espouses the correct political views.”

            That’s the explicit promise of the SJWers. Except its worse than that, because they want to reward/punish work merely for who it was written by. I could appreciate a well-written progressive jeremiad on its merits, even if I disagreed; no work should be judged by the author’s skin color or sexual orientation or politics.

        1. The greatest flaw in your argument is to think that everyone supporting the goals of SP votes, thinks and acts in lockstep. The slate is just a set or recommendations. if voters agree, they will put them up there, if not, they’ll go their own way. No one tells me how to vote when it comes down to the actual ‘picking time’ and from reading the others here, well, good luck getting them to either. I have a herd of cats, and I’d rather get them going in the same direction.

          1. rcade and the rest of the SJW nutjobs are projecting. They assume that because they’re a hivemind, that everyone else is a hivemind, only with wrongthink.

            Understanding *real* diversity — diversity of thought — is well beyond their abilities to comprehend.

          2. Lisa Simpson: Watch yourself, Dad – you’re the highly suggestible type.
            Homer Simpson: Yes, I am the highly suggestible type.

            Correia is good, Correia is great, we surrender our will, as of this date!

        2. dear rcade,

          personally i paid $40 for the express purpose of making YOU whine. i didn’t know it was you at the time, but i knew it would be somebody.

          i just wanted you to know that all your convoluted bullshit here has fulfilled my every hope, and i feel i have gotten my full-on forty bucks worth already.

          next up, i get to read all the nominated stories and books, which for the first time in 30 years WILL NOT SUCK.

          wait until you see what we do to you fuckers next year. you’re going to be pining for Sad Puppies 3.

          and ghod help you, i may even show up in person at Mid America. you’ll be spending a lot of time in the Official SJW Safe Space, because it ain’t going to be Safe around me. i’ll be saying all kindsa triggery shit all over the place, just to be a dick.

          1. Whatever floats your boat.

            I’m not your enemy. I’m just a Hugo voter who wanted to make nominations that had a shot at getting on a ballot. Correia and his pals took that away from me with their bloc voting campaign, so I’m telling him why I think that sucks.

            As for the notion that the Hugo packet has sucked for 30 years, Kim Stanley Robinson alone shoots that idea to hell. And there are plenty of other authors along that span among the greats of the genre.

          2. Rcade. Prove your claim, please. A 200 vote variance between #1 and #5 in the Novella nominations tends to argue against people voting a bloc.

          3. Nathan, only if you’re willing to think and apply your own honest assessment. If you’re willing to concede higher functions to Argument from Authority, well, you get what you get.

          4. The high point for SP-related votes is probably 368-387 (editor or novel). Let’s go with the editor figure, 368.

            Looking for a lowpoint…
            Two Best Dramatic shorts did not make it. Cut off was 71. Semiprozine cutoff was 94, and one missed.

            Unless they were ineligible or declined, of course, that establishes the overall range.

          5. rcade:
            I’m another Hugo voter, off and on for the last 30-some years. Personally, I’m used to nominating works that never wound up on the ballot, because 99% of the time that’s what happens to my picks. But it used to be I could rely on the final ballot to have at least some works I could enjoy. For novels its more or less still true, but for shorter works… I really can’t say I’ve enjoyed many of them for at least a decade now. Last year’s SP noms were probably the first in a fairly long time which I could genuinely say I read without gritting my teeth.

            I’ve said this before and I’ll keep saying it: Ever since I attended my first convention (1979), what have I been hearing about the Hugo ballot? “If you don’t like whats on the ballot, buy a membership and vote. Better yet, get your friends to do the same.” Pardon me, but just how different is that advice from whats happened?

            Not everything I nominated made it onto the ballot, but a far larger percent made it than I’ve ever had before. And its introduced me to some writers I’d not tried before. I do not want to see the Sad Puppies dominating every year, but if this starts the process of making the Hugos at least somewhat more inclusive to all of fandom… I’m for it.

            Re: Redshits
            Since this book keeps coming up as an example of a flawed Hugo win, let me say that IMHO listening to the audio book version (narrated by Will Wheaton) is far superior to actually reading it; the humor works much better narrated than it does read.

            But having said that… its still the polished version of a concept every fanfic reader has been familiar with for decades. (hell, I’m even guilty of using it myself!)

        3. So, you’re bent out of shape that a couple hundred people bought memberships and voted in a way that you don’t like. Rather anti-democratic of you, isn’t it?

          -jcr

          1. Bloc voting is apparently only actionable when wrongfans do it.

            ( sarc ) The SJW crowd never bloc votes. It is just a coincidence that their hivemind always picks out authors that are of the protected-class or the day. No hive-voting here, no siree. ( / sarc )

          1. Screw them. They have bloc voted their hivemind for years.

            Dish some of it back to them.

            Obey the Libertarian International Lord of Hate. You know you want to.

        4. I’ve tended to avoid all this controversy because most people already know that I personally know & like most of the authors from SP1 & SP2, but I’ve been on the verge of commenting on this for days, now.

          You say: “I’m just a Hugo voter who wanted to make nominations that had a shot at getting on a ballot. Correia and his pals took that away from me with their bloc voting campaign, so I’m telling him why I think that sucks.”

          It’s comments like this that bug the hell out of me. You say that you’re “just a Hugo voter who wanted to make nominations that had a shot at getting on a ballot”. Well, you know what? So is Larry. So is Brad. So is EVERYONE else who ponied up their $40 or more to support WorldCon or pay their poll tax.

          Every. Single. One. Of. Them. Are. Hugo. Voters as well.

          You aren’t telling “telling him why I think that sucks,” you’re telling them WHY THEY DON’T MATTER. That THEIR votes aren’t as worthy as YOURS.

          It’s seeing this attitude repeated ad infinitum that just guarantees that more people whose votes will “take that away from you” continue to participate. You want to take that away from them and it doesn’t seem like they want to let you.

          1. Of course we are not worthy. We are wrongfans who promote wrongfun.

            Our badthink must be purged.

        5. Not a single one of my graphics works nominations made the ballot. Not. One.

          None of my artist noms made it

          Only one of my best novel nominations–Jim Butcher–made

          Nearly all of my short fic made the list: because JCW was on fire this year.

          And, you’re going to screw me and Mr. Wright over, raced, just to make a point? How in the unsanctiried lack of salvation is THAT fair? Why do you hate me? What did I ever do to you that you would piss all over the chance of my favorite author winning the Hugo? I’ve been a fan for over 3 decades. Why would you shit on me like this?

          And for the record, I’m NOT going to vote no award on the graphics slate even though all the noms are weak sauce.

          But I am going to do my part to try to help the world con voting fen expand their horizons and check out the amazing Indy comics.

          Your choice; do something positive to make the Hugos better, or shit on innocent writers/ artists/ creators to score points.

          I know what kind of person I want to be.

    3. But the pool of people eligible to vote for Hugos is small (850 people nominated a best novella last year),

      You’ve obviously missed the point. The purpose of SP is to broaden the Hugo electorate to make bloc voting, public or no, ineffective. I’d bet that more than 1000 nominating votes were made in the novella category this year, and that number is going to grow.

      1. Bloc voting doesn’t expand the electorate. It discourages participation in the Hugos for everyone who does not join a bloc. It makes our nominations worthless. No one outside of Torgersen and Day’s blocs got a nominee on the novella, novellette, short story, best related work, or best editor categories.

        Before the nominees came out, I held out hope that the Puppies would be a net positive by bringing a lot more people into the nominating process — both pro-Puppy and anti-Puppy.

        But bloc voting games the system so completely that it will just cause one or more other blocs to form. People who just want to nominate good works without organizing with others will have zero voice.

        1. rcade,

          You’ve fouled your message, as far as I’m concerned. You showed up at another author’s page, one who’s taking some joy in her nomination despite finding herself amidst the silly kerfuffle, and denigrated the value of her nomination.

          Leaving aside her request to keep the nonsense out of her space, who are you to lecture her about the value of her nomination? Who are you to stop by her place and cast a shadow on her pride in the accomplishment?

          It’s pathetic concern trolling, it’s petty and pointless.

          1. Oh, s/he’s the graceless and pathetic concern troll that did that? Guess I should have compared names…

        2. But I thought the SJWs wanted people to organize? Are you saying you’re anti-union?

          What SP is at its heart – organizing the oppressed working class reading masses into recognizing their oppression and working together to do something about it to make a better future for their children.

          We demand good science fiction and fantasy! Down with puerile, heavy-handed, “progressive” message fiction! We demand heroes who perform heroic deeds! We demand stories where the humans are the good guys! We demand stories where the good guys win, or at least go down doing their best, setting up a sequel where their successors can advance the ball down the field in the next generation! We demand a variety of story-telling styles, forms, and themes, not lock-step progressivism extolling the supposed “virtues” of weakness and the favored class of the moment! We want stories that make Big Brother cry and gnash his teeth in anger! Emmanuel Goldstein for best editor! WE WANT GOOD STORIES TO WIN AWARDS!

          Readers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your boredom!

          /end snark/

        3. “Bloc voting doesn’t expand the electorate. It discourages participation in the Hugos for everyone who does not join a bloc.”

          Except for this year when this exact thing happened…

          A bloc existed, a new one formed, and hopefully so many blocs will be created that they aren’t just blocs anymore, but intermingling individual opinions (gasp)

          It’s either that or do away with democracy, which I’m totally fine with, but it’ll probably blow up in their faces if they’re exclusionary again.

    4. That’s quite the temper tantrum there. Would you care for some Preparation H for that industrial-strength butthurt?

      But then, as A Certain Frenchman once said, “Never interrupt your enemy while he’s making a mistake.”

      Please, continue.

    5. But the pool of people eligible to vote for Hugos is small (850 people nominated a best novella last year), so it doesn’t take much for a small group voting as a bloc to determine all of the nominees.

      Wrong. The pool of people eligible to vote for the Hugos numbers in the billions. The pool of those who choose to make the effort and expend the resources to do so is much, much smaller. Sad Puppies has expanded the latter pool. Why is that a bad thing?

    6. I just plunked down my $40, so I will match your “I’m picking up my marbles and going home” brave “No Award” with my vote for the stories I like bestest. When democratic, party politics can trump the creation of a Supreme Soviet for SF, I have to cheer.

      Conformity and acquiescence is easy. Democracy is hard, and sometimes it isn’t pretty. Nancy Pelosi, for example. But it is better than the alternatives.

    7. “Be sure to let me know when your movement to oppose elitism in the Hugos will allow nominations to once again be selected by individuals”

      Um, never have, and never will. It takes at least 30 votes to get something or someone nominated. 30 >>1 that your vote pretty much never matters.

      Sorry

    8. rcade, these were not “my” choices. I polled (straw poll) many dozens of fans, as well as friends, and fellow pros. The list was condensed from a large number of selections. It was right there in my damned blog comments. Of course, all the whiners and complainers never bothered to check. They just wanted to vent their spleens and point fingers, like the crying toddlers that they are.

      1. The fact you took comments from “dozens” in your community does not make it OK that you hijacked the Hugo nomination process away from everyone else. The nominations that I and hundreds of others submitted as individuals in good faith had almost no chance of making the ballot because your slate and Day’s slate filled it.

        In another comment in this discussion, Correia admits he has no proof that even a single novel/novella/novelette category was stuffed with a secret bloc’s nominees in the past 10 years. None.

        Yet in the name of fighting that non-existent problem, you’re completely taking over the Hugos with bloc voting.

        As I told him, just let me know when your anti-elitism campaign is over so someone other than you and your pals can make nominations again.

        1. AAAAAAAAAAAND there’s that moving the goalposts when you are outright told that nope, it’s not just a small handful of people who picked out what to put on that list. Retreat to screaming about hijacking and recommendation lists and voting lockstep when that didn’t happen with SP3. Don’t know about Rabid Puppies, you’ll have to demand answers from them.

          So predictable.

      2. I’m in the same place as rcade on this one. I’m sympathetic to the goals of SP – I’m a newcomer to Hugo voting, having attended my first and only Worldcon in 2011. I’ve kept up a supporting membership since entirely because I didn’t see enough of the sorts of work I like on the ballot. My wife and I have been buying Baen’s monthly bundles almost every month for nearly a decade now, so it’s not that I dislike the sort of work you’re trying to get nominated, either.

        That said, organized open campaigning for the award is not something I can support. I get a little uncomfortable with individual recommendation posts from people for what they think of as works worthy of nominating, and the SP movement has taken that to a new level. The only logical conclusion I can see to this is that we end up with multiple competing organized campaigns for the Hugo noms, and that greatly annoys me.

        I have to deal with enough organized politics in life, as is, thanks. So yeah, I’ll be joining the “No Award” movement for everything on this list and any that appear from *any* organized group in the future, in a probably futile attempt to keep it from turning into the same sort of process as our political process. I’d do the same for any “behind the scenes” cabal, but I’m not connected enough to hear about those if they do exist.

        1. Were you annoyed enough to say anything about “award pimpage”. Were you annoyed enough to say anything when every single winner had similar social justice beliefs and it was hailed as a huge win for diversity?

          Nope.

          And if you’ve been buying the monthly bundles for years, and you truly think that Toni Weisskopf should be shunned because she only got on there because of “organizing” but Patrick Nielsen Hayden’s, what, 12? 14 nominations? were totally fine and completely unorganized and unbiased… Yeah, go ahead.

          Again, we didn’t turn it into a political process. It has been a political process for a long time. Only this time the opposition bothered to show up.

          1. Frankly, with this stance, I know I’ll be shunning several people I’d otherwise vote for. But I don’t see any alternative that doesn’t lead to explicit sides being drawn up and competing slates being campaigned for, and to me, that’s a terrible outcome, and one I’ll protest in the only way I see possible. You may not have turned it into a political process, but you’ve damn well made it overtly one.

          2. So, shining the light of exposure on what had been previously done in the dark by a very small group of self appointed gatekeepers who ensured they received the lion’s share of nominations amongst themselves is bad?

            No, the protest voting is nothing more than temper tantrums.

          3. @Groblek
            How can it be changed, though? Slates are such an effective tactic that it will be hard for people not to use them. Of course, if the vote is diluted enough (so that any one slate gets less than 5% of the nominating vote), slates are no longer effective tactics.
            Also, have you considered that if enough voters decide to be anti-slates, putting people on slates could be a way of guaranteeing someone can’t win a Hugo? Rabid Puppies could put the last Imperial Radch book on their slate next year to guarantee it won’t win, if voters take this attitude.
            Please think it through. If you are anti-slate (insofar as it affects your vote), you are being controlled by slates.

        2. “That said, organized open campaigning for the award is not something I can support. I get a little uncomfortable with individual recommendation posts from people for what they think of as works worthy of nominating, and the SP movement has taken that to a new level.”

          I can get the first part. I’m not really looking forward to the Steampunk slate, and the MilSF slate, and the CyperWar slate, and the Medical slate, and the Latin America slate, and the AltHist slate, and the KillHitler slate, and the Muslim slate, and the Orthodox slate(*) and the FTL slate, and the FemaleFuture slate, and the NoHuman slate, and…no, actually, I take it back. OMG that would AWESOME. If there were only a reason why groups of fans who liked the same sorts of things would comb through the HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of works published each year, in search of what they thought were the best examples of their particular best kind of work. Starting in January, we fans could go from webpage to webpage, checking out the best of AWESOME. OMG. That would so totally rock.

          ” I’ll be joining the “No Award” movement for everything on this list and any that appear from *any* organized group in the future, in a probably futile attempt to keep it from turning into the same sort of process as our political process. ”

          I hate to tell people they haven’t thought about something enough, just because they disagree with me, but really, have you thought about this all the way through? What is the difference between a world where there are NO ‘voting block’ slates, and one where there are NO VISIBLE ‘voting block’ slates? No, seriously, I get that you’d rather the first one.

          But how would you know you had that one, and not the other?

          (*) In my head, the Orthodox slate is late every year, because of protracted infighting over a) representation of Israel and b) if “Eastern Orthodox” works count or not, *again*

          1. ^This!^ Oh, so completely this!

            If people passionate about their interests got together and gave everybody their particular list? And I could go strolling through those lists to find great stuff?!?

            I could live with that.

          2. Honestly, of those two options, I’d reluctantly rather have no visible slates. Entirely because I believe that there’s a limit to how many people can be involved in a secret slate voting bloc, and so enough other voters will be able to over come them. And because I think the effects on the community of having visible slates are going to be very negative. I could well be wrong on both of those fronts, but that’s my opinion on the matter.

          3. I think we should reach out to all of those fandoms next year, if we can. It is their award too.

      3. Some of us came late to the party (but you’ll note we’re not complaining)

        I swear on my towel I’ll get in touch with Kate Paulk and share links & resources to amazebos Indy art and comics. I’m a librarian. We Do Research Right 😉

        Power to the people!

    9. “As a Hugo voter for several years…”

      Question: how many years does someone have to vote before their vote becomes legitimate?

    10. Rcade, I find you fascinating. I think SJWs need to be studied as a psychological and sociological phenemenon of the internet age. What I find remarkable is that you are completely lacking in any self-awareness. You keep projecting your own characteristics on everyone else but you don’t even know you are projecting. Then you realize the SJWs don’t actually see themselves as SJWs at all. They just think they are RIGHT. About everything. And in a completely mindless way. You don’t reconize how badly the SJW crowd ruined the Hugo awards despite being a SJW because you don’t any clue that you are one. Is that the key? It is beyond mere narcissism, but also not really a form of opportunism. It is complete self-delusion based on absolute certainty about one’s own moral superiority. Like something out of 1984. So the clear reaction to the SJW hijacking of the awards makes no sense to you because you are programmed not to recognize that this ever existed. Yet you cannot explain the reaction, which clearly was based on something. So you rationalize and mentally make Sad Puppies into the real SJWs.

      SJWs are people that demand empathy but have none, demand compassion but lack compassion, demand justice but have not one shred of decency, deplore lies but have no honesty, and live an existence of sustained misery, pettiness and infinite self-righteouness that they are completely blind to. Maybe SJWs should be declared a mental illness, or categorized as sociopaths.

      The fact that you cannot see the problem is the problem. Luckily the rest of us are not so impaired.

      1. If you knew my tastes in SF/F and the way I’ve voted for the Hugos the past several years, you would realize the absurdity of calling me a social justice warrior.

        I roll my eyes at all the excessive politicization going on within these genres, whether it’s coming from someone you’d call a SJW or someone whose politics align with Correia.

        All I want is to make my Hugo nominations as an individual and have them not completely swamped by people running slates. Like hundreds of other Hugo voters acting in good faith, I had no chance to see one of my nominations on the ballot this year in most categories.

        Next year, there will probably be competing slates, so I’ll have even less chance.

        The anti-elitist campaign Correia and his pals is running gives ordinary Hugo voters no voice, and that will be true for as long as these slates continue.

        1. My people already knew what it felt like to not have a voice. I’m thinking you’ll find the people you are telling that to are fresh out of pity.

          Only for us, it is worse. Your think your vote won’t count because it doesn’t align with a slate, that sucks. I’m truly sorry. For us, we had that before, but with the added benefit that if we said anything about it we were racist/sexist/homophobes and mobs formed up to damage our careers. And before you pooh-pooh that, check the next blog posts. 8 coordinated news media attacks about white supremacists running a slate of straight white males in 24 hours.

          1. That sounds familiar, ne? If there is a list like GJP or JournoList, what is the liability in spreading libel if found?

          2. Dude: I am your people too. I don’t care about political concerns in SF/F. I care about well-written, thought-inspiring, entertaining books. I’m in my 40s and got my introduction to SF/F with Heinlein, Asimov, Vonnegut and Silverberg.

            If your campaign had gobbled up 1 or 2 slots per category, I likely would have regarded it as a net positive despite the bloc voting because it brought more people into a voting process that needed fresh blood.

            BUT YOU AND VOX TOOK THE ENTIRE BALLOT.

            I am just repeating myself now, so I’ll likely bow out. Thank you for the forum.

            But next time around, I ask that you and your pals consider whether the hostile takeover of the Hugo nominations is worth the cost of excluding voters like me, who just want to participate as individuals and have bupkiss to do with any of the evils you’re railing against.

          3. You point might be made better if you hadn’t shown up at Annie Ballet’s blog and pissed all over her parade, after she specifically asked people not bring the turmoil there.

            So, that being the case, kindly sod off.

          4. Hang on a second, my campaign did gobble up 1 or 2 slots per category last year, by bringing in fresh blood. We were still condemned. Did you say anything then? When we were getting riped for that, lied about, slandered, attacked, sabotaged, did you tell that political clique to calm down, and that we were only bringing in new blood?

            When we lost (which we clearly knew we would, and EVERY SINGLE WINNER shared similiar politics) and they moved the goal posts and danced in the street, insulting my fans, calling them stupid, racist, homophobic losers, did you warn them that maybe they shouldn’t poke the bear with the stick, because the bear might get upset? Did you say that maybe their actions were going to provoke further, bigger backlash, and maybe they should act like gracious adults instead of spoiled children?

            Naw… You didn’t. You let them throw their foot stompy tantrums, ruin careers, and slander innocent people, and you didn’t say a word.

            The next year the angry bear came out of hibernation and wrecked your camp. Now you are upset. Sorry. Already told you it wasn’t perfect, and we could have did things different, but there wasn’t exactly an instruction manual. We did the best we could while the SJWs are wishing for your family to die in a fire, and the supposed moderates stand to the side saying tsk tsk and wagging their scolding fingers.

            We felt excluded once too. Welcome to the party. This is new for you, but we got used to it. You didn’t mind the status quo. You were comfy. It wasn’t you or your friends careers under attack. You think we shouldn’t have done anything, but that’s because you weren’t the one getting poked with the stick.

            But you got caught in the crossfire. That sucks. I feel your pain. But the thing about a crossfire is that bullets are going both ways, and you never said a damned thing about as long as the shells were all flying in my side’s direction.

          5. 1. Vox ain’t Sad Puppies. No matter how much you try to make us out to be the same, it won’t make it true.

            2. So, the *true* sin of Sad Puppies is that – despite ALL expectations to the contrary, Sad Puppies was almost 100% successful…

            See, NO ONE expected Sad Puppies to more than what you have so GRACIOUSLY deigned is “acceptable success”. Well, thank you, m’lord – I suppose I should knuckle my forehead (since I have no forelock to tug).

        2. I have to wonder… how do you feel about bloc voting for under-represented minorities in general?

          Or perhaps, this situation is different?

        3. Frankly, Rcade, if you didn’t agree with Scalzi, et. al., you never DID have a chance of getting your choices nominated.

          But you didn’t “No Award” every work from Scalzi’s lists in previous years, did you?

          1. Show me where John Scalzi posted a list of nominees and urged people to vote for them as a bloc.

            He didn’t do that. There has never been a public bloc campaign like the one the two Puppies slates have undertaken, nor has there been anything that successfully put an entire slate all over the ballot to the exclusion of anyone other people’s nominees.

            I’ve voted as an individual and seen some of my nominations make the ballot in past years, and I never took recommendations from Scalzi.

            What Scalzi does is tout his own Hugo-eligible work on his blog and take comments allowing other people to do the same. His readers also tout other people’s work they like. I have never seen anyone outside of the Puppies actively campaign for bloc voting.

            Correia and his pals have shown they could bring 150-200 people into the Hugos. If they had done that without urging a party-line bloc vote to stick it to the social justice warriors, I think they likely would have achieved their stated goal — bringing some SF/F works they like onto the ballot — without pushing almost everyone else off the ballot entirely.

            That approach also might have let Correia feel comfortable keeping himself on the ballot.

            To me, that’s what Correia, Torgersen and the others involved should do next year. Take the people you’ve already mobilized, tell them the Hugo-eligible works each of you loved in the past year (and the eligible works you produced) and simply encourage everyone to vote.

            That wouldn’t work if there are competing slates, because your individual nominations would be as useless against bloc voting, but so far there’s zero enthusiasm among others for pushing slates.

          2. As I’ve said, I don’t know how many times to you now, when a handful of votes sways the whole thing, and you’ve got a stagnant little pond with the same politics, it doesn’t exactly take a giant conspiracy. Why would they need to put up a direct slate when people they were happy with won damned near everything as it was?

            “To me, that’s what Correia, Torgersen and the others involved should do next year. Take the people you’ve already mobilized, tell them the Hugo-eligible works each of you loved in the past year (and the eligible works you produced) and simply encourage everyone to vote.”

            Your helpful advice is noted, yet totally useless. That is pretty much what we did. We put up a suggested list. I do not have mind control powers. Can you find any place where Brad or I ever ordered these people to march in lockstep? (plus, since most of my fans are fiercely independent and don’t like being told what to do, that would be stupid). In fact, you will find that repeatedly we said these were our suggestions, and you’ll find that I even specifically said go and do whatever you want, because I know you are going to do so anyway.

            The fact that the group of fans who are invested in this, united in their similar tastes, liked the suggestions? Oh well.

            Oh, wait. I forgot. WRONGFANS. Evil vote blocking, blah, blah, blah.

          3. Obviously the bloc voters didn’t vote their own individual tastes — at least not with much variance — or we wouldn’t be having this conversation. There’s no way the Puppies slates fill the entire ballot without a bunch of straight party-line voting.

            If your bloc just voted together because they liked the same works, I’m not seeing many comments that reflect it. It seems like everybody just wants to talk about how they stuck it to the social justice warriors.

            I don’t care about that stuff where SF/F is concerned. If I want to argue about politics I focus on important things like wedding cakes.

            I wish I could persuade you to declare victory and drop bloc voting next year.

          4. Yes, we did stick it to the SJWs. And now my people are rejoicing, because we have exposed them for what they are. Because for years they have insulted these people for being wrongfan having wrongfun. And you holier than thou, above the fray, supposed moderates let them, without nary a condemnation, no matter how absurd their allegations, slander, career sabotage, and lies. Now we fought back, and made them look like fools, and your apple cart was upset in the process. Aw man, maybe you should have said something about them making this all political before, huh?

            You’ve posted here warning about the dangerous politicization of the awards, what, twenty, thirty times now? Over the last decade how many times have you spoken up against angry SJWs making everything in scifi political? Did you post warning that there might be a political backlash against their political witch hunts?

            Oh, don’t worry, I know your answer already. Mumble mumble block voting.

          5. Mathematical analysis, by a fairly disinterested party who has been cranking out fairly accurate predictions and analysis of such awards voting says you’re simply wrong.

            Analysis shows that Puppy voters only stuck to the Puppy slates 40%-50% of the time.

            That’s not “bkoc voting a slate”. Hell, any political party that counted on slate voters that did that poorly would be firing the campaign managers.

            Math is hard.

        4. What’ politicization? Listen, everyone can say all they want about what’s in the stories but the truth is that without the massive wave of anti-white, anti-male and anti-heterosexual remarks this never would’ve happened. That’s the single binding factor that got all these folks on the same page. Or rather, they were thrown onto the same page merely by existing. That massive wave of bigoted remarks continues even right now.

          I am more than happy the morons throwing stuff around about “white privilege” are authors who got pushed off this year’s ballot. They will also be pushed off of next year’s.

          Then, someone else will have membership pizzas delivered. There is no reason to have this Underground Railroad bullshit in SFF. It is lunacy to imagine there is a white male supremacy at work.

          Well, these people haven’t understood reason. Perhaps they’ll understand not seeing their names. Direct action is the only thing feral bullies understand anyway.

        5. “SJW” is just a relatively new label a certain group of people uses for anyone and everyone who doesn’t toe their line. It doesn’t have any functional meaning beyond “someone saying something I don’t want to hear”.

          1. “SJW” stands for “Social Justice Warrior”.

            The term refers specifically to those people for whom “social justice” is the highest good in the world and who aim to accomplish “social justice” by means of slander, defamation, and incitement to violence against those whom the “Social Justice Warriors” deem either members of a privileged class, race or sex (sorry, gender) or insufficiently committed to the cause of “social justice”.

            This slander, defamation and incitement is usually accomplished by blogging or tweeting passive-aggressive comments and outright insults with neither the provision of evidence nor any other attempt at substantiation by the SJW. The accusation is generally considered evidence enough.

            The usual litany runs “Racist, sexist, homophobic shitlord”, though exceptionally creative SJWs will sometimes add “transphobic”, “heternormative”, or “patriarchal” to the list.

            *The more you know~*

          2. No, actually, “Social Justice Warriors” is a term they started using to describe themselves. The ACLU even used it in an article several years before I ever heard it used by conservatives.

            Sorry, but your narrative is sadly missing factual truth.

    11. I must admit, rcade, I’m not a fan, just an avid sf&f reader for well over 50 years, None the less I’m delighted with this whole sad puppies thing, through it Larry, et al, have introduced me to a lot of great writers and reads.

      Your ‘No Award’ stance seems, sorry to say, rather elitist and silly. Because you don’t like those who proposed the slate, you plan to refuse crediting an author/book/etc., even though they deserve credit?

      This sounds so much like the thoughtless action of a true SJW (sorry I’m calling it as I see it), -the type of person who will boycott a company because they, horror of horrors, are selling a Tee shirt made in India (or wherever) using child labor! Said SJW then going to sleep that night with a full belly and a grand sense of satisfaction knowing they fought the good fight. Alas, said SJW not aware nor caring that the child laboring did so because it beats the alternative, that being, perhaps, starvation, and hence, while the SJW’s belly is full, the child, now non-laborer, goes to bed hungry.

