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 Crablezworth wrote:
I'm sorry, arthur chu is claiming this man married his wife to deflect accusations of racism?

No. The tweet is just saying that he is using them as shield, not that he married them for that purpose. And it is in direct reference to the “Not your shield” hashtag.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 Crablezworth wrote:
I'm sorry, arthur chu is claiming this man married his wife to deflect accusations of racism?

No. The tweet is just saying that he is using them as shield, not that he married them for that purpose. And it is in direct reference to the “Not your shield” hashtag.

How is that accusation any less unpleasant?

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
How is that accusation any less unpleasant?

No idea. But it is what he said.

 Manchu wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Are you saying posts like this, and you have many of them, are not implying the Hugo Awards had a powerful, left-leaning concern? Essentially, a conspiracy to promote a Leftish agenda?

Because that is seriously how it comes across.

My posts mean exactly what they say (rather than what you say they mean, go figure) but I don't mind spelling it out once again for you:

One of the main points the Sad Puppies and their allies have made is that the Hugo awards are already politicized. They say they organized to resist this existing state of affairs rather than to simply wrest control away from leftists.

So -- again to be clear -- there are basically two narratives at play:

(1) The Hugos are non-political and recognize works purely on the basis of merit. Sad Puppies wants to transform the Hugos to promote conservative politics.

(2) The Hugos are currently controlled by publishing interests with left-leaning political sympathies. Sad Puppies wants to confront these interests by legally bloc voting for works on the basis of merit.

Nothing I have posted ITT claims that one narrative is more accurate than the other. What I have attempted to do is show how posters who assume the first narrative is correct have merely assumed it without making a case based on evidence.

I'm a progressive liberal by any definition and I can't stand that all it takes is to name drop the words liberal or conservative into anything and get immediate polarization result. With that said after seeing the arthur chu crap and the attempt to name drop gamersgate as if it's somehow related, if I'm honest my immediate reaction is to side more with the sad puppies. After reading the entire thread, I gotta say I still see their narrative as more plausible.

I don't mind fiction being very polemical in nature, but it has to feel right, it takes a good author, otherwise it just feels like every character is a mouth piece of the author. Powerful, thought provoking, but above all nuanced writing is important and to be valued, It's the same reason it's so hard to make a good fiction movie that makes a point without beating you over the head with it.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 Manchu wrote:
Again, you seem to be assuming there was no previous political polarization.

And, unless convincing arguments are being pushed to show it was not the case, we will likely all continue doing. Because, as was said above, showing that some polarization existed is just that much easier than proving it did not exist.

What you have done here is to declare that whatever you want to claim is true unless I prove otherwise ... without any irony.

"Politics is what the other guys do. We only do truth."

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 Crablezworth wrote:
I'm sorry, arthur chu is claiming this man married his wife to deflect accusations of racism?

No. The tweet is just saying that he is using them as shield, not that he married them for that purpose. And it is in direct reference to the “Not your shield” hashtag.

Wow, if I were the other guys I'd be coming for this Arthur Chu dude.

http://www.migranttales.net/of-birds-and-feathers-the-ps-the-sweden-democrats-and-their-american-bedfellows/

http://voxday.blogspot.nl/2014/01/dark-enlightenment-second-stage.html


Yeah he's a real charmer.



NO axe to grind at all.

Clearly this is all about ethics and not at all about trolling/revenge.

 reds8n wrote:
http://www.migranttales.net/of-birds-and-feathers-the-ps-the-sweden-democrats-and-their-american-bedfellows/

http://voxday.blogspot.nl/2014/01/dark-enlightenment-second-stage.html


Yeah he's a real charmer.



NO axe to grind at all.

Clearly this is all about ethics and not at all about trolling/revenge.

Hey the best revenge is...revenge!

 Manchu wrote:
What you have done here is to declare that whatever you want to claim is true unless I prove otherwise ...

Uh, no.

 Manchu wrote:
"Politics is what the other guys do. We only do truth."

