the Hugo awards and sad puppies.

[EternallyBored]

Expect hell next year as Sad Puppies are now a thing and if the choice is Puppies or watching the awards be burned down. People will pick Puppies.

How many years will people accept Mass No awards ?

The sad puppies werent the ones that burned down the awards, the rabid puppies under Vox Day were the ones that started spamming whole slates in multiple categories, and were the reason we got the 5 "no award" categories this year.

As for how long people will put up with it? They'll only have to put up with it 1 more time, as after that the rules are slated to change to stop small groups from being able to control the slate for entire categories, so people aren't going to start picking the puppies slate to avoid mass no awards, especially considering a number of sad puppies supporters are pissed at what Vox day did this year.

As for GRR Martin, last I heard he was largely satisfied with the outcome this year, the thing he was mad about was the anti side proposing nuking the ALL the categories with no award votes, which was avoided.

I don't know where you're getting some of your information from, some of the stuff you are talking about sounds a bit far-fetched. Considering from what I remember you are the guy behind the sarkeesian Mirror's edge 2 rumors, I'm sorry but you are going to need more than unsubstantiated rumors.

So people won't have to worry about the awards being burned down by people throwing fits every year, after next year, unless Vox Day can pull exponentially more supporters out of nowhere, what happened this year likely won't happen again. The rule changes are slated for the end of next year I believe.

 

[Silvanus]

The Puppies claimed that the awards were politicised, but failed to provide any substantial or convincing evidence in that regard. It all hinged on books they didn't like winning, and being diverse. That's not evidence of anything.

In response, they made it political. Created a loud, widely-known politicised hullabaloo, and used explicitly political arguments in order to convince followers to vote for their slate. It's thorough hypocrisy, as far as I can see.

 

[Fox12]

I could maybe sympathize, if I thought Sad Puppies had a case.

The thing is, they claim that their trying to support talented writers that don't get any attention. And the creator himself lamented never getting a nomination, claiming that it was due to politics. So I read their stuff. It's utter garbage. None of them can write. If they don't get nominated, it has nothing to do with politics. I think they're just bitter, especially the creator.

It doesn't help that they're complaints are embarrassingly stupid. The creator just complained about how he'd rather have flash gordon style adventure serials, as opposed to anything high minded. He sounded like a simpleton. Meanwhile he formed a slate of writers, and tried to push through a block voting system to support certain writers based upon things other then writing merit. So whose obsessed with politics here? He's a bitter, failed writer that's taking his frustrations out on the establishment.

The best that can be said is that they aren't actively sexist/racist/insane like the Rabid Puppies and Vox Populi.

Truth be told, I havent read anything of theirs.

But on this very site I have seen someone think the Witcher novels were bad... and on FB I also encountered someone that considered most of the tried and tested literature of any genre as shit... Tolkin, GRRM, Sapkowski and even effin Cervantes...

I did not even...
So yeah, basically... I dont know. It is not that I discard the possibility they are bad authors, but I have seen supposedly erudite people trash classics, cult hits or generally awesome literature... and it made me sad.

This is fair. Quality is at least somewhat subjective. I'm not crazy for the Witcher books myself, for instance, and GRRM is a mixed bag.

They're all Shakespeare compared to Larry Correia, though. Yeesh. His writing is, like, Resident Evil 1 bad. Which is fine until he tries blaming other people for his problems. I just despise their view on literature.

My issue is that, if the Hugo's weren't political before the Sad Puppies got involved, thay certainly were after.

 

[Fdzzaigl]

Once more this reactionary bullshit gets into places where it shouldn't be present. Pretty sad that shit like this gets into the Hugo awards. We've got most of the winning books from the 80's until the late 90's. Politics and ideology should have nothing to do with it.

 

[kitsunefather]

Every year, slate votes are pushed. This year, that slate was the unpopular (among Hugo attendees) Sad Puppies. They did nothing different, really, than anyone else wanting to have their favorite author put into the campaign, except to base their slate in part on politics.

The response from Hugo voters, including phrases like "politics is a part of quality", are damning statements.

In the end, the Hugos gave out as many "No Awards" this year as they ever have in the entire history of the awards show, and they did it because they didn't like the politics of the people involved. It wasn't about the quality of the work, or Science-Fiction in general; it was a value judgment on people based on their political opinions or how they got nominated. By some counts, close to a thousand votes were discarded as "inappropriate" based on who they voted for.

It is an act of sickening ideological puritanism only made worse by the fact that they are discussing adding 72 pages of rules to "prevent this sort of thing" in the future.

Whatever you think of the Sad Puppies, the moral of the story should have been to make sure to nominate the people you think best, and to participate in the awards from the beginning of nominations if you want to make sure your favorite creators are included.

