Hugo Recommendations 2015

This is how I am voting for the 2015 Hugo Awards. Of course, I offer this information regarding my individual ballot for no particular
reason at all, and the fact that I have done so should not be confused
in any way, shape, or form with a slate or a bloc vote, much less a
direct order by the Supreme Dark Lord of the Evil Legion of Evil to his
390 Vile Faceless Minions or anyone else.

Voting closes on July 31, so don’t procrastinate.

Best Novel

  1. The Three-Body Problem
  2. Skin Game
  3. The Goblin Emperor
  4. The Dark Between the Stars

 Best Novella

  1. “One Bright Star to Guide Them”
  2. “Big Boys Don’t Cry”
  3. “The Plural of Helen of Troy”
  4. “Pale Realms of Shade”
  5. “Flow”

Best Novelette

  1. “The Triple Sun: A Golden Age Tale”
  2. “Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust, Earth to Alluvium”
  3. “The Journeyman: In the Stone House”
  4. “Championship B’Tok”
  5. “The Day the World Turned Upside Down”

Best Short Story

  1. “Turncoat”, Steve Rzasa (Riding the Red Horse, Castalia House)
  2. “The Parliament of Beasts and Birds”, John C. Wright (The Book of Feasts & Seasons, Castalia House)
  3. “On A Spiritual Plain”, Lou Antonelli (Sci Phi Journal #2, 11-2014)
  4. “A Single Samurai”, Steven Diamond (The Baen Big Book of Monsters, Baen Books)

Best Related Work

  1. “The Hot Equations: Thermodynamics and Military SF”
  2. Transhuman and Subhuman: Essays on Science Fiction and Awful Truth
  3. “Why Science is Never Settled”
  4. Letters from Gardner
  5. Wisdom from My Internet

Best Graphic Story

  1. No Award


 Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form)

  1. Guardians of the Galaxy
  2.  Captain America: The Winter Soldier
  3. Edge of Tomorrow
  4. Interstellar
  5. The Lego Movie

 Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form)

  1. Game of Thrones: “The Mountain and the Viper”
  2. The Flash: “Pilot”
  3. Grimm: “Once We Were Gods”
  4. Orphan Black: “By Means Which Have Never Yet Been Tried”

 Best Editor, Short Form

  1. Vox Day
  2. Jennifer Broznek
  3. Bryan Thomas Schmidt
  4. Mike Resnick

Best Editor, Long Form

  1. Toni Weisskopf
  2. Anne Sowards
  3. Jim Minz
  4. Vox Day
  5. Sheila Gilbert    

Best Professional Artist

  1. Kirk DouPonce
  2. Alan Polack
  3. Julie Dillon
  4. Nick Greenwood
  5. Carter Reid

Best Semiprozine

  1. Abyss & Apex
  2. Beneath Ceaseless Skies
  3. Strange Horizons
  4. Lightspeed Magazine
  5. Andromeda Spaceways In-Flight Magazine

Best Fanzine

  1. Black Gate
  2. Tangent Online 
  3. Elitist Book Reviews
  4. Journey Planet
  5. The Revenge of Hump Day

Best Fancast

  1. The Sci Phi Show
  2. Adventures in SciFi Publishing
  3. Galactic Suburbia Podcast
  4. Dungeon Crawlers Radio
  5. Tea and Jeopardy

Best Fan Writer

  1. Jeffro Johnson
  2. Dave Freer
  3. Amanda S. Green
  4. Cedar Sanderson
  5. Laura J. Mixon

Best Fan Artist

  1. Elizabeth Leggett
  2. Spring Schoenhuth
  3. Ninni Aalto
  4. Steve Stiles

The John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer

  1. Eric S. Raymond
  2. Wesley Chu
  3. Jason Cordova
  4. Rolf Nelson

    Failing Sun Tzu

    Anti-GamerGate clearly doesn’t bother with opposition research.

    As Milo said, “We need a better class of adversary, you guys.”

    Speaking of opposition research, I’m wondering if I should apply for this job. After all, I’ve probably generated more publicity for Tor and its authors than anyone they actually pay to do it.

    Post Date7/20/2015
    TitlePublicist
    OrganizationTor Books

    Requirements         Tor/Forge Books seeks a highly-motivated and creative Publicist to join its publicity team. The ideal candidate will have three to five years publicity experience, possess excellent writing and organizational skills, be familiar with key print, broadcast and electronic media, and have a successful track record in publicizing a variety of genres. Reporting to Director of Publicity at Tor, this individual will work closely with marketing and sales efforts to implement successful campaigns while developing and strengthening media and author relationships.

