You're Not a Real Sci-fi/Fantasy Fan? · 5:56pm Mar 31st, 2015
This story can also be found on my personal site here
You're probably familiar with the Hugo awards if you're a science-fiction or fantasy writer/reader. Big award, said to celebrated the best that sci-fi and fantasy has to offer? Well, for a while now it hasn't. Celebrated the best, I mean. And I know that science fiction and fantasy can be pretty nebulous on what's "the best," especially among dedicated fans who can have entertaining debates over whether Star Trek or Star Wars is more technically feasible. But the Hugo award was starting to see entirely too much control from one small insular group of "fans." Well, a bunch of authors got tired of it and decided to do something about it to broaden the Hugo audience back to what it once was, and the sad puppies campaign was formed.
Long story short, it's kicked off the closest thing I've seen in the time I've been following the publishing industry to a form of war. And I'm not going to cover it all here. I've covered it on my blog before, and you can catch up on the battle pretty readily yourself with a few quick Google searches, though be wary of what you read: the insular group is pretty nasty.
Of course, groups that are being nasty also often tend to shoot themselves in the foot. And the latest open volley has, as of this morning, seen its arguments countered, point for point. So, what do I think of all this?
I think it's pretty obvious based off of who I linked that I side with the SP campaign. I remember years ago, when I was still in high-school, I used to buy a yearly collection of "best of" science fiction and fantasy stories. And I really looked forward to it ... right up until I didn't. Year by year, my interest waned. Not because I stopped reading or enjoying science-fiction or fantasy, but because a lot of the stories included in the "best of" collection simply stopped being stories that I wanted to read. They started to become soapboxes. Character and plot dropped away to secondary importance (if appearing at all) in lieu of social commentary. So I stopped reading.
Now, do I take issue with them being called "best of" stories? Well, yes, because they'd sort of stopped being stories. Now, I'll be honest, I don't have any issue with someone else liking them and reading them. You want to read thinly-veiled soapboxing, be my guest. I'm just not interested.
But the thing is, the current, inclusive group that's raging against the Hugo awards isn't taking that stance. Instead, they're saying that, and I quote, "The Hugos don’t belong to the set of all people who read the genre ..." Or they're going even further afield with this winner: "I’ve wanted a Hugo since I was in middle school, but I dreamed of being given one by SF community, not Larry Correia."
Hang on a minute. I read Larry Correia. He writes fun fantasy novels. I've also met him. He's very much a geek (you should see his fantasy/sci-fi mini collection). But he's "not" a science-fiction/fantasy fan? Because this group says so?
That's where I draw the line. Someone wants soapboxing in their fantasy? Okay, fine. They want to rave on about how people shouldn't read books written by white men (the link to the original article is linked inside that link if you really do want to read it)? Fine, they can do that. It might be racist and sexist as anything, and I may personally disagree, but they can say it. After all, they can say what they like. Doesn't mean I buy it, but hey, to each their own.
But you want to say that people who disagree with you aren't really science-fiction or fantasy fans simply because they don't agree with you? That's the "no true Scotsman" argument right there. And that's why I'm all for the SP campaign, because it took something that had been thoroughly distorted by a group of people with a "with us or against us" mentality and shined a nice, bright light on them. And you know what, this group of "true" fans can say what they want. But when they start insisting that unless you subscribe to their beliefs and their dogma that you aren't a "real" science-fiction/fantasy fan, they're just showing how off-base they truly are.
I grew up reading The Lord of the Rings. Angelmass. Star Wars. Terry Prachett. Terry Brooks. R.A. Salvatore. More books than I could ever count unless I'd started at day one. I enjoy reading fantasy. I enjoy reading science fiction. And now, I enjoy writing them.
But to be told that I'm "not a real science-fiction/fantasy fan" because I don't hold the same social views? I think if anything, that alone tells me that the SP campaign is on the right track with its boost to the Hugo awards. Because if the people who've been ruling the roost there for the last few years are saying stuff like this, then the Hugos were on the edge of being pretty irrelevant ... at least to anyone deemed "not a real fan."
Which seems to be just about everyone.
You'll find this form of "discussion" everywhere nowadays.
This: "If you don't agree with me to 100 percent you are [insert discrediting insult] and therefore your arguments don't count.
Its cool - as you instantly "win" every "discussion" and don't have even to bother about backing your points. Or think about if your position is maybe not perfectly right...
Because "winning" is the central point of a discussion.
Sadly you just need a annoying loud minority on your side to play this game.
And more sadly you can't do much about this disrupting discussion-culture, besides standing tall and live a better one for yourself.
One positiv outlook may be this: the more radical the annoying loud minority is, the more it is prone to disrupt itself, as everyone
of them wants to win. At some point even more then their comrades.
