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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: 2) by Vanderhoth on Monday April 13 2015, @03:55PM

    by Vanderhoth (61) on Monday April 13 2015, @03:55PM (#169772)

    But that is exactly what they're doing. And they're shitheads for it.

    No more so than the people that were doing it before them, which is kind of the point. It was ok when one group was getting away with it more discretely, but now it's not because the "wrong" people are getting away with it... by playing by the same rules as everyone else. To me playing by the rules doesn't really make them shitheads, it makes their claim that it was already being done more plausible.

    The results of which are now the people that were running the show before want new rules to make sure the "wrong" type of authors can't receive nominations in the future (by having nomination committees rather than public voting) and are buying memberships for people to vote "no award" for people nominated this year.

    So yeah, sad puppies made their point and hopefully it can ALL stop next year, but I doubt it will. Genie's out of the bottle.

    --
    "Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by ikanreed on Monday April 13 2015, @04:02PM

    by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Monday April 13 2015, @04:02PM (#169777) Journal

    Again, that narrative is bullshit. The end.

    • (Score: 4, Touché) by GeminiDomino on Monday April 13 2015, @08:39PM

      by GeminiDomino (661) on Monday April 13 2015, @08:39PM (#169965)

      Well, I'm convinced!

      --
      "We've been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of our culture"
      • (Score: 2) by aristarchus on Monday April 13 2015, @10:18PM

        by aristarchus (2645) on Monday April 13 2015, @10:18PM (#170034) Journal

        Well, I'm convinced!

        Me, too! Very convincing.

      • (Score: 2) by ikanreed on Tuesday April 14 2015, @03:19AM

        by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday April 14 2015, @03:19AM (#170182) Journal

        I explained why, and they repeated the bullshit part. This wasn't a complicated rebuttal because I don't often feel inclined to repeat myself.

        • (Score: 2) by GeminiDomino on Tuesday April 14 2015, @03:42AM

          by GeminiDomino (661) on Tuesday April 14 2015, @03:42AM (#170197)

          Actually, you simply dismissed and insulted. You didn't "explain" anything, either time.

          --
          "We've been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of our culture"
          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 14 2015, @05:45AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 14 2015, @05:45AM (#170234)

            Listen and believe!

            • (Score: 2) by Vanderhoth on Tuesday April 14 2015, @04:24PM

              by Vanderhoth (61) on Tuesday April 14 2015, @04:24PM (#170442)

              is a lie

              --
              "Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe