# Explain the Sad Puppies (Science Fiction Controversy) **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** books-writing-myths\ **Created:** [December 2, 2020, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-the-sad-puppies-science-fiction-controversy/927019 "2020-12-02T16:26:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 9
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2020, 12:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-the-sad-puppies-science-fiction-controversy/927019/161 "2020-12-09T00:46:24Z")
> [@Dark\_Sponge](#): > > These are the “bonus points” I’m talking about. Yes, it’s a silly example but it’s pervasive throughout our culture that winners are not chosen solely based on who is best. Nonsense. The problem is white men who have become so used to receiving preferential treatment that they feel victimized when they’re receive equal treatment. Hell, they complain when they’re still receiving preferential treatment but not quite as much as they received in the past. Do you think any of the Sad Puppies who are upset that a black woman won a Hugo ever protested during the decades when every Hugo winner was a white man? Do you think the people who said the Academy rigged its awards so Kathryn Bigelow would win an Oscar ever felt the system was rigged when men won every other Best Director Oscar? Do you think the people who lost their shit over Barack Obama or Kamala Harris getting elected ever got upset when every President and every Vice President was a white man? ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2020, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-the-sad-puppies-science-fiction-controversy/927019/162 "2020-12-09T02:53:06Z")
> [@gdave](#): > > I mean, it’s _possible_ that the Hugo and Nebula judges both decided it was time for a woman of color to win a major award. Neither award has judges. Both are open to their entire membership and the voters number in the hundreds. They don’t get together and decide anything. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2020, 3:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-the-sad-puppies-science-fiction-controversy/927019/163 "2020-12-09T03:02:11Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Nonsense. The problem is white men who have become so used to receiving preferential treatment that they feel victimized when they’re receive equal treatment. You quoted @Dark_Sponge, but were you actually responding to his specific example? ---
**Author:** ![Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slow_moving_vehicle/32/291_2.png) [@Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slow_Moving_Vehicle)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2020, 3:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-the-sad-puppies-science-fiction-controversy/927019/164 "2020-12-09T03:09:18Z")
> [@Pleonast](#): > > > [@DrDeth](#): > > > > On that note, perhaps we need to get back to the OP? > > I feel some pleasure that a thread about the Sad Puppies has been hijacked into a Bujold discussion Heh. Yeah. But I was specifically responding to @DrDeth, to clear up his confusion about the “Chalion/World of Five Gods” novels. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2020, 3:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-the-sad-puppies-science-fiction-controversy/927019/165 "2020-12-09T03:40:08Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > You quoted @Dark_Sponge, but were you actually responding to his specific example? I’ll admit I’ve never watched an episode of _The Masked Singer_. But he seemed to be saying that a man should have won that show and the only explanation for why that didn’t happen was because the contest was rigged so a woman would win. And while I didn’t see this particular show, Dark Sponge himself said this was just one example of a phenomena that was pervasive throughout our culture. So I felt it was fair to address the wider point he was making. ---
**Author:** ![Odesio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/odesio/32/20003_2.png) [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2020, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-the-sad-puppies-science-fiction-controversy/927019/166 "2020-12-09T03:45:31Z")
> [@gdave](#): > > Games Workshop intended Warhammer 40K, and the Empire of Man in particular, as dry, darkly humorous satire. The Empire of Man is supposed to be a clearly awful, dystopian nightmare. You’re supposed to play them with a sense of ironic detachment. When you play them, you’re supposed to realize that you’re a _villain_ , that the God-Emperor is a fraud, and that you’re playing as a brainwashed fascist stooge. A _lot_ of fans didn’t get the joke. And the background was originally created to serve as a flimsy pretext supporting a war game. It didn’t have to stand up to scrutiny and in the 80s I don’t think any of them could have possibly envisioned GW publishing tons of books or being a billion dollar publicly traded company. They realized they painted themselves in a corner and have been dialing the grim darkness back a bit. ---
**Author:** ![Maserschmidt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/maserschmidt/32/18829_2.png) [@Maserschmidt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maserschmidt)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2020, 4:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-the-sad-puppies-science-fiction-controversy/927019/167 "2020-12-09T04:53:49Z")
This was great. Depressing and insane, but great. (I read the book when I was 12 or 13 and thought it was brilliant, now I am just horrified) ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2020, 5:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-the-sad-puppies-science-fiction-controversy/927019/168 "2020-12-09T05:16:25Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > How did she do that without taking a breath? 😲 It’s a pretty common editing style for informative YouTube. Gotta pack as much information in as little time as possible. Pauses get edited out. Heck, if CGP Gray (another practitioner of the style) is correct, many of them use the “remove pauses” feature when listening to podcasts. BTW, I’ve never read the book, and totally didn’t remember the review until Red mentioned that the third act turns into a “sex cult.” The other details were too common for me to remember. ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2020, 11:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-the-sad-puppies-science-fiction-controversy/927019/169 "2020-12-09T11:20:28Z")
> [@gdave](#): > > I don’t watch “The Masked Singer”. But I take it that it’s a talent competition, and hence the judgements are entirely subjective. Isn’t it possible that the judges just, y’know, maybe, _disagreed_ with you? > > That’s the fundamental problem with the “Sad Puppies” and their arguments. They can’t show _any_ evidence that “bonus points” are being awarded on the basis of “political correctness” beyond their own subjective opinions of who deserves to win being different from the subjective opinions of the awards judges. > > I mean, it’s _possible_ that the Hugo and Nebula judges both decided it was time for a woman of color to win a major award. But how do you tell the difference between that and them just thinking that N.K. Jemison is really good writer? What is it, exactly, that makes you think that they’re awarding “PC bonus points” rather than just _liking different things than you?_ > [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > The problem is white men who have become so used to receiving preferential treatment that they feel victimized when they’re receive equal treatment. Hell, they complain when they’re still receiving preferential treatment but not quite as much as they received in the past. I don’t recall anyone complaining when a woman won the UK version of _Masked Singer_ (other than to be amazed that Nicola Roberts still had a career), but the same loss-of-shit-by-bigots hit the fan when [Nadiya Hussein](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadiya_Hussain) won _Great British Bake-Off_ in 2015, complete with the insistence that the only possible explanation for a Muslim woman winning was political correctness. Never mind that her cakes looked freaking _amazing_; they simply couldn’t grasp that, on a level(-ish) playing field, someone like “that” could be the best. There are “sad puppies” everywhere. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2020, 11:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-the-sad-puppies-science-fiction-controversy/927019/170 "2020-12-09T11:50:26Z")
> [@Babale](#): > > I always assumed this directly stemmed from the WH40k thing The “WH40K” thing is basically just a rip-off of the background of _2000AD_’s _Nemesis the Warlock_ and similar stuff in other _2000AD_ properties like _Dredd_ and _Strontium Dog_. Where they were clearly written as a reflection of the racial shit going down in contemporary 80s Britain, not so much a callout to earlier SF, IMO. ---
**Author:** ![gdave](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gdave/32/3683_2.png) [@gdave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gdave)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2020, 12:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-the-sad-puppies-science-fiction-controversy/927019/171 "2020-12-09T12:55:03Z")
Thanks for the correction. I _knew_ that (I even mentioned that upthread), but managed to confuse myself with the discussion of “The Masked Singer”. Which makes the point I was trying to make even stronger. It’s _possible_ that two overlapping but different pools of hundreds of voters both decided that it was time for a woman of color - and somehow all chose the _same_ woman of color - to win a major award. But surely the most parsimonious explanation is that those voters simply _like_ N.K. Jemisin, and that they like different stuff from @Dark_Sponge or the Sad Puppies. (Side Note: I _don’t_ particularly like N.K. Jemisin, from the little bit of her work I’ve been exposed to. But, even back when I was reading a dozen or more SF/Fantasy novels a year, my personal reading list rarely overlapped with the Hugo and Nebula nomination lists. I didn’t take that as evidence that the awards were rigged, just that the award voters and I had different tastes). ---