    If you’re an unemployed member of the Dread Ilk, I’d encourage you to apply for jobs like this. Invade the entryists. Just remember to be a minority and talk SJW.

    GG tactics work

    It appears #PPGate is off to a good start:

    Representatives from Coca-Cola, Ford Motor Co. and Xerox say they’ve asked Planned Parenthood to remove their names as corporate donors to the embattled organization.

    The move follows a Daily Signal report revealing the names of 41 companies that Planned Parenthood listed as donors. That list, which was featured on Planned Parenthood’s website, has since been removed.

    This latest development comes in the wake of two undercover videos that showed Planned Parenthood executives talking about the sale of fetal body parts. Planned Parenthood is facing both federal and state investigations—and the possibility of losing taxpayer funding.

    Notice the language used by The Daily Signal.

    We Asked Companies About Their Donations to Planned Parenthood. Here’s How They Responded.

    Notice that all they did was ask about their donations in light of the new revelations of Planned Parenthood being ghouls profiting off the corpses of murdered infants. And those corporations that weren’t advertisers or donors were very quick to point out they weren’t.

    Now, it’s fair to ask why these tactics have been more immediately effective than the Tor boycott, and there are two reasons.

    1. Coke, Ford, and Xerox do NOT want to be associated with human organ trafficking. Tor Books doesn’t care if it happens to denigrate a few thousand of its customers.
    2. Targeting the advertisers always works better than targeting the company responsible. It’s the “Amenable Authority” problem. The Daily Signal and #PPGate would have gotten nowhere if they’d gone after Planned Parenthood directly.

    The problem is that Tor Books doesn’t really have any advertisers. And the only individual at Tor who gives a damn about the customers and is theoretically in a position to do something about Gallo is Tom Doherty, but he’s got far less juice there than his title would indicate and he wasn’t willing to let PNH storm out in a huff, which is what he would have had to do to hold Gallo accountable.

    So we can’t hit from outside, but only from upstairs. Which is why the only real question is how seriously Macmillan takes its code of conduct and if they’re willing to call PNH’s bluff.

    But regardless, the key is persistence and patience. Sam Biddle was, and is, GG’s top target and he’s still at Gawker. Does that make #GamerGate a failure? Of course not. So, relax, and be ready to go back into action next week.

    Goodbye, Dainty Flower

    Good-bye my sweet mamma dog. Thank you for watching over us and loving us. We will miss you forever. –Spacebunny

    We had to say goodbye to the Mamma Dog today. She practically raised the kids, whom she clearly regarded as her puppies, and she watched over them more closely than any human nanny. Every night when we turned in, she would go to each child’s bed, one after the other, and sniff at them until she was satisfied they were all right before returning to our room and settling down on her own bed on the floor next to Spacebunny’s side.

    She had a very sweet, but protective nature, and whenever anyone visited the house, she always had to check them out before harrumphing in mild disapproval and retiring to a corner of the room where she could keep an eye on them. You know, just in case. She had a silly side to her too, as she would pick up pieces of her food and throw it in the air just for the fun of it. If you called her on it, she would stop, stare at you, and then do it again, almost defiantly. Her eyebrows were particularly expressive, as she would raise one, then the other, in a slightly skeptical manner.

    She loved the whole family, but there was no question to whom she belonged, as she was always happiest being around her beloved mistress, with whom she even shared a birthday. She liked nothing more than to share a bowl of popcorn with Spacebunny, and when waiting for a kernel to be tossed her way, she had a funny habit of impatiently shifting her weight from one side to the other.

    She was astonishingly athletic. I’ve never seen a dog with such an incredible combination of speed and power. We couldn’t figure out how she was getting in and out of the house without our knowledge one summer, and it turned out that she was casually leaping six feet vertically and four feet horizontally in and out my office window. And yet, when a baby would crawl on top of her, she would hold herself perfectly motionless, her eyebrows moving up and down as she patiently waited for the baby to crawl far enough away that she could move without hurting it.

    She wasn’t flawless. I mean that literally, as the two whorls of her ridge were lopsided and she had an extra partial on the right side. She was literally half-price as a result, but she would have been a bargain at ten times the cost. She was also pigeon-toed, which gave her slightly unusual stance, and she was tall for her breed, bigger than many of the male Ridgebacks we encountered.