Rather “I am unconvinced by claims with nothing to back them when finding such things should be extremely easy”. Now if you or someone else can come up with actual stuff supporting the idea that there was a left-wing bias before, then sure, I can change my mind. Or even disagree but acknowledge you have arguments. Now… well, I just cannot take you seriously until then. And I am not asking for much, just a list of nominated books and quick descriptions that shows they are left-wing or something.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
Uh, no.

Uh yes.

As I explained to InquisitorBob (you might want to re-read that post), you simply wish that I claimed that the Hugo awards are manipulated by a left-wing conspiracy. Why? Because you want to shift the burden from you having to support your claim (which Peregrine believes is impossible) to me having to prove the opposite, despite never having claimed the opposite.

 Manchu wrote:
Again, you seem to be assuming there was no previous political polarization.

I am assuming that any previous polarisation was caused by choices made by readers rather than a left wing cabal's secret conspiracy to create a politically polarised Hugo winner.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I am assuming that any previous polarisation was caused by choices made by readers rather than a left wing cabal's secret conspiracy to create a politically polarised Hugo winner.

And if there were possible explanations outside of that false dichotomy?

Some stuff from the two sad puppy guys. Worth reading.

https://bradrtorgersen.wordpress.com/2015/04/07/fort-living-room/

http://monsterhunternation.com/2015/04/06/a-letter-to-the-smofs-moderates-and-fence-sitters-from-the-author-who-started-sad-puppies/

 MWHistorian wrote:
There is a lot of misinformation flying around about Sad Puppies.
I know Larry Correia and Brad Torgerson personally and have followed this from the beginning.
Here's a run down.
The Hugos, the highest award in sci-fi, was run by a small group of elitists that all had the same political agenda. The books that would get nominations and thus win, were chosen because of their political message, not quality of work. (And usually by TOR publishing to boot.) Some authors, such as John Scalzi would game the system and campaign for votes so he would win. Which he did. A lot.
Larry tried to bring these problems to the Hugo's attention but they ignored him and when he pushed, said he wasn't the kind of person they wanted in science fiction.

So, Larry started sad puppies. (Boring literary message fiction is the leading cause of puppy sadness.) He wanted the Hugos to be about what's good, not what fits the political narrative of the people in charge. Others agreed. They even had to campaign to get the Wheel of Time series nominated. That should have gotten several Hugo's already. There are authors of different colors, gender and even politics associated with Sad Puppies. It's not about getting Conservative authors on the ballet, it's about getting good authors on the ballet.

So they adopted Scalzi's model and gamed the system in order to break it to show how broken and pointless the Hugos already were.
They're not misogynists. Many of the authors on the ballet are women.
They're not racists. Some of the authors are minorities. Brad has been married to a black woman for twenty years.
They're not all conservatives. Some are libertarians and some are even (gasp) liberals.

Edit: And Footfall was awesome!

Exalted!

Unfortunately, a lot of people in this thread seem to want to ignore what Larry has said from the inception of The Campaign to End Puppy Related Sadness, all of which has always been available to the public on his own blog http://monsterhunternation.com/ for anyone to read. Of course why should people read the exact words of the creator of Sad Puppies when they can rely on second, third or fourth hand opinion pieces that clearly are agenda driven?

There is a lot of good enjoyable well written commercially successful SciFi out there written by authors that have a lot of fans who buy a lot of books and go to a lot of conventions. In recent years none of those books won Hugos and the stories that did win Hugos were championed by their fans as being important message fiction that had the proper boxes ticked in their checklist that aligned with their politics. The fans of those stories also actively disparaged other authors and fans of works of those authors for purely political reasons. Those authors and fans pushed back and lots of good popular stories were nominated by fans who cared enough to pay the fee and cast a ballot.

There are a lot of SciFi fans out there. Having more of them participate in the Hugo voting is a good thing. It brings in more money to WorldCon, gets more fan involvement for conventions, publicizes more good stories, breaks no rules. There is no downside to fan participation in fan awarded awards.

