It’s not every day that you wake up to find that the asshole brigade on the internet has been utterly humiliated beyond all expectations, but that appears to be what we have today. Last night, the voters of the Hugo Awards utterly rejected the attempts by a conservative reactionary mob led by one of the single most influential racist, misogynistic assholes on the internet to game the nominating process of their awards, opting instead to give the awards to nobody rather than their handpicked slate. In doing so, the Hugos maintained what integrity they could, and also proved what people like me have been saying about similar controversies like #GamerGate – they claim to speak for a silent majority, when in fact they speak for a loud minority – albeit a loud minority who leverages outrage to mobilize better than any other group.
Tons of good coverage of this, including at Wired, Yes! NPR and BoingBoing (and GRRM has been covering it closely since it all started). Short summary is that earlier this year, two groups of people (the Sad Puppies and the Rabid Puppies) figured out they could game the nominating process for the Hugo Awards, long considered one of the most prestigious awards in speculative fiction, in order to fight against what they percieve as the scourge of ‘SJW’-themed novels that have continued to win of late. They succeeded in the nomination process, but in the final ballot, voters blew their slates out of the water with an unprecedented five ‘no awards’ in these categories. This is an institutional repudiation on par to the mocking that #Gamergate took at GDC’s awards dinner this year.
Over at KotakuInAction (which is really more about anti-SJW hysteria than games at this point), they’re trying weakly to spin it into a positive, or alternatlvely trying to find a way to be outraged about the utter collapse of the anti-SJW effort. Million_dollar Bus Aficionado Mark Kern compared the results to book burning, Ian Miles Cheong nonsensically claimed the results ‘prove’ that the awards were rigged and Milo Yiannopoulos tried to blame the ‘SJWs’ on tearing down the awards rather than, you know, the assholes who tore down the awards. This is a weak sauce argument – the ‘No Award’ vote totals clearly included not just far lefties but moderates as well, which suggests that many people were offended and opposed to the naked attempt to manipulate via brigading one of the most storied awards in Sci-Fi. It was appalling enough that even some of the authors who were nominated by the Puppies to back out rather than be associated with the effort and even the ones who didn’t rejected the tactics.
All of these #gamerGate diehards, by the way, seem utterly unconcerned that the founders of the Puppies movements were enthusiastically pushing their friends, or that Vox Day gamed the rules in order to push himself and his magazine’s contributors to the top of the nominations. Apparently, ethics are only important when SJWs are involved.
All this being said, this is not as rosy as it appears, as legitimately good art was forced off the ballot by the Sad Puppies brigading, or felt compelled to reject their nominations to distance themselves from Vox Day. The Hugos have a real problem to solve in figuring out how to keep this from happening next year. Looking forward, here’s a proposal for improving the voting process, so it can’t be gamed again next year.
Changes to the WSFS Constitution (which the two changes to nominations are) require approval by two successive WSFS Business Meetings.
Business Meetings are held at the World Science Fiction Convention, so the approval this year in Spokane moves those proposals on to the convention next year in Kansas City Missouri. If approved in 2016, they would take effect for 2017.
All WSFS Members may propose amendments, but only those at the actual Business Meeting may vote.
I suppose it doesn’t matter to any of the people celebrating about “No Award” whether or not any of the work that was on the ballots that wasn’t rewarded deserved to be.
Clearly it did matter, as Guardians of the Galaxy (which was on the slate) also won a Hugo.
But, here’s the thing.
You don’t get to take advantage of the fact that the rules of the system (first past the post) could be used to bypass the intended design of the system (everyone nominates works they feel Hugo worthy, in the categories they feel knowledgeable enough to nominate in) by using a fixed slate in every category, and then complain that you lose when people use the rules (you can include “No Award” when ranking finalists).
Well, I mean, you can, but you shouldn’t expect anyone to take you seriously.
A small group (a few hundred) hijacked the nominations, and then got trounced when the rest of the electorate said “oh no you don’t”. That’s democracy for you.
