Hugo Awards Turn (Even More) Political 586
An anonymous reader writes Last year, the Hugo Awards went to mostly minorities and women. In response, a fan group decided to fight back against what they saw as a liberal attack on their medium. It appears that they have succeeded, as the 2015 nominees are predominantly chosen by a group called "Sad Puppies. Now a counter-counter group is trying to ensure that no one wins any Hugo awards in any category except Best Novel.
Yeah good luck with that... (Score:5, Insightful)
Seems like the vocal minority is finally running up against people who've had enough...they're using their own tactics against them, and whining when people beat them at their own game. Oh and it wasn't liberals(tip it was mainly liberals that started the campaign) it was that lovely 'social justice warrior' crowd, that loves to call anyone who disagrees with them 'bigots, misogynists, racists, etc, etc, etc.'
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Social Justice = Give me you shit, Now!
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Really? Because from what I've seen, most forms of tyrannies take from those who have less and give to those who alrady had more. Please explain why you think that situation is better than the reverse?
Anybody who takes from you without permission and gives to others is a tyrant. It doesn't matter who it comes from, or who it goes to. Taking is taking.
There are a few rare times when that is justified (certain forms of taxation, for example), but it isn't justified nearly as often as it actually happens.
Re:Yeah good luck with that... (Score:5, Insightful)
THe problem is that they really missed the target.
The goal is not to have more people of color, women, or one eye gay Episcopalian kangaroos to win awards,
The point is for everyone have an equal chance to win the awards based on the quality of their work.
AKA the issue should never have been one of inclusion. It needs to be one of ending exclusion.
Re:Yeah good luck with that... (Score:5, Insightful)
Wherever they emerge, social-justice warriors claim to be champions of diversity. But they always reveal themselves to be relentlessly hostile to it: they applaud people of different genders, races, and cultures just so long as those people all think the same way. Theirs is a diversity of the trivial; a diversity of skin-deep, ephemeral affiliations.
SJW of all stripes have one thing in common: a relentless drive for conformist groupthink on the issues they fight for. Few people are as scary and dangerous as the ones who are convinced that theirs is a righteous battle, and are prepared to fight it, whether their belief flows from religion or from ideals. And what appears to make the SJW crowd more belligerent is the fact that often they are right, in that there are still plenty of inequities and social injustices. Compared to other "noisy" groups like extreme right wingers, these are the noisiest, most exclusionary, and indeed most violent. And the really scary part is that because the issues they attack are real, this mindset is percolating into the mainstream. Writers being excluded from an association or from an award because they have the wrong ideas. Or in my home country, where no one so much as blinked when a school official stated that "if you have the wrong ideas or are a member of the wrong political party, perhaps you shouldn't be a student or a teacher here". Remember Churchill: "The fascists of the future will be called anti-fascists".
Re:Yeah good luck with that... (Score:5, Interesting)
SJW of all stripes have one thing in common: a relentless drive for conformist groupthink on the issues they fight for.
I would say it's not so much groupthink, rather it's that once you define yourself as a social justice warrior, your very identity is threatened unless you are crusading against a social injustice. Thus many will crusade against an imagined injustice, or a former injustice that is resolved or very nearly resolved, rather than search for less glamorous injustices or accept that they might have achieved victory.
Systemic biases do exist, of course, but more and more they are so minor that it's difficult to find a response that isn't disproportionate.
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Re:Yeah good luck with that... (Score:5, Interesting)
AKA the issue should never have been one of inclusion. It needs to be one of ending exclusion.
Except that science fiction and science fiction fandom has never been exclusionary of women or racial minorities or gays! That's what makes the SJW crusade in fandom so bizarre. They come up with bogus issues like "#racefail," which was the supposed scandal that most WorldCon committees consist of white people. Well, such committees are all entirely voluntary, and AFAIK there's never been a single instance of anyone ever been turned down as a volunteer because they're black or gay or whatever.
I've also read that fandom needs more minorities because some minorities feel uncomfortable at conventions because "there aren't enough people who look like them." Well, whose fault is that? Fans are there because of a love of the genre. Why make a big deal about your race? I've also read complaints about fans asking well-meaning but awkward questions about race, e.g. "What's it like to be black and into science fiction?" Stop the presses! A nerd asks a friendly but awkward question?!? That's never happened before!! And, of course, we have the contradiction that white fans are "supposed to" be more aware of race, but heaven help them if they say something in the wrong way, whatever their intentions.
SJWs??? (Score:2)
Slashdot-Journaling Whiners???
