Institutionalized Islamophobia
Of this, that, and the other thing
All right, a few things that require addressing. First, the Closed Brainstorm meeting to discuss the 2016 strategy will be Thursday, August 27th, at 7 PM EST. Annual and pre-existing monthly members only, since we don’t want to share our thoughts with the SJWs. No decisions will be made, this is simply what it’s called, a brainstorm session. I’ll also share some information about the No Award vote that has been brought to light; still working on documentation. Check your emails tonight for the registration information.
Second, we should probably get going rolling with the VPFL before it gets too late. If you haven’t played before and want to give it a shot, post your name here and I’ll randomly select the winners who will receive a team to manage. If you qualified to come back, please point that out here. I’m a bit behind on this for obvious reasons.
Third, I have been informed that some are seeking Vile Faceless Minion status. Since I don’t have the time to put up with being summoned in the mirror at the moment, you’ll just have to email me requesting it with MINION in the subject. If you’ve recently done so, don’t do it again, I’ve got five or six potential minions waiting to receive Malwyn’s mark and get their number.
What is involved, you ask? Mindless obedience, no quarter, public silence, and gnawing on SJW bones. The Dark Lord speaks, the minion acts. If you’re not down with that, that’s fine, but then don’t sign up. The VFM are the Legion’s shock troops, the devourers and demoralizers, the breakers of enemy lines. If that’s not how you see your role, then stay Dread Ilk, stay Ilk, or simply remain one of the vast numberless minions who also serve the Evil Legion of Evil.
Because as the 400 already know, I will call upon you.
Fourth, SJWs Always Lie: Taking Down the Thought Police will be available in ebook on Amazon and Castalia on Thursday. I don’t know when the hardcover will be available, but before the end of the year. To the left is an example of one of the excellent chapter-heading cartoons contributed by the artist Red Meat.
There will come a day this will stop being funny
Today is not that day.
The dangerous faith
I doubt it has escaped anyone’s attention that with a few exceptions, the atheists, agnostics, and pagans around the world are content to make common cause with very nearly any religion except for one particular faith. As J.B. Bury observed nearly 100 years ago in his epic Cambridge Medieval History, which I cannot recommend more highly, this is not a new development:
Jesus Himself, had His followers allowed, might have had a place between Dionysos and Isis; but Christianity, which according to Porphyry had departed widely from the simple teaching of the mystic of Galilee, was sternly excluded from the Neoplatonist brotherhood of religions. Its idea of a creation in time seemed irreligious to Porphyry; its doctrine of the Incarnation introduced a false conception of the union between God and the world; its teaching about the end of all things he thought both irreverent and irreligious; above all things its claim to be the one religion, its exclusiveness, was hateful to him. He was too noble a man (philosopkus nobilis, says Augustine) not to sympathise with much in Christianity, and seems to have appreciated it more and more in his later writings Still his opinion remained unchanged: “The gods have declared Christ to have been most pious; he has become immortal, and by them his memory is cherished. Whereas the Christians are a polluted set, contaminated and enmeshed in error.” Christianity was the one religion to be fought against and if possible conquered.
What Neoplatonism did theoretically the force of circumstances accomplished on. the practical side. The Oriental creeds had not merely gained multitudes of private worshippers; they had forced their way among the public deities of Rome. Isis, Mithra, Sol Invictus, Dea Syra, the Great Mother, took their places alongside of Jupiter, Venus, Mars, etc., and the Sacra peregrina appeared on the calendar of public festivals. As most of these Oriental cults contained within them the monotheist idea it is possible that they might have fought for preeminence and each aspired to become the official religion of the Empire. But they all recognised Christianity to be a common danger, and M. Cumont has shewn that this feeling united them and made them think and act as one.
From Communists to Muslims to SJWs, various philosophies and religions have been more than happy to attempt to coopt Jesus Christ, because they believe he is dead. What they cannot countenance are the servants of the Living God, the followers of the Risen Christ, who despite our manifold failings, our observable flaws, our complete falling short of the glory of the God we worship, insist on attempting to tread upon the hard and narrow path rather than obediently follow the gentle, easy, thoughtless ways they advocate.
