Eh, it’s an award. There’s not much “meaningful” about it. You pay your $30, you vote, somebody gets a shiny little rocketship And as obnoxious as they are, neither Sad nor Rabid Puppies actually broke any rules. If you don’t like any of the nominations, vote No Award, but you shouldn’t cancel the awards just because people used the system to nominate stuff you don’t like.
We can all agree that they didn’t break any rules. Can we agree that there may be relevant issues besides the letters of the rules? That way we won’t have to bring up the point that they didn’t violate the letter of the rules again.
The point isn’t that they violated the letter of the rules. The point is that they figured out a way to exploit the rules to undermine the point of the rules (i.e., to create a finalist slate that reflects a general consensus of the SF community), and that under the current rules, there’s no way to fight back against what they’re doing without similarly undermining the point of the rules. They know this and chose to do it anyway.
As one critic stated: The Puppies are running in front of an existing parade and claiming to lead it.
The only reason this is happening again is that it takes 2 years to make changes in the Hugo voting system.
Well, in fairness, I only read the first half of it.
There have always been liberals and conservatives, but I remember when the defining characteristic of conservatism was prudence rather than dickishness.
Yeah, the first half is just hard to read. The second hlaf is where it really gets into WTF territory.
So, either way, the Hugos are pretty much ruined as signposts to discovering new quality stuff?
And the winners go into anthologies, and the permanent record of acclaimed works in the field. Well, they used to.
This hasn’t been true for the Hugos in decades. The Nebulas, however, continue to put out an annual anthology.
The Hugos have never been the best place to discover new stuff in any case. They always have been biased toward old favorites. The Nebulas, like every award, have faults but are much better for new writers.
The number of awards in f&sf is ridiculous. Locus magazine maintains an awards database. If you want certified quality new stuff, just browse through there.
The hilarious thing is that anybody would think people would be offended by Chuck Tingle. Who doesn’t like that guy?
Yeah, I didn’t mean necessarily an anthology of the award winners, but that winning the award seemed to make a work more likely to be collected.
That’s probably still true, but the number of best of the year collections alone probably ensures that all the real nominees get anthologized. Gardner Dozois, Neil Clarke, Ann Leckie and Neil Gaiman, Jonathan Strahan, Rich Horton, and Paula Guran all put out anthologies last year. That doesn’t include dark fantasy or horror bests. And that doesn’t include specialty and themed anthologies.
Just getting shortlisted is a pretty good prize. I wouldn’t worry about the future life of the real writers.
OK . . . [clicks]
. . . Let us never speak of this again.
Nobody’s saying they didn’t, and I don’t think anybody here is saying that what they did was appropriate, especially Rabid Puppies. I certainly don’t approve of what they did, and I think that Vox Day in particular is a racist, misogynist asshole. What I’m saying, though, is that a statement like " Were I on the Hugo committee, I would be arguing strongly for a cancellation of this year’s awards. All of them." is arm flailing and an overreaction (and not fair to some of the nominees, who had nothing to do with this whole Rabid Puppies campaign, and some of whom, like Neil Stephenson, like Anne Leckie, like Nnedi Okorafor, like Brandon Sanderson, like Hao Jingfang, have put out really quality pieces of literature, and probably would have gotten nominated anyway.
Here’s the proposal, plus a VERY long comment thread gaming out various possibilities:
http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/016262.html
Short version: via a fairly complicated process, it makes sure that a group of organized voters can get one slot on the final ballot, but not all five (which is the big problem as things stand now). The only way a group can dominate the final ballot under this system is by actually having more nominators than anyone else, in which case basically any voting system is going to be unable to compensate.
Important news on the Chuck Tingle front:
He has released a response to his Hugo nomination in the form of one of his
characteristic short fictions (link possibly NSFW)
One reviewer called it “The Sharknado of gay erotic literature.” 
Chuck Tingle is the most skilled writer of dinosaur/unicorn/bigfoot/metaphysical concept gay erotica out there, and his failure to win a Hugo would be a crime.
Did you see Tingle’s more recent tweet? “IMPORTANT: cant go to hugos award so to thwart devil plans, true buckaroo ZOE QUINN (name of @unburtwitch) has agreed to accept award for me”
Sir, my hat is off and my hand is on my heart.
He’s tipping his hand too much. It’s funnier if you think there’s a possibility he’s a real person.
He’s a computer program? That would be amazing!
Memory tells me that the Hugo-nominated stories are made public as a bundle so that everyone who wants to vote can read them. Will that happen this year?