Glad to see the Peripheral get onto the list. I felt it was one of Gibson’s best in a long time (and I loved the Blue Ant Trilogy to begin with), and if I discover that the fucking Sad Puppies kept it off the Hugo shortlist I will be literally mad with rage.
I liked Peripheral. I also think it is great that The Three-Body problem is on the list. The references to the Chinese Cultural Revolution and Chinese history made it different and added interest to an already interesting plot. I have actually read four of the five novels in the Best SF category so I feel like I am ahead on this one. They are all great novels, and I think I am routing for The Three-Body Problem of the group.
Given that the Locus awards start with a slate chosen by the editors of the mag, is it a surprise that none of the Puppy choices made it? I mean, even if they tried, they’d have to get enough write ins to overwhelm the choices of those who are comfortable just choosing from the Locus slate.
Locus awards provide a mechanism to write in your own suggestions and you are encouraged to do so therefore the answer is no, it doesn’t prove that. Even it proves the opposite, it means that there’s no such silent majority who can’t have their say and prevented by a sekrit eeeevil cabal of editors and gatekeeper special fans of SF stopping “proper” SF getting awards…
If there were enough people reading and liking puppy choices, they could have and would have voted in the Locus awards, if they bothered. Probably next year, they will.
Could be that. But I think the framing effect of being on the recommended reading list probably pushes most of those on the list above those that are not. Admittedly, it’s a large list, but here’s a list of the 2015 award finalists that were not on the 2014 recommended reading list (ignoring the magazine, publisher, editor, and artist categories):
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And here’s a list of the 2014 award finalists that were not on the 2013 recommended reading list:
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And the 2013 awards not on the 2012 list:
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And 2012/2011:
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I’m getting bored of looking for and comparing the two lists, but you likely see my point: Locus Award finalists come from the Locus Recommended Reading List. Either Locus is really good at picking likely winners of their poll, or the fact that it’s on the reading list (“Hey, this is good, you should read this”), distorts the poll. But consider this: the 2013 Hugo Novella winner wasn’t on the reading list. Locus has a write in option, and people may use it. But not enough have used it in the past 4 years to result in anything that wasn’t on the Reading List making it into the top 5, even ones that won other awards.
What is likely, a cabal of editors or a normal statistical distribution of votes showing puppy favourites actually not that much favourite with people bothering with any kind of votes.
One of the most common Puppy complaints is the Hugo being a closed system. Here we have an award system which accepts nominations from -anyone- on the net, even though members’ votes count double but what’s the number of members compared to the numbers of people on the net, even then we see that they can’t even make to the cut.
It is possible that they are not in the recommended reading list because of so-called political reasons, it is also possible that they are not there because they are just not any good. Let’s take a non-puppy example, Wizard of the Coast novels I believe still sell enough numbers to be published (a blast from the past, in 90s they were the -bad- books of my youth and were much loved by my friends who would never accept that their precious book about Lord Soth of Ravenloft was just not good… anyway, I digress) but they still don’t make it to the recommended reading list because 20 years after, they are still crap!
Oh, Crom, hear my lamentations… I just checked. R.A. Salvatore is still writing his dark elf novels… It’s even the same bloody elf character! When will this horror end?
I’m sorry, the Lord Soth Ravenloft book was awesome, matched only by the creepy carnival Ravenloft book and the Ravenloft book about dance magic.
Disclaimer: I haven’t read them since the 90s, I am holding onto my nostalgia goggles with a death grip
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