Christianity is the dangerous faith because it is the one faith that is rooted in truth rather than lies. It is the one real connection Man can make to the Divine. Yes, our understandings are imperfect, yes, we see as though through a glass, darkly, yes, our interpretations are various and contradictory, and yet, only in doing so, only through relentlessly pursuing the truth to the best of our ability can we begin to approach Truth.
Those who consider Christians to be self-righteous entirely miss the point, including those who consider themselves to be righteous Christians. To be forgiven is not the same as being sinless. To be repentant is not the same as to be blameless. It is not necessary to put on sackcloth and with Augustine melodramatically label ourselves the worst of all sinners to recognize that we are no better, and in some cases are considerably worse, than the virtuous pagan.
For better or for worse, we are who we are. We have done what we have done and we can never change the past. But what we don’t have to do is remain broken, frightened, sin-enslaved beings. That, through the grace of God, is the one thing we can change.
And that is what the enemies of God, in all their various guises, cannot abide. Because that is the one freedom they can never offer.
The Archmorlock’s curse
John C. Wright explains why he will not write books for Tor in the future:
I am sad to report that I was mistaken. The Archmorlock himself displayed his courage against the short and girlish figure of my meek and gentle wife.
At the reception just before the Awards Ceremony itself, my lovely and talented wife, who writes for Tor books under her maiden name of L Jagi Lamplighter, and who had been consistently a voice of reason and moderation during the whole silly kerfluffle, approached Mr. Patrick Nielsen Hayden at the party to extent to him the olive branch of peace and reconciliation.
Before she could finish her sentence, however, Mr. Hayden erupted into a swearing and cursing, and he shouted and bellowed at the tiny and cheerful woman I married.
I should mention that during the last few months of the Sad Puppies kerfluffle, I once upon a time accurately described him, Mr. Moshe Feder, and Mrs Irene Gallo of Tor Books as ‘Christ Haters.’ The support of abortion, sodomy, and euthanasia rather unambiguously put a soul into the position of open rebellion against Christian teachings. In addition, any man who bears false witness against his neighbor, delights in poison-tongued gossip, and destroys writing careers of anyone who does not support his politics not only disobeys Christ, but violates the ordinary decency of ordinary men of good will of any faith.
It seems that Mr. Hayden is a Roman Catholic and was so deeply moved to offense by my words that he could not retain a levelheaded and professional demeanor while speaking with my short little wife. He shouted filthy words at her and stormed off. I do not know if there were tears in his eyes.
Before I continue, I should explain to the reader that Mr. Hayden, and no one else, was the driving force behind the corruption of the Hugo Awards in these last fifteen to twenty years.
One thing that Mr. Wright neglected to add: the only reason that the Best Hugo Editor (Long Form) category that was denied to Baen’s Toni Weisskopf even exists was so that Mr. Nielsen Hayden could finally win an award after years of whining about his inability to beat Gardner Dozois for Best Professional Editor. Chris M. Barkley claims sole responsibility for the addition of a new category, but even he admits that Patrick Nielsen Hayden was his co-conspirator, publicly campaigned for the new award, and was the chief driving force behind the creation of the new category as well as the completely coincidental first winner of it.
I sought out Patrick Nielsen Hayden’s support for the Editor’s split and brought him into the fold; I needed a prominent editor to co-sponsor the amendment or it would never have been taken seriously by the Business Meeting. He was reluctant to do so at first but eventually, he concluded that a split of the category was the best option available at the time. Until I finally shook his hand at the LACon IV Business Meeting in 2006, I think he had doubts that it would ever pass. And, the very next year, it was he who was the recipient of the very first Long Form Editor Hugo Award. Was this a coincidence? Yes; Patrick Nielsen Hayden did not conspire to win his Hugo Award, he EARNED it from the voters for his superlative work.