      Subsequently, while your ‘No Award’ position is probably not going to cause a writer to starve, it reflects the same hypocrisy as the SJW-non-tee-shirt-buyer.

  8. Funnily enough, I distrust you not because of any politics or social justice reasons, but because you lied. You’ve said that you’d asked all the authors on your slate if they were okay with being associated with SP, but you didn’t. Several of the authors have made that clear.

    So, while maybe you aren’t pushing any agenda I can’t and won’t trust anything you say in that regard. If you have no agenda, you had no reason to lie about that.

    1. We didn’t lie. We made the attempt to contact all of them and screwed up. Curse this frail human imperfection. The fact that you are trying to dismiss the entire thing over that just means you are a nitpicky checklister.

      But hey, while I’ve got you here, why is failing to contact a nominee to tell them you liked and endorse their work such a terrible sin? Oh yeah… That’s because merely being plugged by outsiders with the wrong politics might CAUSE A MOB OF SOCIAL JUSTICE ATTACK DOGS TO RIP THEM APART AND TRY TO DESTROY THEIR CAREER.

      So, apparently if my neighbor has a mean dog that roams around and bites, and I fail to tell people about the mean dog, that is somehow a worse sin than the asshole who lets his mean dog roam around biting people.

      Now personally, I just kick the dog.

      Try again. Your narrative sucks.

      1. Oh yeah… That’s because merely being plugged by outsiders with the wrong politics might CAUSE A MOB OF SOCIAL JUSTICE ATTACK DOGS TO RIP THEM APART AND TRY TO DESTROY THEIR CAREER.

        *DING DING DING!* We have a winner!

      2. Only kick the mean dog trying to gnaw your leg off?

        That “International Lord of Hate” thing went to a teddy-bear pushover…

        1. Errrm, Alex…

          Have you ever SEEN the ILoH in person? You do not want to feel his size fourteen combat boot making newtonian connections with you.

          Owen Z. Pitt, the human wrecking machine that killed a werewolf bare handed? It’s pretty obvious Larry was looking in the mirror when he dreamed OZP up.

          1. Sure Larry was looking in the mirror when he dreams up Owen ….

            Then Mrs. Lord of Hate came by, gave him a big hug and said that he better tone it down in print because no one would believe the truth.

          2. I have.

            I’m 6’3″, big frame, 265 pounds (sadly, not near as much muscle as it used to be).

            Larry makes me feel small by comparison.

      3. Interestingly enough, the very fact that the SJWs are concern trolling over “innocent authors dragged into this mess without their consent” simply establishes EXACTLY WHAT LARRY HAS BEEN SAYING fr several years.

        The CHORFs will gang up and exclude anyone associated (however vaguely) with a position or person *they* (a tiny clique) deem “bad think”.

        Thanks for proving the original ” J’accuse!” that initiated Sad Puppies was 100% accurate.

      4. This is more akin to diverting someone’s taxi to your place, knowing that there was a mean dog around that might attack them. Sure, you didn’t know about the pack of rabid dogs that came into the neighbourhood, but saying “but didn’t the taxi driver tell you I paid him extra to bring you here instead?” doesn’t exactly cut it.

        If you don’t hear back from all the authors, you mention that fact and say that you’d welcome any way offered to communicate with them. This is not your first rodeo. You should have known, or at least suspected, the reaction. It might be a couple of magnitudes bigger than previous, but it was always going to be there. Humans are humans.

        1. Except we’re not talking about the reactions of mad dogs, but of people. People have self-control; their reactions are their responsibilities, not Larry’s.

          Blame the frothing lunatics for frothing, not the innocent people who stirred them up just by existing.

        2. The TL/DR version of Someone Else’s diatribe:

          “It’s YOUR fault that the SJWs are rabid bigots who don’t actually care about Science Fiction, Fantasy, or the Hugos, and will vilify and, libel, and slander anyone who challenges their long standing corruption of the process. And I’m perfectly willing to help then burn down the whole house rather than vote for works based on their value.”

    2. I agree with LC. The fact they even needed to be contacted shows an inquisition is in play. Does anyone need to pre-contact N.K. Jemisin or Saladin Ahmed. If those Twitter feeds were the world I’d think white people were hunter-killer teams.

      1. What do you mean we don’t have a hunter-killer team? What kind of International hate organization is this?

    3. Wow. What a special word you live in. It must be nice to be able to label every goof up as a lie.

      Here’s the thing. I was being considered for the Sad Puppies slate, and I got spoken to before I was even on the slate (and I wasn’t, alas). I have every reason to believe that the attempt was made, because I saw evidence of it myself.

      But you go on believing that a mistake is a lie. I sincerely hope you get to experience the sensation soon enough.

    4. Wait? So everyone is supposed to ask every author’s permission before saying, “I like these stories, and I think you will, too. Go buy them, read them, and decide for yourself…”

      Shit, I’d better go edit my Facebook “likes” page, since I already know Ouija boards are fake…

      1. There already is a permission process. The authors are asked if they accept the nomination.

        Apparently this special snowflake is worried we might be triggering authors.

        The only triggering here is being done by the SJW witch-hunters to author careers.

      2. Damn skippy! I mean, affirmative consent, right? (“Can I linger over this next verb? Please?”). (/sarc)

    5. If YOU nominated someone, would YOU feel obligated to inform them? Maybe, but no one else does. That SP did so (however imperfectly) was a courtesy they dreamed up, not a requirement of the process.

      And I don’t count honest mistakes as “lies”, especially when the perp has already owned up to their mistake.

      1. With something this politically charged with the fandom and internet as it is? Hell yes. Causing problems for someone is something I try and avoid to the point where things actually become detrimental to myself.

        1. So the actions of SJWs causing problems is somehow Brad’s fault?

          What an… interesting world you live in.

          1. It’s the same mindset that gave us “she dressed provocatively, she knew what to expect”.

          2. Yeah.

            Fan of (insert author here): “I love this person’s books so much I will nominate them for a Hugo Award. I’ll blog about it.”

            Friends of the fan: “Hey, let’s make a list of awesome books that qualify this year and we think deserve a Hugo. Raise awareness, because I didn’t know you could vote for the Hugos.”

            Fan: “Sure! Nobody has to vote for it, this is just the list of the ones we like.”

            Some of the friends: I like some of the ones on that list but I’ll nominate a few others that aren’t on it.

            Fan and other friends: That’s cool, nominate the ones you like.

            *Several books on that list make it*

            SJW: RAAAAAAAAAAAR THEY DIDN’T ASK PERMISSION FROM THE AUTHORS THE BOOK I LIKED DIDN’T GET ON BECAUSE IT’S THEIR FAULT AND RAISED AWARENESS!!!!!!!!!

            *SJW goes to harass authors of the books* TURN DOWN THE NOMINATION OR I WILL SWAT YOU, DESTROY YOUR CAREER AND TELL EVERYONE YOU ARE RACIST AND MISOGYNIST! DO WHAT I SAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY! AND IT’LL BE YOUR FAULT IF YOU DON’T DO WHAT I SAY!

            Fans and several authors: What the actual fuck?

          3. One of the problems with modern discourse is the tendency to equivocate responsibility with blame. They are not one and the same.

            Yes, Messrs. Correia and Torgerson and the rest of the people involved with SP3 are partly responsible for the SJW attack swarms going after the SP nominees. They are not, however, AT FAULT for the antics of the morlocks.

            Torgerson et al. acknowledged that responsibility by attempting to contact everyone they nominated, something they didn’t have to do. That they failed was simple human error, not maliciousness (that trait lies entirely with the morlocks doing the attacking).

          4. Brad telling them that the authors agreed to be on the list is the reason the authors are being attacked so, yes, he bears some responsibility for it. He didn’t have to say they’d all agreed, and he obviously has low opinions of SJWs and has been on the internet for more than ten minutes. Saying he didn’t expect the authors to be harassed just doesn’t cut it.

            Since other people seem to want to think I’m a rape apologist or excuse domestic abuse, here’s another analogy:

            It’s not the fault of the victim that they were raped, ever. However, any friend who saw them heading off into a bad part of town, drunk, and made no effort to stop them, being sober, they have some small blame for the matter.

            The same goes for the friends of the abused spouse who know of the abuse but do nothing to stop it.

            Face facts, Brad is the reason so many authors are being harassed and he could easily have prevented it from the start. He bears some responsibility for what happened and, given how easily it could have been avoided, I simply don’t want to trust him. Yes, I’m being overly cynical, but I’d rather be overly cynical than overly naive.

          5. No. Quite simply no.

            Quite with the asinine analogies.

            Creators were chosen because their creations were appreciated. Full stop.

            Bullies are attacking them because they’re petty human beings.

            You’re here, castigating the people who appreciated the creations for daring to voice their opinion.

            Care to illustrate where you’re anywhere else standing up to the bullies for their petty filth?

          6. Oh, this is great:
            • Brad says he got agreement → he left them open for attack; but
            • Brad doesn’t say that → he gets attacked for this omission.

            Go commit some anatomically-improbable obscene acts elsewhere.

          7. Brad is the reason so many authors are being harassed?

            Brad?

            I’ve tried to be polite this whole damned thread, but that’s over the line. Fuck off.

            Even if I grant you the small percentage of those he failed to confirm with before we launched, then subtract those who jumped off when they had the chance… That leaves how many? It sure as hell not “So Many”. And it in no way justifies them having to prostrate themselves on the altar of social justice to beg not to be destroyed by the inquisition.

            That is vile, cowardly, and disgusting.

            It is Brad’s fault that they’re being called racists? It is Brad’s fault they are being called homophobic? It is Brad’s fault that women, minorities, and homosexuals suddenly transform into straight white males motivated by white supremacy? It is Brad’s fault that there has been a coordinated smear campaign from all these different media outlets?

            Bullshit.

            No, you face facts. You are a either a hypocrite, a fool, or a liar. You are excusing slanderous bullies to blame their victims.

            You claim cynical? No. You’re not. You aren’t worthy of the term cynical. Get off your high horse. You don’t trust Brad? Well shit, I’m sure a Chief Warrant Officer, loving father and husband, honorable friend, and one of the most decent and kind human beings I have ever known will be terribly wounded that you don’t trust him anymore.

            So why don’t you skulk back to Teresa Nielsen Hayden and deliver your report, about how you stood up to the dastardly outsiders, and managed to squeak out some pathetic slander about a man who is worth far more than you’ll ever be?

      2. No, the only liar here is Someone else and his crew. They are using the exact logic of a wife beater: “If you took better care of the kids, I wouldn’t have to hit them and you.”

        1. Yep, the justifications of the habitual abusers, the muggers, and stalkers.

          Stalker: “Tell you what, if she takes down the sticky (that documents all my abuses and warns other people about me) I’ll leave all of right-wing SF alone. Oh, she didn’t, it’s her fault then that I’m harassing everyone. It’s all on her now.”

          I’m very, very familiar with the ‘argument.’

          I love how they blame the victim. DARVO tactics at it’s finest.

        2. I like how I’m part of a crew just because I dare to criticise someone. Isn’t that what you people say the SJWs do?

          1. Someone Else

            Please examine the articles listed.
            https://archive.today/X2HPi
            http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/booknews/11517920/Hugo-Award-nominations-spark-row-over-diversity-in-sci-fi.html

            After that try and ignoring your personal feelings toward the sad puppies crowd and answer the following questions.

            Specificly:
            Are the articles factually correct or not?
            Are you concerned about any lies in the articles or are there any lies?
            Did the articles present multiple sides of the issues as befitting journalstic standards or not?
            Is the the type of discussion or conversion you want to see in the media or not?

            Please explain why you think what you think. Also what are you going to do about it.

    6. I take full responsibility for anyone on the slate who got missed. I was juggling hundreds of e-mails and FB messages over a very short span of time. So far, only two people specifically asked to be removed, and they were removed. We did all of this with as much communication and transparency as could be managed. And some balls got dropped.

      However, I think this is one of the silliest red herrings in the entire fracas. Since when does anyone ask “permission” to list an author or an editor on a suggestion list?

      Simple: when everyone knows that the Social Justice Warriors will make the lives of those on the list, a living hell. Great win for our detractors! You have people terrified! You obviously love this field so much, you are willing to scare the entire field to death; of being retaliated against.

      Go you.

      1. SJWs: Did they ask? I need to know if it’s okay for me to go after this guy. I need to know if I can start slandering this author. I NEED TO KNOW IF THEY SAID YES TO THESE PEOPLE I HAAAAAAAAAAATE!!!!! THEY AREN’T ALLOWED TO LIKE THE THINGS I LIKE MORE THAN I DO!!!!!!!

        *shakes head*

        1. “How many RPM’s (R’sPM…because I must…correct…teh grammorz!) is Orwell up to now?”

          You, sir, are a prince among men. I fear I may have broken something, laughing as enthusiastically as I did…oh boy… Best. Orwell reference. Ever! Oh…I need to sit down…

  9. Well, if I can honestly blame you for something, Larry, it’s letting a lot of us readers who weren’t aware that we could nominate and vote for the Hugos!

    So, yeah, that’s your bad. Totally all your fault. At least where I’m concerned.

    And now I continue to stare with teary eyes at the screenplays for movies, because I can’t choose, they were all awesome!

    (cue Lego Movie themesong)

    1. EXACTLY. Three yeas ago I didn’t even know I COULD vote in the Hugos. I thought the winners were decided by committee- and the results seemed to reflect that. (which is why I never paid attention to who won.)

      And on Twitter- this is the conversation I’m having most often with people who are new to SP.

      1. Yup. I’ve been a die hard fan since, well, forever. I GAVE up on using a Hugo Award as a sign of quality about 25 years ago, because while earlier Hugo winners were almost always entertaining, the inverse was true after that.

        An until Sad Puppies, ibthough there was some kind of “Hugo Committee” that made the awards, sort of like the Nobel Prizes and other major awards.

        “Bloc voting”? Well, no. I didn’t nominate this year (because, frankly, it was the shouts from the tiny clique that thinks it personally owns the Hugo’s as a fiefdom, and the people calling to destroy the awards by voting ” No Award” to “make a statement” that I got motivated to buy a membership, although I’d considered it for a few years). Now, when I vote this year, I’m going to read as many of the nominees as I can, and vote *only* where I have read the majority of them, and *only* base on quality as *I* perceive it. Next year, when I nominate, I will nominate *only* works *I* have personally deemed worthy for consideration, regardless of who may or may not suggest them.

        Sadly, the increased book money will have to come from somewhere else in the budget, which means I’ll be buying fewer guns and ammo for the next year at least… Ah, such sacrifices we make for Art…

        1. Boy oh boy do I have some good news for you!

          Not only did your $40 buy you a year’s shadenfreude, but it also includes e-book versions of most nominees. More than I was able to read last time, anyway.

          I think they shoot for Mermorial Day to get them to you.

        2. I didn’t nominate – didn’t have the money – but goddamn I would have when I found out that Jim Butcher’s Skin Game was eligible.

          See, I completely forgot about the Hugo noms this year, till SP3.

          I wouldn’t have nominated Lego Movie, nor Interstellar (I hadn’t watched it until two nights ago), or any of the movie nominations because I live in Australia and I wait for the DVD release over here. That came WAAAAAAAAAAAY too late for any of the ones that ended up being nominated for me to watch and go “I’ll suggest that for a nomination.”

          I actually didn’t buy much book-fiction last year because I’ve been slowly buying manga and nonfiction. Or DVD box sets (of anime.) But I pre-ordered books like Nemesis and Skin Game. I saw that there were authors I liked in Dangerous Women so I got that in hardcover. (Which authors? GRRM and Jim Butcher. – I find I enjoy Martin’s work better as short stories.)

          But my loving Jim Butcher’s work makes me a minion and a ‘block voter.’

          Instead of books this month, I used my month’s book budget to buy a Sasquan membership so I can vote. (Though, in retrospect, the bundle indirectly means I got books. And for a change the bundle won’t be filled with grey goo like If You Were A Dinosaur, which I did read and it was COMPLETE AND UTTER CRAP. That would have earned a no-award from me because it wasn’t sci-fi OR fantasy.)

          I’m voting for the stuff I enjoyed. I will read the works included in the bundle, as much as my time allows. Has bloody NOTHING to do with the SP3 ‘slate’ because the only thing Sad Puppies ever really did was to inform me “You, the fan, can nominate and vote for works you think deserve the Hugo; and which works were eligible.”

          Larry and Brad did us ‘wrong fans’ an awesome favor.

          1. I’ll have to check and see if I caught the butcher story in dangerous women! I tend to pick up short story collections at the library because I’m not big on them, but I like to know what’s happening if they are characters from books I’m reading (like the dresden files).

            I’ve read all of GRRM’s books, but they are long. I read the first three in a clump and had to take a break for a year or two before tackling the last two.

          2. Lea;

            The Jim Butcher story in Dangerous Women was all sorts of AWESOME – and if I am not mistaken, it’s the first one. I’ll restrain myself on the excited squee because well, it’s full of dangerous women, and Harry’s not the main character this time. It was a fantastic look into the head of one of the other important characters.

            Also, Jim writes really good women, imho as a woman. It really showed in this story – well, at least to me.

            The GRRM story, I felt, was masterful writing; I greatly prefer his stuff when they’re short. I also highly recommend his The Ice Dragon, which was recently re-released with beautiful illustrations by Luis Royo. It’s a book aimed at children, and can be read out loud, chapter by chapter, to one’s kids. (We’re doing Odd and the Frost Giants by Neil Gaiman.)

            I tend to pick up anthologies that include authors I like because it also gives me the opportunity to sample the works of authors I haven’t discovered yet. It’s a bit hit-and-miss since I can’t peruse the books in a physical book store (I buy from Book Depository because free international shipping); but on the whole I enjoy even the unfamiliar offerings. Yes, some of them are messagey fics and some of them have rather obvious tick-in-the-intersectional-box characters, but they don’t always sacrifice the story for the message, and to my pleasure only very few stories were unreadable due to message-brick-cascade.

            A collection of novellas that included one by one of my favorite authors sadly had mostly grey goo, with the story of my favorite being the only really good one. It struck me as a really tragic thing because the other stories had wonderful concepts in them, but suddenly I was being hit over the head with MESSAGE and it’s like the author forgot how to incorporate that more smoothly into the story.

            I generally will try to check out anything that have been edited by Terri Windling (sp?) and Ellen Datlow, anthologywise. They get some really diverse styles and genres.

          3. Ooh, that story is about Molly? I have to say, she has become one of my favorite things about the Dresden files in the last half of the series. I think Jim’s done a fantastic job with her.

            When I finish the pratchett books I picked up at the library and the new jane yellowrock and the new annie bellet that I’m trying out, maybe I’ll check it out.

            I also really liked Jim’s short story about Thomas. I think it was in an all dresden files short story compilation.

          4. And for a change the bundle won’t be filled with grey goo like If You Were A Dinosaur, which I did read and it was COMPLETE AND UTTER CRAP. That would have earned a no-award from me because it wasn’t sci-fi OR fantasy.)

            I did read If You Were A Dinosaur, and honestly, it wasn’t that bad as many people make it out to be; the protagonist of the story just wants her boyfriend lying in bed critically injured to get back up and kick butt, is all. And she imagines him doing so as a dinosaur.

      2. This, a thousand times this.

        I’ve done cons, including worldcon in several locations, It wasn’t until SP1 that I realized the Hugos were fan driven.

        For that alone, I’ll thank Larry et all, if for no other reason.

        (OK, I loved the grimnoir series, and the MH series tickled me pink, but Larry did that for money, and I responded, the SP stuff, he did for free, and for that, I will thank him)

    2. I know it’s great. The real great evil that Larry did here is let general fandom know that they could vote in the Hugo’s. I never knew how they were awarded before the Sad Puppies campaigns.

  10. Larry: I’m probably going to regret posting, but I’ll say it anyway. Here’s the problem with what y’all did. Three Body Problem isn’t on the ballot because you hadn’t had a chance to read it yet. One author, John C. Wright, has six Hugo nominations because his editor put him on a slate.

    It’s like if CBS figured out a way to get 15% of the Emmy voters (which is the approximate percentage of the Hugo ballots your slate controlled) to game the Emmys such that in any given category there were 4 CBS shows and one show from HBO. No matter which show wins (even the HBO one) people are going to suspect it was NOT the best show in that category.

    A persistent argument, repeated here, is that “whisper campaigns” were getting people Hugos. In this year’s voting, 1174 people voted in short stories, nominating 728 short stories. Where’s the whisper campaign in that? The only campaign was the one involving between 230 and 151 people voting a straight Sad Puppies ticket. The other 944 people spread their whispers out among 723 titles.

    Because of bloc voting, the requirement to get on the short fiction ballot went from 6% of the voting public to 12%. And to pull that off – to mobile a paltry 230 people – required enough screaming on the Internet to be heard from orbit. Yet the 60 people needed to pull off a pre-Sad Puppies “whisper campaign” did so in silence and stayed silent?

    At best, the Sad Puppy logic is of the “we had to destroy the village to save it.” I really hope you bring a lot more people to the Hugo voter rolls – by my math you’ve got upwards of a thousand eligible voters who are really upset at you. That’s a big hill to climb.

      1. Taking a concern troll’s bad advice will still not get you a seat at the “cool kids” table.

        All concern trolls have the same advice: “Shut up, hick, and we promise you will stop being hated by us”.

        This is a lie, of course. They just want you to shut up.

    1. Refer to Brad Torgersen’s blog for a take down of this troll. I am too busy to pull back all the eloquent rebuttals of him over there.

    2. Gerrib, as I said above, there’s not exactly an instruction manual for this. I’m terribly sorry that I couldn’t fix every single problem in the world, in an absolutely perfect and fair manner, while simultaneously having assholes scream racist racist racist in my ear.

      Maybe if some of these “moderates” such as yourself (moderate gets quotes for you, because I’ve seen some of the completely asinine and false things you’ve post about us before) would have talked to us last year instead of having a destructive freak out, which then turned into a gloat fest after LonCon, it wouldn’t have come to this. But you didn’t. And my people acted. Oh well.

      I don’t know if you’ve realized this yet, but the fact that a thousand people are mad at me is pretty much irrelevant. I’m one of those obnoxious types who does what I think is right, and can’t be shunned into falling into line.

      You guys didn’t try to work with us. You didn’t listen to us. You attacked us, maligned us, lied about us, and every time you did more of my people showed up with cash in hand, pissed off and wanting to make a difference. Now your apple cart has been upset. Hmmm… maybe you should have done something other than call us names for the last few years and we wouldn’t have this issue.

      1. I said I was going to regret posting, and I was right.

        Larry – I have never lied about you. You wrote a book I thought was competent at best, pounded the Internets to get it on the Hugo, and me and 1500 of my best friends all said no rocket for you.

        You guys didn’t try to work with us. We did. We said, “if you’ve got this mass of unhappy fandom, bring them.” They stayed home, to judge by Loncon’s vote totals.

        You didn’t listen to us. We did. Listening is not agreeing. You spun a tale of conspiracies, in some cases laughable (Chicks Dig Time Lords – published by a one-man shop working in his spare bedroom in Iowa – couldn’t fund a whisper campaign in a million years). We said, “sorry, Larry, not really.”

        more of my people showed up with cash in hand You’re up from 161 in Loncon to 230 now, a 30% growth. Of course, nominations are up from 768 to 1174, a 37% growth. Math’s not trending your way.

        1. “Math’s not trending your way.”

          Clearly, you have nothing to worry about then, right? Right.

          I guess you still can’t hear us yet. SP4, coming up.

          1. By mess up, you mean nominate people like Jim Butcher for best novel? Yeah. That must really suck for you. Just imagine what brilliant work of social justice message fiction didn’t make the cut because of that!

          2. If Butcher or Anderson win, it is gonna be a real kick in the balls then, won’t it?

            Make certain to campaign hard (HARDER I say!) for No Award.

            That will show us!

          3. ” Since the entire short fiction list was a Puppy slate”

            And, of course, no one but a Puppy would ever have voted for any of those crimethink stories, right?

            Gerrib, you’re losing it.

        2. You’re up from 161 in Loncon to 230 now, a 30% growth. Of course, nominations are up from 768 to 1174, a 37% growth. Math’s not trending your way.

          That’s presuming (prejudicially) mindless lockstep block voting.

          There are a lot of people in that non-block-voting 37% that are NOT your allies Chris. Waves!

        3. Oh Gerrib, you are a perfect example of Brandolini’s principle in action. It is a good thing I type fast.

          Your opinion of my book, meh. I’ll get over it. Probably by sleeping on this big pile of money.

          As for not winning in LonCon. Duh. Wow! I never saw that coming (except for in every single post I ever made on the topic, at a con where half the voters hate me for who I am, before Australian rules I came in 4th in London behind two home town favorites and the Wheel of Time).

          You said bring them? Uh… Yeah… We did. That’s why you are here angry at us right now. The 1st pass was a lark. LonCon was only the 2nd time my side ever bothered to do much of anything related to this topic. Now we’ve done it a 3rd time, we did as you said and brought more fans, and now you guys are trying to figure out how to change the rules to exclude them.

          But hey, keep moving those goal posts. I’ll keep bringing more fans. Hilarity will ensue.

          You don’t “fund” a whisper campaign. As for Chicks Dig Timelords, you are either being deliberately obtuse, playing dumb, or lying in the hopes that the people reading this don’t get it. If you look at who contributed to that book, you’ll see a whole bunch of names that are familiar to WorldCon regulars. Most of them have lots of fans in those regular voting cliques. It was a work that was uniquely suited to appeal directly to the small number of people who determine the votes.

          Duh.

          Interesting, Gerrib. I’m curious where you think you’ve got the exact number of Sad Puppies voters for this year. Either you’re full of shit, or you’re playing inside baseball about supposedly secret ballots (which we’ve been told over and over and over again never happens in this sainted process) and you’re admitting it in public.

          But do you really want to argue trends with a former auditor? Disregarding the veracity of your numbers, if I’ve only got 230 total people that sure is a damned sad commentary as to the pathetic state of the awards now, isn’t it?

          But hey, go ahead and No Award Jim Butcher and Kevin J Anderson and I bet I can double that number next year. 🙂

          1. I got the numbers of Sad Puppies from the last slide of Sasquan’s presentation. They listed number of ballots, number of nominated works, and high and low vote totals. Since the entire short fiction list was a Puppy slate, it didn’t take Sherlock Holmes to figure it out. Nor should it take an auditor to figure out that if 90% of the vote is spread out and 10% is concentrated, the 10% wins.

            Regarding “Time Lords” – I actually know the editor (she’s a local fan) and she knows I’m a Hugo voter. Yet I didn’t even know she had something eligible until I saw it on the short-list. Pretty weak whisper campaign.

          2. Yeah, seriously… Don’t quit the day job. Trust me on this one.

            CDTL had contributors who were popular with the cliques. It got plugged by people popular in the clique. Once golden with the cliques, everything else in the series made it too, year after year. Small category, tiny insular voting group, easily swayed.

            Wow… So what you are saying is that as few as 10%, if motivated and united can sway a popularity contest? Hmmm… I wonder where I’ve seen that argument before. Oh yeah, it was me. When nearly every winner in nearly every category was predictably leftist and spouting social justice stuff. Only, I seem to recall when I pointed that out years ago, I was a bad person for insulting the honor of the sacred Hugos.

            Well, thanks for backing me up, Gerrib! 😀 Always a pleasure.

          3. So, no accounting for variance in votes between categories or that, given the relative difficulty some people have in reading enough short fiction to have an opinion, more people in general vote for novel than short fiction?

            Oh, and Chris, a big problem many of us have with your arguments in general is that it usually falls along the lines of “Well *I* didn’t see it.” It makes you sound like the country boy that, when told that 1 in 5 people are Chinese, said that he didn’t know anyone who was Chinese. That you did or didn’t see something is a data point; it does not validate or invalidate an argument by itself.

          4. Which proves?

            No, seriously. 151-230 people Voted for the Short Story nominees. Where’s the bloc voting?

          5. Thanks for the numbers, Chris. It’s just too bad you didn’t actually bother to understand them first.

            Best Fancast, three Sad puppies nominees: low 69, high 179.
            Best Fan writer (5 nominees, 4 won, one lost): low 129, high 201.
            Best Semi-prozine (3 nominees, 1 lost, two won): low 94, high 221
            So AT MOST there were 93 Sad Puppies “pure slate” voters

            Your numbers fail you

          6. Looking at it again, but the 70 to almost 200 vote variance between #1 and #5 in categories swept by SP/RP appears to argue against block voting.

          7. Your book sucked. Sorry, that’s why I didn’t vote for it. London wasn’t a great list and in terms of what was on it it was only ever really going to be a choice of 2 novels and Justice was better than Neptune’s Brood, so that was my 1/2.

            I refused to vote for the Wheel of Time on the basis that it shouldn’t have been there.

            It wasn’t hard.

          8. Duly noted. Somehow I’ll just have to get by with it being in a bunch of languages, my large loyal fan base, winning Audie awards, and making giant piles of money.

          9. Funny thing is, a decision not to vote for Larry because you think his book sucked is *perfectly valid*, and 100% in correspondence with the goals and methods of Sad Puppies.

