Isn’t it? I always think of the term as being akin to white knight. Their cause may be just but they are doing it mostly for attention. Sort of like the guy who yelled at the Chik-Fil-a girl thinking he would be praised for his wonderful Youtube video.
I was totally uninformed about these factions before this. I went back and read some of Torgeson’s blog posts. I didn’t see anything unreasonable in my skimming. His main theme was that nominations in the past were controlled by snobs who think that if you are not in the elite crowd you have no business voting. I can’t know what is in his heart but so far I don’t see anything particularly bad even if I don’t necessarily believe it. Beale is of course a complete asshole.
It was Beale’s slate that carried the day in the categories other than Best Novel - it was his suggestion to nominate three novellas by John C. Wright, for one thing. I cannot believe that three of the five best SF novellas of the year were written by one person, no matter who it is. The whole thing is a damn shame for those of us that just want to get some recommendations out of this.
There are many reason why Pratchett wasn’t nominated more (humor works are always given short shrift in any award that doesn’t have a specific category for them), but the facts refute that entire post.
Ok, so he was a finalist for a Hugo once. True, the post was wrong, but the overall point is still quite valid. And there’s little-to-no humor in Thud, Night Watch, Hogfather (more in that one) and several others he wrote.
I’m not sure that SadPuppies even know what their point is anymore. Flipping through their website, most of their arguments, like the Pratchett one, don’t really make sense. So far as I can tell, they were initially motivated by the Beale’s thing, and than when they realized they could manipulate the voting that way, are basically struggling to find some sort of ex-post-facto reason for doing so.
As far as I can tell, it boils down to a fight between the “Lit’rary SF: IT’S ALL ABOUT BEING AN ARTISTE!!!” crowd and the “IT’S ALL ABOUT HOW FUN THE STORY IS: FUCK ART!!!” crowd. (Despite the moron writer from Salon in BrainGlutton’s link. But Salon tends to reduce everything to “Bad Conservatives”/“Good Liberals”, regardless of appropriateness or relevancy)
FWIW, that website is blocked by my filter as a malicious website.
The Chu story is pretty great, though, and I love the point that a shoddily-designed democratic system is just asking to be taken over by the worst people. I suspect the ultimate upshot of this whole thing will be that the Hugos stop being a pure people’s choice award.
Well, no. That’s if you ignore the people whose nomination slate actually won out.
Torgeson’s side, who actually were more about their own version of hardcore SF and less about the literary side of things, didn’t get much to show for it, except slightly in the best novel category.
The Vox Day/Beale crowd, who actually got most of their nominees through, are outright trolls, and rather openly racist/homophobic/sexist ones at that. And actually fairly conservative, as, for whatever reason, they themselves made part of the story the plight of the put-upon conservatives vs the liberal elites running things now and in past years. They have embraced the literary vs mass market appeal argument somewhat, but it’s not the only argument they make.
The downside is that from now on it really does look like the nomination will turn into a party system, with each interest group advocating for their preferred slate of candidates.
I apparently wasted my time reading a lot of novels and stories, and nominating the ones I liked best: the way to make an impact is to vote in lockstep with like-minded folks. What was wrong with the biography of Robert Heinlein, by the way, that it couldn’t get a nomination? I know that there were some fans back in the day who thought his work didn’t have the superscience adventure that they wanted, and instead featured the impact of technological developments on ordinary people.
It’s really about people who vote for works they think are the best of the year, and people who think that those choices are political in nature and thus needed a different political slant. There was no “liberal bloc” voting for the Hugo and coming up with a slate.
Fandom is changing. At best, their complaint boils down to “Kids these days don’t like what I like.”
And the Hugo has recently gone to popular works such as Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrel, American Gods, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Fire and Redshirts recently. It’s not like it’s only going to obscure literary novels.
I do note that in the past few years the short story winners were by Ken Liu, Ted Chiang, and John Chu. All were fine stories, so I wonder what they find objectionable about the choices? (I think Chiang is probably the best SF writer working today, and Liu is very close.)
I’d also love to ask the people pushing the ballot if they read all the books on it.
Absolutely. Granted, the literary-v.-popular-SF element is also in play here. But Chu is making a larger point, and by no means a moronic one, about democracy in the Internet age.
Somehow, I doubt that the poor sad little put-upon puppies would have had the guts to use Terry Pratchett as an example for their cause if he was still alive and able to respond.
(If we each give up, say a day off of our lives, can we use that to resurrect him just long enough for him to write a response?)
I’m learning a lot in this thread. One specific thing I learned is that John C. Wright has just gone off my “To Read” list.
I was leaning towards the Wright is a weenie side when I read his multi-page rant about how sooper-evvil cartoon Korra (The sequel to Avatar) was because the last 10 seconds had (trigger alert, apparently) two young women holding hands as they ventured forth into the unknown. Apparently this traumatized Wright and his kids. (Some guy’s funny/angry rant about Wright’s hysteria, with links to the original screed
A) I retract any sympathy with the Sad Puppies
B) This is repugnant, regardless of your opinion on euthenasia. He’s upset with himself that he didn’t punch Pratchett in the mouth? Holy shit.
I don’t agree with a single thing Harlan Ellison has ever said politically, and I think he’s a douche…but I can still read some of his stuff. LeGuin when she’s on (The Dispossessed) is brilliant even when I think her point of view is totally wrong (despite it being ambiguous, her sympathies clearly lie more with the commie planet’s ideas. Mine don’t). It takes a lot to get me to dismiss an author out of hand. But regretting that you didn’t punch Pratchett for an opinion you didn’t share? That’s one thing that will for me.
Life is too short and there’s too many books I want to read (and reread) to waste time on people who pre-disqualify themselves.
PS–Chuck, Exapno, anyone more into the actual awards: Why isn’t there a category for “Best collection of old stories” or something? NESFA and Haffner Press (to name just two) do a hell of a job preserving old SF and should be recognized. It’d be like a “Best Revival” Tony Award.
