Tag: Hugo Award

SJWs always cheat

The Making Light SJWs are upset because Tor isn’t collecting its usual Hugo tribute for its predictably mediocre romances in space, sanctimonious PC space lectures, and red-hot necrobestials, so naturally they are lobbying hard to change the rules. WCJ points out what they’re up to:

The method that the Making Light cabal used to evaluate these satisfaction formulae was to simulate elections using the different formulae and look at the outcome. They decided in advance which outcomes would be considered “satisfying:” those that closely replicate the 2013 Hugo shortlists given the known data from the 2013 ballot, and those that excluded or reduced the quantity of nominees of a hypothetical collection of Sad Puppy voters added to the simulations. A “satisfaction” function was regarded as good by the Making Light cabal if it answered positively to that criterion.

This isn’t just sinister, it’s diabolical. Because what they’re doing, quite literally, is defining “satisfaction” not to be YOUR satisfaction, but rather THEIR satisfaction. The function that is supposed to model your happiness as a voter was chosen by someone who is not you, based on criteria that were designed entirely for their benefit and not yours, without any reference whatsoever to your opinion.

It’s vastly amusing that they are doing exactly what we predicted and are trying to change the rules even though no one has won anything yet. However, speaking as a game designer, I can tell you that there is absolutely nothing anyone can do about stopping intelligent exploits without a process that allows for dynamic responses. For example, let’s say they manage to ram through the 4/6 plan, whose author, Chris Gerrib, foolishly believes is somehow magically capable of preventing Rabid Puppies from locking the SJWs out of the awards again in the future.

The answer is entirely obvious. You didn’t seriously think there was no shadowy purpose behind the numbering of the minions, did you? Am I not your Supreme Dark Lord? And are you not entertained?

A commentary on the Two Puppies

Tempest in a Teardrop observes that while it is better to light a candle than curse the darkness…

Sometimes it’s easier to see with a torch. Five points for each member of the Evil Legion of Evil you can correctly identify.

It may be better to light a candle than curse the darkness, but it’s better still to make your way by the light of all the blazing stakes to which your enemies are bound.

That’s not going to happen

Cail Corishev observes the fundamental difference between the Sad Puppies and the Rabid Puppies this year:

Nice Guys believe that A) SJWs can learn, and B) compromise with them is possible.

When the downtrodden, outnumbered Hero finally gets the upper hand, he’s supposed to nobly offer a truce to his Enemy. His Enemy will be so impressed by his fortitude and nobility that he will gain a new respect for the Hero, and they will forge a new, better understanding based on mutual respect. Everyone lives happily ever after. Think of all the fantasy stories and buddy movies that are based on that kind of reversal.

So now that Vox has the SJWs on the ropes, he’s supposed to back away and offer them a draw, and they’re supposed to be so relieved and impressed that they turn over a new leaf. Then everyone can get along and just focus on good writing.

But as Corwin said to Borel outside the Courts of Chaos, this isn’t the Olympic Games. If the Hero offers a truce, his Enemy will only use that to prepare another attack on him — probably a knife in the back. The Hero has no choice but to carry the battle until it’s over and the Enemy is entirely vanquished (sometimes in the stories he learns this after multiple attempts at a truce fail). Nice Guys have a very hard time accepting that.

Apparently Aristotle was not a Nice Guy:

“Before some audiences not even the possession of the exactest knowledge will make it easy for what we say to produce conviction. For argument based on knowledge implies instruction, and there are people whom one cannot instruct.”

Recall what numerous Gammas have told us is the core of the Gamma male: the relentless ability to lie to himself in order to make himself feel better. This means SJWs cannot learn and they cannot compromise. Any information, any evidence, that is laid before him will be immediately discounted and disqualified if it creates badfeels. Even if he accepts a ceasefire because he has been sufficiently defeated or frightened, he will learn nothing from the experience and will return to the attack as soon as doing so will make him feel better.

Scalzi is instructive in his regard. Hostilities went dormant after the 2005 exchange once I offered to review Old Man’s War and gave it a positive review. (Gamma goodfeels.) Then in 2010, when I criticized Scalzi’s most popular post ever, the idiotic “Easiest Difficulty Setting” post, (Gamma badfeels) hostilities were immediately revived and led quickly to all the RSHD accusations, the attacks on the readers here, the Guardian plot, and so forth. No learning ever took place. The hostility was there all along, it was merely in the Gamma’s interest to conceal it for a while.

Sad Puppies 3 failed in its primary objective because the objective was an impossible one stemming from a failure to apply the first half of Sun Tzu’s dictum: know your enemy. Rabid Puppies has succeeded to date, and will continue to succeed, because we apply both halves of the dictum: know your enemy and know yourself.

We do ourselves no favors by dismissing the enemy as idiots. Many are, but some are not. The SJWs will win some battles, they will succeed in discrediting or marginalizing or intimidating some of us. Puppies will burn out and drop out over time. And when we take hits, when we take damage, that is when we will find out who we really are and if we really know ourselves. Now, it’s absolutely fine if you’re not in this for the long haul. We have a need and a place for short-term shock troops. There is no shame in such status and you will have nothing but the gratitude of those of us who will remain on the field. Should you wish to return to the fight in the future, we will gladly welcome back the well-rested veterans of past battles.