P.S.
And thanks for showing me a new term. Had to google for "soapboxing".
Everyday you learn something new, is a good day.
P.P.S. One I have to add:
Otto Walkes - a german comedian once minted this roughly translated quote:
... yeah, cheap one. But sums it up pretty good.
There's a term for this right? Because, not just in this, but in practically every argument (not debate, or discussion; argument) you see people who, when you pull together the runaround language used, essentially are all using the logic of "Because you don't agree with me, your argument is invalid." Those situation where you get "I'm not a spy." "That's what a spy would say!" interactions. Is that the "No true scotsman" ?
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Yeah, the moment someone starts telling people that they're not a "real" fan of science fiction and fantasy, especially with the reasoning given, is the moment I start really lowering my respect for that person. I'm not surprised, to be honest, given the social clique that this individual clings to. But I do disagree, both with her opinions and her clique (as well as its methods). And, actually, Larry posted another link to this article which has been pretty mind-opening. Also, sad to read. And scary, since I'm diving headfirst into the same industry right now.
Speaking of which ...
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As far as I understand it, the "No true Scotsman" argument is somewhat similar to what you're saying, but not 100%. I'm not super educated on all the different types of logical fallacies (the internet loves classifying these), but there's definitely one out there for what you're saying.
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Yeah, it's nice to be able to exit a debate-turned-argument by recognizing the other guy has started Scotsmanning at you (or some other term). If the other guy's not gonna be civil and/or mature about things, I'm not gonna be there to intercept mud with my face.
Speaking of soapboxing, bear in mind that what started this whole thing, as Correia explicitly said last year, was:
So yes, if it's "the closest thing to war" you've seen, it's because by his own admission he picked a fight to make a political point.
Setting aside the gross misinterpretation of "Larry Correia is not the sci-fi community" into "Larry Correia is not in the sci-fi community" — and I really shouldn't set that aside, because you're drawing a great deal of personal umbrage from it — how exactly was she supposed to feel about someone who explicitly organized a cross-the-board voting slate with the stated goal of "getting political untouchables onto the slate"?
I'm sorry, but I have to take their claims that they want to broaden fandom in the context of their stated goals for their previous actions: this is a movement about making science fiction more politically conservative, pure and simple. You're allowed to have opinions on whether that is a positive goal or not, but arguing that that's not what's happening here, that this is just about generically "broadening the audience", is disingenuous.
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Isn't that just rewording the argument in a manner similar to saying that a movement dedicated to equality in hiring is "forcing businesses to hire (insert ethnicity of choice here) people?" You might want to look a little deeper into this, if that's what you think the whole point was. In fact, the organizers have been very clear that this was not the point, and as they've pointed out, their recommendations come from all sides of the political spectrum. There's nothing about making sci-fi more politically conservative to it at all. It's about not making science-fiction inclusive to only one particular worldview, which is what the Hugo's (and a good chunk of the publishing industry) was turning into. Heck, look at some of the things that Sarah Hoyt wrote about that she experienced during her career before settling at Baen:
This is the attitude of the majority of the sci-fi/fantasy publishers. If you're not part of the "clique" you're not going to get published. Or you're going to get blacklisted and shut down. Not because of what you write, but because of whether or not your goals align with the cliques. Were their choices mandated by politics? Yes, they were, so they fired the opening shots and made it political to start with. But SP isn't about just trying to make sci-fi conservative, it's about giving everyone a shot and getting the Hugo award to vote for books that are good again, rather than chosen for political clout. And as a result, they've recommended books that are good, regardless of political sways of the author or fans. Books that have sold well and been well received, but have not had any recognition.
Now, let's look at the other side. We have, for example, a man who has consistently won 28 Hugo awards who declares that the system is working perfectly. Except now it looks like he might not even place now that tons of new sci-fi and fantasy fans are adding their votes, and he's unhappy about it. Then we have a former editor from Tor who's been rather vocally trying to hang onto keeping the Hugos insular making this statement: "The Hugos don’t belong to the set of all people who read the genre; they belong to the worldcon, and the people who attend and/or support it. The set of all people who read SF can start their own award.."
(Edit: And I'm not even going for the low hanging fruit here, these are some of the more sane counters)
Which isn't correct at all. According to to the Hugo's official site, the Hugo's are "... awards for excellence in the field of science fiction and fantasy. They were first awarded in 1953, and have been awarded every year since 1955. The awards are run by and voted on by fans."