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Re:Yeah good luck with that... (Score:5, Insightful)
Well DUH - The SJW crowd has pushed and pushed and the group that they targeted as being "hateful and teh mean" has finally responded to their attacks IN KIND. So it's not surprising that they're "just like the SJW crowd".
Want a current example? Sabrina Erdely and the Rolling Stone magazine apologized to practically everyone involved in the rape article they wrote and published... EXCEPT the male fraternity that was accused, shutdown and subjected to harassment threats because of the now unsubstantiated rape claims in the article.
Why? Perhaps they're using the Dan Rather defense - The rape accusations are unproven but what they say is true. Because, to the SJW crowd, all rape accusations against males should be true until they're proven false. The same is not true for female on male rape, which is real, happens, but is pooh-pooh'd by even the SJW crowd because "Male privilege"
More true than you feared [politico.com].
Why We Believed Jackie's Rape Story
Because it rang true for so many of us on the University of Virginia campus.
WHAT "rang true"? It was ALL fake. If it "rang true", one has to ask WHY THE HELL DID YOU WANT IT TO BE TRUE?!?!?! Why do you WANT men - especially white men - to all be seen as rapists?
So yeah, there's a problem here.
With the "SJWs" living on a planet where the sky isn't blue.
I am drained. I am confused. But I keep returning to one question. If everyone here believed Jackie’s story until yesterday — a story in which she is violently raped by seven men at a fraternity house as part of a planned initiation ritual — should we not still be concerned?
What a dumbass. If "everyone here believed Jackie's story", it never would have been repudiated. Those seven men would be in jail based on SJW "justice".
So yeah, we SHOULD be concerned, but not FOR those who scream "Rape culture!", but BECAUSE of those who do. Those who scream "RAPE CULTURE!!!!" have punished innocents in this case, and had they had their way the courts and police would have convicted them and jailed them.
And in so doing, they have cheapened the claims of every woman who was actually raped.
Way to go, assholes.
And the idiots even literally SAY they don't really care about reality:
Ultimately, though, from where I sit in Charlottesville, to let fact checking define the narrative would be a huge mistake.
What.
A.
Moron.
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An utterly debunked stat and yet she still believes it. Her sky is demonstrably not blue.
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Awards and acclaimatio
Re:Yeah good luck with that... (Score:5, Insightful)
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I follow Scalzi's Whatever. This is his most recent post on the topic: http://whatever.scalzi.com/201... [scalzi.com]
He's leading the drive to vote NO AWARD against the conservatives who dominated the slate this year/ Even though he doesn't come out and say it explicitly, it's blindingly obvious what he's talking about. He did something similar last year when this stupid "controversy" emerged.
I don't recall him ever saying "VOTE FOR X", but the implied message is very clear.
The HUGOs have always been about politics (Score:5, Insightful)
Choosing someone for 'best author' because they're white and male is ridiculous.
What doesn't ever seem to sink into the discussion is that choosing a 'best author' because they're NOT white and male is equally ridiculous.
Then again, to accept that latter proposition would then logically bankrupt the entire concept of 'retributive' racism - ie preferentially picking brown or ovaried-people today, to correct the mistakes of previous generations - so I guess I understand that there's a whole dogma there that would have to be disassembled first.
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*retributive racism OR retributive sexism. /. will develop an 'edit post' feature....
Someday
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Then again, to accept that latter proposition would then logically bankrupt the entire concept of 'retributive' racism - ie preferentially picking brown or ovaried-people today, to correct the mistakes of previous generations - so I guess I understand that there's a whole dogma there that would have to be disassembled first.
I like how you blame "previous generations" while implying that today's society is so much more advanced and fair. Yet, there are these curious statistics where females routinely make ~75% of what an equivalent male would make. And "brown people" (as you so elegantly put it) are stopped, searched and incarcerated statistically higher on average and for longer durations for the many of the same crimes that white people commit.
Such a pure society we live in today where we can maintain the high ground,
Re:The HUGOs have always been about politics (Score:4, Interesting)
You don't mention that Stop And Frisk [nyclu.org]was invented in a deep Blue city and that Hilliary Clinton pays her women staffers even less than 75% [ijreview.com]
Re:The HUGOs have always been about politics (Score:4, Insightful)
Genuine question:
If you are truly about "equality" of treatment, then what's your endpoint?
When have we "won" the civil rights movement? I truly want to know, because as far as I can tell, the 'movement' is a self-perpetuating game of shift-the-goalposts. If there's never a victory condition, then people can just keep complaining forever.
Do we feel women have gotten "enough" help educationally, because the majority of college students are now female? Can we stop with women-preferential programs?
Or what about that black president? Anyone notice that?
