Last Chance. Voting For The Dragon Award Closes Soon

The voting for the Dragon Awards closes at the end of the month. Please spread the word and tell your friends. The Dragons are open to all fans, don’t cost anything, and they want as many fans as possible participating.

I would love for the first annual Dragon to have more fans voting in it than the Hugos.

Once you register here http://application.dragoncon.org/dc_fan_awards_signup.php they will email you your ballot. They send these out in batches, so make sure you give yourself time. If you registered, but not gotten your voting email yet, it might be stuck in your spam folder. It is from dcawards at dragoncon.

Son of the Black Sword- now in Paperback!
Aw, The Guardian's Village Idiot Remembered My Birthday!

85 thoughts on “Last Chance. Voting For The Dragon Award Closes Soon”

  1. Voted.

    I see over at the Blog of Eternal Stench that some of the commenters are speculating that the Puppies are secretly the admins of the Dragon Awards. 😀

    1. Yes. They should totally run with that theory and not even bother to participate.
      (which is ironic, since as far as I know the admin’s identities aren’t secret or anything).

    2. The way the Dragons were set up, you don’t need much in the way of admins anyway. It’s completely open, requites no money changing hands, and the vote counting is simple math. So simple, even a spreadsheet could do it.

      1. And on the other hand you’ve got the Hugos. Which already had the weird Australian rules thing, which doesn’t elect the most popular, but rather the least disliked. And now they’re adding a proportional voting system to the nomination process that you need a stats degree to understand, and a bunch of other wonky stuff. Brilliant.

        1. Yep, the more complicated the voting system, the more suspect the outcome. It will be fun to watch what Vox Day and his minions do with it. Have to remember to advance order some popcorn for next year.

          1. (fair warning, long math stuff)

            The newly-ratified rules for shortlist nominations attempt to prevent slate voting, but what they really do is to penalize nearly-identical ballots. Such ballots might be caused by a slate or by actual coordinated pool voting, but they could just as easily reflect a situation where certain works were obviously most deserving – or they could be caused by a strong desire to communicate virtue signalling to others so they know how inside you are. Mathematical rules don’t have any way to know “good” or” bad” motivation, so similar ballots are penalized regardless.

            What that in fact means is that an actual pool of very coordinated nominators now has more power, not less. Such a group can ensure that their nominations have more dissimilarity than chance would predict, so long as they have several acceptable choices per award, and the current rules will reward that with more voting power. Even a lightly coordinated pool of voters that agrees to pick from their top personal choices by die roll can minimize identical balloting.

            Meanwhile, any CHORF type who wants to nominate has seriously conflicting goals – voting for things that they most feel actually deserve it, voting in a way that maximizes virtue signalling, and voting in a way that minimizes the negative effects of the new nomination rules. It probably isn’t possible to maximize all of those desires, but in any case uncoordinated voters can’t know to what extent they duplicate other votes. Their individual voting power is actually decreased under the new rules.

            It’s worth pointing out that the math guys (like Larry and Vox Day) all seem to be on one side of the issue, so that it is almost certain there’s no general awareness of this on the CHORF side yet. You’ll know when they notice, because they will start trying to discredit the new system in advance of any nominations. You know how it is, you ask for something, you just might get it,

          2. I’m done with playing their stupid game, so I’m not wasting my time doing math.

            As for stopping Vox… The dude lives to game systems. That is his schtick. So they put in place a more complicated system… To stop the gamer. Morons. Good luck with that.

          3. Didn’t the studies point out that there was little effect on the nominee lists for both 2015 and 2016? If so, there’s little need for gamey tactics.

          4. Neither the 2015 nor the 2016 voting was done with the new rules actually in place.

            Knowing that the rules under which your vote will be counted have changed actually matters. Running old data sets under the new rules is meaningless, no matter how much the simple-minded voting model concocted by Schneier and his minion would like to pretend otherwise. People are not automatons who will vote in a specific way regardless of the rules under which their votes will be counted.