            And 180° from where the SJWs and the concern trolls who will vote “No Award” to “send a message” are…

        4. You guys didn’t try to work with us. We did. We said, “if you’ve got this mass of unhappy fandom, bring them.” They stayed home, to judge by Loncon’s vote totals.

          Oh, so that was a one time deal? Well, our mistake. /eye roll/

          You’re up from 161 in Loncon to 230 now, a 30% growth. Of course, nominations are up from 768 to 1174, a 37% growth. Math’s not trending your way.

          And here I thought specifics weren’t being released until after the awards were presented.

          1. He’s, as usual, making massive assumptions before mangling the statistical analysis.

            STEP 1: Assume block voting.

            =161!

            It’s dim.

        5. Chris baby, this is the first year I ever cared enough to vote on the Hugos. I think I like it.

          I think in fact I like it a lot. Because me -just showing up- has a lot of people like you, whom I detest as a patter of principle, going completely nuts.

          We have not even begun to mess your shit up. You are outnumbered, out gunned and out maneuvered. Flanked, even.

          Because: you asked for it, you got it. Toyota.

          1. Gerrib’s side: Well if you want to see your stuff win then vote for them!

            SP3: Challenge Accepted.

            SJWs: YOU WEREN’T SUPPOSED TO DO THAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

        6. . Of course, nominations are up from 768 to 1174, a 37% growth. Math’s not trending your way.

          Only if you assume that all SP fans vote as a bloc. “Begging the Question” is your lookup.

        7. If Only You Were a Dinosaur, Chris Gerrib, you could have defended yourself from the Sad Puppies.

        8. “You’re up from 161 in Loncon to 230 now, a 30% growth. Of course, nominations are up from 768 to 1174, a 37% growth. Math’s not trending your way.”

          Wow. Math REALLY isn’t your strong suit.

          230/161=1.429 (ie. a 43% increase)
          1174/768=1.529 (ie. a 53% increase)

          By the way, maybe you should turn that ‘stunning’ intellect to the question of why – after 60 years – the number of nominations suddenly shot up by more than 400, over 50%. It CERTAINLY couldn’t be because of SP, when, by your attempt at math, they only increased in numbers by 69.

          Must just be some weird cosmic coincidence, huh?

    3. Wait, wait.

      So us not nominating something we didn’t read is a bad thing now?

      Which is it?

      I am actually sad it didn’t make the ballot. But I haven’t read it yet, so I didn’t nominate it.

      I nominated five novels I have read and loved, two of which are on the final ballot.

      Keep in mind – apparently everyone else thought Ancillary Sword and Goblin Emperor were more worthy than 3-Body too.

      1. No, both Larry and Vox said they’d have put it on the slate had they read it in time. Basically, a book got denied a Hugo nomination because of the reading patterns of two people.

        1. So, why didn’t you nominate it and turn out the vote? Why are we supposed to do your job for you? And why are you surprised that a group of people that you’ve shown you disagree with over the past four months have different tastes and different ideas of what is good and fun than yours?

          Are we now expected to have read all works published in a year now? Sorry, no one has time for that, and.my library and the local Barnes & Noble don’t carry Three Body Problem, Ancillary Sword, or the Goblin Emperor. But clearing the rather low bar of nominating from the pool that I’ve read over the year? Yeah, I can do that.

          1. An individual nominating the works that he or she likes is never going to defeat a slate voting as a bloc.

            This is true while Correia and his pals are running the only two blocs, and it will be more true when people with bigger megaphones are running bigger blocs.

          2. Bigger microphones.

            Given the discussions I’ve seen about “giving moderators power to ban anyone backed up by strong gatekeepers when anyone complains”, that means “the only microphones that haven’t had their cables cut.”

            Were you born that dishonest, or did you go to special schools?

        2. I never said that. I’ve not read it yet. I’ve heard good things about it.

          Was it even more brilliant than Ancillary Sword?

          You know, Gerrib, if your argument is that we’re super bad because a work you found worthy didn’t make the ballot… WELCOME TO OUR WORLD EVERY OTHER YEAR. 🙂

          Great novels don’t make the ballot every year. That isn’t exactly a unique problem to us, and there are plenty of examples of truly shitty works that bumped something better from the short list. Your problem isn’t that this was decided by 3 men (it wasn’t, it was decided by a few hundred fans) but that it was the *wrong* men.

          We did a slate of suggestions. We had no way of knowing that such a high percentage of them would make it.

          You have already established in I don’t know how many SP related blog posts over prior months, that your real problem is that voters you don’t like are coming in and threatening your calm. That has to suck for you.

          A Hugo nominee for best work in its field will have to get a shocking 12% of the vote instead of 6% from its tiny group of voters. Man. That sucks. At that rate we’ll never be able to read about dinosaurs getting revenge on a bunch of stereotypes again!

          1. Was it even more brilliant than Ancillary Sword? actually, yeah – Sword wasn’t on my ballot.

            We had no way of knowing that such a high percentage of them would make it. Well, other than you were repeatedly told that bloc voting would screw up the nominating process. Other than you saw that last year when sixty-some followers of VD put something up that then got clobbered by No Award.

          2. Well shoot then, Gerrib, maybe you should have done a better job alerting the regular voters about what a good book 3 Body Problem was so that it would have made it instead of Ancillary Sword. Because you know, all the ones SP nominated are actually good.

            I love how you keep using the phrases like “screw up” like it is a bug, not a feature.

          3. “We had no way of knowing that such a high percentage of them would make it.”

            You know it now. You also know that Vox Day put his publishing house, his authors and himself all over the ballot, which everyone can surely recognize as self-dealing.

            So are you rethinking tactics for next year at all, or is this the new normal?

          4. Well, let’s see… I only said that we would be rethinking tactics a couple of times in the main blog post, and a few more times in the comments… So I’m going to go out on a limb and say yes, we’re constantly rethinking tactics.

            But the CHORFs are making that so very hard when they post stuff like this: http://www.ew.com/article/2015/04/06/hugo-award-nominations-fall-victim-misogynistic-and-racist-voting?hootPostID=221657cca998c926458486c3f53fbe17

            Read that headline…

            Yeah, I can’t imagine why my side would be tempted to say to hell with it and hoist the black flag.

          5. @Larry

            Can you send me a link to the cached copy of that EW article? I wasn’t able to read it before they put up their… less biased version.

          6. Rcade wrote: You also know that Vox Day put his publishing house, his authors and himself all over the ballot, which everyone can surely recognize as self-dealing.

            Yeah, that’s horrible! Who does he think he is! pnh@tor.com?

        3. You know, one of the things that I personally got out of all of the internet fighting the last few months was a realization that I don’t like how angry I get when arguing back and forth. It frays my temper far too much.

          My temper is quite monstrous, and I spent more than two decades forging a leash for it. Given that coworkers have expressed outright shock when I talk about my temper I’d like to think I succeeded into making my control a strength rather than a weakness.

          So I am trying really hard to focus on the positive and not insult people while still defending what I believe in and people I respect.

          You, sir, are testing my resolve.

          You are telling a man WHO TURNED DOWN HIS NOMINATION that it is his fault that a deserving book didn’t make it onto the ballot.

          You are doing this while you and many others have accused us of not reading what we nominated.

          You are doing this when the general voting pool thought Ancillary Sword and Goblin Emperor more deserving as well.

          You have the sheer, unmitigated GALL to attack men whose only fault is that their to be read pile is larger than time permits, as well as AGREEING with you that the book was wonderful.

          It is a shame it isn’t on the ballot. It is a shame the Lost Fleet isn’t there. Or Night Broken. Or a dozen other novels.

          There are only five slots, and thank goodness there are more than five books worthy of inclusion. Something worthy of winning will always be left off.

          I suggest you stop while you’re behind.

          1. I’m not sure the significance of snake, but I laughed. I needed that.
            🙂

          2. He’s not worth getting upset over, no more than a petulant child throwing a temper tantrum over having to share the playground with kids he doesn’t care about sucking up to.

            And that’s all his screeds are: temper tantrums. It’s only worth your pity that a supposedly grown man is acting like a two-year-old,

          3. I love Patricia Briggs but I didn’t think night Broken was all that good.

            But I agree with the rest 😉

          4. There are a couple of Patricia Briggs older works that should have been in contention though.

        4. I have a question, Chris. Where’s the information on the numbers, and who was next in line, coming from? As far as I know that information is not supposed to be released until after the final voting, after the awards ceremony.

          As for the reading habits of two people, well, Tor’s probably earned that one. My own assumption is that a book coming from Tor that’s not from an author I know I like, will probably not be to my liking, so personally I’d have waited for someone else to jump on the grenade and read it first, that I respect. Tor’s earned that reputation, so they get the results.

          1. Yup. Let’s see, looking at my primary bookshelves, how many Tor books do I have…?

            Let’s see, Niven, Flynn, Drake, Pournelle, Poul Anderson, Cook, one Heinlein, Burst, and one rather mediocre Weber (took the risk because I like David’s stuff usually). MOST of those are older works, or authors who signed on with Tor years before.

            Well outnumbered by Baen books (which run about equal with the pre-1990 books).

            But the last fifteen years or so? I *won’t* bother risking my money on an unknown author published by Tor, without a trusted recommendation, because they publish so much dreck. For a while there, I just thought it was modern SF/F in general, until I noticed that of the really prominent houses, Tor had a significantly higher rate of suckage…

            OTOH, I *will* take a flyer on a Baen author I don’t know *anything* about, because I’ve been disappointed less than even buying based on whether I liked previous books by the same author. I found that to be a good working hypothesis (“Baen tends to publish decent stuff”) even before I became aware Baen had a reputation for publishing “badthink”. (Uh, yeah, Tom Kratman, Eric Flint, Mercedes Lackey,S.M. Stifling, Anne McCaffery, and Lois McMaster Bujold are all from the same tiny, extremist sliver of political ideology, right?)

            That says something about the relative quality if the publishing houses…

        5. No fuck you this is where you’re lying.

          It wasn’t the ‘reading patterns of two people’ that became the suggestion list / suggestion slate.

          People were invited to give suggestions. Brad made a list of the ones that got the most suggestion count. I was one of the ones who actively said “Yes” for Skin Game. I had NO opinions outside of Lego Movie for the movie list because I hadn’t watched any of ther other movies being suggested except for that one. The discussion was held across several blogs and I think the owners of the blogs that were putting together the SP3 slate. MHN, According To Hoyt, Mad Genius club and Brad’s blog, were the ones I remember reading that had discussions of what works to put on the list.

          Guess what, Gerrib, YOU could have suggested Three Body Problem, since you fucking comment on all those places. But YOU didn’t suggest it and NOW BLAME LARRY AND VOX? Because guess what? Anyone was welcome to put a suggestion, and the end result was a list of suggested works to vote for. NONE OF US were HELD TO THAT LIST, despite your constant sneaky insinuations that we did. There were several other people openly saying that there were some works they would vote for, and some that they wouldn’t, and that was completely fine. Because unlike your ‘friends’ they weren’t going to destroy us for NOT marching in lockstep. And here you are, going NO AWARD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! BLOCK VOTE NO AWARD!!!!!!!!!

          But it doesn’t matter, because you and your friends would never believe us anyway. And the SJW mantra is “It’s okay when WE do it.” And you’re one of the oldest SJWs I’ve run into.

          You’re still pretending to be the reasonable, vaguely sad POS who used to concern troll over at Jordan179’s LJ till you got banned for your endless goalpost shifting and weaseling.

          Funny how your 1500 friends ‘got beaten’ by the few hundred.

          Are we supposed to yell ‘This is Sparta!’ now?

    4. quote: “you’ve got upwards of a thousand eligible voters who are really upset at you. That’s a big hill to climb.”

      Reminded me of this scene from Inglorious Basterds (sic):

      Col. Hans Landa: Are you mad? What have you done? I made a deal with your general for that man’s life!

      Lt. Aldo Raine: Yeah, they made that deal, but they don’t give a fuck about him. They need you.

      Col. Hans Landa: You’ll be shot for this!

      Lt. Aldo Raine: Nah, I don’t think so. More like chewed out. That’s ok, I’ve been chewed out before.

      1. ” “you’ve got upwards of a thousand eligible voters who are really upset at you. That’s a big hill to climb.”

        Their arrows! Will BLOT out the SUN!

        Then we shall fight in the shade.

    5. Typical.

      In this year’s voting, 1174 people voted in short stories, nominating 728 short stories. Where’s the whisper campaign in that?

      “Let’s all nominate for How to Serve Man, because it is awesome.”

      How many other short story nominations would that “whisper” campaign cause?

      All 1174 could nominate HtSM, and and those same 1174 have 4700 other slots to fill with short stories. Reaching 728 ‘others’ should be no problem. Or a mere 70 could nominate HtSM, and 728 other short stories happen to fill in slots. In other words, as usual, “The statistics presented don’t have any bearing on the case, but they were thrown in to obfuscate the issue and sound rational.”

      The usual would be more like “I like -this-, you should help me get it nominated” and get 20-40 nominations that way. Not very far from 70 really, and a totally pathetic way to run an award.

      I don’t expect you to bother reading up on it, but there was a pre-slate “Ok, what’s actually -good- this year?” series of questions and requests for submissions.

      This year, the (your words) 70-person-whisper-block was outvoted. By, IMNSHO people who had actually read the works.

    6. “In this year’s voting, 1174 people voted in short stories, nominating 728 short stories. Where’s the whisper campaign in that? The only campaign was the one involving between 230 and 151 people voting a straight Sad Puppies ticket. The other 944 people spread their whispers out among 723 titles.”

      Dude. How on earth do you know this? I’m serious, has it been released that as many as 151 people voted “straight” SP? Linky links, por favor.

      I think it’s actually pretty likely that most people who were aware of SP voted for a couple-three of SP “slate” noms in each category, plus a few others ( likely those that didn’t make the SP short list.)

      But if you’ve got specific information indicating straight line voting, please do share.

      1. I downloaded the slides from the Ustream presentation. They gave a breakdown of number of stories listed, ballots cast, and high and low vote counts for the finalists. I then compared them to the 2014 results.

        1. So your guess is educated rather than pulled from some piece of your anatomy. Still a guess.

        2. If your analysis is similar to what you demonstrated in that statistics thread on Brad’s, I’m going to have to ask for an independent auditor. Or at least some form of peer review.

          1. https://chaoshorizon.wordpress.com/ has a post estimating number of puppies. There could have been up to 150 block voters for the big categories. Or, what probably happened was 300 people agreeing with maybe half the slate.
            Chaos Horizon does an excellent job with minimally biased Hugo information.

          2. And that matches the anecdotal information as well. No more than 50% agreement with the slate by the supposed “bloc voters”.

            Hmmm… Almost like they didn’t vote as a bloc…

          3. @differently – good link. I am impressed with what CH is doing – even if I take issue with limiting the math to “high school” stuff.

            His list of factors for the Nebula, f’zample, are very telling, considering how the Locus list left out Baen entirely.

          4. @keranih
            Chaos Horizon is amazing. Sad Puppies came along and was like “the Hugos are biased against conservative authors”. Lots of people said “no it isn’t! the Hugos don’t have biases!”
            Then Chaos Horizon came along and suddenly we have data and studies that show the Hugos are biased against everything from novels that weren’t published between May and October to YA SFF.
            The blog/author should really get a Hugo nomination, sometime. Considering all the controversies, its amazing someone stepped in and started providing unbiased data.

          5. I had both Chaos Horizon and Brandon on my ballot. He’s doing excellent and original work. Worth recognizing.

          6. Chaos Horizon has done some good work. My favorite when he was looking at likely Hugo nominees, and he compared the buzz for two politically polar opposite authors who sell a similar number of books, and discovered that Locked In had reviews from all the places, and Monster Hunter Nemesis had none. It is kind of funny when people who pooh pooh the idea of biases in this industry look at actual data and events and come away like, holy moly, maybe those crazy right wingers aren’t totally crazy after all. 🙂

          7. I assume you’re referring to Sanderson. Man is ridiculously good. I guess that’s what happens when he had enough time to write seven novels before Tor realized the one he submitted to them (Sanderson’s sixth) was worth publishing.
            That being said, I think Tor gets a worse rap on this blog than they deserve. You could make a pretty good hugo shortlist with just Tor published fiction.

          8. And they usually do make a Hugo shortlist of just Tor fiction. 🙂

            Okay, serious answer, I’ve already defended Tor the publisher a couple times on here. I’ve got nothing against Tor. I think that a couple of their editors are scum on a personal level, but that doesn’t reflect on their authors. Some of my best friends are published by Tor.

            The animosity that you see on this blog against Tor comes from a few things. Tor.com the blog, which is often a cesspool of idiocy, where all dissenting opinions are crushed, and the Nielsen Haydens talk a whole lot of trash. I’ve never said anything negative about Tom Doherty and I respect the man.

          9. Whoops, never mind. Brandon is the first name of the guy who runs Chaos Horizon. My bad. I always think of him as Dr. Kempner.

          10. Yeah, Kempner from Chaos Horizon. But I’m a fan of Sanderson. His stuff is good.

          11. @ Correia
            Fair enough. Frankly, I’d rather focus on the positive aspects of Tor.com. Authors GET PAID a lot for short fiction on that website. I’ve looked at their rates.
            I’m also interested in seeing how Tor.com the Imprint ends up working out. It seems like a cool idea.
            And, as a fan, I do love their extensive previews of upcoming work.

          12. Oh, you mean like Baen was doing in the 1990s?

            The first time I read A Civil Campaign was a chapter at a time, as Baen posted Bujold’s submissions BEFORE editing.

          13. Speaking of cesspools…

            Tor publishes Veronica Schanoes…

            “The US is a cesspool of white supremacy.” – Veronica Schanoes

            Oh, dear. Again?

          1. I’m pretty certain we can turn that into a running joke about pretty much everything he says…

        3. Okay, there is a copy of that slide posted here: http://madgeniusclub.com/2015/04/04/2014-hugo-nominations/

          I took those and did some internal comparisons (just 2015), and found that the range of entries to ballots, the range of high to low votes, and comparing those two ratios to the number of SP/RP/and other noms was all the hell over the place. Ranges *seem* most strongly related to the number of available entries (ie, more shorts than novels) than anything else.

          I need actual vote totals to do a better examination, and I’m not going up against LC on the strength of an excel spreadsheet, but your assertion that a definitive pattern exists is not supported by the evidence.

        4. I’m not an auditor (retired or otherwise), but I have been doing failure analysis (starting with analyizong correlations in production testing with failures, to look for ways to set up testing more efficiently for total production ROI savings) for quite a while.

          To paraphrase the great philosopher I. Montoya:

          Your numbers do not mean what you think they mean.

    7. Please note that Gerrib is constitutionally incapable of admitting when he is wrong, so debunking him mostly involves laughing at absurdities.

      Go ahead, ask him if he’s willing to retract his statement that there were “no black people” in pirate movies before Pirates of the Caribbean. And his separate statement that there were no more than 2 black people in that movie. Because SJW’s only want to correct the “whitewashing” of history.

      Seriously. Someone ask him.

      But to his supposed points:

      1) 2 novels NOT on the SP3 list made it onto the Hugo slate. If 3BP is *that* good, your side was able to get it on there. If it’s *that* good and you DIDN’T get it on there, well shame on you for marginalizing a non-anglophone POC in favor of a white woman. You racist hatey-haters.

      2) Irrelevant Emmy comparison, since Emmy Awards are by committee (a large committee, but a committee nonetheless) – Man, you really proved your point on that one.

      3) “Between 230 and 151 voting…” Seriously? At least do us the decency of accusing people of nominating in lockstep. Then we could have an actual discussion about bloc voting. As it is we’re supposed to conclude that, what, a large group of people with similar tastes nominated in similar ways?

      SHOCKING.

      Go tell that to the previous years where 40-45 people nominated the same people across 3 ballots by “accident.”

      We’ll wait.

      Oh, and BTW, thanks in large part to SP campaigns, the number of registered voters has QUADRUPLED in the last 5 years.

      QUADRUPLED.

      You’re welcome.

      4) It didn’t require screaming. It caused it. Get your causation in order.

      5) We’re not the ones threatening to use the nuclear “No Award” option to throw a temper tantrum.

          1. Actually, I’d like to see more of Tanya and Skippy.
            * looks on internet *
            No, not that much! Aaargh, my eyes! I can’t unsee that!
            * unfortunate noises follow *

    8. There’s a word for someone who fails to do the right thing at the crucial moment — such as standing up to actual bullies and even kicking the person fighting back against the bullies and defending others against the bullies in the shin.

      It begins with a “c”.

    9. It’s like if CBS figured out a way to get 15% of the Emmy voters (which is the approximate percentage of the Hugo ballots your slate controlled) to game the Emmys

      By “gaming” you mean “getting them to vote?

      Apparently, Dave Barry is no longer a satirist. “The appeal of this concept was so strong Wilson was swept into office despite widespread allegations of vote-garnering,”

    10. JCW has multiple nominations because his short works this year are made of awesome, with awesome-sauce & sprinkles on top.

      SP made me and other Wright fans aware that we could nominate him for the Hugo. I am ONLY aware of Castallia House because they publish Wright.

      I’ll forgive a business owner a boatload of +++ungoodthink if he makes my favorite author’s works available. Do you know how many of my friends and family got copies of Awake in The Night as gifts? All of them. They’re all looking forward to when they’ll get the on-dead-tree edition of Feasts and Seasons.

      So do us all a favor, okay? Stop spreading that self-serving lie. Read the Wright short fiction nominations. We voted for them because they’re the best stuff we’ve read this year.

      And if the industry rags would quit blacklisting any storyteller who doesn’t toe the party line, there’d be more quality stuff. Didn’t the Soviet Union teach you that commissars are death on creativity?

      1. Personally, I found the Nightlands stuff to be some of the best writing and amazing wordsmithing I’ve ever read.

  11. “Teresa Nielsen Hayden, head of the SMOFfen SS”

    🙂

    Goose-stepping morons like the Haydens should try *reading* books instead of *No Awarding* them.

    Re: GamerGate

    You probably know this already Larry, but GG had the same problem with “moderates”. While the small, incestuous world of gaming media was being taken over by a clique of SJW’s who abused their positions to push radical leftist identity politics in articles about Far Cry 3 or what-have-you, the “moderates” did nothing.

    When gaming journos were being showered with free swag by publishers for promoting their games instead of giving unbiased reviews, the “moderates” did nothing.

    When the gaming press started becoming increasingly insulting of “dudebros” who enjoy the wrong sort of games (like CoD), the “moderates” did nothing.

    When it emerged that a talentless SJW hack of a “games developer” was literally sleeping with the games journalists who promoted her awful “game”, and Reddit and a whole bunch of other sites immediately tried to censor any discussion of that, GamerGate was born. The SJW’s, used to pushing and pushing without any organised resistance, were stunned and enraged at gamers fighting back.

    And what did the “moderates” do? Why, suddenly they were Terribly Concerned! Terribly concerned that these GamerGate folks were saying mean things on the internet, that is! Can’t we all just get along?

    Well, no. SJW’s are like the Borg, if the Borg had rainbow hair dye and ironic hipster specs, and were constantly crying on Twitter about how evil white cis patriarchy is the root of all evil. It is impossible to reason with fanatics, or agree to disagree with extremists, or find mutually respectful common ground with people who are animated by hatred and paranoia.

    The SJW mentality is like a grasping spolit child: “what’s mine is mine and what’s yours is up for grabs”. And it’s “not fair!” if you decide to take anything back.

    The SJWification of the Hugo awards was like the Bugs destroying Buenos Aires. If they thought winning that battle meant they’d won the war, they were wrong. Wendell’s Roughnecks are heading for Klendathu, and we’re going to win.

          1. The CHORF idiots are going to regret getting the Gamergate crowd involved … if they think we are bad news …

          2. This just conjures up the majestic sight of a manatee team as they open their canopies in unison on a HALO jump…Their whiskers blowing upward…. Their flukes fluttering in the slipstream……As their battle cry rings to the heavens…

            “Meeeewhooo Hoooooooooon”

          3. congratulations. I now want a Wendell’s Roughnecks unit patch. Also, a short story. And a sketch of the mobile amphibious armored landing craft, with fishbowl cupola, for Wendell to lead the mechanized charge.

            And a pony. I’d like a pony.

          4. BOOM That was the pony. Just dodge the “rain”.

            Like this:
            youtu.be/1_t44siFyb4

          5. In the 23rd century, genetically-engineered manatees live in zero-g environments across the solar system. When new technologies render them obsolete, the noble manatee people are forced to hire themselves out as mercenaries. From the pirate outposts of the Kuiper Belt to the oceans of Europa, if there’s war raging, you’ll find —- Wendell’s Warriors.

        1. We may have the next Christmas [noun] here…

          Write, Larry, Write!

          Shoot, wouldn’t this make a great shared world anthology, with Hoyt, Wright, Freer….

    1. [quote]It is impossible to reason with fanatics, or agree to disagree with extremists, or find mutually respectful common ground with people who are animated by hatred and paranoia.[/quote]

      This is something I’m finally understanding. It always bothered me that the people screaming for civility were the ones guilty of being uncivil, but I wanted to do the honorable and right thing no matter how deplorable other people’s behavior has been. It’s taken me a while to understand why it’s hard for me to speak up, other than wanting to avoid getting stomped on. The fact is, for me, the people who make my stomach clench and who would rain down character assassination, lies, and the ones who want to destroy others’ careers for simply having a different opinion generally came from the people demanding tolerance and equality.

      It hit me yesterday that these same people who remind us that there are always consequences feel that calls for death (saying people deserve to burn, etc.) and attempts to deprive someone of their livelihood are *appropriate* consequences they are duty-bound to enact. Simply because people have opinions they don’t like. I used to give a lot of people the benefit of the doubt, and it wasn’t SP or anything/one else that convinced me otherwise. Their own words condemned them.

      However SP has helped me speak up. I don’t argue because many of the arguments are not in good faith, but I can present the facts and source them.

      1. I’ve found there’s fewer people less tolerant than those who are constantly telling you how tolerant and accepting they are.

        It’s rather like if you meet someone who’s constantly telling you how trustworthy they are, you’d better grab your wallet and run. (Found THAT one out the hard way…)

        As long as you’ve got facts, present the facts. If they don’t LIKE the facts, that’s just too bad for them…

    2. Larry’s “SMOFfen SS” is one of those phrases that will live on for a long time, I think. 🙂

    3. It’s difficult watching Demolition Man while reading all the blog posts, comments, and tweets about the SJW’s authoritarian takeover of society to make it their way because they just know so much better than we do, but the similarities are just too much to ignore.

      Larry is not just the International Lord of Hate, he is the John Spartan, awoken, unfrozen, and ready to demolish the “perfect” society, because it’s about damn time somebody thought of the Dennis Leary and his Underground as people, too.

    4. Goose-stepping morons like the Haydens should try *reading* books instead of *No Awarding* them.

      This I like. Yes. This no award I won’t read this stuff because reasons is just proving everyone’s point about clicks. A real fan of words written on pages rather than politics and Internet bs would read an vote accordingly. Anyone who refuses to do that loses the right to claim the high ground.

    5. I am an extremist so I expect to get beat around the head and shoulders a bit… but, that ain’t never scared me enough irl to keep my yap shut, so it don’t here either 😛

      But, in this day and age, with the culture war going as it is, imo, ‘moderates’ fall into 1 of 2 camps.

      1. Vichy.
      2. Quislings.

  12. This is an excellent summary of what happened and answers many questions/issues the uninformed have. Thank you for posting.

  13. Whelp, I’ve spent most of Saturday and this morning on Twitter talking to other #WrongFans (Look, Larry, we made a new hashtag!) about the hugos. One guy I know who is in Gamer Gate (and, not surprising, a big SF/F fan), suggested we form a #NotYourShield coalition to combat the nastiness from the usual sources.

    Being a female and a lover of animals of all species, sexes, and orientations (cough-heh.) I like #NotYourKitten- personally. But anyway…

    I find it most amusing how hard the CHORFs on twitter crowd is trying to re-write history.

    * This wasn’t something that Larry started doing years ago. Oh no. GAMER GATE is behind this! Even though GG began only 9ish months ago and majority of it had never heard of SP until last Saturday… NEVERTHELESS! This was GAMER GATE’S DOING! (those evil time traveling bastards!)

    * SP wasn’t a backlash against a clique of people trying to shut out people and books that they don’t approve of- oh no. THEY are the victims! Because… well they’ll get back to you on that. But it will probably involve racism, sexism, and purity of the genre. Or something.

      1. I figured out why this is the other day:

        Because race and gender etc. are cultural constructs, they feel free to assign those constructs to whomever they believe best fits their concept of a given construct.

        So, if you do do not fit their concept of the “Woman of color” construct, then you cannot be a woman of color, and must therefore be assigned to the construct which you most closely resemble, usually a “white male” construct.

        It’s rather Procrustean of them, I have to say.

        Technically it is a violation of the right to self-determination, and the “right” to not be labeled as something that you are not (which they hold so dear), exacerbated by the fact that they re-assign constructs without the consent of the re-assigned, but… “X for me but not for thee” and all.

