Goddamn. I read the first third or so of that screed. Where Martin describes history using specific facts and figures, Correia’s rant is half self-pity, half demonizing opponents, and all fact-free. Some examples:
How anyone finds this dude convincing, or even worth taking seriously, is beyond me. What a tool.
This is exactly why a cursory examination of the issue makes the entire Sad Puppies side look more sympathetic than they really are.
It’s entirely fair to say that the Hugo Awards shouldn’t be dominated by a small group sharing a narrow point of view.
If Sad Puppies limited themselves strictly to that, great. But that’s not what they’re doing. They’re whining that the Hugos aren’t dominated by their small group sharing a narrow point of view by claiming it’s the “other side” (which doesn’t even friggin’ exist) doing it first. It’s conservative persecution syndrome as applied to SF writers. I’d expect something about “real SF fans” just like talk about “the real Americans”, except that’s exactly what’s going on without using those explicit words.
And, as now repeatedly shown in the thread and elsewhere on the interwebs, it’s not even accurate. There’s remarkable diversity in Hugo nominees and winners. They’re not all “message” fiction at all. Nor is it some small cabal of like minded liberal fans pushing a particular agenda. Too many NY bestselling writers for that.
It’s not even the pot calling the kettle black. There was never a kettle in the first place.
I admit I don’t know much about this issue, or any of the people involved, beyond what I’ve read here and at GRRM’s blog. But the rant that you quoted from Torgerson, reminds me of nothing so much as myself when I first got to college as an English major, and began to really study literature academically.
I had that same sort of reaction–but why do we have to examine the story for subtext and symbolism and stuff? Why do have to search for hidden meanings? Why can’t we just read the story and enjoy it? Why can’t we just read things for fun? Isn’t that enough?
Thankfully, I’ve grown past that first reaction. But that’s what strikes me about what Torgerson is saying there–that it’s a very juvenile way of looking at fiction. It’s a way of reading that insists that the immediate, surface meaning of a story is all there is, all there should be. That deeper themes, subtextual meanings, symbols and metaphors, are things to be suspicious of and ultimately to reject. For people who profess to be professional writers, I find that an odd stance to take.
What is the NK Jemisin situation? I love her books and feel all protective and stuff.
Here ya go. 
Y’know, the Grand Old Man of the kind of planetary romance Torgerson likes was Edgar Rice Burroughs – who worked a lot of sociopolitical commentary into his Barsoom novels.
My primary reaction to Gamergate was astonishment that anyone could be so emotionally invested in gaming as to issue death threats over anything having to do with it.
That astonishment is now topped.
Thank you!
On the larger Hugo question: One thing I don’t understand is the attempt to keep the Sad Puppies from being lumped in with the Rabid Puppies, when it seems like the former was created from the impetus of the Beale/Vox Day persona, even if not by him personally.
I agree.
But as with everything in this mess, there’s a spectrum of beliefs involved.
Some people earnestly believe it’s about literary vs accessible fiction (regardless of facts). If I were one of those, I certainly wouldn’t want to be lumped together with the explicitly sexist/racist/homophobic/etc trolls that are the most vocal. I’m not terribly sympathetic to this viewpoint. It’s a distinction with no functional difference, as far as I’m concerned.
Torgesen is trying to paint himself more in this light, but it doesn’t really hold together. There are plenty of people out there (some in this thread even) who’ve knocked plenty of holes in that.
Meh. Pretty much every example of space opera does, to a greater or less extent. He’s not bothered by sociopolitical commentary he agrees with. That’s the “default” in his mind and he thinks what all SF was and should be and what SF never actually was.
I’m in the “accessible” fiction camp and I agree with him that the last two or three years there’s been a lean towards the lit-crit type. But there was the same drift in the late '60s, early '70s. This too shall pass.
(That said, that crappy “dinosaur” word-salad poem-thing that Chuck linked to, upthread was unmitigated donkey-poop.)
Nah–There’s clearly a difference between “message fiction” and “sociopolitical commentary”.
To use Ursula K. Le Guin as an example: The Word For World Is Forest is message fic. Take away the ham-handed, simplistic Vietnam stuff and there’s no actual story there. BUT–look at Dispossessed or Left Hand of Darkness–you can take the commentary out and there’s still the framework of a story in both.
Another example is the “Left Behind” books. They’re message fic (and crap. Utter dreck…not even worth PALATR at)–take away the hamfisted bible-thumping and there’s literally nothing left. Take the same bible-thumping stuff out of the first 6 Narnia books and there’s still a story there, just scenes missing.
Almost all stories have socio-political commentary, but (thankfully) there aren’t a ton of “message” stories
*Who’s kind of an exception to the rule. Something about Heinlein–and it’s not that I share some of his views–makes him readable even at his most didactic.
Kameron Hurley writes in The Atlantic:
It’s no coincidence. Sad/Rabid Puppies, Gamergate, the Tea Party, the religious right, anti-abortion legislation, climate change denial, Angry White Men, MRAs – it’s all part of a desperate cultural rearguard action they must know they are destined to lose in the end, which makes them all the more desperate, and all the more angry.
Oh, my exposure to Heinlein has not been nearly so positive. Not a writer I want to explore further.
Of course, both kinds of SF have their fans, and there’s plenty of room in the genre for both, and as George R.R. Martin points out, you’ll find both nominated for Hugos, neither gets frozen out by the other.
He has his flaws, but he’s part of the core canon, one of the authors you can’t call yourself a Trufan if you haven’t read.
I agree a distinction exists, but the arguments the Puppies present makes me wonder if they care about the difference.
I wouldn’t categorize much, if any, of the work of the last 10-15 years of Hugos nominees as strict message fiction, even if there’s plenty of sociopolitical commentary. But this recent stuff is what they’re objecting to.
Their argument, taken prima facie, makes no sense unless you do ignore the difference.
Of course, if you don’t take their argument prima facie, you get left with a bunch of whiners demanding attention, some of whom get a big kick out of shitting on other people’s lawns.
Of particular interest is Jemisin’s quote from Samuel R. Delaney:
Prophetic.
I can’t imagine ever caring to call myself that! I’m far on the fantasy side of the SF/Fantasy divide, and Heinlein is not part of any canon I have interest in.
And some fans are fans of both. Zealots on both sides risk alienating a lot of people (some of whom read with a breadth that verges on indiscriminate) by being too strident.
I can certainly say that this has turned me off to quite a few writers on both sides of that argument.
Speak for yourself, dude. To me it’s why his fanbase is about as annoying as the Sad Puppies.
I read a bunch of his stuff when I was younger, but when I went back to reread him, I found that he reaaaalllly didn’t hold up for me. There’s a smugness in his writing that drives me up the wall. FWIW, Spider Robinson is pretty far on the hippie end of the spectrum and has a similar smugness.