Tag: Hugo Award

SJW attempts to block Weir nomination

From File 770:

steve davidson on February 2, 2016 at 7:48 am said:
I asked Weir to publicly repudiate the slate inclusion. He has responded that he does not get involved with politics.

(laughs) They are a predictable lot, are they not? Especially when I’ve made it perfectly clear that there is no “slate” per se, there is simply a list of the sort of personal recommendations that many other individuals who read science fiction and fantasy are making. And since we are reliably informed that very few individuals read this blog, it seems strange that so many SJWs get so worked up over what I have read, and what I recommend.

It is hardly my fault that I have such exquisite taste that is so broadly echoed by hundreds of fellow science fiction and fantasy readers.

As for why I did not recommend Mr. Weir as Best New Writer last year, it was for a very simple and straightforward reason: I had not read his novel. Unlike so many of the SJWs, I do not recommend novels I have not read, writers whose books I have not read, or artists whose work I have not seen. Those who have not brought their works to my attention have only themselves, and their publishers, to blame if I remain unfamiliar with them. I am but a mere superintelligence; I am not omniscient.

It is perhaps worth noting, again, that I do not care in the least what a writer or an artist happens to think about being recommended; die Gedanken sind frei. People can recuse themselves, publicly repudiate, or virtue-signal, or perform interpretive dance to express the depth of their feelings about Rabid Puppies. It makes no difference to me.

That being said, it appears Marc Miller is not eligible for Best New Writer despite having published his debut novel in 2015. I shall have to revisit that category at a later date.

Rabid Puppies 2016: Best New Writer

I’ll be gradually making my preliminary recommendations for this year’s Hugo Awards, after which I will collect them all in one complete summary post that is most certainly not a slate, much less a direct order by the Supreme Dark Lord to the Evil Legion of Evil, the Vile Faceless Minions, the Dread Ilk, the Ilk of Vox Popoli, and the Rabid Puppies.

To kick things off, we’ll begin with the Campbell Award: Best New Writer category:

  • Pierce Brown
  • Cheah Kai Wai
  • Sebastien de Castell
  • Marc Miller
  • Andy Weir 

If anyone is aware of any eligibility issues that I might have missed, please let me know.

If you want to play Hugos

And you didn’t vote in the final round last year, you’ll have to register today or tomorrow in order to be able to vote in the nominations.

The Hugo Awards voting process has two stages: a nomination period and a final voting period. During the nomination period ballots may be cast by members of MidAmeriCon II and Worldcon 75 (as of January 31) and members from Sasquan, the 73rd Worldcon.

Just a reminder for those who would have liked to be able to participate last time. The Rabid Puppy List of Recommendations That Is Most Certainly Not a Slate, Much Less a Direct Order From the Supreme Dark Lord of the Evil Legion of Evil will be posted in February.

Tor editor “not expected to recover”

From Facebook:

Late this afternoon David [Hartwell] had a massive brain bleed from which he is not expected to recover.

Hartwell was John C. Wright’s editor at Tor Books; he was also friendlier to the Puppies than any of the SF-SJWs are likely to believe. I had the privilege of speaking with him when he called me last year after the Rabid Puppies overturned the SF applecart; he was the previously unnamed individual who explained the unusual structure of Tor Books to me, using the analogy of a medieval realm with separate and independent duchies. He wanted to avoid cultural war in science fiction even though he clearly understood that it appeared to be unavoidable; it was out of respect for him that I initially tried to make a distinction between Tor Books and the Making Light SJWs before Irene Gallo and Tom Doherty rendered that moot.

Despite his leftward leanings, David Hartwell struck me as being one of the last remaining sane individuals in the editorial offices there, and he was perhaps the only one capable of reigning in the lunatic impulses of Patrick Nielsen Hayden and the Torstapo. By his own account, he even managed to talk the notorious award-whore into standing down and letting long-time bridesmaid Lou Anders of Pyr finally win PNH’s Best Tor Editor Award (also known as Best Editor (Long Form) Hugo) in 2011.

I expect he will be missed by many, and that things in the science fiction world are going to get even more, shall we say, interesting, in his absence.