**Author:** ![gdave](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gdave/32/3683_2.png) [@gdave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gdave)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2020, 1:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-the-sad-puppies-science-fiction-controversy/927019/172 "2020-12-09T13:04:27Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > The “WH40K” thing is basically just a rip-off of the background of _2000AD_ ’s _Nemesis the Warlock_ and similar stuff in other _2000AD_ properties like _Dredd_ and _Strontium Dog_ . > > Where they were clearly written as a reflection of the racial shit going down in contemporary 80s Britain, not so much a callout to earlier SF, IMO. Yes, Warhammer 40K was very much a part of the early 80s British pop SF scene. The 70s were a very rough decade for the UK. A lot of British writers and creators reacted to that with grimdark satire, creating quasi-fascist dystopias that reflected the trends they saw in Margaret Thatcher’s Britain. That creative milieu gave us _Judge Dredd_, _Strontium Dogs_, _V for Vendetta_, at a slight remove _Watchmen_, and Warhammer 40K. That last projected Earth’s far future as a literal return to the Dark Ages, but with spaceships. It’s _supposed_ to be a horrific, satirical comment on contemporary decline and decay in the UK. It’s supposed to be _ironically_ badass and cool. But, just like those other properties, a _lot_ of fans saw the badass and cool parts and missed the irony. ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2020, 1:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-the-sad-puppies-science-fiction-controversy/927019/173 "2020-12-09T13:14:43Z")
Yeah, I’m not huge into 40k lore (I play some WH themed games like Total War, Mechanicus, or Battlefleet Gothic but I haven’t played the tabletop game) but from my understanding almost every problem the Empire is facing is self inflicted ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2020, 1:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-the-sad-puppies-science-fiction-controversy/927019/174 "2020-12-09T13:21:10Z")
> [@gdave](#): > > It’s supposed to be _ironically_ badass and cool. Well, yes and no. Yes, players know that every possible faction is horrible and that nothing ever good ever happens in the Warhammer world… but they still want to pretend that they’re badass Space Marines or Orks. It’s all about being cool, and the ironic detachment is there to make it even cooler, because what’s cooler than nihilism? ---
**Author:** ![gdave](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gdave/32/3683_2.png) [@gdave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gdave)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2020, 2:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-the-sad-puppies-science-fiction-controversy/927019/175 "2020-12-09T14:34:35Z")
Absolutely. But, a lot of folks missed the ironic detachment bit. Warhammer 40K’s God-Emperor is a withered husk, kept barely alive by millennia-old technology that no one understands anymore (because literal Far Future Dark Ages). He isn’t a god by any stretch, and as I understand it, he’s often depicted in the lore as not even really being an emperor, but just a figurehead (I think the lore inconsistently also sometimes depicts him as having vast psychic powers and a vital mind in a withered body). In-universe, he’s depicted as a physical powerful, all-conquering figure, but the _players_ are supposed to understand that it’s all ridiculous propaganda (that ironic detachment, again). Still, some Alt-Right folks have seized on the terminology and imagery and unironically depicted Donald Trump as the physically powerful, all-conquering God Emperor of the Empire of Man. ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2020, 2:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-the-sad-puppies-science-fiction-controversy/927019/176 "2020-12-09T14:51:19Z")
I think he IS a super powerful conquered in the spinoff games WH30K, but (and I’m probably butchering this) in his hubris he clones himself 30 times with each clone being modified a different way; these clones create the space marine chapters; but because he thinks himself so superior and beyond failure he doesn’t share his plans with any of them. Chaos ensues, the clones turn on each other and eventually fatally injure the Emperor (which is how he ends up as a comatose puppet in a space chair). 10,000 years of decline later and you end up with the very backwards Imperium. Which, of course, means that those morons idolize the very being whose failures led to the universe becoming so shifty in the first place. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2020, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-the-sad-puppies-science-fiction-controversy/927019/177 "2020-12-09T15:37:42Z")
> [@Gyrate](#): > > I don’t recall anyone complaining when a woman won the UK version of _Masked Singer_ (other than to be amazed that Nicola Roberts still had a career), but the same loss-of-shit-by-bigots hit the fan when [Nadiya Hussein](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadiya_Hussain) won _Great British Bake-Off_ in 2015, complete with the insistence that the only possible explanation for a Muslim woman winning was political correctness. Never mind that her cakes looked freaking _amazing_; they simply couldn’t grasp that, on a level(-ish) playing field, someone like “that” could be the best. > > There are “sad puppies” everywhere. Obvious, they were able to taste the cake by licking the TV and it was awful. ---