Re:The HUGOs have always been about politics (Score:4, Insightful)
" And "brown people" (as you so elegantly put it) are stopped, searched and incarcerated statistically higher on average and for longer durations for the many of the same crimes that white people commit. "
Are you therefore just as outraged by the sexism which is even MORE egregious in the criminal justice system?
If you believe that black incarceration rates (being so much higher than their population) as "proof" of an injustice, then the fact that incarcerated felons are 92% male must be taken as equal "proof" of gross sexism, right? I mean, shouldn't prison populations be more like 50/50 men/women?
Unless you're ok with asserting that men are "just naturally more likely to be criminals than women"?*
*and doesn't that then just put you in the same place as sexists and racists, claiming that gender or skin color predisposes people to/away from criminality?
Re:The HUGOs have always been about politics (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The HUGOs have always been about politics (Score:5, Interesting)
True, on both counts.
What's not true is the summary, or the article linked. (It's essential the Faux News version of events.) The Sad Puppies movement isn't really about choosing authors or works based on their color, sex, or creed. The Sad Puppies movement is about two things; First, breaking the "monopoly" of a small group of tastemakers in the nomination process. Second, breaking the "monopoly" of the same small group in determining the winners of the poll. Or, to sum up both in another way, the movement is about overcoming voter apathy and broadening the base of nominated works and voters to include a larger and more representative slice of works and fandom.
Seriously, only a few thousand voters in total currently determine the nominees and the ultimate winners - out of a worldwide fanbase numbering in the millions. Those relative few that have dominated the nomination and selection process for decades (and the idiots who parrot their propaganda) are responding in the typical fashion of the "elites" - by demonizing those who would dare to challenge the self assumed predominance that is theirs by right. They, and the idiots who spout their propaganda, are the ones that invented the idea that Sad Puppies is all about skin color and the presence or absence of ovaries.
On top of that, there's the whole "Johnny come lately" attitude typical of any fandom that faces a sudden influx of "new" fans. The tastemaker elite loathes the "new fan". (Not that the issue is actually new, the roots of the issue (and "political" battles over the Hugos) stretch back to the sudden breakdown of the SF ghetto walls in the late 70's and early 80's when Star Wars and Dungeons & Dragons broke out into popular culture.) But what they feel about the "new fan" is positively puppies and kittens and sunshine compared compared to the antipathy and loathing they feel towards pop culture - their slogan is (or at least should be) "Nerdom for Nerds!".
Honestly (Score:3)
It does seem like a big deal. I mean, last year there nominations titled "If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love", which was an unusual choice for both a Nebula (a different SF/F award, chosen by a jury) and a Hugo nomination. The genre is floundering fairly hard.
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It does seem like a big deal. I mean, last year there nominations titled "If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love", which was an unusual choice for both a Nebula (a different SF/F award, chosen by a jury) and a Hugo nomination. The genre is floundering fairly hard.
I agree that the awards are floundering hard, but I disagree about the genre. There is a large body of good SciFi out there, you just have to look a bit harder to find it through the noise.
Re:Honestly (Score:4, Interesting)
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I heard that story on EscapePod http://escapepod.org/ [escapepod.org] and couldn't figure out what it had to do with SciFi, but that was true of most of the stories during their 'Hugo Month'. In fact, the hosts noted that the only reason some of those stories were on the show was because they were Hugo nominated.
I find including or excluding anybody or their work because of race/gender/orientation pretty disgusting.
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That's also where I heard it. It might be a fine story, it's just sort of an odd choice for SF/F. I think the Sad Puppies campaign is a backlash against this, among other problems they see with the genre.
What just makes it that much more odd is that the Nebula is a jury award, and is arguably (with the Hugo) the pinnacle of the industry. The author is pedigreed and connected well enough that she was a quite an industry star, and that may have helped her otherwise not SF/F work - Iowa Writers Workshop, UC
Re:Honestly (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not due to recent SJW politics though. SF has always been transgressive ever since the New Wave, and possibly even before. There's also been conservative writers, but ever since Dangerous Visions hit the market in the 70's, SF and Fantasy has trended leftward. This isn't a bad thing, even if you are conservative, so long as the story is fair and not used as a soapbox.
The problem is science.
No space station? Well that's because people wrote those books, and books on moon colonies or terraforming Mars when they weren't really aware of how much effort it took just to get rockets off the ground. People thought going to Mars would be as easy as driving your car to Vegas, and over time people slowly became aware that it wasn't, and science wouldn't create any magical thing that would make it so. Sf really depends too much on magic or extrapolating current ideas into the future: this is why Neuromancer is so laughable to read today in the wake of a non-VRML net and Japan slowly becoming an extinct nation. Or most old SF books on AI seem even less plausible than Pinnocchio; an algorithm is a process, not a consciousness.
