He appears to be underwhelmed by the panicked SJW proposals to change the rules and destroy the Hugos because the wrong people are on the 2015 shortlists:
Over at Making Light, and on several other sites, various rules changes are being proposed to prevent this from happening ever again. There are so many different proposals they make my head spin. More nominating slots, less nominating slots, weighted voting, eliminating the supporting memberships, outlawing slates, limiting nominees to a single nomination, juried nominations… on and on and on. The worldcon business meeting is never exactly a funfest, but if the proponents of half these proposals show up at Sasquan, this year’s will be a nightmare. And will probably still be going on when MidAmericon II convenes.
I am against all these proposals. If indeed I am at Spokane, and if I can get myself up in time for the business meeting, I will vote against every one of them.
Most of them, frankly, suck. And the mere fact that so many people are discussing them makes me think that the Puppies won. They started this whole thing by saying the Hugo Awards were rigged to exclude them. That is completely untrue, as I believe I demonstrated conclusively in my last post. So what is happening now? The people on MY SIDE, the trufans and SMOFs and good guys, are having an endless circle jerk trying to come up with a foolproof way to RIG THE HUGOS AND EXCLUDE THEM. God DAMN, people. You are proving them right….
Which brings me to another proposed countermeasure: the No Award strategy.
This comes in two flavors. The hardliners propose we vote NO AWARD for everything. Every category, even the ones where the Puppies have no nominees. No Hugo Awards at Sasquan, whatsoever. We’ll show them. Rather than letting them move into our house, we will burn it to the ground. “We had to destroy the village in order to save it.” It worked so well in Vietnam.
All I’ve got to say about this idea is, are you fucking crazy?
The other approach is less radical. Vote NO AWARD in all the categories that are All Puppy. In the others, chose between the nominees (there are a few) that did not appear on either the Sad Puppy or Rabid Puppy slate, and place all the rest, the SP/RP candidates, under No Award.
That’s less insane than the “No Award For Everything” idea, but only a little bit. Sorry, I will not sign on for this one either. For a whole bunch of reasons. For starts, the Puppies are already proclaiming that “No Award” equals victory for them (though sometimes it seems as though they believe anything that happens constitutes victory for them).
It’s called Xanatos Gambit, George. Look it up. Anything that happens IS a victory for us. That’s why “the trufans and SMOFs and good guys” are so upset. Deny us Hugos? Whoop-de-damn-do. We were never going to even be nominated anyhow. Change the rules? Make our point AND, as a bonus, make future Awards less legitimate. No Award everything? See: 2016 Hugos. No Award us? See: 2016 Hugos and you. Leave well enough alone and simply vote on the merits? Some of ours win a few richly deserved Hugos.
Of course, what George and HIS SIDE don’t seem to grasp, that Brad Torgersen tried to explain to them yesterday, is that not only are priorities of the Rabid Puppies not those of the “trufans and SMOFs and good guys”, they are not those of the Sad Puppies either. Brad and Larry and Sad Puppies aren’t the bad guys.
We are. We are the reavers and the renegades and the revolutionaries, and we don’t give a quantum of a damn about pieces of plastic or the insider approval they represent.
You would think it would stop being funny at some point. And you would be wrong.
Mad Mike Williamson, whose work is a 2015 Hugo nominee in the Best Related category, explains why the Old Way is no longer respected:
I attended SFWA functions at Torcon, where I tended bar, Loscon, and then Philcon. The staff of SFWA knew who I was. They greeted me on sight by first name. When I pulled out cover sheets of my next book (“The Hero”), one of the officers said, “Oh, a collaboration. Who’s John Ringo?”
At that point, John had about ten more books than I did, including three NYT bestsellers with David Weber.
But the in-crowd hadn’t heard of him.
And thus it often still is. The in-crowd goes to the meetings, to the literary conventions, the writer that goes with them gets known, and then gets mentioned by friends, blogged about, and eventually, gifted with suggestions of awards.
Think about winners the last few years. Are they good? Generally. Popular? Within a small subsect always. Not always among SF fans overall. Can you think of any winners, where you’d think, “This other book that came out that year was better. Why didn’t it win?”
George RR Martin laments the “marketing” that has come to the Hugos, that the Old Way is no longer respected.
That’s because an NYT bestseller with 13 books out was unknown to the people who promote the award.
And the International Lord of Hate himself explains why it’s important to hate the player, not the team.
For those just joining us, if you are wondering where this is coming from, there are a couple of reasons many Sad Puppies supporters are leery of Tor.
There are a few Tor editors who have accused my people of some vile and outlandish things recently, but the Nielsen Haydens are only a couple of the editors there. Sure, they’ve been insulting, but I’m not going to tar the other editors by association, especially since most of them haven’t said anything, and some have been very nice to us.
Tor.com has posted some asinine stuff on this subject, talked a lot of trash about us, and run some absurd, preachy, social engineering, wannabe literati wankery articles. However, Tor.com isn’t Tor the publisher. From what I’ve been told by some Tor employees, they are kind of their own thing.
Translation: all Torlings are SJWs who work for Tor or are otherwise associated with Tor. But not all people who work for Tor or are otherwise associated with them are Torlings. And some of the worst SJWs in science fiction have no association with Tor at all, but are merely trying to curry favor with the Nielsen Hayden clique in order to obtain an association with Tor.
So leave Tor qua Tor out of it. Tor.com is fair game; Patrick Nielsen Hayden runs it. The Toad of (formerly) Tor is fair game. Moshe whatever-his-name-is is fair game, he’s publicly taken shots at us. But as for the rest, give them the chance to be neutral or even to quietly take our side. We hardly lack for enemies as it stands.