Well. Nice to know that THE EDITOR (me) is finally getting some credit for his role in Puppygate, as is the “High Profile” website of Amazing Stories. A guest post by Ken Burnside on the MadGeniusClub site reveals all! Of course Burnside manages to word things in such a way that it implies that Amazing Stories was the source that first leaked the final ballot, but that is kind of beside the point, which is – The Puppies Like Me! They Really Like Me! (because without me and, oh, about 5,000 other fans, they’d have nothing to bitch about).
Three days before the ballot was released, the editor of Amazing Stories started the campaign for No Award on all the categories that were nominated by Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies. This was the first “high profile” source treating them as interchangeable. This was the first hint that the slates had worked…and was clearly a leak by someone breaking the “please don’t reveal this information” instructions. Guest Post by Ken Burnside
The above was in response to my April 2nd post, which you can read right on site. I strongly urge my new Puppy Pals to stay away since I know you folks don’t like reading things that are accurate and truthful, and since we’ve just become friends I don’t want you to see anything that might spoil that relationship….
To all of the rest of you that helped Noa Ward take home so many rockets – you’re welcome, but of course I couldn’t have done it without you. Please be sure to sign the guest book before you leave so that we’re sure to include you in next year’s SJW Cabal.
Kevin Standlee, over on George Martin’s NotABlog had this to say in Yet Another Time Wasting Puppy Thread:
If the Hugo Awards and Worldcon are so repugnant to you that you want them destroyed because you are so convinced that you are the Only True Believers, then what is stopping you and your fellow True Believers from creating the One True SF/F Award Run by Real Fans for Real Reasons, and founding the One True SF/F Genre Convention Run by Real Fans for Real Reasons? You do know that nobody is stopping you from doing that, don’t you? As long as you don’t use anyone else’s property (like, say “Hugo Award” and “Worldcon”), you can create any old award and set up any sort of convention you want. What in the world is stopping you? If you are really right, and you certainly sound as though you’re convinced that your opinion is the One True Opinion, and that the only reason anything else won was due to people cheating in some way, then go create a system that works.
In case you never figured it out, Worldcon and the Hugo Awards aren’t run by some Big Entertainment Company that sells tickets and that you hire to entertain you and pay dividends to some owners. They are volunteer events, run 100% by volunteer labor, by non-profit organizations who spend any surplus funds for the good of fandom, and whose rules are made by those people who actually care sufficiently to show up and work at the fairly difficult process of democracy.
And in an entirely puppy-unrelated comment, Niel DeGrasse-Tyson had this to say:
“I never associate myself with a political party. If you ask me, I can tell you how I would vote, but I don’t start with ‘oh, I am a
Republican[puppy], I am a…’ No. I am a human being. A trained scientists, a male, I’m a father, I’m a husband, there are things that I am, and that’s not up to somebody’s debate, but intellectual issues I’m not going to attach myself to some movement that is defined by other people who are telling me what it is I should or should not believe.”
(Not entirely related but something to think about tangential to Puppy War IV)
Frank Wu offered an olive branch here on Amazing Stories. David Gerrold offered this:
It’s time for all of us to stop complaining about the other guy and start taking responsibility for our own behavior.
The only way we’re going to elevate the conversation is by elevating the conversation.
We could start by retiring a few tired phrases like “CHORF” and “SJW” and “puppy-kickers.” (We could also retire the knee-jerk accusations of “racist,” “misogynist,” and “homophobe.”) And perhaps we might also retire the whole “sad puppy” meme and replace it with … oh, maybe something like, “we are all science fiction.”
Because, y’know — it’s everybody’s community that’s at stake, it’s all of ours.
Anyway, that’s what I think we should do — without waiting to see who’s first. Maybe it would be better to see who’s going to be first to set the good example…?
Pat Cadigan has called for leaving Worldcon out of the political mess:
Worldon is our annual gathering of the clans, not a field of combat. We go there to enjoy ourselves and to be among friends. For a few days, we get to hang out on Planet Science Fiction/Fantasy.
Worldcon is *not* a battlefield
And what is the response from the “other side”? Here is Kate Paulk, head honcho for Sad Puppies 4, writing the day after the award ceremony:
So, another Hugo award has passed – a singularly apt choice of phrasing in the light of the unfortunate visuals afforded by the now notorious asterisk and the more-than-a-little-phallic rocket award (sooner or later some lout will make a gif of the rocket going into the middle of the asterisk and… well… Let’s not go there. There isn’t enough brain bleach).
