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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."
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 13 2015, @04:14PM
I am having a hard time understanding how vitriol, no matter how vitriolic, is proof of a secret group that existed beforehand.
Just because people are angry and pissed off doesn't make them conspirators, especially prior conspirators.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Oakenshield on Monday April 13 2015, @04:50PM
The point was that the "Sad Puppies" opponents were openly declaring dedication to vote solely based upon politics. The accusations from "Sad Puppy" supporters were that the process had been in fact previously been hijacked by political factions within the membership. That is, that winners were chosen based upon alignment to the political leanings of the membership instead of merit. The Sad Puppies' slate was (allegedly) chosen without regard to politics.
(Score: 2) by Vanderhoth on Monday April 13 2015, @05:14PM
This is supposedly true for this year. The guy that ran SP1 & SP2 admitted he has a conservative leaning. This year the slate was chosen by different people without consideration to politics, some authors that strongly disagreed with SP asked to have their names dropped from the slate and some have turned down nominations. I read one blog by an author who speculates that might be more because other authors are afraid they will be labelled as conservatives for not rejecting the nominations and therefore will be shunned by publishers and attacked by "SJW", I hate that term, in the community... or outside of it. Supposedly one of the defining factors of an "SJW" is they don't care about the communities or fandoms. They get involved in everything for no other reason then to get social justice even if they'd never consume the product themselves, before or after.
"Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 13 2015, @09:26PM
It's that idea that they can/should/will lead you to a better tomorrow or shame you into non-existence for not sharing their vision sort of thing...
You know, like Hitler...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 13 2015, @10:57PM
Supposedly one of the defining factors of an "SJW" is they don't care about the communities or fandoms. They get involved in everything for no other reason then to get social justice even if they'd never consume the product themselves, before or after.
So you disagree with Buzz calling Martin and Scalzi SJWs? [soylentnews.org]
And what do you call all the people who signed up to be hugo voters for the first time ever in order to vote for the SP slate of 'anti-SJW' titles?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 13 2015, @10:52PM
> The point was that the "Sad Puppies" opponents were openly declaring dedication to vote solely based upon politics.
Yes AFTER WITNESSING SP DOING IT FIRST.
You and vander are both pushing circular logic - "someone else was gaming the system first." But all the 'proof' of that is (a) one guy (Scalzi) lobbying for his own stories and (b) a bunch of people angrily vowing to do to SP what SP did first.
Time travel is not real, SP doesn't get to blame their prior actions on what people will do in the future.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Oakenshield on Tuesday April 14 2015, @02:18PM
I realize I am debating a AC and it is pointless, but... SP was reactionary. This was not something that was pulled out of their rectums for the Lulz. It was openly stated it was a response to the (at least) appearance of impropriety of selections by political affiliation. It was also stated that SP's slate was agnostic to politics, and based upon (their opinions of) merit. SP opponents openly stated that their goal was to thwart this and vote based upon political lines which is precisely what the SP supporters claimed that they had done in the past. It is difficult to believe that voting by political affiliation did not exist prior to SP, while those accused freely admit to intentions to do so in the future and while past winners look suspiciously like politics were involved.