The moral is, however, "only the right kind of people deserve our award."

 

[Ricardo Lima]

Every year, slate votes are pushed. This year, that slate was the unpopular (among Hugo attendees) Sad Puppies. They did nothing different, really, than anyone else wanting to have their favorite author put into the campaign, except to base their slate in part on politics.

The response from Hugo voters, including phrases like "politics is a part of quality", are damning statements.

In the end, the Hugos gave out as many "No Awards" this year as they ever have in the entire history of the awards show, and they did it because they didn't like the politics of the people involved. It wasn't about the quality of the work, or Science-Fiction in general; it was a value judgment on people based on their political opinions or how they got nominated. By some counts, close to a thousand votes were discarded as "inappropriate" based on who they voted for.

It is an act of sickening ideological puritanism only made worse by the fact that they are discussing adding 72 pages of rules to "prevent this sort of thing" in the future.

Whatever you think of the Sad Puppies, the moral of the story should have been to make sure to nominate the people you think best, and to participate in the awards from the beginning of nominations if you want to make sure your favorite creators are included.

The moral is, however, "only the right kind of people deserve our award."

I very much agree with you. The Hugos became pure politics and really dont represent quality.

 

[RedRockRun]

Sounds like something Vox would do, the scum.

 

[TwistednMean]

Hugo has been an SJW circlejerk exercise for a while now. For me it just lost its prestige. I don't want to read something because the author is female/gay/non-white or has progressive ideas. I want to read good writing.

But sabotaging Hugo is downright silly. What were they expecting, SJWs saying, "OK, you can have your award back"? Sounds to me like an act of self-pity.

 

[WindKnight]

Whether you believe them or not is mostly a factor of whether you think the works that they pushed to have nominated were legitimately better pieces or not (I note you aren't too impressed by Zombie Nation).

The Rabid Puppies... well... they want what Vox Day wants. If you don't know the guy, even a fairly cursory search on him will give you a fairly good idea of his views on things like minorities and women.

I will never let them live that down, every time they say they want to push quality entertainment into the Hugos And not to spite there competition I was say "like zombie nation". seriously look at it doesn't deserve to be in that spot.

also what candidates did the rabid puppies push? just curious.

Largely it was the Sads list with a few additions, including Vox putting himself on the list twice. The fact that he got both nominations tells me where the votes were coming from.

Its interesting to note one of the authors the Sads pushed is most famous for blog posts where he raged that the Korrasami ending for LOTK was a vile perversion, and that Terry Pratchett was an evil man damning people to hell for being pro euthanasia.

 

[DrownedAmmet]

-snip-

thoughts from George R.R. Martin: http://grrm.livejournal.com/439207.html

so what do you think of the whole ordeal.

ps. sory I R pooor speling

I know nothing about the sad puppies thing, but thank you for linking me to grrm's blog. I was so amazed by how often he responds, and always so patiently and politely. I thought he might be a bit fatigued by his fans by now, but that doesn't seem to be the case

 

[UmberHulk]

Slat pushing is wrong no matter what the reason behind it is. That's all that really needs to be said.

 

[Something Amyss]

The Hugos became pure politics and really dont represent quality.

When did they ever represent quality?

 

[TwistednMean]

The Hugos became pure politics and really dont represent quality.

When did they ever represent quality?

Funny how I wanted to object about the days of Asimov, Antony, Clark, Simak, Silverberg, Anderson and Zelazny... and then I remembered how many times the award went to folks like Le Guin and Scott Card.

Still some nominees used to be good at least in the old days.

 

[Something Amyss]

Still some nominees used to be good at least in the old days.

So is it your assertion that there are absolutely no good recent nominees?

 

[TwistednMean]

My assertion is that nowadays they are a tiny minority, accounting for less than one nomination per year. Bank's Algebraist, Gaiman's Graveyard Book and, maybe, Skin Game by Butcher are the only decent nomination in Novel category in the last 15 years or so.

 

[WindKnight]

The Hugos became pure politics and really dont represent quality.

When did they ever represent quality?

Funny how I wanted to object about the days of Asimov, Antony, Clark, Simak, Silverberg, Anderson and Zelazny... and then I remembered how many times the award went to folks like Le Guin and Scott Card.

Still some nominees used to be good at least in the old days.

There are a lot of great authors who deserved Hugo's, but never got them, whatever their political beliefs and leanings. There are flaws with the Hugo's, but the Sad's were at best wallowing in self pity or delusional if they believed their own story.

I feel the more I hear about Vox, the more he comes across that he is, or wants to be, the embodiment of 4/8Chan culture.

 

[Ricardo Lima]

So back rubing political awards is an apt description.