    I only heard her “serious” bark twice. It was a deep, chesty roar that sounded as if it came up from one of the pits of the lower hells. It didn’t even sound like a dog, but some sort of cross between a lion and a hellhound. And yet, for all her size and strength, she was extremely feminine, hence the Dainty Flower. But to the kids, the cats, and the other dogs, she was always the Mamma Dog.

    After my Viszla died in 2010, she went into a bit of a decline, and when she was subsequently diagnosed with cancer, we wondered how long she was going to last. But then the Prodiguously Large Puppy joined the household, she seemed to absorb some of his excessive energy, and she was visibly revitalized, going on long walks with the family and playing happily with her new responsibility out in the yard as well as inside the house.

    She made it to Christmas, and then to another Christmas, and then was less than entirely pleased when a Ridgeback in need of a new home joined the family a year ago. She seemed convinced that the poor little puppy needed to be defended from The Other Ridgeback, never mind that he was not only a full-grown Viszla, but such an oversized and muscular version of the breed that he was frequently mistaken for a Ridgeback himself. Even though she couldn’t keep up with the two other dogs as they chased each other back and forth outside, she would bark warnings at The Other Ridgeback, promising dire retribution and serious consequences if The Other Ridgeback should somehow harm her tiny, defenseless 70-pound puppy in any way.

    She lived three years longer than we expected, but the cancer finally caught up with her. Her heart was still strong, her eyes were still bright, and she would still perk up and flick her tail when she smelled espresso – she considered any cappucino placed within reach fair game for Ridgebacks – but her rear legs were withered and she was wasting away. We had the vet come out to the house to examine her, but no one knows dogs better than Spacebunny and we already knew what the verdict would be. After everyone had the chance to say their goodbyes, the vet put her to sleep for the last time in her beloved mistress’s arms.

    It may be questionable theology, but I personally cannot conceive of anything that could possibly call itself Heaven or Paradise that does not contain dogs. And I have no doubt that only a little while ago the Viszla came enthusiastically bounding up to her, his tail wagging furiously, barking, “you’re here, you’re FINALLY here! What took you so long?”

    To which I expect the Mamma Dog replied, “I had to watch over my puppies as long as I could.”

    Jeu vidéo et «suprémacisme»

    Causeur responds to Le Monde’s coverage of #GGinPAris:

    Video Games and “Supremacism”

    #Gamergate might not ring a bell with readers, but Le Monde / Pixels recently covered its recent meet-up in Paris. Concerned vigilance sums up the tone of the article. The author ventured onsite ready to ferret out any signs of Evil on the prowl. This unwittingly comic posture does not prove we should all bless #GG, even if it does incline us to consider this affair from a benevolent perspective. If you’ve read Alban Agnoux’s paper in Causeur #26, #Gamergate will seem like familiar territory: it is an online movement engaged in a cultural war to protect freedom of speech in video games. Against whom? Mainly against those #GGers denounce using the term social justice warriors (SJWs). In a nutshell, if you like Lara Croft, you are not an SJW. Does this also make you an antifeminist? It doesn’t take much to become a suspect these days.

    Ah, how the young generation sometimes leaves us scratching our heads in perplexity! The author of the Le Monde article did not evade the polychromatic aspect of the #GG phenomenon. In order to balance his depiction, as well as to avoid bewildering his readers more than was necessary, it is understandable that he also chose to take some harder lines. Did he do so in order to quiet any inner doubts about his own orthodoxy as well? I would not go so far. In any case, this is where Vox Day, one of the gamers behind #GGinParis, came in handy: not too young, easier to classify, especially if you put words in his mouth. Given the number of detractors the man has already accumulated, why not join the pack? The threat lying hidden in the shadows of #GG would thus appear to boil down to him. Him, and his ideology: supremacism.

    Perhaps it is me, but as characterizations go, this one comes across as vague, if not outright flippant. It is an accusation made in bad faith, without force and without conviction. Check out the second photo of the article, in which the alleged supremacist Vox Day appears, but which also inexplicably features the beaming smile of the black owner of the bar: how is the reader not expected to start having doubts after seeing that? If, on top of that, the readers goes off exploring the chap’s blog, well, at least all is not lost. From what I understand, accusations of supremacism sadden the accused greatly, as he never misses a chance to assert his Native American and Mexican heritages. And does he not seem a little too satisfied with the attention bestowed upon on him by Le Monde?