Before I say anything else, congratulations to the winners. Congratulations also to those who were denied an honorable win by the slate-voted No-Award crybabies, and to everyone else who was nominated. Regardless of whether they were nominated by wrongfans or TruFen, every single item on the ballot was there because there were people who thought it was one of the best pieces in its class that year.
It’s a shame this year’s hosts showed all the restraint of a Nazi rally along with the morals of a Soviet show trial and the taste and discernment of a cat in heat.
Continuing with:
I was going to mine the Intertubes for Nazi quotes that the Puppy-Kickers could have said if they’d been about Puppies or white men rather than Jews, but alas, even in translation Hitler and Goebbels are so much more articulate the comparison would be utterly unfair to the Puppy-Kickers (and remember, these are writers and editors – but the Nazis beat them on all fronts when it comes to articulating points of view. I suppose I should be relieved: pointing and shrieking tends to be rather less than effective as a means of converting the undecided).
Oh, and for those who are wondering? The reason I didn’t use quotes from Mao, Lenin, or Stalin was that an awful lot of Puppy-Kickers would be flattered to be compared to such luminaries of the world’s most lethal ideology.
So, let’s call them for what they are. Nasty, petty, bullying socialists who would fit in just as well with the Nazis as they would with their equally murderous Communist cousins. They even have a racial agenda, and while they’d deny it, they’re so US-centric it’s hilarious (as well as sad).
And what’s even sadder is this pathetic collection of power-hungry little Hitlers have destroyed what was once a genuinely respected award. Whether it can be resurrected by the Campaign to End Puppy-Related Sadness or not, I consider the cause to be worthy.
and then concluding with this:
For starters the word slate is not going to appear anywhere. For second [Cross talk] I am not doing a slate, I am doing a list of the most popular works in all of the various categories as submitted by people who read on any of the various blogs that will have me. And I’m going to post ultimately the top ten of each, with links to the full list of everything that everybody wanted to see nominated, and I’m going to be saying “hey if you really want to see your favorite authors nominated your best bet is to pick something of theirs from the most popular in the list as opposed to the least popular”. That is going to be what it is. I don’t care who ends up on that list. I don’t care if David Gerrold ends up being the top of the list somewhere. That’s not the point, the point is that I want to see the voting numbers both for nomination and for actual voting go up above 5,000 up above 10,000, because the more people who are involved and who are voting the harder it is for any faction including puppies to manipulate the results. (from File 770)
And just the other day, Tom Knighton posted in favor of Paulk’s puppypost and said this:
This is important as hell. You see, we’ve been accused of wanting to do this and that to science fiction and fantasy literature, and most of those accusations are bullshit. None of us want to push anyone out of the field.
Which is a nice sentiment until you get to the comments and realize that it’s just another case of Puppies Mostly Lie.
In response to Knighton’s comments on GRRM, this is what he and his readers had to say:
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Wyldkat “He’s sold way too much to just fade into obscurity.”Heh. Quantity ≠ Quality imo. -
Angus Trim I’m not so sure, Tom. GRRM managed to get on Vox’s bad side, every bit as much as Scalzi. The Minions are now busy parodying both of them.GRRM breaks down to George Rape Rape Martin in Minion land, for all of the forced sexual scenes he has in his series. One of the minions is working on documenting this.Successful parody campaigns have damaged or destroyed other celebrities in the past. -
TLKnighton Post author You may well be right. I don’t think so (or else I wouldn’t have said it, naturally), but I’m only human-ish, so I could just as easily be wrong.If it does happen, I don’t know that I’ll be able to shed a tear over it. -
mickoneverything There seems to me to be lot of fans jumping ship from ASOIAF, as the series has stopped really doing anything and there aren’t really any characters left to root for.Grunge music once seemed like it was too big to fail too.
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mickoneverything Rape squared! Yeah, the pillory campaign is just getting warmed up I think. The blazing saddles meme today was pretty hilarious.
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Can we hold Tom responsible for this “free speech” even though he didn’t write all of it? Certainly. He’s not “going to shed a tear”, which remark clearly gives tacit approval to the “Pillory” campaign. That campaign contradicts nearly everything Kate, Tom and all of the other misguided, ignorant, anti-social narcissists are claiming that this year’s campaign is all about.
