Open Thread and Link Farm, 18 Levels Deep Edition

17-layers-deep

  1. Comedy Duo Create An Extremely Detailed Portrait In A Portrait 18 Levels Deep – DesignTAXI.com
  2. Women of Reddit, when did you first notice that men were looking at you in a sexual way? How old were you and how did it make you feel? : AskReddit Content warning for many, many stories of adult men sexualizing girls when they are 11 or even younger.
  3. Experiment Shows Teachers View ‘Deshawns’ More Harshly Than ‘Gregs’ | Colorlines “…teachers reported higher levels of being personally troubled by the report when the student had a name like “Darnell” or “Deshawn” than when the student had a name like “Greg” or “Jake.” They were also more likely to call for harsher punishment…”
  4. Written testimony to Congress by Nancy Chi Cantalupo: “It is downright dangerous to conflate civil rights and criminal justice approaches to sexual violence and allow criminal justice responses to dominate our collective imagination regarding how to address this violence. If we did so, we would eliminate sexual violence victims’ civil rights to equality, specifically student victims’ rights to equal educational opportunity.” (PDF link.)
  5. Republicans Like Class Warfare—So Long As It’s Against Hillary Clinton | Mother Jones
  6. Appomattox: How did Ulysses S. Grant become an embarrassment of history and Robert E. Lee a role model?
  7. Man Camp I wish this were a joke, but I don’t think it is.
  8. Americans’ Spending on Dining Out Just Overtook Grocery Sales for the First Time Ever – Bloomberg Business
  9. Why We Let Prison Rape Go On – NYTimes.com
  10. New Type of Boredom Discovered, and It’s Rampant The headline sounds like a parody, but it’s not.
  11. i want to remind people that if there had been no video of michael slager executing walter scott, he would have just been another cop who got away with murder. he knew the exact story to tell, the exact evidence to plant, and delivered the exact easy bake bullshit that you hear every time they slaughter a black person. and yet you wonder why we question every death— why we never believe them when they say someone tried to take a gun. wake the fuck up! #farfromover
  12. I Posed As A Man On Twitter And Nobody Called Me Fat or Threatened To Rape Me For Once – xoJane.
  13. “Rape is good fodder for comedy”: Amy Schumer makes a case for the feminist rape joke – Salon.com
  14. Fannie’s Room: Researchers Study Online Antisocial Behavior
  15. Will Hillary Clinton be too weak on climate change?
  16. Democratic voters love marijuana legalization. Hillary Clinton doesn’t.
  17. A Miscarrying Woman Was Denied Medication Because of “Conscience”
  18. Corporations now spend more lobbying Congress than taxpayers spend funding Congress
  19. Academic Freedom versus Academic Legitimacy: The UNC Case. Amp’s comment: David has it right here. Criticism of a choice of speaker is not censorship.
  20. New York A.G. to Investigate Employers Who Keep Low-Wage Workers “On Call”
  21. As Cities Raise Their Minimum Wage, Where’s the Economic Collapse the Right Predicted?
  22. California Bill Would Require Crisis Pregnancy Centers to Discuss Abortion Options. Heh. I’m of course against this idea writ large, because free speech; however, I don’t necessarily object to this law, because it limits itself to government-licensed facilities which provide pregnancy-related services.
  23. What If MLK’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” Had Been a Facebook Post? This is a post about the ways that prisons forbid prisoners from using social media – and punish them when they do. Alarmingly, Facebook is cooperating with the prisons on this.
  24. McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: Lesser-Known Trolley Problem Variations.

On The Murder Of Rekia Boyd

  1. A Judge Just Let A Cop Walk After A Deadly Shooting. Legal Experts Say The Reasoning Is ‘Incredible.’ | ThinkProgress
  2. Rekia Boyd Fact Sheet
  3. RIP Rekia Boyd: November 5, 1989 – March 21, 2012 | Gradient Lair
  4. On Rekia Boyd, Freddie Gray and the Cost of Police Impunity
  5. America’s big criminal justice lie: What one cop’s acquittal reveals about police violence & Rekia Boyd’s death – Salon.com
  6. We Do This for Rekia | Transformative Spaces

Puppies, puppies everywhere!

  1. “In other words, of the 16 written fiction nominees on Torgerson’s slate, 11 – more than two-thirds – had not actually been nominated by anyone in the crowd-sourced discussion from which, we are told, the slate emerged.” Amp: How very democratic and non-elitist!
  2. On screaming “We’re not VD!” while ignoring your relationship with VD — Jason Sanford
  3. Some Sad Puppy Data Analysis. The blogger, a puppy supporter (the most civil one I’ve encountered), attempts to use data to support the Sad Puppies; I debate him in the comments.
  4. Philip Sandifer: Writer: Guided by the Beauty of Their Weapons: An Analysis of Theodore Beale and his Supporters “Ultimately, that’s all Beale is doing: he’s hiding what he actually means behind a paper-thin veil so that it is communicated with deniability. (Fittingly, the usual name for this rhetorical technique, a favorite of political campaigns of all leanings, is “dogwhistling.”)” Warning: this one is very long.
  5. Why I Won’t Be A Presenter At The Hugo Awards This Year | Connie Willis. (Willis, for those who don’t know, has won 11 Hugos for her fiction, and been nominated 24 times.)
  6. Back To The Future – Of The Hugos | Barno’s Stables Another blog post where I’m debating the author in the comments.
  7. ETA: (3) Captain Christian White, supreme commander of… This parody of Puppies, written by Adam-Troy Castro, totally cracked me up. Thanks for the link, Myca!

whiteness-fairy

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269 Responses to Open Thread and Link Farm, 18 Levels Deep Edition

  1. 1
    gin-and-whiskey says:

    Has the whole “No Irish need Apply” thing been, largely, a constructed social myth?

    This historian argues that it has, which is entirely news to me. Fascinating read!

    ht Slate Star Codex.

  2. 2
    RonF says:

    [ administrative note ]

    I have noticed that when I enter the home page of the blog and click on a comment in the sidebar so as to go to that thread and that comment, I end up in the 100 section before it. IOW, if that comment happens to be, say, #247, I’ll be sent to comment #100. If that comment happens to be, say, #126, I’ll be sent to comment #1. I have to click on “Newer Comments” in order to get to the last comment section.

    Has anyone else seen this?

    [ /administrative note ]

  3. 3
    Jake Squid says:

    I’ve been watching The Last Man on Earth and I have a problem. The problem is that, while it’s the funniest sitcom that Mrs Squid has ever seen, it seems like a shoddy remake of Fawlty Towers to me. I just can’t get past it. Cleese and Booth spent years writing 12 fantastic episodes about a terrible, terrible man and his slightly less terrible spouse. The time spent allowed them to figure out ways in which we could feel sympathy for Basil. Last Man, otoh, leaves me wondering why anybody would want anything to do with Phil.

    Basil’s plans and schemes, though often done for the worst of motives, usually had the possibility of working out for him. They never did, of course. But, still… the wacky, Rube Goldberg chain of events that undid the best laid plans of Basil were ridiculous and funny. Phil’s plans and schemes, also done for the worst of motives, invariably have no chance of ever working out. We’re just left waiting for it to fall apart in the predictable chain of events. I don’t see the fun in that.

    I like the general concept of the show and the running gag made out of the series’ title. It’s just that I wind up feeling that the show would be so much more interesting and fun if Phil wasn’t in it. Or if Phil wasn’t, literally, the worst person in the world.

  4. 4
    gin-and-whiskey says:

    RonF: Yes. I have the same problem. FYI, if you click on the post title (instead of the comment thread) and then “end” and “page up,” it works faster than finding the “newer comments” button.

  5. 5
    Harlequin says:

    You can also change “comment-page-2” to “comment-page-3”, or delete it entirely, to go to the comment you originally wanted to click on. (But I, myself, usually use the same algorithm as g&w.)

    Last time we discussed this I thought it was due to a difference in counting trackbacks as comments or not, but since this thread has no trackbacks and it’s still wrong, I’ve decided that Amp’s server is haunted.

  6. 6
    Myca says:

    Several Puppygate links:

    Philip Sandifer has written an absolutely fantastic – really, just fucking stunning -analysis/takedown/meditation on Puppygate and VD in particular. It’s long, but it’s absolutely worth it. I’ve already ordered three of his other works after reading this blog post.

    Link here.

    An excerpt, from “Part Six: In Which Several Very Lousy Pieces of Science Fiction (And One Lovely Story About Dinosaurs) Are Analyzed in Depth”:

    In less than a thousand words, Swirsky moves among moments of silliness (“you’d walk with delicate and polite a gait as you could manage on massive talons”), moments of tenderness (“I’d pull out a hydrangea the shade of the sky and press it against my heart and my heart would beat like a flower. I’d bloom. My happiness would become petals”), and moments of utter and tragic sadness as the story’s real premise finally moves into focus in the closing paragraphs. More to the point, it mixes these – the detail of green chiffon early in the story acquires new resonance later when it becomes clear that these are the same dresses she’d already ordered for her now abandoned wedding. (And, of course, there’s the beautifully human detail of her picking a dress she knows makes her bridesmaids look sallow.)

    So, with Swirsky we have more emotional range than… well, any of [VD’s] picks, really. More than that, the story does more – its move from a flight of fancy to a strangely sweet description of a wedding to brutal tragedy and finally to a strange and uneasy rejection of its own premise as the narrator admits that her revenge fantasy – her desire to see the men who put her fiancee in a coma get eviscerated by a dinosaur – is wrong, and cruel, and yet still powerful. There’s nuance, and subtlety, and development. It’s artful, and beautiful.

    And it’s everything that [VD] and his ilk hate.

    A good overview article from the New Republic, which delves into some of the racist history of the sci-fi publishign establishment and includes some analysis of historic Hugo nominees by gender (and for which they picked the single most appropriate picture to top the article of any picture that has ever topped any article ever).

    Link

    John W. Campbell, the contentious and influential editor of Analog, claimed he enjoyed shaking up his audience with outrageous ideas, but [Samuel R. Delaney’s] Nova proved too much for him. According to Delany, Campbell called the author’s agent and said that while he liked the novel “he didn’t feel his readership would be able to relate to a black main character.” Campbell’s contention that fans weren’t ready for a book like Nova was belied by the fact that it was shortlisted for a Hugo in 1969.

    Campbell used his audience as cover for his own racism. In 1968, he penned an editorial endorsing the segregationist George Wallace for president. Earlier, he had published editorials arguing that slavery was a perfectly sensible system for pre-industrial societies, championing the racial theories of William Shockley and asserting, “One of the major reasons the Negro people are having so much trouble gaining acceptance is, simply, that the Negroes are not doing an adequate job of disciplining their own people, themselves.” Tellingly, among the few occasions that Campbell did allow fiction with black protagonists, it was in a series involving race war in Africa.

    Finally, Adam-Troy Castro has penned a hilariously allegorical tale about the adventures of Captain Christian White.

    Captain Christian White grimaced, heterosexually. He remembered the last time a Federation vessel had allowed an SJW cruiser its way, sashaying across the universe at multiple times the speed of light. The Federation’s resolve had weakened, the rockets had sagged a little on their pads, and one of the medals for valor that year had actually gone to somebody with a slightly ethnic last name. Only the keen perception of Captain White and his fellow cabal had recognized that this was the sign of a vile conspiracy, and allowed the institution of safeguards to make sure that this would never happen again.

    He straightened in his chair, not thinking of sodomy at all, and barked, “Viewscreen! NOW!”

    The Captain of the enemy vessel appeared on the screen, and for a horrible moment, Captain White almost committed a faux pas by asking an ensign to adjust the contrast. But no, it was an accurate image. The creature was THAT alien, separated from baseline humanity by a slightly higher percentage of melanin. No doubt he’d ascended to his own command by having people vote for him to feel good about themselves.

    *snerk*

    —Myca

  7. 7
    Jake Squid says:

    I was gonna link to Sandifer, too, Myca. My two favorite quotes from that post:

    And in a debate over the nature of a genre about the future, it seems to me terribly obvious that the side that values the future and savors its imaginative possibilities is going to win out over the side that hates and fears it.