            All bets are off, especially after Vox and his crew have a year to chew on the new rules looking for loopholes and corner cases.

          5. And if they get that new 3SV proposal in (which is the opposite of my 3SV proposal) you can BET they’re going to take advantage of its knock-out feature to kill the crown jewels of the SJW slate.

        2. This is a bit off-topic, but you know what might be interesting ? An award for books with the most bimodal distribution — i.e., books that people feel very strongly about, but where half the people hate it, and the other half love it. Could be interesting.

        3. “Which already had the weird Australian rules thing”

          So the Hugos must be given out in an oval auditorium, and the recipient must bounce the trophy off the floor at least once every 15 yards of travel?

      2. A spreadsheet could do it? But Larry works with spreadsheets . . .

        OMG! The Illuminati! Puppies can’t melt steel! Keep watching the skies!

    3. Yes! Yes! We secretly control 60,000 voters! Worldcon is DOOMED.

      Well, Worldcom is doomed anyway, but that’s mostly due to heart disease and sclerotic business strategies. Oh, and assholes.

  2. Larry,

    Are you attending DragonCon this year? I gotta’ say, even though you mentioned on your FB page I’d have a great time, I’m getting down right anxious. I’ve spent so much time in rural Oregon staying away from most people, for the first time in my life, a huge party that I’m going solo to is starting to make me nervous. Would love to hear there will be some kind of Puppy gathering there.

    DJ

    1. I did Dragon last year but can’t do it this year. It is the same weekend as my local Salt Lake ComicCon (not on purpose, it was the only weekend they could get the big building). I’ll be back next year.

      The beauty of DragonCon is the whole thing is a Puppy gathering. 🙂

        1. Brian, I’m going to be running around like a chicken with my head cut off BUT I’ll mostly be staging out of the Wordfire Press booth for most of the con. That’s the best place to catch me.

  3. Hopefully they’ll fix the wrinkles in the Dragon Award process. Try as I might, I cannot find an official list of nominated works. I can find the list of several blogs, or on my ballot, but nothing at the Dragon Award web site.

    The fairly short period (3-4 weeks) for voting is also annoying — I’d prefer to read the works before voting but can’t read the dozen odd books I hadn’t previously heard of in that time frame.

    1. I didn’t really get the sense that they expected you to read them all between getting the ballot and voting. No one could really read *all* the eligible works, and even if one only stuck to the final nominees, most people don’t read that many books in a whole year. I just voted based on what I had read and skipped the categories where I hadn’t read any of them (or had read some but didn’t like any of the ones I’d read). (If we’d gotten free copies of all the nominees, I’d have tried to read more of them, but that’s not on the table. Heck, there were even nominees that I own but haven’t gotten around to reading and I didn’t feel compelled to move them up the TBR list for this. I think, from my understanding, that this award is more ‘vote for what you read and liked’ than ‘read all of them and really examine their merits before voting’. More casual and fun, I guess. But maybe I’m wrong.)

      1. I’ve cast my ballot and only had to read three that I hadn’t already read. I won’t say I read a lot of books but I average a book every two to three days and on my days off from work have been known to finish three to four.

  4. Voted last week. Nominated as well. Funny how much less drama and screeching there is for this, eh? Almost as if DragonCon might be a fun place to go hang out and talk SF stuff. Wow, what a concept.

  5. Off Topic:
    I apologize for the distraction. This is such an active site for SF&F and definitely not of the leftish persuasion that it’s a good source for information. I have some grandsons in the pre-teen and early teen age groups. Can anyone recommend any modern authors of SF&F that I wouldn’t be embarrassed to give them. Specifically no trans gender public service announcements, lefty politics or age inappropriate language and themes. I’ve run out of the Heinlein juveniles and need fresh fodder for their voracious reading habits. All feedback is appreciated.

    Thanks.

    1. I can recommend MUTINY IN SPACE by Rod Walker. It is a straightforward action story about a youth coming of age, told without cynicism or leftwing sucker punches.