It is quite obvious from the talk during this post-Sasquan half month that NOTHING has changed. The puppies obviously think that fans are idiots and won’t see through their “new” strategy.
It’s a shell game. One of these things is not like the other:
In case you don’t know what the new strategy is, here it is laid out:
Publicly appear to make nice-nice and offer up a list they can almost reasonably claim is not a slate (remember – NO apologies, NO surrender. Can’t appear to knuckle under to SJW demands, got to keep the mob happy and focused) while engaging in character assassination behind the scenes. If they can destroy the reputations of the people they perceive as the leaders of the imaginary SJW Cabal, they will have no need of slates in the future.
This makes it easy for them to justify softening the slate BS. This is a tactic more commonly referred to as “pulling the wool over their eyes”.
They have not learned a thing. They have not changed their strategy, only adjusted a few tactics.
Non-puppies have agreed that reading lists and eligibility lists are not slates. No amount of twisted logic can make them so. But actions can. A recommendation list becomes a political slate when it has political speak behind it and when it is put together to advance a political agenda. And that is exactly what Sad Puppies IV is.
The words being used to describe the methodology are meant to mollify, to sound as if the puppies are doing what everyone has asked them to do all along, but it’s all shields and wolf suits.
Who is going to be on their “reading list”? Puppies nominated by puppies, with some non-puppy works thrown in as camouflage.
From MadGeniusClub:
The tireless, wonderful volunteer Puppy Pack will be collating recommendations.
Later – most likely somewhere around February or early March, I’ll be posting The List to multiple locations. The List will not be a slate – it will be a list of the ten or so most popular recommendations in each Hugo category, and a link to the full list in all its glory. Nothing more, nothing less.
If you want to see your favorite author receive a nomination and an award, your best bet will be to cast your nomination ballot for one of the works in the top ten or thereabouts of The List.
The Bitches are Back
Yes. Indeed they are.
So, what’s one more reading list? It’s not just one more reading list like Goodreads or Locus or NESFA or LASFS puts out, because it still represents the goal of implementing a political agenda as part of its reason for being. Real reading lists have the goal of getting the reader to read, not to stop reading so they can “poke a stick in the SJW eye”.
And on that score, check out the comments attached to the above announcement (a sampling):
Just remember: if there’s a recording of any given event, it’s harder for anyone to lie about what happened. (They’ll still try, but the evidence will prove them wrong). So carry a voice recorder with you at all times. And if you should just so happen to have an interaction with someone that is falsely deemed to be “abusive” or “threatening”, well, maybe some audio of that interaction somehow gets leaked to Youtube where objective third parties can form their own opinions.
Considering Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden are already listed as Guests of the Convention, and considering
“Any action or behavior that is illegal or causes significant interference with event operations, excessive discomfort to other attendees, or adversely affects MidAmeriCon II’s relationship with its guests, its venue, or the public is strictly forbidden and may result in revocation of membership privileges.”
I would argue that since the Sad Puppies make the Haydens sad*, they are obviously not welcome.
*sad may be read as angry, possibly deranged and unhinged.
Interesting. I suppose one should point out that refusing the right to go armed is a violation of 18USC 241, as well as the Second Amendment, so there goes two provisions of the Code almost before it’s fairly published.
I am permitted by law to carry everywhere I go. It’s a fairly easy certification to get for veterans who are also mandated reporters of child abuse. And I can swear in as many deputies as I need.
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Do you really think you’ll need that level of defense? Reportedly, the worst anyone did to a puppy this year was remove promotional materials or swear and shout.
The only guns I want to see at an SF convention are replica blasters. Although I’ve heard of groups from cons going off to target ranges and having a grand time.
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Just because one of these people hasn’t done anything, it doesn’t mean they won’t.
Since there HAVE been death threats in past years, I fault no one who opts to take zero chances.