Those two statements don't agree. But the Hugo definition does agree with the SP mantra, which has been, from day one that people read, submit and vote for what they thought was best. And sure, the SP organizers picked a bunch of their favorites and suggested them, but it was dozens upon dozens of books from all varieties, and again as they point out, they're only suggestions. If you read them and don't like them, then vote for something else. And these authors aren't plugging their own works (though others might), something that the last few years worth of Hugo awards before this can't say the same for.
Again, arguing that it's all about making sci-fi more "politically conservative" seems about as logical as arguing that an equality measure is all about forcing businesses to hire one particular ethnic group. Might that be a side effect? Maybe. But even then, your assertion doesn't make sense. If they're "making" sci-fi more conservative, that would imply that they're going out there and rounding up tons of people and turning them into sci-fi/fantasy fans. Except they aren't. They're just waking up existing fans and saying "Hey, this is what this group is saying the best is. This is what they say should be bought and sold. And this is what they're awarding the awards to, awards that are decided by you, the fans." And then they're letting the fans decide what to do with that. If anything of your declaration is correct in a fashion, it's that this insular clique is being outed for what they are: A small, tiny population of the majority of fans that has convinced themselves that they are the majority when they are not, nor representative of the whole of sci-fi/fantasy. The fans are realizing that their voice hasn't been heard, and they're simply adjusting to that fact. Which is more than anything, broadening the audience. I'll point you towards three final quotes:
One is Teresa's, which you've read before:
This one is from the SP3 Manifesto:
This last one is from the guy who started it all, Larry Correia:
Haven't had enough tea yet to process this completely. So let me try to get this straight.
- Hugo Awards are a big thing for SciFi writers because of the amount of attention it gives to the novel being awarded, and there aren't many other ways writers can make themselves be heard.
- Recently a certain type of writing, featuring soapboxes, has been winning all the Hugo Awards because of the fact that the votes come from a certain demographic going to a con and voting there.
- A group of authors are trying to get more people involved by asking fans to attend said cons. This is the Sad Puppies thing?
- The certain demographic is railing on these authors for trying to do so, and saying that their fans aren't true fans.[No True Scotsman Fallacy] (?)
Once again, I'm seeing parallels in this with another ongoing "war" in a different artform. Not exactly 1:1, but I'm wondering if there are any links between that certain demographic and this other group I'm thinking of.
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Brad Torgerson is the organizer of Sad Puppies 3. The very next post in his blog after the SP3 slate was a complaint that science fiction has lost its way because the label on the outside of the story is not an accurate summary of the inside of the story.
Okay, let's accept that premise. Which means that the organizer of the movement believes that the label of a thing should describe the thing inside. So we have "Sad Puppies 3". This is explicitly labeled as a sequel to a campaign that was, as above, explicitly political. I see no reason not to take him at his word, when there was an entire universe of phrases available for an "open up the Hugo voting" campaign (and when the post I linked spends a long time upset at stories with non-traditional heroes).
The fact that Brad took some suggestions before releasing the slate, and added in some big-box crowd-pleasers like "Guardians Of The Galaxy," doesn't offset the political nominations. Take Eric S. Raymond's suggested nomination for the Campbell Award (best new science fiction author). I spent about half an hour googling him in a vain attempt to find what science fiction he actually wrote in the last two years, as his bibliography doesn't list any. Finally I figured it out: he has a nonfiction essay about combat lasers in the "Riding the Red Horse" SF anthology. That's it, one nonfiction essay on SF topics. Are you seriously suggesting that he was put on the slate on the basis of literary merit rather than "political clout"? Don't you see how insulting this could be to actual fiction authors who worked their butts off getting their first novel or short story written, and (if Sad Puppies gets its way) will be fighting for one fewer slot on the award ballot?
Did you even read the slate you support? That's simply, 100%, untrue.
Best Novel
Monster Hunter Nemesis – Larry Correia – BAEN
Best Related Work
Riding the Red Horse (check out its Amazon page, Brad Torgerson and Vox Day are both contributors)
According to this page on the Hugo Awards site (and as you yourself pointed out in one of your quotes):
"Each year, members of the World Science Fiction Society are invited to nominate and vote on the Hugo Awards. You can become a member by joining the current year’s World Science Fiction Convention."
I'm not happy with the way that Teresa Nielsen Hayden put it either, but that doesn't make her incorrect: The Hugo is not voted on by everyone who reads sci-fi, it's voted on by the people who care enough to join Worldcon and invest the time in reading the works on the ballot. Worldcon membership is open to the public, and anyone who cares enough has always been able to join.
(Full disclosure: I've never actually done so myself. It's a nontrivial amount of money and effort and I can enjoy the nominees/winners without it. I do not feel threatened or excluded by the "gatekeepers" by this fact, because the solution is simple: go attend a con I'd enjoy; or else continue on as an SF fan regardless, secure in my identity because it's a self-applied label that no third party can invalidate.)