    And the one that echoes my thoughts exactly on first reading about this:

    There are several things worth noting here. First and most obvious is the spectacle of a grown man complaining about how he just can’t judge a book by its cover anymore.

    Sandifer agrees with and (greatly) bolsters my position that the puppies goal is destroying the Hugos in his piece. Everything about their actions points that way to me based on my past experiences with such things. Actually winning would just be the bloody hemmorhoid on top of the steaming pile of crap they hope to make of the Hugos.

    The puppies statements ignore the history of the genre. The same things were being said about the New Wave in the 60s & 70s. Look, I love, love, love Clifford Simak and CM Kornbluth and you don’t get much more Golden Age of Science Fiction than them. But I also love N.K. Jemisin and Saladin Ahmed and George Alec Effinger and James P Blaylock and Patricia McKillip and Douglas Adams and Linda Nagata and Vernor Vinge and on and on. None of those 8 authors are anything like Simak & Kornbluth. Not stylistically, not literarily. And only one of those authors I just named are of the most recent generation of SF writers. Science Fiction and Fantasy has changed a bit over the last 80 or 100 years and that’s something to be celebrated.

  8. 8
    desipis says:

    Myca:

    Philip Sandifer has written an absolutely fantastic – really, just fucking stunning -analysis/takedown/meditation on Puppygate and VD in particular

    The more reactions I read to the whole puppygate thing, that include analyses of the puppy nominations that read like hit pieces, the more I think that maybe the sad puppies actually have a point.

    Finally, Adam-Troy Castro has penned a hilariously allegorical tale about the adventures of Captain Christian White.

    OK, that was actually pretty funny.

  9. 9
    Myca says:

    The more reactions I read to the whole puppygate thing, that include analyses of the puppy nominations that read like hit pieces, the more I think that maybe the sad puppies actually have a point.

    Well, see, I think a big chunk of the problem is that the good stuff they write was already getting nominated.

    The best evidence and analysis I’ve seen seems to indicate that the problem Torgersen/Correia/et al are so het up about does not exist. Or in any case, nobody is making a persuasive case for its existence.

    And if it doesn’t exist (which is what I currently believe, thought I might be persuaded otherwise), then the whole Puppy campaign is just affirmative action for mediocre conservative authors.

    And hey, I don’t think “mediocre conservative author” is redundant. There are truly fantastic conservative authors, and mediocre liberal ones. I’d be mad if Tim Powers (frex) wasn’t getting nominated for Hugos … but he is.

    —Myca

  10. 11
    mythago says:

    “The puppies have a point”, I assume, meaning that a lot of people are saying mean things about them, therefore their victim complexes are retroactively true?

    And no, there’s really not a persuasive case for the point they claim to be making.

  11. 12
    Myca says:

    Ah, no longer do we have to wonder about their evidence! We’ve got an official answer from the chief puppy himself!

    From Brad Torgersen:

    …if you truly believe that a book like ANCILLARY JUSTICE or a story like “The Water That Falls On You From Nowhere” did not benefit from a tremendous groundswell of affirmative-action-mindedness, you’re not paying attention.

    So the argument (or this argument, anyway) does not seem to be that there’s an organized campaign to keep conservative authors/stories off the ballot OR an organized campaign to put left-wing authors/stories on the ballot, but instead that some of the people voting for the stories may be doing so because they approve of the political message.

    Well, sure. That happens. But it’s not really a claim about “we wuz robbed” so much as it’s a claim about “we want people to like different things than the things they like” and “it’s totally unfair that people like other books more than ours for reasons we disagree with.”

    —Myca

  12. 13
    desipis says:

    mythago,

    “The puppies have a point”, I assume, meaning that a lot of people are saying mean things about them, therefore their victim complexes are retroactively true?

    Well, I think it shows that there are numerous people who are willing to engage in petty tribalistic criticism that doesn’t consider the quality of the actual work. It’s not a smoking gun, but it does lend some circumstancial creditibility to the puppies’ claims.

    Myca,

    Well, sure. That happens. But it’s not really a claim about “we wuz robbed” so much as it’s a claim about “we want people to like different things than the things they like” and “it’s totally unfair that people like other books more than ours for reasons we disagree with.”

    This sounds like it could apply to both sides.

  13. 14
    Mandolin says:

    Desipsis:

    I am fine with puppies liking what they like. I hope they recommend and vote in future years. But doing so in such a way that no one else gets a say kind of sucks. A lot.

    Also, they’ve been writing hit pieces about my fiction (with very personal attacks on me directly) for a while now, so I’m feeling not terribly sorry that they’re reaping some of what they sowed.

    Many of these picks are ideologically motivated and suffer from that. Some fiction does, and I know I have some pieces where I’m like, “oof, that was not subtle,” in retrospect. They were, by and large, still emotionally affecting to their audiences. So I did what I was supposed to do. Probably these people did, too, but there’s no reason to expect me to be any more enthusiastic about it than they are about mine.

    There’s just no conspiracy. They’re welcome to their say, but not welcome to mine.

  14. 15
    Mandolin says:

    And ancillary justice was good, old-fashioned sf for heavens sake. Space battles. Pew pew.

    The gender play really isn’t groundbreaking if you’re reading other sf. It’s like people being shocked by stage nudity when Hair is, what, 50 years old? I think it was the combination of it being fun adventure fiction, with a bit of speculative posing about gender coming in (are we forbidden to speculate about things now?), that caused it to splash. I dunno, though, sometimes splashes just happen.

    I personally think identity diversity is having a moment, across our whole culture. That happens. PTSD stories have been having a moment for a while, in the magazines at least. Cultures get interested in things, and we can see this particular interest in lots of places. My being interested in it is not an assault on anyone else. Nor is it an illegitimate thing to be interested in. I like speculative fiction that speculates; my undergraduate degree is in anthropology; cultural tropes and the development of identities are *fascinating.*

    Again, puppies can have their say, but it’s not okay for them to block everyone else’s. People are allowed to like things they don’t. And to like them genuinely. To claim that my interest in anthropology is illegitimate, or fake, is demeaning. I have never been a fan of brad’s stories, but I’ve never claimed his fans are liars when they say they are. (Or criticized his work in public, online, before this, to the best of my recollection.)

    If they have more to say and vote, do it. Do it fairly. And we can all try to persuade people to our positions. Fairly.

    There was no organized liberal slate, as far as I know. This is not a 100% guarantee that there isn’t one, but it makes it less likely. I’m tied into the circles they complain about, and they also complain about me directly. If you’re inclined to think I’m lying, I can’t argue with that; if you think I’m a dupe, I can’t argue with that either.

    But if people are voting for what they like, then what’s the ground for complaint? Again, I’m not the one telling them they can’t like what they like, or that they’re lying when they say they like it. But they *are* saying that about me.

    No fun.

  15. 16
    Ledasmom says:

    Desipis, how many of the puppy nominees have you read?
    I’m a hundred pages into “Dark Between the Stars”, have read all the short-story nominees but “A Single Samurai”, all the novelette noms, three of the novellas, have read “Skin Game” (it has been a busy couple of weeks. Also read “Ancillary Sword” as well as “Ancillary Justice” because I had not read that yet. “Goblin Emperor” on deck).
    I rather liked “Totaled”. “Skin Game” is a perfectly good and entertaining Dresden Files book (with reservations as to a couple points, not relevant here). Most of the rest is at best competently written. I won’t go into my problems with the specific stories unless people really want to hear me ramble, but I don’t consider them award-worthy. It is a valid criticism of the practice of slating to say that it produces nominees of inferior quality.
    Mind you, I did enjoy reading some of the stories, and I enjoyed parts of some of the others. But I enjoy McDonald’s french fries too. Doesn’t mean McDonald’s should get a Michelin star.

  16. 17
    Mandolin says:

    Also, again, the affirmative action claim takes for granted that the work is inferior, and that people who claim to be passionate about it are lying.

  17. 18
    Ampersand says:

    Markos Kloos, author of “Lines of Departure,” is a classy guy.

  18. 19
    Copyleft says:

    some of the people voting for the stories may be doing so because they approve of the political message.

    And now that some right wingers called “sad puppies” are doing likewise, it’s suddenly a horrible atrocity that is ‘ruining’ the Hugo Awards. That’s why the complaints don’t get much sympathy from me.

    Heck, I think Vox Day is contemptible and a terrible writer. And I disagree with a lot of Torgesen’s stuff too. But when one politically-motivated group whines about their power being threatened by another politically-motivated group? Cry me a river.

  19. 20
    Harlequin says:

    One of my friends on Twitter said, we can get a Galaxy Quest TV show, but not Star Trek?

    I don’t think anything can touch the perfection of the original movie for me, but I’ll be interested to see where this goes. And I’m always happy for more science fiction TV.

    ***

    In case somebody missed it like I did: somebody combined Comic Sans and Papyrus to make the font Comic Papyrus, a true sign of the end times.

    ***

    The Puppies could have put up a list of suggested fiction that fit their tastes, however long those lists were. They didn’t. They put up a slate. As far as I’m concerned, anything summarized as their “point” must include why they needed to game the nominations in this way; and so far no formulation of their motivations that I’ve seen has managed to both explain that and align with reality, only one or the other.

    I don’t know if they’re allowed to do so, but I wonder if the people tabulating the nominations would be able to release something like the estimated percentage of votes given to the slate candidates that actually came from slate ballots. I suspect at least some of the nominees had some spontaneous support, too, and it might be nice for them to know that. (On the other hand, if such numbers were low, maybe not.)

    ***

    If anyone enjoyed that Singaporean math problem that was making the rounds in the past couple of weeks, this and this have problems in the same category of brain teaser. (Be aware the first link has the answer right after the problem, so read slowly!)

    And if you have a couple of hours to while away on a weirdly algorithmic puzzle, this thing is…interesting. (I haven’t yet solved it– was partway through and got distracted–but I’ve been meaning to go back.)

  20. 21
    Ampersand says:

    some of the people voting for the stories may be doing so because they approve of the political message.

    And now that some right wingers called “sad puppies” are doing likewise, it’s suddenly a horrible atrocity that is ‘ruining’ the Hugo Awards.

    Could you please provide a link and a quote to back up this claim?

    Given the law of large numbers, I’m sure that someone, somewhere, has made such a complaint. But what I’ve seen, including from some extremely prominent writers (George RR Martin is the obvious example), is the claim that slates are unfair.

    I think it’s fine for right-wingers to vote for right-wing stories if they honestly like them better. I don’t think slate voting is fine.

  21. 22
    Jake Squid says:

    Could you please provide a link and a quote to back up this claim?

    You can look at several of my recent comments and find evidence for the claim. Based on my past experience of similar situations, I’m of the opinion that the major goal of the puppies is to destroy the integrity of the Hugos.

    But when one politically-motivated group whines about their power being threatened by another politically-motivated group? Cry me a river.

    Honestly, I find Copyleft’s defense of the puppies to be lacking. I’d like to see some believable evidence that the main complaint against the puppies is that a liberal cabal’s power is being threatened by the slating tactics of the right wing puppies. As far as I can tell, the complaint is that slating is reprehensible because it’s gaming the system. The complaint that the leaders of the puppies are terrible people long predates their gaming of the system.

  22. 23
    Harlequin says:

    Could you please provide a link and a quote to back up this claim?

    You can look at several of my recent comments and find evidence for the claim.

    I think the “claim” in question is not “liberals say the Puppies are ruining the Hugos” but “the Puppies are merely voting for fiction whose politics they support, and that’s what liberals are saying is destroying the Hugos”. It’s false because the Puppies are not merely voting for fiction whose politics they support, and that’s obvious to everyone except some of the Puppies working hard at PR because they’ve realized they’ve gone too far.

    EDIT: I should say, it’s been moderately successful PR, especially among folks not that familiar with the Hugos–I’m not saying Copyleft is one of the Puppies themselves.

  23. 24
    Myca says:

    Some further thoughts …

    I’ve got zero problem with conservative authors and readers nominating and voting for the stories that make them happy, but, as other have noted, if you think that that’s what this discussion/controversy/whole damn thing is about, you’re not paying attention.

    Part of the problem with slates, as expressed by Jeet Heer (author of the New Republic article I linked in comment #6), is that taste is personal, not collective.