But it’s important for each Rabid Puppy, each member of the Dread Ilk, to decide if you’re in it for a battle, a campaign, or a war. (The Vile Faceless Minions of the Evil Legion of Evil don’t need to decide anything, obviously, their Supreme Dark Lord doesn’t not-pay them to think, he not-pays them to rend SJWs limb-from-limb and devour them.) You don’t need to do anything or say anything, you just need to know exactly who you are.

As for me, you know who I am. And you know where I’ll be.

On a tangential note, M raises a good point about coordinating for Worldcon in August. I’ll leave the discussion to those thinking about attending, but feel free to make initial contacts and discuss ideas in the comments.

I live in Vancouver and am considering attending Sasquan to help support the sad/rabid puppies initiative with a physical presence at the event. Even though I’m on the west coast it would still be expensive getting there with accommodations and everything by myself. I’m hoping to connect with others in my area who would be interested in upgrading their membership and splitting travel and accommodation costs. If you know of anywhere that people like me can go to connect with each other and try and  make arrangements please let me know. Otherwise perhaps we should try and put the word out to everyone and direct them to a facebook group or something to organize? I think it’s important we have a good amount of supporters at the event.

Get him to neurology, stat!

Seriously, David Gerrold is not merely incoherent, he’s directly contradicting himself:

Here’s what I suggest. Consider this a starting place for the conversation, not a finished proposal. First, we as a community need to reaffirm our commitment to
inclusiveness — everybody’s welcome, regardless of political views,
religion, sexual orientation, gender, skin color, ethnicity, place of
national origin, body shape, disability, age, whatever. The only
requirement is a love of fantasy and science fiction and respect for
other participants.

My own rule about discussion is that
disagreement should be about issues, not personalities. This is because
most of us have issues, not all of us have personalities. I would
recommend this as a general policy as well. I might think that X or Y is
a big stinky poo-poo head, but speaking it aloud is not the best way to
win points in a debate.

Second, after we reaffirm our commitment to inclusiveness, we need to
consider whether or not the Hugo nominating rules need to be adjusted. I
believe that the administrators of the award should have the power to
disqualify slate-ballots, but the mechanisms for this might be
controversial….

But the point I’m working toward is a difficult one — it’s a
conversation that we tend to shy away from. But any functioning
community, does have the right to protect itself from disruptive
agencies. Groups can and do disinvite those who spoil the party.

The SFWA expelled Vox Day for his unprofessional behavior. Fandom as a
community, and the Worldcon as an institution, should have the same
power to invite someone to the egress. Other conventions have taken
steps to protect themselves from toxic and disruptive individuals — and
based on the back-and-forth conversations I’ve seen, and as unpleasant a
discussion as this will be, maybe it’s time to have a discussion about
the mechanisms for shutting down someone who has publicly declared his
intention to destroy the awards.

That’s the point. We cannot
talk about healing while the knife is still being twisted in the wound. I
can’t speak for the sad puppies, I can’t tell them what to do — but I
would hope that they would recognize that being perceived as standing
next to a man who wants to destroy the system is not the best place to
stand.

TL;DR: Worldcon must be inclusive and tolerant, so we must expel Vox Day and anyone associated with him in any way who fails to publicly denounce him before presenting themselves to us and requesting absolution.

Gerrold still hasn’t figured out that there is no way to expel someone from a group who doesn’t belong to it and doesn’t want to belong to it. But I like where he’s going with his suggestions. As I have often pointed out, it’s hard to destroy things from the outside, and it’s a lot easier if you can get the insiders to do it for you.

It’s also amusing to see them insist that they are not at all political, when the first point is a call to establish SJW ideology as a core principle. As Brad Torgersen has said, the fish don’t understand that the water in which they swim is wet.

A Secret Master’s summary

Mike Glyer has not only been doing yeoman’s work in allowing all sides of the Hugo 2015 controversy to speak their bit, he’s also presented one of the most balanced summaries of the situation while putting it in historical perspective:

Participation in the Hugo nominating phase has always been anemic compared to the final round. Often less than a hundred votes are needed to land something on the ballot in most categories. It’s the most vulnerable point of the award, for obviously nothing can win that doesn’t get on that list. Past incidents of bloc voting have been few and obvious—for example, L. Ron Hubbard’s posthumously published Black Genesis was nominated in 1987, while in 1989 a couple withdrew their collaborative work from the ballot after learning around 20 questionable ballots were cast for it. However, not all attempts to organize blocs have been criticized, especially in the fan categories where a demonstration of social media clout has tended to be applauded.

Only by tapping into anger over the culture wars has someone succeeded in motivating the requisite number of fans to buy supporting memberships at $40 a pop and take control of the Hugo ballot.

Among fans who are critical of the outcome there has been widespread talk of voting “No Award” ahead of nominees from the slate (again). There is also a great deal of technical discussion of rules changes designed to limit the influence of voting slates without creating any barriers to new voters.

Perhaps the most surprising thing was the rash of articles in the mainstream media in Britain and Australia, denouncing the “Sad Puppies” slate as the work of misogynists and racists. Surprising, because the news rarely covers this early phase of the awards. Nor was it clear how reporters decided slates with eight women, or a number of Hispanic writers, could be characterized in those terms, and one of the outlets, Entertainment Weekly, subsequently issued a correction on that score.

A writer for Salon also gave the back of his hand to the Hugo’s democratic rule structure: “We should have learned a long, long time ago that ‘Just let the public give their input’ is a lazy, useless and above all dangerous way to make decisions.”

The Federation of Heinlein’s Starship Troopers may have felt the same way; however, the story is more commonly admired than its philosophy of government.