You could call this the Venus problem. Remember when 50's SF used to set plots on Venus? Notice how no one does that any more? It's because we found out how harsh it really was, and that our scientific progress can't always magically overcome this harshness. We started hitting hard limits about our ability to expand into the cosmos, and a lot of SF from the old days seems quaint because of it.
So there really isn't much to write on save for some fields where the layman can't even understand the mathematics to make a plausible story in the first place, or the "magical science as commentary on social mores" genre. Ironically for all its atheism, SF was even more religious than most Christians; it's religion was in science, and limitless human possibility. Now that reality has snuck in about the limits of possibility and the costs associated with expanding beyond our planet, is it any wonder its dying a slow death in favor of social realist SF and fantasy?
Re:Honestly (Score:4, Interesting)
How about the actual Hugo short story winner, "The Water That Falls on You from Nowhere"? John Chu may be a talented writer, but that story was NOT a science fiction story. It was a cliched story about a guy bringing home a partner that his family didn't approve of, with a silly "you get wet when you lie" bit tossed in at the beginning to somehow qualify it for the Hugo with a mild fantasy element.
It was another "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" plot retread, only this time the "Who" was gay. So what? It was still a story we've all heard or seen a hundred times in the past 30 years - just substitute your race / religion / ethnicity of choice. What makes this one memorable, besides the sexuality of the main characters?
I cannot believe there wasn't a better science fiction short story published in 2013 than Chu's story. It's not the genre that's floundering, it's what the people who are running the Hugo consider to be "worthy" that has plummeted.
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The story is here: http://www.apex-magazine.com/i... [apex-magazine.com]
A word of warning. You will not get the minutes of your life wasted on reading this back.
To call it sophomoric drivel is an insult to sophomores.
It may have good and correct political intentions, but it is overtly cloying, snooty, and pretentious.
It is not good writing by any measure. That it is "award winning" is a travesty.
The shape of the Hugo (Score:2, Insightful)
Politicizing awards like this seems a bit, dare I say it, dick-ish.
The Hugo is shaped like it is to remind us of what we are celebrating - imagining a future, hopefully better than our present.
The fact that a 1950s/60s rocket ship is shaped like a part of the male anatomy is purely coincidental and it is not a license to encourage us to play petty political games that we should have left behind in adolescence. We are better that this.
Who cares, really? (Score:2, Informative)
I'm trying to recall the last time I read a book because it won an award... but I'm coming up blank.
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It's was right after you read a book because of the color of the author's skin.
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Yeah, I've actually read books based on what I have found out about them. Later, as a point of interest, I sometimes try and figure out if they won an award. Sometimes, they do. Other times, they don't.
It's like the Oscars. There are fabulous movies that have rightfully won them. And great movies that haven't. And then there are the movies that sort of suck, but you realize that they won because they were "okay" but hit some sort of theme the Academy liked.
At that point, you remember that it is a bunc
Not really a liberal attack (Score:2)
From that article, it seems people were being excluded for having certain opinions (ostensibly right-leaning ones) by others who thought of themselves as "liberal". But I don't see how anyone willing to enact such a policy of judging the messenger could be considered "liberal" by any measure.
Is there a word for the illiberal who nonetheless see themselves as liberal?
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Holy misleading summary, Batman! (Score:5, Insightful)
First off this is Sad Puppies campaign #3, so it wasn't a sudden reaction to the winners of last year's Hugo's. The first two campaigns worked on verifying the integrity of the awards with Larry Correia, a former accountant, leading the verification. The conclusion was an unqualified opinion that the awards are indeed fairly voted on.
This year the Sad Puppies campaign chose to publish a list of their nominations and encourage fans who had never been part of the Hugo process to nominate works, the Sad Puppies encouraged critical thinking and said nominate books you think are worthy. This is very much like what John Scalzi and other authors have done in the past.
Well with the introduction of new blood into the process the Sad Puppies slate pretty much swept the nomination process. Larry Correia even turned down a nomination because of his involvement with running the Sad Puppies campaigns.
Now we see the backlash from the so called progressives who are willing to burn the awards to the ground by telling everyone to vote No Award for the majority of categories. The sure hatred and virulence since the nominations have been announced are shocking.
I'm now proud to carry the label "Wrong Fan", I've been reading Science Fiction since elementary with some of the earliest books I remember being a bunch of the Tom Swift novels. Yet because I like the works by authors such as Tom Kratman (even if he is very heavy handed with the politics), Larry Correia, David Weber, and pretty much anything published by Baen, I'm not worthy of being involved with the Hugo process.