    Yes, why not reduce the enemy to a caricature — but one has got to put some heart into it, lest the effort prove counterproductive.  

    It’s a strong and wryly jaundiced response to the Le Monde author’s apparent determination to stick to the Narrative, and to take the occasional cheap shot. Don’t get me wrong, I was impressed to see that the journalist not only made the hitherto unseen effort to show up at the event, but spent several hours there and talked to many people there. However, it was disappointing that he elected to run with the “supremacism” line even after acknowledging that my ancestry made the claims of being a white supremacist absurd and that a response to a single attacker cannot seriously be considered a reliable indicator of one’s perspective on a group consisting of hundreds of millions of people.

    Then again, the journalist openly admitted that he did not know how to describe my actual ideology, libertarianism. And he did make an effort, as he even made reference to my attempt to put it in French terms: “Voltairean revolutionaries dedicated to liberte’ while rejecting egalite’“. But the Causeur author is correct to call him to account for taking, shall we say, liberties with the truth, as the fact that communicating a hard-to-translate perspective does not justify inventing your own version of it.

    An existential threat

    Christianity is being eradicated from the Middle East.

    From 1910 to 2010, the number of Christians in the Middle East — in countries like Egypt, Israel, Palestine and Jordan — continued to decline; once 14 percent of the population, Christians now make up roughly 4 percent. (In Iran and Turkey, they’re all but gone.) In Lebanon, the only country in the region where Christians hold significant political power, their numbers have shrunk over the past century, to 34 percent from 78 percent of the population. Low birthrates have contributed to this decline, as well as hostile political environments and economic crisis. Fear is also a driver. The rise of extremist groups, as well as the perception that their communities are vanishing, causes people to leave.

    For more than a decade, extremists have targeted Christians and other minorities, who often serve as stand-ins for the West. This was especially true in Iraq after the U.S. invasion, which caused hundreds of thousands to flee. ‘‘Since 2003, we’ve lost priests, bishops and more than 60 churches were bombed,’’ Bashar Warda, the Chaldean Catholic archbishop of Erbil, said. With the fall of Saddam Hussein, Christians began to leave Iraq in large numbers, and the population shrank to less than 500,000 today from as many as 1.5 million in 2003.

    The Arab Spring only made things worse. As dictators like Mubarak in Egypt and Qaddafi in Libya were toppled, their longstanding protection of minorities also ended. Now, ISIS is looking to eradicate Christians and other minorities altogether. The group twists the early history of Christians in the region — their subjugation by the sword — to legitimize its millenarian enterprise. Recently, ISIS posted videos delineating the second-class status of Christians in the caliphate. Those unwilling to pay the jizya tax or to convert would be destroyed, the narrator warned, as the videos culminated in the now-­infamous scenes of Egyptian and Ethiopian Christians in Libya being marched onto the beach and beheaded, their blood running into the surf.

    The future of Christianity in the region of its birth is now uncertain. ‘‘How much longer can we flee before we and other minorities become a story in a history book?’’ says Nuri Kino, a journalist and founder of the advocacy group Demand for Action. According to a Pew study, more Christians are now faced with religious persecution than at any time since their early history. ‘‘ISIL has put a spotlight on the issue,’’ says Anna Eshoo, a California Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives, whose parents are from the region and who advocates on behalf of Eastern Christians. ‘‘Christianity is under an existential threat.’’

    I expect it won’t be long before the West will return the favor. If you think the mass immigration of the last fifty years can’t be turned around, remember that in Spain, the Ummayads reigned for 700 years before they were driven out. History doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes, and the same patterns play over and over and over.

    But this is not the end of Christianity in the Middle East. It may only be four percent of the population there now, but there was a time when it was only 11 men. The river of the blood of the martyrs is running high right now, and this is neither the first time nor the last time that has happened. It wasn’t all that long ago that Christianity was supposedly dead in Russia, after all.

    I’ll type more slowly

    Vox Day @voxday
    The fact outsiders are starting to accuse people of using GG for SELF-PROMOTION means #GamerGate has DESTROYED the SJW Narrative about it.

    le kacho face :^) ‏@KachoArinoDesu
    not really sure how that logic works, voxy

    (´・ω・｀) ‏@_icze4r
    @KachoArinoDesu that doesn’t make any fucking sense

    le kacho face :^) ‏@KachoArinoDesu
    @_icze4r it really doesn’t but that’s militant GG for you

    Platinum ‏@PlatinumParagon
    @KachoArinoDesu I’ve spent the past few minutes trying to figure this fucking shit out. My brain cells.