    When good stories are political, they tend to be political not in an ‘attacking an ideology’ way, but in a ‘expressing the virtues of an ideology’ way. I think this is broadly true across the spectrum – a left wing story is more likely to have positive portrayals of gay people, for example, and a right wing story might be more likely to have positive portrayals of religion.

    The problem is that this means that writing a story in which there’s a gay character or a person of color portrayed positively automatically codes the story as ‘left wing,’ when the author’s intent may have been much more “try not to write like an asshole.”

    The reason I bring this up specifically is that the response of the Puppies to “here’s a coming out story with some elements of the fantastic” (which is what “The Water That Falls On You From Nowhere” is) is “we’ve got to band together to crush those SJWs.” And that’s a different kind of political. That takes “everyone playing in the sandbox making whatever they like” and turns it into “you’re making the wrong kind of stuff, and we’re going to fucking teach you a lesson.”

    The other thing I’ve been thinking about is how bad these definitions of right and left are. A military story is right wing. Oh man, but you add a gay character and now it’s left wing. Oh shit, what if that gay character is religious? Right wing again? I guess it depends on whether he’s Catholic or Muslim.

    “The Water That Falls On You From Nowhere” is as much about the main character’s family dynamics and how important his family is to him, as it is about his sexuality. And strong families are right wing, right?

    And apparently Ancillary Justice is left-wing not because of its politics but because of its pronouns.

    This is childish.

    This is fucking stupid.

    As near as I can tell, the main complaint, politically, of the puppies, is that readers don’t throw their books away from them in disgust and revulsion upon discovering a character is gay. Because, after all, that’s what they do.

    —Myca

  24. 25
    gin-and-whiskey says:

    mythago says:
    April 21, 2015 at 9:19 pm
    “The puppies have a point”, I assume, meaning that a lot of people are saying mean things about them, therefore their victim complexes are retroactively true?

    More like this, I think:

    A lot of people are saying unusually nasty things about them; and adopting a particularly mocking tone; and doing so in an extremely in-group vs. out-group manner; and taking very strong sides; and deliberately conflating Sad and Rabid (and everyone else with Vox Day) in a manner which supports the underlying “they were always against this group but didn’t want to admit it publicly” concept.

  25. 26
    gin-and-whiskey says:

    er… not that it isn’t your right to put me in auto-mod if you want, but did I miss something?

  26. 27
    Mandolin says:

    I said a bunch of times that I want the puppies to be able to vote and be represented. They should vote their taste, whatever that runs to, which is probably conservative works. Please don’t mischaracterize me. :(

  27. 28
    gin-and-whiskey says:

    And apparently Ancillary Justice is left-wing not because of its politics but because of its pronouns.

    It was a perfectly fine read, as was the sequel. But not award material in my mind. I mean, if you are looking for non-right-wing stuff and you hold Ancillary Justice up against, say, 100,000 Kingdoms? They are not even in the same class of quality.

    But when I read commentary on Ancillary Justice it has often approvingly referenced its gender. Which suggests to me that someone (or a lot of someones) gave WAY too much credit to the “gender bending” aspects over the “quality” aspects, because the book itself isn’t so hot. Unless it was a very weak field that year.

  28. 29
    Mandolin says:

    You’re not in automod. It just tripped the filter somehow.

    There are reasons for some of those reactions, g&w, but at a certain point it’s insider baseball.

  29. 30
    Mandolin says:

    Also — *shrug* — some people super loved Ancillary Justice.

    Some people super loved Redshirts. I thought it was a diverting afternoon.

  30. 31
    Jake Squid says:

    … deliberately conflating Sad and Rabid…

    The available evidence suggests that Sad and Rabid are allied and very much one group in practice. Sandifer, among others, writes about this. I mean, sure, you may not find the evidence convincing but that doesn’t mean others are conflating two entirely separate groups. It just means that others have come to a different conclusion than you seem to have come to. You’re ascribing bad intentions rather than different interpretation of the evidence.

  31. 32
    Patrick says:

    There’s a big difference between saying that a book is getting a lot of extra credit for advancing gender queer politics, and saying that fans of the book are doing something they shouldn’t with respect to the Hugo’s. A big, big difference.

    If gender politics are “in” to a level that they legitimately win Hugos, then they should win Hugos. If ten years from now poorly disguised Christian allegory is so popular that it wins Hugos, then so be it.

    I think it’s darn near obvious that LGBT stuff is getting credit just for being LGBT stuff. But as long as that comes in the form of 1. people liking it, and 2. choosing to vote for it because they like it, then that’s fine! I mean, sure, I’d like it if stuff I like won instead of stuff someone else likes, but when that doesn’t happen I’m not being wronged.

    If Vox Days fans were gloating because Vox Day became so popular that he was about to win a Hugo then take a bath in liberal tears, I wouldn’t be happy. But he also wouldn’t be cheating. So I’d say, give the man his Hugo, he earned it. But if he’s going to logroll votes from his fans with those of other authors in irder to magnify his popularity, then at best any Hugo he gets should be handed to him with a curse, a reminder to the world that he broke the spirit if the rules, and a decision to tighten the written rules so this can’t happen again.

  32. 33
    Harlequin says:

    A lot of people are saying unusually nasty things about them; and adopting a particularly mocking tone; and doing so in an extremely in-group vs. out-group manner; and taking very strong sides; and deliberately conflating Sad and Rabid (and everyone else with Vox Day) in a manner which supports the underlying “they were always against this group but didn’t want to admit it publicly” concept.

    Not sure how many times we can say “But their claim isn’t just that people don’t like them, it’s that they have been deliberately kept out of the awards by shadowy cabals.” So even if you’d managed to prove that there was ill will between groups of fans before this happened, you’d have managed to prove that…a group of thousands of people contains some subgroups that don’t get along with each other? I mean, is that a surprise? (And see also Patrick’s comment @32.)

    And, of course, “people don’t like us after we fucked with them” proves nothing about opinions before said bad behavior. Unless you think we’re lying about what it is we’re mad about (ie the creation of a slate).

  33. 34
    Pete Patriot says:

    Well, sure. That happens. But it’s not really a claim about “we wuz robbed” so much as it’s a claim about “we want people to like different things than the things they like” and “it’s totally unfair that people like other books more than ours for reasons we disagree with.”

    Look. Here’s an example of what’s happening: the editor of the SFWA bulletin had to resign for putting a chainmail bikini on the cover. So we’re absolutely clear: putting CHAINMAIL BIKINIS on the covers of FANTASY NOVELS is now a politically controversial action. That’s the world we live in, one where SFF has a massive social justice warrior problem, and it isn’t due to the right.

    The reason this is a big deal – and isn’t just that we like different things – is that our stuff came first and what you’re doing is a blatant ideological rejection of the genre’s roots. None of the genre’s most influential writers – REH, Leiber, Lovecraft, Heinlein, etc – would get nominated now purely because of political distate for their work. This is a case of people who fundamentally despise the history of the genre for political reasons trying to ‘appropriate’ it for their own purposes. Of course there’s a reaction.

    The best solution would be for SJWs to fuck off, rather than trying to ruin things for everyone. This isn’t unreasonable. No one cares about “Paranormal Romance” authors because they do their own thing. Can you imagine how much people would hate them they were moaning about people putting corpses on the covers of horror novels, complaining that Lovecraft’s protagonists weren’t sexy enough, and making sure weird fiction award nominees always had romantic sub-plots. This is what you look like to those with an appreciation of the SFF genres past.

  34. 35
    Mandolin says:

    The bulletin is a professional journal, not a fantasy novel.

    Grrm has listed works by contemporary conservatives, and works which fit the sp aesthetic, nominated in recent years. Torgersen and correia themselves have nominations from before adopting slate tactics.

  35. 36
    Mandolin says:

    (Also, of course, chain mail bikini = forced to quit, bears only glancing similarity to what happened.)

  36. 37
    nm says:

    This is a case of people who fundamentally despise the history of the genre for political reasons trying to ‘appropriate’ it for their own purposes.

    I read a fair amount of SF/F. I’m not a writer; I’m not a Hugo voter. But I have been reading in the field (classic works, and contemporary-when-I-read-them-but-now-either-classic-or-forgotten works, and contemporary-right-now works), and the quoted statement seems to me to be just so much nonsense. Rather, this is a case of people who love a genre, recognize that its history (like the history of everything and everybody, in fact) is a mixed bag, and are doing just exactly what “REH, Leiber, Lovecraft, Heinlein, etc” were doing: writing speculative fiction about human beings that reflect on the society around them, the technology around them, the possible futures that society and technology would lead to, with some attempts to create convincing characters and situations and prose that’s fun to read.

    I mean, really, this is like people complaining that pop music today doesn’t use Beatles chords, or the like.

  37. 38
    Myca says:

    None of the genre’s most influential writers – REH, Leiber, Lovecraft, Heinlein, etc – would get nominated now purely because of political distate for their work.

    I know, right?

    God, did you see that shit the SJWs got on the ballot back in the 80’s? It was all about a woman in an interracial group marriage. There were even parts where she tediously lectured the other members of the marriage about their insufficient racial tolerance.

    Actually, you might have even seen it … just a sec … oh yeah. Friday, by Robert Heinlein? Fuck that guy, right?

    BTW, while we’re on the topic of “fuck Heinlein” the second volume of a biography of the beloved St. Bob would likely have been on the ballot this year, were it not for the puppy antics. I’m sure it was SJW mind control that made them do it, though.

    —Myca

  38. 39
    Myca says:

    I mean, really, this is like people complaining that pop music today doesn’t use Beatles chords, or the like.

    It’s worse then that, because there are plenty of stories being written and published now that are just entertaining and fun without a message. Their complaint is that their lovingly recreated Beatles cover band didn’t win a Grammy.

    [oldmanvoice]How could you give it to all that hippity hop electronic nonsense? Why aren’t things the way they used to be?[/oldmanvoice]

    —Myca

  39. 40
    nm says:

    Myca, you’re right. Of course, the Beatles never won a Grammy, either. So the old guard of SF/F is actually ahead that way, if you think about it.

  40. 41
    Harlequin says:

    (sorry, I’ve had a comment in moderation limbo for a few hours now–just checking that it didn’t fall through the cracks? [obviously if it actually should be moderated, that’s cool too])

  41. 42
    Ruchama says:

    Mary Shelley would clearly be totally opposed to any of this sort of liberal nonsense, as well.

  42. 43
    Myca says:

    Part of the issue is that the puppies (who I’m conflating for truth) have a whole boatload of complaints, so if you address one, they’ll just seamlessly switch to another.

    So one complaint is that conservative authors don’t get nominated for stuff – that they’ve been blacklisted. There doesn’t seem to be any evidence for this (though, like I said, I’m open to being convinced). Another complaint is that there’s a shadowy cabal of left-wing authors/readers/Illuminati who are conspiring to nominate and vote for left-wing stuff. There’s really no evidence for this, and since it’s their primary claim for justification (“they did it first so now we get to too”), it would be good if they had some.

    But their claim that people were mean to them at conventions … okay, I’m willing to believe that. I’ll even believe that people were mean to them because of their politics … sorta.

    Because the thing is – the overwhelming majority of authors being publicly aggrieved on the *puppy slates are … well … kind of a little bit fucking assholes. I’m not counting Brad Torgersen (who seems nice, but this isn’t his complaint, anyhow), but Larry Correia, John C Wright, and VD, certainly. These are people who are publicly and aggressively insulting to people who are not like them on a continual basis.

    Now Larry Correia even acknowledges this, but he says that, “hey, I didn’t used to be an aggressively public jerk! I was a real nice guy, and everyone was a jerk to me because I’m a conservative!” And yet his con report from the time doesn’t mention this, and, again, non-fucking-asshole conservatives seem to do just fine.

    And also, and I’m speculating, I have a hard time believing that someone who’s true self is ‘fucking asshole’ can mask it all that well for all that long. I suspect that his ‘nice guy persona’ was not as airtight as he claims.

    I also think maybe part of the disconnect is the understanding that viciously hateful homophobic screeds like Wright’s are personal attacks, even if they don’t name specific people.