There is a fix coming to the rules to that, if confirmed next year, will greatly limit the ability of organized groups to do more than get *one* item on the list of candidates. And that seems fine. If there is one book (or story, or film, or editor) you think is being missed, and you can recruit a bunch of people to become WSFS members and nominate it, then it should be on the final ballot. What was broken is the ability of 10-15% of the electorate, if working in lockstep, to completely control the ballot.
((I’ve since cleared out the information from my local copy of the voting packet, but if memory serves one of the slate nominees for Best Editor (Long Form) declined to even provide a list of the books she had edited. So much for being deserving there.))
Voting out of spite without evaluating the work, which as many as 2500 people did, is plainly unethical.
Joining to vote on work that you have read is plainly ethical.
Both appear to be within the rules. They are not equal.
There are thousands of us who supported Sad Puppies who didn’t participate because it would be unethical to vote without evaluating the work.
I sure see a lot of Sad Puppy supporters whining about unethically gaming the system shortly after their attempt to unethically game the system exploded in their face.
I didn’t vote, jackass.
So ethical!
John,
You make me feel unsafe.
So, voting out of spite is unethical, but nominating out of spite is perfectly all right, and therefore that’s why it makes sense for you to support the Sad Puppies but criticize the Huge voters who rejected the transparently political attempt to hijack a set of awards?
I don’t accept the premise that the Sad Puppies were voting “out of spite.” I’m not the one arguing that two wrongs make a right. Correia was trying to promote quality work and had open discussions with the community about what work was worthy. This indicate to me that they were actually reading the work.
I don’t know exactly what Vox Day was doing. My understanding was that he wanted to burn down the awards, but was convinced not to, and made a good faith effort to promote good work, also. His group openly talked about works were worthy, so I don’t know that they weren’t evidence that they weren’t reading the works, either.
Anyone that participated in the nomination process in bad faith is unethical.
What we know for a fact, and what is being defended, is that a couple thousand people voted “No Award” out of spite, without any serious consideration of the nominated work. This is also plainly unethical.
So, sure, be proud that there were more unethical people on your side than there were on the other side.
I read the “good work” that they nominated. It was almost exclusively rubbish.
If they were trying to nominate “good work”, their taste is a joke.
Funny thing though, they seemed to nominate Vox Day’s publishing house an awful lot.
Oh, but I guess in the Puppy/Gater world, that sort of collusion is somehow “ethical”.
Incidentally, you might want to rethink “what we know for a fact”, unless you have some miraculous device capable of reading the minds of thousands of people.
“I don’t accept the premise that the Sad Puppies were voting “out of spite.””
That’s a pity. It would be awesome if you could admit reality for once.
You read all of it?
I did not require myself to finish a work if it was bad enough. That would be cruel.
Some points of fact:
First, VD is on record as saying that he included Jon Eno on his slate solely because Jon Eno was on the Sad Puppy slate. He didn’t evaluate Eno’s 2014 work. We know this because Jon Eno didn’t have any eligible work in 2014.
http://file770.com/?p=21886&cpage=1#comment-250890
So I reject the premise that he was trying to promote good work.
Second, Correia didn’t put together the Sad Puppy slate this year, so it’s unclear why Daniel is referring to him.
Third, if anyone would like a reference as to how much attention Brad Torgersen paid to his blog readership’s recommendations, there’s a great spreadsheet here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1KsUUULAR4McYiosUfFT1lr9IRnJgYabSuX6qgSEs19s/edit#gid=0
It is unfortunate that the fandom – and the prestige of the Hugo is that it is awarded by fan vote, not the industry – found it necessary to use the “no award” option. It is unfortunate that authors were placed in the position of having to choose whether to accept a Puppy nomination or decline to appear on the ballot. But let’s be plain. The people who have intruded a political agenda into the Hugo Awards aren’t women, or people of color, or LGBT folks – they have been writing SF and winning Hugos for it as long as I have been alive (Anne McCaffrey, a woman, and Chip Delaney, a gay man of color, both won Hugos the year I was born, and I was born a year before Stonewall). No, the people politicizing the process are those pushing a hateful, narrow, bigoted and reactionary view that is alien to the spirit of SF and abhorrent to the fandom at large.
