The least disliked among the five works most popular among the thousand or so fans who remember to nominate. That’s what the voting setup is designed to produce.
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You mean other than rabid homophobe John C. Wright and Beale, personally, right? Read Charles Stross’ take on this.
Or you can read Wright ranting about the gay agenda:
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Actually, “Ancillary Sword,” was quite good (and is going to win best novel now).
No, that’s not true in the slightest. This is exactly what Cory and other authors have described it as: driving trollies the hugos because a bunch of right wing Christian homophobes felt like “real” SF (the kind they write) was being blocked by a cabal of gay minority women or something similar.
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I heard it was about ethics in science fiction voting.
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Goddamnit, it’s wasn’t until you quoted it that I noticed that was a really awkwardly put sentence. Now it’s bothering me, I’ll have to sort that out.
But anyway, yes, that’s about the size of it. A smaller group within a small group pick the book they like the best, or at least dislike the least, out of all the books that were nominated.
And it’s not like it’s ever been hard to influence - I can think of at least two occasions where it was influenced just by things like where Worldcon was held, or who the guest of honor was. It’s just that this is a particularly blatant and open attempt to do so by a group, rather than simply something that happened by accident.
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Not satisfied with buying our nation’s elections, the conservatives are now buying our book genre’s elections.
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I’m not 100% convinced that the guy behind the Sad Puppies is a shit, he might be a Useful Idiot but the Rabid Puppies master is undoubtedly an utter shite.
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Never underestimate the desire to Troll driven by the knowledge that it will annoy people. There are probably some Useful Idiots on the slate because they think that forcing things will prove the need to reform, but the bulk are almost certainly doing it for the lolz.
They tried last year as well of course, got some things on the ballot, which all came last. We shall see what happens when it comes to the real voting.
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This was a reaction to the non-scifi fantasy trash the Hugos have been nominating for years. I simply ignore them. The problem has been the “literary” types have often simply chosen political agenda stories, and the reverse being done is somehow bad.
The whole thing is a demonstration how when one side, who has had a monopoly, is overthrown by the opposite side then the type of behavior the original side has been engaging in for many years is suddenly bad.
If this is taken as a way to get more readers involved in voting rather than literary agents,then there will be true reform, else the voluntary association must disband.
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No sci-fi elements at all? Really?
From “Selkie Stories Are For Losers:”
“Gray in front and gray in back, 'tis the very thing I lack.” That’s what the man’s wife said, when she found the skin. The man ran to catch her, he even kissed her even though she was already a seal, but she squirmed off down the road and flopped into the water. The man stood knee-deep in the chilly waves, stinking of fish, and cried. In selkie stories, kissing never solves anything. No transformation happens because of a kiss. No one loves you just because you love them. What kind of fairy tale is that?
From “If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love”:
If all I needed was something blue, I’d run across the church, heels clicking on the marble, until I reached a vase by the front pew. 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. Green chiffon would turn into leaves. My legs would be pale stems, my hair delicate pistils. From my throat, bees would drink exotic nectars. I would astonish everyone assembled, the biologists and the paleontologists and the geneticists, the reporters and the rubberneckers and the music aficionados, all those people who—deceived by the helix-and-fossil trappings of cloned dinosaurs– believed that they lived in a science fictional world when really they lived in a world of magic where anything was possible.
From “The Ink Readers of Doi Saket”:
Tangmoo looked up. Thousands upon thousands of khom loi floated like swarms of fluorescent jellyfish against the nocturnal canopy. The sky was laden with wishes. The closest ones seemed to be moving more quickly, drifting southward. When they reached higher altitudes they veered west, toward the mountains. Where are they going? Tangmoo wondered. They all drifted past steadily, purposely, aiming for an unknown destination. They flew toward the edge of the universe and then beyond.