Let me pause there to agree with you that greater public interest in the Hugos is a commendable goal. A post like this would have been unobjectionable, no, laudable: if the Sad Puppies feel that the Hugo voters aren't representative of the fandom as a whole, then asking their preferred demographic to get more involved ensures that their interests are taken into account.
But what happened is that they are pointing people to the Hugos along with a voting slate, in a project that is explicitly political on the label. If a politician spent a lot of time and effort driving new voters to the polls and handed them a list of "suggestions" in the car, people watching the race would similarly cry foul.
Finally, and semi-unrelatedly, I really wish that SFF fandom had the demographic attention that furry fandom does. The furry survey has been running for years now, getting a broad cross-section of the fandom and tracking demographic data over time. They've even done some cross-fandom studies (with anime fans and fantasy sports fans); question 7 is interesting, because by their data all fandoms they surveyed are more politically liberal than average. This is not necessarily also true for SFF fandom (for which I can find no corresponding data), but it's suggestive enough to make me very suspicious of the hypothesis that "there's a silent conservative majority of fandom which this campaign is merely bringing out of the woodwork".
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I just ... wow. The amount of willful digging you're doing ... I mean dang, if you wanted to expose yourself as only digging and Googling far enough to cherry pick stuff that supported your position, you definitely did it. I mean DANG. That takes effort.
So, addressing only the parts of your response that are worth the actual response because they haven't been either A) been heavily disproved by others, B) aren't fully questionable in their own assertions or C) just really deserving a of a response.
So first, this bit:
Which the authors themselves DID NOT submit to the slate. They were submitted by other members of the slate. Now, it's especially interesting that you're defending this because the "opposing side" that you've been busily defending has been very guilty of this, and it's well documented. Heck, they've even passed it off as permissible and accepted ... provided you're plugging the "appropriate" literature. So, while SP has been very clearly not plugging it's own works (you'll note that during book bombs for all the stuff on the slate, Larry, for example, did not plug his own books or link them during the bomb). Meanwhile, the other side has. Double standard much?
So then there's nothing wrong with SP encouraging others to come to the Worldcon they've been attending for years? Because you seem to be arguing that this isn't the case, that they're doing something wrong by saying "No, worldcon shouldn't be inclusive to one particular ethnic/social/political group." Which is what those were running control over Worldcon were doing: closing it off to anyone but their little group. As was said by that group, they don't want other people attending because they 'aren't real fans.'
That's funny, because i believe this was one of the reasons SP got started. For someone who seems upset about how this might "insult actual fiction authors," it doesn't seem like you had a problem with that system when it was handing out awards to the first-time writers (or non-fiction authors who'd published no fiction at all) who were part of the insular group. Now actual fiction writers are involved, and you're claiming it's insulting? So, is it only insulting when it's the new authors you don't like being nominated, or the new authors who don't check the right boxes on their submission form?
Again, slates and authors pushing their own works at the hugos have been an accepted practice for a while now. The people that were winning would, every year, without fail, propose their own works, conduct massive twitter and internet publicity campaigns for themselves, again, heavily political/ideologically based, and win. Some of them even appeared to have insider knowledge of who and what had won before such things were publicly announced. Again, you seem to only find this objectionable now that someone else is doing it and proving to quite possibly be the bigger dog.
So, by drawing a correlation from one fandom to another (which is a fallacy of composition) you're attempting to cast negative light on my declaration by declaring yourself "suspicious" rather than posting any reasoned response. This one is just gravy over the rest of your post.
So let's clear some things:
Do you accept that the fans of the authors who comprise sad puppies qualify as Science-fiction or fantasy fans? Yes or no?
If yes, then are those fans just as eligible to attend worldcon and vote for the "best" literature as all other fans? Yes or no?
If no, why not? Because they're -insert label of choice here-?
If yes, then what's the problem? have they done anything that the current winners of the Hugo have not done? NO.
If they are fans like all the other fans, and they vote for something and it wins ... what is the issue?
Note that at this point, unless you actually answer any of the questions raised by this post or any of the other responses I've made, I probably will just ignore it. This far you've completely ignored the majority of questions and points that have been raised, and have made a number of statements while ignoring and not addressing anything that refutes them. Which isn't exactly surprising, but does lower my incentive to spend time responding. After all, I've got more books to publish.
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If they self-identify as SFF fans, yes.
"Worldcon membership is open to the public, and anyone who cares enough has always been able to join. … Let me pause there to agree with you that greater public interest in the Hugos is a commendable goal." I think I agree that we're wasting time here if you're not actually reading my comments.
Volume, voting blocs, and turning a vote about story quality into a political referendum. (I will not repeat my previous evidence for that assertion; I have already laid out my thesis as clearly as I'm able.)