      2. You and I must have man-ginas. Or something. Two xx chromosomes, a functional uterus, and publically identifying as female, but nope: Not Real Women.

        Funny how that works.

  14. “Marko Kloos indy published sci-fi book has sold literally over ten times as many copies as last year’s winner Ancillary Justice, and people love it, but it isn’t worthy”

    Is there supporting evidence for this somewhere?

      1. Fairly certain Amazon doesn’t publish sales numbers? Ten times the sales is a hell of an assertion, which is why I took the time to comment. You were in business, would you have accepted such a wild assertion without hard numbers to back it up? A quick glance at goodreads shows Lecke with a substantial lead in reviews so I was hoping for some enlightment.

        I don’t always agree with your politics, or your presentation, but I’ve followed your blog for awhile, and this is the first thing that just sounded off the wall.

          1. What the hell? Did you even look at that site before making your snide little comment? That site is stupidly obtuse, has some sort of blackbox calculation of sales rank going on, and I certainly can’t find a total sales figure since publication.

            If you’d like to continue to feel superior then, please, post a link to both of those book’s stats from that site where it gives total sales since publication. I will happily bow down to your superior intelligence at that point.

            Until then, here’s what I’m seeing:

            Amazon Reviews for Ancillary Justice: 640
            Amazon Reviews for Terms of Enlistment: 1868
            – so roughly three times as many amazon reviews

            Goodreads Ratings for Ancillary Justice: 16750
            Goodreads Ratings for Terms of Enlistment: 5716
            – so roughly one third as many goodreads ratings

            So, to be clear, the assertion that Larry made that Terms has sold “literally TEN TIMES more” there should be 186 Amazon reviews and 571 Goodreads ratings. Obviously that’s fuzzy math. All of this is fuzzy, just like blackbox calculations of amazon ranks. However, the actual numbers are FAR too close to even remotely support that assertion.

            So. Dazzle me. Make me feel stupid and expose my ignorance to the blinding light of day. I really want to be proven wrong here because it bothers the hell out of me that Larry would say something like that without being able to support it.

          2. Dude, I know Marko. I was one of the tards that kept kicking him about wasting his time submitting his work to dead tree houses until he took our advice and self-published.

            He’s making damned near as much cash as Larry.
            Read keranih’s post in this subthread. He had way less info that I have, and he figured it out.

          3. @Justin – I agree, the novel rank tool is not complete, but I suspect there are very sound reasons (ie, it would embarrass and/or cost a lot of money to Very Important People In Publishing) why the information is not more easily accessible.

            @ Kristophr *cough* she *cough* (not a huge thing, no offense taken, but these the chromosomes God gave me)

            @ LC – ah, ooops. *facepalm* In which case, novelrank doesn’t give enough data, as ToE has been out under 47North long enough that the self-publish data isn’t available. I will say that my eyeball says that ToE has likely already outsold that 30K just under 47North, not counting the previous self-publishing.

            And unlike MK, I think I could bring myself to eventually be okay with outselling everyone on Amazon except Stephanie Meyer. Eventually.

        1. Kloos is only publishing in Kindle. The novelrank tool below shows that for the last 12 months, AJ has been averaging just short of 1K sales a month. Lines of Departure has been at 1200 plus. And AJ has had about 150 books a month in paperback. LoD has been out for three months less than AJ, too. And completely without the publishing house backing.

          1. To clarify, I was talking about his first book, not the one nominated. My guestimates on numbers are based on that article from last year where Ancillary Justice was declared the future of scifi and had sold 30k copies, and I can’t say anything else about Marko’s numbers, because that would be jerky. But I know how much money he makes, and we’re kind of competitive about it. 🙂

  15. FWIW – the reason why topic X keeps shifting is because SJW (and their saner kin, quietly battling away in the trenches of actual oppression, rather than ranting on teh intrawebs) are in fact fighting the concept of the kyriarchy, which is All That Which Oppresses Anyone.

    (This is apparently going as well as any fight against an idea ever does – or, for that matter, any operation without a well defined objective.)

    They aren’t deliberately shifting goalposts, because the goalposts are everywhere at once, in some sort of multi-verse Schrodinger space.

    Having said that – LC’s rebuttals are on point, and I get his frustration. This is a mess he didn’t make, but one he took upon himself to fix.

    I still would like to see a wider spread of candidates for each category, and will be paying closer attention this year, in order to suggest those I fancy when I see them.

    To make up for failing to get engaged in time to nominate anything this year, (I voted in SP2, but RL got away from me) I have roped in two friends to sign up for WC this year, who swear they will read before voting.

    Hang in there. This is the good fight.

    1. They’re not trying to fight oppression — they’re trying to set themselves up as the oppressors.

      1. They’re not trying to fight oppression — they’re trying to set themselves up as the oppressors.

        No, most folks are just trying to get by.

    2. “FWIW – the reason why topic X keeps shifting is because SJW (and their saner kin, quietly battling away in the trenches of actual oppression, rather than ranting on teh intrawebs) are in fact fighting the concept of the kyriarchy, which is All That Which Oppresses Anyone.”

      What is this MIckey Mouse bullshit?

      The topic keeps shifting because they try to paint anyone who doesn’t fall into lockstep with them as a Bad, Evil, No Good Person!

      1. ” they try to paint anyone who doesn’t fall into lockstep with them as a Bad, Evil, No Good Person!”

        Well, *yes*, but they call it “being an agent of the kyriarchy.” Which most anyone could end up being.

        Circular firing squads are a feature, not a bug.

      2. I call it currently accepted reality. what that is depends on the clique of approved insiders. If you don’t know what that is right now and deviate from it, SJW mob will descend upon you and rebuke you.

      1. Doubt it. Eleison has the Greek for ‘mercy’ as the root, and I don’t see much mercy out of the SJWs. 😉

  16. Larry:

    All over the internet, the SMOF’s are saying that the SP’s should start their own award.

    So, why not have an internet poll of the SP slate? Announce the result AFTER the Hugos.

    Call it the Happy Puppy.

    1. That would kinda defeat the point of SP3. They’re trying to reform the Hugos so that it once again is representative of good SFF, not create yet another little known award.

      1. Not so. By releasing the award results AFTER the Hugo, it’s win-win. How could they object?

    2. I don’t know, seperate but equal awards? I feel like I’ve heard of that before, there’s no way that could be construed as prejudiced. ..

    3. The social justice warriors have been allowed to mess up enough good things. It is about time they were pushed back.

    4. Why the hell should we bother making a new award?

      There’s this cute, shiny Hugo award, just lying there, neglected for the last couple of decades. Just waiting to be picked up by a fanbase who work hard at jobs, buy books, and can afford $40 each.

  17. Larry, if you want to know, the thing that put me over the top on this Hugo thing was Alex MacFarlane over at TOR.Com
    She proclaimed that SF was now officially “post-binary-gender”, and that there should be no more stories with “binary” gender characters. Or some such twaddle, I read her idiot blog but none of it made a lick of sense.

    However, senseless as it was, it pissed me off. So I paid a bunch more attention to Sad Puppies this year. Discovered all it was going to cost me to have my say was $40US. So I did.

    It would appear I was not alone.

    I’m actually amazed at how few votes it took to sweep this thing. Just goes to show that the Hugos have sucked since the 1970s because of a REALLY SMALL CLIQUE, and they just got served.

    Y’all can thank Alex MacFarlane for this year’s Hugos. Larry Correia is practically a bystander at this point.

    1. Here’s about as short a synopsis as you’ll find, written by some goof on a tumblr:

      “Gender creates the differences between the sexes. It celebrates inequality and it glamorizes the subordinate status of females – therefore gender is the embodiment of sexism. Without gender, we’d be androgynous in terms of fashion, and it would be much more difficult to notice one’s sex at first glance. How do groups of people oppress other groups if they aren’t able to tell themselves apart from the other? Gender’s intended purpose is to clearly mark the subordinate class from the privileged class.”

      They literally think men have used masculinity like a scarecrow – a suit of clothes they put on to keep women in line for thousands of years. When we’re alone we revert to that silicon thing in Terminator 2.

      1. I’m thinking this thing called biology would still make it possible to tell the sex of some, if not most, people. And that’s not even taking into account individuality. In a perfect, Maoist world, we all might have to wear the same ugly androgynous garb, but in the real world, we’re allowed to choose how we dress. Of course, that is presupposing we’re all denizens of earth.

  18. The CHORF’s are amusing. They really don’t understand what the “win” in this game is. The more the mask slips off with their bluster, threats and attempts to “shame”, the more they prove the point to the whole exercise.

    The badfan call for inclusiveness should be heeded, but it won’t. Be interesting to see just how tightly they think they can circle the wagons…….

    1. They’ve never once listened to anything SP voters had to say. They lied about the motivation behind SP. They didn’t believe us when we denied their accusations. They eat up their own BS as if it were tasty truth.

      Now that we’ve proved them wrong on every count, they don’t know what to do with themselves.

      It’s not fair that we didn’t act the way that they claimed we were going to act! Now they have to scurry around and find a new thing to be mad about.

  19. About Ms. Toni Weisskopf: I sent her an e-mail once letting her know about a couple of authors I thought she ought to look at. Now, I’m just an old guy (71) who has been reading Sci Fi, Fantasy, S&S and associated genre for around 60 years. Nobody special, me. I didn’t expect to hear a peep out of her as she’s a big wig at an important publishing house for books I like to read. I just hoped she’d see the e-mail and think about the two guys works.

    A week or so later she sent me a response. I was surprised. So, if some folks have bad things to say about her, in my view, they are idiots. If a publisher of a very good house takes the time to consider the opinion of a reader of books, and I didn’t mention that I buy Baen books, though I confess I dropped Larry’s name, she can’t be all bad.

  20. 1. N. K. Jemisin ‏@nkjemisin Apr 5 Ehn. I started to blog about the Hugos today, but I’d actually rather do my taxes.

    2. Tobias Buckell ‏@tobiasbuckell Apr 5 @nkjemisin spending the weekend building bed lofts for my twins and writing

    3. N. K. Jemisin ‏@nkjemisin Apr 5 @tobiasbuckell Awesome better way to use your time. 🙂

    4. Tobias Buckell ‏@tobiasbuckell Apr 5 @nkjemisin I feel like I won. Plus, these sorts of people spent the first years of my career saying and threatening far worse. I’m inured.

    5. K Tempest Bradford ‏@tinytempest Apr 5 @tobiasbuckell @nkjemisin I am with you. These assholes are still around but they aren’t the mainstream anymore.

    6. Mary Robinette Kowal ‏@MaryRobinette Apr 5 @tinytempest @nkjemisin @tobiasbuckell That’s what people were saying during Reconstruction. I’m worried about assuming they’ll fade away.

    7. Tobias Buckell ‏@tobiasbuckell Apr 5 @MaryRobinette @tinytempest @nkjemisin I don’t assume they’ll fade away, I just am not surprised to see this stuff come back to light.

    8. Tobias Buckell ‏@tobiasbuckell Apr 5 @MaryRobinette @tinytempest @nkjemisin ie: I always assume it’s there based on how common it was 10-15 years ago when I got started

    9. Tobias Buckell ‏@tobiasbuckell Apr 5 @MaryRobinette @tinytempest @nkjemisin and based on the emails and personal encounters I had before I had multiple novels out

    10. Mikki Kendall ‏@Karnythia Apr 5 @tobiasbuckell @MaryRobinette @tinytempest @nkjemisin It’s Race Fail 2015. We were about due.

    11. N. K. Jemisin ‏@nkjemisin Apr 5 @Karnythia @tobiasbuckell @MaryRobinette @tinytempest Ugh. Why you gotta tell the truth?

    12. Mikki Kendall ‏@Karnythia Apr 5 @nkjemisin @tobiasbuckell @MaryRobinette @tinytempest I like truth. Also, they’ll ride this train for a few months then move on to comics

    Hahahahahah. Freakin’ reconstruction!!! The South’s gonna rise again!! Ahahahahahah.

    1. The SJWs are all about punishing people for escaping the Democratic Party plantation.

      Nothing has changed for these folks since the Civil War.

    2. Okay, if there are any newcomers in the comments, this is what we’re up against. Everything is about racism.

      1. Yep. Despite some of us are writing diverse characters doing pretty cool things,they think we really just want to see non-straight white males in chains or something.

      2. It’s true. The Left thinks everything we say is racist code words. No wonder they get outraged by the most innocuous things.

        1. That wasn’t about you, Brad, or Larry for that matter.

          There are, sadly, racists in SFF. That was very specifically about the fact being complacent about racism has historically not gone well.

          1. Mary, I appreciate your showing up here.

            I would ask all of my readers to be polite and respectful in their disagreements.

            Now, I have to say that I agree you. It is bad to be complacent about racism. So why do people like Tempest Bradford get a pass? Or worse? Cheered on? Why does judging people by their skin color, sexual orientation, or sex suddenly become okay if only certain groups are attacked?

          2. Tempest and I are friends, and I’ve called her out on occasion when I thought she went too far.

            Now… if you really want me to answer this, it’ll take awhile, because it involves unpacking some things that are kind of built into our society. I used to ask the same questions, and it’s taken me years to pull the blinders off. So. Are you asking me rhetorically to make a point, or do you really want to know? Because if you really want to know, then I’ll take the time to walk you through it.

          3. I’d love to know. Today, a Hugo nominated Fan writer who I’ve enjoyed reading claimed that racism requires institutional power within the American framework of race, and that only certain groups are responsible for getting rid of it.
            I’ve always thought of racism as just people discriminating against other people on the basis of the color of their skin, the place they were born, where their parents came from, etc.
            I don’t see how discrimination can be okay, even if it’s against a group that has discriminated in the past.
            So what’s up with racism? How is this word being used?

          4. Correia:

            “Why does judging people by their skin color, sexual orientation, or sex suddenly become okay if only certain groups are attacked?”

            Kowal:

            “do you really want to know? Because if you really want to know, then I’ll take the time to walk you through it.”

            This makes it pretty clear: Kowal agrees that judging people by skin, sex, or sexual behavior is ok under some conditions.

            Allow me to speed things up and go straight to the end point. Judging people by skin, sex, or sexual behavior is ALWAYS ok, if it is EVER ok. Some people, Kowal possibly included, will claim it is not ok under limited conditions; such people are hypocrites, attempting to deflect criticism they don’t want to hear. Silence the critic by redrawing the limits of “acceptable” to exclude the critic, and have the redrawn limits always be to one’s advantage. That is how the left works.

            differently:
            “I don’t see how discrimination can be okay,”

            You don’t see how perceiving the difference between two different things can be okay?

            Do you understand what it is you are saying?

          5. I have already written a prediction of what this walk-through will be but I will not present it until Larry and Mary have their go round. But I will say this: I can predict what any intersectionalist will say about historic or social events. That’s because straight white men never move from the cross-hairs of an intersectionalist. Conversely, whether it’s slavery, colonialism or homophobia, no entity that is perceived as Islamic or PoC will ever move into those cross-hairs, no matter how historically accurate it is. It’s all power-privilege punching up mumbo-jumbo where the outcome is decided far in advance. That’s because the disdain for a thing precedes its essence.

            Also, group defamation is always wrong – no exceptions. No skin or sex has ever been “wrong.” There is no such thing in terms of historic currents that cross oceans and mountains and centuries.

          6. @ Rollory
            When I said discrimination in the sentence you quoted, I meant the types of discrimination mentioned, discriminating based on race, nationality of parents, etc. And I’m talking about taking action based on that, not just observing that someone has a given skin color.
            Obviously, I don’t have a problem with people liking what they like in fiction.

          7. Ms Kowal –

            I would be interested in hearing your take on the apparent dual standard in reaction to both biased content and vicious tone in various actors.

            Before you start, be prepared for people (like myself) who have been long exposed to social justice paradigms and mythos such as “tone argument” and “privilege knapsack” and who have, *after long consideration* rejected these as unhelpful and/or inaccurate povs for navigating through the world.

            It would be an error to assume bigotry or ignorance based simply on not agreeing with intersectionalists in these matters. One person’s pov does not dictate the pov of the whole world.

    3. Here is the ever faithful Telegraph. I’m not surprised it’s anonymous:

      “The Hugo Awards have been at the centre of a furore after two campaigns successfully prevented female authors and authors of colour from being proportionally nominated. Some people are comparing the controversy to GamerGate, which in 2014 saw coordinated misogynist attacks aimed at people who spoke out about sexism in the gaming industry.”

      And they have this quote from K. Tempest Bradford:

      “a class issue, a race issue, a gender issue. In other words, it’s intersectional.”

      Who’da thunk that? The South’s gonna rise again boys. I hope SJWs have laid in stores of prozac and klonopin in their anti-white man shelters to weather the coming storm.

      1. Did they catch the part where we have a whole bunch of women on our slate? We also have people of different sexual orientation and People of Color (I so hate that stupid term, it’s just Colored People backwards), only we didn’t make a big deal out of it because we truly don’t care and it was all about the quality of the work.

        1. The problem is that we DIDN’T make a fuss over that stuff. Don’t you know you’re *supposed* to make fusses over arbitrary genetics? Pffft.

        2. Apparently those nominations were only to disguise your racist and sexist motives. Yes, I really did see someone make that claim.

        3. Most Esteemed and Dread Lord of Hate, I tremble to correct you, yet am compelled to do so.

          “Colored People” was an exclusionary artifact of White Supremacy, one that only referred to individuals of proximate African descent, aka “Negros”, “Blacks”, “Afro-Americans” and most recently “African-Americans.”

          In the interest of being more inclusive, stick it to the White Supremacy for categorizing people based on the color of their skin, and demonstrate how colorblind the Social Justice Warriors and their ilk are, “People of Colour” was coined. It includes yellow people, black people, red people and brown people. Surprisingly, it does not include pink people, but by inference does include albinos. Odd, eh?

          Those who coined the term assure us that THEY are not racists, and would never judge people by the color of their skin.

          humbly yours.

        4. I haven’t checked the others, but on both the EW and Telegraph articles the comments are mostly on our side, maybe 80% or better? And lots of folks calling the SJW side fascists, Thought Police, nutters, etc.
          I think we might be winning the PR war everywhere except the really hard left-wing sites, since they typically ban opposing comments (or “disemvowel” them) in order to suppress dissent as much as possible.
          Does anyone know how the comments are going on the other slandersites?

      2. The reason I hate it is because in real world terms there literally is no such thing as “people of color.”

        It was a term created to make whites look like planetary racists.

    4. K Tempest Bradford ‏@tinytempest Apr 5 @tobiasbuckell @nkjemisin I am with you. These assholes are still around but they aren’t the mainstream anymore.

      As if this woman would deign to associate with the riff-raff that passes for mainstream in her mind. It took me about 2 seconds (I am not exaggerating) to be banned from her Facebook page for daring to state that I, even as a woman, felt SP represented me more than the SJW side of the fence. Of course she simply concluded that I’m a closet misogynist because I’m white (I assume I’m racist too…)

      I think I really pissed her off when I stated that my money spent just as well as hers and that her reviews would get no more weight than mine on Amazon regardless of her skin color.

        1. Birds of a feather I guess. They’re all pretty much batshi*t crazy. The inevitable bad-ending to this particular friendship ought to be hilarious.

          1. And they’re pummeling Laura Mixon (M. J. Locke) the wife of Steven Gould, president of the SFWA for the expose Mixon wrote on RH. The funny thing about that feud is that the expose in question is bullshit. It’s a weird thing that backfired. By Mixon purposefully ignoring what it is RH REALLY did – which is take out white men – Mixon dug a hole for herself. SJWs routinely fall into tiger pits they dug for others.

          2. LMAO, really, watching them rip each other to shreds never gets old.

            It’s like watching one of those documentaries, except the animals in documentaries actually stop when it’s time to eat.

    5. Sigh, always sad to see Tobias with them (though I know he is tight with scalzi) I enjoyed his Ragamuffin and Crystal Rain books.

      1. I agree. Buckell is a great writer and I have seen lots of support from readers that frequent this blog so I’m not sure where the victim complex comes from. I’m also wondering about the nature of the threats he claims to have had directed at him. I just can’t see the SP crowd doing that.

        1. There are some racists still out there. A lot of them are card-carrying progressives, just like the vast majority of today’s anti-Semites.

    6. 5. K Tempest Bradford ‏@tinytempest Apr 5 @tobiasbuckell @nkjemisin I am with you. These assholes are still around but they aren’t the mainstream anymore.

      This statement reminds me of my old days in fandom.

      People in fandom would be all a-flutter over a new movie and proclaiming how it would made hundreds of millions at the box office. They then would be shocked when the movie only made $15 million or something. “How can this be?!” Well, fandom was excited for the movie but that was it. No one outside of fandom was even aware of the movie. And fandom obviously wasn’t big enough to make it box office gold.

      The story’s point is just like with fandom’s shock about a movie not doing well at the box office because of the fandom echo chamber. The SJWs talk about the “assholes” that aren’t mainstream anymore except how do they know? They surround themselves with like-minded people and block the “assholes” and from where I’m standing, their echo chamber isn’t very big just noisy.

      1. I was ousted from Bradford’s echo chamber within 30 seconds for offering a dissenting opinion. They have no idea what mainstream really means.

  21. Hey Larry,

    Just a heads up: I believe ‘Warner’ should be ‘Wernher’ in the sentence below. Not a huge issue, as its obvious who you were referring to.
    “She had relatives on the Manhattan Project and ate dinner at Warner Von Braun’s house”

    BTW, huge kudos for your (and everyone else involved, go Brad!) success with Sad Puppies. Thanks so much for your efforts.

  22. Mr Correia,

    I’m pretty sure I’m drastically to the left of where you sit, and I do have some issues with the whole concept of organizing a proposed slate for the Hugo Awards (by anyone), but I very much oppose the idea of blanket No Awarding everyone in sight who was associated in any way with either Sad Puppies or Rabid Puppies.

    I nominated for the Hugo Award works I loved and thought were fantastic, and for the novel, I wish I had more slots to fill. I have a supporting membership, so I’m going to vote.

    I value the Hugo Awards, this is something I look forward to every year and I’m going to treat this year much the same as I do every year: Read the nominated works. Vote accordingly. There’s some stuff on the ballot I was already interested in reading, and some other works I have no idea what they are or where they came from. I’m going to treat them all the same because I value the Awards and regardless of what anyone else does, I can’t No Award something simply because it was slated by a Sad or Rabid Puppy. That’s not right.

    And if you’re right about there being a history of secret slates (I’m somewhat skeptical, but okay), I oppose that, too, but if I voted based on the works on the ballot then, how could I do differently now?

    As a side note: Warbound was the first of your books I’ve read because of your Hugo nomination. I enjoyed it. I plan to give Monster Hunter a shot. Another guy who I think is farther to the left (but could be wrong because we only talk books) loves them and I tend to trust / appreciate his viewpoint. But this way I get to start at the beginning rather than jump in on the latest book. I do wish you would have kept the nomination, though. I understand the reason you rejected it, but I still would have liked to have seen it on the ballot since enough people thought it was worthwhile.

    I’ve become increasingly annoyed by everyone these days, on either “side”. Too much anger.

    I’ve taken up enough of your time. I think I’m going to go read a good book. Have a good day, sir.

    1. I think that is fantastic, and all I can hope for is that most of the voters will follow your example.

    2. Awesome, Joe. So glad you’re giving other authors a chance. 🙂

      btw- the whisper campaigns were always a sort of open-secret at World Con. I’ve seen authors talking about it online, but the only one I can link to immediate (because I don’t remember where I saw every other one- like I said, sort of an open secret) is Bill Willingham’s comment about his 4 hugo noms here (scroll down to almost the bottom of the page to see it): http://www.jasonsanford.com/blog/2015/3/yes-the-sad-puppies-campaign-swept-the-hugo-awards

      He mentions having a friend of his who was a World Con old timer pull him aside and explain why it was he’d never win the award. It’s a shame that that’s how it’s worked for so long.

      1. I didn’t see Willingham’s comment at the time, though I do follow Sanford’s blog (I usually only read comments the first or second time through and not return to an article multiple times unless I’m part of a discussion).

        That’s sad. I’d love to know more of the specifics regarding what was said, but I’m an outsider on the periphery (in that I nominate, vote, and participate in some online conversations).

        But, it’s bullshit that any of the voting is hinky or irregular. Jut vote straight up what you liked in the order in which you prefer it. Period.

        Also, Fables is excellent.

        1. Yeah, Willingham is on open conservative in the comics field. Not a great position to be in, especially now.

  23. TNH was being an ignorant nitwit to get upset that SP was being discussed in GamerGate circles. Think back and recall where some of the first published reviews of game software ran. That’s right, in SF&F magazines. Computer and video games has had a huge overlap with fandom from the moment they were technologically possible.

    If you’re going to be hostile to gamers, well, that just illustrates the basic problem all the better.

    Piss them off enough and you’re going to find yourself giving a Hugo to a Halo novel.

    1. The Hugos traditionally hate and despise media tie in fiction. In fact, the very first and only work of media tie in fiction to ever make it into a Hugo fiction category was the Butcher of Khardov, written by Dan Wells (democrat) for the Warmachine universe, which I plugged as part of SP2.

    2. Halo novels are actually pretty good. A little ubermensch for my taste, but overall I’m talking 3.5+ territory. And for me, that means “well worth reading if you like the genre.” Heck, there was more actual Sci-Fi in the first Halo novel than most “sci-fi” I’ve read.

    3. “Piss them off enough and you’re going to find yourself giving a Hugo to a Halo novel.”

      1. It’s utterly ironic that one of the unhappy tweets quoted above was by a guy who writes, among other things, Halo tie-in works (Tobias S. Buckell). And his novels are very, very good. We’d happily read and maybe vote for any qualifying works of his that made it onto an SP slate.

      2. Media tie-in novels are ignored, yes. Someone like Keith R. A. DeCandido has gotten no love from the Hugo nominators. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_DeCandido
      He creates works with amazing plots and tight writing. Creatively staying within a cannon is harder than is sounds. But it’s in someone else’s universe, so he must be a “hack,” to the gatekeepers.

      1. Not like all those screen/scriptwriters they froth over, like Joss Whedon. Hey, Whedon didn’t invent the Avengers! He must be a hack! And so is James Gunn, because he didn’t invent Guardians of the Galaxy!

        The hypocrisy gives me such a headache.

      2. Heck, Paramount could have made a HUGE amount of money by having Diane Duane adapt her Rihannsu Star Trek books for NextGen.

        1. I kind of wish that those novels could be movies right about now, myself (hers, John M. Ford’s, the Stevenses, or anybody else that’s written a Star Trek novel that’s good.) Heck, I’ll even take David Gerrold’s novel The Galactic Whirlpool as a script for a Star Trek movie.

          1. Gerald tried to Kickstart his Star Wolf book series as a television series. He failed only $88 thousand pledged he wanted $650,000.

    4. A Halo novel is setting the bar too high.

      I’ve seen Minecraft novels that would mop the floor with that wretched dinosaur story.

      1. *Mind boggles.*

        There are actually Minecraft novels?

        (Checks.)

        There are actually Minecraft novels.

        (Reads.)

        Yep. You’re right.

      1. The HALO novels are actually pretty good; though we haven’t had the chance to get the latest ones. I buy them for my hubby then end up reading them before he does.

        1. Except for Halo: the Flood.
          There were several sections that read like they were copied from the strategy guide.
          “… he picked up the sniper, then shot some guys, and when he was out of ammo he went back and picked up the rocket launcher and took that forward….”

          Blegh

          1. …Yeah I caught that and wondered if the writer OR his editor lacked coffee and missed those draft notes.

            I’m reminded though that I’ve a huuuuuge backlog of books to buy. Yikes. (Not just HALO.)

    5. /GamerGate/ here. First i’d like to say hey other GGer posting. Hope to meet up at /GamerGateHQ/

      Second to your post.
      So here is the thing, SP and hugo wasn’t being talked about in GG circles. The reference she found was someone being pro GG asking for people to vote in the Hugo awards.

      We were completely blind sided by this

  24. Larry, I’ve been trying to get an interview with you since we met at GenCon last year. Admittedly, my podcast only reaches about 9,000-10,000 fantasy/scifi gamers/readers but I’ve talked about your books so often I know my listeners would love to hear anything you have to say. (They’re tabletop wargamers too, so you’ve got a double hold on my listenership!) If you’re even remotely interested I’d be honored to set up an interview.
    David@garagehammer.net

  25. Do you know what bothers me most about Sad Puppies? It is raising the bar for new authors to get on the slate. In the first two Sad Puppies, basically all you needed to do was to suck up to Larry. This year, you had to make nice with Larry and Brad. Next year, you will have to make nice with Larry, Brad, and Kate. The year after that, Sarah Hoyt will be added to the mix.

    YOU ARE MAKING IT MORE DIFFICULT TO GET ON THE BALLOT! It is unfair and exclusionary of you.

    David

    (For those that lack the sarcasm detector, it should have gone off about the third sentence above.)

  26. I’m hoping they try to #noaward everything. There’s no way they have enough votes. Especially since the nominations came out people all over the web are asking if it’s to late to sign up to vote for the Hugos.
    If the SJWs push the #noaward, all they’ll do is embarrass themselves even further and weaken their positions into irrelevance.