The Road Ahead: Hugo Awards lore comes in both an idealized Disney version and a noir Oliver Stone version. If someone says Hugo voters are trying to pick the best stories of the year, you can find someone else who’ll say it’s just a popularity award. The enthusiast will point out growing participation has produced record–breaking numbers of Hugo voters. The cynic will dismiss that number as trivially small. But just now the only thing anyone can say about the future of the Hugos is that it’s unlikely to resemble the past; even idealists and cynics have to agree on that.

Yes, it was indeed strange that there was so much coverage of the Hugo nominations in the international media. I wonder how that may have come about? Perhaps an enterprising investigative reporter should consider looking into that. It is certainly rather remarkable how many people writing about the Hugo Awards for the Guardian have links with a certain SF publishing house that didn’t do quite as well as it is accustomed in 2015.

Speaking of Secret Masters of Fandom and Mike Glyer, this comment at File 770 will likely amuse the Ilk:

It doesn’t take a genius that the regulars at Vox Populi would do it
for entertainment value alone (leaving aside their philosophical
beliefs). And despite the apparent belief of some, they are, in
general, very intelligent and perfectly willing to light a match. For those who doubt me, spend a few days quietly reading his site. I
can’t decide if it’s closer in character to a Pirate’s Den or a Wild
West town.

He’s referring to us responding to a proposed change in the rules in which we’d need to split up and coordinate our actions, and his conclusion is entirely correct. It’s amusing to think that anyone imagines we’re going to be dissuaded by the threat of being accused of “behaving in bad faith” when, as Mike Glyer noted, we’re already being accused of misogyny, racism, crimethink, and perpetrating badfeels everywhere from the UK to New Zealand.

As for this site, I tend to lean towards Pirate’s Den, but then, we do rather like our showdowns and seeing overconfident challengers gunned down in a hail of dialectic too. I also find it a little bizarre that some sort of contradiction between “people willing to vote along [my] recommended lines” and “mindless posters” is postulated. Forget 4GW, the basic concept of “flash mob” must be totally impossible for some of these people to grasp.

Nobody has to pay $40. Nobody has to vote at all. Nobody has to vote the way that I recommend. I’m not a dictator, nobody elected me to anything, and I’m not holding anyone’s kitten hostage. They can bitch and whine all they want about “slates” and “bloc-voting”, but there is nothing new about the former and there is no statistical evidence of the latter. In fact, the statistical evidence absolutely disproves the false accusation of “bloc-voting”, as there is a greater variance among the ballots cast for various Rabid Puppies nominees in both absolute and percentage terms than seen in many past years.

I’ve sent out the material for the Hugo Voters’s Packet, which should be going out later this month. I will be posting my voting recommendations in July, after I get the chance to read the works I haven’t read yet.

Smells like success

This review of “Turncoat” by Steve Rzasa precisely underlines the central point made by the Sad Puppies campaign and single-handedly serves to justify it:

I’m going to start with short stories, because they’re, well, short, and with the last story on the ballot and then work my way up.  So the first story is “Turncoat,” by Steve Rzasa. A sentient warship and some post-humans are battling against another group, people who have decided not to make the jump to post-humanity.  The warship goes from being annoyed at the messy, pesky humans to championing them (though I’m not sure where in the story this switch occurs) and defects at the end, bringing along with it (him? her?) its superior hardware and some useful intel about the other side.

I’m going to take a slight detour here, though I promise I’ll get back to the review soon.  When I was in high school I did or said something that got me sent to detention, a closet-sized room where, oddly, someone had left a stack of Analogs.  I had just started reading science fiction, and of course my first  thought was, Is this supposed to be punishment?

But I ended up not really liking most of the stories.  They emphasized hardware, and not even interesting hardware.  The characters were cardboard, the stories predictable (partly because they all ended with humanity triumphing), the style ranged from serviceable to really pretty bad.

This was late-period John Campbell I’m talking about.  (Yes, I’m old.)  I will stipulate that the guy did some good things for sf in his prime, but something had happened along the way, some hardening of attitudes and an inability to tell when a story had gone bad.  Humanity had to be shown to triumph in every story, for example, to be superior to anything thrown against it, which pretty much let the air out of any balloon of tension.

So, as I hope I’ve made clear, when I say “Turncoat” is a perfectly adequate late-period Campbellian story I don’t mean it as a compliment.  You can’t even say the characters are cardboard, since there are no characters, just a warship that, for the most part, proceeds along strict logical lines.  There’s no one to like, or even hate, no one to identify with or root for, nothing at stake for the reader.

But think about everything that’s happened since Campbell.  The New Wave (does anyone remember the New Wave?  Yes, I’m old), feminism, cyberpunk, counter-cyberpunk, a fresh infusion of writers who are not white or straight or able-bodied.  This would have been an average story in the late sixties, but now, nearly fifty years later, it’s stale and dated.

Rzasa hasn’t even caught up with the second of these new categories.  “Our founders were the men who…”  “Posthuman Man…” “Not content with setting Man on his new evolutionary path…”  After Ancillary Justice — hell, after The Left Hand of Darkness — this reads very oddly.

 Now consider Castalia House’s mission statement:

“The books that we publish honor the traditions and intellectual
authenticity exemplified by writers such as J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis,
Robert E. Howard, G.K. Chesterton, and Hermann Hesse. We are consciously
providing an alternative to readers who increasingly feel alienated
from the nihilistic, dogmatic science fiction and fantasy being
published today. We seek nothing less than a Campbellian revolution in
genre literature.”