    Let’s look at “Requires Hate/Benjanun Sriduangkaew.” She was on the left, and (in retrospect) I agree with a lot of her criticisms, though not the way in which she expressed them. I don’t think anyone here would expect “Sally,” who was called “vile subhuman filth,” by Benjanun Sriduangkaew to then invite her to parties and generally hang out with her. And I think that this would probably extend to Sally’s friends as well, right?

    I think that there needs to be an understanding that the same rules apply if “Sally,” was called “vile subhuman filth,” not directly, but obliquely on account of her sexual orientation or race, by John C Wright or Vox Day.

    But if it’s about sexual orientation or race, there are a lot more Sallys, and a lot more friends. So yeah. I’d imagine there are a lot more parties they don’t get invited to. Because they’ve personally attacked and insulted people.

    —Myca

  43. 44
    Mandolin says:

    Harlequin — I don’t see anything in mod. It may be lost. :/

  44. 45
    Harlequin says:

    It’s #33 now, I think somebody else silently rescued it :) (or else my earlier theory about the haunted server was correct, and this was revenge!)

  45. 46
    mythago says:

    I’m not counting Brad Torgersen (who seems nice, but this isn’t his complaint, anyhow)

    Actually, yeah, it is. Apparently like LC, Brad was told that some people didn’t want to talk to him at cons because he’s kind of a dramatic douchebag online (though supposedly nice offline), and his feelings got hurt, probably especially because he’s bragged about fans coming up to him at cons and speaking approvingly. His real motivation seems to be in large part his belief that his idol and mentor, Mike Resnick, was slighted.

    The “conservative godly heroes would never get nominated today” is unfalsifiable, but people like Pete will keep saying it because it’s the mirror image of what they feel. They hear that Ancillary Justice had gender-neutral pronouns or whatever, and they get all worked up about that, convinced that because they can’t get past it, clearly that’s what all the Hugo voters really cared about. They conveniently forget that, as Myca says, Heinlein wrote all kinds of sexual revolution female empowerment hippy dippy type stuff, or that Robert E. Howard was a nihilist, or that the SFF of two or three decades ago was chock full of “message fiction”, some of which was written by Saint Heinlein his own self.

  46. 47
    Myca says:

    Actually, yeah, it is. Apparently like LC, Brad was told that some people didn’t want to talk to him at cons because he’s kind of a dramatic douchebag online (though supposedly nice offline), and his feelings got hurt, probably especially because he’s bragged about fans coming up to him at cons and speaking approvingly.

    Ah, I stand corrected!

    Speaking of corrected, I ran across this fantastic quote about the difference between “gee-wiz adventure sci-fi” and the heavy, political, message-based stuff.

    He will permit any speculation at all — as long as it is about gadgets only and doesn’t touch people. He doesn’t care what mayhem you commit on physics, astronomy, or chemistry with your gadgets… but the people must be the same plain old wonderful jerks that live in his Home Town. Give him a good ole adventure story any time, with lots of Gee-Whiz in it and space ships blasting off and maybe the Good Guys (in white space ships) chasing the Bad Guys (in black space ships) but, brother, don’t you say anything about the Methodist Church, or the Flag, or incest, or homosexuality, or teleology, or theology, or the sacredness of marriage, or anything philosophical! Because you are just an entertainer, see? That sort of Heavy Thinking is reserved for C. P. Snow or Graham Greene. You are a pulp writer, Bud, and you will always be a pulp writer even though your trivia is now bound in boards and sells for just as much as Grace Metalious’ stories… and you are not permitted to have Heavy Thoughts. Space Ships and Heavy Thinking do not mix — so shut up and sit down!

    The rule is: Science Fiction by its nature must be trivial.

    This of course rules out… a large fraction of my work — and all my future work, I think.

    That is, of course, Robert A. Heinlein, in a 1962 letter to Theodore Sturgeon.

    I can understand why the puppies missed this sentiment, though, since John C Wright would have been a tiny infant in 1962, and the others wouldn’t be born for some years yet.

    But they long for the science fiction of their childhoods. Right.

    The letter, incidentally, was included in Chapter 2 of that RAH biography they kept off the ballot.

    Jesus Fucking Christ.

    —Myca

  47. 48
    desipis says:

    Not puppy related, but I found this talk by Dr. Carol Tavris quite good: “Who’s Lying, Who’s Self-Justifying? Origins of the He Said/She Said Gap in Sexual Allegations

  48. 49
    desipis says:

    I’ve been trying to get a better understanding of the Sad Puppies complaint(s), and looking at what they’ve said, and others’ responses to them, it seems something more of a ‘hostile environment’ argument that one might see in a workplace discrimination complaint. That is negative behaviour, that individually might be somewhat minor or harmless, but in a pattern can be more problematic. I don’t see a consistent complaint about a formal or organised campaign against them.

    It would appear that the Sad Puppies feel that those patterns of behaviour (against them or conservative/christian authers generally) are comparitively egregious as putting up a slate. I’m not sure I’ve read enough of the works to agree/disagree with that, although I haven’t found anything so far that would make me inclined to agree.

    Ledasmom:

    Desipis, how many of the puppy nominees have you read?

    I’ve read three or four from the short stories and novelettes, trying to get through whichever novellas I can find (on Flow atm), but I have some other things consuming my time. I’d like to go back and read through their recommendations from last year as well to get an better feel for the whole thing.

  49. 50
    Ledasmom says:

    I do not remember if anyone has linked this:
    short fiction nominees
    Most of the short fiction nominees are linked from there. John C. Wright’s nominated works are available as a free ebook from Castalia House.

  50. 51
    mythago says:

    @despis: technically ‘hostile work environment’ means that there isn’t a threat that complying with the harassment will lead to positive or negative job consequences (the classic ‘if you don’t sleep with the boss you get fired’ example). It doesn’t mean that the harassment must be low level, only that there’s not a quid pro quo for putting up with it. I think what you’re thinking of is the standard for determining what a hostile work environment is; if the incidents are minor, they need to be more frequent or pervasive than if they are severe.

    The ‘people are mean to conservatives’ is one of the SPs’ stated complaints, but their official beef is that supposedly a clique of snobby Chardonnay-sipping liberal elites are honoring “SJW message fiction” over good writing, good writing being defined as stuff that conservatives don’t find offensive, and by Torgersen more specifically as stories geared to twelve-year-old boys.

  51. 52
    gin-and-whiskey says:

    Frankly I don’t really agree with the puppies’ slate, because I seem to like quite a few things that they don’t, and I dislike (I think) some of what they like. But from a process perspective, there does seem to be a shit-ton of nasty elitist holier-than-thou snarkery going on aimed in their direction, oddly accompanied by a denial that it’s happening. So I’m not supportive necessarily of the puppies’ content, but process wise they seem to be having an argument worth dealing with.

    Similarly I am finding it hard to believe the apparent implication (or perhaps it should be called a “dog whistle?”) that there wasn’t already a bunch of powerful elitist holier-than-thou anti-puppy folks, but rather that such folks just so happened to instantly appear en masse in a highly coordinated and extraordinarily powerful form… which, of course, only happened because of “slate voting” and not because folks just don’t like the authors. Maybe that is being dropped, now? Not really sure. It certainly seemed to be one of the initial arguments.

  52. 53
    Mandolin says:

    G&W, I think people who aren’t in the industry see “oh, people are posting about this now, so therefore it just manifested.” This is untrue. The argument has been happening behind the scenes for a long time now. A lot of us were very unhappy with their behavior — BEHAVIOR — over a long period, and that’s coming out. They’ve been acting (again, BEHAVIOR) like assholes for a long time, but people were dealing with it behind closed doors because the level of the conversation was relatively low. Though you can, in fact, find discussion of it from previous years, it’s just that it was proportionate to their organizing and success. Now, they’re super accelerated, so people are responding back at the same volume, “Dudes. Not okay.”

    And what’s with this “elitist” allegation, exactly? How is it elitist for me to want my vote to count, and not elitist for them to use the taste of a single individual (noting again that the slate assembly was not open and democratic) to substitute for the taste of everyone else? Why *wouldn’t* people be pissed about that?

  53. 54
    Mandolin says:

    but people were dealing with it behind closed doors

    You know, actually, I don’t want to use that terminology because it adds to “whispers.” Not behind closed doors, but in appropriate professional venues. Because, though it may seem like it sometimes, it’s not actually the case that all SF/F writer interaction happens in public on the internet. We talk amongst ourselves, as we should.

    And it’s because we do that I’ve been familiar with Brad’s BEHAVIOR over a long period of time. No, I don’t like him. Because of his BEHAVIOR.

    Also, I think he’s a shitty writer. But I like lots of people who I think don’t write very well, and no, I’m not going to list them, because come on. Do I like other writers with Brad’s politics? As it happens, yes, I do.

    But it’s not like I should be *obliged* to like someone who makes the kinds of comments about women and POC he’s been making for years, or participates in a lot of behind-the-scenes nastiness that still hasn’t come out, and probably won’t, because most of us have the good sense not to drag every issue onto the internet in the public eye, in view of people who are uninvolved. If I had been willing to make my personal opinions into public business, despite knowing the weirdness and damage that might cause Brad, I’d have been bitching about him in public for years. But I didn’t because that would have been unfair.

    He, however, has been happy to go after me publicly, and now, I find, a number of other authors, some of whom are brand-new, and thus definitely not in his weight class. And even so, I didn’t reply to his going after me for months, because it wasn’t worth my time. (In fact, I’d probably still be trying to make this comment as gentle as possible, except that I’m really pissed her went after people in ‘younger’ writing generations.)

    For heaven’s sake, “this group suddenly manifested because I haven’t seen them before in an industry I’m not part of” is super weird. If it’s just a misconception, then fine. If you’re alleging there’s a conspiracy, then Jesus fuck. I am so sick of that shit.

  54. 55
    Mandolin says:

    He took something other people have spent energy building and maintaining and trashed it with the slate process. Why wouldn’t people be angry? But if we are, then it just confirms he was right to do it in the first place? The only option is to *silently* let him fuck everything up, or else we deserved it? Arghargharghargh.

  55. 56
    Harlequin says:

    g&w, would you mind clarifying what you perceive as elitism from the anti-puppy folks? I can think of a few possible areas (reading tastes, writing products, social interactions, etc) and it might help me to understand which thing you’re arguing…

  56. 57
    Myca says:

    In terms of pre-established biases, speaking just for myself, I knew about VD before all this, and knew that he was a white supremacist fascist. I have a very low opinion of anyone who pals around with him, just as I’d have a low opinion of anyone palling around with any white supremacist fascist.

    I knew of Larry Correia because, as I said earlier, I’ve read his “Grimnoir” series, which I enjoyed but did not seem extraordinary one way or the other. I had a mildly positive impression of him, but also could tell that he was right-wing and a bit delusional.

    I knew of John C. Wright because of his “Orphans of Chaos” series, which I enjoyed but did not seem extraordinary one way or the other. I had a mildly positive impression of him, and knew nothing of his politics, though the Orphans of Chaos series had some problematic stuff around rape.

    I knew of Brad Torgersen not at all.

    So: VERY negative opinion of one, mildly positive opinion of two, and totally ignorant of the fourth. And that’s where it would have stayed, had they not pulled this crap.

    —Myca

  57. 58
    gin-and-whiskey says:

    Mandolin says:
    April 23, 2015 at 8:47 am
    G&W, I think people who aren’t in the industry see “oh, people are posting about this now, so therefore it just manifested.”

    yes, that is true to some degree; at least for me.

    This is untrue. The argument has been happening behind the scenes for a long time now. A lot of us were very unhappy with their behavior — BEHAVIOR — over a long period, and that’s coming out.

    Well, in that case it’s for the best. “Behind the scenes” is rarely ideal. It might mean that the puppies were insufficiently chastised for bad behavior. It might mean that the puppies were inappropriately lumped together or punished. or both. It might be that what you think of as “bad behavior” is something that seems not so bad to other folks. Facts are good. They let people judge both the person being talked about, and (to the extent that people toss in descriptors like “bad” or “racist” or whatever) the person doing the talking.

    They’ve been acting (again, BEHAVIOR) like assholes for a long time, but people were dealing with it behind closed doors because the level of the conversation was relatively low. Though you can, in fact, find discussion of it from previous years, it’s just that it was proportionate to their organizing and success. Now, they’re super accelerated, so people are responding back at the same volume, “Dudes. Not okay.”

