Everything I am writing about is basically verbatim from sad puppies and rabid puppies own sites. Not from commentaries. You are free to make your own opinions, but please don’t misrepresent the facts.
I also don’t see this hatred on here. Pity and disgust, possibly sad humor that these people are this simple, but not hatred. I wish they would not screw up the Hugos, but they do appear to basically be trolls. And trolls will be trolls.
Starship Troopers wouldn’t win an award today because we live in a world where ST won in the 50s. The world has moved on, in part because of the fact that ST won. When the Puppies imply that this is what they want to happen today, that Starship Troopers should win again and again and again, they’re painting a kind of existential hell for fans. Who the heck wants to read ST again and again, every year? Is Starship Troopers really the best SF ever? That ever was and ever could be?
I understand why a writer might want to re-write ST again and again, and get paid and lauded for it… in their dreams, or if they were very jaded and cynical about the business of writing. But the chances are, with such a strategy you’re going to have to be doing it for the money, and not for love of genre that might have a chance of winning an award. Some people will buy anything.
And there have been things like ST every now and then. Old Mans War, Armor, The Forever War, etc. Each dealt with their own social issues and were not simply vehicles for space violence.
@murph I would happily re-read Starship Troopers regularly - but maybe not every year. I don’t think Heinlein was anywhere near as right wing as many people - on the left or the right - believe; I think this has already been discussed by others. But would political correctness prevent Heinlein from winning a Hugo today? It’s a possibility, but mainly one stemming from the fact that Heinlein was writing in the 50s. If he were a writer today, I think it pretty unlikely he’d be writing now exactly as he did then. If he was writing 1950s SF now, he probably wouldn’t deserve to win. Again, it demonstrates the simple lack of ability among the Sad Puppies to actually contextualise a story within the time and circumstances that it was written. It’s no wonder they think that old SF has no ideological content, since they appear to be utterly blind to the frames of reference that would make the ideological content apparent. Imagine that you were reading the Forever War and you had no idea about US intervention in SE Asia. To you, Vietnam hadn’t happened. Or read Foundation whilst pretending you knew nothing about the Romans.
Another observation is that the Sad Puppies movement seem to want SF to be judged according to some other criteria than the rest of literature. Much as I get tired of a lot of intentionally literary writing in and outside of SF, forcing SF to only reward pulp writing is an incredibly fucking stupid idea - and not only because it’d prove Margaret Attwood right in her conceit on the genre.
re Hubbard, um OK? Is liking Battleship Earth now disallowed? (Actually Elron was a source of much amusement in my youth, starting with the whole Dianetics can be used to regrow teeth claims in Analog, to forming a religion as an intelligence rig to cover accidentally blundering into foreign secure naval facilities <—rampant speculation, but funny if true)
The conspiracy claim is commonplace to ever controversy I know of, but I’ve rarely found anything of substance to it.
Like the Urban Legend it devolves into someone I know, knew someone who knew, someone who was, secretly…but the trail ends before confirmation.
Conspiracies definitely exist, claiming that the reason your claims don’t match the data because of ‘the conspiracy’ is, IMO a critical thinking failure
I hope so, I havn’t found opaque esoteric double talk conducive to conversation=)
[quote=“murph, post:172, topic:56166, full:true”]
re Hubbard, um OK? Is liking Battleship Earth now disallowed?[/quote]
No, not at all. It is merely precluded by good taste, decency, the iron rule of Xenu, that sort of thing.
None of the rest of your post made the slightest bit of sense so I trust you will forgive me for not addressing it.
I’m sorry, but I don’t agree with your assertion that they want Starship Troopers to win again and again if it’s held up as a standard or more clearly a goal to aspire to, as to the quality they feel is missing.
Mostly because I can’t see anyway to prove that assertion, but also because I don’t beleive having standards automatically translates as to being rigidly lockstepped into anything.
I didn’t assert it. It was a rhetorical device. I asked if that’s what they wanted, in part because it isn’t at all clear to me that they don’t mean it literally, or that they really understand what they do in fact want.
Well said.
Yeah, of course - I’m not saying they’re right - I’m saying they’re fuck-witted.
How is @Mindysan33 asking you questions “a straw man”? Questions aren’t a stated position, they are for you to clarify your position.