The main people behind Tor publishing are some of the most reprehensibly in the whole process. The sheer hatred amazes me, for them it is also ego since Tor has dominated the Hugo's for 20+ years.
Several reviewers and authors I've never heard of have gone so far as to state that they will either not read the Sad Puppies related works, or if they do read them won't consider them on their worth. I've seen one blog that some author stated she will rank every Sad Puppies related work below No Award just because it was nominated and on the Sad Puppies recommended list.
Where is the progressive ideas of tolerance here? This is blacklisting in the worst way and I can tell you it is firing up fans who have never cared about the Hugo's in the past.
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So the Sad Puppies organized to support their own slate of nominees. Good for them, I suppose, but there's something pathetic about the whole affair -- engineering a win for yourself in what's supposed to be a fan popularity contest. I say this as someone who's been reading sci-fi for over 40 years: if you want *my* respect, get people who *disagree* with you politically to vote for you.
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Sad Puppies is different because it used the slate to effectively take over a category. In the past, there most definitely has been bloc voting, any look at the nominations clearly shows that the nominated blocks haven't changed much at all. A very small number of nominations has been enough to get you on the ballot.
The slate providing 4-5 nominations per category pushes out other works, which is new. So in the past, a bloc or voting campaign would get the target work on the ballot, which was seen as fine
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Right, so they took advantage of the nomination process to avoid competing with works that would probably beat them.
Back in the early 70s there was a character who called himself "Count Dante" who used to advertise himself in the back of comic books as "'The Deadliest Man Alive'" (in quotes) based on his victory at an international death-match martial arts tournament he'd organized. What he neglected to mention is that he won this tournament by default, being the sole entrant.
That's exactly what the Sad Pu
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The backlash comes from a number of avenues, but a strong reason for this anger is that by the introduction of "slates", the Sad Puppy movement may have irretrievably damaged the Hugos. It is akin to introducing party politics into elections that were previously sets of independents. Once introduced, you can never go back, because that just lets another slate win.
What are the odds that everyone abandons parties and goes back to independents, when parties so evidently work?
Likewise, voting on what you feel
Re:Holy misleading summary, Batman! (Score:5, Insightful)
TOR has been running a slate for decades. They just did it behind the scenes where no one knew about it.
The voting results (which were posted by Vox Day) made that very clear.
Also, emails were circulated in private (not unlike journolist) to coordinate voting. Some of those emails were accidentally sent to the wrong people.
Sad Puppies is doing nothing wrong, nothing illegal. That can not be said however for the people who are complaining the loudest about all of this.
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So if you want to argue that it's okay when John Scalzi does it a little bit, but it's not okay when others do it more...
Actually, that's *exactly* what I'm suggesting. My neighborhood has a yearly water-gun fight. The day that someone decides to bring a full-power fire-hose, despite not being explicitly disallowed, will be the end of the tradition.
Did they break the rules ("only water-only weapons allowed")? No.
Had people upped-the-ante before ("Well, he introduced Super-Soakers, and I don't see him get
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Another mostly Baen reader here.
IMHO, honestly I don't give a crap. Really. I have my favorite authors, as does every other fan. Hugo's don't factor into my buying decisions at all. If they do, its to show me books to avoid (based on my past history with Hugo winners).
My wife (a much bigger fan than I) buys mostly female authors. I buy (barely) mostly men. I find female authors have trouble making believable (to me as a lifetime male) male characters, and that can be distracting. I'm sure my wife finds
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Yeah, Kratman's out there in terms of politics, and lays it on to the point of ridiculousness in his work (though I haven't read his Hugo nominee). I find his novels are still mostly a fun read (especially because I can laugh at the heavy-handed politics), but I wouldn't vote for them for an award.
Weber, though. How is it that NONE of his Honor Harrington novels were nominated for the major SF awards?
Can there be any question ... (Score:5, Insightful)
From what I've read... (Score:5, Informative)
From what I've read, the Hugos, the SFWA, etc. have all been slowly taken over by SJWs in the past 10-15 years. Certainly, I once used the Hugos as a way of finding interesting new authors - but this hasn't been possible for several years, unless you are looking for a social-justice tract. Certainly "hard" SF has been scarce for a long time.
The "sad puppies" group is drumming up support for good writing that wouldn't otherwise get nominated, because it doesn't meet the SJW criteria. If the "sad puppies" have a political center, then it will obviously be a bit on the right, just because they by definition disagree with the SJW crowd. However, politics isn't supposed to be the point - if anything, it is (hopefully!) about removing, or at least counteracting the political filtering from the works nominated for the Hugo awards.