    I strongly suspect that the “dealing with it” part is something which you think was appropriate, etc., or you wouldn’t be condoning it. But it’s my experience that generally speaking, if a group has behind-closed-doors power to ‘deal with things’ that they perceive as a problem/threat/annoyance, the outcomes are less likely to be especially equitable.

    Maybe this is the rare exception. Maybe your judgment of their behavior is accurate; and your response is balanced; and your treatment of things unrelated to behavior (like, say, book quality) is unaffected; and so on. If so, that should be more clear when facts come out.

    And what’s with this “elitist” allegation, exactly?

    There is a certain sneery tone which comes across in a lot of the anti-puppy stuff. At least it seems that way to me. Like that hit review which Myca posted. It reads, to me, a lot like “know your place” stuff.

    How is it elitist for me to want my vote to count,

    Well, of course that isn’t elitist. Never said it was.

    and not elitist for them to use the taste of a single individual

    I think that you and I may be using different definitions of “elitist.” I am having trouble understanding how a minority and relatively-disempowered group instantly would become “elitist” if their tactics were successful. (also: one individual? Do you mean Vox? Do you recall that nobody actually had to vote for it; that everyone who did so paid for it; and that most folks who voted apparently didn’t vote for the whole slate?)

    (noting again that the slate assembly was not open and democratic) to substitute for the taste of everyone else?

    Everyone knew there was a slate, I think. Everyone has their own right to make a slate. If you were inclined to get a group of people to agree that a certain # of books are so great that the deserve common focus, that was certainly possible to do. Even if you wanted to change the Hugo voting rules, that was possible, too.

    Seems to me that the future can go a few ways. One is for the

    Why *wouldn’t* people be pissed about that?

    It depends on how pissed you get and what you do in response, right?

    For heaven’s sake, “this group suddenly manifested because I haven’t seen them before in an industry I’m not part of” is super weird. If it’s just a misconception, then fine. If you’re alleging there’s a conspiracy, then Jesus fuck. I am so sick of that shit

    When I first read a lot of the anti-puppy responses, I picked up a lot of feeling that there was a general denial of any sort of organized existing anti-puppy people. Now, that seems to be changing; it seems like more people (like you) are conceding that yes, there was something going on before, which you thought was appropriate and good.

    Which, OK. Conspiracy theory gone. It was only the combination of having so many people on the puppy side talking about “they’re against us and always have been” and so many defenders saying “no, no, we don’t dislike them; we’ve always treated them like anyone else” that seemed off to me.

    He took something other people have spent energy building and maintaining and trashed it with the slate process.

    This one is actually much more interesting. I’ll use an analogy: Do I, as a new resident of Anywhere, have the same voting rights (and get the same consideration) as someone who has lived there for 20 years?

    Personally, I think that in many cases the answer is “yes.” The people who worked on the Hugos in the past got the benefit in the past. The benefits of being involved in 1985 is that you had more sway in a smaller field, and that you had years of influence, and so on. But it doesn’t necessarily mean that you should have more of a stake in what happens during 2016.

  58. 59
    Grace Annam says:

    gin-and-whiskey:

    I’ll use an analogy: Do I, as a new resident of Anywhere, have the same voting rights (and get the same consideration) as someone who has lived there for 20 years?

    Wrong analogy. I haven’t seen a single person say that the puppies shouldn’t have the same voting rights. The issue is community standards. There used to be a community consensus that everyone voted for the things they liked. Self-promotion was beyond the pale to such a degree that even saying publicly, “Hey, I wrote this Hugo-eligible thing,” was frowned upon. And the voting system worked decently to reward the authors of things the majority of the people liked (using an IRV variant, for heaven’s sake!).

    Now it doesn’t. It rewards people who can organize a voting block. Which is within the letter of the rules, but not the intent toward which the rules were written.

    Suppose Anywhere has been having an annual barbecue. Generally speaking things have been friendly, and very few rules have been needed, and although there were sometimes arguments and disputes, generally speaking things went along fine.

    This year you arrive and play the latest heavy metal out of your souped-up car stereo system. You don’t shatter china with it. You’re within the local noise ordinances. You just play it loudly. Some of the barbecue-goers even like it, though even a lot of them think that Victor Daley guy should stop it with the screaming fascist slogans in time with the music. But for a lot of other barbecue-goers, it ruins their enjoyment of the event, and makes it something other than what it was.

    Now they’re going to have to propose changes to rules, and get very particular and somewhat mechanical about them, in an effort to ensure that the event runs in such a way that you can still play music, but in such a way that everyone else can enjoy themselves, too.

    Before, the rules were fewer, and everyone agreed on certain community standards. Now, eventually, there will be lots of very finicky rules arrived at by committee and voted on during a period of acrimony, and fewer community standards. In the meantime, everyone who doesn’t like heavy metal gets to hear some.

    Now, you’re completely within the existing rules. But the result violates the spirit of the rules and ruins the event, and forever changes the event, going forward.

    An actual majority of the people participating liked it the way it was, even though your voting block is effective at winning the votes. Can you see why your behavior, while perfectly within the rules, kinda pisses people off?

    Grace

  59. 60
    Patrick says:

    What was problematic in Orphans of Chaos’ treatment of rape? It was a bit MRA-ish in that it got a bit up on a soapbox about “men can be raped too guyz!” and I was all like, I know, why are you yelling, but that’s fairly benign.

    Someone tried to brainwash the point of view character into being sexually submissive to them, but 1) this was clearly portrayed as evil, 2) didn’t work, and 3) that character really didn’t have agency problems. Like at all.

    Looking at Wrights career as a whole, I’m amazed at just how not-creepy Orphans of Chaos actually was. A bit of his trademark “Catholic Ayn Rand” stuff bleeds through, but overall he was remarkably restrained. For him.

  60. 61
    Myca says:

    What was problematic in Orphans of Chaos’ treatment of rape?

    Heh, to be honest, I really don’t remember. I read it probably ~7 or 8 years ago, and was left with that general impression, but there’s no way I could pick out anything resembling details or an argument now.

    Which should tell you how much of an impression it made on me.

    I seem to vaguely remember that I liked the opening of the series much more than the ending.

    —Myca

  61. 62
    Patrick says:

    The very very ending was terrible. And it’s terribleness was the direct result of Wrights religious views. All through the series he has five characters with very different- in fact literally incompatible- world views. But right at the end, you find out that secretly one of them was the authors and that one is best. Says him.

  62. 63
    Copyleft says:

    You know, personal dislike and even personal conduct seem to matter to a lot of people who are talking about judging stories for their quality alone. What’s up with that?

    I’ve always gone with the principle that if Adolf Bloody Hitler develops a workable Grand Unified Field Theory, then Adolf Hitler wins the feckin’ Nobel Prize, period. Personal conduct matters diddly-squat.

  63. 64
    gin-and-whiskey says:

    Grace, you’re right: that’s a better analogy.

    Before, the rules were fewer, and everyone agreed on certain community standards. Now, eventually, there will be lots of very finicky rules arrived at by committee and voted on during a period of acrimony, and fewer community standards. In the meantime, everyone who doesn’t like heavy metal gets to hear some.

    Yup. That can totally be a dick move. Often, it is.

    But often, it can be necessary.

    To the people who “just want to hear some heavy metal while sucking their ribs,” they used to feel unwelcome and ignored: it wasn’t like “15 minutes of heavy metal once per hour,” or something.

    Or, to put it differently: who gets to say what the “community” is? At what point does it become elitist? At what point does it become exclusionary?

    Now, you’re completely within the existing rules. But the result violates the spirit of the rules and ruins the event, and forever changes the event, going forward.

    Well, that presupposes that everyone agrees on what the “spirit of the rules” actually IS. Right?

    The heavy metal fans may feel that it’s against the spirit to advertise something as “open to the public” and run it in a way that they don’t enjoy: is it really only open to that segment of the public whose personal tastes and decorum match what the mayor likes?

    And will the new event–which has different rules–be “changed and ruined,” or simply changed?

    An actual majority of the people participating liked it the way it was,

    Sure. And they can still have a say.

    It may be, in the end, that they like “rotating DJ every 5 minutes” more than the “no music.”

    It may be that they hate music entirely, but are forced to confront the fact that the “no music” rule is directly related to the fact that a big chunk of tax-paying citizens feel like they aren’t welcome at the party. Maybe they’ll compromise.

    It may be that they hate it enough to pass new “no music” rules.

    Can you see why their behavior, while perfectly within the rules, kinda pisses people off?

    Sure. Can you see why people might feel like pissing folks off is the only way to get a seat at the table?

  64. 65
    Myca says:

    You know, personal dislike and even personal conduct seem to matter to a lot of people who are talking about judging stories for their quality alone. What’s up with that?

    It’s because we’re addressing different things and you’re not understanding.

    The “these guys act like assholes” isn’t a response to “Why aren’t we nominated for awards.” It’s a response to “Why are people mean to us at conventions?”

    The response to “Why aren’t we (or alternately, ‘conservative authors’) nominated for awards,” is “when you write well, you are you fucking crybabies,” and, “you have yet to produce any evidence for your claims.”

    This goes back to my comment #43, where I said:

    Part of the issue is that the puppies (who I’m conflating for truth) have a whole boatload of complaints, so if you address one, they’ll just seamlessly switch to another.

    So one complaint is that conservative authors don’t get nominated for stuff – that they’ve been blacklisted. There doesn’t seem to be any evidence for this (though, like I said, I’m open to being convinced). Another complaint is that there’s a shadowy cabal of left-wing authors/readers/Illuminati who are conspiring to nominate and vote for left-wing stuff. There’s really no evidence for this, and since it’s their primary claim for justification (“they did it first so now we get to too”), it would be good if they had some.

    —Myca

  65. 66
    Mandolin says:

    Well, in that case it’s for the best. “Behind the scenes” is rarely ideal. It might mean that the puppies were insufficiently chastised for bad behavior. It might mean that the puppies were inappropriately lumped together or punished. or both. It might be that what you think of as “bad behavior” is something that seems not so bad to other folks. Facts are good. They let people judge both the person being talked about, and (to the extent that people toss in descriptors like “bad” or “racist” or whatever) the person doing the talking.

    Fuck, really? Tell me all the private incidents in YOUR job. Seriously, right now. Tell me who your boss is, and what you think of him, and every detail of bad behavior. So I, stranger fucking X, can judge it.

  66. 67
    Grace Annam says:

    Copyleft:

    You know, personal dislike and even personal conduct seem to matter to a lot of people who are talking about judging stories for their quality alone. What’s up with that?

    So, as regards liking or not liking people, you know that we are talking about at least two different things, right? One of them is whether they write good stories, in the aggregate opinion of the voting fans. That should determine who gets a Hugo. The other is whether they try to get Hugos awarded on something other than the personal opinion of the voting fans, thereby wrecking something neat. That determines whether many of the rest of the fans think they are assholes or not.

    It seems like you’re conflating those two things. Since they’re easily separated, I’m not sure why. If that’s not what you’re doing, could you point to an example of what you’re talking about so that we’re not trying to talk about what “seem[s] to matter to a lot of people”, which is vague at best?

    Grace

  67. 68
    Grace Annam says:

    gin-and-whiskey:

    Sure. Can you see why people might feel like pissing folks off is the only way to get a seat at the table?

    Sure. And to that we have to go to the merits of the case.

    Let’s see… how could we decide whether the puppy factions are, or are not, producing stories which are better than stories other people are producing.

    I know! Let’s put the question to the people reading the stories, via a fair and open democratic process wherein everyone votes for the individual works they think are best, without regard to (among other things) whether those works appear adjacent to other works on the ballot.

    Grace

  68. 69
    Mandolin says:

    I

    strongly suspect that the “dealing with it” part is something which you think was appropriate, etc., or you wouldn’t be condoning it. But it’s my experience that generally speaking, if a group has behind-closed-doors power to ‘deal with things’ that they perceive as a problem/threat/annoyance, the outcomes are less likely to be especially equitable.

    Please, do tell me everything that’s happened in your profession lately. Jesus.

    If so, that should be more clear when facts come out.

    Which facts? Everyone’s personal fucking laundry? Every trespass that happened on confidential message boards or in professional organizations? No. You do not get that.

