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posted by LaminatorX on Monday April 13 2015, @11:30AM   Printer-friendly
from the Livejournal-still-works dept.

From the The Guardian.

Introducing the Sad Puppies...

"The shortlists for the long-running American genre awards, won in the past by names from Kurt Vonnegut to Ursula K Le Guin and voted for by fans, were announced this weekend to uproar in the science fiction community, after it emerged that the line-up corresponded closely with the slates of titles backed by certain conservative writers. The self-styled "Sad Puppies" campaigners had set out to combat what orchestrator and writer Brad Torgersen had criticised as the Hugos' tendency to reward "literary" and "ideological" works.

Today's Hugos, Torgersen has blogged, "have lost cachet, because at the same time SF/F has exploded popularly – with larger-than-life, exciting, entertaining franchises and products – the voting body of 'fandom' have tended to go in the opposite direction: niche, academic, overtly to the Left in ideology and flavor, and ultimately lacking what might best be called visceral, gut-level, swashbuckling fun".

Twenty years ago, he writes, "if you saw a lovely spaceship on a book cover, with a gorgeous planet in the background, you could be pretty sure you were going to get a rousing space adventure featuring starships and distant, amazing worlds". Nowadays, he claims, the same jacket is likely to be a story "merely about racial prejudice and exploitation, with interplanetary or interstellar trappings".

And here we have the Rabid Puppies definitely not mentioning GamerGate:

Another group of allied rightwing campaigners, dubbing themselves the Rabid Puppies and led by Vox Day, real name Theodore Beale, have also added their voices to the block-voting campaign against what Day called "the left-wing control freaks who have subjected science fiction to ideological control for two decades and are now attempting to do the same thing in the game industry".

And finally a bit of Martin:

"Call it block voting. Call it ballot stuffing. Call it gaming the system. There's truth to all of those characterisations. You can't call it cheating, though. It was all within the rules. But many things can be legal, and still bad ... and this is one of those, from where I sit. I think the Sad Puppies have broken the Hugo awards, and I am not sure they can ever be repaired," he wrote.

"If the Sad Puppies wanted to start their own award ... for Best Conservative SF, or Best Space Opera, or Best Military SF, or Best Old-Fashioned SF the Way It Used to Be ... whatever it is they are actually looking for ... hey, I don't think anyone would have any objections to that. I certainly wouldn't. More power to them," he added. "But that's not what they are doing here, it seems to me. Instead they seem to want to take the Hugos and turn them into their own awards."

 
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  • (Score: 5, Disagree) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday April 13 2015, @12:40PM

    Watch the twitter streams of the authors who're pissed off. They leave zero doubt that it is because of their social justice politics.

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    My rights don't end where your fear begins.
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 13 2015, @12:47PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 13 2015, @12:47PM (#169668)

    Eye of the beholder

    • (Score: 3, Flamebait) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday April 13 2015, @12:56PM

      Really not. They'll outright say so minus the phrase "social justice" if you watch a while. They're not remotely ashamed to say that they think their politics should rule the genre and other views should be censored.

      --
      My rights don't end where your fear begins.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 13 2015, @01:17PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 13 2015, @01:17PM (#169685)

        I'm referring to the "pissed off"

        To an unacknowledged collectivist like yourself anyone challenging the status quo is pissed off.

        • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday April 13 2015, @01:47PM

          Oh, you were being pedantic. Roger that.

          --
          My rights don't end where your fear begins.
          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 13 2015, @01:51PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 13 2015, @01:51PM (#169707)

            Nope, I was criticising your argument's foundations of minimization.

      • (Score: 4, Insightful) by snick on Monday April 13 2015, @01:33PM

        by snick (1408) on Monday April 13 2015, @01:33PM (#169698)

        It always amazes me how some folks equate criticism with censorship.

        • (Score: 4, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday April 13 2015, @01:46PM

          It's all about the context. In the context of an award, it is absolutely censorship to refuse to consider those of beliefs that don't fit your narrative of how things should be.

          --
          My rights don't end where your fear begins.
          • (Score: 3, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 13 2015, @01:53PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 13 2015, @01:53PM (#169708)

            > In the context of an award, it is absolutely censorship to refuse to consider those of
            > beliefs that don't fit your narrative of how things should be.

            Fatal irony overload alert!

            • (Score: 2) by aristarchus on Monday April 13 2015, @09:56PM

              by aristarchus (2645) on Monday April 13 2015, @09:56PM (#170026) Journal

              > In the context of an award, it is absolutely censorship to refuse to consider those of
              > beliefs that don't fit your narrative of how things should be.

              Fatal irony overload alert!

              Wow, just wow! I stand in awe of the alerter! Will Buzz get the message? Will understanding come to the Sad Puppies who are much put upon? Stay tuned for breaking news! (Fatal Irony Overload, heh heh, we should be so lucky!)

          • (Score: 5, Touché) by snick on Monday April 13 2015, @02:03PM

            by snick (1408) on Monday April 13 2015, @02:03PM (#169712)

            Sorry. You seem to have confused censorship with butthurt.