Some of the authors supporting the sad-puppy movement include:
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Here's an interesting definition http://leiterreports.typepad.c... [typepad.com]
Functionally defined, "SJW" designates someone who monitors cyberspace for slights or miscues that reveal bias, and then exploits the various tools of social media to shame the offender, express outrage, and summon the digital mob, whilst achieving for themselves a righteous fame that ties their identities and their actions to the heroes and achievements of the civil rights movement, the landmark moments of which preceded their adulthood. SJWs divide the world, GWB-like, into the evildoers ("shitlords") and the oppressed, with the possible, but problematic remainder, being allies, whose status is ever tenuous and usually collapses into shitlord. SJWs do not distinguish between major and minor offenses -- unintentionally using "transgender-ed" instead of "transgender" is as unforgivable as any other act of oppression -- nor do they distinguish repeat and systematic from first-time offenders. They employ a principle of interpretation that is something like the opposite of charity. (If the utterance gives offense under one interpretation, that interpretation is correct.) It is a harsh "justice".
Indeed, it's unclear whether SJWs do not fully grasp the cruelty and inhumanity of their cybermob shame tactics, the anguish it causes, typically to the socially clueless and ASD spectrum types (itself a form of ableism), or just people with older, less plastic, brains, who are unable to keep pace with the rapidly shifting pronoun and non-slur requirements, or whether this is fully grasped, and indeed the retributive point of the exercise. In any case, the SJW hallmark is cruelty in the name of compassion. (And creating incredibly dangerous environments in the name of "safe space".)
Well, as a Nietzsche scholar, I can hardly tell you anything you don't already see better here. The difference between the Christian slave revolt and this one is that with Christianity at least, there is forgiveness.
What a lying, bullshit summary! (Score:5, Informative)
The Sad Puppies campaign has nothing to do with "minorities and women" winning awards, it had everything to do with Social Justice Warriors taking down and doxxing people [blogspot.com] for disagreeing with them and trying to impose censorship and speech controls on organizations like SFWA.
In fact this entire, "if you oppose the Social Justice Warrior agenda you hate women and minorities" slight of hand bullshit is one of the very things the sad puppies are fighting against. Thanks for proving the necessity of that fight yet again.
This should be an interesting near future. (Score:4, Interesting)
On one hand, we have this SJW BS flaring up all over the place, attacking people online and making their lives marginally more difficult. On the other we have this dogmatic crusade against cyber-bullying picking up speed and momentum at a rather interesting pace. Both sides are making the same types of ad passiones arguments and neither side seeing the inevitable conflict.
As an impartial observer and someone who views both sides as a bunch of crackpots and assholes with too much time on their hands, I can not wait to see these two trains collide.
the post is a lie (Score:5, Informative)
Wow, this post contains epic amounts of FUD and just pure lying.
First of all, the Sad Puppies group started over two years ago.
Second of all, the response was due to stories being subjected to an ideological purity test before being allowed to win.
Third of all, the stories were no longer about telling a story, but were all about 'sending the right (approved) political message' which was killing the medium.
Fourth of all, several of the awards went to things that not only had nothing to do with Science Fiction or Fantasy, but they sucked ('If you were a dinosaur my love'?? Really?)
Go read all the official Sad Puppies posts, make your own decision. Also I'm pretty sure there are more women nominated this year, than there were last year, and that's from the SP Slate. Don't forget as well, that the SP project was started by a minority.
Last note: The Hugo's have been gamed for a very long time now, look at how many were won by only one publisher. The author of 'Red Shirts' heavily gamed the system the year he won, but no one said a word about that. The promotion of 'message fiction' has seriously hurt the genre, and sales have been going down for years, because most of what's been winning the Hugo's the last five or so years has been crap. Heck, Terry Pratchet couldn't even win a Hugo!!
The awards should be about GOOD stories, not about Politically Correct stories written by the 'RIGHT' person! The very fact that the person writing this story had to LIE about the reason for Sad Puppies, and is more focused on the sex and race of writers should make that pretty clear right off the top.
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No, we are just saying it is like the Oscars now.
Re:Oh, Okay (Score:5, Insightful)
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I think part of the problem is every issue has became political.
Even issues that really shouldn't be political. Like if humans are causing global warming. So if you were to write a science fiction book about a future devastated by global warming, then it is a political statement.
Science fiction points out what if scenarios, and how would the world be if they follow down a particular sliding scale.