    Like that hit review which Myca posted. It reads, to me, a lot like “know your place” stuff.

    Great. Now go read their hit pieces on mine. Are they elitists, too?

    I think that you and I may be using different definitions of “elitist.” I am having trouble understanding how a minority and relatively-disempowered group

    Problem #1. Do try substantiating that. Figuring out whether they were shut out of the awards process before now might help. You could analyze the ballots from years past, or you could go read GRRM’s analysis.

    (also: one individual? Do you mean Vox? Do you recall that nobody actually had to vote for it; that everyone who did so paid for it; and that most folks who voted apparently didn’t vote for the whole slate?)

    You do not seem to get the way that this violated the standards of the community. Fine. It’s not your community. So, understand — no one has done anything like this before. It’s not “heavy metal at the barbeque,” it’s delibereately drowning out everything else. With the allegation that no heavy metal was ever allowed before, by Messieurs one and two, who have previously played heavy metal at the barbeque.

    And not only this, but they’re claiming that I, and my classical music, have colluded to drown out their heavy metal with only classical. This, despite having themselves been playing. This, despite it being shown that other heavy metal was still around at other barbeques, by other folks.

    So, demonstrate this please. Not only that heavy metal was *not* on the ballots before (it was), and that there has been collusion to drown it out (there was not).

    Everyone knew there was a slate, I think. Everyone has their own right to make a slate. If you were inclined to get a group of people to agree that a certain # of books are so great that the deserve common focus, that was certainly possible to do. Even if you wanted to change the Hugo voting rules, that was possible, too.

    Changing the rules is possible. And that’s what will be done. Because slates are poison. They’re poison now, and they’ll CERTAINLY be poison if more are proposed for stupid, exclusionary ideological and aesthetic reasons.

    Look, not your fandom. Not your community. You don’t get it. Fine. But at least grant that other people can actually be upset about what we say we’re upset about — the fact that there is essentially a movement to create political parties within the Hugos.

    Yeah, they were there last year. Yeah, we knew they were there this year. But no, no one organized opposing parties. Because last year they weren’t successful and everyone hoped that it would just not be an idea that caught fire. This year, they were, so different reaction. But the reaction isn’t going to be forming political parties, which would, as you suggest, be the logical reaction if there actually were secret slates or a desire to make sure that whoever’s picks and only theirs make it on the ballot. Instead, people are reacting the way they would if they were *against political parties* — by *not creating political parties.*

    When I first read a lot of the anti-puppy responses, I picked up a lot of feeling that there was a general denial of any sort of organized existing anti-puppy people. Now, that seems to be changing; it seems like more people (like you) are conceding that yes, there was something going on before, which you thought was appropriate and good.

    1) Organized existing puppy people — No. That is NOT what I said. There are no ORGANIZED groups. Also,

    2) The claim is not that there were groups of people that didn’t like them generally, so I have no need to prove that there aren’t any, although there aren’t. The claim was that these groups were *specifically and secretly organized to influence the Hugo slates.* Prove that. Start with GRRM.

    Which, OK. Conspiracy theory gone. It was only the combination of having so many people on the puppy side talking about “they’re against us and always have been” and so many defenders saying “no, no, we don’t dislike them; we’ve always treated them like anyone else” that seemed off to me.

    Thank you re: conspiracy. I hope you understand why being accused of, essentially, lying to everyone for years, gets under my skin.

    I think this is fundamentally an issue of “them” and also an issue of “treat us just like.” For instance:

    1) Them. This is flexibly used to refer either to the people who are doing the organizing (who, yup, I dislike), or to everyone involved (many of whom I don’t know), or to religious people as a group, or to conservatives as a group. The group of people organizing is 3. Ish. The group of religious people and conservatives is huge. Will I admit that I have a problem with those 3? Yep. Just did. Will I admit that I discriminate against all religious people and conservatives? No.

    Now, obviously, they’d argue that I do. So, fine. But the fact that I am significantly angry at puppies does not mean that I am significantly angry at the groups they claim to represent.

    2) The question also revolves around the word “treat.” I will set aside the Rabid for reasons I don’t expect I need to establish. For the others, I’ve treated them the way I treat anyone else. Which is to say, should our business interests coincide, I will work with them in a calm and professional manner. And to the extent that I think they are assholes, I will stay away from them socially.

    The claim, again, is that these people are being discriminated against in a way that affects publishing houses and awards. It’s been pointed out that Tor, supposed liberal bastion, publishes people whose rightward views the puppies specifically champion. (It’s ALSO been pointed out that Baen publishes some self-confessed pinkos.) When a Tor editor says “I treat them just like anyone else,” they don’t mean “At parties, we are best friends!” they mean “When I am in my capacity as an editor, I work with people in that capacity, formally and fairly.”

    This one is actually much more interesting. I’ll use an analogy: Do I, as a new resident of Anywhere, have the same voting rights (and get the same consideration) as someone who has lived there for 20 years?

    Hey, cool. Remember how I kept saying that they deserve to have their vote, and their say, and their representation? What sucks pants is the forming of political parties in the Hugos.

  69. 70
    gin-and-whiskey says:

    Mandolin says:
    April 23, 2015 at 12:09 pm
    Fuck, really? Tell me all the private incidents in YOUR job. Seriously, right now. Tell me who your boss is, and what you think of him, and every detail of bad behavior. So I, stranger fucking X, can judge it.

    [shrug] if you want more transparency in the law generally; or with respect to legal conventions; or with respect to how certain people get elected to ABA positions; or how people get chosen to run bar associations and so on, I’m all in favor.

    There’s a lot of stuff that I can’t oppose but which I would like to change. The problem is that (a) one person can’t easily change it, because it’s too risky to get on the wrong side of the powerful; and (b) you can’t easily organize a group, for the same reason, unless you manage to do so in secret. Nothing would make me (or a lot of folks) happier than a bit of Sad-Puppies-style shakeups in the legal “good old boys” community.

    More to the point: I do not run a public, fan-based, group, which is pretty relevant I think.

    That said, I am hesitant to keep discussing this point here, because you’re so involved. I certainly don’t have a vested interest in anything you wrote personally.

  70. 71
    Mandolin says:

    Sure. Can you see why people might feel like pissing folks off is the only way to get a seat at the table?

    Sure. And to that we have to go to the merits of the case.

    Such as whether there was justification for bringing it in the first place. Which requires a number of proofs, none of which have been provided. Such as:

    1) Was the fiction excluded from the ballots?

    To address this, we need to address the fact that they are actually, when talking about fiction they want on the ballots, talking about at least four separate traits, usually as if they are a single one.

    a) Fun adventure stories have been blocked from Hugo contention. Easily disproved: REDSHIRTS, ANCILLARY JUSTICE for two. Granting them their hatred of Scalzi and Leckie, let’s go with Bujold, Maguire, Sanderson, Jordan, etc.

    b) Message stories are the only ones that appear on the ballot. This requires a tortured reading of Scalzi, for one, whose work is not messagey. (And before you argue “how can I know that if I agree with him,” can you consider that I am an educated reader, please?) But we don’t need Scalzi to prove the case. We have Bujold, Maguire, etc, not to mention a number of conservative writers, including much of Resnick’s work, regularly published on the ballot.

    This has a corollary of “message stories are inappropriate” which requires an examination of the puppy ballot. Are any of their stories messagey? Yes, in fact. Brad Torgersen’s “Chaplain’s Legacy” from last year is unabashedly political and message-oriented in the way it discusses atheism.

    c) The work on the ballot is too literary. Literary, of course, is itself a very complicated term, but as far as I can tell, the aspects under discussion are ambitious prose, formal experimentation and relatively small stakes. Not all my work has all those traits, but I’m willing to take the hit for this one and be the model of all things literary, along with, I dunno, Kij Johnson and Sofia Samatar.

    However, do all the ballot items feature ambitious prose, formal experimentation and small stakes? No. Scalzi, Stross, Bujold, Resnick, Sanderson, Maguire. Scalzi does vague formal experimentation in Redshirts, but in a very commercial way, and not in his other fiction.

    d) No conservatives are allowed on the ballot. Resnick has five Hugo awards from a record 36 nominations.

    Corellary, devout Christian people aren’t allowed on the ballot. Connie Willis: a record of 11 wins, from 24.

  71. 72
    Mandolin says:

    Which requires a number of proofs, none of which have been provided. Such as:

    Well, also other things, like that it needs to be proven that even if they are being excluded it is the result of organized action (which is claimed). But I’m out of steam.

  72. 73
    Patrick says:

    Arguably, Redshirts is really literary. It experiments with the effects of lesser or greater characterization contra posed with greater or lesser stakes, in terms of how each garners reader interest.

    I’m not sure most readers got that though.

  73. 74
    Mandolin says:

    Arguably, Redshirts is really literary. It experiments with the effects of lesser or greater characterization contra posed with greater or lesser stakes, in terms of how each garners reader interest.

    I’m not sure most readers got that though.

    I felt that it did it within an established parodic framework that made it not outside the realm of commercial fiction. People’s mileage super varied, and I’m fine with that.

  74. 75
    gin-and-whiskey says:

    Just one more:

    Look, not your fandom.

    To be fair, that isn’t at all true. I read a ton of books–north of 100 books/year, of which most are sci fi; it’s the first place I go in the library and always has been. And I have been reading at that rate (and with a heavy sci fi / fantasy focus) since I first burned through the Susan Cooper series in third or fourth grade, many decades ago. My library literally doesn’t have a sci-fi book which I haven’t read. Neither do the two neighboring towns which I have checked. (Not that they’re very big. When I wanted to read the Jemisin books I had to request them from somewhere else.)

    I’m a fast reader; bizarrely so in fact. And sci fi is my bread and butter. So not only am I relatively certain that I have read every hugo and nebula award winner in the last couple of decades, but as a rule I have also read every book by every author which I have ever liked. And there are a lot of them. If I pick up a Kress book and like it, I’ll just read them all. Etc.

    But you see how quickly this ends up personal? Ihonestly don’t feel defensively pissy about your comment, because I have no vested interest in being regarded as a sci-fi fan or not (and actually, that is something which very few people even know about me.) But lots of people are heavily vested in how people regard that aspect of their personalities, and the “not your fandom” stuff is likely to annoy them.

    But at least grant that other people can actually be upset about what we say we’re upset about — the fact that there is essentially a movement to create political parties within the Hugos.

    Yes. I can easily see why that would piss you off. Especially since it seems to be led by people who you don’t like, and who have, by all accounts, been quite unfriendly to you.

    Yeah, they were there last year. Yeah, we knew they were there this year. But no, no one organized opposing parties. Because last year they weren’t successful and everyone hoped that it would just not be an idea that caught fire. This year, they were, so different reaction.

    OK.

    But the reaction isn’t going to be forming political parties, which would, as you suggest, be the logical reaction if there actually were secret slates or a desire to make sure that whoever’s picks and only theirs make it on the ballot. Instead, people are reacting the way they would if they were *against political parties* — by *not creating political parties.*

    Confused: Isn’t there a large group who is targeting slate voters for “no award?” And if so, isn’t that basically becoming something akin to a political party? (I may be wrong; I’m a bit biased by Amp, perhaps.)

    I don’t know what will happen in 2016. I think it’s a bit too early to conclude that there won’t be parties at all. It’s quite possible that there will end up being multiple parties: old/new style; different publishing houses; those who promote/oppose AA; etc. While it is clear that a two-party system isn’t great, not every system which involves parties is necessarily bad. Perhaps there will be a party called the “I swear on penalties of perjury that I have read every single book in the listed field but ignored the author bio” party; that would not be bad.

    Because one thing is clear: there were a lot of people who seem willing to claim they’ve been mistreated and were willing to pay the $50 and vote.

    WERE THEY mistreated? Who knows? We can argue about that for a long time and not get anywhere. The important thing is that they THINK they were. So either you’re going to end up compromising with them, or dealing with them being unhappy.

  75. 76
    Harlequin says:

    And I have been reading at that rate (and with a heavy sci fi / fantasy focus) since I first burned through the Susan Cooper series in third or fourth grade, many decades ago

    Bizarrely, this is an almost exact description of my readerly trajectory (except I read somewhat less quickly than you do, and may have found them a year or so earlier).

