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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: 4, Informative) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Monday April 13 2015, @04:35PM
Starship Troopers? Crypto-Fascist love poem to the sacred homoerotic sublimation of military boot camp.
But Heinlein was a decent human being - a man who changed many of his assumptions and judgements over the course of his life. He was as many worlds apart from Philip K Dick as a man could be, but was helpful when most needed, without being asked or expected.
"Several years ago, when I was ill, Heinlein offered his help, anything he could do, and we had never met; he would phone me to cheer me up and see how I was doing. He wanted to buy me an electric typewriter, God bless him — one of the few true gentlemen in this world. I don't agree with any ideas he puts forth in his writing, but that is neither here nor there. One time when I owed the IRS a lot of money and couldn't raise it, Heinlein loaned the money to me. I think a great deal of him and his wife; I dedicated a book to them in appreciation. Robert Heinlein is a fine-looking man, very impressive and very military in stance; you can tell he has a military background, even to the haircut. He knows I'm a flipped-out freak and still he helped me and my wife when we were in trouble. That is the best in humanity, there; that is who and what I love."
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Philip_K._Dick [wikiquote.org]
You're betting on the pantomime horse...
(Score: 2) by tadas on Monday April 13 2015, @07:10PM
Starship Troopers? Crypto-Fascist love poem to the sacred homoerotic sublimation of military boot camp.
I'm surprised that nobody has yet mentioned one of Science Fiction's great touchés - Joe Haldeman's The Forever War. In it, the troopers' sacrifices turn out to be the result of a great misunderstanding. A great "answer record".
(Score: 2) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Monday April 13 2015, @09:19PM
Yes! Haldeman and Harrison. Worth a mountain of Spinrad and Ellison.
You're betting on the pantomime horse...
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Monday April 13 2015, @09:40PM
Starship Troopers? Crypto-Fascist love poem to the sacred homoerotic sublimation of military boot camp.
So, It's just like 300, but without Gerard Butler or all the Greek nonsense?
(Score: 2) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Tuesday April 14 2015, @12:10AM
The racism is directed at ACTUAL inhumans - not anti-historical, dehumanized stand ins for racist "clash of civilizations", like 300. ;-)
You're betting on the pantomime horse...
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Tuesday April 14 2015, @09:31AM
sudo mod me up