As for volume/blocs, if you assert that SP3 is no different than booster campaigns from previous winners, please provide a link to one of their Hugo promotional efforts which has asked fans to vote for a slate which would fill the entire Hugo nomination ballot.
I doubt that either of us will convince the other, so I'd just like to ask two questions in return, and then I'm done here as well and we can both get back to writing. I don't plan to further respond.
1) Do you have any data about (modern) SFF fandom demographics?
None exists, as near as I can tell. I provided the most relevant data available; i.e. demographic data from similar fandoms. I noted myself that this is not proof of SFF demographics, because I'm trying to be fair here; my evidence is circumstantial. But as far as I can tell from this comment thread you're asserting a silent conservative majority from zero evidence.
2) Do you believe Eric S. Raymond was put on SP3's Campbell slate (Best New Science Fiction Author) on the basis of literary merit?
If yes, on what grounds?
If no, then how does his inclusion in the SP3 slate advance the goals you claim SP3 has?
- h
Looking at both those articles and the comments, I just want to find whoever started this (no, I mean whoever really started it. Whoever gave people the idea that what they believe in one field will affect the other fields horribly.) and give them several good knocks upside the head, not to mention a good talking to.
Ok this is an amusing "story" posted by one Scorpomancer on Reddit:
http://monsterhunternation.com/2015/04/06/a-letter-to-the-smofs-moderates-and-fence-sitters-from-the-author-who-started-sad-puppies/#comments
Haha. Ok, what kind of Mental Olympics awards have these idiots gotten for somehow connecting Correida's SP campaign with something that started up around 9 months ago? Because apparently someone who plays games couldn't possibly like reading Sci-Fi or anything of that sort. Nope, everyone's got to have their own tidy labels. Apparently GamerGate has perfected time travel so they can go and harass women in the past. My thoughts on those screeching against Correida and GG detractors being of the same ilk is starting to gain evidence.
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Some of my favorite parts from that letter:
-The point that the rebuttals and vitriol against Sad Puppies don't have any consistent message, nor one that makes sense with a good minute or less worth of Googling. It's just baseless buzz-words and fear mongering, and the one's repeating it refuse to look elsewhere or believe differently (and we've seen that in this comments thread).
-The SJW's messages from individuals keep changing. What Teresa said three years ago when the whole thing started ('This is about everyone, the Hugos are totally open and fair, we don't reject anyone') and what she's saying now ('You're the wrong fans, and we don't want you, the Hugos are for us and no one else) are completely hypocritical and remind me a bit of Animal Farm; "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."
-The continual insistence that the entire group is a racist, white-supremacy group/conservative right-wing movement, promoting racist, white-supremacy fiction ... when anyone who's even peeked at the books that were nominated or submitted for nomination, or the people leading the SP movement, know that's not even remotely true. Of course, a number of notable SJWs (including a senior editor at Tor) have responded with the blast that they refuse to even read the stuff that was nominated—a mindset that distills into just about everything else they're doing. One of the comments pointed out how one of the women who won a nomination for the Hugo is now apparently under harsh attack by the SJWs because they apparently considered her "one of them," but now that she's won a nomination, she's now a "conservative," etc, etc, etc.
Basically, the whole thing is nuts. And they're pulling out all the stops too. Entertainment Weekly uploaded an article yesterday that screams of favors being called in, and was so defamatory to certain people's characters with its accusations that Brad Torgerson (in that link above he mentions this) contacted them and pointed out that it was libel. Then uploaded the picture of his family to show how off base the insular crowd is with it's vicious accusations.
Again, the whole thing is ridiculous. SJWs will do anything they can to maintain power. Just like Starlight Glimmer did with her public shaming of anyone who stepped out of line in her community to keep control, only to crack when everything started to come apart and show her true colors, the SJW crowd keeps breaking further and further. They bring race into the issue (white supremacists) and then try to label everyone to suit their argument (for instance, it has been said that Larry Correia is 'too white' to be Portuguese because he doesn't act 'hispanic' enough. Who comes up with this stuff? And do they even fact-check it? No). They try to publicly shame people and claim a high moral ground, but then quietly distance themselves when members of their own clique end up publicly exposed and accused of some of the very behavior they claim to decry.
All in all? Sad Puppies needed to happen. A tiny little group wormed its way into a position of power and began exerting that power as hard as they could. Now the rest of the fandom has gotten sick of it, and they and their followers will do anything to stay in power: lie, slander, libel ... whatever it takes.