The people who are upset by the success of Sad Puppies are the only ones bringing politics into the Hugos. Fans of popular well selling books voted for them for Hugos. The fact that some people are upset that the "wrong" stories are being nominated by the "wrong" fans is telling. SciFi fandom is a big tent and everyone who pays the fee and signs up has the right to vote for the Hugos. The only "bad" SciFi stories are the ones that aren't enjoyable to read.

As I understand it, this "false dichotomy" is the basis for the Sad Puppies's group's course of action.

Perhaps it is all caused by CIA mind control lasers.

Prestor Jon wrote:
The fact that some people are upset that the "wrong" stories are being nominated by the "wrong" fans is telling.

The counterargument is that those mobilized by Sad Puppies et al. are only voting for political reasons rather than aesthetic ones. That is, they are no more interested in excellence in science fiction than they allege their opponents are. I don't think that counter-argument stands up to reason: either one must admit that both sides are principally interested in politics or demonstrate that politics played no significant role in the awards prior to Sad Puppies' lobbying (i.e., that Sad Puppies only cares about politicizing a non-political award).

Correia himself offered a different explanation last year (i.e., pre-GamerGate):

The Hugos are supposed to be about honoring the best works, and many of the voters still take this responsibility very seriously. I thank them for this. But basically the Hugos are a popularity contest decided by the attendees of WorldCon. I am a popular writer, however my fans aren’t typical WorldCon attendees. Anyone who pays to purchase a WorldCon membership is allowed to vote. Other writers, bloggers, and even publishing houses have encouraged their fans to get involved in the nomination process before. I simply did the same thing. This controversy arises only because my fans are the wrong kind of fans.

http://monsterhunternation.com/2014/04/24/an-explanation-about-the-hugo-awards-controversy/

 Kilkrazy wrote:
As I understand it, this "false dichotomy" is the basis for the Sad Puppies's group's course of action.

Then I think you misunderstand their argument. As shown above, Correia believes that there is a significant left-leaning bias among "typical WorldCon attendees," which is pretty short of some preposterous "left wing cabal's secret conspiracy" or "CIA mind control lasers."

"Yes and no. SP1 was very politically biased because it was just me. SP2 did have a preponderance of nominees on the right side of the political spectrum, again, because that slate was basically my suggested list of stuff that I personally enjoyed. However, ultimately that didn’t matter because the liberals we got noms for were just as attacked and vilified as the rest of us.

SP3 is actually extremely politically diverse. That’s because this time our slate of suggestions was put together by a bigger group of authors and fans, and since Brad was running the show and trying to be all about getting recognition for quality, deserving authors, their personal beliefs were of no concern. Don’t take my word for it. Go through our list of nominees for yourself. You’ll find that we have liberals, conservatives, moderates, and question marks who’ve kept their politics to themselves.

What these authors have in common is that they are good, entertaining, and wouldn’t normally have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting a nomination because they aren’t inclined to kiss the right butts. If you look at our best novel nominees, none of them are conservatives. I was the only one on there who could possibly be described as right wing, and I refused my nomination.

For the record, Brad Torgersen is a moderate. By Utah standards he is a flaming liberal.

As you go through the other categories, you’ll find that we put up many authors and editors who are my polar political opposites, and I’d guess that a majority of them are actually moderate to left on the spectrum.
That’s because Sad Puppies suggestions was about the quality of the work. Not the author’s politics. Anybody who says the SP nominees are a bunch of right wingers is either misinformed, willfully ignorant, or a liar."

http://monsterhunternation.com/2015/04/06/a-letter-to-the-smofs-moderates-and-fence-sitters-from-the-author-who-started-sad-puppies/

 Manchu wrote:

Prestor Jon wrote:
The fact that some people are upset that the "wrong" stories are being nominated by the "wrong" fans is telling.