The nomination process was open to possible abuse, and it was abused. However, the voting process provided a means by which the fandom could opt not to grant an award where the game had been unfairly rigged. No one wanted to have to do that, but it was impossible to disentangle the works nominated from the agenda of the nominating parties, and that agenda is absolutely insupportable.
And don’t forget about the works that deserved to be on the ballot, but didn’t even get nominated because Vox Day and his enablers were gaming the nomination process.
The good news is that the works that deserved it did get recognition at the after-party: George R. R. Martin gave out the first annual “Alfie” awards, to works that would likely have won Hugos if it hadn’t been for Vox Day and his enablers.
Of course the downside is that Mr. Martin had to spend time collating the data and giving out the awards, which means that “The Winds of Winter” is going to be delayed that much longer. Thanks again, Vox!
“Thanks again, Vox!”
Please, let us specify that we are talking about Vox Day, not the website known as Vox.
One enables poorly thought-out and objectionable writing that is more often than not a direct attack upon the intellect. The other one, of course, publishes science fiction.
And, uh, at this point, I think Martin’s just into finding pretexts not to finish Game of Thrones. Had it not been that, it would have been an attempt to create a platypus colony in Alaska or whatever.
Now, I don’t care about science fiction. I don’t read it. To me, science fiction is either about lighthearted romps in which men (or women) in space suits fire lasers at one another, or heavy existential dramas on humankind’s purpose in the universe or the loss of humanity to technology.
So, I have no idea why (in Wired’s words) a story “in which a gay man decides to come out to his traditional Chinese family after the world is beset by a new phenomenon: whenever a person lies, water inexplicably falls on them” qualifies as science fiction in the first place.
Vox Day does indeed come across as a prick in the purest neoreactionary tradition. I can see why people would want to distance themselves from him, even if it’s just “a persona” of whatever his real name is (an excuse which to me sounds like “it was a joke” when you’re getting sued for libel).
That “No Award” thing, though, bothers me. If your nomination process is so screwed-up that it’s getting hijacked by interest groups even though no actual breaking of the rules has taken place, then change the nomination process for next year. But this year, DEAL WITH IT and pick a choice from the nominees. I can’t believe they were all that bad, even for science fiction.
Besides, who the fuck was Hugo Gernsback? A hack writer and a stingy hucksterish publisher. And they named awards after him? Gee, I can’t wait for the Michael B. Bay Prize for Cinematic Excellence.
And yet, voting “No Award” is *also* not breaking the rules. It is a safety net for the integrity of the award, and it worked as designed.
They did pick a choice from the nominees. No Award has been an option for decades, and it has “won” categories in the past.
But my question is whether the nominees in the “No Award” categories were really that bad. As I mentioned, I don’t read science fiction to begin with. If the candidates were bad, then I could understand. But if they were good, then the decision to give no award is purely based on political considerations, and I’m not sure I’m for that.
Some of them were absolutely atrocious.
Seriously. Unreadably bad. I can’t believe someone published this bad. I’d rather read the dialog in the tavern in Goldshire bad.
But there is another side to it.
Let’s say, you want an award (either for yourself, or for people you happen to like). But you aren’t likely to get it, because, well, you/they are either producing things that aren’t good enough, or there are just other people who are better. Oh, you can raise conspiracy theories all you want (I lean towards the Spathi theory that the Ultimate Evil is hiding just outside of sensor range, which proves how malign it is), but those are the primary reasons.
But, if you can keep the people who are more likely to win *off* the ballot, you win by default! So, if a group of people collude to control the nominations, they can control who are on the list, and weaken the field so that the people they want to win will win.