Seriously, the man worked to create a new Hugo award just so he could win one. Here is PNH himself in 2006 whining about how he and David Hartwell of Tor never ever get to win a Hugo:
In a post to his own weblog, Scalzi expresses regret that I personally didn’t make the “Best Professional Editor” ballot, despite the fact that I acquired three out of the five Best Novel nominees and personally shepherded two of them to publication. This is generous of John, and I wouldn’t have declined the nomination, but in fact as every book editor in our field knows, while the Best Professional Hugo is regularly awarded to high-profile magazine editors and anthologists, it only goes to book editors if we die. It’s for this reason that there’s a pending proposal to split the editorial award into “long form” and “short form” categories; whether this will be ratified by this year’s Worldcon Business Meeting is anyone’s guess. Personally, I note that David Hartwell has been a finalist for Best Professional Editor 15 times, leaving aside his 17 further nominations for the New York Review of Science Fiction, and that he’s never won a Hugo of any kind. Pretty shabby treatment for an individual who is by any measure one of the best and most influential editors in the eighty-year history of our field. Whether or not the World SF Convention decides to reform the editor award, it’s years past time one went to Hartwell.
The Best Tor Books Editor award was duly created, and the awards went to:
Patrick Nielsen Hayden, David Hartwell, David Hartwell, and Patrick
Nielsen Hayden for the first four years before before Hartwell talked PNH into turning down their nominations so Lou Anders of Pyr could have a chance to win. Hartwell, a gentlemanly individual who is John C. Wright’s editor at Tor, continued to decline nominations, but PNH has eagerly continued throwing his hat in the ring and likely would have won the award again this year if the Puppies had not prevented him from being nominated a 16th time.
And that is why he was shouting and swearing at Tor author L. Jagi Lamplighter. Patrick Nielsen Hayden is a vain, pompous little freak who is furious that his influence over science fiction has been broken and he’s not even being nominated for his own personal award. Here is his very professional comment after the ceremony.
#18 ::: Patrick Nielsen Hayden ::: (view all by) ::: August 23, 2015, 02:55 AM:
I’ll have more to say later. Right now TNH and I are at GRRM’s Hugo Loser Party and all I have to say is, my, that is some tasty, tasty schadenfreude pie.
They proved Larry right
Milo offers a much more realistic take on the Hugo Awards:
“I said the Hugos were dominated by
cliques that cared more about an author’s identity and politics than the
quality of their work,” Sad Puppies founder Larry Correia told
Breitbart. “Tonight they proved me right.”Vox Day, an author and publisher who
assembled the Rabid Puppies slate, agreed. “The scorched earth strategy
being pursued by the SJWs in science fiction is evidence that we hold
the initiative and we are winning,” he said. “The fact that the SJWs would rather
give out no award rather than honor an influential editor like Toni
Weisskopf of Baen Books or science fiction grandmaster John C. Wright
demonstrates the extent to which science fiction has been politicized
and degraded by their far-left politics. The SJWs will try to portray this as
a victory – they would try to portray suicide by self-cannibalism as a
victory – but anyone who knows anything about history understands the
significance of one side resorting to burning down its own houses in
order to deny it to the enemy. That is a defensive tactic borne of
desperation.”Like the empire at the end of The Empire Strikes Back, the
forces of social justice believe they have the rebel puppy alliance on
their knees. What they don’t realize is that the puppies are already
plotting their approach to 2016, which may not include a large army of
Ewoks, but certainly will include many more pissed off fans.Science fiction fans of all types are left, like the punters in Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land,
unable to grok how their supposed fellow fans could choose to harm not
only the awards themselves but the wider industry with vindictive,
nihilistic self-immolation.
It’s fascinating to see SJWs desperately trying to cling to their Narrative on Twitter and elsewhere. They’re insisting that we’re mad, that we’re crying, that we’re upset, when the fact is that I knew this would be the result this year prior to creating Rabid Puppies.
This is the difference between game designers and normal people. We think, we HAVE to think, in terms of consequences, both obvious and non-obvious. We started last year with 1,100 reliable anti-Puppy votes and 160 reliable pro-puppy votes. That meant we were 900 in the hole before we even got started.
That’s why I was urging everyone not to adopt the tactics of the other side and mass-mobilize. Last year wasn’t a good test because I wasn’t involved in the organizing and the Dread Ilk really didn’t get involved. There was no point in throwing the full weight of our effort into this year’s awards when we had the chance to see a) what our core forces looked like and b) what their maximal forces looked like. That’s why I told everyone that this year was about the nominations and the best we could reasonably hope for was to provoke them into voting No Award… which they dutifully did.