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Considering the fact that gamers dug up a group of journos that coordinated several articles attacking gamers at large within a span of 24 hours, I would not be surprised if there was a similar list of "journalists" for all these articles cropping up doing the same to Sad Puppies. The general GG response is derision and laughter at the absurdity of the situation, as well as recognition of pretty much the same tactics from the SJW/CHODE playbook. Heck, I could probably repeat your points and apply them to GG without difficulty.
Here we go:
Gamers be insulted with every derogatory mentioned (hate-group, racist, homophobic, misogynistic, etc.) One moment GG is a hate group using "Ethics in Games Journalism" as a cover to drive women out the games industry, the next they're a good intentioned movement corrupted by trolls and witch-hunting. And about every other day GG/gamers is/are dead, because some news site said so.
"Big Developer" Wu (you'll probably hear more about her as she screeches about her Hugo-winning husband) is part of the group insulting games for having "problematic" depictions of women. One just needs to look at her one iOS game and then see the depiction. Only reason her name keeps coming up is because of her squawking on twitter, along with the media, both old and new, propping her up as the harassed woman fighting the good fight for women in the games industry. (In the meanwhile those who actually do matter are busy making games, and have reported a good working environment.)
Don't even know where to start with this. Anyone supporting GG has that label since its inception, even with charts showing the political spectrum to be all over the place, but nope, gamergaters be all white cis-het conservative males. Attempt at showing that not everyone who supports GG started up, called #NotYourShield, if you're interested. In short, a bunch of folks in GG get accused of being white cis-het males faking as black/female/etc sockpuppets show that they aren't, and get either brushed off as brainwashed or insulted as race/gender-traitors.
The games the SJW are praising, on the other hand, fall pretty much into artsy, linear stories that I'd stick more into interactive fiction, but I hesitate even with that. Tried the games that were advertised, and can't even call them CYOA types. They're mostly a monologue on a "deep" subject. On the other hand, it's quite amusing to see them complain about a transmisogynistic (this is apparently a word) piece of writing on a tombstone insulting an idiot who ran off a cliff after realizing he slept with another man in a bout of drunken coitus. In a game where you can sacrifice a fetus and kill nearly everyone, among other things. People speculate the complainers never even planned on buying the games and just wanted something to be outraged against, otherwise the writing would be the least of their concern.
Same with all articles I've mentioned. People speculating that these game journos have large ties to old media as well. The term to search for is "Gamers are Dead articles". Good to keep everything archived. Big difference is that instead of mocking and insulting a general faceless group of gamers, they are going after names and faces. Will be curious to see how this will turn out when lawyers get involved in a slander / libel case.
Haha. Even Wu, a big detractor of GG, got raked over the coals by "her own kind" when she decided to have a chat over coffee with SJW target Brad Wardell (Dude got hit with a false rape accusation). In their eyes, she was talking with "the enemy". Resulted in a backpedal by her and more screeching, up to and including the leaking over to SP.
Backlash is happening everywhere. Glad to see Sci-Fi community doing it their way to push back against the Clique.
I would say that the side of the debate that countsVox DayandJohn C. Wrightas supporters is pretty nasty, too.EDIT: Maybe I was a bit hasty in implying that everything Vox or Wright do is this appalling or that Correia et al are no better than them. I suppose it's possible that Wright is good at writing as long as he keeps politics out of it, and he has other reasons for being marginalized, but this sort of thing and comparisons drawn to GamerGate (sometimes by actual GamerGaters) makes it hard for me to trust this movement you've endorsed, but if anyone wants to vote for anyone besides Vox or Wright anyways, I've got no problem with it.
So a question I have for you is, how important are the Hugo Awards, anyway? As far as I know, the Nebula Awards also exist, and Terry Pratchett declined his nomination because he didn't need it as much as unknown authors who didn't have Pratchett's reputation or accomplishments behind them.
EDIT 2: I just finished reading a whole bunch of articles about this, spanning from a web of links from news that George R.R. Martin is speaking out against Sad Puppies. This one is the most in-depth and I've decided that it reflects my own position pretty well, if I was much more well-informed and knowledgeable than I actually am.
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Here's the thing with the GamerGate comparisons: They started this last weekend. This last weekend, there was a massive anti-Sad Puppies media campaign that launched, in which 8 different news organizations ran the same story (in most cases word for word), each of which was a fount of unresearched information. In fact, it was so bad, and so defamatory, that Brad R. Torgerson contacted one of the new agencies and pointed out that what they had posted was, very simply, basically libel. The articles held, among other things, that the leaders of the Sad Puppies movement were racist, white supremacist who wanted all women and non-whites out of publishing, and that they were being run and controlled by, and had been from the beginning (and here comes more fear tactics) GamerGate!