UPDATE: David Hartwell has died. Requiescat in pace.

Sad Puppies can’t protect them now

Sarah Hoyt tries to explain what Brad and Larry couldn’t manage to get across to the SF SJWs last year.

What they don’t realize is that they’re attacking the people who read in favor of the imaginary “other” who will be so refined and perfect. They also don’t realize that Sad Puppies was the only thing PROTECTING them from Vox. I don’t know if we still are enough to protect them, and at this point I know any number of people who say “May G-d have mercy on their souls” rather than try to defend them.

Even if one disregards how many Sad Puppies were converted into Rabid Puppies by the actions of the SJWs, there simply isn’t anything the Sad Puppies can do to protect them from us this year. Nor are they particularly interested in doing so.

“I find Vox Day a bit abrasive but honestly at this point I’m ready for him to eat them alive.”

Last year, my alliance with the others tied my hands. You may recall that I did not talk much to the media or bother to protest most of their ridiculous characterizations, but left that to Brad, the SP3 spokesman. I had no need to defend myself against spurious charges, and there was no point in doing so anyhow.

This year is when the Rabid Puppies will respond. But not in kind. No, because we have no need to tell lies about them. I intend to do something far, far worse. I intend to tell the truth.

While they, apparently, are occupied with making Lego figures of us. It seems that is what they do when they are not obsessing over what they think we are thinking. Even in light of how poorly they anticipated me last time, it’s mildly amusing to see that they still don’t understand my perspective at all.

PNH’s assault parakeet

Scott Lynch, whose lips have been firmly attached to Patrick Nielsen Hayden’s posterior for over a decade now, is speaking out for the Macmillan-silenced Tor Books senior editor in falsely accusing John C. Wright.

This was especially frustrating in the wake of the 2015 World Science Fiction Convention, after which the ponderously self-important blowhard John C. Wright publicly accused veteran editor and lifelong fan Patrick Nielsen Hayden of both assaulting Wright’s wife and masterminding the long-term “corruption” of the Hugo Awards, to which the SF/F field largely replied: “Meh.” Now, some of that is certainly due to Wright’s tireless self-marginalization and frothing bigotry, but regardless, I think Patrick deserved better of his friends and colleagues. He deserved to have someone stand up and state plainly what he could not– that John C. Wright talks a big game about truth and courage, but that he is demonstrably full of shit. 

The only individual here who is completely full of shit is the habitually vulgar Scott Lynch. Wright was telling the truth about Patrick Nielsen Hayden’s unprofessional and inappropriate verbal attack on Mr. Wright’s wife, and he is also telling the truth about PNH’s involvement in corrupting the Hugo Awards. No one stood up and defended PNH because they knew that Wright was telling the truth: PNH is a hot-tempered, unprofessional, and literally uneducated awards whore.

I know it too. I have had direct, personal conversations with a senior executive at an SF publishing house who confirmed that Patrick Nielsen Hayden is a shameless award-chaser who was finally persuaded to finally step back and recuse himself one year so that a perennial second-placer could have a chance to win an award, before promptly putting himself forward again in order to chase more awards.

I don’t know if PNH’s awards-whoring is due to his shame at being one of the very few without a high school degree in a highly literate field; perhaps he thinks collecting awards will somehow compensate for his inferiority complex or perhaps he simply requires external approval for his efforts. Whatever the reason, the simple fact is that PNH and the little coterie of authors around him have connived, pimped, and collaborated to manipulate the Hugo Awards process on their own behalf for well over a decade. This isn’t up for debate. It’s the recent history of the Hugo Awards.

In fact, the ONLY reason that two different Best Editor awards exist in the first place is because PNH was whining and crying to anyone who would listen about the fact that he kept losing out to short form editors like Gardner Dozois. And no sooner did the Puppies knock him out of contention in 2015 than his site became the center of efforts to change the rules so that PNH would be able to reliably nominate himself for Best Editor (Long Form) again.

Wright makes these points clear over and over again on his own time, and the fact that he’s a bigoted goofball is hardly a state secret. What is important is that nothing he’s tried to push about the Hugo Awards or about Patrick Nielsen Hayden has any scintilla of truth to it, and anyone who tries to tell you differently in the coming months is either a liar or a water carrier for a depressingly stupid conspiracy theory spun by liars.