Our execution wasn’t flawless. I made two mistakes, one which was fortuitous as it permitted Three Body Problem to make the shortlist and win, and one which was stupid as it cost us a 6th category in novelette. Our discipline could also have been better, although I don’t see that it would have made any difference at all with regards to either the nominations or the awards. But I trust the moderate approach is now sufficiently discredited in everyone’s eyes.
As for what comes next, we’re going to be discussing RP plans for 2016 at a Closed Brainstorm session later this week; only Annual Members and Monthly Members who were registered before today will be permitted to attend. Suffice it to say that there will be plenty for everyone, VFM, Rabids, Dread Ilk, and new Rabid converts alike, to do in the coming year.
Meanwhile, the Beautiful but Evil Space Princess gradually begins to grok the Evil ways of the Supreme Dark Lord:
Until today I viewed him as a mirror of the SJW posturing. I retract that and I give him full measure of applause. Yes, his views are still repulsive and he still makes my skin crawl as often as the Marxists do, but you know what? At least he has a brain and uses it. Those of you celebrating might want to take a deep breath and wonder — for just a minute — if you did anything more than what Vox wanted. Because from where I’m sitting, the man that set out to destroy the field and prove that everyone calling themselves its leadership were mannerless and brainless children not only won last night, he won walking away. He won without DOING anything. He won by convincing yourselves to hit yourselves repeatedly with the obvious hammers of partisanship, lack of care for quality and INTEREST in the health of the field. And before you died, you gloated you had won. The mind boggles.
Well done, Vox Day. My laughter is tinged with tears because I don’t know if the field I loved will ever recover from stupidity displayed in such an open manner. I think today I prove the Valentine Michael Smith adage that sometimes you laugh because it hurts too much to cry.
I suspect last night was a lot harder for writers like Sarah and Brad, who once considered the morons blithely running around with matches their colleagues, friends, and peers, to witness their antics last night than it was for me. After my one visit to MiniCon, I never considered them anything more than psychologically damaged human wreckage, so it doesn’t surprise me in the slightest that they were dumb enough to play it that way. After all, SJWs always double down.
A tale of two interviews
Once again, the Wall Street Journal did a much more equitable job of covering the Hugos than other media outlets as Michael Rapoport followed up his previous article on the nominations with one on the awards:
Authors and fans who have opposed the Puppy campaigns said the results show that the science fiction fans who vote on the Hugos don’t want to see the field’s most prestigious award gamed.
“Good work was rewarded and bad action was penalized,” said novelist John Scalzi. “A small group of people tried to game the awards for their own gain, and a vastly larger group of people who valued the integrity of the awards responded by choosing ‘No Award’ over nominees they felt got on the ballot by gaming the system.”
But Theodore Beale, aka “Vox Day,” the writer and editor who organized the Rabid Puppies slate, characterized the results as a “scorched earth strategy,” and said liberals in science fiction “would rather burn down a historically prestigious award” than let the awards go to Puppy-backed nominees. It “demonstrates the extent to which science fiction has been politicized and degraded by their far left politics,” he said….
“This was the most optimal outcome with what we had to deal with,”
said author Kameron Hurley, another critic of the Puppies. “Really proud
of the community for rewarding deserving work and passing on so many of
the stacked categories.”But Sarah Hoyt, a Sad Puppies organizer, said the “fury” of the
reaction to the Puppies has proven their point. “That is the reaction of
a small clique that has engaged in log rolling or years to reward its
followers and those they approved of,” she said before the Hugo
ceremony.The Hugo ceremony mostly steered clear of direct references to the
controversy, apart from loud applause for some of the announcements of
“No Award.” “Please, God, let there be winners,” co-host David Gerrold
joked at one point, clutching a bunch of awards envelopes yet to be
opened.
