Tag: Puppies

It’s not a new problem

Politics took the prize a long time ago and the Puppies are a response to the politicization of science fiction. Compare and contrast the latest Hugo mewling by The Guardian with Mike Glyer’s count of conservative Hugo-winners:

The Hugo awards will be the losers if politics takes the prize

The controversy stirred up by science fiction’s ‘Sad Puppies’ means there will be no winners at this year’s Hugo awards

The latest furore to consume SF fandom will reach a conclusion on Friday, when voting for the Hugo awards – arguably one of the genre’s most prestigious accolades – closes. Spats around the awards are nothing new. The nominations are chosen by fans, and every year authors are accused of campaigning to get their names on the list. This year a gang of rightwing authors known as the “Sad Puppies” have taken campaigning to a whole new level. Calling on their fans to stack the nomination slate with candidates who share their political agenda, their main beef is that they believe too many genre awards go to lefty, ideological fiction, and not enough to more “swashbuckling” books. Authors and fans on both sides of the divide have written endless blogs about the controversy, big names including George RR Martin have weighed in against the Puppies, and the story has been picked up by the mainstream press.

It raises the question: who should nominate works for awards anyway? A select jury (a la the Man Booker or Clarke) or the fans who actually buy the books? Clearly there should be enough room – and integrity – for both. Yet this year’s Clarke award shortlist was almost universally praised, while, in contrast, the Hugo nominations were met with derision and incredulity (for example, so-called “rabid puppy” Vox Day, who has called women’s rights “a disease to be eradicated”, is up for two awards). You might say that this is democracy at work – the fans have spoken! – and that would be all well and good, but, tellingly, two authors recommended by the Sad Puppies have already pulled their work from the nominations, saying that they want their writing to be judged on merit and not on their assumed political affiliations. It goes without saying that all books, whatever their authors’ political stance, should be judged on whether they’re any good or not; but with some factions suggesting fans vote “No Award” on categories that they believe have been hijacked, and the Puppies urging their stormtroopers to stick to their guns, the whole thing has slipped into farce. And this is a great pity. The Hugos have always been a popularity contest, a showcase of SF fandoms’ favourite fiction, and skewing the lists for political point-scoring makes a mockery of them. Whether the Sad Puppies win the day or not, it’s the awards’ legacy that will suffer, along with the future work that would have benefited from their now damaged prestige. That’s what is truly sad.

19 of the 266 Hugo Awards that have been given out since 1996 have gone to political conservatives. And the legacy of the awards has already suffered, because they have been regularly given out to inferior work for at least the last 15 years. When Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Charles Stross, and John Scalzi have more Hugo nominations in far fewer years of professionally writing and editing than Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, and Arthur C. Clarke, it is patently obvious that something is seriously wrong.

Meanwhile, women have won 65.7 Hugos in the same time. And keep in mind that conservatives outnumber liberals by a factor of 1.6 in the USA, which means that conservatives are underrepresented by a factor of 11.3, versus women being underrepresented by a factor of 2.

Now, if the SJWs in SF are to be believed, this is evidence that sexism is a serious problem but
there is absolutely no evidence of left wing ideological bias. They keep
repeating this despite the fact that the anti-right wing bias in
science fiction is observably 5.6 times worse than the purported sexism
about which they so often complain.

Of course, SJWs always lie.

Everyone hates Gawker

Because other than occasionally sending emails to their dwindling pool of advertisers, I pay no attention to Gawker, I completely missed the fact that the Gawker Review of Books addressed the Puppies and the Gallo attack in Gawker’s inimitable – and yes, libelous – style back in June.

The Sad Puppies are also closely associated with neoreactionary, Gamergater, and notorious white supremacist Vox Day (he says he’s not a white supremacist, but he also says “Racism is neither a sin nor is it a societal evil. Race-based self-segregation is not only the observably preferred human norm for all races throughout the entirety of recorded human history, it is inevitable,” so go ahead and draw your own conclusions) who both played a part in picking the Sad Puppies nominees and started his own Rabid Puppies slate. Coincidentally, a number of the Rabid Puppies nominees have been published by Day’s obscure, Finland-based publishing house, Castalia House.

“I don’t mind being linked to Vox, because I don’t hate and fear Vox like a little schoolgirl who’s been stung by a wasp,” Torgersen has written.

And that’s who the most powerful publisher in sci-fi apparently decided to appease at the expense of one of its own employees.

But why?