Political debate today has long gone past intelligent debate and fear mongering on the sliding scale worst cas
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Re: Oh, Okay (Score:5, Insightful)
No irony at all - the reason for the backlash is because the books that were written by women and minorities were barely "Scifi" at all and were obviously voted in because they "said the right things" rather than be poignant and proper science fiction.
Because I'm sure you noted that the books that were voted on by "teh evil" fan group INCLUDED books by women and minorities.
So what's the argument here? That women and minorities were being shut out or that the women and minorities that are now on this years ballot "didn't say the right things?"
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The definition of Science Fiction is very, very wide. There's a lot of, "no true Scottsman" fallacy in the way people attempt to exclude works because they're not Campbellian enough or they don't mess with society's norms enough.
The only way it's going to be fixed is if works are anonymously judged, much the same way that m
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Anonymously judged. Interesting concept. Don't publish, and you stay anonymous? We should have anonymous elections too. The things that spill out of open minds are amazing.
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Orchestras switched to a system that didn't let the judge physically see or know who the musician was so that the quality of their playing, not their gender, race, or any other characteristic defined how they were rated.
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You consider "On the Beach" barely sci fi ?
What's "Brave New World" for you ? Your company's HR manual ?
1984 ? A how to guide ?
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It's speculative fiction more than science fiction.
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"...the reason for the backlash is because the books that were written by women and minorities were barely "Scifi" at all"
Are you aware that the Hugo awards are given for the best science fiction AND FANTASY? So something like "The Water That Falls on You From Nowhere" by John Chu (best short story), set in a world where you get a personal rain shower every time you tell a lie, fits well within the range of the fantastical covered by previous Hugo awards. Sofia Samatar (best new writer, but not technically
Re: Oh, Okay (Score:5, Insightful)
The Sad Puppies [wordpress.com] and Rabid Puppies slates weren't about not having women and minorities win. Both slates included several women and minorities and even some left-wing writers who had to be publicly "horrified" the wrong people liked their work.
They're about wanting Hugo nominees/winners that reflect science fiction and what they consider the best story, rather than the last decade or so style of being nominated because the author is a leftist non-white male who includes the properly politically correct representatives in their story, even though the story itself isn't remotely the best SF story of the year. They're about wanting the winners to reflect SF fans, rather than just a small insular group of NY elites in the publishing business. Looking at you, Tor.
If you wonder why there seems to be a big gap of 12-15 years where not a lot of new good SF authors came out in book form, except from Baen, it's because the literary elite decided SF should be about identity politics instead of about science and speculation. SP/RP are about taking the field back for real SF that the fans of SF like, not the kind where it's "important" because it shows a woman musing about how the evil corporations are ruining the environment but if only her homosexual boyfriend would wake up from his coma they could live happily ever after mutually respecting each other in hipster anguish. -Gasp-
Re: Oh, Okay (Score:3, Insightful)
That just goes to show you how touchy the SJWs are. If you toe the lie on all of their points but one, which OSC does, they'll still ostracize you.
Re: Oh, Okay (Score:4, Insightful)
Not necessarily. They're only worthless if non whites or non males win apparently.
First a disclaimer. I am a heterosexual White male from the middle class. I am married and have an infant son. I was in a racial minority in elementary and high school (20% of my high school was White). My university was 51% White and had several public debates on how to get more minorities in student government (conclusion: people who don't run for office don't get elected!).
I have long stated that Affirmative Action is broken. I applaud its desire to fix a real problem, but the net effect is reverse discrimination. Best qualified is best qualified whether male, female, black, blue, brown, yellow, white, or orange.
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The problem is that the war over SJW, PC fiction, and other items has all but destroyed sci fi as we know it in the past 10 years.
Sci-fi used to be about promising hopes, about what mankind can do getting to the stars. Take Star Trek, for example. It led the way into devices we take for granted.
Now, take a look at sci-fi today. Dystopic, post-apocalyptic vision, one after the other. I am damn sick and tired of story after story about our future being a world where the only technology advances are to inf
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What's "bleak" about Starship Troopers? (Score:3)
What's "bleak" about Startship Troopers? Granted, the movie portrays humanity somewhat bleakly, but the book — and you alluded to having read rather than watched it yourself — is not bleak at all.
Yes, humanity has encountered a formidable adversary, whose ideology is totally at odds with ours — but that's not any more bleak, than any WW2 or James Bond story. Heinlein compares "the bugs" with Communists a number
Re:What's "bleak" about Starship Troopers? (Score:4, Insightful)
One of the core concepts of the book is the franchise is only available through Federal service. So in order to vote you must be indoctrinated into the government and there is no concept of loyal opposition. I don't recall the exact name, but everyone was required to take a class along the lines of History and Moral practices. One thing that has always stood out for me in those sections is the concept of total war. Again I may have the specifics wrong, but the teachers makes a comment about "ask the leading fathers of Carthage how war never solves anything" Implying that wiping out your enemies is not only a valid tactic but is the best one.