That review is supposed to be a negative one, but it sure sounds to me as if we’re on the right track. Now consider these three reviews, the first two from SJWs, the second from a neutral party.

Daveon on May 4, 2015 at 11:46 am said:

I hated Turncoat – compared to how Iain Banks, Neal Asher, Peter Hamilton write sentient battleships and describe space warfare it was unbearable, then there were lines like ‘the men who…’ versus ‘the people who’ really jarred against me – it felt like a story written about AIs written by somebody who has ignored any progress in fiction, computing and so forth in 20 years. The opening battle scene at the start of The Reality Dysfunction is better than Turncoat in every way, and that was written in 1996.

I found that to be rather amusing, considering how spectacularly boring Iain Banks’s space battles are. But considering that Daveon hates Sad Puppies and hates Rabid Puppies, how surprising is it that he – mirabile dictu – just happens to hate “Turncoat” as well? Another SJW posted a similar review:

In the story, an artificial intelligence serves the post-humans in a far-future war against ordinary humans. As the title suggests, it chooses to switch sides in the end. That’s it.

I think this is a quite awfully-written story with a heavy-handed delivery of plot points and a lot of infodumping. You can see the “surprise” conclusion of the story coming from miles away (or by reading the title, actually). A very boring read, overall.

The one thing that could have made the story at least slightly interesting if done well was the characterization of the AI and the post-humans. Sadly, that was crappy and formulaic as well. The protagonist doesn’t really feel like he belongs to the far-future, or the future at all, for that matter. The black-and-white pontificating (a term lifted from Secritcrush) has a definite vibe of the past in it.

A black-and-white approach to any war of conflict just feels silly and makes the whole world of the story unrealistic for me. Now that I was doing some googling, I noticed that Hugo-nominated Puppy-fanwriter Jeffro Johnson is praising this story because it offers a “concise description of real Christian religious experience”. That’s an interesting thought and maybe some people do enjoy over-simplified morality dramas in 2015, but I certainly don’t.

This is certainly going below no award.

Addendum

The vibe of the past I was writing about arises from the protagonist’s
moralistic attitudes which bring to mind the papery characters of old
fiction who don’t really resemble real people (or real consciousnesses
in this case). Also, I think there was no futuristic sensawunda in the
far-future fight scenes when compared with, say, Greg Bear’s Hardfought
(that’s a far future war story I think is very good, even though
military SF is not really my cup of cat crackers)…. On a second thought, let’s also try to give the Hugo finalists an
unscientific numeral score on the range of 1-10 in order to make
comparing them easier (if unscientific). “Turncoat” gets 2.

On the other hand, Steve Moss reached a very different conclusion:

I loved Turncoat. Beware- SPOILERS:

SPOILERS

To correct something, there are two types of machine intelligence in Turncoat. The Uploaded, which is as you described, humans who have placed their consciousness into machines. The other is true artificial machine intelligence.

The antagonist is Alpha 7 Alpha. He is one of the Uploaded. He also appears to have carried over many of the negative human emotions such as hate, etc.

The protagonist is X 45 Delta. He is a 42nd generation true artificial intelligence. He’s never had a human body.

What I loved about the story is that the Uploaded have lost their humanity (become inhuman) while the true machine intelligence becomes more humane. X 45 Delta committed his betrayal because, in his words, he “wants to decide the sort of man I will become.”

You are right that he expresses annoyance with his human crew. They are inefficient and filled with inane chatter. He also expresses pride and protective instincts in them, and misses them when they are removed from his ship. All of these things are very human feelings.

Alpha 7 Alpha removes the crew from X 45 Delta to make him more efficient in battle. Which is true, but also a lie, as X 45 Delta notes (he’s learned to lie from the Uploaded, mostly by omission). He deduces that they will be either terminated or uploaded against their will. This is when his metamorphosis from loyal warrior to turncoat begins.

All in all, Turncoat was an excellent story and well worthy of a Hugo nomination. I haven’t read everything (yet), but it may well be my number one pick.

At the end of the day, there isn’t much room for compromise. They hate the actual science fiction we love. We have no interest in or regard for their SJW, non-SF, “science fiction”. We appreciate a genuine sense of wonder. They refer in snarky contempt to “sensawunda”. We believe in the human soul, we believe in God, we believe in higher things,  they believe in “science” and the infinite evil of humanity, to the extent they believe in anything at all.

Patience is a strategic virtue

An informative dialogue between members of the Dread Ilk:

Ticticboom: “Larry Correia and Brad Torgensen have mentioned that most of their
interactions with Vox have been asking him not to burn the Hugos down.
What the SJWs don’t realize is how downright forgiving and tolerant Vox
is compared to what they think of as his followers.”

Vile Faceless Minion 156: “Agreed. When I see interviews where the left twists Vox’s (or another truthteller’s) words, calls names and basically spit on those I appreciate for standing up for Western Civilization… I feel blinding rage and a desire to destroy. Vox shrugs and presses onwards. I don’t understand this calm moderation and cannot maintain it.”

I feel flashes of emotional reaction just like anyone else. I know what it is like to feel the blinding rage and harbor the intense desire to destroy. The difference is that I spent six years in a very hard school learning not to trust such feelings or to give into them. In the martial arts, when you react emotionally, when you throw caution to the wind, you pay for it, and you often pay for it in pain.