    “Come at me bro”

    1. Question I’ve got is after we vote for our choices, if we want to vote No Award do we rank that above the items we want below No Award or do we not even put them on the ballot after No Award?

      1. 1. Thing I really want to win
        2. Thing I kinda want to win
        3. No award
        4. OK, if my first two choices don’t win and neither did No award, give it to this choice.

        Left off the ballot: things I no way in heck want to win.

        “No award” is ranked, just like all the other ballot options.

        1. Not quite.

          Off the ballot =”I don’t care in what order these are listed.”

          If I vote:
          1. Skin game
          2. Goblin Emperor
          3. No award

          I’m saying I’d like to see Skin Game win; failing that Goblin Emperor, but if neither win I’d rather see nobody win.

          If I stop my ballot at #2 (no entry for No award) I’m saying I’s still prefer Butcher or then Addison, but after that people can award who they like and I’m fine with whatever they pick.

          If voted fairly, No Award should be for people or works you don’t think should be eligible, or that you think are truly awful. not just not to your taste.

      2. If you’re worried about No Award being used by the SJW clique to blow up the Hugos, I recommend you DO NOT vote “No Award” at *any* ranking, unless you truly believe no work listed is worth awarding.

        You don’t want to give the No Award listing any greater mathematical weight than is utterly necessary, since you already know the whiners will be voting No Award to sabotage the awards.

        1. Not true. If you vote for all the books you want to win, then No Award, then don’t vote for any books that you think simply aren’t good enough to deserve an award, then your “No Award” only harms those books that you didn’t vote for.

          “Australian rules” voting is weird to Americans, and it’s not perfect, but it’s really hard to screw yourself with it.

      3. I’d recommend Kevin Standlee’s article on this: http://kevin-standlee.livejournal.com/1440530.html

        The shorter version is that No Award works in two ways.

        First: It acts like a nominee just like any other. So, with the preferential voting system, if you vote anything under No Award when No Award is eliminated for having the fewest votes (likely in the first round), your vote will go to your next highest ranked selection. No matter how much you hate it. If it is on your ballot, it counts. If it is not on your ballot, your vote will not go to anything else. JC Salomon and Craig have it right. Anything on your ballot is ranked in the order in which you would prefer them to win an award.

        Second: After a “preliminary winner” is determined by going through the ranked voting process, it is then tallied up against No Award. If PW is ranked higher on more ballots than No Award, it wins. If No Award is ranked higher than PW on more ballots, even though it made PW through the preferential voting system, No Award will be given for that category.

        TL, DR: How you use No Award matters, and don’t rank anything below No Award if you really don’t want it to win an award.

        1. Thank you. I think I’ve got my brain around the problem now and you folks have definitely answered my concern.

  27. Those bastards are exactly why I paid $40 to vote. I can do a small something and I will. They can slowly rot in their own feces-filled, fetid, inbred bastard swamp for all I care.

  28. You know, Larry, neither you nor Bard are typical Utah Mormons. That’s not a bad thing, of course, it is just one of those things that shows that most people defy stereotypes in one way or another.

  29. What’s amazing to me is the fact that if you look down the list of Neubula nominees for best novel for the past 10 or 15 years there’s nary a Scalzi or Stross nomination to be found. Considering that it’s industry professionals that largely make up the Neubula voting pool compared to fans you would think there would at least be some commonality where the works of Scalzi and Stross are concerned if their works were actually so desreving to be nominated time and time again. Yet over the years neither have received a nomination for best novel in the Neubula Awards.

    One would think that in Stross’ case the sheer number of nominations over the last 10 years for supposed brilliant work would have also garnered at least some recognition in the form of a single nomination during this period yet there is none.

    If you add this to the fact that both have been known to plead for votes over the years for their own work is it any wonder why Sad Puppies has become so popular?

    The corruption is plain as day for anyone actually willing to open their eyes and take a proper look.

  30. Here’s how fucking dumb Scalzi is – even though he lives in America – when Maynard says he doesn’t know or care about “the race, sexual orientation, or even gender of the author.”:

    “April 5, 2015 at 11:19 pm

    Jay Maynard:

    “‘It’s about the stories, not the politics.’

    “While I would not presume to doubt your sincerity, you should be aware that this is a “I don’t see color” sort of statement, which is generally treated with skepticism by people who see the obvious disconnect between the statement and the real world application of such an assertion.”

    There is only a massive amount of “real world” evidence Americans in fact don’t see color in the sense it matters. There is no way in hell Lebron James and Michael Jordan are the #1-#2 most popular athletes in an America Scalzi and his crew of paranoia live in. Wouldn’t it be Tom Brady or Peyton Manning? Why is the NFL America’s most popular sport – it’s 2/3 black. Shouldn’t it be hockey? Why is the majority black March Madness a blockbuster rather than the all-white college baseball or hockey playoffs, which have dismal TV ratings. Why would Americans act so completely differently in SFF, there’s frequently a ton of crossover with them being sports fans. All of a sudden they turn racist when they read a book? Why in the hell are black acts dominating the Grammy’s instead of country western?

    SJWs have bullshit burned into their minds and there’s nothing – no kind of reality, logic or facts – that will dissuade them. In the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, SJWs hold onto this race privilege shit like it’s a pacifier. Meanwhile I’ve got to listen to Jim Crow on the march once again being Alaya Dawn Johnson trying to tell us N. K. Jemisin being mistaken for another black author is “institutional racism.” Are these people completely daffy, or what’s the story? “Obvious”? What the hell is obvious to John Scalzi? He wrote white privilege is as “obvious” as “gravity.” Somehow college football sellouts in stadiums across America watching black guys play escapes him and he figures those fans spit on those same guys if they write a book.

    Then a couple of Scalzi’s sheep call Maynard a bigot just because. And this bizarre devotion to diversity, as if it’s some Holy Grail or miracle cure is something I can’t fathom.

    1. I’ve never understood why people assume everyone else has their same limitations re: “I don’t see color.” Just because some aren’t able to see past another person’s skin tone, doesn’t mean other people can’t.

      My real world application: Yes, I see color. I even have some too. But I’m not going to judge you by how much melanin you have in your skin. What I will judge you by are both your words and your works.

      1. I think “I don’t see color” is pretty applicable to book, though.

        For instance, I have absolutely no fucking clue what Jim Butcher looks like. I’m sure I could find out in about three seconds with google image search, but I don’t care.

        Or hell, take it back 25 years, to when Dragonlance first came out. I totally though Tracy Hickman was a lady. (Sorry, Tracy. I didn’t know! I didn’t care! Your name was on the cover of a book with another lady. Or… Man, if Margaret Weis is actually a dude, he needs to punch his parents for that.) Because I totally don’t care what skin color or reproductive equipment an author has. I don’t even care what their politics are, if it doesn’t show up glaringly in their books. Hell, I’m a huge fan of Vlad Taltos, and Steven Brust is a straight up Wobbly.

        All that matters to me from a book is quality, and to some extent page count. I read too fast, and short books make me sad. 😉

        1. You don’t know what Butcher looks like? Towering, like a Greek god, chiseled, rugged features, and a twinkle in his eye, men want to be him and women want to be with him.

          1. So… if he looks like a Greek god, presumably he’s… kinda Mediterranian colored? “Olive” skin, black hair, and so forth? 😀

            Seriously, I could not possibly care less. He could be a brain in a jar with a USB connection to the keyboard port on a computer for all the difference it makes to me. I’ve never met him. I just want him to WRITE FASTER, DAMNIT.

            Butcher is one of very few people I buy hardcovers of, because I. Just. Can’t. Wait. (Brust is the other. And I might have hardcovers of all three Grimnoir books. *cough* 😉 )

        2. Heck, my favorite filker of all time is Leslie Fish, whose first two albums were put out by an all-Wobbly band.

          Anybody who can reduce James T. Kirk to putty with a Wobbly union organizer…..

          “You know, Captain, there have so been Navy unions before….”

    2. Well, yes, exactly.

      A few words about my experiences sort of involving Mr. Scalzi, social justice warrior extraordinaire, plus iron crosses.

      I’d never heard of him, if I recall, when I read a recommendation from Glen Reynolds of instapundit.com for his book Old Man’s War. I saw it on the shelf in B&N, skimmed through it, liked it, bought other books in the series later, read his blog.

      Hmmm, leftist. OK, I have no trouble reading authors whose politics I disagree with. Charlie Stross, happy to give him my money.

      However, I do dislike asshats. Scalzi is an asshat. I kept noticing assorted asshattery, etc- and one fine day Scalzi happened to express his wish that right-wingers would be condemned to exile in a desert to die, because hate. The context was something about people in trouble in a desert, or whatever. I forget, it was years ago, sorry. But I distinctly remember wondering if that wish for right-wingers to die included Glen Reynolds, the guy who’d certainly handed him quite a few sales. I quit reading soon after, whatevs.

      I have more anecdotes describing how Scalzi made me grow to loath him, but I’m sure everyone gets the picture.

      Bottom line: SJWs like Scalzi drove me away from SF for years, such that I stopped bothering to even look for new SF, because I came to believe new actually SF of the sort I actually wanted to buy simply didn’t exist.

      Thank you Amazon and indie publishing thank you thank you thank you.

    3. Saw that sort of reasoning on a book blog a few months back where they were taking ‘diversity’ as an automatic signifier of high quality.

      Which, of course, it isn’t. But they had to believe in their little heart of hearts that to be good people they needed to expand their reading lists.

      Me, I don’t care what color, gender, or sexuality you are. I can’t see that on a page – what I’m looking for is an engaging story, and I understand that what I find good someone else may see as junk, and color/gender/sexuality doesn’t have anything to do with a good story.

      And it’s weird as hell that the ‘progressives’ don’t seem able to understand that.

  31. This is a half formed thought I’m working through and I’m happy to be swayed on it.

    I wonder if SP3 was too successful.

    By dominating the awards and doing so in a public fashion it could leave the in between voters feeling voiceless.
    The progression of such dominance could make them feel that their vote will no longer count if they don’t pick a slate to join with.
    Now next year might be SP vs one slate or there could be a number of competing slates, but I don’t see more than 3 others happening, tops.

    Those who voted for the things they found in odd places that the SP or other slate creators didn’t see, didn’t get around to reading or were just generally overlooked might not bother to nominate them because they don’t have the reach a slate creator has.

    And so good works in smaller venues might entirely lose out because the people that saw them only numbered in the tens by the time nominations came up.

    Which could lead to voters in the middle, who really don’t want to pick a side, either withdrawing from the process or being forced to be partisan just so they feel like their vote counts.
    And I don’t think sci fi fandom should have to pick a side, they should be able to pick what they like.

    I know there are a lot of “mights”, ” maybes” and “could” in this. For all I know the ship will right itself from the middle.
    This is just what I worry about.
    And for a lot of people $40 is too much to throw away on a vote you don’t believe will count.

    1. I threw down my $40. I’ll be voting. If I care about making my vote count more than someone else, I can’t speak for that person.

      But I’ll not let this nonsense pass unresisted. And that’s from a veteran living mainly on a 50% disability pension. Don’t talk to me about financial sacrifice versus doing the honorable thing.

      1. “Don’t talk to me about financial sacrifice versus doing the honorable thing.”

        That’s not what I was talking about at all

    2. I completely agree. I think that if SP/RP continues to dominate the awards, we have the same problem we had to start: a small group of tastemakers controlling the Hugos.
      To be fair, SP had no reasonable expectation of being this successful this year (based on earlier performances). But in the future, tactics should change.
      Slate voting isn’t going back in the bag; it’s like a nuke, once it’s out, it’s out there for anyone to use. But it doesn’t have to eliminate the votes of those who don’t care/don’t know about slates
      To the fans (because the Hugo is our award, as fans) and to Mr. Correia, while you’re reconsidering tactics, please consider some of these suggestions.
      Reach out to other people or fandoms and let them compile slates independently. It gets more people involved (part of the point of Sad Puppies 3), and it also gives more works a shot at being nominated. Fans won’t have to vote on one slate, they could take what they like from differing slates.
      Fandoms in these areas have been mostly ignored by both the Hugo’s and the Sad Puppies, while still being very popular.
      Young adult science fiction & fantasy: I regularly hear on this and other blogs about how sff is dying. This is complete crap. Young adult SFF was the fastest growing print book sales category or 2014, and outsold adult SFF by a factor of nearly 4:1.
      Link here: http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bookselling/article/65387-the-hot-and-cold-categories-of-2014.html
      But it has been ignored by both SP and ‘traditional’ Hugo voters. Young adult books have been nominated for the Hugo’s in two years only, according to Chaos Horizon.
      Ask around, see whether people want to help get more YA on the ballot. Reach out to specific YA fandoms and tell them about the Hugos. It’s their award too.
      Epic Fantasy: Does quite a bit better than YA, still underperforms compared to how many people read and are fans of it. No nominations for Rothfuss, no wins for Martin, etc.
      Humor: As Vox Day pointed out (one of the few times I think he’s been right about anything), the Hugo’s neglect of Terry Pratchett is astonishing. Douglass Adams ignored, etc.
      SP has slightly improved the hugos there, but there is a long way to go.
      Alternative media: Does anyone who votes for the Hugo’s realize how much popular stuff that isn’t movies or TV is eligible is eligible for best dramatic presentation? Welcome to Night Vale, Starkid, radio, youtube videos.
      While we’re widening the tent let’s bring in as many people as possible. It’s awesome if they aren’t SP or RP, part of the mission is making the Hugos relevant to all of SFF fandom.

      1. All good and valid suggestions for us to look at.

        I’ll have to read through them again tomorrow, because right now I’m still kind of fuming about the whole Entertainment Weekly calling me a white supremacist right now. 🙂

      2. I actually would be on board with that. I’ve been pre-reading a lot of YA literature, before purchasing it for my daughter’s bookshelf. And, frankly, I’m envious of the sort of things that are available to that age group that CERTAINLY weren’t available when I was a kid. You’d never have pried me out of B. Dalton if they’d had this kind of selection. And a lot of it is really, really good. I’ve gifted copies of Jessica Day’s stuff to other people. Heck a lot of Robin McKinley’s work ends up in YA.

        I do also get your point about alternative media. I’m sort of sorry I didn’t realize that we COULD nominate back when Seeing Ear Theater was still a thing.

        1. Holly, got any recommendations for a fellow mum?

          Funny story: I was in the corner of a B.Dalton’s reading (something I planned to buy when I’d saved up), and I was a teeny, skinny thing as a kid and I guess nobody noticed me till an employee almost tripped on me. I’d gotten locked in. Whoops.

          1. Not Holly but I was tidying my bookshelf the other day and saw the ‘Pellinor Series’ which looks like it’s grade 8 and up. I think Alison Crogan is actually from your neck the woods, though, so maybe you are already familiar with her work.

          2. Brandon Sanderson’s new “Reckoners” series is aimed at the YA market, I think. I’m not a mom (or a dad) so I, erm, just read ’em for me, but I quite liked them.

          3. I’m a different Holly, but my ten and twelve year olds liked Pam Uphoff’s YAs, written as Zoey Ivers. I’ve bought three copies of The Barton Street Gym because they found it necessary to give to friends.

          4. Lots. Sadly, a local independent book store went out of business recently, and I attended the fire sale. I bought more books for her than I did for myself. 🙂 I really do like Jessica Day George’s fairy tale retellings. It starts with Princess of the Midnight Ball. Also “Tesla’s Attic.” And “Cabinet of Earths” was both fascinating and eerie – I’m still hunting for the sequel. “Liesl and Po” is a neat little ghost story. And the story of a would-be young sorceress called “Rose” is apparently the start of another series. I saw a later book at B&N just the other day. Not sure how many there are. All of these are also suitable for the younger set, really – 10 and up, if they’re advanced readers? “Rose” is probably more FOR the younger set – 7-10, maybe. Charles de Lint’s “Little (grrrl) Lost,” if you can find it. She’s in bed now, or I’d go sift her bookshelf for others. More in the AM, maybe. As mine gets older, I’m venturing more into the Twilight-level YA stuff. “Cinder” is in my “to read” list, for example.

          5. Jessica is a super talented author. For one of my daughters, Jessica is her favorite author, beating out that big dude who pays for the house she lives in. 🙂

        2. Shadowdancer: try GHOSTGlRL by Tonya Hurley for your kids. But don’t read it yourself unless you have _very_ strong nerves. A high school senior commits accidental suicide [sic] and is condemned to after-life high school for all eternity. Gives me nightmares, contemplating that.

          And of course, A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS, more books that are too scary for most adults. Kids love it.

      3. The only issue I really saw with the final slate was the domination of Wright’s works in the shorter categories. I could see how that might irritate some people.

        Welcome to NightVale is great – has that not won anything?

        Reach out to other people or fandoms and let them compile slates independently.

        This is a great idea. also a good idea to do lists of books throughout the year. (And I’ve read a fair bit of YA in the past and a lot of that stuff is quite entertaining)

        1. Oh, and if people like urban fantatasy, I want to put in a plug for the jane yellowrock books. I have really enjoyed them and just saw that the new one is out today.

          1. I didn’t put in urban fantasy because that is something SP has done a very good job with, and hasn’t been extremely neglected in the Hugos as a whole. Subgenres of it have been though, such as paranormal romance. No nominations for Kenyon, despite that she’s been writing bestselling paranormal romance and romantic sci-fi for over a decade.
            Glad to see such a positive response.

          2. oh sure. I didn’t mean a plug to nominate them for anything, just that I think people might find them entertaining.

            Not that it matters to any of us, but the author is female, the main character is female and native american and there are a whole mix of other characters as well.

          3. @Differently – I enjoyed a particular story of Kenyon’s where the fantasy aspect of the story revolved around books. She’s quite fun to read when I want something more relaxing.

          4. Ooooh, yeah. I just read all of those. Pretty much straight through. :p There’s another author who needs to WRITE FASTER. 😉

        2. Welcome to Night Vale has yet to get a Hugo nomination. The ‘Sandstorm’ episode got kind of close a couple years ago, so it’s not because of a lack of fans, even among Hugo voters. I just think people are so used to short form dramatic presentation = TV. Never mind that H.G. Well’s war of the worlds had an extremely famous radio presentation.

        1. Point. I messed up. I mostly pay attention to the novel category. Epic/Secondary world fantasy does better in other categories (like Sanderson’s win for Emperor’s Soul).

    3. I wonder if SP3 would be getting the same level of backlash if Larry & Brad had only pushed for “their type” of readers to go get membership packets and vote for books they like, instead of suggesting a “slate.”

      Probably, yeah. But I can still see a good argument that *that* is the direction that should be taken in future years. Similar to how Democrats always push “get out the vote” among people they know will vote their direction 🙂

      1. Very true. If we truly believe most SFF fans are not reading it for purely social justice reasons, then getting them voting will bring more fun, popular stuff to the Hugos. Maybe we’ll end up liking stuff we’ve never heard of, that way.

  32. Thanks so much for doing this. As someone who enjoys sci-fi, but would never claim to be a super-fan, I had no idea what was happening to the genre until a few years ago via a link to Vox Day’s blog. Keep fighting the good fight and helping others find worthy reads amidst the CHORF-promoted dreck.

    Love your Monster Hunters series, too!

  33. As the shining, guilt-proving link between #GamerGate and Sad Puppies:

    1 – I only nominated works I read.

    2 – I didn’t nominate Sad Puppies works I had read, because I didn’t believe they deserved it.

    3 – I nominated other works I felt deserved it, which didn’t make it.

    I’m glad I participated, and I’m looking forward to participating next year.

    Also, I’m a nobody, who had nothing to do with Sad Puppies except sending out some tweets. PNH used my tweets to defame everyone in Sad Puppies. That’s despicable.

    The people of Sad Puppies won a victory. #GamerGate had little or nothing to do with it.

    Evidence: pic.twitter.com/ilZQ2x8LLu

    I’m glad Larry is taking back the initiative, so Sad Puppies can speak for itself.

    Kudos, Mountain That Writes.

    1. I think it’s awesome that PNH picked you as her link between SP and GG. I loved that you were tweeting about the Hugos because it’s something that everyone who has any interest in SFF – including gamers – should care about. And I adore that your “slate” had nothing to do with SP. That’s just the cherry on the sundae. PNH can go sit and spin for all I care.

      Keep on keeping on!

  34. Larry, would still love to have you on my radio show in Anchorage to talk about this. If you have 10 minutes to do a live bit I think it would be good radio. But then again…maybe not. LOL

    1. At this point you might be hosting “The Volcano that Writes.” I don’t know that I’ve ever seen Larry explode on Twitter like that.

      1. No problem Larry. If you have time over the next couple/three weeks I will make it work on your schedule. Luckily everything is Alaska time so it’ll be early in the day.
        Thanks MD

  35. And so the punch-up is finally underway.

    SJWs don’t negotiate. They don’t like you. They consider you scum, hateful, racist, sexist, because they NEED you to be that.

    Because they need you to be The Enemy. If you were good, decent human beings, they wouldn’t be able to make this a War For The Soul of Fandom.

    It’s gonna be a fight all the way through to the final vote, and I guarantee you, they will be pulling every dirty trick that they don’t think will send them to jail.

    So knuckle down.

    1. It’s a phenomenon called “Othering”, and when they accuse anyone to the right of Stalin of it, they’re projecting.

  36. This is the text of an email message I have just sent to Teresa Nielsen Hayden. It has clearly been written as an open letter/message/whatever.

    It wasn’t personal. Now it is.

    I had scanned the File 770 posting on the current Hugo kurfullfle earlier today, but I had missed this upon my first reading/scan. This is the former Teresa Barbara Nielsen (I won’t let her hide behind another persona) as quoted in F770, from her blog “Making Light” —

    “Third, when the people doing a block voting attack on the Hugos claim to practically worship Heinlein, but aren’t aware that the second huge volume of his first major biography has come out, perhaps you ought not worry about your own lack of omniscience.”

    So here we have Teresa trying to wrap herself in the flag (so to speak) of the 2nd volume of the Robert A. Heinlein biography by Bill Patterson. That Tor published.

    Bill died last year on 22 April 2014. He was my best friend for 40 years. He was someone that Teresa (and her husband Patrick) knew.

    Did they even mention that someone they knew (Bill) had died on their Making Light blog back last year? No. Not a tit; not a tiddle. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Zero. Goose egg. He was, the way they treated him, an unperson. Despite the fact that two volumes of a book by him was published by Tor. They made no mention anywhere at anytime of his death despite all of the various venues they had available to them to do so, such as their own blog.

    And here Teresa wants to claim somehow that she was somehow on Bill’s side, so as to make some points against the Sad Puppies folks.

    Bill was a friend — clearly not a concept, Teresa, you are familiar with. Your attempt to use him a year after his death, after you had formerly thrown him metaphorically under the bus, shows for one and all what sort of a human being you are. Certainly it shows it to me, after 40 years of fooling myself.

    1. I’m glad the first one was nominated, but it lost to one of the Chicks Dig Timelords.

      Apparently TNH can speak for the dead.She also claimed to speak for Jim Baen, which is asinine. The woman has zero shame.

    2. I love how all these SJW morons are suddenly people of principle. Where were you when N. K. Jemisin took out the entire continent of Australia as a pack of racists? You gave her “Bravo.” Where were you when Resnick and Malzberg were savaged out of a gig by a swarm of feminist inspired idiots because they were “white” and “men”? Where were you when Seanan McGuire, Fabio Fernandes and Charlie Stross hounded Jonathan Ross out of a gig because he was male, “white” and unsafe? Where are you when your racist fucks are throwing around bullshit about “white privilege” and “white saviors”? What were you doing when Miss “Cracka Ass Cracka” put all white men on probationary status for a year? What is a principle that critiques a segregated high school prom and not a segregated room at a convention. Where were you when your John W. Campbell Award nominees asserted they live in a “white supremacy” and that white men are as stupid as “buffalos,” but at least not “half-savage”? Where were you when Jim Hines put on his race goggles, peered into a photo of white WorldCon chairs and declared a racist emergency? Where were you when your Solomon Mikki Kendall asserted the man who shot Mike Brown was my “murdering kin”? What do you say when anyone talks about terrorism. Then “murdering kin” is wrong.

      I know where I was. I was on the wrong end of all that – a “white dude parade” 100 million strong.

      Both sides are accusing the other of being “racist.” Only one side has a principled neutral definition of that term.

      So go fuck. I don’t have to put up with your Klonopin-riddled obsessive compulsive feminist swarm or the “men” whose nuts they keep a tight hold of.

  37. The relationship with Gamergate is that the long-silent majority, who enjoy their various hobbies, passions, professions and pass-times, be it video games or sci-fi fiction, toddled along for years, happily debating, playing, critiquing, reading and enjoying their respective genres. Then the SJWs came along and said, you’re doing it all wrong. There aren’t enough minorities and women and the ones you have are presented all wrong. The attitudes and implied politics of your books and games are not agents for social justice, and we demand they be, regardless of merit or quality.

    There’s FINALLY a backlash against this sort of thing and thank God there is. The social justice social media buillies are getting a taste of their own medicine in the form of an actual democratic process, and boy they don’t like it. They don’t operate by building consensus, debating issues and moral suasion, they operate by trying to destroy people’s lives if they disagree with them. They attack them online, attack them at their jobs, attack their kids, publish their home addresses so that they can be attacked there and even “SWAT” them on occasion.

    I’m going to join every “backlash” organization I can so we can reclaim the things that make life enjoyable instead of reducing every effing thing in the world into a culture war “teachable moment” with a leftist bias- sports, movies, video games and sci-fi literature. Let them have the college administrations and MSM newsrooms, those are going to die in the next decade anyway.

  38. You know, when I first heard about the Sad Puppy thing I was excited about the idea of expanding the pool of voters. As an occasional Hugo voter over the last decade, I’d thought the biggest flaw of the award was the tiny number of people that nominated and voted for it. I was happy that more people might buy memberships and make their voices heard, and that would lead to more variety in the shortlist.

    But you didn’t just encourage people to join and vote. Or even just put up a recommendation thread encouraging people to suggest possible choices. You put together an actual slate and encouraged people to vote that specifc slate. Granted, I’m willing to believe Sad Puppy people didn’t vote in lockstep. But you inspired Vox Day to put together his Rabid Puppy slate, and I have the suspicion that his crowd DID vote in lockstep. How else do you explain John Wright’s 6 nominations, including multiple noms in the same category? That’s a far worse abuse of the system than I ever saw in years past. Even more
    annoyingly, it’s practically guaranteed that the Hugos will now turn into a pissing contest between rival voting blocs. So much for variety, or any chance of the independent voter having their
    voice heard. I feel like what could’ve been a bright future for the award (more people voting) has instead burned it to the ground.

    I hear it takes 2 years for rule changes to go into effect. I don’t even know if a rule change can be made that would stop bloc voting from dominating the shortlist. The only way I have to express my displeasure over the bloc voting is to put everything listed on a slate below No Award, so that’s what I’ll be doing, for both Sad and Rabid puppies. I don’t care about your politics or anyone’s politics. If the so-called SJWs put up a competing slate next year, I’ll No Award the hell out of that too. Probably won’t make any difference, but it’s the only way I have left
    to make my voice heard at all.

    1. Uh huh… That reads like a cut and paste from that other dude earlier.

      You can scroll through and seem my response to him so I don’t need to type it all over again.

      I inspired Vox Day to mess with SJWs? BWA HA HA HA HAAAAAAAAAAAA Ha. Sir, you overestimate my powers. Nobody motivates Vox to do anything except for Vox.

      And hate to break it to you, but when your awards last year were Best Novel, SJW. Best Novella, SJW. Best Short, SJW. Best Novellete, SJW. Best Related, SJW. Best Fanzine, the one that published the best related SJW. Etc… The SJWs are already putting up a defacto slate, and you upright, morally courageous types haven’t done shit about it.

      But like I told the other dude, go ahead on the No Award. That’ll show me who is boss. 🙂

      1. To clarify on the “inspired,” I think the success of the SP slate last year in getting choices onto the shortlist made Vox Day realize just how easily the system could be gamed. He took full advantage of that this year, and in doing so, trashed all hope the Hugos could be rehabilitated. I don’t at all dispute that the shortlists in recent years have been limited in variety. What I’m saying is that I had genuinely hoped SP could help change that. Instead, I see one clique replaced with another (Vox Day’s) that’s provided even LESS variety in the shortlist. I don’t see how that’s a win in any sense of the word. What’s worse is that I don’t see how the award can come back from this, unless by some miracle so many new people join as to radically expand the voting pool and make bloc voting much more difficult to organize. But as a cynic, I don’t put much faith in miracles. I vote No Award not to show anyone who’s boss, but because I don’t know what the hell else to do to indicate that I think the nomination process is broken.

        1. Heh. My guess would be that Vox will move on to a different project in a couple of years, so nothing to worry about there.

        2. The issue has for a long time been the low number of people who know the Hugo exists, know they can get involved, and care.

          2015 only had two Puppies slates that I knew of, because they were thought to be forlorn hopes. There will be more. Already, Sad and Rapid Puppies have some differing goals and methods.

          The net result will likely be a sizable number of voters, without an overwhelming amount of common agreement.

          Unless you would argue that Mr. Beale’s prestige is that much larger than that of the Hugo and of the rest of the field?