Puppy supporters have been talking shit about Tor from the beginning of their campaign, largely because Tor editors Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden have been openly critical, and were among the first to note that Gamergate and the Puppies were making common cause. In April, Larry Correia, who started and named the original Sad Puppies campaign two years ago, had to tell Puppies supporters to chill out with their attacks on the publisher, because—as Tom Doherty also pointed out—Tor has published Puppy favorites like John C. Wright. Wright rode the Puppies slates to a record-breaking six Hugo nominations this year.

The frenzy started again last week, though, when Vox Day reignited it with a screencap of Irene Gallo’s Facebook comments, calling them “libel.” (He calls a lot of things libel.)

I don’t call “a lot of things libel”. I simply happen to be libeled on a regular basis by liars in the media at places like Gawker and The Guardian. For example, I’m not a “white supremacist”, I am a “red reservationist” who supports the right of my tribe and others to keep our racially segregated reservations established by treaty with the U.S. Federal Government.

If Jay Hathaway opposes the right of Native Americans to retain their racially segregated reservations, then he should come right out and say it. And he should also apologize for libeling me and correct his piece. But I won’t hold my breath; Gawker may well be history once Hulk Hogan gets through with them.

And notice classic SJW inversion at work. The Puppy supporters have been “talking shit about Tor” because Tor editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden and FORMER Tor editor Teresa Nielsen Hayden, to say nothing of various Torlings, have been “talking shit” about various Puppies for more than ten years now.

The war at Tor

Like a swan swimming across a pond, what looks like serenity from the outside often masks a tremendous amount of activity going on beneath the surface. Over the last few weeks I’ve had several conversations with executives at Tor Books, Macmillan, and Macmillan UK, and I can assure you that there is a very good reason for Mr. George Martin’s sudden and repeated calls for supporters of Irene Gallo and others at Tor Books to “denounce and oppose” the ongoing Tor boycott.

For those who want to stand up to the bullies and rabids and their Tor boycott, please note that SONGS OF THE DYING EARTH was published by Tor. (They were also Jack Vance’s publisher for most of the last few decades).  

That was a pretty good anthology actually. Despite the best efforts of the various authors it seldom rose to full-blown Vancean heights, but I quite liked the Tanith Lee and John C. Wright stories it contained. What Martin appears to be trying to do with his multiple posts on the subject is make it harder for the executives at Macmillan to hold anyone at Tor Books responsible for their repeated violations of the Macmillan Code of Conduct or for their attacks on Tor’s authors and customers. And although Martin is unwilling to come right out and say it, he is offering an implicit threat that if Macmillan does the right thing and jettisons the unprofessional parties concerned, he and other SJWs will launch their own boycott of Tor and take their future books to other publishers.

The reason George is doing this now is because he knows what’s going on inside Tor thanks to his various contacts there. Things are getting very heated, as it has been reported that Patrick Nielsen Hayden has threatened to take his Scalzi (and other writers) and go elsewhere if either Irene Gallo or Moshe Feder are fired or forced to resign. Whether John Scalzi backs PNH to this extent or not (and if he is even aware of this threat on his behalf or not), I do not know, but I personally find it very difficult to believe that Scalzi would ever consent to put his ten-year contract with Tor Books in jeopardy for anyone’s sake. He may be grateful to PNH for launching and repeatedly propping up his career, but he’s not THAT grateful.

If it’s true that PNH is threatening to take his ball and go to DAW or some other publishing home, it’s an amateurish move that demonstrates the very sort of entitled unprofessionalism and poor decision-making that has put Tor Books into the current situation in the first place. But it shouldn’t be a surprise that PNH might be taking this line, as he would not be the only Tor-affiliated individual who to take such a stance. For example, Tor author Mary Robinette Kowal has already publicly threatened to return the advances for her next two books and take them elsewhere if Ms Gallo is fired.

‏ @RizziWorld How about this. If they fire Irene, I will return the advances on my next two books and pull them.
7:23 AM – 14 Jun 2015

What a noble gesture in support of an employee’s right to publicly attack the company’s customers! Anyhow, if Mr. Nielsen Hayden was in fact foolish enough to threaten his superiors in any way, I expect he will soon receive an object lesson in the realities of corporate power.

And for the witch hunters at Tor who are desperate to learn with whom I have been speaking, I am kind enough to give you one little hint. Go to my Twitter account, search through it, and see who has commented on my tweets. I think you will find the results to be illuminating.