The best, fastest, hardest kick I ever threw in my life was in my fifth year, when I was sparring my sensei one afternoon. We were going at it hard and fast. I was holding nothing back and he was probably going about 90 percent. He feinted with a left jab, then pulled back-and-up as he often did; reading it correctly, I moved in and launched a skipping front sidekick that would have taken a lesser fighter’s head off. I mean, it was a rocket! I had him absolutely dead to rights and I knew it.

But somehow, he managed to lift his head up and turn it so that my heel barely brushed the side of his chin. He ducked and leaped sideways to safety before I could follow it up, smiled broadly, and said, “Now THAT was close. But not close enough!”

I completely lost it. It was maddening. I couldn’t BELIEVE that I’d read him perfectly, timed him perfectly, threw the perfect kick, and STILL didn’t catch the bastard cleanly. I went after him hard with my hands, he retreated, blocking everything, until finally, in frustration, I literally leaped at him and threw a haymaker at his head. This was insanely stupid, and in five years I’d never made such an unmitigated error before, but I was seeing red. My sensei told me later that he had so much time, and I’d left myself so open by leaving my feet and extending myself, that he actually had time to think “I cannot believe he did that” as he ducked under the wild punch and came up and across with a rear-hand shot to the body, which in combination with my forward momentum hit me so hard that it not only knocked the wind out of me, it actually lifted me higher off the ground on his fist.

I was lucky that I didn’t rupture anything. I’ve been knocked out and I’ve had bones broken, but that was the hardest anyone has ever hit me. I went down in what we called the full “armadillo” and stayed down. Getting up was not an option;  I couldn’t breathe and I couldn’t even roll over onto my back. It felt like I’d been hit by a charging bull. My abdomen was bruised for days and if he’d hit me just a few inches to the left, I’d have had several broken ribs.

In light of that experience, consider the completely unsurprising news that Floyd Mayweather not only won last night, but won rather easily against a very highly-regarded fighter.

Floyd Mayweather Jr. spent Saturday night doing — for the most part
— what he’s done in the vast majority of his championship bouts over
the last decade. He fought strategically. He landed counterpunchers. He held to offset rallies. The significance of this one was that the opponent was Manny Pacquiao. In
a welterweight bout that’s seemingly been a generation in the making,
Mayweather controlled the action in mid ring, eluded prolonged damage
along the ropes and worked his way to a unanimous decision that earned
him the WBO welterweight title to go along with the WBA and WBC belts he
arrived with. The win boosted him to 48-0 as a pro in a 19-year career. Pacquiao is 57-6-2.

“He fought strategically.” That’s the significant quote here. Now let’s look at how fighting strategically applies to the Hugo 2015 situation. We know, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that the SJWs are going to vote No Award on most of the Puppy-recommended works. Some will claim to have read them all, some will proudly proclaim that they have read none, others will pretend to genuinely believe that there is not a single award-worthy work in the lot, and a few particularly foolish ones will even convince themselves they believe as much. That’s fine, we all know what their opinions are worth as the list of past winners are well-documented. The only relevant point is that they are going to do it.

So why shouldn’t we join them? Why not pour on the gasoline as they run around shrieking and lighting matches? After all, getting things nominated that the other side would No Award, then turning around and joining them to ensure no awards were given out was my original idea, which I set aside in favor of SP3 and Brad Torgersen’s ultimately futile attempt to save the Hugos from the SJWs. The reason to abandon this original objective now that it is firmly in our grasp is that the situation has developed in ways that I did not fully anticipate, thereby indicating a strategic adjustment. Why settle for burning Munich when Berlin may be within reach, especially if the munchkins are promising to burn Munich for us as we advance? Jeff Duntemann’s summary to which Mike Glyer directed our attention yesterday is informative in this regard.

It’s something like a sociological law: Commotion attracts attention.
Attention is unpredictable, because it reaches friend and foe alike. It
can go your way, or it can go the other way. There’s no way to control
the polarity of adverse attention. The only way to limit adverse
attention is to stop the commotion.

In other words, just shut up.

I know, this is difficult. For some psychologies, hate is delicious
to the point of being psychological crack, so it’s hard to just lecture
them on the fact that hate has consequences, including but hardly
limited to adverse attention.

My conclusion is this: The opponents of Sad Puppies 3 put them on the map,
and probably took them from a fluke to a viable long-term institution. I
don’t think this is what the APs intended. In the wake of the April 4
announcement of the final Hugo ballot, I’d guess the opposition has
generated several hundred kilostreisands of adverse attention, and the
numbers will continue to increase.

In other words, thanks to the SJW overreaction, our capabilities may now permit us to accomplish more than we had reasonably believed possible at the start. Brad wanted to do something that was always impossible because the SJWs are much more poisonous than he naively believed them to be. I was not surprised by their nature (which is why I was always dubious about the SP3 goal), but I was surprised by how astonishingly stupid and self-destructive their post-shortlist reactions have been. So, thanks to them, the strategic situation has now changed and it behooves us to take advantage of their mistakes. The original options as I saw them, prior to the nominations being announced, were as follows:

  1. SJWs and Puppies play it straight. Puppies win between 1 and 3 awards. Vox Day collects two more 6th of 5 participation prizes.
  2. SJWs choose nuclear option and Puppies play it straight. No Award wins
    the majority of categories. Vox Day collects two more 6th of 5
    participation prizes.
  3. SJWs and Puppies choose nuclear option. No Award wins the majority of
    categories. Vox Day collects two more 6th of 5 participation prize.