    2. Stephen Lawhead, if you’re looking for more fantasy stuff. Larry Correia, for the ones in their early teens–might be a little much for the younger ones.

      1. Lawhead’s Song of Albion, and Pendragon Cycle for certain. Byzantium, Patrick, and Celtic Crusades are more late teen to adult. Bright Empires had some amazing ideas, but isn’t up to his previous works.

    3. Can anyone tell me how Celia Hayes’ Lone Star Sons and Lamplighter’s Rachel Griffon might fit the criteria?

    4. Jessica Day George’s Princess novels
      Alison Croggon’s Pellinor novels
      Brandon Mull’s Fablehaven, Candy Shop War, and Beyonders novels
      ML Forman’s Adventurer’s Wanted books (personally, I didn’t like them, as they were a little too juvenile for my tastes, but they are popular and not leftist propaganda. I’ll admit I’m not the target demographic though.)
      Most things from Shadow Mountain Press (Obert Skye, James Dashner, others) seem to be pretty good for young adult readers.

      If you want to go more old school, the Prydain Chronicles and the Dark is Rising sequence are excellent fantasy YA that aren’t as well know as, say, Narnia, The Hobbit, or A Wrinkle in Time.

    5. Don’t neglect Louis L’Amour, though he is western and not SF; excellent stories and good illustration of what a man should be, short enough to keep even a fairly distractible pre-teen engaged.

    6. John Ringo (not the Knight of Shadows series)
      David Weber
      Tom Kratman
      Travis Taylor
      Larry Somebody
      Chris Nuttall
      Sam Schall
      Nick Cole

      Michael Flynn (not for pre-teen, kind of complex prose style)
      Jim Butcher
      Nathan Lowell***

      Sarah Hoyt
      Daniel M. Hoyt
      Brandon Sanderson
      Paul Anderson
      Keith Laumer
      Gordon R. Dickson
      Glen Cook (not for pre-teen)

    7. Dave Freer’s _Changeling’s Island_. Very boy-friendly and young-people friendly. And such a good read you might find yourself sneak-reading it before he does.

    8. Going back to what I loved when I was that age…

      Jack Vance: Planet of Adventure series (City of the Chasch; Servants of Wankh; The Dirdir; the Pnume)
      Jack Vance: Demon Princes series (Star King; The Killing Machine; The Palace of Love; The Face; The Book of Dreams)
      Keith Laumer: Anything in the Retief series
      Poul Anderson: Anything in the Technic Civilization series (Dominic Flandry, David Falkayn, Nicholas van Rinn, etc.)
      A. Bertram Chandler: Anything in the John Grimes series
      Anything by H. Beam Piper.

    9. I’m not sure what ‘age inappropriate language’ is – it varies from family to family; so I’ll guess swearing. I’ll preface that I don’t really consider ‘damn’ a swearword. The children’ve managed to not pick up swearing, because we’ve told them ‘adult language for grown ups. You’ll learn when not to swear, and when it’s appropriate, by then.’ (Yes, I used the ‘it’s time for a colorful metaphor’ as a parent rule. It worked on the Vulcan, it worked on the kids, amazingly enough.)

      Dave Freer’s Changeling’s Island is my top YA recommendation right now. This is followed by Diane Duane’s Young Wizards series, starting with So You Want To Be A Wizard. Young Wizards predates Harry Potter by a lot, and doesn’t have the ‘adults are useless’ thing that got a bit popular over the recent years.

      There’s always David Eddings’ Belgariad, the Malloreon, and his Elenium/Tamuli. He describes the characters cursing, but I don’t quite recall him writing swearwords other than ‘damn,’ or ones that refer to the made-up deities of his fictional worlds (“Belar, Mara and Nedra!”) I’d probably put into that same box the first Dragonlance trilogy; The War of the Lance, and possibly for the older ones, the second trilogy, The Time of the Twins. I’d definitely recommend the Dragonlance Tales anthologies and the Heroes of the Lance ‘prequel’ books.

      Going a bit older, I’d recommend The Prydain Chronicles as well.

