In which Brad Torgerson, who took up the Sad Puppies mantle when Larry Correia retired from the science fiction award scene, shares his thoughts on our successful nuking of the Hugo Awards.
One of the most fascinating things about the past ten years has been watching different people who weren’t part of Sad Puppies speak authoritatively on Sad Puppies. I have my own thoughts, of course. Understand that everything I am about to say, I say as a guy with several authorial accolades under his belt, including the DragonCon Dragon for Best SF novel in 2019, and three readers’ choice awards from Analog magazine in 2010, 2012, and 2014. I was also the rare triple-nominee for Hugo, Nebula, and Campbell awards in 2012.
So . . . did Sad Puppies fail?
For my part I wanted the Hugos to have broad cultural relevance within literary SF again. Versus continuing their long slide into activism-induced irrelevance. In this regard Sad Puppies 3 failed spectacularly. The net dividend of 2015 was the power brokers of Worldcon declaring, “We’re gonna Feminist and Queer the Hugos even HARDER!” and that’s precisely how it went. The Hugos are now ignored by the great majority of spec fic and fantasy readers because they know beyond a shadow of a doubt the award has been made into an explicitly political activist totem. As of 2026 only a fraction of spec fic and fantasy readers even know who the Hugo winners are year to year, and most who remember the Hugos think of the Hugos as they think of almost all entertainment awards: that legacy thing we used to care about but we’ve stopped caring about because people on stages giving each other trophies doesn’t matter to the consumer like it did a few decades ago. It was already becoming true by 2010.
Much moreso, now. Grammys, Emmys, Oscars, yadda. Just don’t have the cultural heft of the 1970s-1990s. And the same for both the Hugo and Nebula. Which are not signposts of quality (on a book cover) like they once were. In fact, for many readers they are a, “Stay away, this is a Modern Audience (said in Drinker voice) book!” And that’s precisely what I wanted reversed. Because I remember when the words HUGO WINNER and NEBULA WINNER on a dust jacket actually described what was between the covers. Like with Ender’s Game and Speaker for the Dead. But the opposite occurred. Because the Nielsen-Haydens and George R. R. Martin and many other people with media reach and influence decreed that no dirty normal Hugo voters would have a say in their sainted backroom politicized log-rolling process. The Hugos would be perma-Woke.
And so they are. And that’s a damned shame, because most readers don’t give the Hugos any regard anymore—as they don’t give most lit awards any regard. And if you doubt it ask yourself if Ann Leckie is bigger than Heinlein? Who has been dead for decades. But he outsells Leckie 20 to 1 on Grandpa Bob’s slow days. They hate Heinlein for that. They want him dustbinned. They tried their best to make Leckie into a thing. Heaped every award possible on her between 2014 and 2016. And all that resulted were massive stacks of deluxe boxed merchandise at B&N locations. With the words HAS WON EVERY SCIENCE FICTION AWARD KNOWN TO MAN plastered across the slipcases and the special selection signage.
But the merchandise didn’t move. I repeat: the merchandise didn’t move. They tried the same thing from ’16-’18 with Nora Jemisin, and it was a similar result: triple-Hugo Best Novels that sat on shelves. And kept sitting. Neither Leckie nor Jemisin are bigger than Heinlein. Both remain midlist activist authors who could not be catapulted over the cultural relevance wall by any means, because that’s not how a literary work (nor author) achieves long-standing relevance in both geek culture and the wider English-speaking culture as a whole. You know who does have relevance? J.K. Rowling. Or Orson Scott Card. Or any dozen other caps-n Names nobody needs to spotlight trophies about. Because their books gained and kept vast audiences all on their own power. Much like Heinlein’s.
The dog of culture cannot be wagged. You can take over institutions believing you will take over culture, but it doesn’t really work like that. The Soviet system dominated the Eastern Bloc for most of a century. It literally owned every institution. But all it did was teach generations of Iron Curtain dwellers to subsist on black humor about how their supposed Socialist paradise was in fact a corrupt hell of bureaucrats, toadies, secret police, and fear.
I believe we’re entering something like that, where American pop culture is concerned. The Woke own the big gaming companies, along with gaming media. But who’s buying and playing the games? Similarly, the Woke own the big movie studios and all of the media media, but ticket sales have cratered on huge blockbuster projects over and over, and keep cratering. More broadly, the Woke own the Ivy League, but all this does is make people question if the Ivy League still matters anymore? Or, does a PhD even matter if the person putting those letters next to their name is a raving loon stuffed with terrible ideas and terrible politics, like a rotten Christmas turkey?
You can corrupt an organization, but you cannot corrupt people if they don’t want to be corrupted. In this regard Sad Puppies was a spectacular success. Because it was the loud, emphatic shout of the normie SF/F reader who used to esteem the Hugo and refused to let the Hugo go quietly into the night. People who could not be convinced that mediocre or even terrible storytelling with Woke wrappings and trappings was in fact brilliant and timeless.
Again, the dog of culture cannot be wagged.
UPDATE: JDA adds his perspective at Fandom Pulse:
The controversy began in the mid 2010s when it became obvious that works were being nominated for the politics of the author and not because of the content of them, in tandem with Tor Books clearly running behind-the-scenes ops to influence the awards toward their authors for marketing purposes. Larry Correia posted up a slate of works he thought were good for his fans to enjoy, and it spiraled from there.
The media attacked everyone involved, calling them racists, Nazis, and the usual insults that sane people ignore. However, it was a different time back then, and the pressure was immense. Vox Day, the publisher of the fine books imprint Castlia Library, saw the writing on the wall that they would never allow the proverbial “normies” influence ithin the culture, and formed a secondary group called The Rabid Puppies where he used his gaming experience to torpedo the entire system by nominating absurd works to ensure nothing but the most extreme would win, tarnishing the reputation of the Hugo Awards forever… Was there a winner for the Puppies? Yes, and it has to be decisively and objectively stated that it was Vox Day.
I still have my Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies shirts. And I still wear them with great pride. Especially since when you look at the list of the current Hugo Awards today, you see absolutely nothing but Tor, Tor Tor… thereby underlining my original point, and, more or less, Larry Correia’s. The Hugo Awards ceased to be about science fiction a long, long time ago.