Three options, two outcomes. From a strategic perspective, Option 3 is obviously the preferable one there. It may be little hard on John C. Wright, Jim Butcher, Toni Weisskopf, and other strong finalists who might genuinely appreciate winning an award, but as I have consistently pointed out from the start, I don’t care about awards. Neither do the hundreds of Vile Faceless Minions of the Evil Legion of Evil. But this situation no longer applies. Now, with the influx of THOUSANDS of new voters, whose allegiances are unknown, there are three possible outcomes.

  1. SJWs and Puppies play it straight. Puppies win between 3 and 6 awards. Vox Day collects neither Hugo Awards nor 6th of 5 participation prizes.
  2. SJWs and Puppies choose nuclear option. No Award wins the majority of categories.Vox Day collects two more 6th of 5 participation prizes.
  3. SJWs choose nuclear option and Puppies play it straight. No Award wins the majority of categories. Vox Day collects two more 6th of 5 participation prizes.
  4. SJWs choose nuclear option and Puppies play it straight. Puppies win between 10 and 12 awards. Vox Day wins Best Editor, Short Form and finishes third, behind Toni Weisskopf and Jim Minz, in the other editorial category.

The Option 4 is a legitimate possibility if two-thirds or more of the new supporting members are Puppy sympathizers. The reason Option 4 is the more desirable outcome is because a) the results of Option 2 and Option 3 are exactly the same, and b) it will publicly break the perceived power of the SJWs under the current rules. Option 2/3 interrupts their inability to hand out awards to themselves for a single year, but Option 4 will reveal the hard limits of their influence and render them relatively impotent for the foreseeable future.

The best possible outcome is not to see them nuke themselves, as amusing as that would be, but to see them try to nuke themselves and fail, thereby demonstrating that they don’t even possess the nukes they think they have. And even if Option 4 turns out to have been beyond our reach this year, its failure is still within the range of our victory conditions. This is what it means to successfully execute a Xanatos Gambit. If we fail, we win. If we succeed, we win even bigger. Why settle for victory when we can vanquish?

Now that the science fiction SJWs have publicly declared No Award, the best possible outcome for us is for them to try to burn down the awards and fail. And that is why we should not help them do it. I very much understand the temptation to cry havoc, run amok, and gleefully set fires, but keep this in mind: while strategic arson is good, strategic occupation is glorious.

Translation: stow the flamethrowers. For now. And as for those who are tempted to freak out and overreact simply because the other side is throwing punches, keep in mind how the great champions react to getting hit.

Floyd Mayweather let Manny Pacquiao hit him with a slew of body blows, then looked Pacquiao in the eye, shook his head, and said NOPE.

Puppy Precedent

WorldCon historian Mike Glyer digs out some longtime precedent for not only campaigning, but bloc votes. And it’s actually from the Philcon II committee itself!

There is still time to (a) do a little campaigning to line up a solid bloc of votes for your favorites, (b) get some members—every membership is a potential vote for your favorites, and (c) get your own votes in before our August 25th postmark deadline. In the categories of outstanding FAN MAGAZINE, COVER PAINTING, INTERIOR ILLUSTRATION and SHORT STORY OR NOVELETTE the field is wide open, with no front-runners yet. So far, Bestor’s Demolished Man is leading in the NOVEL class, with Bob Tucker’s Long Loud Silence in second place. Most votes for favorite FAN are divided between old-timer Forrest J. Ackerman and new-timer Harlon Ellison. Galaxy is just edging Astounding as favorite PRO MAGAZINE.

He’s got the scan of the page from the August 1953 Progress Report at File 770. No doubt Larry, Brad, and I can all expect fulsome apologies from our various accusers for all of the false charges of violating the spirit of the law and gamesmanship that have been levied at us.

Compare and contrast

The SJWs in science fiction believe that if they can control the narrative, if they can convince the media to tell the story their way, they are going to retain their control of the science fiction establishment. They are given every opportunity to spin the narrative and make their case; Brad, Larry, and I were contacted by a Wall Street Journal reporter yesterday, which was a welcome change from most of the coverage that we’ve been seeing of late, but so too were John Scalzi and George Martin.

It’s just like one sees on the cable news. If a talking head has on a liberal guest, the liberal appears alone to sell the narrative. If a talking head has on a conservative guest, a liberal guest usually appears to dispute the narrative. And although it is only a guess, I suspect that the way that the story is likely to go will be moderately anti-Puppy, in light of the reporter actually “playing devil’s advocate” in conversation with me.

When I pointed out how the Puppy case is bolstered by comparing the number of Hugo nominations belonging to those in the Making Light clique, (15 for Charles Stross, 15/14 for Patrick Nielsen Hayden, and 9 for John Scalzi compared to 12 for Isaac Asimov, 12 for Robert Heinlein, and 7 for Arthur C. Clarke), the reporter shot back, and I quote, “yeah, but they’re editors!”

Although I pointed out to him that a) Charles Stross and John Scalzi are not, in fact, editors, and b) Isaac Asimov was an editor as well as a writer, I got the feeling that he was not likely to quote me concerning those readily observable and very telling facts. We’ll see, perhaps I’m wrong.

But the anti-Puppy influence over the mainstream media is largely irrelevant. Because, when people look more closely at the situation, here is the sort of thing they are seeing the Anti-Puppies say:

Anna Feruglio Dal Dan: “It’s not the Hugo ballot – that is a problem, but I am solving it by gleefully voting No Award to lots of categories, and I think I will make a point not to read any of it just to annoy you – it’s the strutting and posturing and pronouncing of you guys that I find hilarious. OK, I tell a lie, some of you are just boring and lame, Kratman for example can’t even insult people creatively, but you have moments of pure comedy genius.”