          1. I agree. The best way to make non-slate voters voices heard is to have enough independently compiled slates/suggestion lists that they’ll probably pick work that already ended up on someone else’s slate. Then their vote inadvertently counts toward a slate.
            More slates/suggestion lists that bring in more of the field are ideal. We get 100+ moderately popular slates, and we’ve probably covered most of the field.

          2. I hope you’re right about the net result. My concern is that bloc voting rewards a far smaller number of people willing to vote in lockstep over a far larger number of people voting for a spread of works. And it’s the people voting out of some agenda other than the quality of the work (like politics or personal gain of single author/publishing house) that are most willing to vote in lockstep. Look at the success of Rabid vs. Sad puppies on this year’s shortlist. I do not at all believe that Rabid puppies had a larger group of voters than SP. But SP people presumably took the SP slate more as a suggestion, and spread their noms among other works they felt worthy. The core group of RP people voted in lockstep, and as a result, had a far larger influence on the shortlist.

            Sure, Vox Day may go off to play somewhere else. But now that he’s demonstrated how easy it is to sweep the shortlist with a lockstep bloc, the cynic in me says plenty of other people will try the same thing. Only way to mitigate the effect is with a hugely expanded pool of voters. Yet what I see on SFF forums I frequent where people didn’t know much about Hugos is not, “Oh cool, you can vote for the Hugos? Sign me up!” but “Wow, those awards are a total joke. Good thing I don’t care at all about them.” This does not give me hope that a significantly larger pool of voters will be available any time soon.

          3. It is exactly the problem that so many more care a little about sci fi than care about the Hugo.

            The puppy sort of slate, built publicly by someone who writes fun and speaks good advertising to a sizable market, is effective at bringing people to the Hugo’s. Much like Hugo Gernsback.

            The secret cabal stuff doesn’t bring many, because it is closely held.

            Qualifying markets for the Hugo are mostly controlled by those that have favored the secret cabal option over the public campaign.

            Once the rubble stops bouncing, and some noise about rule changes made, there will absolutely be some Leftist establishment slates.

            Furthermore, if the definitions of qualifying markets are expanded to more accurately reflect sci fi, many more people who do fun stuff and can speak well enough to pull in voters will be around.

          4. @Bob: Qualifying markets do not apply to the Hugo Awards, they are used by the SFWA (Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America) to determine membership eligibility.

            While the Hugo Awards do use Professional, Semi-Pro, and Fan in regards to Art, Fan Writer, and “Zines”, their definition is substantially different from how SFWA uses it. Also note that this is only for those specific categories. Everything else is completely open season provided the work meets the overall criteria of the category (a novel is not a short story or dramatic presentation)

            http://www.thehugoawards.org/hugo-categories/

            As a side note, even the Nebula Awards do not appear to hew to the qualifying markets. You need to be a member of SFWA to nominate or vote, but not to receive an award – and I didn’t see anything about qualifying markets in regards to nominations.

          5. Joe Sherry,

            My error.

            It does look like fanfic, doujins, scanlated manga, Japanese, Chinese and Korean light novels, visual novels, and video games qualify.

            Okay, now that the proof of concept is in, once those communities know, the votes will come roaring in.

            If I had known that Naruto would have qualified for Graphic Story this year, I would have suggested it for Sad Puppies 3, instead of assuming that it waits for the final volume being published in English, which I guess would be Sad Puppies 4.

            Vathara’s Embers only qualified for Sad Puppies 3. Again, had I known.

          6. @R. Maddox
            Yes, it will be tough getting more people into the voting pool. But the Nominating and voting pools have been increasing. A work needs at least 5% support to get on the ballot. If we find 20,000 people willing to nominate, it suddenly takes a minimum of 1,000 people to nominate a work. I find it unlikely that many campaigns could do that, based on Wheel of Time and Puppy campaigns.
            And I do think we can find 20,000 fans eventually. There are so many SFF fans that don’t know you can vote in the Hugos for $40, but do want the works they like recognized.
            As for agendas beyond the quality of the work: the only thing we can do is present slates that are based on the quality of the work, and hope people care about that. It worked for Wheel of Time; they didn’t vote out of any idealogical reasons. They were just obsessed with the series and thought it (and its authors) deserved an award.

          7. Fandom is huge. One of the things Brad originally pointed out was how much fandom has grown compared to FANDOM.

            SLC ComicCon has 150,000 people. A big WorldCon would fit in one tiny corner of it.

            There should be tens of thousands of people voting in the Hugos.

          8. Anime is pretty huge. Okay, with Naruto over, a lot of its fans are aging out of the primary anime demographic. Naruto is still a pretty big property, and might be a good way to get anime fans interested in Hugo’s.

            Besides the English market, the Japanese market probably has lots of fans interested in voting. I’m wondering if Shonen Jump would help them find out.

        3. ” I don’t see how the award can come back from this, unless by some miracle so many new people join as to radically expand the voting pool and make bloc voting much more difficult to organize”

          …Look, I have as much faith in the works of God as the next poor sinner, but I don’t think expanding the Hugo voter pool out to 15 or 50 K voters is going to require divine intervention. How about we give it a run ourselves first, before insisting the big guy take care of it?

          1. If I remember right, there were about 2K nominations this year out of a pool of 8K eligible members. That 2K number is only up by a few hundred (if that) from the years before SP. So I fear getting nominations up to 15K is either going to take a miracle or a very, very long time (like decades). I’d prefer not to watch rival voting blocs have pissing matches during all that time. This is why I’m voting No Award, because 2 years to effect a rule change of some kind feels like the fastest anti-bloc method, and No Award is the only method I have to indicate I think a change in nomination process is desperately needed.

          2. @ Maddox

            “If I remember right, there were about 2K nominations this year out of a pool of 8K eligible members. That 2K number is only up by a few hundred (if that) from the years before SP.”

            First off, the pool of “eligible members” is ALL OF FREAKING FANDOM. Not 8K people. IMO, we (right thinking) fans should be handing out info on signing up for WorldCon at every SF event, ever. (And then we should get them to drop the supporting member price to something more like $20.)

            Secondly, in 2012, the year before SP began, there were 1011 nominating ballots. This year there were 2122, which is more than 100% increase. Over the course of three years.

            As for changes in nomination processes…not sure what you want, that you can get. I think you’d just drive things underground, rather than having them out in the open air.

            And for indicating ones desires…there’s always email, you know…

          3. @keranih

            In theory, yes, the pool of voters is all of fandom. In practice, it’s people willing to fork over the membership fee (a far smaller number). I would love to see the fee to vote lessened or even dropped entirely; I do think that would encourage more people to participate. But I believe the only way such a rule change would have a hope of going through is for No Award to make it clear to WSFS that their current rules are broken and need changing.

          4. Oh, the WSFS trufen are well aware they need to change their process. Unfortunately, every proposal to change it I’ve seen or heard of involves something along the lines of “We’ll have rules for the rubes to believe they’ll matter, but the strong gatekeepers behind the curtain will make sure the only impact they have is to fatten the WSFS treasury while we decide who’s WORTHY!!!!”

            They can take two weeks and kiss every inch of my @$$.

          5. I agree with the rules needing a second look. Why was Old Man’s War, released previously to the year in which it was nominated, eligible and the Martian not? Why is the Writing Excuses podcast a Related Work when other podcasts contain publishers, writers, and editors are relegated to Fancast? Why are professional writers, some even nominated for Best Novel, Short Story, etc. in the same year, eligible as fan writers or any fan category? (Seriously, someone clue me in. I could use clarification.)

            No Award isn’t going to fix any of that.

          6. @ Nathan:

            Old Man’s War: My guess is because it was serialized rather than self published all in one big volume ala Agent to the Stars. But I’m not sure and am also not sure how much of the serialized version was changed from self pub to Tor’s publication. My side guess to that is also that perhaps the people who nominated OMW didn’t realize it was self published AND that the Worldcon committee that year also didn’t know. I wasn’t engaging the awards at that time, so I’m completely out of the loop. The Martian had HUGE popularity as a self published work and it was part of the novel’s story. So, it was known to be ineligible.

            Writing Excuses: Just my guess – I believe that it is sponsored (partially) by Audible.com – which suggests they are getting paid for it. Most other podcasts are done for free (again, I think), so even though they involve professionals, they are still fan work. There is a potential gray area of something like Rocket Talk which is published on a professional venue, but not produced by and only lightly compensating the host. I nominated it as Related Work even though it may straddle the line.

            Pro Writers: Professional writers can both do professional work during the year as well as fan work. Larry would be eligible for fan writing based on this blog, but also for Best Novel for a Monster Hunter or Grimnoir book. It has to do with where the work is published, and Larry’s professional work should not be considered when evaluating his fan work. It does, however, shape the popularity of the fan writer category because waaaaay more people would know who Larry Correia is than will ever know who Joe Sherry is because Larry sells books by the truckload and I only occasionally blog. So, if the award turns into a popularity contest or simply just an accessibility contest, it is perhaps easier for a professional writer to win the fan category when nominated.

          7. Thank you, Joe. Some of the workings were a little opaque on where or why some works were eligible and I was not suggesting impropriety.

          8. Nathan: Interestingly, I most confident about what I wrote in reverse order. Pro vs Fan Writer is solid. OMW’s eligibility back then: A wild guess.

          9. I also think we can find ~18,000 people willing to pay up and vote. It just requires more outreach.
            Next year, reach out to every fandom. Inform them about the Hugos, the voting packet, the good stuff. Maybe even have some well known authors who’ve had nothing to do with the Hugos up until now make some slate. The Wheel of Time fandom on its own brought in over 150 nominators in one year. There are several similarly sized or larger fandoms out there. Get them all to campaign. Get them all involved, and the Hugos could see supporting memberships rise fast.
            I’d assume most of us are fans of works by people besides Larry. We can reach out to those fandoms we are a part of next year and help them hear about it.
            If we find 100 fandoms roughly as enthused about the Hugos as the Wheel of time, then we’ve found 15000 nominating votes already. If we only find ten, we’ll still have nearly doubled the size of the voting pool.

          10. I like Mike Williamson’s idea. Make a Supporting Membership only $5. He told the story today of a fan in Bangladesh, who is middle class there and makes the equivalent of $250 a week. $40 for much of the world is a big deal. If it is truly a WorldCon and the award represents the world, let’s do it.

            Tempest Bradford was trying to make voting into some sort of racist issue, because privileged people have more money. Fine. I agree. Lower that supporting membership down so that fans everywhere from all walks of life can participate.

            That would sure take care of the concerns the moderates are voicing about block voting, if there were so many thousands of diverse voters that a block of a few hundred like minded people was irrelevant.

            From an accounting perspective, 1000 supporting memberships at $40 is the same amount of money as 8000 at $5. Sure, there would be more work in counting all those fan’s votes, but they could figure that out.

            Well, look at that. I agree with K. Tempest Bradford on something. Let’s make it so that every fan can vote.

          11. “Well, look at that. I agree with K. Tempest Bradford on something. ”

            It IS the week after Easter. Anybody got the Vatican’s miracle tipline number? 😎

            If this keeps up, Pentecost this year may involve more miracles and signs than the first one….. King Arthur’s Court would approve.

        4. I appreciate you thoughts about voting and how to improve the nomination process. I am curious about your thoughts on the following articles

          https://archive.today/X2HPi
          http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/booknews/11517920/Hugo-Award-nominations-spark-row-over-diversity-in-sci-fi.html

          I would like to hear your thoughts on the following.

          Are the articles factually correct or not?
          Did the articles present multiple sides of the issues as befitting journalstic standards or not?
          Is the the type of discussion or conversion you want to see in the media or not?

          Please explain why you think what you think. Also what are you going to do about it.

          1. The Telegraph article isn’t too far off base in the actual article. (Most of the quoted Twitters are woefully short on facts, but the Telegraph didn’t write those, they’re just reporting then.)

            The other article was so blatantly libelous (factualky false and demonstrably malicious) that it had to be corrected several times *AFTER* the version you linked. I suspect EW is going to lose hard in court.

    1. ( gets out the valu-rite, cleans the .30-06, and starts drunkenly planning the next hobo-hunt. My smokehouse is empty )

  39. Man, everybody who takes a swing at Larry ends up falling on their faces. This is what the EW article says now:

    “CORRECTION: After misinterpreting reports in other news publications, EW published an unfair and inaccurate depiction of the Sad Puppies voting slate, which does, in fact, include many women and writers of color. As Sad Puppies’ Brad Torgerson explained to EW, the slate includes both women and non-caucasian writers, including Rajnar Vajra, Larry Correia, Annie Bellet, Kary English, Toni Weisskopf, Ann Sowards, Megan Gray, Sheila Gilbert, Jennifer Brozek, Cedar Sanderson, and Amanda Green.”

    1. “All of whom we recklessly and with malice called white supremacists, misogynists, etc. Damn, this is going to be expensive, isn’t it?”

      1. Actually looking at the slate would have taken, like five minutes.

        And how could you guess from names that “Annie” and “Toni” and “Ann ” and “Megan” and “Sheila” and “Jennifer” and “Amanda” might be female, or that “Rajnar Varja” might not be white?

    2. Dear SJWs, give it a rest with the race and gender already. You are hysterical. Are you even capable of controlling your weird compulsion that SFF is Jim Crow Mississippi in 1960? You are broken people wailing about precisely nothing.

    3. That is one hell of a correction!

      It is so weird to be amazed at the sloppy reporting at ew of all places. All the had to do to ‘research’ was spend five minutes looking on the Internet and they didn’t even do that. Pathetic.

      1. How did EW make such a mistake?

        Well, ROLLING STONE ran a story about a gang rape that never happened. The story ran because the story’s author never sought to do any research worth the name. She ass/u/me/d that the story must be true.

        A few years before that, a prosecutor in Durham, NC charged a fraternity with another gang rape that didn’t occur. The Duke fiasco didn’t cause ROLLING STONE to check anything, though.

        And there’s been a bunch of cases of ‘racial harassment’ where the ‘victim’ was doing the ‘harassing’, and eventually got caught at it.

        People easily believe whatever fits their preconceptions. That’s what happened at EW, ROLLING STONE, Duke University. Pathetic, and shameful.

  40. My favorite bit (after some thought) of the “Hugos belong to us” diatribe was her “worry” over the Best Related Work.

    “People who create reference books get one shot at the Hugo.”

    Uh, no. No they don’t. They get one shot every time they create a reference book.

    ANY work is eligible only in it’s original year of publication/presentation.

    Andy Weir’s The Martian would have been a near shoe-in for Best Novel this year. Problem being it is ineligible since it had a prior publication.

    Larry declined a nomination for Monster Hunter Nemesis. That novel will never have another chance for the rocket.

    Is creating a related work harder than a novel, a script, hell even a short story? Iunno, I’ve done very little writing of my own. But the opportunity is still there for all those who were “squeezed out” by Williamson’s nomination.

    Here, I’ll even help you (or them) get started:

    For 2016 Best Related Work:

    Futanari Dig Time Lords: A Celebration of Doctor Who and the Hermaphrodites/Pre-Op Transexuals Who Love It

    For 2017 Best Related Work:

    Gaspers Dig Time Lords: A Celebration of Doctor Who and the Auto-Erotic Asphyxiants Who Love It

    For 2018 Best Related Work:

    Some Subset of LBTQQIABDSMPHDBFDVIPRSVPRESPECTEIEIO Dig Time Lords: My Essay Is Important Because of My Crotch and What I Do With It

    So get to work and good luck.

    1. Collection of humorous web posts by Scalzi, published by Tor: duckspeak.

      Collection of humorous web posts by Williamson, not published by Tor: crimethink.

  41. Worth noting that they *still* haven’t changed the actual link, which contains most of the offending buzzwords.

    1. They can’t really change the link — it would screw up all the people linking to them about the controversy, and smell of a coverup. Cue a hundred articles about the silly SJWs trying to throw something down the memory hole, when the internet never forgets.

  42. Larry,

    I just wanted to say ‘Thank you!’. You (and, of course, everyone else who worked to organize and promote Sad Puppies) helped prove that we, the fans, can have a voice in choosing what works might be recognized and receive our fandom’s most prestigious awards.

    It is my fondest hope that someday soon, this vote-drive will have energized so many fans that the official Sad Puppies slate will read only, “Y’know what? No recommendations this year. Vote your conscience. This award belongs to you, the collective fandom!’ , and that all other cliques and voter blocks are lost in the noise.

  43. Oh, *now* she wants Larry’s side of the story.

    http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/204729/

    More here:

    http://twitchy.com/2015/04/06/entertainment-weekly-retracts-claim-of-misogynistic-racist-hugo-awards-voting-campaign/

    Including this quote from Larry earlier tonight on Twitter: “Fisking to start, but that’s not good enough. I’m sick of this libelous bullshit.”

    Oh please, *please* break out the Tetsubo of Justice or at least sic some really good lawyers on ’em. Assuming, of course, that there’s anything left to sue after Torgersen gets done working them over with the flamethrower; I gather that the changes in the story started immediately after he contacted EW’s editorial staff with the corrections that now comprise the first paragraph of the “story.”

    1. Here’s a classic primer on how speaker-to-whites SJW Mikki Kendall signal boosts bullshit about statistics to attack white people:

      “Mikki Kendall retweeted HuffPost Politics @HuffPostPol · 3h 3 hours ago Who gets food stamps? White people, mostly http://huff.to/1AmPFwo

      “According to 2013 data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which administers the program, 40.2 percent of SNAP recipients are white, 25.7 percent are black,…”

      So in truth, a third LESS whites receive help than their demography and almost twice as many blacks. Does this woman really think anyone’s fooled?

      1. Aw, come on, Jim. Math is hard! Especially when you’ve spent so many years eating paint chips by the family-size bagful.

  44. Watching this whole EW business is akin to the proverbial slo-mo train-wreck.

    Also, for some mysterious reason, the phrase ‘Unleash the Kraken!’ keeps running through my head….

    1. I expect they have awoken the Correia-ken. May Heaven have mercy on them, for he will not!

  45. Larry, Larry, Larry. You’re not “a big mean jerk”; you’re just a classic alpha male, and there’s nothing wrong with that, no matter what the feminists say.

    IMO, you’ve done a real service to geekdom with your Sad Puppies movement. Take a bow; you’ve earned it!

  46. That EW “article” is remarkable. Does it have a single sentence that doesn’t contain at least one outright lie?

    1. Ann Coulter once wrote, “every word you’ve ever read about Joe McCarthy is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the’.”

      That assessment strikes me as equally applicable to both GamerGate and Sad Puppies.

  47. Well, Larry, you got another sale today. After dealing as civilly as I could with a bunch who see nothing wrong with dismissing words that are offensive because the words were aimed at white guys, people who insist that this sort of racism and sexism (that really isn’t, because REASONS) is not only permissible, but not even worth mentioning unless it’s to yell at the people speaking up, people who still believe they must be ground beneath the thumb of oppression because the world isn’t always fair . . . I need a break. And something fun. My husband assures me that Monster Hunter fits the bill. I look forward to reading. 🙂

    1. You have chosen well. I love the MH books and recommend them to pretty much everyone. (It’s the romance. And the guns. And the monsters. Ok, I just like the whole universe.)

      I’m going to have to steal the first Grimnoir Chronicles book back from my SO now…

      1. *loved* the first Grimnoir book. Have to purchase and read the rest of the trilogy after I finish with MH 1-5. 🙂

        Thanks! It’s good to know about MH. I blush easily, so have mostly stuck to younger SFF, but this sounds like my cup of tea. 🙂

        1. As I recall, the romance isn’t blush-worthy, but it’s very sweet and adds a nice touch to the story. I really need to go back and re-read those.

          I’ve been saving the first Grimnoir book for a rainy day. Ok, a rainy weekend. (It’s long.) Hmm. Maybe I’ll chase my son off to his grandmother’s this weekend…

  48. The thing that I find most interesting about the Sad Puppies campaign and its well-deserved success is that it loosely follows the push back we saw this week with the GoFundMe response to Memories Pizza and last year’s push back withe Chick-fil-A.

    Looking at Fandom as a microcosm of America as a whole, it’s obvious to me that by and large the days that the SJWs, CHORFs, and Glittery hoo-has could control the microphone and shout down any and all opposition of their agenda and narrative are drawing to a close.

    Outside in the greater world, things will move a bit slower because the Leftist hammerlock on the news media and academia is going to take a lot of prying and crying to break, but it will break — just as there are many more quiet and solid fans that support the Sad Puppies than there CHORFs, there are far more exasperated and irritated middle class, middle aged, middle Americans that are totally tired of their bullshit and ready to fight back — all they need is a medium, and they are finding them.

  49. Mr. Correia: I love the fact you’ve made the hugos a matter of public discussion, and I’m with you that this was the best way to make some noise. And you’ve done nothing but show class about things thus far. So I’m with you.

    I just wished you to know I picked up the audiobook of Monster Hunter Alpha today, and I’m enjoying the series thus far. Is there another series you’d recommend off the top of your head to someone interested in your brand of novel?

    1. Don’t know about Larry, but my pick would be John Ringo’s Under A Graveyard Sky zombie apocalypse series (4 vols).

  50. Good job! I was only dimly aware of the socjus infiltration of sci-fi, and am glad to learn about the Sad Puppies, and how they drew blood on the SJW clique.

  51. I loved this part about the E. Weekly article:

    “and posted racist views towards black writer NK Jemisin.”

    It doesn’t mention Jemisin’s racist views towards the entire continent of Australia, all of SFF fandom being “racist as fuck,” and all white people being “diabolical.”

  52. So to start off, I’ve been following the Hugo ‘thing’ for awhile and just spent an hour (I’ll never get back) over at Whatever trying to read their side of things. Two things stood out 1) Larry mind controls all his fans so they will vote in lockstep. 2) by their own words act on par with my 8 yr old. She’s not wanting to go to her best friends party cause some one she doesn’t like will be there. Many, many comments like I’m gonna vote no award-why does Jim Butcher have to be a SP? Well, he chose to be aSP so NoAward for him! Really? And yet Larry’s fans are brainless minions.

    Also doesn’t this NoAward voting seem like a dick thing to do? I don’t care how you identify, it’s a dick move. Though I rarely agree with Will Wheaton, I do agree that ‘Don’t be a Dick’ should be in people’s mission statements.

    1. I find it hard to believe that someone who is a fan of the dresden files will vote him ‘no award’ because somebody tells them to. (But then I’m not a hive mind type) So I’m very curious how this vote will actually go.

  53. In April 1963, a small paperback imprint (incidentally edited by Harlan Ellison) called Regency published a nonfiction book by Eric Frank Russell called THE RABBLE ROUSERS. Its subject was the behavior of mobs, its theme that a mob is a creature with 10,000 arses and no brain. A headless monster.

    It’s a bitterly funny book. It has chapters on the Sacco and Vanzetti case, the Florida land boom, and the Dreyfus Affaire.

    Russell would have laughed himself sick over the SJW response to Sad Puppies 3. The SJWs are would-be Headless Monster jockeys, exactly the kind of conscienceless swine Russell excoriated. And they are deeply, deeply frightened that their days in the saddle are coming to a close.

    Good.

  54. “MichaelDamianThomas @michaeldthomas · 5h 5 hours ago So, yeah, Archon uninvited a Fan GoH when people pointed out his fanzine was full of racist jokes. Now it’s Hugo nominated. :(”

    “MichaelDamianThomas @michaeldthomas · 19h 19 hours ago You might be lovely & your work splendid, but I can’t vote for you if you made it on to the ballot due to a hate group’s slate. Sorry.”

    “MichaelDamianThomas @michaeldthomas · Apr 5 As a disabilities advocate, I work w/ many conservatives. Many are friends. HUGE difference between conservatives & hate groups.”

    What possible world does this man live in which ignores the fact half the line up in the first three issues of his magazine routinely qualify for this:

    “All hate groups have beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics.” – Southern Poverty Law Center.

    Is there a single SJW in possession of a dictionary… or a sense of irony? And shouldn’t Older and Nussbaum be making these self-confessions to a cleric?

    “MichaelDamianThomas retweeted Abigail Nussbaum @NussbaumAbigail · Apr 4 Fourth: if you choose to associate with bigots and hate groups, you will be treated accordingly. That’s how adult life works.”

    “MichaelDamianThomas retweeted Daniel José Older @djolder · Apr 4 Racists in Fandom: you’re not welcome here. You get more irrelevant everyday and you failed on literary and human levels.”

    “Failed” on a literary level? These are WRITERS who don’t know the meaning of simple words!!

    #SJWsHaveNoStrikeZone

    “MichaelDamianThomas @michaeldthomas · Apr 4 Why the fuck would you want a tainted nomination that will tie your name to hateful extremists forever?”

    Is he talking about last year’s Nebula Klan rally?

    “MichaelDamianThomas @michaeldthomas · Apr 4 Community. Art. Beauty. Friendship. Diverse voices. Emotional truths. Hate is fucking terrified, and will fall. Love you all.”

    Hahahahahahahaha

    “MichaelDamianThomas retweeted Mary Robinette Kowal @MaryRobinette · Apr 3 Feel free to express your bigotry. Just do not expect that people will accept it any longer, or that you can be free of consequences.”

    Thank you, Miss “No White Men.” Did you know the word “bigotry” isn’t in the dictionary?

    “MichaelDamianThomas @michaeldthomas · Apr 2 What makes more sense: You’re not getting published because of an SJW blacklist or because you’re a mediocre writer & an asshole?”

    Priceless. Orwellian morons who live at the Ministry of Love always are. And so there’s the news about the White Privilege Conference (formerly known as the “Hugos”). In what world of etardation would adults have to hold a debate about the meaning of the word “bigot”? Imagine a baseball game that never gets started.

  55. It was my birthday today. I spent much of my time at Fort Living Room with my wife and daughter. Not much for me to add at this point, beyond what I already put into my own blog response to Entertainment Weekly’s shoddy, shameful hit piece.

    My link is here.

    1. Happy birthday, Brad. I am beyond sorry and sickened that you and Larry have been slimed in this fashion. The paroxysms of hatred directed towards people who have done nothing more heinous than participate in an open process, by the rules, is truly shocking.

  56. “Well, if you want your books on the ballot, then get them nominated,” they said, mockingly.

    “Challenge Accepted,” was the reply.

      1. And their latest response is that because we played by the rules and won, the Worldcon and the Hugos will become things “of men, not laws.”

        These people are so dishonest they can hide behind a corkscrew.

          1. Honesty compels me to admit that it may have been coined by Hunter Thompson to describe Richard Nixon. Or it could have been Harlan Ellison.

            However, I consider Kipling’s “When ‘Omer Smote His Bloomin’ Lyre” to be an instruction manual for filkers like me.

  57. I love Rose Lemberg, I really do. Because like all SJWs, Rose Lemberg loves literature:

    “3. Solicit from established AND up-and-coming authors. If, for example, you buy stories from white cisgender men at all stages in their careers, but you only buy from women, trans and non-binary people, and/or PoC creators if they are famous, that is not going to appear especially welcoming, and will not necessarily balance your slush.

    “4. Invite a co-editor of the demographic you seek to encourage. For example, if you are an all-white, all-cisgender, all-straight male team, think of inviting someone different to collaborate with you. Then actually give that person power to make some choices.

    “6. Special or themed issues are a great way to encourage new authors to discover your market. For example, we are very proud of our Queer issue;”

    “8. Also, if you could please encourage people of all underrepresented genders, not just cisgender women, to submit to your venue, that would be great. Gender diversity is more complicated than men vs. women.

    “Expanding on 8, I have now seen firsthand how complicated encouraging all genders can be. Some trans and/or non-binary writers feel that “women-only” calls exclude them. In response, quite a few markets expanded their calls to “women and non-binary people,” which to me feels like a step in the right direction, but unfortunately, some trans and/or non-binary writers feel that the “women and non-binary” rubric still excludes them, especially so if they are male-assigned. While I have no handy solution to offer, I am eager to see further discussions and hope that the field will become even more welcoming to writers of all genders.”

    Uh, duhhhh. Say hello to the death of a literary genre.

    1. This whole rant ignores everything about how people buy books.

      1. The only clue I have to your gender, race, trans whatever is your name. Used to have an occasional book jacket picture but with kindle so much. Occasionally i might see your writers page at amazon.

      2. Unless you tell me, I have no idea if you are gay.

      3. There is a long tradition of females using male pen names and occasionally the reverse.

      4. Am I really supposed to be trying to figure out what ‘stage’someome is in in their career? The way I buy books is if I like an author I buy jut about everything they write until I find something I don’t like.

      1. Well said, Lea. It also ignores why people *read* books: a good story. Why should the writer’s race, gender, sexual orientation, stage in career, etc. matter at all if the work stand on its own quality?

        1. I cannot take people seriously who think women are not represented in fiction. Women are all over fiction! Get out of the house, folks.

          I would actually be happy to see a slate of native american, black, hispanic authors who wrote fantastic books. Sign me up. I’m always looking for new books. Just dont’ tell me this is all I’m allowed to read, because FU to that.

      2. I didn’t even know that several of the Sad Puppies recommended authors were women until it was brought up because of the Entertainment Weekly article.

        I just don’t care of the author’s background, I want good stories not goodthink author bios.

    2. 1. Have flunky mask the name and author info on piece of slush.

