This interview with NK Jemisin in The Atlantic is interesting, as it indicates a change in strategy on the part of the Puppykickers:
Just a year ago, the idea of a novel as deliberately outside the science-fiction norm as The Fifth Season winning the Hugo Award seemed unlikely. In 2013, a small group of science-fiction writers and commentators launched the “Sad Puppies” and “Rabid Puppies” campaigns to exploit the Hugo nomination system and place dozens of books and stories of their own choosing up for awards. Those campaigns arose as a reaction to perceived “politicization” of the genre—often code for it becoming more diverse and exploring more themes of social justice, race, and gender—and became a space for some science-fiction and fantasy communities to rail against “heavy handed message fic.” Led by people like the “alt-right” commentator Vox Day, the movements reached fever pitch in the 2015 Hugo Award cycle, and Jemisin herself was often caught up in the intense arguments about the future of the genre.
I spoke to Jemisin about her works, politics, the sad puppies controversy, and about race and gender representation in science-fiction and fantasy the day before The Fifth Season won the Hugo Award. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Newkirk: For you, are those people something that bothers you as you build a profile? Are people louder now that The Fifth Season is getting so much love?
Jemisin: They may be, but I’m not hearing them as much. I seem to have passed some kind of threshold, and maybe it’s something as simple as I now have so many positive messages coming at me that the negatives are sort of drowned out. As a side note, the so-called boogeyman of science-fiction, the white supremacist asshat who started the Rabid Puppies, Vox Day, apparently posted something about me a few days ago and I just didn’t care. There was a whole to-do between me and him a few years back where he ended up getting booted out of SWFA [Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America] because of some stuff he said about me, and I just didn’t care. It was a watershed moment at that point but now it’s just sort of, “Oh, it’s him again. He must be needing to get some new readers or trying to raise his profile again. Or something.” I didn’t look at it. No one bothered to read it and dissect it and send me anything about it. No one cared.
She just didn’t care. She just didn’t care. No one cared.
And then, the next day, they completely revamped the rules of the Hugo Award.
SJWAL. What’s particularly amusing about this is that last year, the Puppykickers went running to the media, pointing-and-shrieking like banshees. That strategy completely failed, so now they’re going with the “oh, we don’t care” line, while simultaneously trying to claim that I am seeking to raise my profile. We’ll see how long that lasts.
Let’s face it, I’m not the one talking to The Atlantic about me. Nor do I have any need to do so. As Mike Cernovich says, we are the Alt Media now.
Notice how the interviewer doesn’t ask her about calling Robert Heinlein and most of SF fandom “racist as *fuck*”. The truth is that having Jemisin replace Scalzi as the public face of Pink SF is about the best possible thing for Blue SF.