{"id":21689,"date":"2016-04-26T14:02:50","date_gmt":"2016-04-26T21:02:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=21689"},"modified":"2016-04-26T14:10:50","modified_gmt":"2016-04-26T21:10:50","slug":"hugo-nominations-are-out-and-the-rabid-puppies-dominated-the-list-a-few-thoughts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=21689","title":{"rendered":"Hugo Nominations Are Out, And The Rabid Puppies Dominated The List. A Few Thoughts."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Bad-Dog\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Spacefaring Kittens<\/a> publishes the list of nominees (marking which ones came from the Rabid Puppies list, which is most of them), and comments:<\/p>\n

…How about just no awarding the shit and ignoring the troll\u2019s trolling?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I\u2019m basically with this view this year.<\/p>\n

Winning a Hugo is a two-stage process; a first stage to select the shortlist of nominees, and a second stage to select the winners from the shortlist.<\/p>\n

Last year, the Sad and Rabid Puppies selected a bunch of sub-par work that never would have made the Hugo ballot without the use of slates (slates: groups of fans strategically nominating from a pre-agreed short list in order to combine their voting power). By gaming the vote this way, they dominated the Hugo nominations in the first stage of voting. But in the second stage of voting, which can\u2019t be effectively slated, virtually all their choices ended up coming below \u201cNo Award,\u201d the option Hugo voters can choose if they feel that none of the nominees deserve to win a Hugo Award.<\/p>\n

This year, the Sad Puppies have more-or-less backed off slating, and just published a recommendation list, arrived at through an open voting procedure. But the Rabid Puppies once again did a slate, chosen by one person – professional asshat Vox Day – which dominated Hugo nominations this year. But Day deliberately chose many nominees that would plausibly have been Hugo nominated anyway<\/a>. (No one thinks that Neil Gaiman requires Vox Day\u2019s help to get Hugo-nominated, for instance.)<\/p>\n

Last year, I ranked every Puppy nominee below \u201cno award\u201d on my ballot. That seemed to be the right thing to do. Winning a Hugo is a two-stage process, and works that couldn’t have gotten past the first stage of voting without gaming the vote, in my view can’t legitimately win a Hugo Award.<\/p>\n

This year, I don\u2019t think I\u2019ll do the same. It seems ridiculous to penalize works that could plauisbly have made it onto the Hugo ballot just because (as John Scalzi put it) \u201cthe Puppies are running in front of an existing parade and claiming to lead it.\u201d\u00a0 This year I\u2019ll read all the nominees, and vote for the ones I think are wonderful; those that I think don\u2019t deserve to be on the ballot I’ll rank below \u201cNo Award.\u201d<\/p>\n

A few other Hugo-notes:<\/p>\n

1) My guess is that we\u2019ll see Noah Ward win on at least a couple of categories this year, but most categories will have a named winner.<\/p>\n

2) Next year, assuming the voters at this year\u2019s Worldcon agree to this, there will be a change in the Hugo vote-counting rules – E Pluribus Hugo<\/a> – which might reduce the ability of a minority of slate voters to game the process and unfairly dominate Hugo nominations. Early data may indicate that EPH won\u2019t make as large a difference as people are hoping. If further changes are necessary to prevent the Rabid Puppies from gaming the system to dominate nominations, I expect further changes will be made.<\/p>\n

3) By a wide margin, more people voted to nominate works for the Hugos in 2016 than in any prior year. And the Rabid Puppies still dominated the outcome. If there are hundreds of possible nominees, and if most nominators vote honestly, then a small group of slate voters can overpower the large majority of honest voters. I hope that this result will persuade people who have been saying \u201call\u2019s that\u2019s needed is for more people to nominate\u201d to change their minds.<\/p>\n

4) A tedious parody of \u201cIf You Were A Dinosaur, My Love<\/a>,\u201d which was published on Vox Day\u2019s blog, is one of the nominees for best short story. 1) This shows that the Rabid Puppies are in no way against message fic. 2) This shows that the Rabid Puppies are in no way about ensuring that good-quality fiction is nominated.<\/p>\n

5) But on the bright side, as Mandolin pointed out on Twitter<\/a>, this makes \u201cDinosaurs\u201d the first piece of fiction to have its fanfic <\/em>nominated for a Hugo. History!<\/p>\n

6) I wonder if there was no effort to nominate \u201cHPMOR<\/a>\u201d at all, or if HPMOR\u2019s fans tried but just didn\u2019t have enough votes?<\/p>\n

7) DragonCon is starting a fandom awards that is connected to a much larger convention than the WorldCon (home of the Hugos), and which anyone can vote in online. Which is what the Puppies have been saying they want all along. So will they be content with getting what they want and stop trying to fuck with the Hugo Awards?<\/p>\n

8) Once again, no sign at all of a competing left-wing slate controlling the Hugo Awards. It’s only the Puppies who are doing this shit.<\/p>\n

9) I’m going to try to post less often about the Puppies this year, because we’ve all already heard this song. But at least it gives me an excuse to post adorable puppy photos.<\/p>\n

\n

Related reading: Asking the Wrong Questions: The 2016 Hugo Awards: Thoughts on the Nominees<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Spacefaring Kittens publishes the list of nominees (marking which ones came from the Rabid Puppies list, which is most of them), and comments: …How about just no awarding the shit and ignoring the troll\u2019s trolling? I\u2019m basically with this view … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[167],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hugo-awards"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21689"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21689\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21694,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21689\/revisions\/21694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}