This Wired article attempting to maintain the SJW Narrative concerning the Hugos is mildly amusing for the author’s complete inability to keep up and follow the plot. It’s an example of Vox’s First Law in action, sprinkled with a few factual inaccuracies that appear to result from the writer’s attempt to maintain the narrative. But give Amy Wallace credit for at least talking to us:
Based on his voluminous writings, it can be said that Theodore Beale—who writes fiction as a hobby while working as a game designer—openly opposes racial diversity, homosexuality, and women’s suffrage. Beale quibbles with those assertions, as he did with me when I reached him at his home in Northern Italy. For example, he says he doesn’t oppose all women’s suffrage, just women (and most men) voting in a representative democracy, like the one we have, um, in America. The reason: “Women are very, very highly inclined to value security over liberty” and thus are “very, very easy to manipulate.” (He favors direct democracy—and, obviously, men). At one point, he emailed that he would be “very disappointed” if I failed to quote the Wall Street Journal’s label for him: “the most despised man in science fiction.”
A conversation with Beale feels sort of like walking around a room designed by MC Escher. It turns in on itself in unexpected and at times dizzying ways. A sampling: When I asked him why he once called noted fantasy author NK Jemisin an “educated, but ignorant half-savage” on his blog, he said it wasn’t because she is black, then launched into an explication of what he called “new” genetic research that he says he doesn’t expect very many people to understand (but which he claims supports his use of the term “half-savage”).
When I said that he was intentionally baiting a person of color with a word that has racial overtones, he acknowledged, “I’m calling her a half-savage because I know it’s going to offend the crap out of her, because she’s going to run around screaming, ‘Racist! Racist!’ for the next 10 years.”
A beat, and then he added: “I don’t consider all black people to be half-savages. I mean, some people are. Here in Europe, for example, we have actual proper Africans, not African-Americans. This leads to problems, like people shitting on top of the closed toilets. They don’t know how to use indoor plumbing, okay? This is not civilized behavior.”
Torgersen told me something that helped me understand Beale, which is that he believes Vox Day is a character Beale plays—“Performance art, like Andy Kaufman,” Torgersen said. “He embraces this nemesis role that he inhabits. He’s the dark star circling around the outer rim of the solar system. He’s Darth Vader breathing heavily into your phone. He wants people to be enraged and flipping out and tearing their hair and completely losing their minds. And he gets that every single time.”
Beale acknowledged as much: “I love chaos,” he says. “I am generally pretty destructive.”
Given this kind of incendiary rhetoric, it’s possible that the Sad Puppies were at best naïve when they let Beale piggyback on their idea. At worst, they have been accused of providing a politely moderate front for a shit-stirring provocateur. Certainly, both Correia and Torgersen have worked hard to distinguish themselves from Beale.
“Look at it like this,” Correia blogged at one point. “I’m Churchill, Brad is FDR. We wound up on the same side as Stalin.” But when I asked Torgersen whether he felt the Sad Puppies had been tarnished by their association with Beale, he said no. “If he went away, I don’t think it would have changed much. People would have been just as hacked off about Sad Puppies. They just would have found some other reason.”
For his part, Beale—who runs his own small publishing company, Castalia House, which got five of its writers and editors (including Beale himself) on this year’s Hugo ballot—has been outspoken about his goals. “I wanted to leave a big smoking hole where the Hugo Awards were,” he told me before the winners were announced. “All this has ever been is a giant Fuck You—one massive gesture of contempt.” Some nerds just want to watch the world burn.
Going forward, he said, no matter how the Hugo administrators modify the nominating process to try to prevent manipulation (and there are two proposals being considered), he will still have enough supporters to control future awards. Specifically, “I have 390 sworn and numbered vile faceless minions—the hardcore shock troops—who are sworn to mindless and perfect obedience,” he said, acknowledging that his army wasn’t made up solely of sci-fi fans. On the contrary, “the people who are very anti-SJW said, ‘Okay, we want to get in on this.’” When I asked him how he might deploy those people in the future, he continued, “It’s very simple. The dark lord speaks, the minion acts.”
Corrections:
- I don’t favor direct democracy “and, obviously, men”, I favor direct democracy for all native-born adult citizens. Period.
- I did not rely upon “genetic research” to justify my use of the term “half-savage” to describe NK Jemisin, I relied upon my Hypothesis of Time to Civilization, which is a combination of history and logic that the writer somehow managed to confuse with science.
- I did not acknowledge the Torgersen’s claim of “performance art” but specifically denied it.
- I have 400 Vile Faceless Minions, not 390, and the number is growing daily.