At the end with the last drop of Rico's Roughnecks, humanity is appearing to win. But I would say it is at the cost of what makes humans in general good and noble.
A key message throughout the book is that the ends justify the means, that to me is bleak.
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No, not at all — there is nothing there about indoctrination.
There is nothing about its absence either — how those eligible to vote use their privilege is completely outside the scope of the book.
The bit you, apparently, missed, is that people currently in Federal Service do not get to vote either — Heinlein didn't want the military and the government's civil service to decide
Re: Oh, Okay (Score:5, Insightful)
Wells, H. G. The Time Machine. 1895
Chambers, Robert W. The King In Yellow. 1985.
Lovecraft, Howard P. The Shadow Over Innsmouth. 1936
Lovecraft, Howard P. At The Mountains of Madness. 1936
Lovecraft, Howard P. The Shadow Out of Time. 1936
Orwell, George. Nineteen Eighty-Four. 1949.
Gibson, William. Neuromancer. 1984.
Gibson, William. Count Zero. 1986.
Sterling, Bruce. The Artificial Kid. 1980.
Sterling, Bruce. Mirrorshades. 1986.
Stephenson, Neal. Snow Crash. 1992
Dystopian sci-fi is not a feature of Social Justice, it's a feature of sci-fi itself.
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1. PC/SJW bullshit to "re-educate" sci-fans according to their playbook.
2. The dystopian / post-apocalyptic subject matter that is popular in sci-fi writing.
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Take Star Trek, for example. It led the way into devices we take for granted.
No, hardworking engineers made the devices possible. As much as I adore star trek, please give credit where credit is due.
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A lot of things we have now were never even addressed in Star Trek. For instance, nobody in Star Trek carried around a digital camera.
Re: Oh, Okay (Score:3, Insightful)
Dune dystopic? You know they did end up following the "golden path". Sure there is drama, death, intrigue, war, etc. But there was also love, family, loyalty, duty, honor.
Dune is an epic history of future, not a dystopic story.
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L Ron did not kill SciFi ('when weenies started writing space opera'). It thrived for decades after.
I'd put the blame square on the douche Roddenberry. Lucas just put it out of our misery.
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Asimov was alive and well during both Roddenberry and Lucas. So was Arthur C. Clarke.
Really their deaths killed sci-fi. Fantasy however has become much more popular and in some ways fills the void that good sci-fi has filled, without hte need to pretend that the world is based in science, a hard thing for non-scientists to work with.
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So you never read any Iain M. Banks, Charlie Stross or John Scalzi? Missed William Gibson's return to futuristic fiction? Avoiding last year's Hugo winners?
Science fiction is alive and well, just not in the book section of your local Hefty Mart, I guess.
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We are moving back, but we will move forward again, as well. Civilization moves in cycles, we get better, the elite want more, take too much, society collapses, we rebuild. But in general the curve is up. I hope that this time the rich, see that they have enough (not holding my breath), and we won't have a major collapse. I can only hope.
Re: Oh, Okay (Score:5, Informative)
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Isn't he the fat guy from Lost? Maybe he lost weight and won an award.
But fat or not, he was the the only character with a positive attitude. All the others were messed up in some way.
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Hate groups should die
+1 Irony.
Re:Hate groups should die (Score:5, Insightful)
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Everyone is allowed to perform genital mutilation, as long as the victim is a male child.
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Or if it's their own genitals they're having mutilated.
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Maybe this is trolling, but I gotta say, I see this argument a lot lately, and I think it's just a ridiculous argument taken to the extreme.
Let's say I put two rape victims in a room that you can't peek into, and I tell you: Two rape victims are in this room. Okay, great.
Then I tell you one is male and one is female. Are you going to tell me that there's an allotment of suffering there that must be split in favor of the woman?
What if I tell you that the male is black and the female is white? Now what?
Wha
Re:So, the end result is ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Have you seen the numerous reviewers and authors who have stated that they will not read any Sad Puppies related work because it is was part of the slate? They have already come to the conclusion that anything Sad Puppies related is not worthy of winning a Hugo. Some have said they will read the Sad Puppies works but regardless of merit will rank them below No Award because of politics.
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not Single, Jewish, White?
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io9 is a Gawker blog. You shouldn't even have to click through to the site to know it's going to be shit.