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REFERENCE: NOT IN COMMENTS:
Missouri Law regarding businesses and no guns:
Chapter 571, Section 571.107 of the Missouri Statutes:
“Any private property whose owner has posted the premises as being off-limits to concealed firearms by means of one or more signs displayed in a conspicuous place of a minimum size of eleven inches by fourteen inches with the writing thereon in letters of not less than one inch. The owner, business or commercial lessee, manager of a private business enterprise, or any other organization, entity, or person may prohibit persons holding a concealed carry permit or endorsement from carrying concealed firearms on the premises and may prohibit employees, not authorized by the employer, holding a concealed carry permit or endorsement from carrying concealed firearms on the property of the employer. If the building or the premises are open to the public, the employer of the business enterprise shall post signs on or about the premises if carrying a concealed firearm is prohibited. Possession of a firearm in a vehicle on the premises shall not be a criminal offense so long as the firearm is not removed from the vehicle or brandished while the vehicle is on the premises. An employer may prohibit employees or other persons holding a concealed carry permit or endorsement from carrying a concealed firearm in vehicles owned by the employer”
and
571.121 15 – which gives private property, including commercial enterprises, the right to prohibit firearms.
Puppies are intending to go to MidAmeriConII armed not only with voice recorders and cameras (so they have ‘evidence’ of ‘assaults’ on their person that they can bring to the concom) but with firearms so they can “protect” themselves. (Hint: conventions have had a No Weapons policy for decades – I had to confiscate a six shooter at Iguanacon in 1978 – and your 2nd amendment rights do not extend to private affairs that have rules and regulations to the contrary.)
(I’ve never seen such a huge collection of scaredy cats all in one place. I’m really really tempted to compare the need to open carry to a similar need to drive the biggest, flashiest sports car as compensation for…but I’ll not go there. For now.)
These are people who are looking for controversy, not reconciliation.
And then there’s this:
The Puppies have lobbied long and hard to make it seem that the Hugo Awards are a popular choice/people’s choice award. They claim that the works that sell the most are not getting nominated and not winning, and that this means that the Hugo awards are not reflecting popular, democratic choice.
We know that quality and popularity have some relation but that they aren’t the same. The bigger the Hugo voting pool gets the more it will tend to popularity. Popularity isn’t particularly useful information because there are plenty of ways of already finding out what is popular. Camestros Felapton
Similar from GRRM:
Martin, the son of a longshoreman, rejects the idea that anyone has been excluded from the Hugos for not being either highbrow or politically correct enough. But just being popular shouldn’t be enough to win, he told me on the second day of Sasquan. “The reward for popularity is popularity! It’s truckloads of money! Do you need the trophy, too?” he said as we sat in his hotel room overlooking the convention center and the Spokane River. “Can’t the trophy go to the guy who sells 5,000 copies but is doing something innovative?” Wired Magazine
Both of them are correct. The Hugo Awards are not about popularity. They are awards given out by a self-selecting group of fans who care enough about the field to spend the money and the time necessary to nominate and vote. Many of them have decades of experience with the field (I’ve got 47 years of reading SF under my belt and I’m a piker!), have demonstrated their deep interest through years of consistent involvement and they CARE, as more than 5,000 of them demonstrated at Sasquan this year. (Not to mention that many of my and earlier generations of fans suffered to one degree or another for our involvement – laughed at, ridiculed, out-cast for our interest in that brain-rotting Buck Rogers stuff.)
Unfortunately, disagreeing about the intent of the award is not the only reason that the Puppies are in favor of MOAR. They want the Hugos to be voted on based on sales (for that is what you get with a popularity contest) and they figure that it is far easier to influence the general public than it is a bunch of SJW Chorfs. In short, following Sasquan they understand that they can not sway the majority of fandom to their point of view, so instead they’re trying to replace it.
If the puppies want to advance the acceptable goals that they have articulated (as cover, one strongly suspects), they would do certain things that they are absolutely not doing:
- start a campaign to raise awareness about Worldcon and the Hugo Awards – without political speech attached. Something like “Join Worldcon and Nominate for the Hugo Awards“. And then leave it at that. It sounds pretty simple, but the puppies seem unable to master this task.
- wait a year to start putting out reading lists. Let Vox Day and the Rabid Puppies have their day (divorce themselves more forcefully than the lip-service they’ve paid to doing so up to now) “We’re not Rabid” would have some validity if there was actually some evidence to back it up
- stop the attack speech. Being at odds with most of Worldcon fandom is a tough row to hoe; using language that makes us turn you off the minute you put fingers to keyboards (and words to microphones) wins no supporters – and continues to confirm the belief that what you say is not what you mean.