- I am not a white male. I am a Red male.
- Castalia House is not mine. I don’t own it, I’m just the lead editor.
- GamerGate did not make a “political movement out of threatening with rape any woman who has the temerity to offer an opinion about a videogame.”
Notice in particular the juxtaposition between “it can be said” and “quibbles with those assertions”. Translation: she said “Isn’t it true that….” to which I responded “No.” For crying out loud, as I explained to her, ANY support for direct democracy is intrinsically far MORE democratic than playing games about the specific limits on whom is permitted to choose between the two candidates offered by the bifactional ruling party.
My favorite part of the article was this: “But even as Beale claimed victory, John Scalzi, a novelist and
three-time Hugo winner who has been among their most outspoken
opponents, said the war was over.”
SJWs always lie.
You may not like what I say one little bit, but it’s hard to argue that I don’t tell the truth. Granted, it’s only been just over two years as yet, but NK Jemisin is still running around screaming “racist, racist!” You’ll note that the writer didn’t see fit to quote Jemisin calling Robert Heinlein and “most of SF fandom” “racist as *fuck*”. And lest you think I was inventing Europe’s indoor plumbing problem, there is a reason you’ll now see these signs at the train stations when traveling through Switzerland and Germany.
恭喜！別客氣。
I had an initial look at the Hugo statistics. I’ll have more on them later, but what leaped out immediately was the fact that the Puppy vote tipped the balance in Best Novel, giving it to Cixin Liu’s very good hard SF novel instead of Katherine Addison’s SJW fantasy angst-fest.
2649 The Three Body Problem
2449 The Goblin Emperor
Considering that the Rabid Puppy vote averaged 565 across the various categories, that demonstrates that we have the ability to play kingmaker even when we’re outnumbered approximately 4.5 to one by the SJWs combined with the traditional WorldCon community.
I’m going to guess that other than Chaos Horizon, who confirmed my Best Novel analysis, we’re not going to see a lot of SJW commentary on that, as they are too busy celebrating their successful self-immolations.
Goblin Emperor lost the Best Novel to Three-Body Problem
by 200 votes. Since there seem to have been at least 500 Rabid Puppy
voters who followed VD’s suggestion to vote Liu first, this means Liu
won because of the Rabid Puppies. Take that as you will.
Based on Chaos Horizon’s numbers, it appears there are 2500 SJWs, up from 1,100 last year, plus 2,400 WorldCon voters who are naturally biased against the Puppies, mostly on the basis of our slates, but are not intrinsically opposed to us on ideological grounds. That’s pretty close to their maximum mobilization, whereas 565 RP and 450 SP is only a fraction of our own.
I also appreciated this email from a RA, a non-Puppy who is one of the many former fans unhappy with what the SJW gatekeepers have decided is sufficiently non-problematic fiction worthy of publishing:
I wanted to write to you to say thank you for your work demonstrating the toxicity of the social justice warriors that have invested science fiction.
Science fiction was the first community I ran screaming from when the SJWs appeared – the amount of anti-white racism, the group-think, and the identity politics was shocking and horrifying to me. Segregated anthologies, editors that saw no harm in ranting about how they despised an entire race of people, and reviewers who made a point of counting how many “coloureds” and “women” there were in anthologies so they could decide how good they were.
Looking back I can’t believe how bad it was, and I’m glad I no longer write or am involved in science fiction groups.
I am absolutely indebted to you for your work on the Hugo Awards which show so clearly their approach to people who do not “rightthink”. In a way it shows me that I wasn’t crazy, that they were abhorrent, and that this is a community I should never have been involved in, given the horrible things it endorses.
RA is quite welcome, of course. The current SF community is a deeply sick and twisted one, and their ridiculous preferences in literature are merely a symptom of the real issues that plague them. The five categories burned last night are only the first sparks of the cleansing conflagration that is coming.
Immigration hard line is a winner
Donald Trump increases his lead in the polls after releasing his anti-invasion plan:
Republican Donald Trump is pulling away from the pack in the race for the party’s U.S. presidential nomination, widening his lead over his closest rivals in the past week, a Reuters/Ipsos poll showed on Friday.
