The Sad Puppies

[John Galt]

this shit right pisses me off

so some butt-hurt author complained that he didn't win a hugo and has decided that it is ideological bias as to why he didn't win. it made him a "sad puppy".

you see, he's a mormon that doesn't like gays. NO, his name is NOT Orson Scott Card, winner of several Hugos

Two years ago Larry Correia started a campaign to get himself nominated for a Hugo, not through writing superior writing but by doing it through numbers. you see, the Hugo is for fans who can write in nominations. anyone who is a member of The World Science Fiction Society, which costs $50 annually, can nominate.

now perhaps Correia has a point, in that some people's preferences are what shine though. me? i like great writing. there's so much libertarianism in scifi, so much that has been nominated and won the hugos i really don't see where he's coming from with this shit. that he's a mormon and he didn't win? so what, Card is a mormon too. ah, he replied, that was "Then" and this is "Now". perhaps there are some people who are ideologically driven, but there was no campaign of ideologically driving nominations. they all offset each other until just the ones about good writing trickle to the top

not this year. this year the Sad Puppies got their way to the top of the list. most of the hugos are controlled by what they voted for. Correia declined all his nominations but he recommended a bunch of other authors that made their way to the top, probably by people that hadn't even read the damn stories. Vox Day, who thinks women shouldn't be able to vote, got nominated twice for best editor (Vox Day is the psyedonym for Thomas Beale, who is from, of all places, Minnesota). he's the lead editor for Castalia House, which got most of the nominations this year because Castalia House is a bunch of right wing sci fi authors. also note Vox Day led the Rabid Puppies this year, who had similar goals in mind, but are even more extreme than the sad puppies. should just be "whiny bitches"

there's a bunch of articles on this, like here: http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/201 ... tions.html

i'm fine with right wing scifi. i like right wing scifi. in fact i find it much more interesting that left-wing scifi, and much more believable. and while Iain Banks received a nomination over his long career of making a bunch of scifi novels, he never won one. he's perhaps the preeminent left wing space operaist. he didn't win because he made the only book i actually stopped reading part way through it was so horribly written and edited ("Consider Phelbas" was the worst book I have ever read).
there's lots of libertarian books that have won. just because you didn't win doesn't mean there is a conspiracy.

there is a conspiracy now though. the hugos are are in control of the highest bidder. Correia and Day released lists of what you, their devoted zealots, should vote for with their $50 membership.

sad puppies indeed

what i don't like about it is a campaign to control the lists entirely. last year, they got nominees into categories. that's fine. but this year having like all of one guy's short stories be all that's nominated for best short story is detrimental to the award.

rules should be changed. 1 nomination per category per person for one thing. secondly, perhaps, there can be more nominees per category: having 10 nominees for best novel would then prevent this kind of thing from happening. also run offs. although i don't know if they do that

[Winchester]

Weird. No time to read up on the "controversy" for a few days. I will say I've read everything Mr Correia has written and like it quite a bit. I even actually bought/still have his first book Monster Hunter Inc in the self-published version before his stuff went mainstream. He was pimping his work at a gun forum I used to frequent.

[John Galt]

[Tejada]

This sounds pretty awful. Did a quick google search to learn more about the Hugo Awards and saw that the Sad Puppy group/club/circle-jerk or whatever called upon members of #Gamergate to pitch into their efforts. That's enough information for me to condemn them. Gamergate folks are whiny pissbaby HQ in the twittersphere, to rival the SJW crowd.

[John Galt]

[Tejada]

[Spider]

Haven't read any of his stuff. Is his religious baggage heavily punctuating his work? In the case of Card I had no idea he was a Mormon until randomly learning it years later. Didn't much care.

[Winchester]

[Spider]

[NAB]