And from the winner, “The Water That Falls On You”:
The water that falls on you from nowhere when you lie is perfectly ordinary, but perfectly pure. True fact. I tested it myself when the water started falling a few weeks ago. Everyone on Earth did. Everyone with any sense of lab safety anyway. Never assume any liquid is just water. When you say “I always document my experiments as I go along,” enough water falls to test, but not so much that you have to mop up the lab. Which lie doesn’t matter. The liquid tests as distilled water every time.
I’m really confused about why you think these stories don’t have science fiction or fantasy elements. They do. They all do. Some are more subtle than others, certainly. None of them are easy reads. They are devoid of all the comfortable tropes and shibboleths that you seem to need your science fiction and fantasy to contain, and perhaps that’s the real issue here for people who are making your sort of objection.
I think for people who complain that none of these works are “real” science fiction or fantasy, the problem is that they simply aren’t their definition of science fiction or fantasy. My tastes run more to China Mieville and Neil Gaiman. Ray Bradbury and Stanislaw Lem. Octavia Butler and Margaret Atwood. Connie Willis and Ursula LeGuin. All science fiction/fantasy writers, but ones who turn the normal world inside out, defamiliarize it, make it reveal unseen layers–and I’m not talking about a whimsical magical disappearing train platform to a sorcery school. That’s kid stuff. I’m talking about viae ferae that vanish without a trace from a posh London borough only to appear snaking through a burned-out Romani bidonville off the A1 to Aéroport Charles de Gaulle, and God help the poor sod who gets caught in transit.
But that’s my point. The genre is expanding, and so is its readership, and, well, our standards are higher. It’s no longer a club for little boys who hate books that don’t involve wizards and dragons and robots, even if they decide to let in an occasional girl in a magnanimous display of tokenism (as long as she toes the line). It’s going to become more challenging, and self-serving masturbatory exercises like those on the slates (and a few that were removed by their authors, knowing how transparent their motives apparently were) will soon be a thing of the past. Even if this manages to kill the Hugos, it’s too late. Sorry about that.
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This is why I always remind people to not let their buttons get pushed. To be thoughtful and not overreact in the predictable ways the trollies wanted. People only trolley because they know that it works…
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If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love is beautiful, but only marginally genre. A series of speculations and stream of consciousness grief. There is no possibility that the lover is or could be a dinosaur, just that the world would be better if he was that impossible thing.
The Ink Readers of Doi Saket. It’s been a while, but is it genre? Not strongly. More Oriental Romance. It’s about Thai life where people believe in wishes being sent downriver on boats, not necessarily a world where those wishes have worldly power.
You’ve not mentioned Wakulla Springs, a novella nominee, but that’s the one that most struck me as non-genre. There’s about one sentence, right at the end, which pushes things a little towards magical realism. Everything else is just Deep South slice of life.
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Oddly, I had the opposite reaction:
Kudos to Cory for praising some activist-writing of George R. R. Martin, and de facto suggesting we reward this behavior in the marketplace.
Ah, you are one of those that pays for this website via an annual-subscription?
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My, goodness. What is that doing in an awards slate for speculative fiction ?!?!?
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Isn’t that a left wing cause?
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Your quoted examples do not bear this out.
It never has been, and the fact that you characterize it that way lends credibility to the claims of the puppies. You mention Connie Willis, did you forget her eleven Hugo awards? You are the one reducing her, and Bujold, and LeGuin, to tokens.
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I knew nothing of the Sad Puppies until yesterday nor do I pay attention to the Hugos. What I know is this: Jim Butcher is on this list, and if you’re against Jim Butcher, then I’m against you.
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Ouch. OK, yes, deserved that one, could have phrased things better.
The point I was meaning to make was that if I write a story about what I am going to do if I win the lottery then that is small f fantasy, but hardly Fantasy, let alone Science Fiction.
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FWIW, if I can read a work which is ostensibly SF, and tell from that reading what the author’s position is on political/social issues of the twenty-teens USA, I feel vaguely let down by that work considered as SF.
In the past year, I’ve read a bunch of John Scalzi and Orson Scott Card, both of whom can write a great story with no reference to their politics. I’ll continue to buy and read from them (and from others) just as long as they keep doing so.
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