Republican voters show no signs they are growing weary of the brash real estate mogul, who has dominated political headlines and the 17-strong Republican presidential field with his tough talk about immigration and insults directed at his political rivals. The candidates are vying to be nominated to represent their party in the November 2016 general election.
Nearly 32 percent of Republicans surveyed online said they backed Trump, up from 24 percent a week earlier, the opinion poll found. Trump had nearly double the support of his closest competitor, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, who got 16 percent. Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson was third at 8 percent.
Some have theorized that Trump is a Clinton stalking horse. But in light of what appears to be happening to both Trump and Clinton in the polls, is it possible that they have it backwards?
Hugo 2015 results
We had 315 people celebrating the Rabid Puppy demolition of the 2015 Hugo Awards at the Brainstorm online party, but I have to confess, I am just a little disappointed. With the unwitting assistance of the SJWs, we managed to burn five categories, but after Chu won the Campbell, I was confident that we were going to get a historic seven. Sadly, Novelette and Graphic Novel both eluded us. It’s disappointing, because apparently only five had been awarded in the entire history of the award, and I would have liked to have exceeded that this year.
I understand that Toni Weisskopf of Baen Books walked out of the ceremony after hearing all the jokes about this being the year of the asterisk. It is just as well, because the no-awarding of her, John C. Wright, and Jim Butcher is conclusive proof that the Hugo Awards are no longer fit for purpose and need to be burned down in their entirety. That was my original position, but this year we Rabids followed the Sad Puppies lead and pursued the “fair play” approach.
Now we know the result of that. This is a cultural war, not a literary sport. They are practicing a scorched earth strategy, and we can certainly assist them in that since we do not value their territory. I still think it was worth trying to take Berlin and end the war in one fell swoop, but even though our attempt break them once and for all failed, that only means that the victory was less than complete. What the Puppies accomplished was incredible when you look at the numbers involved and clearly indicates that the Rabid strategy, not the Sad one, is the only viable strategy. There will be no reconciliation.
Some SJWs are already trying to claim that they only rejected Toni Weisskopf because she was “part of a slate”, but the fact that they had no problem voting for Guardians of the Galaxy, which was on the same slate, demonstrates very clearly that they have no such principle, it’s all about the politics for them.
No doubt George Martin, John Scalzi, David Gerrold, The Guardian, and the rest of the SJWs will try to portray this as a resounding defeat for us, but keep this in mind: the side that resorts to a scorched earth strategy is the one that is losing and in retreat. All they have accomplished is to convert many Sad Puppies into Rabid Puppies.
They have talked about sending us a message, and we have heard it. I don’t know about you, but the message I heard was “bring more Puppies.”
UPDATE: This is amusing. The SJWs are so pleased with what they are claiming was a “victory” that they have vanished the categories that were No Awarded. “Those categories in which there were Awards presented are listed below.”
UPDATE 2: The vote totals are here. With 525 Rabid Puppies, we definitely face an uphill climb, but keep in mind that this represents their fully mobilized forces, up from their anti-Puppy vote of 1,100 last year. I’ll analyze this and share some of my thoughts in a future post.
Below are the results, along with my personal vote and how I voted the winner:
Best Novel
The Three-Body Problem (1)
Best Novella
No Award
“One Bright Star to Guide Them”
Best Novelette
“The Day the World Turned Upside Down” (5)
Best Short Story
No Award
“Turncoat”, Steve Rzasa (Riding the Red Horse, Castalia House)
Best Related Work
No Award
“The Hot Equations: Thermodynamics and Military SF”
Best Graphic Story
Ms Marvel
No Award
Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form)
Guardians of the Galaxy (1)
Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form)
Orphan Black: “By Means Which Have Never Yet Been Tried” (4)
Best Editor, Short Form
No Award
Vox Day
Best Editor, Long Form
No Award
Toni Weisskopf
Best Professional Artist
Julie Dillon (3)
Best Semiprozine
Lightspeed Magazine (4)
Best Fanzine
Journey Planet (4)
Best Fancast
Galactic Suburbia Podcast (3)
Best Fan Writer
Laura J. Mixon (5)
Best Fan Artist
Elizabeth Leggett (1)
The John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer
Wesley Chu (2)