    Confused: Isn’t there a large group who is targeting slate voters for “no award?” And if so, isn’t that basically becoming something akin to a political party? (I may be wrong; I’m a bit biased by Amp, perhaps.)

    There is certainly a loud group saying the slate nominees should be put below No Award, yes; hard to say how large it is, or if it will win. Whether you call that a political party or not is, I guess, up to you. I would state it more like “people who hate political parties so much they’d rather break the awards this year than allow the party any success at all”, and I think I wouldn’t call that a political party because they’d be doing that to *any* slate–it’s not anti-puppy it’s anti-slate. But this may be an unfruitful semantic argument.

    I don’t know what will happen in 2016. I think it’s a bit too early to conclude that there won’t be parties at all. It’s quite possible that there will end up being multiple parties: old/new style; different publishing houses; those who promote/oppose AA; etc.

    I have been reading this debate going across various platforms for weeks now. Every once in a while a lone voice will say, “Maybe, just for next year, we should counter orga–” and they are immediately and firmly told by multiple people that this is unacceptable. (I’ve seen this less than ten times in literally thousands of comments I’ve read, so it’s rare to begin with.) IOW, there will be no counter slates, because….everyone is actually serious when they say that slates are the problem and not the Puppies’ politics. (Edit: Or, I should say, no successful slates. Some lone wolves may try to set them up.)

  76. 77
    Pete Patriot says:

    d) No conservatives are allowed on the ballot. Resnick has five Hugo awards from a record 36 nominations.

    Well a lot of these are very old, it’s not really relevant what happened a generation ago in 1989. But Resnick was nominated every year from 2000 except 2003 and funnily enough 2013 onwards. I wonder what happened in 2013, any ideas Mandolin?

  77. 78
    Harlequin says:

    But Resnick was nominated every year from 2000 except 2003 and funnily enough 2013 onwards. I wonder what happened in 2013,

    Oh, hey, you’re right! That was the first year of the Sad Puppies.

  78. 79
    Ampersand says:

    (I may be wrong; I’m a bit biased by Amp, perhaps.)

    Please stop making vague insinuations that you don’t back up with links or quotes.

    I have never said or implied that there is, or should be, an opposing political party to the puppies. Saying “I think people should vote X because….” – whether X is a particular work, or “no award,” or NOT voting “no award” – is not the same thing as forming an organized political party or voting slate.

    If I say “I don’t think Hilary is the best candidate, so I’d advise people to vote for O’Malley,” I have not just formed a voting bloc or a political party. Because that’s not organizing.

    If Linus decides to organize a hundred people into supporting an anti-Hillary voting slate, and names his group “The Rabid Blankets,” that is forming a sort of party. I don’t think treating these two things as if they’re the same thing makes sense.

    ETA: I realize that these are, in a way, points on a spectrum. Driving though a neighborhood at 20mph and at 100mph are points on a spectrum, too; that doesn’t mean that it’s hypocritical to object to one but not the other.

  79. 80
    Myca says:

    But Resnick was nominated every year from 2000 except 2003 and funnily enough 2013 onwards.

    Pete, please 1) make a claim, and 2) provide backing evidence for that claim.

    Because Mike Resnick (whose work, to be clear, I don’t dislike) getting nominated 18 times in the last 14 years is not exactly evidence that there’s a conspiracy against him. Or conservatives. Or religious people.

    If your claim is that he’s been unfairly kept off the ballot the last 2 years, then say that and (and this part is important, so listen carefully) provide backing evidence.

    —Myca

  80. 81
    Ampersand says:

    G&W:

    1) I totally acknowledge that you are a sf fan. But I do think you’ve shown, in this thread, that you don’t actually know all that much about the Hugos, or worldcon. That doesn’t in any way make you less of a sf fan.

    WERE THEY mistreated? Who knows? We can argue about that for a long time and not get anywhere. The important thing is that they THINK they were. So either you’re going to end up compromising with them, or dealing with them being unhappy.

    I can’t understand why you would say that whether or not their accusations are true isn’t a relevant factor to consider.

    I’m also not sure what “compromise” would consist of, in this case. Most of the SP proposals for “compromise” I’ve seen seem to consist of the SPs getting everything they want (Hugos becoming a completely different award and abandoning its history, slate voting totally accepted, etc) and giving up nothing in return.

    Honestly, it’s pretty clear that what’s making them unhappy is that writers whose work they don’t like are being published and in some cases are getting critically praised (including winning awards).

    I think that as long as writers who they don’t like are allowed to publish and are praised by some critics, they will be displeased. In this post, for example, Brad T. makes it clear that he objects to topics he doesn’t like (gender, racism, etc) being “on permanent display” – by which he seems to mean, “published” – in SF. And he seems to be saying that SF imagery (spaceships, planetscapes, etc) should belong only to his little exclusive club of “we only like pew pew pew space battle sf” fans, rather than being something that can be legitimately used by all of fandom and all SF authors.

    I don’t see any way that can be compromised with.

  81. 82
    Patrick says:

    RonF Pete Patriot – I can’t speak for what the Evil Liberal Conspiracy was up to, but since the voting process for the Hugos is the most transparent voting process ever, I can provide this: http://www.thehugoawards.org/content/pdf/2013HugoStatistics.pdf

    and this: http://www.thehugoawards.org/content/pdf/2012HugoVotingReport.pdf

    The 2013 PDF is not searchable using my software, but I do notice that Resnick received a number of votes in the Best Short Story category. Votes in that category were so fragmented that only three works passed the bar to receive formal nominations. This is normal in the Hugo process, but of course the Puppies are working hard to fix THAT.

    Resnick received 36 nomination votes in 2012 for Best Short Story. In 2013 he received 24 nomination votes.

    That’s a 12 person difference. I’m going to take that as virtually no change.

    Although it would be horribly hysterical if the reason he lost his nomination votes was because his fans overlap with the puppies and they were all too busy voting for a Puppies slate. It wouldn’t take much overlap- we’re dealing with a few dozen people.

  82. 83
    Ampersand says:

    [shrug] if you want more transparency in the law generally; or with respect to legal conventions; or with respect to how certain people get elected to ABA positions; or how people get chosen to run bar associations and so on, I’m all in favor. […]

    More to the point: I do not run a public, fan-based, group, which is pretty relevant I think.

    Short of making everyone’s individual vote public by name – which is not an idea anyone wants, afaik – I don’t see how the Hugos could be more transparent. Virtually all the statistics – that is, exactly how many votes were made, how many votes each nominee received, etc – are put on the web after each Hugo awards, and because SF fandom has a lot of smart numbers geeks, there’s also really high-quality analysis of the numbers available every year.

    Anyone with $40 can vote for the Hugos. Anyone who attends the Worldcon can attend the business meeting, where they will have a completely equal right to make proposals and vote on proposals, including proposals to change Worldcon’s constitution and change how the Hugos are administered. I don’t think “you have to attend WorldCon in order to vote on how WorldCon is run” is an unreasonably high bar. (There are improvements that could be made regarding the economics of this, but that’s not the substance of the Puppy complaint, so I’m not addressing that in this comment.)

    Those Worldcon attendees who don’t want to vote but still want to observe the meeting are allowed to. Under the WorldCon Constitution, no attending member can be kept out.

    The minutes for the meetings are online dating back several decades. Since 2009, videos of the meetings have been posted online, as well. You don’t have to be a worldcon member to view this material.

    No one has been prevented from voting in the Hugos or from attending Worldcon and participating in changing the rules there. If Brad T or even VD want to participate in the process, literally all they have to do is show up.

    TL,DR: The idea that Puppies have been kept out of the process in any meaningful fashion is utter bullshit. The WorldCon and the Hugos are open to everyone (except those who can’t afford to go); no Puppy has ever been kept out. Furthermore, the rules and process are entirely transparent.

  83. 84
    Ampersand says:

    RonF- I can’t speak for what the Evil Liberal Conspiracy was up to…

    Patrick, is it possible that you intended to address Pete Patriot here, rather than Ron?

  84. 85
    Patrick says:

    …yes.

  85. 86
    Ampersand says:

    Fixed! And good comment, btw.

  86. 87
    Pete Patriot says:

    If your claim is that he’s been unfairly kept off the ballot the last 2 years, then say that and (and this part is important, so listen carefully) provide backing evidence.

    No. I want this to come from Mandolin. She’s happy to point to Rensnick’s hefty historic nominations to claim there’s not a problem. But I also know she knows exactly what happened in 2013. So she’s gotta have an opinion on why after being nominated 18 times in 12 out of 13 years Resnick then suddenly disappeared for the last 3 – and I’d like to hear it. I’m just trying to approach this fairly. I think we should listen to her version of events post-2013 (rather than having me impute things) and then we can make a judgement on whether “Resnick’s got loads of nominations” is a fair representation of what she knows about his recent career trajectory and status within SFF.

  87. 88
    gin-and-whiskey says:

    Ampersand says:
    April 23, 2015 at 2:43 pm
    (I may be wrong; I’m a bit biased by Amp, perhaps.)

    Please stop making vague insinuations that you don’t back up with links or quotes.

    Er, I read one of your own links in which you said that you would No Award people and understood it to be A Thing. I didn’t think there was anything “vague insuation-y” about it.

    I have never said or implied that there is, or should be, an opposing political party to the puppies. Saying “I think people should vote X because….” – whether X is a particular work, or “no award,” or NOT voting “no award” – is not the same thing as forming an organized political party or voting slate.

    I…… don’t know if I think that there’s a fundamental difference, especially if you’re preaching to a relatively interconnected choir.

    ETA: I realize that these are, in a way, points on a spectrum. Driving though a neighborhood at 20mph and at 100mph are points on a spectrum, too; that doesn’t mean that it’s hypocritical to object to one but not the other.

    I grok that this is a distinction which seems to matter quite a bit to you, but I am not sure you’re right to make the distinction so strongly. I don’t really care to call it hypocritical because you seem honestly to believe you’re right, but doesn’t seem as clearcut as I think you are maintaining.

    1) I totally acknowledge that you are a sf fan. But I do think you’ve shown, in this thread, that you don’t actually know all that much about the Hugos, or worldcon. That doesn’t in any way make you less of a sf fan

    Nope. I’m not a con-attendee type. I’ve been reading the Hugos for a looong time, though.

    I’m sort of like a standard John Doe Fan. My interest in the Hugos is primarily “make it so if I buy/borrow a Hugo winner it will be a kick ass novel, ideally the best one of the year by a good margin.” To the degree that the Puppies would mess with that (Skin Game? Seriously?) then I oppose it. To the degree that anyone else would mess with that (Ancillary Justice? Seriously?) then I oppose that as well.

    I can’t understand why you would say that whether or not their accusations are true isn’t a relevant factor to consider.

    Because a lot of the root of the bad feeling of their accusations is, as Mandolin puts it, buried behind a wall of privacy which people don’t necessarily care to discuss. And also because both sides are so incredibly invested in winning and so heavily opposed to other parties that I tend to distrust quite a bit of what I hear, which makes it hard to conclude anything other than “I like these people better so I’ll believe them more.” That isn’t so much my style. It isn’t irrelevant (if I had video I’d watch it) but more like “unprovable.”

    I’m also not sure what “compromise” would consist of, in this case.

    I imagine that it would involve
    1) Avoid “no awarding” out of an anti-slate bias. IOW, instead of your “no award unless something is truly exceptional and I can’t stand not to award it” it would be “award unless you think there is really nothing which is arguably of Hugo quality, at all.”

    2) Get Torgerson et all (not VD) to agree to avoid the slate voting next year.

    3) Tweak the voting a bit so that the SP contingent feels less cut out at the nomination phase. Perhaps agree that you’ll give 1 slot to the SMOF majority vote; 1 slot to the SP majority vote; and let the remainders fall where they may. That’s a change, but not necessarily too bad of a change. Sure: many (though not all) of the SP voters may vote for their preferred nominee, but once the field is smaller that won’t be controlling.

    Honestly, it’s pretty clear that what’s making them unhappy is that writers whose work they don’t like are being published and in some cases are getting critically praised (including winning awards).

    That is really only 1/3 of what I perceive to be an argument about: (a) the wrong people; (b) not the right people; (c) through hidden means.