That being the case, it is a perfectly *reasonable* answer for voters to say, “No, this isn’t actually a fair playing field, the field was artificially limited to exclude stronger contenders, there is no way to fairly give an award, so no award will be given”. And that’s pretty much what appears to have happened.
I’ll be submitting a proposal to the WSFS Business Meeting next year to allow for “Retro Hugos” to be awarded 10, 25, or 50 years after a “No Award” was given, if the category can be mapped to a current category, and if the administering World Con decides to make that an option. Mind you, I won’t be at the WSFS Meeting, so I won’t have a vote (all members may offer proposals, only those physically present may vote). Retro Hugos have already been awarded for years in which no Hugo was given, I don’t think this is a big stretch. But, we’ll see. The WSFS is generally very conservative in making significant changes to the rules.
They were that bad. I urge you to read them. The voters all had to. If you still think No Award was the wrong decision after reading the Puppy submissions, I will be astonished.
I doubt I could make the difference between good and bad sci fi anyway, so I’ll take your word for it.
They only made the ballot on account of political machinations. Voting “no award” was a repudiation of that tactic. Fandom demonstrated its ability to vote an award in spite of the political shenannigans by voting for Guardians of the Galaxy, because it really was a well-loved work, in spite of the lingering stench of Puppy-finagled nomination. Then again, it is likely to have been nominated on its own merits in any case.
I feel bad for the Puppy nominees, because politics robbed them not of an award, but of knowing their nomination came from readers who enjoyed their writing. That is what the Hugos are, and why they are prestigious. A voting block pushing a political agenda – which is what both Puppy slates were, make no mistake – takes away from that. And fans who vote for the Hugos because they love SF are not going to allow that to happen.
The Puppies claim to believe that there has been a secret conspiracy against “real SF” by blacks and gays and women, and that their reaction was therefore justified. Let me tell you, it is very difficult to get LGBT people to work together, much less get support from, say the black Civil Rights movement which is historically rather religious.
Also, blacks and gays and women winning Hugos isn’s recent. Chip Delany was getting nominations about the same time Ohio was electing its first black state representative, in the late 1960s. The change in voting patterns at the Hugos parallel changes in society at large, because that’s where they originate – in the lives and experiences of SF fans, living in the same world the rest of us live in. It’s sad indeed that the Puppies seem to want to live in a less inclusive place.
You had me all the way until “legitimately good art.” What did you mean by that? “good” and “art” are both painfully subjective. Legitimacy, as used here, could take on many definitions…
1
a : lawfully begotten; specifically : born in wedlock
b : having full filial rights and obligations by birth
2
: being exactly as purposed : neither spurious nor false
3
a : accordant with law or with established legal forms and requirements
b : ruling by or based on the strict principle of hereditary right
4
: conforming to recognized principles or accepted rules and standards
5
: relating to plays acted by professional actors but not including revues, burlesque, or some forms of musical comedy
^^^ edit:
1
a : lawfully begotten; specifically : born in wedlock
b : having full filial rights and obligations by birth (a legitimate child)
2
: being exactly as purposed : neither spurious nor false (a legitimate grievance) (a legitimate practitioner)
3
a : accordant with law or with established legal forms and requirements (a legitimate government)
b : ruling by or based on the strict principle of hereditary right (a legitimate king)
4
: conforming to recognized principles or accepted rules and standards (a legitimate advertising expenditure) (a legitimate inference)
5
: relating to plays acted by professional actors but not including revues, burlesque, or some forms of musical comedy (the legitimate theater)
Knowing Schubert, it’s anything from “literary masterpiece to which I have no ideological objection” to “formulaic crap that passed the Bechdel test”.
But you don’t know Schubert, so lets let him answer.
What utter horseshit. First off, I am no big fan of the Bechdel test. It’s simplistic, its terrible when looking at any one piece, and its too often bandied like a weapon by overzealous feminists. Gravity would have failed the Bechdel test, while Porky’s passes it. The Bechdel test is useful for looking at overall trends through the industry at best.