George Martin opposes the Tor boycott

George Rape Rape Martin takes time out of his daily fetish-writing to urge everyone  to oppose the Tor boycott, which is totally irrelevant and futile and doesn’t matter in the slightest, which is precisely why it must be denounced and opposed. It’s frankly a shame that he’s been distracted in this way, as old RapeSquared had been working on a smashing scene involving the violation of Arya Stark wearing the face of Cersei Lannister by two Sparrows, seven nuns, Ser Robert Strong, and King Tomas’s adopted kitten. It was really going to blow everyone’s socks off when West of Eros: The Epic Rapes of George R. R. Martin appears in 2017.

In one of the more recent developments, the Rabid Puppies and some of their allies and fellow travellers have declared a boycott of Tor Books. I say “Rabid” here because Beale is backing the boycott, while Larry Correia says the Sad Puppies are not boycotting anyone… though Correia and some of the other Sads certainly seem deeply sympathetic to the boycott.

I am not, needless to say. Neither is most of fandom.

Which makes this a perfect time to BUY SOME TOR BOOKS!!

So if you would like to strike a blow for free speech and decency, and support all the good people at Tor, go ye forth and buy a book today… from the Cocteau, or Amazon, or anywhere… and let your voice be heard.

[Martin adds in the comments:] “The Tor boycott is an ugly attempt to try and cost some good people their jobs. It needs to be denounced and opposed.”

Good people? On what planet can the likes of lying, libelous, Code of Conduct-violating individuals such as Irene Gallo and Patrick Nielsen Hayden be reasonably described as “good people”? Observably not this one. And as for the “free speech and decency” Martin claims to be defending, let’s recall the speech itself:

 “There are two extreme right-wing to neo-nazi groups, called the Sad
Puppies and the Rabid Puppies respectively, that are calling for the end
of social justice in science fiction and fantasy. They are
unrepentantly racist, sexist and homophobic. A noisy few but they’ve
been able to gather some Gamergate folks around them and elect a slate
of bad-to-reprehensible works on this year’s Hugo ballot.”
– Irene Gallo, Creative Director of Tor Books and Associate Publisher of Tor.com

That is a clear and undeniable violation on several counts of the Macmillan Code of Conduct. It is a completely unprovoked, absolutely unprofessional attack on Tor’s customers as well as several of Tor’s own authors. If Irene Gallo was a fry cook at McDonalds or a minimum-wage greeter at Walmart, she’d be gone already, and it is as disingenuous as it is stupid to pretend otherwise.

RapeSquared was promptly called on his little omissions by a few of his readers and didn’t hesitate to take some liberties with the facts. Because, after all, George Martin is an SJW, and SJWs always lie.

lordevaco
Jul. 7th, 2015 09:00 pm (UTC)
I just thought it was weird to leave out why there is a boycott in the first place, so I googled it. I didn’t even know about it, but apparently it’s because someone at Tor denounced all of them as “neo-Nazis” and “unrepentantly racist, misogynist, and homophobic” and Tor didn’t do anything about it.

That’s not cool at all either.

grrm
Jul. 7th, 2015 10:45 pm (UTC)
If you googled it, you should also have read that not one but TWO apologies were issued for that tweet, one by the person who posted it, one by the publisher of Tor. That should have closed the book on the affair. Instead we have a boycott and calls for firings.

And I have yet to see anyone on the Puppy side apologize for anything, though their name-calling has far exceeded that coming from the fans.

lumbridge
Jul. 8th, 2015 12:43 am (UTC)
Why are the sad puppies boycotting Tor books? By the way which fantasy titles would you recommend that Tor publishes?

grrm
Jul. 8th, 2015 01:27 am (UTC)
It’s the Rabid Puppies boycotting Tor, not the Sads. Plus some unaffiliated or semi-affiliated allies.

I will not attempt to explain the whole thing. In a nutshell, a Tor employee categorized the Puppies in a nasty way, some of them got outraged and demanded an apology, an apology was issued, but the Rabids decided that was not enough and now want resignations and firings. (Which they are never going to get, by the way).

We’ll see. Corporate actions tend to move along very slowly and then happen all at once. Macmillan’s CEO just returned from his sabbatical this week and I have been directly informed by a Macmillan executive that no decision on how to address the situation has yet been made. And while I suppose it is possible that Mr. Sargent could simply throw out the company Code of Conduct in order to retain the services of an arrogant, entitled employee who believes she can treat his company’s customers and authors with total contempt and still retain her job, I tend to doubt it.