It’s amusing to see Lynch talk about what isn’t a state secret, considering what he obviously doesn’t know about PNH. Scott Lynch clearly doesn’t know a damn thing about any of this. He wasn’t there at the time that Patrick Nielsen Hayden verbally attacked Mrs. Wright and he isn’t sufficiently well connected in publishing circles to know the truth about what an insecure little awards whore PNH is.

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.

How generous of John indeed! Fortunately, PNH was able to repay that generosity at Macmillan’s expense. Notice that PNH doesn’t see fit to mention mention that he was the co-sponsor of the new award.

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.
– Chris Barkley

Both Mr. and Mrs. Wright were published by Tor Books, and they know the same thing I do as a result of my conversations with the publishing executive. PNH was colluding and conspiring and campaigning for awards long before the Sad Puppies entered the picture, and long-time industry professionals know it.

In any event, the fact that Macmillan still hasn’t responded to the complaints about PNH’s Code of Conduct violation means that it is time to start requesting responses from them again. And if they don’t respond to his unprovoked and unprofessional attack on a woman of Jewish descent, then the matter will be brought to the employment authorities.

McRapey’s take: “What it looks like when one writer calls another writer onto the carpet, and then sets the carpet on fire…. Seriously, I think I’m just gonna spend my day eating ice cream and
figuring out what part of science fiction I’m totes ruining next.”

Well, we already knew he’s not going to spend it writing….

The new battleground

George Kirby throws down a gauntlet.

Look – you will be represented in accordance with your numbers. It’s just that you have really small numbers. That’s why you got your ass handed to you during the vote. And its going to get smaller. Once EPH goes into effect people will stop forking over $40 just because Bard/Larry/Vox tells them them TOR is controlling the Hugos. Again – look at the Goodreads Choice Awards. How are the pups doing? Why don’t you freep that? Because you can’t. Your numbers are tiny.

It’s remarkable how SJWs keep doing the same thing over and over again. I seem to recall when John Scalzi told us that instead of complaining about the increasingly poor quality of the fiction that was winning Hugo awards, we should get involved, nominate, and vote. And instead of being praised for that, we were attacked, vilified, and abused by the deviants of Fandom.

In the event that we follow Mr. Kirby’s suggestion and are successful in 2016, does anyone think he will congratulate us? Or will we meet with more vilification? I think we can guess given this pair of mind-boggling assertions on his part.

“Scalzi writes good stuff and doesn’t call you anything.”

In any event, there is really only one way to find out. I created my Goodreads account yesterday, as it is clear that with Amazon increasingly policing their reviews, Goodreads has become a primary locus of effort for SJWs. It’s time to for us to start contesting that territory; create an account there and friend me. If you’ve already got a Goodreads account, friend me. You can also follow my author page there. And then start rating. Don’t worry about writing reviews for now, just hit the ratings for the time being.

You can also join the new Goodreads group: Rabid Puppies.

The other thing to do is to flag all of the attack reviews. For example, an SJW named Aaah tried to pass this off as a one-star review of SJWAL:

Ah, Vox Day. This gif reflects how I feel whenever I hear/read him argue about something, which I’ve been doing since reading A Throne of Bones (a fantasy novel by Vox Day so bad it may cause indelible fits of laughter).

Unlike with A Throne of Bones, I didn’t actually read SJWs Always Lie.

I didn’t have to. It’s all in the title.

1. Because Vox Day’s horde – and I swear to god, they’re a “horde” he calls “the Dread Ilk” – have given the book 5 star ratings across the board on Amazon. They actually gather online to discuss “tactics”, as they’re now doing for the 2016 Hugo Awards. I am not making this up. Day, who failed at destroying the 2015 Hugo Awards, is actually happily sneering at liberal speculative fiction writers, using fandom’s post-Hugo celebratory time to (I swear) try and plan a sneak attack. His own words.

“Sneak attack.” No fucking irony.