    I think that as long as writers who they don’t like are allowed to publish and are praised by some critics, they will be displeased.

    Could be.

    In this post, for example, Brad T. makes it clear that he objects to topics he doesn’t like (gender, racism, etc) being “on permanent display” – by which he seems to mean, “published” – in SF.

    This is an interesting quote selection. The whole paragraph says:

    Which is not to say you can’t make a good SF/F book about racism, or sexism, or gender issues, or sex, or whatever other close-to-home topic you want. But for Pete’s sake, why did we think it was a good idea to put these things so much on permanent display, that the stuff which originally made the field attractive in the first place — To Boldly Go Where No One Has Gone Before! — is pushed to the side? Or even absent altogether?

    You say “he doesn’t want this stuff published.”
    I say “actually, it seems pretty clear that he doesn’t want SO MUCH of that stuff published that his favorite stuff is “pushed to the side or even absent altogether.”

    I do not think you are fairly representing his position.

    And he seems to be saying that SF imagery (spaceships, planetscapes, etc) should belong only to his little exclusive club of “we only like pew pew pew space battle sf” fans, rather than being something that can be legitimately used by all of fandom and all SF authors.

    I also do not think you are going to get very far in the “it’s their fault” while you keep saying things like “we only like pew pew pew space battle sf fans.” But hey, your call.

    I don’t see any way that can be compromised with.

    I do. But then again I view the SP as normal people with differing opinions, and not as “we only like pew pew pew space battle sf fans”

  88. 89
    Myca says:

    No. I want this to come from Mandolin.

    …and I want a pony.

    The reason you’re neither making a direct claim nor backing it up is that you have no claim to make nor any evidence to back it up with. Because you are long on slimy insinuations and short on evidence, you want to imply things that you cannot even partially prove.

    Mandolin is, of course, welcome to reply to you or not, but I’d be surprised if she bothered.

    —Myca

  89. 90
    Ruchama says:

    Which is not to say you can’t make a good SF/F book about racism, or sexism, or gender issues, or sex, or whatever other close-to-home topic you want. But for Pete’s sake, why did we think it was a good idea to put these things so much on permanent display, that the stuff which originally made the field attractive in the first place — To Boldly Go Where No One Has Gone Before! — is pushed to the side? Or even absent altogether?

    I’ve mostly been staying out of this discussion, because I don’t really know enough about the whole process of nominating and voting and everything, and I haven’t read enough of the works involved, to really contribute anything. But this made me do a hard double-take. Does he actually think that Star Trek DIDN’T deal with racism and sexism? (Also, interesting that he quoted the “No One” rather than “No Man” version.)

  90. 91
    Ampersand says:

    Er, I read one of your own links in which you said that you would No Award people and understood it to be A Thing. I didn’t think there was anything “vague insuation-y” about it.

    In what possible way is me saying how I plan to vote (individually), the same thing as people in effect forming a political party?

    I…… don’t know if I think that there’s a fundamental difference, especially if you’re preaching to a relatively interconnected choir.

    Actually, the example you cited is me “preaching” to people who strongly disagree with me. That aside, let’s clarify something. Here’s my example again, slightly reworded:

    If Lucy says “I don’t think Hilary is the best candidate, so I’d advise people to vote for O’Malley,” that is not the same thing as Lucy forming a voting bloc or a political party. Because that’s not organizing.

    If Linus decides to organize a hundred people into supporting an anti-Hillary voting slate, and names his group “The Rabid Blankets,” that is organizing a political party (or at least a bloc voting organization).

    Are you explicitly saying that you cannot see any substantive difference between what Linus does, and what Lucy does, in this example? Please answer this question, if you answer any of my comment at all.

    I say “actually, it seems pretty clear that he doesn’t want SO MUCH of that stuff published that his favorite stuff is “pushed to the side or even absent altogether.”

    But this is factually wrong. “Space exploration and pioneering derring-do” sf has not been pushed to the side; they are shelved in the same section of the bookstore, they are available through online booksellers, they have been nominated for major awards and sometimes win them. In what sense – and please answer this question with facts, not with feelings – have SEAPDD works been pushed aside or made to be absent?

    Brad objects to two things: the “permanent display” of SF about topics he isn’t interested in, and the works he likes being pushed aside or absented. But only one of these two claims has any truth to it at all. The former can be addressed, but shouldn’t be. The latter is literally impossible to address. There’s no way to stop “pushing aside” or absenting books that have not been in any way pushed aside or absented.

    But then again I view the SP as normal people with differing opinions, and not as “we only like pew pew pew space battle sf fans”

    It’s weird how you combine chiding me for being uncivl, with so much snideness.

    For the record. I view the SP as normal people with differing opinions. I also don’t respect their taste in SF.[*] These two opinions do not contradict each other in any way at all, and suggesting that people I made a joke about their literary tastes I therefore don’t view them as normal people is, to put it mildly, dishonest of you.

    [*] ETA: Actually, I’m sure there are SPs who have varied tastes.

  91. 92
    Ampersand says:

    More response to G&W:

    1) Avoid “no awarding” out of an anti-slate bias. IOW, instead of your “no award unless something is truly exceptional and I can’t stand not to award it” it would be “award unless you think there is really nothing which is arguably of Hugo quality, at all.”

    I don’t think you understand how “no award” voting works in the Hugos. This is an inaccurate description of how it works, because it ignores that I can “no award” some works (by ranking them below “no award” on my ballot, for example) while still voting for other works to get the award.

    2) Get Torgerson et all (not VD) to agree to avoid the slate voting next year.

    But VD is the one that actually matters; his RP slate was significantly more successful at placing their candidates than the SP slate was. So although I’d certainly welcome Brad et al renouncing slate voting, it would not change the essential situation in any way. Slate voters would still be able to game the system to effectively disenfranchise the majority.

    3) Tweak the voting a bit so that the SP contingent feels less cut out at the nomination phase. Perhaps agree that you’ll give 1 slot to the SMOF majority vote; 1 slot to the SP majority vote; and let the remainders fall where they may. That’s a change, but not necessarily too bad of a change. Sure: many (though not all) of the SP voters may vote for their preferred nominee, but once the field is smaller that won’t be controlling.

    This goes radically against what the Hugo awards have been, and I don’t think a single person who has any actual involvement with WorldCon would support this idea. It’s a non-starter. It’s also a terrible idea for many pragmatic reasons – how, for voting purposes, can SP and SMOF voters be defined? Is a SP voter just whoever Brad says is one? The SPs do not have a transparent process – is it really worth throwing away the Hugo’s well-earned rep for transparency to placate the SPs? What if some other right-wing author can gather together 200 voters – does administrating the SP slot move from Brad to that author, on the grounds that that author is a better reflection of the common will? What if some other group of fans – paranormal romance fans, for example, or time travel fans, or fantasy fans – demand that they get their own slots, too?

    Also, legitimately winning a Hugo requires being the victor of a two-stage election process. Under your proposal, some people (those selected by Brad T. or whomever) get to win after only winning one stage of an election, while others still have to win two elections. That’s obviously unfair.

  92. 93
    Ampersand says:

    One more thing – the specific thing that anti-puppies have been saying, over and over and over again, is that we don’t want slates and we don’t want parties. (The most prominent anti-puppy writer, GRRM, is exceedingly clear on this point.) A solution which says “we should have parties and reserve slots for them” is not a compromise.

  93. 94
    Pete Patriot says:

    The reason you’re neither making a direct claim nor backing it up is that you have no claim to make nor any evidence to back it up with. Because you are long on slimy insinuations and short on evidence, you want to imply things that you cannot even partially prove.

    Myca – your contributions aren’t helpful and I really regret that your provocative and belligerent ignorance baited me into post #87, which I would like to retract and apologise for.

    Resnick is a interesting case. He was nominated 18 times in 12 out of 13 years. At that point he expressed some revanchist views and offended people when writing for the SFWA, I know Mandolin knows, because she mentioned it in reply to me in #36 and also, as it turns out, actually lead the internal investigation into the incident. (And yes, its undeniable there was a conspiracy in the sense of organised political action against him – blogs are full of it.) It is also on the record that Resnick’s nominations stopped at that point and he hasn’t got one in the 3 years since.

    So, maybe, this is all a coincidence and the guy’s writing quality suddenly dropped off at the same time as he offended people with his politics. But this strikes me as a clear cut case of (however justifiably) someone successful becoming a pariah for their political views and I’d like to hear Mandolin’s opinion on the matter. It seem extremely odd to promote him as an example of a conservative welcome at the Hugos given this incident and the events that followed (or rather didn’t).

  94. 95
    Patrick says:

    Pete Patriot- I googled what you’re talking about.

    You are being absolutely ridiculous. To a morally blameworthy extent.

    The Hugo nomination process is fully transparent. If you want to argue that the Evil SJW conspiracy torpedoed Mike Resnicks chances, there’s something you apparently haven’t been swift enough to realize- you don’t just need to argue that the Evil SJWs don’t like Resnick. You need to argue, specifically, that the approximately three dozen people who liked Resnick enough to consistently vote for him across the course of more than a decade stopped liking him over this issue.

    You don’t need to argue that his detractors mocked him. You need to argue that his biggest fans started hating him.

    Good luck.

    What I find particularly frustrating about this is that I’m actually pretty convinced that the Mike Resnick hate party was made up of some genuinely awful people, with genuinely awful political views that genuinely masquerade as virtue in circles of self righteously awful people. But that doesn’t mean they cheated at the Hugos.

  95. 96
    Pete Patriot says:

    What? The rules are if you pay your money you can take your pick. Nothing’s “cheating”. The issue is do people wrongly judge work based on politics when they shouldn’t? Yes. Are there conspiracies based on politics? Yes. That’s undeniable. We’re stumbling towards an awful world where what people think when they pick up a book is “does this conform to the correct political views”. Many of the best books are horrible politically.

  96. 97
    Myca says:

    Myca – your contributions aren’t helpful and I really regret that your provocative and belligerent ignorance baited me into post #87, which I would like to retract and apologise for.

    :D

    I’m aware of the Resnick situation, but still and again, this isn’t evidence. The reason I keep asking for a specific claim with specific evidence to back it up is because I knew you meant something like this, and I knew you didn’t have any actual evidence.

    And hey, maybe Patrick’s right. Maybe Resnick pissed off a bunch of people who used to vote for him, and now they don’t. Even if that ends up being true, THAT’S NOT A CONSPIRACY.

    —Myca

  97. 98
    Patrick says:

    Just to be clear, I really, really doubt that Resnick pissed off “a bunch of people who used to vote for him.”

    I believe he pissed off “a bunch of people who never voted for him” and I believe that his fans don’t give a damn. That’s why pissing off people isn’t likely to affect his Hugo chances. You can’t cast a Hugo anti-vote in the nomination process. Even if the one thing you remember the most from 2013 is how much you hate Mike Resnick, his fans can still vote for him and there’s nothing you can do about that.

    So any claim that Resnick related drama is torpedoing his Hugo chances is going to have to involve a much more robust causal element than “feminists got mad at him.”

  98. 99
    Myca says:

    Are there conspiracies based on politics? Yes. That’s undeniable.

    And yet I deny it.

    Well … maybe?

    If you don’t count secrecy as a necessary part of the makeup of a conspiracy, then there is one (Hugo) conspiracy based on politics. The Sad/Rabid Puppy conspiracy.

    I deny that there is a left-wing conspiracy to match it.

    If you disagree … that is, if you believe that there is a conspiracy on the left to keep right-wing authors and works off the Hugo noms list, or to get left-wing authors and works on, please offer evidence of this conspiracy.

    You will not. Because you cannot. Because no such conspiracy exists.

    —Myca

  99. 100
    Pete Patriot says:

    What the do you mean by a conspiracy – like Protocols style stuff? Just a bunch of people collectively deciding to work towards a goal is a conspiracy (and yes a bunch of people decided to stir up chainmailbikinigate, and hugofatjokegate, and lovecraftstatuegate, and scottcardhatesgaysgate, and so on and so on). People individually disliking stuff is one thing, collective action to create and escalate a shitstorm, and reinforce the view that work should be judged politically is another. There is certainly a lot of the later in SFF.