I will not be even remotely surprised if both Ms Gallo and Mr. Nielsen Hayden leave Tor Books in the near future. Macmillan quite clearly had no idea what sort of inmate-run asylum it has on its hands, and it’s not surprising that it would take a little time for them to figure out what needs to be done in order to set it straight.

If it were my problem, I would clean house. After all, how many of the big SF/F franchises of the last 20 years has the biggest publisher in SF/F published? If one considers how hit SF/F franchises Tor Books has missed on, including Martin’s ASOIAF, it’s not as if their management team can considered irreplaceable. But it’s not my problem and not my decision. I’m simply not going to buy any Tor Books, not even those written by the excellent Mr. Wright, while Irene Gallo and Patrick Nielsen Hayden are still employed there.

Puppypalooza!

Puppypalooza
6 PM Friday, July 10th
The Mean Eyed Cat
Austin, Texas

Booze and barbecue. All Rabid Puppies, Dread Ilk, Ilk, and Vile Faceless Minions welcome. VFM: don’t forget your number… and check your email tonight.

RPinDC

GK sends the word of a DC-area Puppies meetup:

Saturday, July 11th
8-10 PM
Rock Bottom Brewpub
Ballston Commons Mall (Lower Level)
Arlington, Virginia

All Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies welcome. We don’t particularly care which flavor of Puppy Supporters show up. The Browncoats flag will be flying.

If you’re interested, get your bark on. And if you carry Glock, be prepared to be mocked! (Says the man who still kind of misses his G23.)

I don’t care what you do

Hugo nominee Kary English doesn’t want to give me satisfaction. But she does want a pony:

I also wish people like Brad, Larry and other SP notables would come out and say “Hey, this* isn’t what we intended or what we hoped would happen. We’re sorry the whole thing has become such a mess.” (*where “this” means locking up the ballot and shutting out other works.

Or, you know, maybe they’re not sorry. I’m certainly not. I doubt anyone in the Evil Legion of Evil is. One benefit of being ELoE is never having to say you’re sorry.

I don’t consider myself a spokesperson for the SP, or even an SP notable, but I’ll say it. I never got involved in this with any idea that I’d even make the ballot, much less that VD would run his own campaign or that there would be a ballot sweep. If I’d known that, I wouldn’t have participated. To the extent that I’ve been part of that, even unknowingly, I apologize.

Translation: “Please don’t try to kill my career, it’s not MY fault!” Of course, the truth is that all four Puppy campaigns were a convoluted plot concocted by Kary English to get herself a Hugo while leaving Brad, Larry, and I to take the blame for everything. We were naught but puppets in her insidious scheme. I have also heard that she is responsible for Benghazi and the overthrow of the Ukrainian government, as well as the upcoming Greek referendum.

It seems I can’t say anything remotely in that vein without someone saying that if I truly thought that, I would withdraw. I’ve already given my reasons for not withdrawing, but I’ll mention again that a large part of it is not giving Vox Day the satisfaction.

I think it’s interesting that she thinks I have given her any thought whatsoever. Kary, my dear, I don’t give a quantum of a damn what you do. Withdraw, don’t withdraw, retire to a nunnery, it makes absolutely no difference to me.

All that stuff about nominating liberals just to watch them self-flagellate and see how fast they withdraw? I’m not his marionette, and I won’t dance to his tune. He set us up to be targets, just like he set up Irene Gallo. I’m not giving in to Vox Day.

And yet, here she is frantically dancing without me even bothering to so much as whistle. As for Irene Gallo, I’m afraid Ms English grants me infernal powers that are, as yet, sadly not at my disposal. Ms Gallo set herself up for dismissal without my help; no one asked her to attack Tor’s customers, Tor’s authors, or Tor’s products. No one asked her to violate the Macmillan Code of Conduct.

As several of the VFM have pointed out, the SJWs have it all backwards. They have to think that I am somehow duping thousands of idiots and fools into openly opposing them because the alternative is to accept how massively unpopular they are and how dismally their decades-long campaign to tell people what science fiction they may and may not read has failed.

What should frighten them is not the idea that Brad and Larry are the moderates in this regard. What should frighten them is the fact that I AM THE REASONABLE ONE here. Because the Evil Legion of Evil, the Dread Ilk, the Ilk, the Rabid Puppies, and above all, the Vile Faceless Minions, are not here to negotiate.