Well, a lot of quick retractions went up, some of the stories almost becoming completely different from what they'd first posted. I even wrote a post about it here (noting some of the things said and how messed up it was that they were said in the first place). What was said was easily disputed: The Sad Puppies supported books that have been nominated are actually far more varied than anything that's been awarded or nominated by the Hugos for the past couple of years. The articles initially reported that there were no women on the SP supported list, and no people of color, while the Hugos were a bastion of diversity. The rewrites pointed out (or hinted at, since many of them didn't want to say) that it was the other way around: the SP slate is far more diverse than what the Hugos have been awarding/nominating. There's more cultural diversity, more gender-based diversity, and more political diversity. More on this in a moment.
The other thing was the GamerGate scare word. Because make no mistake, it was a flat out scare word. Barring the rather obvious time distortion that the article made in order to make that claim (GamerGate apparently has a time machine, since the 8 articles claimed the big SJW-bugaboo was behind SPs, a drive that existed more than two-and-a-half years before GG ever happened), GamerGate itself was quick to point out that it had nothing to do with the Sad Puppies campaign and that the information had been entirely fabricated as a scare tactic. GamerGate = Bad! GamerGate = Sad Puppies! Sad Puppies = Bad!
Of course, stooping to such a desperate tactic kind of backfired. Because GamerGate was all to happy to say "No, we don't have anything to do with this ... but now we kind of do." Because here was a case of the small, insular group that has controlled the Hugos for the last little while calling in a bunch of favors and getting some collusion going among a group of journalists to smear some people publicly ... and that's something GamerGate has had a serious past with. And now GamerGate is, one way or another, involved at some level, mostly just because they're angry at a desperate group of power-hungry insulars who tried to use their name as part of a smear campaign.
Now, speaking of that campaign, it was pretty sick. The insular group has already shown that they're not willing to play by any human standards of honor and decency. They send long, vitriol-filled twitter rants at targets they've picked out. They make very public accusations of "fear words" like racism and bigotry. Or cisgendertransmyphobia, which as some have pointed out, usually isn't spelled consistently on top of being a fairly "what?" word and concept to begin with. But they're getting really rotten. Last year Larry Correia's wife started getting phone calls from relatives and friends who'd heard that her husband was a rapist, a wife beater, etc. No joke. He's not, nor has he ever been even accused of such things, but the SJW groups publicized it so much anyway that his family started getting calls about it. This weekend Brad R. Torgerson had to bring his family into it (well, technically after his attackers did) in order to show that their accusations were way off base (again, libel was mentioned).
All because Larry noticed that only one type of book was getting hugo nominations: a type that was A) super politically left and B) written by someone in this little group of people. That was all there was to it. Since then, it's been noted that while Sci-fi greats like Issac Asimov have a few Hugo awards, the people in this group have quite a few more (I don't recall the number off-hand so I won't just make them up), and this despite the fact that one of these modern hugo winners has an average review on his book of three-and-half stars ... something my books are even beating. It's been noted that while fifteen, twenty years ago all the books on the Hugo award would follow a wide spread of political positioning, all the current books are only from far-left authors with far-left messages in the writing, and anything that wasn't far left was dropped from the slate. Even the awards given were for questionable reasons, such as one book being given the Hugo award for (and I'm not making this up) using the feminine gender pronouns instead of male. That was the only reason I am aware of that the book was given the award.
And the behavior hasn't gotten any better. Since the Sad Puppies backed-books ended were nominated, many of the higher voices among the insular group have come out and publicly said that they will not even read said books, nor will they vote for them ... and they've been very vocal about it. They're judging the Hugo nominations? Well, if you're not one of the books they recommended (and they recommend and push books just as the SPs have done) they will flat out not read it and refuse to vote. Crud, one of the people who's said this, who is an editor at Tor, said he'd only vote for books that weren't from SP, ie, books that he'd supported. He won't read the others, and if they're finalist, he's going to recommend that no award be issued. Several other judges issued the similar statements. (EDIT: Brad R. Torgerson has pointed out as of this morning that this action is "cutting the baby in half" approach to things. I'd call it a "raze the ground" approach, a "if we can't have this NO ONE WILL mentality)
This is, mind you, the faction that's claiming their the "open and accepting group." The one that uses the word "equality." The one that's "inclusive to all" and "willing to judge on the merits of looking past labels." Unless, apparently, that label is one they've applied themselves and it means "bad." Also, this is the same group that has, as one of it's more vocal members, a woman who has quite publicly stated that all readers should stop reading books written by white men (100% no joke here, she's made a whole internet campaign over it) ... because that's not racist?