- drop the “army” mentality of separation from fandom. You’re fans and have admitted as much. Be fans.
or, alternatively:
If the Hugos are as meaningless as so many of you have said,
if the Worldcon is as unwelcoming as you’ve said,
if the culture of fandom is completely at odds with your own beliefs as you’ve said,
if the majority of fans isn’t represented by Trufandom as you’ve said,
if the best works are really determined by sales as you’ve said,
then why are you wasting time on a bunch of SJW CHORFS? You’re trying to make political points by spending all of your resources on a powerless, meaningless, sub-sub-minority. Even if you win that fight, by your own admission you’d have won NOTHING.
Except a cynical, calculated bid to “win” what some are already calling an “Author’s War”. The puppies all seem to feel and are acting as if the market of readers is closed and getting someone to buy one of their books is a zero sum game: money spent on buying puppy works means no money to buy SJW works.
First, it don’t work that way. Want people to buy your stuff? Write good copy and advertise i. (Hint: Worldcon is not an advertising billboard.)
Second – all artistic fields are being subject to squeezing by our changing technologies. Get used to it. In future, if you want to make a living writing, you’re probably going to have to generate your revenue through secondary sales – like T-shirts and mousepads – rather than direct fiction sales. (Yes, your novel will be nothing more than a loss leader.) The reason why you’re not selling has more to do with bad writing, lack of effective marketing and the general state of the market than it does anything that your feverdreamed SJW cabal might be doing.
~~~
So, the first thing is, I’m stealing Kevin’s convention and award names.
But until the event is scheduled, we’ve still got Sad Puppies IV to deal with, because the problem is, as spokesperson for that effort, Kate Paulk’s words do not match her stated intent.
I’ll shortly be announcing the creation of the One True SF/F Award Run by Real Fans for Real Reasons, which will be presented at a soon-to-be-announced convention, the One True SF/F Genre Convention Run by Real Fans for Real Reasons. Which no doubt will be quickly shortened to SFFGCRBRFFRRCon, just as the awards themselves (a silver flying saucer base, above which will be mounted a symbol for science fiction, fantasy or horror that will be crowd-sourced and unique every year) will soon be known as the SFFGCRBRFFRRies.
Everyone attending the convention will receive a ribbon to attach to their ID badge. That ribbon will state that the wearer is a REAL FAN for REAL REASONS. Additional ribbons, containing short, pithy summations of REASONS can be appended to the RFRR ribbons for those who wish greater specificity. Summations such as: “I’m clueless about fandom but it must be doing something wrong because I am not the center of attention”, “Money is the root of all evil, I earn so much I must be Evil”, “The message in my message fiction is that message fiction sucks” and “Someone on the internet told me that someone on the internet is doing it wrong”. For a fee, personal REASON ribbons will be made on site.
Tasha – was it a pleasant conversation about cosplay & dress & photography? (I don’t remember – I hope it was)
It had its ups and downs. I was learning to adjust to my hearing aids and it was the biggest con I’d ever attended so I was a bit overwhelmed all weekend.
Tasha,
what you ask would be foolish. I need to accumulate all of the associated wealth under my own control so as to use it to effectively advance SJW causes. Besides, I always thought that the purpose of a minion was to minionize, not ask for favors….(either that or pray in the Jewish tradition….)
Work with other SJW cabals? How can there be more than one cabal? (shhhhhhhh!!! dammit!)
MD – I’m tempted to play off of nuggety nuggets. Oh, something along the lines of, if the Hugo Rocket is a phallus, their award must be the accompanying scrotal….
Maybe that’s what we ought to do…commission a sculpture of nuggety nuggets, designed in such a way that they can be hung around a Hugo rocket’s base….
I’ve never been good at being a minion… Or prayer…
I like the Nuggety Nugget sculpture design.
I think your suggested name is just too long and hard to pronounce. I suggest something simpler:
1. ScifiMF for Real Men
2. SFF Nuggety Nuggets
3. The Best SFF Awards
4. Puppies for SFF
I do like the space ship award for winners. Something like their logo done as a statue.
What kind of swag do I get if I officially join your SJW cabal? Will the cookies be dairy free? Will you sign a copy of the secret cabal manifesto and plans? Is there a cool handshake? Are you co-ordinating with the other secret SJW cabals?
We met at Arisia in 2013. Had a lengthy discussion on photography rules & cosplay/dressing appropriately.
Well they didn’t waste any time did they? Straight out of the gate and crashed right into Godwin`s Law. Maybe they should give out their own award. They could call it the Nuggety Nugget Award.