2. Vox Day’s inability to grasp irony makes its way to the book title. Because Vox Day is, I’ve decided in the time since reading A Throne of Bones (somehow not explicitly subtitled Jesus is the Light of the World and Also Women Are Timid, Frail, Innocent Creatures Which Ought to Be Ruled By Men) an actual idiot….

It takes a real toilet-clogger to earn 1-star based on title alone, but Day did it.

Congratulations, Einstein.

Of course, because SJWs Always Lie, it’s apparent that he didn’t read ATOB either. Goodreads is already aware it has a problem with SJWs posting DISQUALIFY reviews like this; some of them still complain about the great review Purge that began in 2013 after it announced a policy that banned reviews like the one quoted above.

**Delete content focused on author behavior. We have
had a policy of removing reviews that were created primarily to talk
about author behavior from the community book page. Once removed, these
reviews would remain on the member’s profile. Starting today, we will
now delete these entirely from the site. We will also delete shelves and
lists of books on Goodreads that are focused on author behavior.

With that in mind, in addition to rating whatever books you’ve read, those participating should go through the various reviews of the books of the Castalia House authors and flag every review that contains content focused on author behavior rather than on the book itself.

Do we want to reconcile?

Steve Davidson of Amazing Stories informs us how the Puppies can do so, should we be so inclined.

Want to reconcile?  Here’s what puppies must do.

  1.     stop scamming the system.  If you want to recommend works that you think are worthy of the award, go ahead and do so.  But drop the political agenda (you’re dragons are imaginary) and eliminate the hateful, snarky commentary
  2.     stop attacking the very people who are offering you a bridge
  3.     please learn a little bit about the history of Worldcon and the Hugo Awards
  4.     if you want to be counted as Fans, then be Fans.  Fans who care attend Worldcon, nominate their conscience and attend the business meeting to effect change they think is needed.  They work WITH and within fandom – they do not set themselves up as a cabal that engages in fear and hate.

My response:

  1. Recommending works we thought were worthy was all we did last year. I wrote one (1) single post to that effect. Chaos Horizon even demonstrated mathematically that there was no bloc-voting by the Puppies last year. But PNH and the Tor Cabal are not imaginary. The whisper campaigns and award pimpage of the past are not imaginary. People buying memberships for their underage children so they could bloc-vote for them are not imaginary. SJWs actively pushing a political agenda in science fiction are not imaginary. The rules changes they rammed through in order to defend their turf, exactly as I predicted, are not imaginary. So, no.
  2. No. It’s not a bridge, it’s an invitation to surrender.
  3. We know far more about the history of Worldcon, Fandom, and the Hugo Awards than you want us to know. We know all about Heidi Saha and David Asimov and the Greyland siblings and Kevin Smith, and the Sri Lankan cabana boys, just to name a few, and soon the entire world will know all about what happened to more than a few children at Fandom’s hands. Or to be more precise, what is happening to them. Fandom fosters, defends, and even celebrates a tremendously sick and twisted group of criminal deviants.
  4. We don’t want to be Fans. We don’t want to be anything like you. We don’t want anything to do with you. We are entirely content to be what George Martin dismisses as mere readers, writers, editors, and publishers. And what we intend to do in 2016 is continue to liberate a literary genre from the small collection of creepy left-wing monsters, rape enthusiasts, and social justice warriors who have made it their home for decades.

The caption reads: “Eat your heart out, Isaac Asimov – Heidi has promised to wait until Forry grows up!”

Note that the gentleman in the photograph above, Forrest Ackermann, was honored with a 1939 Retro-Hugo for Best Fanzine in 2014. He was also nominated for Best Fan Writer.

I said in 2013, there can be no reconciliation. Everything I have learned over the last two years has confirmed that. Decent human beings who respect traditional morality don’t reconcile with child abusers and the amoral Fans who enable, celebrate, and associate with them.

So, I vote no to reconciliation. What do you say, Rabid Puppies? What do you say, Dread Ilk? What do you say, Sad Puppies?

Even the moderate leader of Sad Puppies 3, Brad Torgersen, sounds as if he considers the prospect of reconciliation to be a dubious one.