The Tale of the Herald

A Parable by Cataline Sergius

The vast fires of the besiegers blanketed the once-beautiful plains surrounding Tor Keep as far as the eye could see, glowing a
hellish red-orange against a sky so dark from the smoke that mid-day
appeared to be twilight. The black legions of Evil
chanted, “he rises! he rises!” as the massive flaming boulders from
their gigantic trebuchets crashed into the Embarrassed-To-Be-So-White
walls of Tor Keep. Huge scorpios launched terrible bolts big enough to impale an elephant, or even a Swirsky.

The high walls of the keep, once thought to be completely
impenetrable, now showed massive cracks, They were the result of the thunderous
barrage of the mighty siege engines arrayed on every side, as well as the cunning mines dug  by the minions of the Supreme Dark Lord, which was totally unfair because they were so good at math.

The defenders of the
walls valiantly rained insults and condescension down upon their vile
faceless attackers, though despair now gripped every heart. The Embarrassed-To-Be-So-White walls were crumbling despite the tireless efforts of
the Diversity Wizards to magically reinforce them.

Far back
from the fighting and deep within the bowels of The Tower That Jordan Built, two herald-minions of the
Dread Lord stood before the women of the All-White-But-Nevertheless-Incredibly-Inclusive-and-Diverse-Because-They-Have-One-Gay-Asian-Guy-From-Silicon-Valley Council.

Their beautiful-in-a-very-different-way queen, Toadina the Squat, rose slowly from her heavily reinforced
throne, prompting great waves of magnificently turbulent fat to roll back and forth across her massive belly like an indecisive tsunami. She delicately cleaned one squinting yellow eye
with an elegant stroke of her forked tongue before clearing her swollen throat.

She addressed
the heralds in an imperious manner. “Here are the merciful terms we offer for your
complete and unconditional surrender. Behead your leaders. Kill one
in ten of the vile minions. Hand over two-thirds of your lands as well as all your present and future spawn. Admit your beliefs are sexist, racist, homophobic, and outdated, and renounce them. Then castrate yourselves. In
exchange we promise… to like you. A little.”

Blinking in astonishment, the two heralds looked at each other. Their faces twitched, and they appeared to be restraining deep emotion, but was it futile defiance or humble gratitude? Finally, mastering himself, the one with the number 289 branded on his right cheek stepped forward.

“I am sorry, Madam, but you appear to have mistaken us for Republicans.”

Fire Irene Gallo

Hey, SJWs, do tell us again how it is totally unthinkable that anyone could lose a job as a consequence of a private Facebook post:

North Charleston police officer was fired from his position after posting a photo on Facebook featuring the Confederate flag. WCIV reports the post, which featured the officer wearing Confederate flag boxer shorts, went viral Thursday after it was posted a few days earlier.

The police chief terminated Sgt. Shannon Dildine’s position, saying the photo questioned his ability to improve trust and instill confidence between citizens and officers.

“Your posting in this manner led to you being publicly identified as a North Charleston Police officer and associated both you and the Department with an image that symbolizes hate and oppression to a significant portion of the citizens we are sworn to serve,” Police Chief Eddie Driggers wrote, as reported by WCIV.

The continued refusal of Tor Books to hold Irene Gallo responsible for her actions demonstrates that labeling Tor’s customers “racist neo-Nazis” and Tor’s own books “bad-to-reprehensible” is observably acceptable to its management, no matter what feeble protests Tom Doherty may offer.

Sgt. Dildine posted a picture of himself. Irene Gallo attacked her employer’s customers, her employer’s authors, and her employer’s products. Why on Earth is she still employed by that employer?

We’d like you better if you were losing

The commenters at File 770 have some advice for the Puppies:

Shambles: “I think a good thing for the puppies would be new leadership; an even better thing would be to walk away from Beale; and the best thing would be to realize each member is welcome as an individual and it’s not necessary to create voting blocks for individually nominated and voted upon awards.” 

Bruce Baugh: All of this. Having a collaborative effort to assess and improve conservative fans’ and creators’ image within fandom seems well worthwhile, but it needs to come from someone who hasn’t glorified hate-mongering and vandalism and who actually does respect other fans and the volunteers who make this all happen.

Ah, if only we were more like them and had new leadership who respected them and was more interested in improving our image in their eyes than in drinking wine from their silvered skulls. Although to be honest, the more I read what they write, the more I fear they won’t make for much more than shot glasses.

What do you say, Rabids? In the place of a Dark Lord shall there be a Bright and Obsequious Queen, who shall make it her top priority to seek favor in the eyes of science fiction’s SJWs?

Or shall we make ourselves thrones of their bones once the VFM are done chewing on them?