As far as importance goes, one of the things that's been said about the Hugos in this day and age is that in a time when there are more books than ever—the market's being flooded due to e-books and self-publishing—the Hugos are a great way to pick out a an author who has quality work. Which is why is serves no one's interest that someone like John Scalzi be nominated every year like clockwork. Or anyone else from this group. And as an award that's supposed to represent all of science fiction and fans (by the founding motto's admission), granting the reward for five years running to the exact same harping line ruins the value of the award. And that having a tightly-knit group of close-minded (and closed-minded) friends controlling what goes onto it and what wins is a bad idea.
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The fact that you mention that as a result of the media gun-jumping that put Sad Puppies and GamerGate together, the two groups are now actually talking with each other for real, is discouraging and I don't think it's a point in your favor. To be fair, I've seen much less evidence of gross behavior from SP than GG, and while I'm willing to believe that there are bad apples on both sides, the tweets I get exposed to from GG are almost always Bill-O'Reilly-esque in nature. SP is better in that I haven't seen those tweets from its supporters, and I admit that many of the articles I saw (the one I linked being an exception) is very presumptuous in dismissing SP supporters as hijacking reactionaries, though until I get evidence I find talk of conspiracies locking people with conservative values out of cultural hot spots like the Hugos equally presumptuous.
I'm not planning on spending the time or money to vote on the Hugos, am not very familiar with them, and may not have ever heard of this whole deal if you'd never posted about it on the blog. If I was, I would give everything on the ballots a chance, with the possible exception of entries written by John C. Wright or Vox Day's publishing house, because I had very bad first impressions of both of them and I'm suspicious of the sheer quantity of entries from both that made the ballot. I'm going to start reading Black Gate because this whole thing brought it to my attention, so in at least one instance the slate was right. I'll also be keeping an eye on the results and see if this changes or destroys the Hugo as so many have predicted.
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On GamerGate in relation to Sad Puppies
For the most part, the consensus is that GG should not be pushing into SP for the sake of getting at the Clique. Most of them are happy to watch a parallel campaign vs. SJW without interfering, if the nomination numbers are indicative of that. They aren't as angry with the slander, considering the 9-month tirade against them, as amused at the Mental Olympics required to tie the two movements together. "We're misogynistic, transphobic, racist, all-CisHetWhiteMale, sockpupet-using, 'worse than ISIS', time traveling Nazis now! Time to level-up and drive out women from all industries and back to the kitchen. /sarcasm" GG never had any false hope winning the PR war considering that the people they're up against is the media. It would have been nice if journalists actually done their job and do research, but lazy regurgitation is what you'll see nowadays, using buzzwords rather than discussion. So for the most part, they've kinda accepted and poke fun of the fact that they are the new internet boogeyman. Instead, GG have actually accomplished things, such as getting several sites to update their ethics policies, as well as grabbing the attention of the FBI (current investigation under wraps) and the FTC. In addition, they've donated to several causes (More women in game development, suicide prevention, etc) to the point where they've been accused of "weaponizing charity".
For the most part, the only things that really ties these two campaigns (GG and SP) in a relation is the crossover demographics, i.e. gamers who love sci-fi / sci-fi fans who also play video games, and the existence of an extreme left Clique that have ties to the media. There are a lot of differences in the scenarios. From what I get SP is about the Clique already taking up the majority of the Hugos, and is a push for more diversity. GG on the other hand, is about the Clique doing unethical shenanigans to try and push out elements in video games, while promoting their own friends, all while (most of them) claiming to do ethical journalism (Cheong come to mind as an exception). SP actually have names of "leaders", i.e. those who started up and supporting the slates. GG on the other hand is a hashtag that several people use to refer to the push against the Clique. You can see the difference that makes in a movement with and without leaders. SP people got slandered and libeled for pushing SP, but they do have the right of reply. Doesn't help with the phone calls, but definitely against any media sites doing stupid things, like Entertainment Weekly. GG folks also get a ton of harassment, with no right of reply, because of the fact that as an amorphous group, anyone can use the tag and say what they want, for good or for ill. Best folks can do is call them out and ignore.
There's your problem right there. Twitter is a silly place to try and debate. It's meant for rapid information dispersal (Think Arab Spring), announcements, and zingers. Please do more research into the topic before dismissing. Ignorance is one of the sore spots for GG folks, but ask and most of them should be willing to discuss the topic with you, as opposed to what SJW will do if you question their lockstep. Not everyone that supports GG will be on Twitter. GG is not a hivemind. There will be some stupid stuff brought up, but follow the topic and you'll find others who will call these folks out. Once there was a person that was looked up to in GG circles with the tag KingOfPol. Then GG started digging and found a number of falsified information coming from him. They called him out on it and now he is mostly ignored. Names come and go, which keeps the movement alive when a person becomes burned out from all the drama or forced to leave due to death threats that they warrant as legitimate.