    Tyler Valle ‏@TylerValleGG
    @KachoArinoDesu RUN! DON’T GET SUCKED IN BY VOX! RUUUUUUUNNNN!!!!!!!!

    le kacho face :^) ‏@KachoArinoDesu
    @TylerValleGG >me
    >agreeing with Vox Day
    >ever

    Vox Day ‏@voxday
    It’s straightforward. No self-promoter advances himself by jumping on a bandwagon that everyone hates and thinks is awful.

    It probably goes without saying, but it hurts me far more to have to explain something so patently obvious than to see ten thousand SJWs calling me names. But on the plus side, that’s a new one for the SJWs in science fiction to cower over and whisper fearfully about. I’m not just GG, I’m militant GG. To say nothing of:

    Hugo Recommendations: Best Professional Artist

    This is how I am voting in the Best Professional Artist category. Of course, I merely
    offer this information regarding my individual ballot for no particular
    reason at all, and the fact that I have done so should not be confused
    in any way, shape, or form with a slate or a bloc vote, much less a
    direct order by the Supreme Dark Lord of the Evil Legion of Evil to his
    390 Vile Faceless Minions or anyone else.

    1. Kirk DouPonce
    2. Alan Polack
    3. Julie Dillon
    4. Nick Greenwood
    5. Carter Reid

    Best Novel
    Best Novella
    Best Short Story
    Best Fan Writer
    Best Related Work 
    Best Editor

    I’ll put up my complete ballot tomorrow. But in the meantime, perhaps this will help explain why I believe Kirk DouPonce to be one of the best cover artists in the business.

    #PPGate

    Someone asked me at the Brainstorm session last night how abortion foes could utilize #GamerGate tactics to take down Planned Parenthood. I said I didn’t know, but that it would be tough if they were reliant upon government funding, because choking off government funding is difficult.

    Well, Moe Lane just provided the answer.

    “Here are the 41 companies that have directly funded Planned Parenthood.”

        Adobe
        American Cancer Society
        American Express
        AT&T
        Avon
        Bank of America
        Bath & Body Works
        Ben & Jerry’s
        Clorox
        Coca-Cola
        Converse
        Deutsche Bank
        Dockers

    The rest of the 41 corporations are listed at the link. Start sending emails, complete with quotes from the Planned Parenthood people about selling organs from aborted infants, to the PR/Marketing departments of these corporations and asking them if they support those practices. Put all the relevant names and emails on a central site, complete with various draft emails, and then start sending emails. Recruit others to do so. Talk about your activities under the #PPGate hashtag.

    Don’t threaten, don’t talk about boycotts, don’t quote Bible verses, just try to get a statement from them concerning whether they support Planned Parenthood’s sale of harvested human organs. Don’t whine, suck it up and recall that thousands of gamers did this for weeks before getting any results. Another important thing is to regularly push encouraging graphic memes on Twitter; this is only one of hundreds of examples of the images posted by #GamerGaters to keep the emails flowing.

    Abject surrender is never easy

    The tide of national opinion appears to be turning against the sovereignty sell-outs of Syrizia:

    The Greek leader is fighting for political survival after abandoning his opposition to austerity earlier this month with his country on the brink of financial collapse. He’s trying to hold off elections long enough to steer the country through the bailout negotiations, Michaelides said.

    The plenary debate began at about 9 a.m. in Athens with the vote in the Greek parliament scheduled for around midnight. The bill under consideration includes the transposition of the European Union’s Bank Recovery and Resolution Directive into national law, as well as an overhaul of Code of Civil Procedure.

    “There is a risk of the number of rebels growing,” said Michael Michaelides, a fixed-income strategist at Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc in London. “It will be a question of whether Tsipras can maintain the party under control to prevent unwanted political developments.”

    Considerable risk, I should think. But I think it’s cute that they call what is little more than an unconditional surrender veiled by a modicum of trivia to help the sell-outs save face “negotiations”.

    The more interesting thing is the word that Tsipras had intended to go back to the drachma, but neither Russia nor China would come through with the $10 billion they needed to print drachmas. But I’m not sure I buy that, as they could have simply declared they were back on the drachma with or without the notes.