Hampus Eckerman: “Honestly, when you are saying that there are no unwritten rules, the
only thing you’re really saying is that you haven’t got the social
competence to notice them. Even when people write them on your nose.

Mickey Finn: “I’ve been making my way through the short stories, novellas and
novelettes, and so far haven’t even encountered a competently polished
turd.

NelC: “I’m not absolutely convinced that you’re not the type of loony who
thinks he can gain advantage by pretending to be a (different kind of)
loony, but either way, you’re seriously fucked in the head.”

Alexvdl: “I think you have articulated better than anyone else why Beale’s (and
other puppies) reliance on rating systems shows how far outside fandom
they are.”

Whatever reader: “I had a great time voting “No Award” today… I’d rather give the award to a trash can than to the crap they spent years working on.”

By contrast, here is how the non-Puppies in the field see the situation.

Rick Moen: “I think it’s abundantly clear what about the Beale and Torgersen
campaigning and (apparent) acquisition of nomination votes has made
habitual Hugo voters and Worldcon co-goers very annoyed and (in my
estimation) in a mood to terminate what they see as behaviour hostile to
the Worldcon.”

Whereas here is how at least some of those outside science fiction are seeing it:

Greg Ellis: “When all of this blew up I was not even a non-attending supporting
member of WorldCon. I’ve known about the Hugos for years, but never knew
I had, as a fan, a chance to vote for nominees or on the final ballot.
That all changed this year. What also changed was that I came down on
the Sad Puppies side of the debate. For awhile I was trying to look at both sides and judge equitably. I
was trying to be fair and open-minded and non-biased. Then I asked the
wrong question of the wrong people at the wrong time. Even Brianna Wu
chimed in on that one. I was a “white supremacist” by mere association
with Brad Torgerson and Larry Correia because they knew Vox Day and I
was friends with Brad and Larry on FaceBook. Guilt-by-association. I do
not tolerate being accused of something that anyone who knows me
understands that I am not. You want to push me into somebody else’s
camp, make an accusation like that.”

RI: I’ve been a spectator to this conflict for several months now. To be
honest, I didn’t even know who any of the participants were when I first
started following. Now, because of the outcry against you, Mr. Correia,
and Mr. Torgersen I have become a daily reader of your blog and am
rapidly burning through Mr. Corriea’s books.

Bojoti, a Worldcon Supporting member appears to share similar sentiments:

I knew absolutely nothing about the Sad Puppies until this year. I knew of the Hugos but little about them, either. I’d followed George R.R. Martin’s Not a Blog for years, and I remember him encouraging people to vote because the Hugos were their award (except now, they aren’t). But, back then, I had a house full of kids which meant less time for reading and fewer dollars for sure! Now, the kids are gone, and I have more of both of the aforementioned. When I discovered that WorldCon would be held in the Midwest in 2016, I was excited and decided to get a supporting membership for this year and attend the next.

I didn’t realize all the turmoil about Sad Puppies until after the nominations were announced. I came to the situation too late to nominate and unaware that my membership would be an affront to the TrueFans. I just wanted to participate in and give back to a genre that has been integral to my life. Instead, I find that I’m not welcome at the cool kids’ table, which is ironically hilarious, because my science fiction ways were unpopular to the non-science fiction crowd of my youth.

As is my researching way, I took to the Internet to look at all sides. I went all the way back to the inception of Sad Puppies. I read “Making Light.” I Googled, read, and digested from a wide spectrum from news sources (most very biased and inaccurate), authors’ websites, Twitter, and Facebook.

I think what the TrueFans and Sad Puppies don’t realize is that they are being watched by the great unwashed masses, hoi polloi, the little people of science fiction. Some of the behavior and rhetoric is so hateful and venomous that I regret my membership. Authors were saying that the new members didn’t love science fiction; they were claiming that they didn’t even read! Some were even saying stupid things like the Koch brothers bought my membership. TrueFans were disgusted by the thought of new members. They like the WorldCon being small and are actively against new members.

I’m rethinking attending WorldCon 2016. I’ll wait to see what happens at Sasquan before I decide. If people are going to act crazy like a frenetic bag of cut snakes, I want no part of that fandom (or Fandom). I don’t need to spend money to be ostracized, belittled, and hated. I’m sure I can get that for free, elsewhere!

The TrueFans are pushing the new members right into the Sad Puppies’ doghouse. I wasn’t a Sad Puppy, but if the TrueFans don’t want me, they have proven the Sad Puppies’ charge of insular exclusivity. When the TrueFans band together and decide as a bloc NOT to read the works and agree to vote No Award to Sad Puppy nominations, they’ve lost any respect or sympathy I had for them. When people advocate putting the Puppies “down,” I’m horrified. When people write “basically if the “hero” isn’t white and male, the Puppies will get all Sad at you and threaten to rape you to death. Like the good, tolerant humans they are, natch,” I’m sickened. When an author opines the correct way to treat the Sad Puppies is “Well, we make fun of them. We refuse to play with them. We refuse to share our resources with them,” I flash back to the petty games of the middle school mean girls’ cliques.

Baen Books author John Ringo has an idea where things are headed and why:

The SJBs, CHORFs, what have you are facing an uphill climb. Their ‘award winning authors’ are hardly popular in the mainstream (also frequently boring as shit on a panel) and every convention which has tried to stay entirely ‘SJW’ has found it has little or no market.