The counterargument is that those mobilized by Sad Puppies et al. are only voting for political reasons rather than aesthetic ones. That is, they are no more interested in excellence in science fiction than they allege their opponents are. I don't think that counter-argument stands up to reason: either one must admit that both sides are principally interested in politics or demonstrate that politics played no significant role in the awards prior to Sad Puppies' lobbying.

Correia himself offered a different explanation last year (i.e., pre-GamerGate):

The Hugos are supposed to be about honoring the best works, and many of the voters still take this responsibility very seriously. I thank them for this. But basically the Hugos are a popularity contest decided by the attendees of WorldCon. I am a popular writer, however my fans aren’t typical WorldCon attendees. Anyone who pays to purchase a WorldCon membership is allowed to vote. Other writers, bloggers, and even publishing houses have encouraged their fans to get involved in the nomination process before. I simply did the same thing. This controversy arises only because my fans are the wrong kind of fans.

http://monsterhunternation.com/2014/04/24/an-explanation-about-the-hugo-awards-controversy/

You're conflating politics with fandom. Fans of popular SciFi authors wonder why the books that win Hugos aren't the popular best selling ones. Some popular best selling authors provide the explanation and encourage their numerous fans to vote and vote for whatever books they want.

Larry has personally made the effort to push the books he felt were worthy of nomination and get more people to buy them. This was demonstrably proven by his book bombs for nominees increasing their sales and sales rank on amazon. The stories he pushed people to buy and read were written by various authors whose personal politics were across the spectrum, both men and women were included along with various races. The stories that he encouraged his fans to read were not some unified block of stories written by authors with the same political views or from within the same demographic they were just good stories that Larry thought his fans would also like and potentially want to vote for.

http://monsterhunternation.com/2015/03/04/sad-puppies-book-bomb-best-related-work-and-campbell-award-for-best-new-writer/
http://monsterhunternation.com/2015/03/03/sad-puppies-short-story-update-free-championship-btok-and-tuesdays-with-molakesh-eligibility/
http://monsterhunternation.com/2015/02/26/book-bomb-results-more-free-stories-and-sad-puppies-slate-update/
http://monsterhunternation.com/2015/02/25/book-bomb-short-stories-from-the-sad-puppies-slate/
http://monsterhunternation.com/2015/02/19/book-bomb-success-behold-the-power-of-sad-puppies/
http://monsterhunternation.com/2015/02/18/book-bomb-novellas-from-the-sad-puppies-slate/

There you go, proof that Sad Puppies wasn't about politics. It was about getting talented authors more publicity, help them sell more books and introduce Larry's fans to stories they might like and if they did like them that they would be willing to vote for them for Hugos.

If you can find any shred of evidence that shows that Larry or Brad encouraged fans to vote for authors or stories based solely on that author's political beliefs I'd like to see it.

 Manchu wrote:

Prestor Jon wrote:
The fact that some people are upset that the "wrong" stories are being nominated by the "wrong" fans is telling.

The counterargument is that those mobilized by Sad Puppies et al. are only voting for political reasons rather than aesthetic ones.

Then what's their political agenda? Because SP is filled with people from all walks of the political spectrum.
So, I guess it's gotta be something all sides could agree with. That in itself must be an amazing political agenda.

They could start their own award...

I find it really, really interesting that one of the major quotes from the people behind this is all about how, unlike the good old days, sci-fi and fantasy isn't just about barbarians plundering ancient barrows or space mari...errrrr...futuristic soldiers shooting evil alien bugs, but keeps having some kind of pesky message or social commentary.

That's not exactly a new phenomenon in either genre. In fact, his complaints fall more in line with critics of both genres who don't think they can be 'literary'. There's room for both Conan and Picard, and there always has been!

...and seriously? He touched on cover art being unreliable? Cover art has always been unreliable!

On the subject of that quote with regards to the late Sir Terry...wow.

Prestor Jon wrote:
You're conflating politics with fandom.

I do think there is a political dimension to fandom. People tend to like things that support their existing worldview. In real life, they like to hang out with people who share their interests and opinions. This does not have to be and often is not a matter of conscious political organization and yet it is political all the same. But people who spend most of their time in situations where their opinions are reinforced and congratulated tend to believe those opinions are factual in contrast to political. Like I said above, anyone who disagrees, however, they are the ones doing politics.