      2. Read piece of slush. Is it good enough to publish? Go to Step 4.

      3. Attach rejection notice, return to flunky, who will provide next piece of slush.

      4. Publish.

      5. Profit!

      6. Goto Step 1.

      Flunky Instructions:

      1. Mask name and author info on item.

      2. When manuscript returned, unmask info, send rejection/acceptance notice to author.

      3. Under NO circumstances provide author info to reader.

      4. Repeat steps 1-2, rereading step 3 until it gets totally ingrained. Thou shalt provide no info, and keepth thy job….

  58. Theodore Beale, aka Vox Day:
    On women: “I very much like women and wish them well, which is precisely why I consider womens rights to be a disease that should be eradicated. For what is rather more difficult to dismiss are the simple and easily verifiable facts that indicate women have seldom been less able to pursue their dreams and less able to achieve their desires than today, the Golden Age of Feminism.”
    And: a few acid-burned faces is a small price to pay for lasting marriages, stable families, legitimate children, low levels of debt, strong currencies, affordable housing, homogenous populations, low levels of crime, and demographic stability.”
    And: “Because they are the intellectual driving force of humanity, men will be fine… It is written that women ruin everything.”
    And: “First, there is no such thing as marital rape. Once consent is formally given in public ceremony, it cannot be revoked… If a woman believes in the concept of marital rape, absolutely do not marry her!”
    His thoughts on African-American author N.K. Jemsin: “an educated, but ignorant half-savage, with little more understanding of what it took to build a new literature”
    And: “Jemisin has it wrong; it is not that I, and others, do not view her as human, (although genetic science presently suggests that we are not equally homo sapiens sapiens), it is that we do not view her as being fully civilized for the obvious reason that she is not.”
    On Homosexuals:
    “Homosexuality is a birth defect from every relevant secular, material, and sociological perspective…[we must] help them achieve sexual normality.”

    So what exactly did they get wrong about the sick/rabid puppies?

    1. Hey, you posted all that to the wrong blog. Vox Day’s blog is thataway.

      Unless you are playing that game, you know? The one where you cherry pick outlandish statements from somebody on the opposing side and demand that anybody tangentially related to them in any way has to explain them… Because if we’re playing that game, I can give you a hundred times as many racist, outlandish, asinine, hateful, violence-wishing comments from Hugo and Nebula nominated authors on the Social Justice side.

      Want to play? Because seriously, I’ve got a dude on here who collects their racist tweets like a hobby.

      So, yes, you have quotes from somebody who wasn’t even on my slate. I don’t know the context they were made in, and they aren’t my words or opinions.

      That is my nice way of saying take it up with him, jackass.

      1. I think “Vox Day” has become one of those all-purpose, knee-jerk liberal epithets – like “Haliburton!” “Faux News!” “Koch Brothers!” – intended to convey that they aren’t interested in debating you, that you’re wrong and they’re right no matter what the facts are, and that if you continue talking to them they’re going to just stick their fingers in their ears and start yodeling to drown out the sound of your voice.

        They’ve never figured out yet that Vox *feeds* on that sort of thing.

        1. SJWs keep whining we’re conservatives or ideologically connected in some way. What they can’t figure out is their own words.

          When they start Tweeting No Mas Hombres Blancos after the Nebula Awards, that’s putting us all in a boat made of skin and sex. Any port in a storm, assholes.

  59. If they do vote no award, I suggest you start your own award, with blackjack and adult escorts from both genders

  60. Science Fiction has ALWAYS been about social justice. Railing against it is denying SF’s source.

    I have no issue with recommend reading lists. NESFA, BASFA, and a host of others do that. I have no issue with authors (or artists) saying, “Here is my Hugo-worthy work.” I do have an issue with people saying, “Vote this way to stick it to The Man.”

    BTW, Toni Weisskopf has had two previous Hugo nominations. Not exactly overlooked.

    1. Check your facts. Toni Weisskopf’s two nominations came from Sad Puppies 1 and Sad Puppies 2. Before I came along and threw a rock into your stagnant little pond, she had been ignored.

      As for science fiction always being about social justice… Are you talking about like the big idea definition expanding human horizons sense of the term, or are you talking about the petty, tyrannical, communist-puritans out there running hit pieces on anybody who deviates from group think? Because hint, the reason the term SJW stuck in our cultural lexicon is because it is ironically 3 lies in one term.

      We’re railing against the thought police. We actually like the old school sci-fi stuff.

      As for voting to Stick It To The Man, maybe if The Man hadn’t been a douchebag to a giant segment of fandom, telling them they are wrongfan having wrongfun, then maybe these people wouldn’t want to Stick It To Him. You’d better take it up with The Man.

      1. Wait… I thought that science fiction had always been about maintaining the white patriarchy.

        I mean… WTF… science fiction has always been a playground for xenophiles and the SJWs have been insisting, against all reason and rationality, that it’s been the white patriarchy thing… we say, whaaa?… they say “You’re just mad that some women and people of color *finally* have a chance. And we say… whaaaa? again. Because what else can you say?

        Yes, Lisa… science fiction has always been about imagining other ways to be human. Sometimes campy, sometimes profound.

        So what’s the *problem* and why do we all have to confess to original sin and start some freaking penance of *pretending* that something else was ever true?

      2. I always thought science fiction was about examining how science and technology affect us as humans.
        Its always been about the characters and their reactions to the events or technology around them, for me.

        During a drunken discussion with someone I posited the following (sorta-kinda, I’m sober now).
        If you have the worlds most amazing technological gun, you have a plot point.
        You have a story when you tell me who is holding the gun, why they are holding it, who they are pointing it at, why they may or may not pull the trigger and what are the consequences of that.

  61. I bought a supporting membership last night. I look forward to reading the nominees, then voting for whomever I think is best. But-

    I will have a hard time not voting for Jim Butcher. The guy rocks.

    I will have a hard time not voting for John C. Wright. He’s a class writer.

    I will have difficulty not voting for Vox Day, just for the joy of seeing SJW heads explode. If his edited works are any good (and they are, I’ve read several), he may well be a lock.

    1. At the moment Jim Butcher is in the lead for my best novel vote. KJA’s book (the only other I’ve read) is good but not as much as Skin Game (sorry Mr. Anderson). The other three are going to have a tough time dissuading me from that, but I’m willing to give them the chance.

      I’m also leaning towards Rajnar Vajna, because I’ve enjoyed his Analog work. Someone at Baen should really approach him about a short story collection.

    2. NOBODY from our side will be upset if Jim Butcher wins. Least of all Larry. (They met in a con some months back and OH MY GOD THE WORLD DID NOT EXPLODE FROM THE AWESOMENESS SINGULARITY)

          1. Shadow, you are bearing up exceptionally given the dire circumstance. Words entirely fail me at this time.

            You need anything I can deliver from Canada, you let me know. In the mean time, you’re doing awesome. I’d be a puddle.

  62. Hi guys, I’d like to say thanks for all the work you’ve put into the Sad Puppies campaign. Until the last few days I had no idea quite how much was wrong with the Hugos and fandom in general. I’ve been reading the stuff since early childhood but never really got involved with the social side.

    I have a bit of a dilemma. One author I’ve always loved was Charles Stross, but going through a couple of threads on Making Light has left Tor’s authors poisoned to me. The organisation is so bitter and hate-filled I just couldn’t enjoy reading its stuff any more.

    But I hoped Stross would be more reasonable, though he’s very involved with that group. I posted a comment on his blog making the obvious point: a business can only lose by insulting its customers. They ought to keep silent if they can’t at least be neutral. Likening their customers to child rapists will only drive those customers away. In essence, I said that if we could politely agree to disagree then I would carry on reading his books.

    His response was to accuse me of being a Nazi sock-puppet.

    The dilemma is this: if he actually understood the point, he might well agree. No-one in business would be so suicidal as to drive away customers on purpose; he must really think that I’m some kind of neo-Nazi with a fake account and a made-up story.

    How much effort, if any, should I put into trying to make the point? The whole thing is all very hurtful, though the Nazi allegation is ludicrous enough to be funny rather than offensive. I can’t help thinking that any time spent arguing with these people will add nothing good to my life, but I will be sorry not to read any more of his books. (They would give me no pleasure any more.)

    What do you think? Should I go back on his blog and press the issue?

    1. Some of us authors are more approachable than others. Some like debate, some don’t.

      Personally, I read books by people from all over the political spectrum, and don’t really care until they beat me over the head or bore me.

      I can’t speak for Stross. Don’t know him. I know he doesn’t like me much. 🙂

      1. I do feel rather beaten over the head. Think it’s my first actual interaction with a writer, and it’s kind of impressive to get called a Nazi sock-puppet on my first go.

        You guys are probably right. He’s entrenched enough that I don’t think he could change his position even if he secretly wanted to. I’ll cut my losses. Pity; I enjoyed those books.

    2. I wouldn’t. Many authors tend to swing the banhammer or the disenvowling knife liberally. Cut your losses on the argument, and I hope that in a later date that you might be able to enjoy what you once have.

    3. Don’t bother. His mind is made up, and no amount of arguing will dissuade him. You’re better off posting at places where neutrals, moderates, and undecideds congregate and try to persuade them. Stross and his faction will never give you an open discussion.

      And I liked Stross enough to have voted for Neptune’s Children last year as best novel. But reason with him? A fools errand.

      1. You guys are so much more gracious than I am. When I feel personally offended I just can’t read the author anymore. I haven’t read Scalzi, Stross, or Tad Williams in years. Probably never will again. This latest tantrum has added a lot of authors to the cannot-read list but it doesn’t bother me too much. So much of the work is about filling racial/gender etc., quotas that it lost a lot of entertainment value anyway.

        1. I admit, Stross’s other books have dropped a few dozen places in my to-read pile, but I find I just can’t be annoyed at any author forever. It may take a while, but I’ll probably get back to him some day.

          Cooerction: It was Neptune’s BROOD that was up for the Hugo last year. His other book in that series is Saturn’s Children, and I seem to keep confusing the two.

        2. You shouldn’t drop them. It’s actually a very good mental exercise to read from those whom you disagree with. Even from SJWs (if the quality of their prose is any good, mind you).

          Only this way can you learn how to separate these contexts, to leave your personal feelings behind and see a work only based on it’s real merits.

          Later you will stop getting offended and you’ll see the true value of having a wide open mind everywhere in your life.

          1. I understand your larger point but I have a hard time giving money to people who say vicious things about me (or people who think like me) on a regular basis. If I do that I feel like I’m giving them a bigger platform and it’s repugnant to me.

            I’m the silent consumer my business teacher told my class about years ago. The one who won’t tell you to your face that your service sucks but will stop frequenting your business. That’s how I look at this.

          2. Exactly. I won’t pay money for a single Scalzi work again, *not* because I disagree with his politics or philosophy, but he attacks me, using his prominence as a writer to give himself authority.

            I choose not to contribute to his presumed authority.

          3. (RS, I’m answering here because it does not let me reply to you)

            I understand your sentiment completely. My only disagrement is on that a solid piece of work worth the money regardless of the author, his behavior or politics.

            And by the way, you do not have to give them money (I also rarely do). There are a lot of legitimate sources like libraries, book lending, aftermarkets to get what you’re unsure about paying in full.

            Just don’t shield yourself on purpose. It’s not worth it in the long run no matter how offended they make you.

          4. The thing is, I’d never have guessed Stross’ politics or position on this from anything of his I’ve read.

            (Accelerando and all the Laundry books.)

            I mean, it’s a good mental exercise to read things you disagree with, to get firsthand knowledge of opposing views and arguments (and thus strengthen your own views, or modify them if The Other Guy actually makes a good point).

            Reading innocuous works from “the other side” isn’t so much a mental exercise, as a way to protest against “the personal is the political”.

            It’s worthwhile to undermine that horrid little belief, alone.

          5. @RS You don’t have to buy those books, you can get them from the library if they’ve got copies.

            That way you can read the books without any extra money going to the author (unless of course you like the book and decide to buy it).

            It is how I read practically everything anymore, library first and if I like it bookstore second.

        3. Yeah, some of the comments and links that James May has posted have put me off even trying any of those writers. Life is too short and there are too many books to read to waste time on the haters.

          1. There is a simple solution available to them: I can’t quote hate speech that doesn’t exist.

            I never quote anyone on political issues. Just racial and sexual defamation.

        4. Tell me about it. I have to actively avoid certain authors social media sites **cough – Mira Grant – cough** because I don’t want to stop liking their work.

          1. *Sigh* Me too. I haven’t given up on everyone yet. But when I see certain authors (Williams is especially prolific) making rude comments on Facebook it’s especially hard. I only see Williams’ comments because Brad will politely try to engage him or one of his followers in a reasonable discussion that usually ends up with poo flinging in Brad’s direction. Brad is such an unfailingly nice guy that it makes me angry on his behalf.

        5. I’m actually with you. I used to show up at Peter David’s blog. I really enjoyed his writing, both comics and novels, and I was interested in seeing what he had to say outside of the structure of the stories. I was quite frankly crushed to learn how he viewed people like me (ie those to the right of him). Finally I couldn’t take it anymore and stopped both visiting his site and buying anything that he wrote, no matter the medium. I just couldn’t do anything to support someone who despised the things I felt were important in my life. I wished him well when I heard about his health problems, but I just can’t pick up anything by him at this point

        6. Williams is another good example of someone whose political views I find bizarre and unnatural, but who doesn’t put it in his books. And therefore, I will read, because goddamn, that man can write.

          1. I have yet to read a single comment TW has left on Facebook that hasn’t been obnoxious.

            Thankfully there is no rule that jackasses are unable to create great art, nor that we much discard the same because of it.

          2. @Jared – Indeed, the world would be short of – at least – the works of Harlan Ellison and Mark Twain, plus a great many of lesser name.

            One might consider feting the works of jackasses to be the better course – convince them (us) that time is best spent in lonely pursuit of art, rather than in inflicting themselves (ourselves) on other humans.

          3. Exactly. I find him personally abhorrent and dishonest, but I love his writing. Would have no problems nominating and voting his work, if something came out that year that was of the same quality as all his previous stuff.

    4. “What do you think? Should I go back on his blog and press the issue?”

      I don’t see the point, unless you’re trying to reach people who are on the fence. He believes he’s in the right, unassailably so – and there are few things less obdurate than an SJW with their minds made up. Unobtainium girders will bend and flex before any doubt will enter their minds.

      If anything, that’s the thing that I dislike most about that crew. They never THINK that their positions might be wrong, that they could be in error, that their preconceptions might be faulty. They know what’s what, and the world had better fall in line pretty fast or they’re gonna get bent out of shape about it…

    5. If there’s an author I like but I get even a hint they’re going to be Stupid On The Internet… I put my fingers in my ears and go La La La La La La… and avoid them on the internet.

      They don’t get dumped until they reach a threshold of Stupid In Their Books that can’t be ignored.

  63. I just saw this quote from the EW original:

    Fortunately, some sane voters allowed well-deserving writers to pull through. Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Sword and Listen was nominated for Dramatic Presentation, and Annie Bellet’s Goodnight Stars was nominated, despite having a non-white, female protagonist.

    …?

    Wow. Disproved their first paragraph in their last. Good job at that ‘reporting’ thing, EW! How can I trust your list of ‘what to watch tonight’ now??

  64. I would typically associate SJWs with the “Everyone needs to vote, the more the better” and “Open borders” crowds. Interesting they don’t feel that way when it comes to the Hugo awards.

  65. Thanks for doing this. Wish I’d known earlier. Just bought my “supporting membership” — had a lot of trouble with the site. I suspect I’m not the only one just joining the wave.

    I don’t really see this ending well, but I value the Hugos, and they’ve been turned into a joke over the last decade (or two). As time goes on, the awards from those years are just going to look worse and worse.

    Just look at the best novels right through the ’80s — the awards had no trouble finding Startide Rising and Neuromancer and Ender’s Game — all the first novels nominated from those authors. They spotted Anne McCaffrey from the first Pern novellas.

    In the last twenty years, they’ve completely missed the opening salvoes in Game of Thrones (1997), Harry Potter (1998), and Hunger Games (2009). This alone tells you something has gone profoundly wrong. Each of those three books alone has done more to expand SFF readership than all the winners in the last ten years combined.

    They also missed the Name of the Wind (2007), the whole Wheel of Time series (until last year’s sop that embarrassingly confirmed none of them had ever even been on the shortlist before) and the entire Urban Fantasy genre.

    Some of the nominees this year feel a bit like the nominations of GRRM’s and JKR’s later works — trying to make up for missing the earlier, more deserving works. (Jim Butcher’s Changes from 2010 was spectacular. Skin Game was also quite good, but it’s definitely an “oops, we missed the previous fourteen books, but this one’s good too.”) But I’m looking forward to reading all the best novel nominees — which hasn’t happened ever. (I wasn’t aware of the Hugos at all, except as something I saw on book covers, back in the 80s when they had really spectacular years like 1986.)

    So, thanks. I’m glad someone’s making the effort.

    1. No ‘oops’ about it.

      It’s a ‘are you people blind or just stupid. You’ve passed over Butcher, on the Dresden Files alone, fourteen bloody times. Right, well that’s it then, he *will* be 15th-time lucky.’

      They didn’t miss anything. Jim Butcher made the cardinal sin of understanding his role in giving the readers a story they actually like and enjoy, and almost as badly, being given lots of money for doing it. Referencing pop culture and having Harry enjoy Coke instead of reading the New Yorker over a sauvignon blanc is icing on the cake. Was never going to be given a shot by the non-puppies.

      1. In addition, Codex Alera was completely passed over, despite being the awesomest way to combine Pokemon and Lost Roman Legions possible. Hopefully Cinder Spires won’t be missed in the same way.
        As for Hunger Games, it had the misfortune of being YA. YA has only gotten on the ballot two times, despite having nearly four times as many print books sold as adult SFF in the US in 2014. Something is seriously wrong there.

    2. I looked briefly at Ancillary Justice at Amazon but while the blurb sounded like something I might enjoy once I realized that the author was playing games with “gender neutrality” and use of “she” to refer to everyone (a SJW dreamworld) I decided to save my $$ and buy something that I would enjoy. Maybe this is why I haven’t automatically bought a Hugo winner in the last 15 years?

      btw, still haven’t found the “supporting membership” registration. But since Sasquan is in my neck of the woods I might head over to attend. Eat some popcorn and enjoy SJW head explosions for a day or so while I discover new authors.

      1. https://sasquan.swoc.us/sasquan/reg.php

        If you’re in the US and are paying 40 USD, that’s the supporting membership.It’s a drop-down list and the default is the Attending Membership for $210.

        I don’t know anything about whether you can buy a ticket at the door and walk in. They answer pretty fast though, as I had a question and got an answer within a few hours. I might have caught them in a slightly unbusy hour though.

        1. Shadowdancer:
          You can buy a ticket at the door, but the price is STEEP. Worldcons want to know how many will attend, so they keep raising the price as time goes on. At the door prices are hideous.

    3. They missed Peter Hamilton for the most part as well. No SF writer has ever held together 1.2 million words while maintaining dramatic tension with endless cool cliffhangers like he did in Night’s Dawn.

          1. Not surprising. My impression is that it was the case of exactly what we’ve all been talking about for the last few years – albeit on the other side of the political spectrum.

            I.e. the Message overshadowing the Story.

            If I understand correctly, the trilogy was primarily the result of Hamilton getting tired of the dominant narrative of the 1980s – every dystopia was akin to V for Vendetta ( a thinly disguised Reagan/Thatcher establishing a right-wing Christianist dictatorship and provoking a nuclear Armageddon). Dictators never seemed to come under the red flag.

            So Hamilton decided to write a post-apocalyptic story with left-wing dictatorship as the villain. But again – the Message came first. So the Story suffered.

    4. This looks like a good place to address something that’s been bugging me for a while:

      After seeing how much influence Tor has had over the Hugos – and seeing how certain current and former Tor editors gleefully rip into current Tor authors whose works are enjoyed by wrongfans having wrongfun – I find myself wondering just why Robert Jordan was never nominated for a Hugo until well after his death, and another author had been brought in to finish *his* magnum opus.

      And the only reason that nomination happened is because RJ-fangirl Leigh Butler over at Tor led a campaign – say better, fan revolt – to make it happen.

      No, this isn’t another rant about how some people can campaign for their favorite books to win a Hugo and others can’t. Indeed, as a huge Wheel of Time fan myself I was hoping that RJ would win, and said as much both here and over at Tor.com.

      And it’s probably fair to say that the last solitary damn I had to give about the Hugos slipped out of my hands, fell to the floor and broke the day crap like “Ancillary Justice” and “If You Were A Dinosaur, My Love” won Hugos and Robert Jordan didn’t.

      And I find myself wondering what sort of politics – whether office politics or the political sort of politics – kept one of Tor’s most beloved, popular and bestselling authors out of the Hugos until he was safely dead.

      1. I think there’s always been the idea that the Hugo should go to something important and that extruded fantasy product (used to be a common phrase) might be lucrative but not important.

        The question of “book series” is a bit contentious. I have sympathy for the idea that the Hugo should go to something outstanding and standing alone. I don’t have sympathy for the idea that something past a certain threshold of “entertaining” and “popular” can’t possibly be “important”.

      2. Wes: I didn’t have a vote last year, but I ranked the novels as if I did. Ancillary Justice was easily my top choice.

        I love The Wheel of Time. Love it. I’ve read the whole thing multiple times. I would have voted it only above the Stross, which I didn’t read (if I had, No Award may have been above the Stross if it was anything like Saturn’s Children).

        As much as I love Wheel of Time, I didn’t think the series as a whole represented the best fiction of 2014. Looking back, I’m not sure any single volume was among the best of that year. I still love the books, but I can easily see how Jordan was not recognized in the past, which is both a shame and understandable. I would have supported a lifetime achievement award.

      3. Also, the Swirsky story was in a different category and had nothing to do with Wheel of Time not winning. To that point, the Swirsky did not win the Hugo for Short Story. The Nebula, yes, but that’s a different beast.

  66. So I keep hearing this: We must destroy the hugo’s (No Award) in order to save them.

    I keep hearing echo’s of Ban Tre (We had to destroy the village in order to save it).

    The SJW’s have become what they hated most.

    1. On the contrary, as Michael Savage is fond of noting, “liberalism isn’t just a mental disorder…it’s a suicidal disorder”.

      I mean, these are the same people that cheerlead radical Muslims that want to put their heads on a pike.

      Mass suicide and self-destruction is the endgame for all liberals/SJWs. We’ve seen it again and again through history. Who were the first people exterminated in the wake of the October Revolution? Liberal Russian students/supporters.

      Ruining the Hugos is simply a more symbolic form of suicide. 🙂

  67. I’ve been following this loosely for a couple years, but never really intended to vote or buy in.
    Then I started being attacked for not being some sort of quasi-gender self hating slug, simply for being on Larry’s facebook and wishing him good luck.
    When I say attacked I mean verbally assaulted on the ground of my Gender, Ethnicity, and sexual orientation. Told repeatedly that I’m some sort of monster because I prefer to read books I can identify with and actually enjoy, instead of slog through like some sort of literary self flagellation ritual.

    That EW article is the last fucking straw. Larry and Brad joke about not caring if anyone hates them, make jokes about the way they are treated and dragged through the mud, but it’s bullshit.
    Larry has been awesome to anyone I’ve ever seen publicly address him with the exception of those whom decide to randomly attack him for his views.
    Hell, I’ve never seen a writer treat his fans better, and more like friends than he does. He treats people with the respect they give him and fights for what he believes in.
    I don’t agree with everything he says, (being an atheist, among other things) and disagree with him regularly, but he’s never once bashed me for it.

    Sorry for the rant, you have my 40 bucks. I’ll start reading through the nominees and vote for whatever fucking books I want. I don’t need anyone’s fucking permission to like what I like.

  68. The crazy thing about all this is that the established fans could probably have defused it years ago. All it would have taken was a professional response, congratulating the nominees, urging everyone to vote according to their conscience and hoping politics stay out of fandom.

    They’d have looked magnanimous and we would have had little to get angry about. SP3 might never have happened if they’d responded like that to SP1. And I might still be reading Charles Stross.

  69. “Over the years I’ve done Sad Puppies, do you know how many fannish blogs, fanzines, and podcasts interviewed me, the guy who started the campaign, about the goals of Sad Puppies?

    None.

    I can’t think of single one. You’d think with the most controversial thing to happen to the Hugos in forever, somebody would actually want to sit down and interview us and get our side of the story, but nada, zip.”

    The Adventures In SciFi Publishing podcast interviewed Larry and Brad about Sad Puppies last month: http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/adventures-in-scifi-publishing/e/aisfp-289-sad-puppies-with-larry-correia-brad-r-torgersen-37233267

    1. Yeah, I put that link into my post, right after the part you quoted, because they were the first place to do so. 🙂

      1. He didn’t read that far, just skimmed it until he thought he could catch you in a lie, then creamed his jeans posting about it, without reading any further.

  70. I think we are at a seminal moment in the culture wars where the perpetually outraged proselytizers for the insane Politically Correct have over-reached to all aspects of Western culture at once. In academia, entertainment, and everyday social congress we see these people forcing themselves upon a public that is becoming increasingly aware of their presence and they are not going to tolerate it any further. There is only so much common sense that you can sacrifice on the alter of political correctness before society comes together and with one voice shouts, “ENOUGH!”. I think we are reaching that moment, inching closer everyday.

  71. You know, after last year, I figured the other side would be better organized and they would blunt the impact of a third Sad Puppies campaign. But instead, we caught them with their britches down two years running. Their paranoia about GamerGate pushed GG into our corner, and now the Entertainment Weekly blew up in their faces like one of Wiley Coyote’s bombs.

    In the beginning, I just came here because I loved Monster Hunter International. A few years later, I’m at the epicenter of a seismic shift in fandom.

    Interesting times.

    1. Honestly, there are a bunch of us who see “better organized” sides as the worst possible outcome of this. I like and nominate books from across the spectrum politically, but the last thing I’d like to see is open campaigning for the awards becoming the norm. Mind, I’ve only been a Hugo voter since 2011, so I’m certainly not part of the old guard or anything like that.
      Cheers,
      Groblek

      1. If it is only two sides, I agree. If we have twenty or more close to equally popular sides, we don’t have a problem at all, since they won’t be able to get to five percent without help from general voters who don’t care about slates.
        The problem is that campaigning is so effective under the Hugo rules, and it is very hard to stop it if we still want fans to be able to vote. But if there are enough independent campaigns, they will cover more of the field and have less of an impact, allowing voters who don’t care about slates to still have a say, since the slates won’t be able to successfully nominate without some general voters supporting their picks.

        1. That’s possible, and if what we end up with is anything like the twenty or more sides, I’ll withdraw my objection. But I think that we’re more likely to end up with 2-4 slates, and I see that as a bad outcome.

          1. Agreed. The only thing to do, then, is try to encourage the creation of more independent slates. It will be hard, but I don’t see another solution within the rules as they currently stand. And I think that changing the rules could easily turn into a nightmare on its own.

    2. I think they truly thought that, after the results of the Loncon vote were known, we’d shot our wad, learned our lesson, and would slink back to the rocks from under which we’d crawled never to be heard from again. Remember how they’d celebrated then? They clearly didn’t think we’d stay organized into the next cycle and even grow; that was contrary to the narrative they’d imagined.

    3. Gamergate crowd hasn’t even dipped a toe yet. If they got truly involved the Hugo would probably have had triple the amount of votes, and halo would dominate all genres.
      Sad Puppies aren’t the ones bringing them into it, though.
      The SJW’s are slowly building an army against themselves by trying to marginalize everyone that isn’t them.

    4. Their paranoia about GamerGate pushed GG into our corner, and now the Entertainment Weekly blew up in their faces like one of Wiley Coyote’s bombs.

      Which reminds me of Wile E’s little business card statement: Supergenius.

      😉

  72. Oh Lordie. What a dust-up and what a basket of butthurt. How DARE a gang of rebels toss the King’s tea into the harbor!
    I want to know more about the machine gun store.

    1. I was one of the founders and owners of FBMG in Draper Utah. I sold out in 2008. Running a small business was a whole lot of work. Sure, I played with guns all the time, which was cool, but the business/money part of being a small business owner is hard as hell. 🙂

      1. As my Dad liked to say, “The key to making your own business successful is to only work half days. Which 12 hours are entirely up to you.”

      2. I imagine it’s even more of a pain when there’s all the NFA paperwork and BATFE stuff to deal with…

  73. What Larry has described is a phenomenon I refer to as “The Drunk At The Party.”

    We’ve all experienced this: you’re at a party, having a good time, and some loudmouth of a drunk starts ranting about this and that.

    Everybody tries to ignore the drunk, sure that addressing the drunken elephant in the room will cause more fuss, make a bigger scene. So everybody sits, uncomfortably, hoping if nobody challenges the drunk he (or she) will wander away.

    This inaction instead allows the drunk to think his/her behaviour and opinions acceptable, and to invite more friends in to the party. Pretty soon the nice people slip away, leaving the drunks more in control and the party eventually ends in destruction and disaster.

    Larry (and now Brad and kate) are due a vote of thanks for stepping up and telling the drunken bullies that theirs is not the kind of behaviour that is acceptable in society and the drunks will either have to behave or go.