      Matthew Reilly’s Troll Mountain is YA; though I’ve handed my 9 year old son other works of his like Contest, The Great Zoo of China even if there is swearing in it. (He’s currently reading Hovercar Racer, which, if I recall, was optioned by Disney.)

      His Jack West Jr. series of books starts with The Seven Ancient Wonders, and is followed by The Six Sacred Stones and The Five Greatest Warriors. The latest, The Four Legendary Kingdoms, is out this October. There are children in the story, and the swear jar is a running gag because there are also soldiers in the story.

      Also Jim Butcher’s The Dresden Files I’d give to a teenager.

      I don’t know if folks can still get their hands on them, but I enjoyed the Star Wars expanded universe novels; like the stuff written by Timothy Zahn, and books like The Courtship of Princess Leia. On a similar vein, I’d recommend the Star Trek novels, like The Vulcan Academy Murders, and personally will pick up anything by Peter David and Star Trek, because it’ll be funny. Also, anything Star Trek and Diane Duane. A few particular mentions for books: Demons by J.M. Dillard, Dragon’s Honor by KIJ Johnson and Greg Cox, Doctor’s Order’s by Diane Duane, the Kobiyashi Maru by Julia Ecklar, and How Much For Just The Planet? – I can’t find my copy so I can’t give the author, sorry.

      There was also a whole series of pre-teen novels called Starfleet Academy. I’ve been trying very hard to find copies of it for my son, but they may or may not be in ebook format.

      Wandering off the path a bit, the light novel series Log Horizon is quite YA friendly – my kids love it. For the older kids, I’d give them a go at Sword Art Online. Both stories start with ‘trapped in a video game’ premise, but the characters approach what happens differently (largely because the penalties for Log Horizon are not as final as in Sword Art Online.)

      1. Hi Shadowdancer:
        I guess I’ll define “age inappropriate language as anything I’d be embarrassed to say in front of my children and grandchildren. “Damn” is fine. Somewhere between TV and PG-13 is probably close. I guess it’s getting more difficult to agree on standards. I err on the side of caution. I’m only the grandfather after all. I’ll leave it to his peers to corrupt him.

        1. *grin* I’ll always recommend books; but always, always, the final decision is up to the grand/parent/giftgiver. “Age inappropriate language” seems to differ from family to family, and I’ll always respect that, and err on the side of caution.

          Diane Duane, Dave Freer, the Dragonlance books, Star Trek/Star Wars series books, and Eddings generally don’t have much in salty language (or go for made up ones describe cursing) Troll Mountain was aimed solidly at YA; while the other books by Matthew Reilly fall into TV level of swearing; perhaps more to PG-15? The only one that is solidly into adult territory of his is The Tournament.

        2. Oh, I forgot to put in previous comment that I ran across an author named Chris Ryan. While most of his books are upper teen/twenties and up adventure, he seems to have put together a series of books for YA levels called Alpha Force. I haven’t gotten to read them yet but they looked interesting enough that I’m thinking of getting them for my son.

          “The eponymous Alpha Force are a group of five teenagers with unique talents, skills and personalities who were shipwrecked together in the first book, Survival, and after being forced to work together as a team, created strong friendships with each other. Every school holiday they meet up to complete different challenges to test all of their skills but always manage to get sucked into fighting wrongdoing because of their talents and inability to let injustice go unpunished.”

          Sounds promising to me!

    10. When I was twelve I got into E.E. Doc Smith’s space opera in a big way. It wasn’t until the fourth or fifth re-read that I realised some of this stuff had been written in the 1930s and yet apart from relying on basically 1930s valve tech, there were no CONCEPTS that weren’t familiar from (if not more grandiose than) Star Wars or Star Trek (though for all that he did do, Smith never seems to have pre-empted the Star Trek-style matter transporter, and the smallest ships in his space battles are the class of large frigates rather than one-man interceptors).