Nonsense. Maybe in the 19th century when things like slavery and eugenics were still pretty mainstream ideas, but most racists in the 21st century make a point of claiming not to be racist. They may even tell themselves that they aren’t racist. That’s why any sentence that begins with “I’m not racist, but…” is all but guaranteed to end with some really racist statement.
but whether I stay or go is kind of up to you folks.
One of the few things I understood from @murph’s rant is their passive-aggressive martyrdom.
Nothing about that was well said. O_o
Possibly worth pointing out that Friday is supposed to be a person (albeit artificial) of color, so you really can’t judge this book by its cover.
I bodged up a “colour-shifted” version of that a while ago:
Probably didn’t get the skin tone quite right, but it’s a lot closer to what it should be than Whelan’s original, I think.
No, when I’m kidding I’ll start with “So have you heard the one about…”
Allow me to demonstrate, uh humph. "So have you heard the one about the people who claim an entire post devoted to hash-tags meant to ridicule and who regularly use such labels and phrases as,
“…he was never a vicious, vindictive little shit like these people are…”
“… beale is a vicious piece of work…”,
“Personality-based contraception is incredibly effective.”
“Oh yeah, he’s the dude with the slightly different logo and list. VD, STD, sad, rabid, they definitely seem related to me. Again, that nearly identical logo and name thing, similar grievances, and so on, kind of connect VD with these guys.”
“…beale is a vicious piece of work who is condemned by his own words…”
“Beale basically represents the worse aspects of humanity”
"Yeah…the gay director. Suck it Puppy. "
“I cant have enough fun with the #NewHugoCategories hash-tag, first time I find Twitter useful for something.I’m literally flooding it with rancid tropes.”
“Eh, they’re all in the same bed together, and share the same fleas”
“That a guy who we should all ignore for being an odious, racist, sexist troll, is now being talked about all across fandom…”
is all meant to convey their love, support and devotion?
See, that’s funny because it’s an ironic juxtaposition of the literal claim with what was actually meant.
And yes, I think it’s ludicrous to claim that your questioning of there being any hatred should be used to assert you love Beale, that’s actually one of my complaints, it doesn’t make sense, it breaks the rules of the logic game.
And I’m sorry if I haven’t been clear, I am explicitly trying to defend “the puppies”, or more specifically Larry and Brad from statements that I think are demonstrably untrue.
I’m reserving judgment on Beale because…
…asserting we should have a direct democracy that allowed everyone, including women and poc, to directly vote on political issues doesn’t = all women should be owned by men.
and
…noting the acts of a barbaric culture make sense in the context of that culture doesn’t = support for that culture or that acts.
Which are the two things I stumbled upon right at the beginning that didn’t jibe with his critics claims.
So hopefully the goal posts clear enough for you.
I don’t think Correia or Torgersen are evil men who act from evil intent for evil purposes, because I haven’t seen anything to support such a claim, and I object to character assassination in general.
And I’m not going to declare someone to be evil, or the worst of humanity, or fill in the blank, just because people tell me to.
Even if they pull out the rhetorical big guns like “and yet…hmm…” to insinuate something negative.
In fact, I’m going to have to get off of this comment thread and go do some research so…hmmmm…indeed.
I applaud the effort, but to me she now looks like a Swede who got carried away with the bronzer.
Now you’re just being willfully dense. It’s more than a name, its a shared ideological platform, one just happens to be the more militaristic wing. They all wish to “combat the forces of liberality and utopian social justice” in the what-could-be of science fiction. It all seems so sad and counterproductive, the flaws in humanity are no reason to not look beyond and cling to regressive thought and action.
I was raised in a fairly conservative family, however they were Trekkers. The lessons, questions, parallels, and essential socialism of the Federation was kept in context and they didn’t throw these passive aggressive shitfits over the lack of “traditional values” represented. The desire to see their views reflected directly and comfortingly were never such an issue as the younger Tea Parties and allied libertarian contrarians find in their media consumption.
Like I said read for yourself. I spent a couple hours reading Torgersens site and personally found very little substance to his grievances. I doubt that I will read any of his work soon.
Beale is evil. Plain and simple. Unless you are using a really different moral compass, his writings, in context, are simply horrible and retrograde views of anybody who is not a white, alpha male.
And Aldo I don’t see any character assassination here. I see straight up clash of world views.