**Author:** ![Odesio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/odesio/32/20003_2.png) [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2020, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-the-sad-puppies-science-fiction-controversy/927019/178 "2020-12-09T16:06:31Z")
> [@gdave](#): > > He isn’t a god by any stretch, and as I understand it, he’s often depicted in the lore as not even really being an emperor, but just a figurehead (I think the lore inconsistently also sometimes depicts him as having vast psychic powers and a vital mind in a withered body). In-universe, he’s depicted as a physical powerful, all-conquering figure, but the _players_ are supposed to understand that it’s all ridiculous propaganda (that ironic detachment, again). There’s the Emperor pre-heresy and the Emperor post-heresy but he’s a powerful psyker in either form. Post-heresy Emperor’s psychic powers direct the Astronomican, a navigational beacon on Earth by which all Imperium ships use to travel at faster than light speed through the Warp and the Empire would collapse without it. But he’s just a figurehead these days and I don’t think anyone can actually communicate with him. I know the online Warhammer community has some problems. With Covid, I recently got back into Warhammer and started listening to some lore videos. I ran across an asshole I don’t care to name who was trying to answer the question of whether or not an Ultramarine could be black. This was in response to the controversy of an upcoming book (at the time) featuring a black Ultramarine on the cover. He begrudgingly answered yes but made it clear that the Ultramarine wouldn’t have any African features. Between that and a few other videos of his I wised up and stopped watching. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2020, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-the-sad-puppies-science-fiction-controversy/927019/179 "2020-12-09T16:21:08Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > I’ll admit I’ve never watched an episode of _The Masked Singer_ . But he seemed to be saying that a man should have won that show and the only explanation for why that didn’t happen was because the contest was rigged so a woman would win. As I interpreted it, @Dark_Sponge didn’t say anything about the contest being rigged, only that he suspected the individual voters of voting for singers that they did not think were the most talented, in the interest of gender balance. (I have never watched The Masked Singer either, and I have no opinion about whether this suspicion is correct.) Which, as I understand it, would be something like if you were voting for an Academy Award for Best Actor, and you voted. not for the nominee who you thought actually was the best actor or gave the best performance, but for one of the other nominees—maybe because the one you thought was actually best already had several awards and the one you voted for was “due”; or the nominee you voted for represented some group that you thought was underrepresented; or something like that. Bringing it back to the Hugos (etc.), I guess the question is, would the voters have voted the same way they did if the authors had been “masked” and the voters had no way of knowing their gender, ethnicity, nationality, etc.? Note that I, personally, am not suggesting they would have. But, in general, it’s not an unreasonable question to ask whether awards are given or voted on solely on the basis of merit, or whether other factors influence the voters’ decisions. That is in fact the question we’re asking when we accuse white males of having unfair advantages. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2020, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-the-sad-puppies-science-fiction-controversy/927019/180 "2020-12-09T16:52:28Z")
I’ve got a pretty good example from Science Fiction of what **darksponge** is talking about: the [2020 Nebula nominees](https://eisenhowerlibrary.org/2020-nebula-nominees/). I’ve read all of them–except one that I didn’t finish. They include: -A really interesting clash between two intergalactic societies with some great technology (including ancestor-memory-chips) and lovely cultural grace-notes, in _A Memory Called Empire_. -A 1920s fantasy drawing on ancient mythological influences and little-known aspects of culture, in _Gods of Jade and Shadow_. -A modern fantasy about secret societies and alternate universes, in _The Ten Thousand Doors of January_. -An absolutely bonkers story of interstellar necromancers combined with a locked-room whodunit, in _Gideon the Ninth_. -A quiet, meditative extrapolation of what would happen to society if mass gatherings were banned in the face of a pandemic (not prescient at all), in _A Song for a New Day_. These ranged from okay to great, in my opinion. But then there was: -Some what-the-shit-is-this space opera bullshit with a Mary Sue protagonist who may not actually say “Die pirate scum!” as he pew-pews the evil space pirates from his plucky little ship, but he might, it’s actually that bad, and I couldn’t through more than three or four pages before I started throwing up in my mouth. _Marque of Caine_, y’all. What the hell was that last one doing on the list? My best guess is that the author, as **darksponge** implied sometimes happens, got bonus points for being a White man. They must have wanted some diversity on the list or something, knowing about the howls they’d hear from sad puppies if the list included no White men. Otherwise I absolutely cannot account for such awful dreck getting anywhere near the Nebulas. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-the-sad-puppies-science-fiction-controversy/927019.md?page=8) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-the-sad-puppies-science-fiction-controversy/927019.md?page=10)