The CHORFs accuse the SPs of ‘fighting to retain white-male privilege.’ The reality is that the CHORFs are desperate to retain any sort of relevance at all. ‘Their’ conventions are failing. ‘Their’ books don’t sell as well as ‘pulp crap’. ‘Their’ magazines are losing circulation and closing. Lose control of the Hugos and they become irrelevant. And desperate regimes get crazier and crazier the more desperate they become.

They are not completely irrelevant yet. But they will be. And they fear it. Their over-the-top reactions make that very clear indeed.

Vile Minion pride

Dear Evil
Legion of Evil,

It has come to my attention that our vile faceless minions,
in their abject loyalty to Our Evilness, crave more than the
mere lash of our whips, the daily sustenance of SJW blood, and the occasional bones of an SJW on
which to gnaw. Such is their pride in the growing spread of the dark
shadow over lands hitherto unengulfed that they have begged for
badges of recognition with which they can strike yet more
fear into our craven and cowardly foes.

It is, of course, exceedingly risible to imagine that we should raise
them up to the extent of providing them with names. Or, as
one minion, who is unfortunately no longer with us after an
accident that involved six Hellhounds and the untimely ringing of a dinner
bell, once had the temerity to suggest, pay them wages. But it occurred to me, in a
stroke of Indubitably Evil Genius, that it might be
useful to be able to tell the difference between these
otherwise indistinguishable, and indeed, faceless,
creatures. Therefore, in my Tender yet Sinister Mercy, I have graciously acceded to their pleas.

An example of the first said badge is provided, one which has already been awarded to the first and most ruthlessly loyal of our minions. Should any
of these vile and faceless minions wish to boast their own number in the Evil Legion of
Evil, they have merely to humbly bring themselves to Our Superlatively Evil Attention via the word MINION.
My Inventively Evil and Aggressively Breasted Executive Assistant, Malwyn, she who is also known as the Whore-Mistress of the Spiked Six-Whip, will subsequently send them a uniquely numbered badge, which they can display
to the public with all the unseemly pride and haughty arrogance they will no doubt feel, filling SJW hearts with fear and horror thereby.

In Supreme Confidence of the Coming Day in which Darkness Shall Cover All the Land,

Vox Day
Supreme Dark Lord
Evil Legion of Evil


And in other news, I answer a few questions about my intentions at File 770:


“I don’t care about awards at all.”

None the less, your nomination of yourself has been noted. Also, your nomination of people who work for you.”

Yes, that’s obvious. And the statement is nevertheless true.

“Well, who cares how many page views he gets?”

Scalzi and everyone who claims how popular and influential he is. It was all self-puffery all along. When he claimed to have 2 million pageviews monthly in a 2010 interview with Lightspeed and everyone bought it, he actually had 305k.

“No-one’s conspiring to keep you from your just rewards, we just individually don’t like you.”

Yes, I know. I still don’t care. Why is it that you feel the need to keep pointing out the obvious? Do you find it that hard to accept that I place no value on your precious opinion? And yes, I will keep coming after PNH, but no I would not go after Stross, Valente, or anyone else unless they give me reason to do so. Leave me alone, I’ll leave you alone. And unlike Scalzi, I have respect for Stross’s writing. I was one of the few people who used to nominate him for Nebulas back when he most deserved them.

“What is your ultimate objective regarding the Hugos this year? Is it to win a few for your writers?”

To see how the SF establishment responds. This was just recon. No, winning awards was never an objective. I do think John deserves to win a few, as with Stephenson and Mieville he is one of the best SF/F writers writing today. And if WorldCon prefers No Award to honoring Wright for works much superior to past winners, that will confirm what I suspected from the start. And what I expected.

See, I’ve never been interested in much more than convincing a large number of people that the SJWs in SF are, in fact, the cultural enemy. You’ve collectively played your part wonderfully well in that regard. Based on his recent piece, I think Jim Hines is one of the first to belatedly figured out what’s actually going on. But it’s far too late. The mask has not only slipped, it’s been ripped off.

“And what will your response be next year if SP/RP nominees are No Awarded this year, as some have threatened?”

I haven’t given the matter much thought, other than to point out the one obvious option. It’s no secret that a fair number of RP want me to declare No Award for everyone and everything THIS year. The idea had some appeal, but the SP asked me not to do that and I agreed to give WorldCon a chance to play ball. If they’d rather play war, well, I am a wargamer. That’s fine too.

“And what is the plan about getting yourself nominated as editor?”

I am the sharpest stick. And I am the best short-form editor this year, as it happens. Not that it is likely to matter with regards to the vote, but then, that’s sort of the point.

“In conclusion, if you don’t care about awards (and I believe you), why go through the exercise? Do you intend to advise your supporters how to cast their final ballot? Will you be actively coordinating the final ballot with Larry Corriea, Brad Torgersen, Jim Butcher, etc.? Will you be suggesting anything for No Award?”

To get a better grasp on what the other side can bring to the battlefield when motivated. Yes. No. I will either suggest everything or nothing for No Award, but I have not made a final decision. Out of respect for the opinions of SP and neutrals, I am leaning towards nothing but it is possible their opinions will change, given the behavior of the SJWs.

With regards to the vote, although Sasquan’s ballot is now open, I will not be posting my list of recommendations until several weeks after the Hugo packet is released. I have no idea when that will be, as I have not yet been contacted in that regard. However, those interested in reading the nominated works of John C. Wright can download them for free here.