An analysis of the post-Hugo numbers identifies a 2,500-vote block of individuals who seemed to think the best way to annihilate the infamous forces of the Kurgan — Vox Day — was to accept Vox’s challenge to play chicken. Now, I warned everybody that chicken is the Kurgan’s favorite game. But that 2,500-vote block went ahead and played the game anyway, nuking five whole categories, and cheering themselves in the process. It was their finest moment. It was also precisely what Vox Day wanted them to do, because it gives Vox his pretext for further assaults on the Hugos in future years, while also radicalizing and alienating many people who wanted nothing to do with Vox, but who did want to see justice done at the Hugo awards proper.

As I warned Mike Glyer of File 770, I am a patient man. We didn’t fight back in the media last year, but let them take their best shot at calling us bigots, racists, neo-nazis, and so forth. Last year, I did nothing more than post a single list of recommendations.

And now that 2015 has come to an end, it’s our turn.

In the spirit of the season

George R.R. Martin spares a few kind words for the Sad Puppies:

In the spirit of the season, I am going to say something nice about the Sad Puppies. Last year’s Puppygate was an ugly affair. I am not going to rehash it here. My views are all on record, my original blog posts still up for anyone who wants to go back and read them. The last thing I want… the last thing anyone who truly loves science fiction, fantasy, and fandom would want… would be to have to go through the whole thing again in 2016. Whatever your view of how the Hugo Awards turned out at Sasquan, I think we can all agree that we would like MidAmericon II’s awards to be more joyful, less rancorous, less controversial.

And maybe… just maybe… we’ll get our wish. Call me naive. Call me an innocent. Call me too trusting by half, too nice a guy to see how things really are… but, really, I am starting to have some hope. All over the internet, people are already talking about the Hugo Awards, making recommendations, discussing the work… the WORK, the things we love, the stuff that unites us instead of the stuff that divides us. I’ve been trying to do my part, here on my Not A Blog, and will continue to do so. Over at FILE 770, similar discussions are taking place. And on many other websites, blogs, and bulletin boards as well… including Sad Puppies 4.

Yes, the Sad Puppies are doing it again. ((No big secret, that was announced even before worldcon)). Discussions of possible nominations in all Hugo categories can be found on their SP4 site here: http://sadpuppies4.org/sp4-recommendations-pages-and-faq/ Go check it out. You can even join in. So far as I can tell, you don’t need to be a Puppy to recommend.

As of a few minutes ago, there were 159 ‘thoughts’ in the Best Novel section, which suggests a healthy level of participation. And, I am pleased to say, almost all of what follows seems to be honest and enthusiastic discussion of the work. I am seeing very little name-calling compared to what we saw in Sad Puppies 3, a dearth of references to CHORFS and ASPs and Puppy-kickers and that perennial favorite, SJWs. I am not seeing any “nominate this, it will make their heads explode” posts that we saw so often last year.

Instead, people are recommending books. A very wide range of books. Sure, new works by familiar Puppy favorites like Larry Correia, Mike Williamson, and John C. Wright are being recommended (no surprise there)… but so are works by Neal Stephenson, James S.A. Corey, Naomi Novik, Victor Milan, Terry Pratchett, S.M. Stirling, Ian Tregillis, Ernie Cline, Elizabeth Bear, Gene Wolfe, Michael Moorcock, Orson Scott Card, Greg Bear, Kate Elliott, and many others… including the latest Marko Kloos, and… wonder of wonder… novels from N.K. Jemisin and Anne Leckie!

There are some really good names on that list. Some really good books. (And many I have not read yet, but will look up now). And there’s an amazing range of literary styles, subgenres, and… yes… political and religious views. And all this is to the good.

Is it a Christmas miracle? Has Mr. Martin’s heart grown three sizes? It is an inspiration, is it not?

For my part, I will certainly pledge that when the time comes to make the recommendations for Rabid Puppies 2, there will not be a single reference to CHORFS and ASPS, to Puppykickers, or even to SJWs. There will be no negativity nor will any nominations be urged for the purposes of inspiring rapid cranial expansion; any head-exploding that happens to take place in response to the RP2 recommendations will be entirely unintended on my part.

I trust that all of the responses to those recommendations, by Mr. Martin and others, will be similarly restrained.