The trouble is, the Hugos are not just a WorldCon affair (contrary to GRRM's recent, half-hearted assertions) but a term of wider marketable relevance. So even people not traditionally affiliated with WorldCon and its alleged political bent would naturally value receiving a Hugo award.

Prestor Jon wrote:
If you can find any shred of evidence that shows that Larry or Brad encouraged fans to vote for authors or stories based solely on that author's political beliefs I'd like to see it.

So would I.

 Frazzled wrote:
They could start their own award...

As GRRM pointed out, the prestige of an award is largely a matter of who has received it. Vonnegut, Asimov, Heinlein, PKD, Arthur C. Clarke, etc., etc., are not around anymore to receive a newly-founded award.

 Spinner wrote:
I find it really, really interesting that one of the major quotes from the people behind this is all about how, unlike the good old days, sci-fi and fantasy isn't just about barbarians plundering ancient barrows or space mari...errrrr...futuristic soldiers shooting evil alien bugs, but keeps having some kind of pesky message or social commentary.

That's not exactly a new phenomenon in either genre. In fact, his complaints fall more in line with critics of both genres who don't think they can be 'literary'. There's room for both Conan and Picard, and there always has been!

...and seriously? He touched on cover art being unreliable? Cover art has always been unreliable!

On the subject of that quote with regards to the late Sir Terry...wow.

They're not saying fiction shouldn't have a message.
They're saying that message shouldn't override story.
They point to Dune as an example. Dune had a strong message about politics and society. Yet the story was what came first and as a result it's far more readable, enjoyable and even stronger in its message for doing so.

 MWHistorian wrote:

 Manchu wrote:
The counterargument is that those mobilized by Sad Puppies et al. are only voting for political reasons rather than aesthetic ones.

Then what's their political agenda?

According to their left-wing opponents (who many posters ITT refuse to believe exist) racism, misogyny, homophobia, etc.

 MWHistorian wrote:

 Spinner wrote:
I find it really, really interesting that one of the major quotes from the people behind this is all about how, unlike the good old days, sci-fi and fantasy isn't just about barbarians plundering ancient barrows or space mari...errrrr...futuristic soldiers shooting evil alien bugs, but keeps having some kind of pesky message or social commentary.

That's not exactly a new phenomenon in either genre. In fact, his complaints fall more in line with critics of both genres who don't think they can be 'literary'. There's room for both Conan and Picard, and there always has been!

...and seriously? He touched on cover art being unreliable? Cover art has always been unreliable!

On the subject of that quote with regards to the late Sir Terry...wow.

They're not saying fiction shouldn't have a message.
They're saying that message shouldn't override story.
They point to Dune as an example. Dune had a strong message about politics and society. Yet the story was what came first and as a result it's far more readable, enjoyable and even stronger in its message for doing so.

Ender Games as well, but from how people talk about it now you'd think its the most controversial book.

Except of course Ender's Game was boring to tears and written like a 12 year old wrote it.

 Manchu wrote:
you simply wish that I claimed that the Hugo awards are manipulated by a left-wing conspiracy.

Actually, I wish you would stop implying there was one. Replace “Manchu” by “Sad Puppies” in my message if that makes you feel better. But I am not going to assume conspiracy by default.

 Frazzled wrote:
Except of course Ender's Game was boring to tears and written like a 12 year old wrote it.

Now I know to completely ignore your tastes in literature.

So...just get more of your people to come to this convention? I mean how is it different then before? Was there a different voting procedure?

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
But I am not going to assume conspiracy by default.

No one, not even Sad Puppies, has asked you to do so.

We've got more straw men ITT than a Wizard of Oz cosplay convention.

 Frazzled wrote:
So...just get more of your people to come to this convention? I mean how is it different then before? Was there a different voting procedure?

In order: yes, it is overt, and no.