Also, I routinely enjoy books that I disagree with ideologically. I somehow manage to love both The Dark Knight and Captain America: The Winter Soldier despite the fact that they have exactly the opposite political message. I love old Heinlein, but his politics (which came through in his writing loud and clear) I find odious. And so on.
To be honest, those who use the Bechdel test as a weapon are often sexist reactionaries looking for a convenient strawman than actual feminists. I’ve found that it often takes severe quote mining to find a feminist that doesn’t use the test to comment on the broader culture.
BTW, aren’t you tired of trolls and rape apologists defecating all over your blog?
Glad to know you won’t support the Bechdel test, which is little more than a new box-ticking list to replace an old box-ticking list. I must admit I’m still worried by the implications of your “Capitalism and Diversity” post, though.
Superhero stuff reeks of fascism through and through, but I don’t think it justifies itself artistically enough to be worth my time. In comparison, you couldn’t swing a dead cat among High Modernists without hitting a fascist, but they are artistically significant.
By the way, if the “rape apologist” remark is intended for me — piss off.
This seems like a quibble over a word choice, in an odd attempt at a ‘gotcha’. Let’s put it this way. There were several very good writers who had very legitimate chances at getting their first chance at a Hugo, only to be pushed aside by Vox Day’s attempts to push the slate, many of whom’s terrible crayon-written prose would have little or no hope of being published anywhere other than Day’s own crappy little publication. Of particular note:
“Following the ceremony on Saturday, George R.R. Martin held the “Alfie Awards,” (named after author Alfred Bester), in which he honored Patrick Rothfuss, Ursula Vernon, Jo Walton, John Joseph Adams, and Liz Gorinsky (all of whom who would have been on this year’s ballot if not for the puppies). Martin also bestowed an Alfie on Marko Kloos and Annie Bellet, who withdrew from consideration after being nominated as part of the puppy slate.”
http://www.themarysue.com/hugo-awards-roundup/
Not a “gotcha” at all, seeing as how the core of the recent Hugo Drama is the endgoal of being viewed as “legitimate.” Whatever that’s worth.
Here is an excellent writeup of what happened: http://www.alexandraerin.com/2015/08/hugo-awards-upset-fans-say-no-to-sad-puppies/
If the Sad Puppies or whomever (tbh I don’t follow sci-fi/fantasy literature as closely as I used to) have an issue with the Hugo awards why don’t they use their energies to set up their own awards?
This is a really good question, that has been asked before.
Part of it is that a new award wouldn’t have the status that the Hugos have built up over the past 60 years.
And I think part of it is that the Sad Puppy organizers were convinced that they were being denied awards that they “deserved” by a clique of insiders. I think they really expected to win this year, and the whiplash of having the fans say “no, and we don’t like slates at *all*” is something they still haven’t dealt with.
I say that, because the organizers of the slates have doubled down on the “it’s a conspiracy” rubbish. For that matter, some people decided that George R. R. Martin throwing a party that he paid for, and giving awards that he had made at his own expense to those people who were knocked off the ballot by the slate was proof of a conspiracy.
I would point out that the Hugos didn’t then have the stature of today’s Hugos when they started, either. They built that stature by consistently awarding excellent works such that the award became a de facto mark of quality.
If the puppies are so certain their works are simply better than what gets nominated and awarded Hugos these days, they should have no fear of setting up their own awards system, because that award would quickly become known as the “awards that are even better than the Hugos”.
Of course, that hinges on their being correct about (for example) Wright being the finest sci-fi author who ever lived.
In yet another case of Moon Lawyering, at least one GamerGate supporter on Twitter is declaring that the fact that awards were not given in all categories is grounds for him to demand his membership money back, and grounds for a lawsuit if they refuse.
He also thinks a commemorative wooden disk invalidates all the awards.