    1. You mean books he cowrote with the original author’s son who owns the IP? Good thing we nominated one of his solo works for you to judge accordingly, then. 🙂

      1. I take then his writing has significantly improved? ‘Cause the last time I read a solo work of his he was basically a poor man’s Michael A. Stackpole.

        1. 23 million (?) books in print. Obviously, someone likes his stuff, even if it isn’t for you.

          (To be fair, I’ve only read one thing he’s written since the Star Wars books very, very long ago.)

    2. Agreed. As far as I am concerned Brian Herbert and KJA should be sued for vandalism based on their treatment of his father’s franchise. I haven’t been able to bring myself to by any of the latter’s books after getting burned on the Dune stuff.

  74. “However, many good, decent, honorable people self-identify as SMOFs. I count many of these people as friends, and many of them are cheering Sad Puppies on.”

    Like, say, this one.

    I will, however, say one thing about Larry’s “hey, if you’d reined in the SJWs” comment. We’ve tried. But a few people can’t do all the work on that front, and the apathy of the many means keeping whatever gains you make becomes more difficult.

    Personally, I’ve mostly gafiated. I’d rather put the energy and talent into doing things that pay me, rather than things that suck my soul.

  75. I’m very disheartened by the state of science fiction today.

    Like many people, I looked to the Hugos and Nebulas as a guide to what was worth reading, and I can remember a time when I was mostly satisfied with the recommendations. But in recent years – and there’s no denying this – the stories have gotten progressively worse. Badly written, didactic, even riddled with grammatical and spelling errors in some cases.

    These bad stories all have one thing in common, they all push the same sort of politics. This trend seems to have reached an all-time low in Rachel Swirsky’s “If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love”, a juvenile rambling that had nothing to do with science, and could only charitably be called fiction.

    Let me be clear – I don’t object to the female viewpoint, or the gay viewpoint, or the transgendered alien robot viewpoint. To me that’s what reading, and especially reading science fiction, is about – exploring new ideas, new possibilities.

    Explore these viewpoints, just make sure the writing is good. Don’t push bad stories simply because the author fits an idea of what you think a writer should be. I don’t care about an author’s politics, or race, or sexual orientation. The only thing I care about is if they can tell me a good story.

    I’m a writer myself. I’m not a great writer, maybe not even a good one. I am a minority, and it would probably make submissions easier if I put that in my bio, but I don’t. Why? The colour of my skin or my gender or who I sleep with is not especially important, or even very interesting, and I wouldn’t want it to be the reason I got published. Read my story, and judge me by the weight of my words.

    The Sad Puppies campaign has received a lot of negative press, but I’m glad that it brought to light the reasons why Science Fiction is in such a sad state, and I thank Larry for that much.

    The campaign exposed the problem, but obviously it’s not the solution; having another person or clique decide the awards doesn’t fix anything. So what would? I don’t know. Maybe the system isn’t worth fixing. Maybe it’s just another meaningless self-congratulatory award that an industry gives to itself, and we shouldn’t even care about it. But the names “Hugo” and “Nebula” still carry weight with the readers, don’t they?

    Maybe we should leave Hugo nominations up to those readers. Let them vote on who they want on the slate that Sad Puppies pushes, and the WSFS then votes on. Not a perfect system, but that should be good enough until the system is actually reformed.

    1. Gee, I guess I have to step in and say something about Rachel Swirsky’s “If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love”. The something is, it’s good.

      It isn’t a good story, because it’s not a story. It isn’t good science fiction, or fantasy, because it’s not SFF.

      I’m not sure what the fuck it is, but whatever you call such things, it’s rather well written, and rather well constructed.

      If you want to pick on something, pick on the fact-free ‘history’ of “We have always fought.”

      1. I read about this supposedly being a dreadful 2014 Hugo nomination (and it WON a Nebula in 2013) in the Breitbart article.

        Since it was five pages and available for free on the Internet, I decided to give it a gander.

        Now, I came into it with an open mind. Just because the writer might be unethical or an insane liberal doesn’t mean he/she can’t be a good writer. For instance, Margaret Atwood is a batshit insane wingnut radical. However, she is also an utterly brilliant, amazing author. Ditto for other talented, highly liberal writers like Stephen King and Terry Pratchett.

        Rachel Swirsky is not part of that group.

        Here is my review; https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1246018826

        1. I don’t have the link handy, but John C. Wright read that, was so blown away by the badness of it, that he wrote in 4 hours a dinosaur revenge time travel story of his own. I’d invite you to compare the two. It is fascinating.

          (and it is also a good indicator of why after being ignored his whole career, the dam broke and my crowd threw a whole bunch of nominations at him)

          1. Thank you for the link!

            I just read the John C Wright version and it is indeed FAR superior to the Swirsky garbage, while maintaining all the details and broad beats.

            Not great or even particularly good, but an interesting, passable story that is genuinely science fiction, all putting it light-years ahead of the Hugo nominated one.

      2. I shouldn’t have singled out any particular author or work; it was an interesting piece of writing, it just wasn’t a SFF story, as you said.

  76. “Damien Walter retweeted Elizabeth Bear @matociquala · 7h 7 hours ago Stop screaming in my face because I exist and trying to deny me equal treatment, and I’ll stop calling you to account for your behavior.”

    I’m not doing jack shit to this awful woman or denying her anything.

  77. And now, a special message to rcade and all the rest of the “I’m going to vote “No Award” to punish block voting” poster.

    Fuck you.

    I didn’t buy a supporting membership this year, but I nominated because I had the right as a supporting member from last year. The following are the number of nominees in each category that were NOT on my nominating ballot:

    novel 3/5

    novella 3/5

    novellette 5/5

    short stories 4/5

    Related work 1/5

    Graphic Story 4/5

    Dramatic, long 5/5

    Dramatic, short 3/5

    Editor, Short 5/5

    Editor, Long 4/5

    Pro Artist 5/5

    SemiProzine 5/5

    Fanzine 4/5

    Fancast 5/5

    Fan Writer 3/5

    Fan Artist 5/5

    John W. Campbell Award 2/5

    And the horse you rode in on, morons. Thanks to you, I purchased a supporting membership while reading this thread. Wasn’t going to bother, because some of the stuff I most wanted on the ballot wasn’t there, but I’ve had it. You’re oh so upset about “bloc voting”, and to protest it you’re going to ‘independebtly’ do what various CHORFs called all proper, right thinking left thinking fools to do, I’m going to jump in and vote against you. And I’ll be sure, next year, to fill my ballot with SP slate suggestions in cases where I don’t have five nominees of my own in a category.

    Congratulations, you’ve just created a permanent bloc voter.

    1. The following are the number of nominees in each category that were NOT on my nominating ballot:

      novel 5/5
      novella 5/5
      novelette 5/5
      short stories 5/5
      Related work 5/5
      Graphic Story 5/5
      Dramatic, long 5/5
      Dramatic, short 5/5
      Editor, Short 5/5
      Editor, Long 5/5
      Pro Artist 5/5
      SemiProzine 5/5
      Fanzine 5/5
      Fancast 5/5
      Fan Writer 5/5
      Fan Artist 5/5
      John W. Campbell Award 5/5

      Next year, if Correia’s pals organize another bloc voting campaign, I will again vote as an individual and likely achieve the same result — 0 nominations.

      Bloc voting means hundreds of Hugo voters have almost no say on the ballot. Our choice is to accept this or form competing slates, which I regard as a terrible outcome for everybody.

      It’s even a terrible outcome for people and works that Correia would celebrate. This year, a well-regarded Heinlein biography isn’t on the Hugo ballot. Why? Because Correia, Torgersen and their crowd didn’t know about it.

      I don’t want to vote No Award over slate nominees, but to do otherwise rewards an odious tactic I don’t want to see repeated.

      1. The confluence of the details of your narrative with the talking points being cast far and wide by the shrieking brigade casts suspicion on your sincerity.

        It’s almost like there’s a bloc (aha!) of opposition coordinating a negative response!

        You’re a tool, witting or no you’ve got their greasy paw-prints all over you.

        1. It’s pretty sad that some people here are conjuring up fantasies about me being part of an enemy group just because I disagree with bloc voting.

          I’m a tool/social justice warrior/nutjob/ychorf because I oppose some SF/F fans voting in lockstep?

          I showed up to directly talk to Correia as one Hugo voter who doesn’t like what he’s unleashed. I’ve been respectful to him in spite of our strong disagreement, and I’d appreciate the same courtesy.

          1. How do propose block voting be stopped? Slates are effective, that’s out there, it isn’t going back in the bag.
            If you vote against everything that was put on a slate on principle, you could end up voting against works that you do think are worthy. Heck, puppies could put the last Imperial Radch book on the slate next year. Slates don’t have to ask permission of the authors on there, it was lucky Sad Puppies did that at all.
            If there are a lot of voters that put everything they know was on a slate below no award, it becomes very easy to destroy someone’s Hugo chances.
            So what solution do you propose? I think diluting the vote so that no slate contains 5% of the nominating ballots is the best idea, but I’d love to hear some suggestions.

          2. Sorry, no.

            You keep harping on the lockstep argument despite multiple people addressing it, and in the absence of proof. You’ve had your say, multiple times, and had engagement, multiple times. Yet you’re still here lecturing. You’re off on another sight bragging. You bounced over to a nominee’s page to tell her her Hugo didn’t matter, you’re so sorry, but it’s tainted.

            This is the extent of the courtesy, I personally, am going to extend you.

          3. Hello? Hugos.

            So what time’s the parade this year?

            What parade? We don’t have a parade.

            So who’s in the parade this year?

            etc.

          4. “How do propose block voting be stopped?”

            There’s a proposal here to dynamically increase the number of nominees in a category based on nominating patterns:

            http://drplokta.livejournal.com/166650.html

            It wouldn’t stop bloc voting, but it would get some nominees on the ballot also who would’ve been there if not for bloc voting.

            Computer security expert Bruce Schneier also is discussing the technical issues of how a voting system could potentially prevent against bloc voting:

            http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/016199.html

          5. It might shock you that I’m not against the 4 noms/6 spots proposal. I think that’s great. Again, I wanted to toss a rock into your stagnant little pond, not become Hugo Pope.

            I’m also in favor lowering the supporting membership cost so that people from all over the world can more freely participate.

          6. Yes computer security expert said this. “We saw both of these dynamics in the 2015 Hugo nomination election. People who normally didn’t pay attention were motivated to vote because they could vote the slate without any further thought, and the existence of the slate focused their votes to make them even more effective” False assumption.

          7. @ rcade
            I went and looked at the making light link and the other link. I do think many ideas proposed over there are good ideas (I posted in a different thread about that). Larry has also said that he doesn’t have a problem with quite a few of the ideas.
            There still isn’t overwhelming evidence that people voted slate and only slate, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen in the future, so precautions do seem in order.
            Ultimately, though, the awards will better reflect people’s taste if more people nominate.

          8. @Differently –

            Making Light is an odd, cranky, lot this month. Their approach to confrontation is…well, I wonder if a lot of dissenting voices are just not posting right now. And surely I get that they feel backed into a corner.

            But despite the several decent ideas put forth, I really came away with a sense of “omg the barbarians are coming!” The trend is towards shutting out all but the “right” sorts, not adapting to the new electorate.

            (Not an attitude owned by any single publishing house, nation, or political party – it appears to be a human condition.)

          9. @keranih
            Good ideas are good ideas, even if they don’t from good people. They have suggested some policies over there that I noted as exclusionary. They’ve also suggested some that could be improvements on the current system, or at least not worse.
            Just support the good ideas and laugh at the bad. The 4/6 proposal is fine, transferable voting is fine, lowering the cost of supporting membership is awesome. Saying new members can’t nominate until they’ve been in for three years = not fine (even though that wouldn’t shut out several puppies).

      2. And there is zero evidence that (absent SP3) the Heinlein biography would be on the ballot. Because Racist! Sexist! and that other battlewhine.

        We know, now, that you will vote Anti-slate. Cool. When the EssJayDubs slate up next year, will your principles stand? Or will you fluffle up with the rest of the lagomorphs?

        1. I’m never voting for a slate. It wouldn’t be any more welcome a tactic from people you call social justice warriors than it is from the Puppies.

      3. Eh,, go ahead. You’re convince in your own head despite the math challenging your assertion. Sorry your picks didn’t make it. I only got one of mine for best novel myself. We don’t always get what we want.

        As for works getting left off the ballot, it’s what happens when there are a limited number of slots. Some deserving work is always going to be left off. It’s a shame, but it’s the nature of the beast. There’s more good deserving SFF out there than even the top 15 list released at the end of the year.

        Frankly, get over yourself. We’re not going to change because of YOU. The tactics will be different next year, and probably a wider number of recommendations to chose from because absolutely NO ONE thought we’d be this successful. We didn’t count on the other team, so to speak, not showing up. And there’s merit to some of the criticism. But SP4 is happening, regardless of your protest vote, so holding your breath and stamping your feet until you turn blue won’t get you anything.

      4. Why would a group of 20+ more or less equally popular independent slates hurt you as a voter? They would each take less than 5% of the vote, meaning that non-slate voters would be needed to get anything on the ballot.
        Also, with 20 or more groups independently creating slates, they are more likely to find things that general voters care about, if only by accident.
        It is a problem that Correia and pals shut many works out of contending in some categories because they didn’t read them. Do you have any suggestions for how to fix this? I’m sure everyone would be interested to hear.
        But as regards slate voting; I think that cat is out of the bag. You aren’t going to be able to prevent people from using such an effective tactic. But if enough popular groups use it, it becomes less effective, is my view.

        1. What I’d like to see, if we’re going to be stuck accepting slates of nominees (and I suspect we are, as much as I’m opposed and rail against it), is some sort of “gentleman’s agreement” to prevent one slate from dominating entire categories. Say, an agreement to limit the number of nominees on a slate to half the slots available or something like that.

          I think an informal agreement is the way to go, because I’ve played RPGs for 20 years and have never seen rules changes stop people from gaming a system. This is something that requires a social fix from the community to patch the system in a way that doesn’t leave everyone screaming about who rigged things *this* year on an annual basis.

          1. When part of the argument is over the nature of the community, only the attendees of WorldCon vs. the greater fandom as a whole, I’m not sure I can see an easy was to reconcile that enough to get the gentleman’s bet. Although I would like to meet the person who could do it.

          2. That is a possibility, but it fails whenever a new group decides to enter the Hugo voting arena. Sad Puppies and Wheel of Time didn’t care about established protocol. Vox Day will, I’m sure, not care about any such agreement.
            I would rather have a system that is hard to game, because you would simply have to convince a large number of people. And if that many people agree with you, maybe you really do deserve to get something on the ballot.
            That being said, I think it would be a good thing to try in combination with increasing the number of voters (and possibly the number of slates). It certainly can’t hurt. We’ll see if Mr. Correia is receptive to that suggestion.

          3. I’m on record in favor of proposals that would increase the number of voters. I love the idea of lowering the costs of supporting memberships to something that any fan, anywhere, can afford. I have no problem with the nominate a maximum of 4, total of 6 proposal.

          4. It doesn’t matter, actually, if Larry is receptive to the idea or not. What matters if it’s idea that will be received and internalized over a multi-year period by the group of people who give a damn.

            As I noted previously, this is a battle that’s been fought for years. The reason that it’s still an issue is..apathy. We’ve fought this battle, and won the battle, and the war? Nobody sticks long enough for it to work.

          5. Social fixes require trust.

            The reaction this year is that everything akin to what was nominated last year was actually fine, but this year is an unconscionable monster that must be stopped, but uniquely so because 5 is an evil number where 2 was not.

            Now, go back and look at the reactions to last year. Where what was nominated was an unconscionable monster that must be stopped. Even though only 1-2 suggested nominees per category like we are now told was always how gentlemen did it and was always OK.

            In that environment, convincing people that any change, no matter what it was, would get them moved outside the category of “badfan” in some people’s mind, is very difficult.

          6. Can’t have an agreement with people who view agreements with unbelievers to be binding only as long as they are advantageous to believers. It’s the Muslim hudna concept, with the serial numbers filed off.

          7. Pardon me if my side is hesitant to make a “gentleman’s agreement” with the side that ran 8 simultaneous news articles off the same script libeling us as white supremacists.

          8. ^^ This. One can only make a “gentlemen’s agreement” with gentlemen (and ladies).

            You see, “trust” is a key, and necessary, requirement of such an agreement. And liars who engage in public slander and libel do not enjoy such trust from reasonable people.

          9. “Gentleman’s agreements” work among gentlemen, in gentlemen’s clubs.

            Who have to be fairly rigorously policed and those who have “demonstrated” non-gentleman traits shown the door. Otherwise, it all falls apart.

            Out in the world I live in – having neither the money, the family, nor the chromosomes to be a gentleman – we set down rules that can be enforced among everyone, and we let everyone play.

            Hugos have been a “gentleman’s club” for too long. Time to let the gutterrats play, too.

            And gutter rats don’t care about bending rules. They care about winning. To keep them from breaking the rules, you have to catch them at it. And not take their word for it.

            The rules have to be formal and they have to have teeth. And there are very few things you can enforce like that over something the size of Fandom. Informal ‘can’t we all be friends’ rules won’t cut it.

      5. Listen, we certainly booted some bona fide racial bigots off the lists this year. SJWs can say all they want about the word “bigot” but it has an actual and real meaning. Whoever didn’t get on will never have a second chance. Not ever. That in itself is a win. Even if it’s just one brief interruption – that’s a win. I am tired of being lit up by these morons and I am tired of WorldCon culture standing by and not having the spine to stand up to crying jags on Twitter about white men this and white men that. If you can’t control your morons, we are more than happy to do it for you. It’s not like we haven’t asked a million times. It was no secret this is coming.

      6. None of your nominees made it? Oh good. Now you can have empathy for how these other fans have felt for years.

        Since there are thousands of eligible novels published per year, and only a tiny, tiny fraction are nominated, then many worthy works will be left off, regardless.

  78. In the hundreds of comments, there’s one innovation that no one has mentioned. The way that the SJW’s lie and smear and shun and destroy is by picking out a target and sharing important information about the target so the SJW army can attack all together. We need to do the same (remember, we must always “punch back twice as hard”). For instance, we don’t really know enough about the liar-writer Isabella Biedenharn. Who does she work for? How does she make a living? Where does she live? Who is her boss? Where did she go to school? What other unsavory things have she done in the past? What are her career pressure-points? ALL such information should be shared and distributed…so those of us who take offense at THEM can justly utilize the same tactics that they UNjustly use to attack their targets. Sound reasonable? If so, Biedenharn first please.

    1. The answer to all of those questions is that I don’t know, and I don’t care. If I’m going to destroy something, it is going to be their arguments.

    2. So someone wants us to get into the doxxing line, the same as has been said of #GamerGate. Whaddya think, neighbors? Is “James” an agent provocateur or just a fugghead?

      (I refer, of course, to Niven’s Law: No cause is so noble that it won’t attract fuggheads.)

    3. I think the Puppies would alienate a ton of moderates, including myself, if they did that.
      Attacking people does not encourage participation. Since the one of the stated goals of SP3 was encouraging participation, such a tactic would be hypocritical, to say the least.

  79. Thank you.

    It took a decade or two to find what I sought in bookstores. I pretty much found it with Baen. I didn’t ever expect to see it in the Hugos or Nebulas, nor did I care.

    On the gripping hand, I’m a dedicated fan of SF and get to vote.

  80. White=intersectional Straight=gender Male=feminism

    Intersectional Gender Feminism. That’s the cult. Take that away and almost 100% of the rhetoric disappears.

  81. Larry Says: “Here is an interesting one for you moderates, SMOFs, and fence sitters to ponder on. Why is it that our own words and actions aren’t to be believed, but anything the other side says about us, no matter how outlandish, is to be accepted?”

    Miles Naismith Vorkosigan Says: “If no guarantee would suit you, maybe the fault isn’t with the guarantee, but with you.”

    In other words “Moderates”, “SJW’s”, and “SMOF’s”, maybe YOU are the problem. And not Sad Puppies.

    1. Right, because everyone is supposed to trust people who have publicly lied and libeled people, and threatened to damn by association anyone remotely associated with them?

  82. Ya know what, Larry? All I want is a story. Just tell me a story. I’m an old fart and a jerk too – but I am well read and grew up on stuff by the masters like Heinlein and Asimov.

    So when I read the shit by hacks and cretins like Vox Day…you’ll forgive me if I am tempted to throw you guys out with the SJW’s. Kratman? Do you want to tell me that guy is on par with the greats? I’m sure that unlike Vox, he’s a nice guy…but his best work is surely still ahead.

    This isn’t about an award. The publishing industry is not being taken down not only by SJW’s, but by hacks writers that learned wordcraft in a workshop Give me ORIGINALITY. The stuff coming out of writers today belongs in comic books, it’s that bad..

    You say you want to open the genre up…why not IMPROVE it too? Isn’t that what those awards are for?

    1. Well I’d agree there is a massive amount of conformism. That’s going to happen when people come into a genre from Dungeons and Dragons and video games. For me the turning point was Snowcrash. That was vintage Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Since then SF novels have become increasingly like James Rollins and Michael Crichton or hopelessly overwritten. I’m reading The Three Body Problem. There’s a lot of awfully clever stuff in there but it reads like Rollins with a lot more science. There’s no depth to the characters and they all seem like the same guy, even the women, except for one stereotypical rogue tough guy cop. They all seem like video game characters who are there only to die but you don’t actually care if they do. They’re manikins.

      Unsurprisingly a lot of it takes place in a video game and I saw where that was heading almost right away. It’s a nice book but it’s being pushed for the wrong reasons – it’s non-Western, non-white and yadda yadda. What about its literary merits? Jack Vance’s To Live Forever from 1956 or Simak’s “The Big Front Yard” a couple years later are more startling, eccentric and diverse visions. That’s fine art, and that’s what SF used to provide as a refuge from mainstream fiction. SF was considered a ghetto and in retrospect, it was better off.

      Reading Laura Mixon’s hopelessly saccharine stuff about “…a range of people who either are themselves vulnerable or marginalized, or else who read and/or write stories in diverse settings or with characters from diverse communities… ones we want to nurture, promote, and elevate” is heart-breaking, and for all the wrong reasons. I’m an adult, and I’m not interested in seeing kid’s drawings yanked off a refrigerator cuz their “diverse.”

    2. Did you read Kratman’s Big Boys Don’t Cry? Or are you just talking out of your ass? By the way, we Book Bombed it. Can’t remember actual number for that one alone, but between the 3 novella suggestions we sold over 2,000 copies that week, making it one of the most widely read novellas to be on the ballot in I don’t know how long.

      So, did you read it before saying everybody who nominated it is stupid? Or are you telepathic?

      Vox Day isn’t on our ballot. Next.

      In that same category, John C. Wright? Arlan Andrews? You going to tell me that they don’t write as good as the prior year’s nominees?

      Jim Butcher? Kevin J. Anderson? Marko Kloos?

      Kary English? Anne Bellet?

      If you want to glom onto disliking a single work, fine. You don’t like Kratman. Whoop.

      But if you don’t think that these are an improvement over approved message fic of the week, well, I don’t know what to tell you there.

      Look, I don’t mind disagreement. Which should be obvious from the hundreds of responses I’ve typed, but the sanctimonious bullshit is a waste of my time. If you think Ann Leckie’s debut novel is better than Kevin J Anderson’s 125th novel, goodie for you. That just demonstrates that people have different tastes.

    3. Glen, I should not speak up, but here I must. Your comment betrays you have not read whereof you speak.

      Not to boast, but the reason why I have won no Hugo Awards erenow is that my fans did not know how to get one for me. Now they do. They voted me on the ballot in shockingly overwhelming numbers.

      Come August, we will see what the fans say. I say that they will say what you just said: give me a good story.

      I have done that. You just have not read them.

      I offer you a deal:

      If you give Larry your email, and he gives it to me, I will send you free of charge copies of everything for which I was nominated this year. That you can write me and tell me if you think it was original and well crafted or not.

      The proof of the pudding is in the tasting.

      1. Mr. Wright, I commend you on your efforts.
        I expect them to fail; not because you are deficient in writing skills, but because your intended audience is metaphorically blind, and you are sending xim paintings of exquisite color xe is neither ready nor capable of appreciating.

        I wish you well in the effort. A man drowning in gray goo may not appreciate the bright red life ring passed to him, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t throw it to him.

        Expect the best, plan for the worst.
        Good luck.

  83. On the charge that a lot of gamergate people voted for the sad puppies slate. It might well be true, but not for the insidious conspiracy reason implied. It is just that many people who love gaming also love sci fi. After fighting against an SJW takeover of gaming with gamergate, those same people might well become interested in a slate that is fighting against a SJW takeover in sci fi as well.

  84. Ahh…the battle over who will claim the coveted ‘Victim’ status” I guess it is time for the right-wing white guys to take their turn in ‘My viewpoint is being ignored by big meanies”

    1. Victim? Do you mean somebody who has been wronged? (like having your career sabotaged? Like the victim of a crime?) Or do you mean victim (like people who whine about stuff). Because I’ve got 8 media outlets running simultaneous articles off the same script to demonstrate definition one, but definition two doesn’t really work, because we didn’t just whine. We did something about it.

      WORDS! WHAT DO THEY MEAN?

    2. SJWs always call equal protection for us fee-fees or meanies or some bullshit like that. It’s like we’ve ceded our rights forever because of slavery or something.

  85. Good lord, what a bunch of silliness. Giving fans access to the internet is like giving toddlers access to marshmallow guns.

    None of this is new; fans have been having political fights since the first convention. It’s just more people can get involved.

    Me, I always think it’s best to know as little as possible about an author. They are generally much less interesting than their books, and a great deal more annoying.

  86. I’ve been wondering this morning whether the way forward is for the Hugos to actively encourage slates. Let any group of five people with Worldcon attending memberships announce their slate on thehugoawards.org while nominations are open, but limit them to three picks per category. Let any other member who wants to sign on as a supporter publicly do so.

    If there were 5-10 popular slates representing different parts of SF/F fandom, their impact is spread out and no slate is likely to take the entire ballot. Voters who wanted to influence the process without adopting one slate could pick from the best of several.

    We could end up with a ballot that contains some picks from slates, some works with crossover appeal to multiple slates and others that got there from individual support. This wouldn’t require any rules changes, though I think it would help to also expand the nominees per category from 5 to 10.

    1. FYI: Chaoshorizon is planning to run analysis on a lot of the proposals.

      Curious to see how the math breaks out.

    2. That’s what I’ve been pushing for a few days now. If we get 20 equally popular slates from different parts of fandom, none will be able to get five percent without at least some outside support.
      If the Hugo rules change to make slate voting less effective, that’s fine. But more slates makes slate voting less effective also, and might get more fans involved in the Hugos.
      I don’t think anyone over in Sad Puppies would be upset by another 18 slates popping up next year.

      1. Differently where would you find 20 different slates. Say 3 from Locus editors who managed to recommend not one single Baen item for last year while finding 42 Tor items to recommend. Or Moshe and Hayden from TOR?

        1. 1) Non-English works 21) Feminist SF

          2) Translations into English 22) POC SF

          3) Tor 23) Robot SF

          4) Baen 24) Literary SF

          5) Orbitz 25) Non Human SF

          6) DAW 26) Bio/Life Science

          7) Kindle Self-pub 27) Sociology SF

          8) Tiny Publishers, et al 28) Epic Fantasy

          9) Analog oriented 29) Urban Fantasy

          10) Asmovi oriented 30) Euro Fantasy

          11) Locus 31) Non-Euro Fantas

          12) Mil SF 32) Unicorn/Dragon

          13) Space Opera 33) Ghost stories

          14) UK/Commonwealth 34) Other Horror SFF
          /Anglosphere oriented

          15) Latin America 35) Religious SFF

          16) Africa 36) Christian SFF

          17) EU oriented 37) FTL SF

          18) Asia/Oceania 38) Timetravel SFF

          19) Steampunk 39) Media Tie-in

          20) Cyperpunk 40) Game tie-in

          (I know, I know, but I got on a roll…..)

          1. @Thomas
            I think keranih nailed it. We can just go to subgenres.
            We could also go to places fans gather on the web, like TvTropes (and numerous other sites). We can ask other authors whether they’d like to get in on Hugo campaigning (though that last one might be a little cruel. I wouldn’t want to see more authors get libeled).
            I’m not sure keranih’s idea of having publishers make their own slates would work out terribly well, but why not try everyone we can think of next year.
            And keranih hasn’t made close to an exhaustive list. There are none of the romantic subgenres of SFF on there, there is no YA on there, no dystopic, etc.
            I’m sure if we all actually brainstormed, we could think of a thousand places to try to construct Hugo slates on the internet. Most would fail, but that’s okay for now. We just need to take a scattershot approach next year.

  87. More organizations need to be correctly and specifically accused of libel. Slate and The Atlantic come to mind.

    If they write that sad puppies is an effort to exclude women and minorities from the awards in blatant violation of the reality of the slate itself, then they have committed libel, illegal propagating falsehood in an effort to slander.

    These news organizations need to be called out for breaking the law. The above is not an opinion, it is a verifiable falsehood.

  88. Thanks for the explainer. I’ve bumped into this topic from time to time on Twitter, but never have pieced together what’s going on.

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