      Smith did go down the route of showing what a matriarchal planet would be like, but he does it as an example of a failed and emotionally barren society. To their credit, the heroes adopt a live-and-let-live attitude and the denizens (or at least their leader) are sane enough to reciprocate.

      Because of when it was written the heroes are almost entirely male, but when the small number of ladies get going they really kick arse (and it’s justified in universe).

    11. A.E.van Vogt, SLAN, WORLD OF NULL A, WEAPON SHOPS OF ISHER
      Keith Laumer DINOSAUR BEACH, THE LONG TWILIGHT, THE GLORY GAME
      Jack Vance The Demon Princes series, the Planet of Adventure series, EMPHYRIO, TO LIVE FOREVER
      C.S. Lewis The Space Trilogy
      Edgar Rice Burroughs, A PRINCESS OF MARS, etc
      Robert Heinlein, STARSHIP TROOPERS, HAVE SPACE SUIT WILL TRAVEL
      Larry Niven RINGWORLD
      Olaf Stapleton LAST AND FIRST MEN, STARMAKER
      EE Doc Smith, the Skylark series, the Lensman series
      HG Wells, THE TIME MACHINE

          1. Nobody’s pointed out Heinlein’s Juveniles yet? I started with Orphans of the Sky when I was 9. Have Spacesuit Will Travel, Tunnel in the Sky, Rocket Ship Galileo, and so on.

      1. Just the first three, though. Book 4 was bad enough that I didn’t even try to finish the series, which is something I’ve only ever done twice.

        1. No. Kids get genespliced to where they’re part bird. The corporation that did this is trying to take over the world and hunt them down, because reasons. Books 1-3 are decent, and book three is a great ending for the series.
          Book 4 is terrible. It’s basically a massive “Global Warming Will Doom Us All Unless We Do Something” screed. And also ignores most of the character growth that happened in the first three books.

    12. Early teen you might try Charles Higson’s The Enemy, though it might be too violent. Brandon Sanderson’s Steelheart is pretty good, though may be more for a 16 year old. Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card. Mars and Colony by Ben Bova. Edgar Rice Burroughs is good – John Carter, Venus series, Pellucidar. His style is a bit old fashioned, though. Diane Wynne Jones Chrestomanci series, though haven’t read them in a long time.

    13. Watership Down for the older one (the life and adventures of British rabbits), maybe the Raymond Feist fantasy novels. Pretty sure the first ones were tame on language…he’s written about twenty of them I think. Magician is the first one.

    14. John Christophe’s the Tripod series. And I know I read the Prince in Waiting series but can’t remember it at all.

    15. I am a leftist pinko commie, but I hate propaganda as much as you do, so:

      Austin Grossman — Soon I Will Be Invincible
      Leonard Richardson — Constellation Games

      These ate my favorite books of all time.

      C.J.Cherryh — Cyteen

      If you are looking for an anti-propaganda book, this is it.

  6. I want to see the worldcon peoples reaction to this event. The salt should hopefully be glorious.

    (Sidenote: when I got on the blog about ten minutes ago, I was actually logged into someones account….. from my personal computer. No idea who it belonged to and when I refreshed I was no longer logged in. I am wondering what happened.)

    1. I mostly want to see the figures about how many people participated. I’m betting that it will be several orders of magnitude more than the Hugo’s.

  7. Ah! Much better than the “Brand X” awards! My ballot is a brighter color, the pet stains are out of the carpet, and my in-box has a fresh minty scent!

    Thank you, Dragon Awards!

  8. Got the following message when I tried to get on voting site around 11:00pm (23:00) tonight:

    “You Confirmation link has already been used by Michael Dunbar on 2016-08-27 20:01:50.

    If this is not you then please contact the site admin with your email, contact name and confirmation code.”

    I was not online prior to 22:30, so how did I vote at 20:01:50? Is this site run by Democrats? Can I have my vote reset and another email sent to me please so I can vote appropriately please.

    1. . . . Aaaaaaannnd I just voted. I’ve got to say, several of the novel categories were tough because there’s just so much talent there.

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